The God Project

by John Saul

  “It wasn’t SIDS,” Sally interrupted. “Something happened to Julie.” Her voice rose and took on a shrillness that Wiseman immediately recognized as the beginnings of hysteria. “I don’t know what it was,” Sally plunged on, “but I’m going to find out. It wasn’t SIDS—it was something else. Julie was fine. She was just fine!”

  Wiseman listened helplessly as Sally’s hysteria soared, certain that he’d been wrong to come to the funeral, wrong to speak to Sally Montgomery right now. Here, today, he could see the true depths of her grief. When the time came for her to begin dealing with the reality of her loss, would he be able to help her? He was glad when Steve Montgomery, accompanied by Sally’s mother and Jason, appeared beside her.

  “Sally?” Steve asked. Sally’s gaze shifted over to him, and Steve, too, saw the strange light in her eyes. “Are you all right?”

  “I want to go home,” Sally whispered, the last of her energy drained by her outburst “I want to go home, and get away from here. Please? Take me home.” She moved once more toward the nearby car, Steve by her side, Jason trailing along behind them. Only Phyllis Paine stayed behind to speak to Wiseman, and there was an anger in her voice that he had rarely heard in the long years of their friendship.

  “Arthur, what did you say to her?” she demanded. “What did you say to my daughter?”

  “Nothing, Phyllis,” Wiseman replied tiredly. “Only that maybe someday we’ll have some idea of what causes SIDS.”

  “At the funeral?” Phyllis asked, her voice reflecting her outrage. “You came to the funeral to talk about what killed Julie?”

  Wiseman groaned inwardly, but was careful to maintain a calm façade. “That’s hardly what I was doing, Phyllis, and when you think about it, I know you’ll realize I would never do something like that. But it’s important that Sally understand what happened, and I wanted to let her know that if there’s anything I can do, either as her doctor or her friend, I’ll do it.”

  As Wiseman spoke, Steven Montgomery came back to escort his mother-in-law to the waiting car. “There is something you can do, Dr. Wiseman,” he said. “Just try to let us forget about it. It’s over, and nothing can be done. We have to try to forget.”

  He led Phyllis to the car, helped her in, then turned back to face the doctor once again. “You understand, don’t you?” he asked with a bleakness in his voice that Wiseman had rarely heard before. “There’s nothing we can do now. Nothing at all.” Then Steve, too, got into the car, and Wiseman watched as the Montgomery’s drove away. When they were gone, the agony of Sally’s eyes and Steve’s words remained.

  As he left the cemetery, Wiseman pondered the true depth of the tragedy that had befallen the Montgomerys.

  For Julie, the tragedy was over.

  For her parents, it had just begun.

  * * *

  Jason Montgomery jammed the shovel into the ground, jumped on it, then pulled on the handle until the clod of earth came loose. He repeated the process again and again, then stopped to inspect his work.

  There was a square, four feet on a side, from which he’d stripped the topsoil. He’d been working for almost an hour—ever since he’d gotten home from his sister’s funeral. So far, no one had come out to tell him to stop.

  Maybe today, no one would.

  If it happened that way—and Jason thought the chances were pretty good—then he would have his fort done by suppertime. It would be four feet deep and covered over with some planks he’d found behind the garage last week. His father had said they were going to be used for a chicken coop, but Jason had decided that since they had no chickens, he might as well use them for the roof of his fort. Besides, all he had to do was lay them on the ground side by side. They wouldn’t even have to be nailed. The work was all in the digging. He wished Bandy Corliss were there to help him, but he hadn’t even been allowed to call Randy today, so now he had to build the fort all by himself.

  He picked up the shovel once more and plunged it deep into the softer earth that lay beneath the surface. He felt the shovel hit something and pushed harder. It gave a little, then a lot. Putting the shovel aside, he knelt down in the dirt and began digging at the loose soil with his bare hands.

  A moment later he hit the broken bottle.

  It had been whole when the shovel struck it, but now its sharp edges slashed at him, cutting deep into the index finger on his left hand. Reflexively, Jason jerked his hand out of the dirt and stuck the finger in his mouth. He sucked hard, tasting the sweet saltiness of the blood, then spat onto the ground.

  He inspected his finger carefully. Blood was oozing thickly from the cut, running down his hand, then dripping slowly onto the pile of loose dirt. He squeezed the finger, remembering someone once telling him that you had to make a cut bleed a lot to keep it from getting infected.

  When the bleeding slowed a minute later, he inspected the cut. It was about a half-inch long and looked deep. He decided he’d better go wash his hand.

  He slipped through the kitchen and dining room, avoiding the living room where he knew his parents were sitting. Even though he didn’t really miss his little sister, he knew they were very upset, and he didn’t want to bother them. He could take care of the cut himself, or, if he decided he couldn’t, he could get his grandmother to help him.

  He went upstairs to the bathroom and began washing his hands. The dirt and already-clotting blood swirled down the drain. Once more Jason squeezed at the finger.

  This time it didn’t bleed.

  Puzzled, Jason held his hand up to the light and inspected it.

  He couldn’t find the cut.

  He stared at his finger, and in a moment found the faintest tracing of a scar where the injury had been.

  His brow furrowed into a curious scowl as he tried to figure out what had happened.

  It had bled a lot.

  Now there was nothing.

  Did cuts heal that fast? In the past when he’d skinned his knee or something, the Band-Aid always had to stay on for a couple of days.

  Of course, who knew what happened under the Band-Aid? His mother had never let him look.

  Maybe all cuts healed this fast.

  Or maybe the cut hadn’t been as bad as he’d thought.

  He tried to remember how much it had hurt and couldn’t remember it having hurt much at all. Not like when he skinned his knees or his elbows, when it stung for a couple of seconds. With the cut, he’d hardly felt anything. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the blood, he probably wouldn’t even have noticed it.

  He turned off the water, dried his hands, then went back downstairs and outside. He looked at the ground where all the blood had dripped. There didn’t seem to be much left. And then, from next door, he heard a voice calling him, and looked up to see Joey Connors waving to him.

  “Hey, Jason,” Joey was saying, “you wanna come over and see my puppies?”

  “Puppies?” Jason repeated, his eyes widening with eagerness, the cut finger forgotten. “You got puppies?”

  Joey nodded. “Daisy had ’em day before yesterday, but my mom wouldn’t let me call you.”

  “How come?” Jason asked as he climbed over the fence and dropped into the Connors’ yard.

  “ ’Cause of your sister. Did you go to the funeral?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What was it like?”

  Jason stopped a minute, thinking. “Like a funeral, I guess,” he said. Then, “Can I have one of the puppies?”

  To an adult, Jason Montgomery’s reaction to the death of his sister might have seemed callous. To him, her death was as unreal as she had been, and in his life, not much had changed. In fact, for Jason, the most notable event of the day was probably the finger that healed in ten minutes flat.

  In her daughter’s guest room, Phyllis Paine packed the last of her belongings into her suitcase and snapped it shut. Her eyes scanned the room absently. She was sure she had left nothing out. In her own mind she was already at home, taking up the myriad details of which
life, for her, was composed. Phyllis was not a cold woman. When Julie died, Phyllis had experienced one of those private moments of unutterable grief, and then, taking herself in hand, had risen to the occasion. For two days she had run her daughter’s home as she ran her own—efficiently, quietly, and with a sense of purpose. She had done her best to give Sally room in which to mourn. Now Sally had to begin putting her life back together again. All Phyllis’s instincts told her to stay on, and “do” for Sally. She knew the pain Sally was feeling; she had felt it herself so long ago when her own first child had been stillborn. But no one had “done” for her. She had been forced to deal with her feelings, cope with the turns life can take, and persevere. And so she had buried her little boy, as Sally had just buried her little girl, and then gone on with life.

  She picked up her suitcase and carried it downstairs. Sally and Steve were in the living room, sitting on a sofa, a distance between them that seemed greater than the few inches that separated them.

  “Steve, would you call a taxi for me, please?”

  Sally’s head swung slowly around, and her eyes, clouded by tears that still threatened to overflow at any moment, seemed puzzled. “A taxi?” she repeated vacantly. “Where are you going?”

  “Home, dear,” Phyllis said gently. She forced herself to remain impassive to the barely perceptible shudder that passed over her daughter. Her gaze shifted to her son-in-law and she nodded slightly; Steve left her alone with Sally. Only then did she move to the sofa and sit by her daughter, taking Sally’s hand in her own.

  There was a long silence between the two women, and for a moment Phyllis wasn’t sure how to bridge it. Finally she squeezed Sally’s hand reassuringly.

  “I was wrong yesterday, dear,” she said, “and I want to apologize.”

  Sally’s eyes, full of fright and dazed, met her mother’s. “Wrong? About what?”

  “About Julie,” Phyllis said. “About how she died. I don’t know why I said what I did before—about babies not just dying. It was stupid of me.”

  Sally’s expression cleared slightly. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean I was wrong to insinuate that something must have happened to Julie. I know now that nothing did. She simply died, and we have to accept that.”

  “Like you accepted what happened to my brother?” Though her voice was level, there was a coldness in her tone that shocked Phyllis even more than the words.

  “How did you know about that?”

  “Daddy told me. A long time ago.”

  “He had no right—” Phyllis began.

  “He had every right, Mother,” Sally replied. “He was trying to explain to me why—well, why you’re the way you are.”

  “I see,” Phyllis replied, sinking back into the depths of the sofa. It was the first time her son had been mentioned in Phyllis’s presence since the day he had been born. “And did it explain anything?” she heard herself asking.

  “No, not really,” Sally replied, her voice distant, as if she were thinking of something else.

  “Then let me try,” Phyllis said, choosing her words carefully, afraid that even talking of that time nearly thirty years in the past might destroy the careful structure she had built for herself. “I blamed myself for the fact that your brother was born dead, even though the doctors told me it wasn’t my fault. Just as you might be blaming yourself for what happened to Julie. In the months afterward, I wanted to me myself. I almost did. I—well, I almost killed myself. But then something changed my mind. Don’t ask what—I don’t even remember. But I suddenly realized that no matter how I felt about the son I never knew, I had responsibilities. To your father, and, a few years later, to you. And so I took each day as it came, and I got through. And I’m still getting through, Sally, just as you must. One day at a time. Don’t think about what Julie might have been. Don’t even think about what she was. Just take each day as it comes, and do what you must do. Life is for the living, Sally, and no matter how you’re feeling now, you’re still alive.”

  There was a silence as Sally tried to absorb her mother’s words. They sounded so cold, so uncaring. And in her mind, Sally kept seeing her daughter, asleep in her crib, but not asleep.

  Dying.

  Dying from what?

  For how long?

  She swallowed, trying by the gesture to drive the image from her mind, but knowing it was useless. And then she saw Steve standing a few feet away, watching her. How long had he been there? Had he been listening?

  “She’s right, you know,” he said. He had been listening. For some reason Sally felt betrayed. “We have to put our lives together again, darling, and we have to do it by ourselves.”

  “But I need-”

  “You need Jason, and you need me,” Steve went on, his voice firm. “You need to pick up the threads of your life. And you can’t do that as long as Phyllis is here. Don’t you see that?”

  Sally shifted on the couch, drawing herself away from her mother. “You want me to forget about Julie, don’t you?” she said. “You want me to do what Mother did and pretend she didn’t exist at all. Well, I can’t do that. I won’t do that. She was my daughter, Steve. She was my little girl, and something killed her. I have to find out what! I have to, and I will!”

  “Sally—” Steve started toward his wife, but the sudden jangling of the telephone stopped him. His eyes, beseeching, stayed on Sally for a moment “Oh, Jesus,” he muttered. He disappeared into the kitchen to answer the phone while Sally and her mother sat in tense silence in the living room. And then Steve was back.

  “Sally, someone wants to talk to you.”

  “Not now,” Sally said, her voice dull.

  “I think you’d better take it. I think it’s important.”

  Sally started to protest once mote, but the expression in her husband’s eyes changed her mind. Stiffly, her body aching with exhaustion, she got to her feet and went to the kitchen.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Montgomery? My name is Lois Petropoulous. You don’t know me, but—”

  “My husband said you have something to say to me,” Sally broke in. “This isn’t a good time for me—”

  “I know. I’m terribly sorry about your daughter. I know what you’re going through. The same thing happened to me six months ago.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “There’s a group of us, Mrs. Montgomery. Six couples. We meet once a week, trying to deal with the deaths of our children.”

  Sally frowned. What was the woman talking about? A group for the parents of dead children? “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I don’t—”

  “Don’t hang up, Mrs. Montgomery, please? It’s the SIDS Foundation. They set up these groups so we can try to help each other understand what happened. We meet on Tuesdays, and I hope you and your husband might come tonight.”

  Sally fought to hold her temper. They weren’t going to leave her alone. None of them. Not her husband, not her mother. And now the strangers were going to start on her, meddling in her life, trying to tell her what was good for her. Well, she would have none of it. She’d deal with her problems in her own way. “Thank you for calling,” she said politely, “but Julie did not die of SIDS, so there would be no point in my coming to your meeting, would there?” Without waiting for a reply, she hung up the phone and returned to the living room. Through the window she could see a cab pulling up in front of the house. Her mother was standing up, looking at her expectantly. Sally composed herself, intent on hiding the resentment she was feeling for both Phyllis and Steve.

  “Shall I walk you to the cab?”

  Phyllis ignored the question. “Who was on the phone? Was it something to do with Julie?”

  “No, Mother. It was nothing.” She began guiding her mother toward the door. “I’m sorry for what I said. I’m just terribly tired right now. But you’re right—life is for the living. I’ll be all right” She gave her mother a quick hug, and kissed her on the cheek. “Really I will.”

&
nbsp; The two of them paused at the front door, but there was nothing left to say. And then Phyllis was gone, and Sally returned to her husband.

  “We’re going to that meeting,” Steve said as soon as Sally had returned to the living room.

  Sally looked at him, her eyes clear. “But why? It’s a meeting for SIDS parents, and that’s not us.”

  “It is us, Sally,” Steve said quietly. “I’m going to that meeting, and you’re going with me, and that’s that. Do you understand?”

  The hardness of his voice hit Sally like a blow. She searched Ins face, trying to see what had changed. He had never spoken to her that way before, never as long as she had known him. And yet his voice had left no room for doubt—he had given her an order and expected to be obeyed. Her eyes narrowed, and when she spoke, there was a hardness in her own voice that was foreign to her. “Then well go,” she said. “But I still see no purpose to it.”

  A few minutes later she went into the room where Julie had lived to begin the process of clearing out all the things she would never need again. She stripped the bedding from Julie’s crib, then folded up the crib itself. She went through the chest of drawers, pausing over each tiny dress or blouse—so many of them had never been worn, and now never would be. Finally, she took down the mobile that had been drifting over Julie’s crib since the very beginning, stared at it sadly for a moment, then reluctantly dropped it into the wastebasket.

  Everything was changed.

  Her family was changed.

  Her husband was changed.

  She herself was changed.

  From now on everything was going to be different.

  Oh, she would do her best to be like her mother. She would accept her responsibilities. She would live for the living.

  And yet, deep inside, a part of her was convinced that there was a reason for Julie’s death, and even as she put away Julie’s things, she knew that sooner or later she would have to discover that reason. And so, when she eventually left that room for the last time, she knew that she would never be like her mother at all.