I was rude. Here he was feeling good, better than he’d been in forever, and I was picking on him for memorizing something that mattered to him. “I’m sorry, Jess. This is just … a bit much. You know?”
“I know.” He reached over, gave my leg a squeeze. “Don’t worry—I’m not some Jesus freak. I’ve just … made my peace with God.”
“Great.”
“I guess it does sound odd.” He smiled, and I was glad. It was a terrific smile—I hadn’t seen one like that on him in so long.
He did in fact seem peaceful. Why was I feeling so the opposite? I couldn’t imagine cracking a smile; I’d forgotten what it felt like.
“So … what religion are you?” I asked him.
“No religion. I’m just spiritual.”
“Do you actually pray?” I asked. It seemed strange to even say the word.
He nodded. “Yup.”
“How do you … start?”
“I say the Serenity Prayer. You know what that is?’
“Yeah. I’ve seen it on pillows and magnets, stuff like that.” And in his notebook, of course, but I couldn’t tell him that.
“Then I just launch right in.” He laughed. “I say how grateful I am.”
“Grateful?” That was too much. “How can you be grateful? Grateful for what?”
He shrugged. “I’m grateful for everything. For you, for the sun and the air, for each moment—I just feel grateful. It’s like a load’s been lifted off of me.”
“Oh, yeah? Are you grateful for cancer?”
Oh, God. That’s awful. What a snide, mean bitch I was.
But he wasn’t mad.
“I know it’s hard for you to understand, Sam. I wish I could give you this feeling—share it with you.” He really did sound like one of those religious zealots and it scared me. Was he going to start quoting scripture next?
We sat in silence for a little while.
He took my hand and I concentrated on that—on that warmth, on that beat going between us. I wanted to understand, but it was impossible; it was like he was speaking in tongues. All I felt was sadness and anger.
Then he said, “I forgave my dad.”
“How? You haven’t even spoken to him.”
“That’s the thing—I didn’t need to. I just released everything.” He squeezed into my hand. “I just turned it all over to my higher power.”
“That’s wonderful, Jess.”
And of course I meant it—I wanted him to be happy and feel good, obviously—but somehow I was also feeling abandoned. It was like Jess was leaving me for God.
“What’s going on with your dad?” he asked me.
“Still dead,” I said. “Oh, God—that was awful. I’m sorry, Jess.” It was the second time I’d apologized in the conversation. He let go of my hand. I couldn’t blame him. What’s wrong with me?
He said, “I was just wondering if you were still seeing him, and if you’d told your mom.”
“Yes, and no.”
“I wish you’d talk to her.”
“I can’t imagine how that would help.” Plus, I didn’t want to burden her with any additional mental issues I had. “Maybe I’ll just pray for an answer.”
He looked at me for a moment. “I don’t expect you to get it, but maybe you could just respect that I’ve found something that brings me relief, okay?”
That sounded so reasonable. Why was it so hard?
“I’ll try,” I told him.
***
I went to my mom. Not to tell her about glimpsing my dad—I really didn’t want to lay that on her. It probably was just dreaming anyway—except I was awake when it happened.
It was daydreaming. That’s all.
Anyway, I wasn’t going to discuss Dad. But this new thing with Jess … How was I supposed to compete with God?
“Oh, baby,” Mom said, after I told her about what Jess had revealed. “You’re not competing with anyone. I’m just happy that Jesse feels better.”
“Me, too. But—he’s talking about all these things—it’s like he’s a different person.”
We were sitting at her kitchen table with a plate of several kinds of cookies between us. What would Mom ever do without her trusty oven? It was incredible that she wasn’t fat; but then, she was always offering her baked goods to everyone else. She never really ate any of it herself.
“People discover things, Sam. Their tastes change, and people grow. No one’s stagnant. You aren’t, either, even if you might feel that way right now.”
Funny that Mom would say this, wearing her usual sweats; she was pretty stagnant herself. Was it still grief, or did she devote so much energy to my brother and me, and her books, that she had nothing left to try doing something new, or different? Maybe one day I could talk to her about that—when I wasn’t so wrapped up in myself and Jess.
“I get what you’re saying, Mom. But this—it’s like God’s taken him over.” I played with the plate of cookies, rotating it.
“It’s a unique situation, I’ll admit. But if this works for him, you have to find a way to support him in it. Maybe you can learn more about it yourself.”
I was shocked. “You want me to find God? You, who raised me with no religion?”
“I’m not completely faithless. I’ve just never been comfortable with organized religion. And I guess with everything that’s gone on in our lives, I never addressed it with you. I’m sorry if I shortchanged you on this.”
I stopped spinning the plate and took a cookie, choosing an oatmeal raisin cookie with burnt edges and not too many raisins—though you never could tell for sure.
“Are you saying you buy in to this God stuff in some way?”
“I’m not ruling anything out, baby. And if it makes him happy, that’s a good thing.”
I held the cookie, feeling its craggy surface. But I didn’t raise it to my lips; I didn’t really feel like eating it. It was more like a prop—something to hold on to.
“I’m afraid … I’m scared he’s going to change so much that I’ll lose him… .”
She reached across the table, put her palm over my hand without disturbing my grip on the cookie, and squeezed.
“You know what Roosevelt said: ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’ Think about that, Sam.”
***
Walking through Oz and back to Jess, I did think about that. And when I got inside his room again, I apologized. I promised him, and myself, that I would work on respecting his new beliefs—and accepting that he was still the same in his heart.
I had to learn to believe there was room in his heart for both me and God.
***
It took me a week of working on it, but finally I felt reassured that I wasn’t losing Jess to God. But I was losing him to his friends.
It was two a.m. and Jess wasn’t home yet; he’d gone out at around seven to see a movie with Pete and the guys, and I wasn’t invited. Well, it’s not like they’d said I wasn’t, but they hadn’t asked me to go, either. I would’ve ignored that detail a year ago, but now I realized that guys needed guy-time; I didn’t especially like it, but I recognized it.
Since Jess had been sprung from the hospital, he’d gone out with his friends four times. But who was counting? It was like he was either busy with his cancer support people, praying, or going out—and none of it included me.
Meanwhile, I sat entombed in Gwen’s bathroom; it had the warmth of a mausoleum. A few minutes earlier, I’d woken up for about the seventeenth time to find Jess’s bed still empty. I’d stumbled into the bathroom, slammed up the shiny black toilet seat cover, sat, and peed. That meant facing the hideous painting hanging across from the toilet: a man and a woman, both dressed in black, each with most of their faces missing. She only had eyes—really mournful blue eyes. He had only a huge grin, like the Joker. They were in a dark forest with bare trees; a bowl of fruit rested in the dirt at their feet, with a big carving knife jabbed into an apple. What a thing to hang in a bathroom. Or anywhere.
That painting never failed to get to me, but it especially did at times like this—lonely, two a.m. times.
God, I sucked—getting jealous like this, wanting Jess here, all to myself. I guess I could’ve called my girlfriends, but I didn’t. I’d never been as close with them as I was with Jess, and it seemed like such an effort to pick up the phone. And it wasn’t like they were begging to hang out with me or anything when I’d see them at school. Who knew if they even wanted to be friends anymore? Who knew if I did?
No, I didn’t want to chat with my supposed friends, didn’t want to go and do “the girl thing,” whatever that meant. Socializing was something I’d never quite fathomed. I only wanted to be with Jess. But Jess had other plans.
Miserable wench! I cursed myself as I hunched on that toilet seat staring into the forest of doom. But I missed him. Was this what it was going to be like now? Was he slipping away from me? Had he ever really been mine, or was I just convenient?
Don’t, I begged my mind. Don’t go there. It wasn’t true, couldn’t be true. Two a.m. rantings were never logical, never right.
Were they?
But Jess was gone, and my rantings were all I had to keep me company. Them and a wretched painting from hell. The grey granite floor was cold and biting my bare feet, sending a chill through my body. I shivered, forced myself up from the toilet, and flushed. Twisting the gleaming brass faucet, I blasted the hot water into the black and gold marble sink and splashed my face. If I wash myself enough, maybe I can get all the bad thoughts out and get back to sleep.
Yeah, right.
By the time I stepped back into the bedroom, my most selfish thoughts were whooping through my mind again, like Indians doing a rain dance. When Jess goes for the chemo, he’ll come back to me. He’ll need me to take care of him.
How horrible was that—to think such a thing, to look forward to it?
I clutched at Jess’s balled pillow, a poor substitute for him, but at least it had his scent. I needed to smell him to sleep. Mashing that fluff against my nose and inhaling was a relief, the way a fish must feel, released from a hook and given a second chance at breathing. I was completely dependent on Jesse and it appalled me. I wasn’t sure if I’d even stop sleeping with Jess if I found out that he was using me—or that I could stop. Pathetic.
But I loved him. He said he loved me, he wrote that damn poem about me. But where was he, now that he was feeling better?
Where was he?
Why wasn’t I good enough to be with when he was well?
I squeezed into the pillow tighter, tighter, until I’d squished my fingers right into the center and there was no more to squish. I pressed it against my face; it was like an oxygen mask on a plane. Dr. Chadwick had talked about fastening the mask around your own face first, before trying to help someone else. But there was no one else to take care of now, and the plane was going down. Who would rescue me?
Sleep, I willed myself. Sleep. Things will look different in the morning.
And even if they didn’t, I had to face the facts. I had no one to blame for all this but myself. I was the one who’d slipped into Jess’s bed to begin with, not the other way around.
Yeah, that was it exactly. It hadn’t been the other way around. The words whipped through my head. No matter what he said, it probably never would’ve been.
I rumpled into the pillow, but it was no good now. Now, it felt like a shroud of cotton and feathers.
All I wanted to do was fade out, but I couldn’t.
I put the pillow down and stared ahead in the dark. Light would help, I thought, so I flicked the lamp on. Then I noticed Kitty’s button eyes staring at me accusingly from the far corner of the bed. “Pull yourself together,” she’d tell me if she weren’t an inanimate object. But what did Kitty know anyway? She’d been coming apart at the seams for years. I turned away and sunk back into the mush of Jess’s pillow.
To sleep, to wipe out all the hurt. To forget, at least for a while, at least until the sun came back. But it was impossible—to sleep, or forget.
I felt like I was going mad, and then I got further evidence of it.
There was a new scent in the room now—an impossible scent. It was my dad’s cologne—one I’d gotten him for his birthday. The last birthday he’d had, and the last gift from me.
Oh, God. How could it be? Was I really crazy?
Somehow smelling him was worse than all those times seeing him. It gave more dimension to his presence. The scent made him more real.
I pushed the pillow aside, kicked off the covers and fled.
***
I stumbled through the dark to the other side of the apartment, to Maria’s room. I didn’t dare turn on the lights and risk disturbing Gwen. In my panic I ran into several pieces of furniture, but I managed to keep it quiet.
I had to talk to Maria.
My freaked-out meter was higher than any concern about the wrath of Gwen if I woke her, and I rapped on the door. Logically I knew I could make a little noise here—it was a safe distance from Gwen’s room—but still I cringed at the sounds I made.
“Sammy, wat is it?” Maria said, swinging her door open wide to let me in. She was in a bright turquoise flannel nightgown, with several pairs of multicolored beads strung around her neck. I’d be afraid of choking in my sleep with those things on, but she thought of them as protection against evil spirits. I knew because she’d told me so a long time ago; back then it seemed crazy to do the things she did. Now, I would’ve been willing to bargain with the devil. That’s the kind of thing that happened in the dead of night, I supposed, when people were still awake. The night was meant for sleeping.
Maria’s bare feet poked from under the hem. She’d come to the door without stopping to put on her slippers. I realized how rude I was being, jarring her from bed like that.
“I’m sorry, Maria. This was the only place I could go—”
“Shhh, of course you come here. You can always come here, Sammy,” she said, dismissing my apology with a wave of her hand. She held the door open for me, and I went inside. It’d been a long time since I’d been there—years.
“Jess isn’t home yet,” I explained. We sat on the edge of her white bedspread, and I poured out my troubles. I stopped short of telling her about my dad. It probably was all in my head anyway. I was stressed to the max, hallucinating—and now smelling my dad, too.
God, I needed to get a grip.
Maria’s small room was like a shrine. There were lit candles everywhere, which might’ve been romantic if not for the crosses and the giant picture of Jesus on one wall, which was surrounded with candles. The scent of Go Away, Evil! spray hung in the air.
“You worried ’bout Jesse?”
“No, I—” No, just about losing him … I didn’t want to say it out loud, but then I looked into Jesus’ sad eyes and it all came pouring out.
“Oh, Sammy. He loves you.”
That startled me—until I realized she meant Jess, of course.
“I know he does, but—” Well, what does love mean anyway? Nothing substantial—nothing you can hold on to.
“What you need is a coconut shell reading,” Maria counseled. She patted my hand.
Why not?
“We will ask Ochum for an answer,” Maria said. “She’s the Goddess of Love.”
“Okay,” I said. Might as well ask the Goddess of Love. It fit the situation.
“Her colors are yellow, gold, and orange,” Maria said. “I have beads in her colors. You must wear them.”
“Whatever you say.” I allowed her to drape three strands of plastic beads over my head—one necklace in each of the goddess’s colors. They went well with my Happy Bunny pajamas. The thing about this was, I was actually taking it seriously, hoping for some kind of answers. But what even was the question?
Maybe Maria asked the goddess a question, but I couldn’t know what it was because she was chanting in some other language and sprinkling water on the floor. Then she tossed four pieces of cocon
ut shell on to the green carpet. They landed noiselessly, one with the curve facing up, the other three curves facing down.
“Itagua!” Maria pronounced—whatever that meant. “It means ‘probably yes,’ but we have to ask again,” she explained.
I still didn’t know what the question was, but I was willing to go along with her, rather than sit back in Jess’s bedroom alone.
She did it again; again, we got the same results.
“Unbelievable!” she said.
I don’t know that I would’ve called it unbelievable. It was like rolling snake eyes twice. It happens.
“Maybe we’re not meant to know the answer just yet,” I suggested.
Maria stared at me hard, in consideration. “You may be right, Sammy,” she said. “But I tink we try da seashells now.”
She opened a little jar and sprinkled a bunch of little shells into her palm. Again, she recited something with great vehemence and intention. Whatever she was saying, she meant it.
She tossed the shells on to the carpet. They made no noise at all.
We both looked at them. I didn’t know what they stood for, so I just counted them.
There were fifteen. Some up, some down.
“The answer is ordun number eight,” Maria said.
“What does that mean?”
“The seashells don’t give answers, they give advice. Yours are telling you ‘The head carries the body.’ ”
“Ah.” I said. “Well, thanks.” That was about as useful as the last fortune I’d gotten from a cookie: “Blood flows through the veins.” Maybe all this meant that I needed to pay closer attention in biology.
“I tink you need an herbal love bath,” Maria said. “I go run it for you.”
I couldn’t imagine taking a bath at that moment; I was feeling kind of sleepy, maybe from the flickering of the candles.
“Maybe tomorrow,” I told her. “I think I’m gonna go now. But I feel better—thanks.”
“If tings get worse, we can write your names on paper, prick your finger, circle your names in your blood, and bury the paper precisely at nine o’clock on Friday night,” she said as I rose.
I gave her a hug. “I’ll keep that in mind, Maria.”
I realized I never did ask her what she’d asked the goddess of the coconut shells, or whoever she was. But then, we hadn’t gotten a solid answer, anyway. It was like the Magic Eight Ball when it said “Ask again later.” There was a lot of that in life, especially lately.
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