by Nancy Rue
I caught the inside of my mouth between my teeth. Chris had promised that we wouldn’t, and yet every chance he got he was saying he wanted us to be a family. If I trusted his promise to Ben, I could be setting Ben up for disappointment.
But his promise was all I had to go on. That and the tears I had seen over and over in Chris’s eyes.
“We’re staying here,” I said. “Isn’t that what Daddy told you?”
“Does he always tell the truth?”
He finally looked up at me. His eyes were worried, but probably no more so than mine.
God, can you help me out here?
Ben was stiffening as he watched my hesitation.
“Daddy has always told you the truth,” I said.
Ben nodded. “Do you think Daddy knows how to pitch?”
The door opened then, and both Doc Opie and Chris appeared.
“Why don’t you ask him?” I said.
“Ask me what, Tiger?” Chris squatted down next to Ben. His body seemed more relaxed now—at least his hair wasn’t standing on end. But there was still deep worry in his eyes.
Ben stopped, puzzle piece in hand, and looked up at him shyly. “Can you pitch a baseball?”
“Yeah. I’m no Roger Clemens, but I can get it across the plate.”
“You could pitch to me?” Ben said.
Chris closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “You bet, Tiger. I can pitch to you as soon as we get home.”
Ben nodded—and then he looked up at me and grinned. “He can pitch.”
Doc Opie took Ben in for a short session, which left Chris and me in the waiting room, sitting awkwardly next to each other in beanbag chairs. We must have looked like Raggedy Ann and Andy, flopped there side by side but unable to speak.
Finally, Chris said, “He’s a nice guy.”
“He’s a great guy,” I said. “He’s saving Ben’s life as far as I’m concerned.”
“I’m sure you’ve had something to do with it.”
“Maybe—somehow—in spite of myself. It’s God showing me what to do—that’s the only way I can explain it.”
“God pretty much explains it all.”
I turned to gape at him. He had his eyes closed.
“I’ve never heard you mention God before,” I said. “All the times we went to church. That whole year you were parish treasurer—you never talked about God.”
“Who’da thought, huh?” he said.
When Ben came out and the two of us went in, Doc Opie had a grin the size of a slice of Mayberry watermelon on his face. I was tempted to tell him not to jump to any conclusions, but he looked so content I didn’t want to ruin his picnic.
We talked about how far Ben had come, how far he had to go. He warned us that having Chris in the equation would seem like a step backward at first, but that was due to Ben’s having to readjust.
“The more consistently you’re with him, the better,” Opie said to Chris.
I tilted forward in the papasan chair. “Ben doesn’t want to go back to Richmond. He talked about it last night. He mentioned it out in the waiting room just a few minutes ago.”
I looked at Chris, but he was studying his hands.
“He has bad associations with Richmond,” Doc Opie said. “That’s not an insurmountable obstacle if it has to be dealt with at some point.”
“Does he need another obstacle right now, though?” I heard my voice getting tight.
“The fewer he has, the better,” Doc Opie said. “But we can help with any that can’t be avoided.”
“I think we can avoid this one.” I leaned back in the chair and massaged my jaws with my fingertips. I hope I can trust you, Chris. I just pray that I can.
When we got back to the apartment, Chris and Ben played ball in the backyard while I cooked supper. I looked out the window several times, which was like watching progressive slides in a slide show. First slide—Ben swinging his bat, saying nothing to Chris’s shouts of “Good try!” “Almost, Tiger!” and “Ooh, so close!” Second slide—Ben smiling slowly as Chris ran to catch the ball he’d tipped. Third—Ben laughing out loud as Chris chased him to base, ball in hand, stretching as if Ben were out of arm’s reach instead of only inches ahead of him. Last look—Ben shrieking happily as Chris picked him up and put him on his shoulder, yelling, “Safe! Safe! The runner is safe!”
Once again, I had the urge to lean out the window and scream, “It’s easy for you to show up and be the play-dad now, Chris!”—and yet I had the ache for more and more and more scenes like that, unashamed copies of Norman Rockwell prints.
I banged the wooden spoon on the edge of the skillet and let it drop to the counter. I’m losing my center, I thought. I was doing fine, and then he shows up and here I am being pulled apart like Gumby. It was making my jaw hurt.
I glanced at my watch. It was too late to reach Dominica for something that wasn’t an emergency Reggie, I knew, was headed out for a weekend church retreat, and she’d probably tell me if I ate something I would feel better.
I went to the phone and dialed Yancy’s number. She was better at processing this stuff with me, anyway. Sometimes I needed Reggie’s unpolished country wisdom, and sometimes I needed Yancy’s Southern sophistication. Unfortunately, I was getting none of it just then, because there was no answer at her house.
Hale? I thought. Nah, he was all for me packing up and going straight back to Chris. Men. There was some kind of testosterone bond that made them all loyal to each other in the end.
I guess it’s just me, then, I thought. Me and God.
We can do this, right, Father?
No audible answer.
Chris helped with bedtime that night, and it was obvious right away that the whole pitching-the-baseball thing had won him a lot of points. He did the song, at Ben’s request. The little stinker said Daddy didn’t sound as much like a frog as I did. Ben wanted him to read the story, too, and when it came time for prayers, he looked at his father and said, “Do you know how to pray, Daddy?”
I looked at Chris, too. This could be interesting.
“You know, as a matter of fact, Tiger, I’m just now learning how to really pray. I’m not as good at it as your mommy, but I talk to God best I can.”
Ben nodded solemnly, as if they had just exchanged something deep, man-to-man.
“You both pray, then,” Ben said. “Take turns.”
Chris looked at me, a little nervously, I thought. I was tempted to say, “Go for it, oh heroic father,” but I couldn’t do it. There was something about playing games with the prayer thing that didn’t sit right. So I came to Chris’s rescue and said, “I’ll go first.”
Chris did take his turn, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut to keep from gaping at him. It was the first time I had ever heard him pray, except to recite the Lord’s Prayer in church. He was praying simply and plainly, sans the lawyer voice, in his Louisiana thick-as-molasses drawl.
I know you’re trying hard, I thought. But I never would have expected this.
After Ben finally drifted off, I went into the kitchen and made a pot of decaf and stood at the back window watching the end-of-summer fireflies wink among the tree shadows. I was noticing the small, seeing the details, the way Dominica had taught me. Yet how could a life that had become so simple still be so riddled with complexity and doubt? Hadn’t Chris always had that effect on me? Coming in with his boyish charm and his slow Southern ways and then luring me into his courtroom and cross-examining me into someone I wasn’t?
Ben and fireflies and baseball and two parents praying beside his bed. Could it really be that way—or should I just let things stay the way they’d been before Chris came for this visit? Ben and I were fine. We were healing. Chris could turn that upside down and inside out faster than he could smile, any day of the week.
The pot beeped at me, and I splashed coffee into mugs with a vengeance. It was a wonder I didn’t end up with first-degree burns.
Chris was standing with his back to me, hands shoved into
his pockets, looking out the window when I came in with the coffee. I was certain he wasn’t observing the lightning bugs. In fact, I had barely set the tray on the toy-chest-coffee-table when he said, “Toni, I want us all together. Come home. Please.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. It was the only way I could keep from slugging him.
“You told Ben you wouldn’t make him go back,” I said.
“I don’t want to make him. I think he’ll want to go—the way things are going with us.”
“Chris, you’ve been here twenty-four hours. What can that possibly tell you? That he likes to play baseball with you?”
“I know there’s more to it than that.”
“You bet your life there is. There’s his therapy. There are all the people he trusts. How do I know I can find someone as good as Parkins in Richmond? Or people who understand our situation, people like Reggie and Yancy and his little friends?”
“You made all that happen, Toni.”
He hadn’t moved from the window except to turn toward me, but I still stepped back, as if he were crowding me into a corner. The backs of my legs hit the chair.
“We could create the same things for him in Richmond—together,” he said.
“I didn’t make it happen. My focus here is on God—Ben and I are surrounded by people who get that. That’s the first thing. And what evidence do I have that you aren’t going to do what you’ve always done and leave it all to me? If I’m going to do it all, then I’d rather do it here where it’s already in place.”
Chris sat on the edge of the windowsill as if it were a cliff. “You don’t know this yet, but something’s happened to me.”
“What?” My voice was testy. “Are you sick?”
“No—nothing like that.”
“Look, Chris, I’m going to say this again, and I’ll say it as many times as I have to until you get it: All of this is about Ben. It’s not about me or you. I’m trying to follow what I can figure out God is showing me for Ben. It just doesn’t look to me like that means Richmond.”
“What about what I’m figuring out?” Chris said. “One of the things Doc Opie told me this afternoon was that I could do a lot to replace Ben’s memories of Sid with a healthy male image. It’s the same as the way you’ve replaced Bobbi in his mind—he’s starting to trust women.”
I cupped my jaws in my hands. My ears were throbbing.
“I can see him warming up to you,” I said, “and even though there are moments when that infuriates me to no end, I know he needs you. But do we have to disrupt his life right now—just when he’s doing so well?”
“Then there’s a chance?”
“I don’t know!” I stopped, got control of my tone. “Don’t push this, Chris. When you try to make it happen, it screws everything up. Just don’t push me.”
“Toni, I’m sorry.”
“Good night.”
He said my name again, but I was already closing my bedroom door. I fell back on the bed and lay there, staring at a water mark on the ceiling, head spinning out my frantic prayers.
Dear God—dear God—please—we have to take care of my baby—that’s all.
I flopped a fist against the comforter. Why couldn’t God just give me a straight answer, a little reassurance out loud? Dominica had told me it was okay if my answers seemed to come from other people, but there were no other people standing around my bed giving me clarification, and I needed it now.
Since none seemed to be forthcoming, I dragged myself up and pulled my door open so I could hear Ben if he woke up. It was Chris’s voice that drifted in, a stream of words I couldn’t hear, spoken with intent, as if he were making a case.
Is he talking to himself? I thought.
I turned to get the shorts and T-shirt I slept in from the hook on the back of the door, but Chris’s monologue continued, and something in its urgency made me stop and listen. He seemed to be trying to keep his volume low, so I crept just outside the doorway and strained in the shadow to hear.
“If I file for custody,” he was saying, “the judge will order that Ben be returned to Virginia while the suit’s going on. If she wants to be with him, she’ll have to come, too.”
There was a silence, as if he too were listening, and I realized he must be talking on his cell phone. I pressed my hand against my mouth to stifle both nausea and screams.
“All I’ve got going for me are the legal guns,” Chris was saying. “This is what I know how to do.”
I told him to do that! I thought frantically. But this wasn’t what I meant!
I wanted him to fight for Ben—but not against me. This wasn’t a battle between the two of us… There was a sudden, startled cry from Ben’s room. I went straight for him, anxiety pumping on a number of levels, not the least of which was fear that Ben, too, had heard.
He was sitting straight up in bed, his eyes wide but unfocused.
“Ben? What is it, Pal?”
He mumbled something about Lamb, who had somehow made his way down to the bottom of the bed, under the blanket, probably to avoid being squeezed to death. I retrieved him and tucked him into Ben’s arms. He was still staring, unfocused, ahead of him. Thank God he had never been awake. All it would have taken was for him to hear Chris saying what he’d just said and we’d be up all night—from now until he went to college.
I coaxed him to lie down and let me pull the covers up around his ears the way he liked them.
“Wrap me up like a burrito,” he mumbled.
I tucked the blankets around him, tortilla style.
“Do you want me to stay?” I said.
“I’m all right.” And he was deep asleep again, like a normal little boy who had just misplaced his stuffed animal friend.
I went directly to the living room, marching like the gestapo. Chris was on the couch, studying the cell phone.
He looked up, guilt smeared all over his face. “Everything okay?” he said.
“I don’t know. That depends on you.” I punched myself down on the arm of the couch, feet on the cushions, so I could face him squarely. “I heard you on the phone. Chris, don’t do this. Don’t turn this into a legal battle over Ben. I’ll fight beside you for his life, but I don’t want to have to fight against you. I’m already fighting against enough.”
Chris was shaking his head. “What you heard me saying—forget that.”
“How can I forget it? You’re going to try to take my son away from me!”
“No, I’m not. That was just a wild-hare idea. I was desperate and I called—a friend of mine—to process it. It’s a stupid idea. I’m not going to do it.”
I stiffened straight up. A friend. Wonder if she’s anybody I know this time?
I dragged both of my hands through my hair. “Can I really trust that?”
“You can now. You’re not the only one who can change, Toni.”
I slapped both palms to my knees. “I wish this were a Hobson’s choice.”
Chris frowned. “A Hobson’s choice?”
“Yeah, it’s when—”
“I’m familiar with it. Why would you wish for that?”
“Because it’s easier when you have no choice. You just do what you have to do.” I shook my head. “I thought I had given up absolutely everything I could possibly give up. I don’t know what to do now.”
I could see Chris sagging. “Would coming back to me be such a sacrifice?”
“It could be. I’ve found out who I am, and I don’t know if you could live the kind of life that fits me.” I shook my head again, harder. “But that really isn’t the point. All this time, I’ve been able to sacrifice whatever I had to for Ben’s healing. If I move Ben back to Richmond so you can be with him, what if I’m then sacrificing Ben? What if that isn’t what’s best for him?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I’ve already told you why! The therapy—the church—the friends—our support—and Ben’s associations with Richmond. If he’s still too vulnerable, I don’t want
to take him backward.”
“How will you ever know that unless you at least try it?” Chris said.
“This isn’t like changing to a different line of questioning, trying to cop a different plea. Doc Opie told me in the very beginning that I had to create the safest, most secure environment I could for Ben. I just can’t take a risk that would put that into jeopardy.”
“On the other hand, it could be even safer and more secure with the three of us together—or at least closer together. You can’t know that without giving it a chance. Can you take that risk?”
“No.”
Chris looked stunned. “No? Just like that?”
“With every other choice I’ve had to make on Ben’s behalf, I’ve known there was no other way I could do it, not and live with myself.” I leaned forward as far as I could without falling headlong into his arms. “Chris, please let God do what’s right for our son. Whatever that is, that’s what I’ll do. I’m begging you to do the same. Do you hear me? For the first time in my life, I am begging you.”
And then, because there didn’t seem to be anything else I could say, I went to bed. I lay there in the dark, certain I wasn’t going to be able to close an eye, unabashedly begging some more.
God, please, please—show me, tell me, make this clear—what else can I possibly give up?
You’ve done all you can, Toni. Now give up control.
I stiffened against the mattress. Where had that thought come from? It was the sound of my mind-voice, but the words were none that would ever come from my stock responses.
Give up control, I thought. And give it to Me.
Even as the thought slid away, I knew it hadn’t been mine. It was God’s. Clearly God’s.
“I don’t know how to do that,” I whispered. “I’ll do anything you want—anything—but You’re going to have to help me. If You really want me to let go, then please help me do it.”
The next thing I knew I was blinking my eyes against the slashes of sunlight coming through the blinds. It took me several bad-breath yawns and dekinking stretches to realize that I had slept through the night, for the first time in months.
Good thing it’s Saturday, I thought. I’ll bet Ben’s ready for Fruit Loops.