by Sara Zarr
Not that it’s an excuse to drink. But maybe it is, a little bit? I don’t know.
I think about the pamphlets from New Beginnings that are sitting in our house somewhere, unread, at least by me. Maybe I should take a look.
In the distance, thunder claps, and those dark clouds are coming in closer. It’s going to rain; I can smell it. I pedal faster and realize I’m getting near the church, that somehow that’s just where the bike pointed.
I ride around the block, twice. The lot is empty, which is a little odd since usually my dad and sometimes Gerald are here getting ready for Sunday. Even without going in, I know exactly how the sanctuary will look, how it will feel. I’ve walked up and down those aisles, between those pews, my whole life. It was home. And I guess what I feel now is that it’s not. Like I’ve been betrayed, and—even though I know I could physically go in—locked out.
By the time I coast through the empty parking lot a third time and stop at the side entrance of the church, my shirt clings and my hair is coming loose from its knotted bun. The clouds are thick overhead. I lean the bike against the stone wall and stand outside the door. I know it won’t be locked. Against the objections of the building committee, my dad always leaves this door—which goes straight into the sanctuary—unlocked, so that anyone who feels like they want to be inside of a church, any day, can.
There’s a story in the Bible, a parable Jesus tells, about a widow who’d been done wrong. She shows up to the judge’s house day after day, knocking on his door, demanding justice. And eventually, she gets it.
Even if some part of me feels locked out, I have a right to be here, a right to make my own demands.
I go inside.
It smells like wax. From the candles at last night’s vigil. It’s still warm, too, as if the heat from all those bodies hasn’t had anywhere to go yet. Just one light is on—one of the chandeliers near the middle of the ceiling, and it casts just enough of a pale glow that I can see where I’m going. Not that I need it.
I sit at the end of a pew near the back, close to where I sat last night. Without the crowd here, I have a clear view of all the stained glass. Not just the big windows in the front but the side ones, too, the ones with scenes from the life of Jesus.
Rain starts to blow against the windows that are all around me, and every now and then a gust of wind rattles the door, and the sulfur smell of rain mixes with the warmth and wax, and I close my eyes and do what I haven’t in a long time: picture myself there. There, with Jesus, in all of those places where he performed miracles, all of the places where he became who he was going to be. I imagine sitting on the bank of the river where he was baptized, and wonder if I’d notice the heavens opening up or if it was the kind of thing that was more subtle.
I imagine being passed a basket of bread that magically never gets empty, and taking a bite of the fish that feeds thousands. Would it be creepy, the way it never ran out, or would everyone just be laughing in that certain way you laugh when amazed?
I imagine being a shepherdess on the hillside when Jesus went out looking for his one lost sheep. Robes blowing around my legs. A rough wooden staff in my hands. The way it might feel to see a grown man coming back over the hill, carrying a lamb like a baby. It would make me love him, I think.
Mostly I picture myself crying outside the tomb of Lazarus, as one of his sisters, who as the story tells it were mad at Jesus because they’d asked him to come and asked him to come, and he got delayed, and Lazarus died. They buried him, mourned him. When Jesus finally got there, his sisters were like, what took you so long? It’s too late. Lazarus is dead. And then Jesus tells Lazarus to come out, and he does, all wrapped up like a mummy in his grave clothes. But he wasn’t a mummy; he was his real, alive self.
How would it feel to be so finally and completely dead, and then brought back to life? Did he know he was dead? His life afterward couldn’t have been perfect. Maybe on bad days he’d get mad and wonder why Jesus saved him if it was just to have a hard, boring life like everyone else. Then maybe there were other days full of blue skies and fresh bread when he couldn’t imagine missing out.
I mean, if it even really happened, which is the sentence I add now in my head whenever I think of any story in the Bible.
When I open my eyes, the tears spill out, and I ask anyone who might be listening, demand it: Let me believe again.
It’s quiet for a long time. I don’t know if I feel anything.
Then, a voice booms from behind me. “Samara!”
But it’s not God, it’s my dad. I turn around. He and Vanessa are standing there, wet from rain, both looking simultaneously relieved and angry. Vanessa more angry than anything. “Oh my God,” she shouts, “why did you do that?”
I stand up. “I’m sorry.”
“I mean what do you think I thought happened, Sam? You were there one second, then gone, and your phone was sitting there in the hammock like someone had just come and…”
“What’s gotten into you, Sam?” Dad asks, coming closer, less mad than Vanessa, but still pretty mad.
“I borrowed your bike,” I say to Vanessa.
“I know that now, because we saw it outside and that’s how we knew you were here. But at the time all I saw was that you were gone.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeat.
Dad and Vanessa are soaked from wrestling her bike into the trunk of the car. Vanessa sits in the back with her earbuds in, staring out the window. Dad and I are up front. He’s taking me back to the Hathaways’. When I protest, he looks at me in disbelief. “After all that, you think I’m going to leave you at home unsupervised?”
No, I want to say. I thought you’d supervise me.
When we get to Vanessa’s, he tells me to stay put while he helps her get her bike out, because he wants to talk to me before I go in. She walks it up to her porch and waits. Dad gets back in the car and says, “We’re going to talk about this tomorrow, after you’ve had some time to think.”
“When tomorrow?”
“At brunch.” He looks at me. “Mom called back. We’re going to meet her at the Lodge.”
Day 9
Sunday
Vanessa doesn’t talk to me at breakfast. She tried last night, before bed, when she was helping me set up my sleeping bag downstairs on the sectional sofa. She didn’t even want me sleeping in the same room as her.
“… I’m just asking, Sam. Maybe you can’t explain it to your dad because he’s your dad, but you could explain it to me. You could at least try. To explain why you’d think it was anywhere near okay to just disappear, considering Jody.”
“I can’t explain” was all I could say to Vanessa. I almost called Nick about six different times during the night, but I don’t know what I would have said to him, either, and anyway whatever connection I imagined I had with him was obviously just that—imagined. When he said to look for him after the vigil, that was just a polite way to end a phone conversation.
Now Vanessa crunches her cereal with a blank look on her face, staring past me. Mr. and Mrs. Hathaway aren’t exactly chatty, either, mad that I’d put them in the position of feeling guilty or responsible if something happened to me. Even Robby seems like he’s over the novelty of me living with them and keeps his eyes on the puzzle on the back of the cereal box.
I excuse myself from the table.
“We’ll be leaving for church in ten minutes,” Mrs. Hathaway says. “Meet us in the front room.”
There’s hardly anyone at youth group; just me and Vanessa and Paul and Kacey Franklin. Families are making their last summer trips before school starts, going on with their lives. I don’t know where Daniel is. Erin hasn’t planned anything for us to do other than sit around and talk about how we’re dealing with the Jody situation, but it seems like no one is in the mood. Vanessa protests my stupidity of yesterday by keeping her arms crossed and refusing to say anything.
I’m staring at the COMMUNITY HAPPENS! poster wondering how it’s going to feel to see my mom, w
hen Kacey says, “Um, I guess I have something to share.”
I look at her. We all do. I don’t think Kacey’s said anything in youth group, ever, except when we were discussing planning and organizing.
“Go ahead,” Erin says, smiling encouragingly.
Kacey runs her fingers through the ends of her hair. “You know how I only come here because my parents make me? I could have stayed home today, with my brother, but I wanted to be here. I wanted to.” When no one reacts, she looks around the room. “For real, that’s big. I’m serious.”
“What do you think changed?” Erin asks.
“I think I might believe in God.” She says it almost with a shrug, like it’s just that easy.
“Why?” I ask. Everyone stares at me, like I’ve said a bad word or something. Maybe it was the way I said it.
Kacey is the only one who takes my question seriously. “I think because of Jody.”
The thing that has made me not believe in God, or not want to, or at least the thing that’s pushed me over the edge after a year of doubt, is the same thing that makes Kacey believe?
“I don’t get it,” I say.
Vanessa unfolds her arms and sits forward. “She realized she needs help,” she says to me.
“No,” Kacey says, shaking her head. “That’s not it. I think my parents make me come because they believe it’s just what you do if you want a good life. Like, if you don’t want bad things to happen to you. After Jody, it’s like, now we all know that just because we come here every Sunday… that doesn’t protect us from bad things happening, right?”
“Yeah?” Paul says.
I watch Kacey’s face, waiting to see if I can grab hold of one little corner of her belief and let it carry me.
“But everyone’s still here,” Kacey says. “I mean, the vigil was packed. And I got here this morning and the parking lot’s full. So all these people must be here for some other reason. Some real… reason.” She looks around at us. “Right?”
“Right,” Erin says, and we all stare at Kacey, like we’d never thought of that. Because maybe we hadn’t.
After youth group, Erin pulls me aside and says, “So what’s this thing about you running off yesterday and not telling anyone where you were going?”
I can’t believe my dad, who barely has time to acknowledge that I exist, has somehow already managed to find a few minutes to tell Erin about yesterday.
“Come on, Sam.” She smiles her open, clear smile, like I can trust her. “Let me help you figure it out. I’m good at this, it’s my job.”
I stare. “If you’re so good at it, you don’t need me to help you figure it out.”
Her mouth shrinks out of the smile and she puts her hand on my arm, and I realize she actually thinks she does have it figured out. “It’s your mom, and also a father thing, I know. I totally get that. You’re acting out. I have a few issues there myself, you know? With my dad. Let’s talk about it, let’s—”
I pull my arm away. “Could you just…” Leave us alone, is how I want to finish that. “We’re seeing my mom today. You probably know.”
She nods, and the smile comes back, but it’s different this time, forced. “I heard.”
“I’m just nervous. Sorry.”
“It’s going to be okay,” she says. To me, she doesn’t sound all that convinced.
The service seems strange, and I don’t know if it’s because of the way I’m feeling or because Gerald doesn’t show up, and we have to sing all the hymns a capella since Mr. Hathaway forgot to bring his guitar, which I’m sure is somehow my fault. One of the choir members runs over to the piano to hit a note before every song, to get us started in the right key, but it’s still not sounding so good.
The air-conditioning can’t keep up with the heat. People fan themselves with whatever is handy and look at their watches a lot. And of course we’re all thinking of Jody and how last week at this time she sang that beautiful solo. And everyone needs my dad to say the right things, to open to the perfect verse. But the Psalm reading falls flat and the Old Testament promises sound unbelievable and the sermon is disjointed and hard to follow. I can feel Dad straining to make a point that not even he’s sure of, and I wonder if he’s thinking about how in about an hour we’re going to see Mom.
Dad tells the congregation that because of the heat and lack of accompaniment we’re skipping the final hymn and going right to the benediction.
My stomach flutters. Now there’s only the fellowship time and a car ride between us and whatever is going to happen to our family next.
In the car, Dad strips off his tie and throws it into the backseat, loosening the top buttons of his shirt. We get out onto the highway and you can’t even tell that it poured down rain yesterday; the hills along the road look as brown and dry as ever.
“How was youth group?” Dad asks. It’s the same post-church conversation we always have, so far.
“Fine.”
We drive another five minutes before he says, “I’m trying to understand. Help me.”
I look out at the brown hills whipping by in a blur. “I can’t,” I say. “I don’t know.”
“Normally it wouldn’t be that big a deal. Everyone needs some time alone sometimes. But Sammy, right now you can’t—”
“I know.”
More driving.
“Sam,” he starts, and sounds so confident that I turn to him and wait, hope, for him to say what I need him to say. I don’t know what that is, but I think I’ll know it when I hear it. “When we see Mom, I don’t want to upset her with all this stuff. You running off yesterday, whatever else. She’s got enough on her mind.”
We turn up the road to the Lodge.
He glances at me. “Okay? Sam?”
I assume we should also not upset her with the news that I’m not living at home, that Erin spends so much time with Dad, that I’m changing schools, or any other true facts about our lives. “Okay.”
As soon as we pull into the parking lot, I see her. She’s standing in the shade out in front, wearing a cotton skirt and sandals and an eyelet blouse. My breath catches. The parking lot gets blurry. I blink a few times and look at her again and think how pretty she is, and how small and thin and holding her body in this way that makes you think she’s not sure something won’t come along and blow her away.
She turns away from us and points her finger to the car and someone else comes out of the shade, a woman with short gray hair. I recognize her from the day we got our tour of New Beginnings. Margaret, I think, is her name.
Dad looks at himself in the visor mirror, touching his hair, while I watch Mom and Margaret talk. Mom shakes her head. Margaret puts one hand on each of Mom’s shoulders and comes in close, like my soccer coach sometimes would, back when I still played, and she had to tell me something important about the game. Mom shakes her head some more. Margaret gets closer, bends her head as if to make sure Mom is really looking at her, really hearing her.
Mom is being coached. On how to get through lunch with her own family.
Dad flips the visor back up. “Okay. Remember what I said.” Then he looks at me and blows air out, his cheeks puffing. “I’m nervous, too.”
I nod, thinking we could be less nervous if we weren’t trying to hide everything. That’s been part of the problem all along.
When we get to where Mom and Margaret are waiting, I want to run up and hug her but suddenly I feel shy around my own mom, and she’s frozen stiff, and I can’t really see her face as it’s hidden by her bob, which has grown some since she left and hangs over her eye. There’s still a faint scratch and bump on her cheek from the accident. Then, she smiles a scared sort of smile and lifts her arms, and when we hug she holds on an extra second or two and says my name: “Samara. You look so beautiful.” I inhale. Her hair smells different. She must have run out of her own shampoo. But she’s still Mom.
I don’t want to let go. When I finally do, Dad gives her a short hug and a kiss on the cheek but they don’t look
each other in the eye. His movements are jerky, and spots of sweat are spreading under his armpits.
Margaret folds her hands together and says, “Good, then.” She looks at my mom. “I’ll see you in an hour?”
Mom nods and I realize Margaret is her escort or chaperone, not just a ride. She walks toward the lot to do whatever it is she’s going to do for the next hour while we have brunch.
“Do you want to sit out on the deck or inside?” Dad asks, still not quite letting his eyes stop anywhere near Mom’s face.
“It’s up to you,” Mom says.
They’re being so polite.
“Sam?” Dad asks.
“Either way.”
He opens the door to go in. “I guess we’ll just take whatever they’ve got.”
Half an hour later I have my pancakes, Dad has his French toast special, and Mom has her two-egg breakfast, just like always, except now the tomato juice the waiter brings is just tomato juice. We did end up seated on the deck and at least half a dozen people from church have come to our table to say hi to my mom, tell her how great she looks, that they miss her, and ask how it’s going. I wish this town had just one more place that was open on Sundays.
“Fine,” she says.
“Thank you,” she says.
And when they say they’re looking forward to having her back, she smiles and says, “Me, too.” But when another person asks when that will be, she says, “I’m not sure.”