The Matchup
Page 7
“Typical four-year-old, I’d guess.” He was beginning to learn that Zach had two speeds, fast and zoom.
“True enough. Come into the kitchen and fix yourself a plate.”
While Gage ate heartily and listened to the others chatting, he took note of the closeness the Levington family still shared. Valerie wasn’t the only member who had changed. Her oldest brother, Jake, and sister, Chloe, were showing tinges of gray. Even more compelling than that, Valerie’s younger brother, Luke, had grown taller than Gage and was married with a baby, making Gage feel old.
One by one, the Levington siblings departed with their families, promising to get together again soon. Kurt’s wife left the group to say good-bye to her family as well. All that remained were Kurt, John and Brande, and Pierce and Noelle.
“So, Gage,” John said, “what have you been up to these days?”
At Pierce’s look of warning, Gage decided to answer with caution, giving the same watered-down answer he’d given Valerie a few days before. “Working, mostly, and trying to stay out of trouble.”
“Are you succeeding?” John asked, catching Gage off guard.
“Beg your pardon?”
“Staying out of trouble, I meant. Are you succeeding?”
A corner of Gage’s mouth lifted up. “Not very well.”
Pierce arched his brows. Gage ignored him. John chuckled, turning to his wife. “You need a good wife to keep you out of trouble. Doesn’t he, Brande?”
And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Gage tried not to squirm under John’s all-knowing gaze.
Noelle must have sensed Gage’s discomfort because she said, “He has a good job and a really great son. Two out of three aren’t bad.”
“Marriage is a tricky proposition these days. Most of our children have found wonderful spouses. It’s comforting to know they are taken care of,” Brande said.
“Except for Valerie,” Kurt blurted. Gage wondered if he realized how insensitive he sounded, mentioning his sister’s difficult situation when she wasn’t here. “What will she do once Grandma and Grandpa come home from their mission?”
John and Brande looked at each other uncertainly. “She doesn’t know yet,” Brande answered. “She’s worried about having to increase her hours at work so that she can pay rent on an apartment.”
“She can’t be away from her kids all day,” Kurt said.
“I agree.” John’s smile faded.
Gage cleared his throat. “Pardon me for asking, but I noticed that her son has some difficulties. What’s the story there?”
In the awkward pause that followed, Gage wished that he’d never opened his mouth. But his curiosity had gotten the better of him. Ah, well, it seemed that he and Kurt were in good company.
Kurt answered, “He’s been diagnosed with mild autism. But just because he’s high-functioning doesn’t mean that he’s easy to deal with.”
So that was it. Autism. Interesting. The Diamondbacks Foundation, in conjunction with their affiliated radio station, conducted an annual fund-raiser for autism research and educational programs for children and teenagers who fell on the spectrum. And throughout the year, various school groups came to the gates at Chase Field for guided tours. Once in a while, when a group of special needs children was brought in, extra personnel was secured to handle them. Their excitement at being at the ballpark was contagious.
Although Gage had heard a few co-workers talking about autism, he didn’t know much about the disorder itself. Warren, an older gentleman at work, had a teenager with Asperger’s while Rhonda, a mother of three, was dealing with her youngest child’s recent diagnosis. It had been rough going for a time, but now she seemed to be adjusting. “Of course not.”
Brande regarded Gage compassionately. “Valerie is a very dedicated mother. Unfortunately, she has received some negative reactions to her son. When she lived with us for a short time after her divorce, the members of our ward had a difficult time accepting her because Justin kept disrupting sacrament meeting with his tantrums. Because of this, she is more sensitive to what she construes as criticism.”
Hmm. So that was why Valerie had acted so put out when Gage had first offered to help her. But his persistence had paid off and she’d visibly softened toward him. “I’m sure it’s not easy. I admire her for her fortitude. Let’s hope that Justin continues to improve.” Gage held his hand out to John. “It was nice to see you again. But it’s time for me to take my son home. He goes back to his mother tomorrow.”
Pierce eyed Gage speculatively without commenting.
“Thanks for letting us barge in on your family time. Sorry for the imposition.”
“Gage,” Brande reassured him, “it wasn’t an imposition in the least. We’re very glad to see you again.” She gave him another warm hug. “You take care of yourself, all right? And tell your mother I said hello.”
“Uh, thanks. I will.” He still hadn’t reconciled with his mom. He decided to call her as soon as he dropped Zach off at April’s place.
As it turned out, there was no need for Gage to call his mother when he and Zach arrived home. Through the glare of the setting sun, he spied her silver Jetta off to the side of the driveway. Gage pulled in and parked his Camaro, taking a deep breath before stepping out to meet her. Sarah Nielsen, looking a bit anxious, stepped out of her vehicle as well and approached him slowly.
Gage tried to maintain a calm, controlled air as he greeted her. “Hi, Mom.”
She offered him a stiff smile. “Hello.”
“Been here long?”
“About fifteen minutes or so. I had almost lost my nerve and decided to leave when you pulled up.”
“I assume that you’re here to meet Zach,” he said tentatively.
Sarah pinched the seams of the dress she’d worn to church in a nervous gesture. In all his years of growing up, Gage had never seen his mother like this. She’d always been so poised. Even when she and his dad had gone through so much strife, she’d kept the greater part of it from her sons.
“Yes. Eric wanted to come, too, but I needed to do this alone—you know, with Zach being my grandson. Mine and your father’s.” She cleared her throat and stepped forward. “I’m sorry for the way I ran out of the dining room. It was very rude of me.”
Gage scoffed. “Mom, if anybody should be apologizing, it’s me. I’ve been such a jerk. You’ve loved me and supported me even with all the stupid things I’ve done. I should have come to you when April told me about Zach. But I didn’t want you to know that I was such a loser not to even know about having a son.”
“Believe it or not, I understand. Having two older know-it-all brothers and an absentee father did a number on you.”
Gage stared at her, stunned by her keen observation. He’d never told anyone about his insecurities. Craig and Pierce had both earned top grades in school, served missions, and married nice Mormon girls. Gage had earned decent grades through the years, but that was as far as the similarities went. And his dad’s indifference during that time hadn’t helped matters.
“Zach fell asleep on the ride home.” He backed up and opened the passenger door. “Let’s see if I can get him out without waking him.”
“Gage, you’re avoiding the subject. You can’t hide from the past forever.”
Lifting a sleeping Zach to his shoulder, he met her gaze headon. “I know that.”
“Do you? Or are you just saying that to appease me?”
As he considered his answer, all of the old doubts and fears came soaring over him, taking him back in time to when he was just a kid. He’d sensed, if not understood, that his parents’ relationship was strained. He’d felt the tension but had somehow known not to ask anyone about it, not even his older brothers.
Then, for some reason that he couldn’t define even to this day, Gage had put the blame on himself. He wasn’t good enough for his dad anymore. He wasn’t smart like Craig or a go-getter like Pierce. He wasn’t able to separate his anxieties from his actions and had slip
ped off the proverbial cliff, looking for acceptance with a group of friends that dragged him down with them. That old pain crept up inside him, the pain he’d worked so hard to block out through the years. “Let’s go inside where we’ll be more comfortable.”
He led her inside through the kitchen to the front room where he deposited Zach on the couch. Sarah sat on the other end, looking longingly at her grandson. “He’s beautiful.”
“You’re the only person who’ll be allowed to say that about my son.”
She chuckled. “When is his birthday?”
Gage answered that he’d just had one, saddened by the knowledge that he’d deprived his mom of loving Zach. She hadn’t been able to shower him with gifts or give him the mushy hugs that little boys outwardly loathed but secretly craved. In that moment, the guilt piled on Gage as he realized the full extent to which he’d hurt his family to protect his pride.
It seemed as if Sarah could read his mind. “I wonder if by not telling us about Zach, you were trying to cover up a guilty conscience of your past behavior.”
Gage was silent for a long time before admitting, “I feel guilty about a lot of things.”
She waited patiently for him to explain. When Gage realized she wasn’t going anywhere until he did, he began, albeit a little defensively, “I feel guilty about marrying April. Guilty about backing out of my mission. For all the hurt I’ve caused in the family. I mean, hey, if it wasn’t for me, everyone’s life would have run a lot more smoothly, don’t you think?”
“Gage,” she admonished, her tone letting him know she meant business.
He sighed, releasing the tension he was feeling. “Okay, fine, Mom. When I was little, I got a lot of the attention from you and Dad because I was the youngest—and cutest, I was told.”
She nodded.
“But then it all suddenly stopped. I was too young to understand what was going on between you and Dad and why he stopped going to church. All I knew was that everything was broken. Craig and Pierce seemed to handle it just fine, and Dad was always telling us to ‘man up,’ so I didn’t push it. I kept hoping that whatever happened would eventually get better.”
“Instead of getting better, it got worse.” At his mom’s stricken face, Gage swallowed hard. Maybe it was better to just keep these memories buried. Really, what good did it do to dredge up the past?
He shrugged. “I may not have been as sensitive to your moods as Pierce was, but even I knew when you were upset. I didn’t understand why I had to wait to get baptized so Dad could do it. Later on, when he became inactive again and couldn’t ordain me to the Aaronic Priesthood, I saw just how important I was to him at that point.” Gage couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm from his voice. “I had to find friends who would make me feel good about myself. At least then I would be important to somebody.”
“You were important to me.”
“I know that now. But back then you were almost never home.”
“Now it’s my turn to confess that I felt guilty for being gone all the time. I quit my job in the hope that spending more time with you would curtail your disruptive behavior. But I was too late, wasn’t I?”
“I feel guilty about that too. You wouldn’t have needed to quit working for Dad if I hadn’t been pulling stupid pranks with my so-called friends. And later, Dad’s business fell apart because that jerk he hired in your place embezzled Dad’s funds.”
Gage offered her a tiny smile. “But I got excited when I sent my mission application in and kept telling Dad all about the things I was learning in the mission prep classes. He just told me to quit preaching to him. I had hoped to open my call with the two of you, but he told me that he was with a client and that he would be home late. He couldn’t even set work aside long enough to be with me for that.”
Gage hated seeing the tears that formed in his mom’s eyes.
He lifted his shoulder in what he hoped would be a show of indifference. “But it doesn’t matter much now. I knew that I had no business telling people that families can be together forever when mine was falling apart.”
Sarah grabbed a tissue from a nearby box. “Gage, it has hurt so much to see how this has affected you. Please understand that you weren’t at fault for my decision to quit working for your dad. I think we were all emotionally drained from that time. You were looking for peace, too, just not in the best places. I wish you would come back to church.”
Where Gage had yelled at Pierce for suggesting the same thing, there was no way he would do that to his mom. Still, he needed to be firm. “I’ve made some mistakes and I want to be the kind of dad to Zach that Dad wasn’t for me, but I just don’t know if I can believe in that stuff anymore.”
“Meaning the teachings of the gospel.”
He nodded, his heart pounding in his chest. “Yeah. We’ve been told that Christ overcame the sins of the world. He suffered for us so that we wouldn’t have to. But people suffer all the time. Look at Valerie Hall.”
Sarah squinted as if trying to conjure a mental image. “Who?”
“Levington,” he clarified. “She’s divorced now with two kids to raise. Her youngest is autistic. Where’s the fairness in that?”
Sarah reached over and patted Zach’s hand when he shifted in his sleep. “I didn’t realize that you knew what was going on in Valerie’s life.”
“We’ve reconnected,” he replied simply.
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Well, I haven’t heard much about her lately, but from what I understand, her husband was a charmer who didn’t know how to deal with an autistic child. He couldn’t put up with the disruptions it caused in their home life.”
Gage’s eyes narrowed. As far as he was concerned, Valerie shouldn’t have had to put up with her husband.
Reigning in his errant thoughts, he trained his ear once again on what his mom was saying. “Believing that your life will go smoothly just because you live the commandments is incorrect. Part of the gospel plan is for us to be tested. But because of Christ’s Atonement, whatever sorrow we suffer in this life will be made up for in the next.”
“How can you be sure of that, Mom?”
Her gray eyes softened as she responded, “I know because when I almost lost hope of ever being happy again after your father and I split up, the Lord lifted that burden. I was reminded that He still loved me. Through the Spirit, I was guided to seek others who had been through similar situations. And in time, I knew that the Lord had prepared me for something better. He never left me alone.”
Her testimony pierced Gage’s heart so directly that if he didn’t know better, he’d think it was bleeding.
Suddenly, a memory surfaced of him standing in his dad’s mansion in San Diego, California, five years earlier when he and his brothers met their new stepmother, Tamara. After dinner, when Tamara had asked the three Logan brothers to clear the dishes, she’d stood at the kitchen island and addressed the pain that their father had inflicted on them. Alluding to her own abusive marriage, she stated boldly that if they wanted to forgive their father, which would allow them to establish a closer relationship with him, they needed to let go of the pain.
Gage recalled telling her that it wasn’t as easy as she was implying and she’d instantly declared, “Oh, I know it won’t be easy for any of you. But that’s what you’ve got to do.”
Let go of the pain.
But how? Five years later, he was still trying to figure out the answer to that question.
Sarah must have read his thoughts because she asked Gage, “Have you prayed at all since receiving your mission call?”
That had been nine years ago. Almost a decade. Gage was shocked to realize that he’d wasted so much of his time looking for solace in all the wrong places.
“Not much,” he said honestly. Most of his prayers, when he’d rarely uttered one, had been desperate pleas for help out of the current jam he’d gotten himself into.
Sarah placed her hand on his arm. “We held a family fast for you today.”
/> He was so shocked, he didn’t know what to say. “You did?”
Nodding, she replied, “We feel that you need the Lord’s help right now more than ever.”
For Gage, fasting had simply meant going hungry for two meals. He’d never experienced any benefit from doing it. But inexplicably, he was touched beyond measure that his family would do that for him. He felt a sudden sting of tears in his eyes and blinked rapidly to drive them away. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Gage, I want to see all three of my sons in the temple someday soon. I want to challenge you to sincerely ask Heavenly Father what he wants you to do. You know the principles of the gospel, but you’ve lost the Spirit. If you really want your life to change for the better, you need to be willing to change as well.”
Gage felt a long-forsaken but not forgotten warmth spread through his chest.
Sarah stood and made her way to the front door. Before turning the knob, she paused to smile at him. “Please, Gage. I love you very much and I want to see you happy. Do this, not for us, but for yourself.” With that, she kissed his cheek and quietly let herself out, leaving Gage standing as still as a statue.
The next morning after Gage and Zach had finished breakfast and were putting their dishes in the sink, Gage’s phone buzzed. It was Keith Westbrook. What would he be calling about? Gage and Zach were scheduled to leave for Tucson in just a few minutes. “Hello?”
“Gage.” A keen note of distress hit Gage’s ear as Keith began the conversation. “I’m calling about April.”
“What is it?” he asked in alarm.
“April and Ryker were caught in a multi-car accident on I-10 yesterday afternoon. The police have informed us that they both died.” His voice cracked with the admission.
Gage nearly dropped his phone. “What?”
A lengthy pause followed with muffled sounds of heavy breathing punctuated by tearful moans. When Keith came back on the phone, Gage quickly accepted his strangled apology. He wanted to know more. “Madeline and I are on our way to the coroner’s office right now. They’ve asked us to identify the body. . .” Keith could no longer go on. Gage could hear Madeline sobbing in the background.