by Ann Tatlock
“That,” I say. “The star. Remember we looked at it together before?”
He doesn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, he shakes his head. “I don’t remember. What is it?”
“It’s the star that showed up the day Digger disappeared. It’s been here every night since—but only here. You can’t see it from anywhere else. So it’s got to be from another time.”
“Another time?” he echoes.
“Yeah. I brought you out here to see it once when you were still back in 1916. Don’t you remember that?”
He squints and moans like all of a sudden his head hurts. He’s looking up, but I know at the same time he’s thinking back, trying to remember. “Oh yes,” he says. He’s speaking so quiet I can hardly hear him. “Now I remember.”
“Well, back then you were sure science could explain it. I thought you might be right, but now I’m not so sure anymore.”
“So why did you bring me here tonight, Linda? Why did you want to show me this now?”
“Because I think it’s the Star of Bethlehem. Remember, I told you that before. I was wondering what you might think now. Do you think it could be the Christmas star?”
His eyes grow small, and his head moves slowly up and down. “Well, I don’t know,” he says. “If the star can be seen from nowhere else but right here, then it’s got to be something that happened in another time. But the Star of Bethlehem?”
“Well, if it is—and I say it is, because it’s got to be something pretty important—then wouldn’t the whole thing be true? I mean, the whole thing about God coming to earth? I always found it hard to believe, like it was just a story or a fairy tale or something. But with the star showing up every night, I kind of have to wonder.”
He stops looking at the sky and looks at me. He’s rubbing the back of his neck like it’s aching from looking up too long. “I’ve never believed in any of it, Linda. You know that. Not in God. Certainly not in God coming in the flesh.”
“But the star?”
He takes a few steps forward, looks up, looks down. He paces in a small circle, finally coming back to me. “It’s real, isn’t it? The star is real.”
“Yes,” I say. “Of course it’s real. We can see it, can’t we?”
“But that doesn’t mean it’s what you think it is. It doesn’t mean …” He stops talking and starts pacing again.
“Dad said something about, if we peeled back time, we could go back to the day Jesus was born. He says it was a real event, you know, something that really happened.”
He stops pacing. He looks at me, and he looks angry. “What are you getting at, Linda?” he asks.
I shrug. I’m beginning to be sorry I brought him here. “You just sounded so sad in the hospital. I thought if I brought you out here and showed you the star and told you it just might all be true, that would give you a little hope.”
He stares at me a long time like I’ve said something terrible, but then he tilts his head back again and looks up at the star. “Such foolishness,” he says. “But perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it’s a glorious foolishness. It would be worth considering.”
I don’t really know what he’s talking about. But as he’s standing there in the light of the star, I can see that some kind of sadness slips off his face. He breathes in deeply like he hasn’t been able to catch his breath in a long time. He looks at me again and says, “Thank you for bringing me here tonight, Linda.”
I give him a nod. “You’re welcome, Austin.”
“Maybe I’ll come back and look at it again sometime. You’ve given me much to think about.”
“All right.”
“For now, I’m tired. I think I’d better go home.”
“Okay. But Austin?”
“Yes, Linda?”
“Just speaking for me, I’m finding it easier and easier to believe.”
He nods but doesn’t say anything as we walk across the grass to the house.
62
Sheldon
Saturday, April 26, 1969
CARL LOOKS AROUND the dining room table, his eyes shifting from me to Meg to Linda and back to me. His fork hovers over his plate, interrupted in its otherwise frantic journey toward the next bite. Finally, he says, “You guys been dropping acid or something while I’ve been away?”
“I wish,” Linda says, but when I look at her she shrugs. “Just kidding, Dad.”
Meg says, “Listen, Carl, I know it sounds crazy. And heaven knows we didn’t believe it at first either. But it’s true.”
Carl’s eyes narrow. The fork still hangs motionless over the chicken fricassee Meg has prepared for lunch. “So you’re telling me you see people in this house that are living in different times?”
“That’s right, son,” I say.
“Well, what? Are they ghosts or something?”
Linda shakes her head. “They’re not ghosts. Some of them aren’t even dead yet. Heck, some of them aren’t even born yet, for that matter.”
“Not born yet?” Carl echoes. “Like who?”
“Well,” Linda says, “Dad said he saw Gavan’s son, Nicholas, who isn’t born till the twenty-first century.”
“The twenty-first century?”
I lift a hand. “It’s impossible to understand, Carl,” I say. “But I can tell you this much. It’s a gift. For whatever reason, God is allowing us to see in part what he sees in full. He’s giving us at least a glimpse into the Eternal Now.”
“Yeah?” Carl sounds skeptical. “How come?”
For love’s sake, I think.
Before I can speak, Meg says, “We don’t really know, Carl. We just wanted you to be prepared in case you see anything out of the ordinary.”
“You mean like somebody suddenly appearing on the couch next to me when I’m trying to watch TV or something?”
“Exactly,” Linda says.
The fork reluctantly stabs a piece of chicken and carries it to Carl’s mouth, where it is slowly consumed. Once Carl swallows, he says, “Peyote, right? Or magic mushrooms? Listen, I’ve heard ’shrooms can distort time and make you see things that aren’t really there. Not that I’d know from experience—”
“Sure, Carl,” Linda interrupts.
“But really,” Carl goes on, “you’re making me nervous here, folks. I mean, I come home from ’Nam thinking things are finally going to be somewhat normal, and I find my family’s been turning on with Timothy Leary or something.”
Meg sighs heavily. She looks at me, hoping I’ll have an answer for Carl. I take a long drink of water to give myself a moment to think.
“Listen, son,” I say at last. “Surely you know us better than that. We wouldn’t take drugs, and we certainly wouldn’t lie to you. At the same time, we don’t necessarily expect you to believe us either. Maybe you’ll see for yourself, and maybe not. For now, we’ll just let it rest, all right?”
But Carl’s not quite ready to let it rest. “And anyway,” he says, his eyes making the rounds again, “what’s so great about the place where we lost Digger? How can that be a gift?”
His words silence us. I for one feel momentarily chastened, as though I’ve forgotten what happened here. Not that I could ever forget.
“Listen, Carl,” Linda says, “why don’t we go down to the ice cream parlor where I work? I can get us a couple of free banana splits.”
“All right. Sure.” Carl lays down his fork and pushes away from the table. He steps around to Meg and kisses her forehead. “Great lunch, Mom. I’ve missed your cooking.”
She smiles up at him and pats the hand that has momentarily alighted on her shoulder. Then Carl and Linda are gone, and Meg and I are left to gaze at each other across the table. There was a time when what we wanted most was to be alone, she and I. Now, it leaves us feeling awkward and afraid. Her face has grown pale, and her lips are slightly parted, as though she wants to say something and at the same time doesn’t want to say it. I try to swallow but my mouth is dry. My heart sinks in my chest like a stone.
>
63
Meg
Saturday, April 26, 1969
WITH CARL AND Linda gone, the room is so quiet I can actually hear a clock ticking, the clock on the mantle in the kitchen. The seconds fall away, telling me it’s time. No more waiting because the number of seconds is finite and someday there will be an end to them. So says Mrs. See, and I know she’s right.
I feel the words at the base of my throat, but I can’t seem to find the strength to carry them to my tongue. I squeeze my hands together in my lap and pray for courage, but several more seconds tick off and the moment passes. Sheldon is speaking.
“Well,” he says, “I guess we really couldn’t expect Carl to react in any other way. It’s a little, um—beyond the pale, so to speak.” He tries to smile, but his lips tremble.
I nod. This isn’t what I wanted to talk about, but I need to respond. “I suppose he’ll simply have to experience it to believe it,” I say.
“Yes, I suppose so. At least if something happens, he won’t be caught completely off-guard.”
“And if nothing happens?”
“Then he’ll go on thinking we’ve lost our minds.”
Sheldon and I look at each other and, suddenly, we laugh. Together. Loud and long. As though our son thinking us crazy is the funniest thing in the world. Because somehow, in this moment, it is.
When the laughter trails off, I know it has taken something with it. Something bad that had been hanging in the air between Sheldon and me for far too long. And when the room is quiet again, I’m no longer with the man who wronged me; I am with an old friend.
“Sheldon?”
“Yes, Meg?”
The words are there now, and it’s not too late. “No matter what else happens, we need to be a family again.”
“We do?” His right hand shakes as he reaches for his water glass. He starts to lift it but changes his mind. “I mean, of course we do. For the sake of the children.”
“No, Sheldon,” I say. “Not just for them, but for our own sake too.”
His eyes narrow slightly, like he’s trying to understand. “For our own sake?” he repeats.
“Yes. I’m tired of being alone in our marriage. I want us to be together again, like we were at the start of things.”
He sits up a little straighter, and his face brightens. “Do you think we can be?” he asks. “Together again, I mean?”
“I don’t know. But I believe we have to try.”
“You want to try, Meg?”
Just as he says that, I picture Charlene and the baby. A sharp pain strikes at the heart of my resolve. I take a deep breath and let the pain roll through me. I can’t follow the lingering hurt because it’s headed in the wrong direction. Forgiveness, Mrs. See said, is the road between heaven and earth. It’s a difficult first step, but I decide again to take it.
“Yes, I do want to try,” I tell Sheldon. “What I don’t want is to grow old alone. I want you with me.”
Sheldon is smiling now, tentatively, as his head moves from side to side. “I don’t even know how to begin,” he confesses.
“You must begin by forgiving me.”
“Forgiving you? I don’t understand. I’m the one who—”
I raise a hand. “You must forgive me for holding on to my anger so long, for not being willing to forgive you when you asked me to; and you must forgive me for being a pastor’s wife for so long without ever really believing what you believed.”
Sheldon is silenced by that. A long moment passes before he says, “I never should have asked you to be a pastor’s wife. I never did ask you, and maybe that’s the problem. I did what I wanted to do, even though my decisions didn’t make life easy for you.”
“No, you never did ask me,” I agree, “and maybe you should have, but what’s done is done. If you were to ask me now if you should be a pastor, I would tell you yes. You made the right decision. That was how you were meant to spend your life. I know that now.”
Sheldon’s eyes glisten at me down the length of the table. He nods slightly and moistens his lips with his tongue. “Thank you for saying so, Meg. That means a lot to me. And of course I forgive you if there’s really anything to forgive, but the more important question is, can you forgive me? I’m the one who did the greater wrong.”
“Oh, Sheldon.” I sigh and shake my head. “I’m not going to try to weigh your wrong against mine. We were both wrong, and now we have to put it behind us and try to move forward.”
Sheldon drops his eyes. “You do understand that the Gavan in this house is my son, don’t you?”
There’s the pain again. I push it aside. “Yes, I understand. So he came and found you.”
“Yes. He wanted to meet me and to tell me he’s glad to be alive.”
I think about that a moment. It never occurred to me that this person who wasn’t meant to be might in fact be happy to be alive. I cock my head and look at Sheldon. “That’s good, then, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
“And you said his son, the boy Nicholas—you said he looks like Digger.”
“Very much so. There’s a little bit of Digger living on in him.”
Oh Digger. That is one pain that I will allow to settle in my heart. I couldn’t push it away, even if I wanted to. Of Nicholas, I say, “Life springs up even from our mistakes, and there’s something good to be said about that.”
“Only because God makes it so.”
I feel the pressure of tears at the back of my eyes. I lift my gaze to the window so they don’t spill over. “I’m willing to believe that now,” I say. “I’m not even quite sure why, except for the strange happenings in this house and the chance to see something of what God sees. Still, I don’t consider either Gavan or Nicholas a substitute for Digger.”
“Of course not,” Sheldon agrees. “Neither do I.”
“He is … Digger is gone. I’ve been trying to hold on to hope, but as the days go by I’m finding it harder and harder to believe he’ll come home.”
Sheldon’s mouth forms a small line as he nods. “I’m afraid you’re probably right, Meg. I don’t think Digger will be coming home. It’s time to let him go.”
Time again. I give in to the tears and allow them to roll down my cheeks. “You know, I had come to believe that as long as the star was shining over our house every night, there was hope for Digger’s being alive. But that’s the thing. Maybe the star is telling us that he is alive, and we’ll see him in heaven. I want to believe that at least.”
“We can believe it,” Sheldon says, “because it’s true.”
Of all the hundreds of sermons that Sheldon has ever preached, he has just given the first message of hope that I actually believe.
I nod and smile at him. “Then it’s enough,” I say.
64
Sheldon
Saturday, April 26, 1969
THERE’S A DREAM-LIKE quality to the moment, when what you have been hoping for happens and yet things don’t seem quite real. You have to pause and wait for your heart to catch up with your mind so that both are in the same place.
“Meg,” I say quietly, “if you don’t mind, I would just like to hear you say the words.”
She looks puzzled. “What words, Sheldon?”
“That you forgive me. I mean, that’s what you’re trying to tell me, isn’t it? That you forgive me?”
She is crying still, silent tears rolling down her cheeks, and yet as I look at her waiting for an answer, she smiles. “Yes, Sheldon,” she says. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I forgive you.”
I am like air. Weightless. Unconfined. Free to move about for the first time in a very long while.
I push myself away from the table and stand. “I’ve so longed to comfort you, you know.”
She wipes her tears with the back of one hand as she rises from her chair. She hesitates a moment so I take the first step. My legs are weak, and I can’t move fast enough. The distance from my end of the table to hers seems endless a
nd yet, in the next moment, she’s in my arms.
65
Meg
Saturday, May 10, 1969
CARL HAS BEEN home for almost three weeks, and the house has been quiet. That is, no sudden appearances from anyone who isn’t really there, no talking with people from other times. Only the star remains, but it seems smaller somehow and dimmer, as though its job is done and it’s sinking back into history.
Maybe all of it is finished. Maybe the house has accomplished what it was meant to do for us, and now it’ll lie dormant till someone else needs it. Another family, maybe. Or maybe Gavan Valdez in the unimaginable year of 2005. Meanwhile, we settle back into life, grateful for what we have, trying as ever to accept what we have lost. Looking ahead to what we will find again.
Sheldon is talking about going back into the ministry, finding a small church to serve as assistant pastor or something. It would be a second profession, in addition to the dealership, because we must pay the bills and provide for Charlene’s child. As it should be. We prepare for the future we know is coming.
I think I’m ready to be a pastor’s wife this time around. Sheldon says all it takes is a little bit of faith, and that’s a good thing because a little bit of faith is all I have—though that’s more than I had before. At least it’s a place to start and a place from which to move forward.
I stand at the kitchen sink, a cup of coffee in one hand, its matching saucer in the other. The grass outside shimmers with dew in the early morning light, and the leaves of the trees rise and fall with the wind. Upstairs I hear footsteps. Sheldon is getting up, getting ready to go to work. Another Super Saturday Sale—Prices that can’t be beat. And so it goes. He doesn’t complain. He says the used car lot is a sanctuary of sorts, his customers the sheep of his flock. He is a pastor because he can’t be anything else. I understand that now, and accept it.
Margaret See was right. Forgiveness is the road between heaven and earth. I am able now to love Sheldon without the constant anger and pain. Those continue to fall away while the love grows stronger. In that regard, time is our ally and will bring us where we’re meant to be.