Embrace Me

by Lisa Samson

  “What’s the matter with you?” he yelled, laying a hand on his cheek.

  “You, Howdy-Doody. You’re what’s the matter with me.”

  He winced.

  “Stop thinking I don’t know what’s going on with you. Just stay away from me. I’ll do the show. But leave me alone.”

  Peter would cheer if he wasn’t painted in one position. I’m pretty sure of that.

  Something snapped in my brain. It’s hard to say how a true snapping occurs. I felt something loosen, almost physically, inside my skull, as if a cage door opened and let loose a small, glinty-eyed creature who stared out of my eyes and groped through an almost drunken haze at the same time.

  I hurried out of the suite and ran for my car. Drew didn’t bother to follow, not surprisingly. The animal in my forehead scratched down to the bone and I longed to scream in frustration. It was easy to know where to go. Since childhood I’d stood before her medicine cabinet in the bathroom off her bedroom—Dad had been down the hall for several years by this time—memorizing her prescriptions, wondering what they were all for.

  But now I knew.

  Reaching up my hand, I hesitated, wondering which bottle to choose. Maybe I should ask Trician, I remember thinking, suppressing a chuckle. I mean, she knew everything about everything and everybody, everywhere, and everyhow. The woman was a storehouse of smarts and savvy and stick with her kid and she’ll take you places you never dreamed of going.

  And what were my dreams, you ask? Thank you, James the son of Alpheus. Not much, in answer to your question. Just to be rid of Trician in a way she didn’t mind, a way that would get her off my back by the sheer affirmation she was right all along about my talent. Other than that, I liked selling comic books. I wasn’t naturally high in the ambition department and I was fine with that.

  I grabbed two bottles and stared at the face in the mirror, unrecognizable as myself, then tiptoed down the hall to my own bathroom, the walls hung with twenty-two framed comic book covers denoting the issues I made top sales. Each frame displayed little gold plaques with my name and the month they debuted. Sergeant Hero, Lady Illusion, Lizard Girl, and my favorite, Conundra and Indestructibo.

  Grabbing my spit cup, I turned on the water. I filled it up, then counted out two of each prescription. Vicodin and OxyContin. I didn’t want to die or anything, I just wanted to sleep, really sleep like I hadn’t done since I left Action Packed Comics and worked for Drew. Because after I woke up, I had to come up with a whole new plan for my life, and that was going to be the most difficult thing I’d ever done.

  Then I realized there’d be too much noise at my house; I had to get away. And Mother would come barreling in any moment, asking me to explain my behavior with Drew. So I put the pills back in the bottles and hit the road.

  By midnight, I found a small motel near Durham. A little strip of a place off the highway, rustic with mullioned windows, it was going for chalet and failing miserably. I paid cash for the room.

  The pills went down easily, and I looked at myself once more and began to cry.

  I had lost myself. I was so sure I could keep it going, make it somewhere decent enough to leave everyone behind and still keep my self-respect. But it didn’t work out that way.

  THIRTEEN

  DREW: 2003

  The night settles in, blanketing the gorge in silence, the wooden house comforting in the darkness. Monica remarked over and over how much bigger I seemed in person than on TV.

  We sit at the rugged dining table and eat stew. Hermy’s down for the night, reading in his bedroom, resting assured that yes, Campton has a library that, while not well-stocked as city libraries go, will at least offer some books he’s probably not perused.

  “So you watched me on TV?”

  “I did. I’ve been watching you since you were on The Port of Peace Hour. I even visited your church a few times. You have a gift for communication. It’s a shame you were bent on squandering it. I never should have left. I never should have let Charles talk me into it; I should have trusted the Lord more, Drew.”

  “What happened? You know he told me they thought it was a suicide. When I was sixteen he offered up that bit of information. I was starting to ask too many questions about the accident, I guess.”

  She holds her hand to her mouth, rounded in horror. “Oh no! No! That wasn’t part of our agreement. I would have never left you of my own volition.”

  “Isn’t that exactly what you did?”

  She rises and collects our bowls. “Let’s have some coffee for this talk. I’m going to need it.”

  I head to the bathroom while she prepares the coffeemaker. I won’t burn myself, not here. “Can I smoke in the house?” I call.

  “You’re a grown man.”

  “It’s your house.”

  “All right.”

  I have a feeling I’m going to need this smoke more than any other. But for the first time in years, a sense of gratitude overwhelms me as I light up the cigarette. Monica’s alive, she’s fine, she’s fixing coffee in the kitchen. And I never have to see my father again.

  If this had happened five years ago, I would have been all right, my life would have turned out so differently. Daisy would probably be fine. But in the span of life, what’s five years? I mean, we now live in a world where the second chance is really the beginning of it all, because we believe we’ve a right to as many chances as we need with little consequence to pay.

  After smoking half of the thing, I throw it in the toilet, flush, and head back out. Monica’s arranging store-bought cookies on a plate. Oreos. We always did love those.

  “When did you start smoking, Drew?”

  “Dabbled in it since college. Started full swing a couple of years ago.” Yeah, the viewing audience would have loved that. Right now I smoke more than a ham house.

  “What does your father say? Does he feel bad about that, being a former lobbyist for the tobacco industry?”

  “I don’t answer to him anymore, Mom. And my smoking has nothing to do with his old job.”

  “Well, at least there’s that.” She smiles at me. It’s still there, her and me against the world. “You have to tell me how you found me.”

  “First tell me why you started calling me.”

  She taps her nails on the counter and I notice a tattooed circle around the ring finger of her left hand. “What’s that?” I ask.

  “I’m married to the Lord now.”

  “You’re a nun?!”

  “No! Well, not really. You know, your father and I are technically still married. We never divorced. I’m sure you can imagine why.”

  “I always wondered why he never dated after you died.”

  She looks down. “He wasn’t much for sex anyway, Drew. Now, I probably shouldn’t say that to my son. But the fact that you’re here is God’s graciousness to me. We lived in an almost sexless state. Just a few times in all those years, and you resulted from one of them.” She looks up at the heavens through the ceiling. “You were the exhibition of God’s faithfulness, and when I had to give you up—” She gulps down a sob, swallows the years back down to a calmer place inside. “Anyway, you’ve never married. Are you like he was in that way?”

  “No. I almost wish I was.”

  “Oh, Drew.”

  “It’s not easy being single.”

  “But the Apostle Paul gave us the perfect out! Now, I’ve been basically single for twenty years and I’m fine. I go to work, read my books, and I have a cat—you haven’t seen her yet—who sits on my lap at night. I still go to church. It’s a good life. I don’t feel like I’ve settled in that way.”

  “I thought I’d be settling if I opted for marriage for marriage’s sake. But I made a huge mistake, Mom. I can’t talk about it. But there was a time when I used to believe God had something for me.”

  “Drew, the Lord does have something for you.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know if I want any of it anymore. I can’t bear the weight of it all anymore. Me and
Hermy, we live a simple life at the Dunesgrass. I will have to get a job soon, though.”

  Okay, it’s a lie. With frugality, I could live for another three or four years, maybe more. But that seems like an awfully long time.

  “No. You don’t have to get a job soon, Son.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I always know a lie. Especially from you, Drew. You saved up a lot of money when you pastored that church, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Drew, do you really know the Lord? You did as a little boy. Sometimes it frightened me, the things you’d say. I wondered if angels visited you.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I left. I thought God would take you through life by another route. Your father …”

  “Yeah.” I run a hand over the stubble on my head. “So why did you leave?”

  She lifts up the coffeepot and pours two mugs of black coffee, not bothering to ask me how I take it, which is still with milk. She hands me the drink. “Let’s sit on the sofa.”

  I grab the plate and she smiles. “You were always helpful, Drew. Are you still helpful to the people around you?”

  “No. I’m a taker. I take from Hermy and Father Brian these days. I give them almost nothing in return.”

  “Almost?”

  “I suppose the satisfaction of knowing they’re helping a messed-up man is something.”

  “God’s giving that to them, not you, Drew.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you?” She sits down.

  I place the cookies onto the coffee table. “I don’t see much really.”

  “We have so much to talk about. How long can you stay?”

  “As long as you’ll have me. What about Hermy?”

  “He’s welcome to stay. God probably brought him here for reasons only He and Hermy know.” She leans forward. “Does he eat much?”

  I shake my head. “Nah.”

  She laughs. And heaven knows, I need the levity.

  “Look, Drew!” She points outside the sliders to the back deck.

  A light shines onto the planking, a golden beam against the darkness of the gorge. Snow falls into the light. “The temperature must have dropped.”

  “We didn’t get much of that down in North Carolina, did we?”

  “No, sadly enough.” She sips her coffee. “Okay, the whole story. Do you remember the huge debacle when I called that candidate out for his adultering ways?”

  Spoken like a true prophet.

  “Yes. I heard the conversation you and Dad had. I was listening at the top of the steps.”

  “I thought as much. Afterwards Charles stewed for days, leaving town to do so. He came back with a verdict. Either I divorced him and he took custody of you, or he’d commit me to a mental institution.

  “That wasn’t the first time I’d done something like that, Drew. But it was, well, I guess you could say, far larger in its implications. I’d humiliated him for the last time. His career was on the line with this one.” She lifts her mug. “I subtracted exceedingly from the equation.”

  “You were so beautiful on his arm, Mom.”

  Her face softens. “God blessed me that way. It was my cross to bear. Your father would have never set his sights on me had I been plain. And Daddy … my daddy, well … he was bowled over by Charles.” She shrugs, still lithe and willowy. “Charles was so charming when he sought me. But it wasn’t worth it.” She lays a sudden hand on my leg. “Except for you, Drew! You made everything worth it.” She hands me a blanket. “It’s getting chilly.”

  “I’ll start a fire.” I set the blanket aside, walk across the room, and begin arranging the wood onto the grate.

  “When I refused to divorce him because there were no biblical grounds, he started visiting nearby institutions to cement his threat. But something happened, perhaps his natural wiliness took hold. He thought of another option. Disappearance.”

  “Ah.”

  “I balked at that. How could I just leave you? What would that do to you to think your own mother walked out on you, just walked out, never returning? It was my idea to fake my death. I thought it would close doors in your mind, free you from thinking you were the reason.”

  I close my eyes, remembering the countless moments I’d allowed myself to succumb to my grief in my room, weeping for an hour or more. All those visits to her grave. But she was right, thinking she didn’t care would have been worse. My pain was sharp but clean.

  I lay on the final log. “Why didn’t you just go for the divorce, Mom? We would have seen each other.”

  “He threatened sole custody based on mental incapacity on my part. And believe me, Drew, he certainly had enough to prove just what he wanted.”

  “Could you have at least tried?”

  She looks down at her hands. “I thought God would reward my faithfulness to His Word.”

  “And has He?”

  She places her palms on her thighs. “We all have things about God we don’t understand, don’t we, Drew?”

  I stuff newspaper in between the logs I’ve stacked.

  When she disappeared, I was too young to even think to investigate. Dad told everyone else it was a drug overdose, a suicide, but that he was keeping the truth from me. There were no articles in the newspapers, nothing. He’d spent a fortune on it all, but there was so much more to be gained.

  You’ve got to spend money to make money, right?

  “So where did you go?”

  “Even with your grandparents dead, I couldn’t go back to Louisiana. I’d have been spotted right away by someone. So I dyed my hair black and traveled the world for the first five years.” She laughs. “I spent as much of your father’s money as I could.”

  “Good for you.”

  “I settled in Maine for a couple of years but couldn’t take the winters, so I found this cabin and have been here ever since. It’s a good place, seasonal, cold in winter, but not too cold. Hot in the summer, yes, but well, you know I love the heat.”

  “I remember.”

  “Do you, Drew?”

  “I remember it all, Mom.”

  “Do you understand I did what I had to do? I had no choice. No matter what I chose, we’d be apart. I tried to do what was best for you.”

  I shake my head slowly, reaching for the box of matches. “What a monster.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You did what you had to do. You were going to be gone either way.”

  “And I watched from afar. He was decent enough to send pictures and updates.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Surprising, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t think he had it in him.”

  “Drew, your father is the most mysterious person I’ve ever met.”

  “Is he really a Christian? I mean, he talks the game to the right people.”

  “That’s not my call to make.”

  “I guess not. I mean I know about talking the game. I was the chief of sinners, leading people astray with my messages of selfish, spiritual acquisitiveness, as if we can gorge on God and never give anything away.”

  “I heard the messages. They broke my heart. You were doing what your father did, lobbying for ‘blessing upon blessing,’ whatever that meant to you, Drew, instead of introducing people to a far greater thing—the Lord Himself.”

  I strike a long match and hold it to the newspaper. “How could I do that? I don’t even know who He is.”

  “What made you leave Mount Oak?”

  I inhale as deeply as I can. “Daisy disappeared and I knew the show was doomed, but I had raised a lot of money. I knew the show wouldn’t have been enough eventually, because that’s the way it is with power, Mom. You get what you thought you wanted and it isn’t enough. So you go to the next thing and that’s not enough. It would never be enough.”

  “God opened your eyes.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “He’s calling you, though. Do you feel that?”

  The
flame catches, spreading. “It’s what you said over the phone.”

  “The Lord told me to give you that message.”

  “How did you track me down?”

  “I called your church and they said you’d taken a sabbatical and left without a forwarding address. I came to Mount Oak and couldn’t find you anywhere. So I took a chance and called our old hotel in Ocean City. And there you were.”

  The flame continues to eat the newspaper, licking at the dry, peeling bark of the logs.

  “Why didn’t you just come down?”

  “I was planning on it next week.”

  I stand up. “I needed you sooner than this. Didn’t you realize it? Why did you continue to stay away once I was older?”

  “You thought I was dead. I was trying to trust God to take care of you.”

  I blow on the flame then turn to her. “Sometimes, Mom, God wants us to move forward when we see somebody drowning instead of waiting for a sign. Don’t you think?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You know it’s possible to overspiritualize things.” I sit back down on the couch.

  “Maybe you’re right. You have every right to be mad at me. What can I do now, Drew? We’re together. What can I do?”

  “I need you to help me. Dear Lord, Mom, I need you to save my soul. I’ve always needed you to do that.”

  She folds her arms around me, lays my head against her breast, and hums as the coffee cools and the cookies remain uneaten. After a while she leans back and clicks off the lamp, and we watch the snowfall outside, covering the railing, the deck, the picnic table. Falling headlong into the gorge.

  I awaken to gleaming sunshine, my head on a pillow, a quilt covering my body. Monica lies curled up on the love seat, still beautiful these twenty years later, her face sweet, serene, and nestled against the cat, a skinny gray tabby, who finally showed herself.

  Movement outside catches my gaze. A red cardinal hops about in the snow, the wind ruffling its feathers. It flutters to the bird feeder, pecks at the seeds, and flies away.

  I reach over to the coffee table and pick up my notebook.

  After a month of taping, Faith Street had five shows in the can and the Hopewells began teasing their viewers with clips on their own show.