Of Stillness and Storm

by Michele Phoenix

  Sam had been halfway through a degree in finance when we’d met in Austria, and though his driving goal even then had been to be a force for change in a broader scope, he’d gone back to a college he couldn’t really afford to finish the degree he needed in order to move forward. After a couple years working in accounting for a nonprofit organization on the outskirts of Indianapolis, he’d come to the reluctant conclusion that our college debt wasn’t going to pay itself off and that any save-the-world endeavors were contingent on that.

  So Sam had gone over to what he called the dark side. He applied for several “real” accounting jobs and finally landed one in Muncie. The thankless work was made bearable only by the clients whose impact extended beyond North America to Africa, Asia, and South America. He drew a degree of comfort from knowing that his number crunching was contributing in some way to cultures outside his reach. Still, the zeal of his calling to needy parts of the globe seemed only deferred, not quenched, by those small connections with a vaster world.

  And now it felt like we were sacrificing our family to Sam’s “call,” as hazy as it was.

  “Where exactly do you think we’re going, Sam?” I asked again, my dreams of motherhood groaning under the weight of his conviction.

  “I don’t know,” he said, weariness in his voice. “Wherever God calls me.”

  “Us.”

  “Us.” He leaned across the table and took my hands in both of his. “Of course, us …”

  I squeezed the hands that held mine with what felt like contrition. “I want a baby. I want ‘us’ to be you, me, and at least one baby.”

  “I want that too …” His grip tightened on mine.

  “But not enough to invest in it? It’s just money, Sam.”

  “It’s money we don’t have.”

  We locked eyes, silent. There was certainty in his gaze. And determination. I pulled my hands free and moved to the living room’s picture window, crossing my arms over the empty womb that had sucked the joy out of our lovemaking and the brightness out of a future I could no longer envision. We lived frugally in a modest house, our thermostat set low. We walked rather than drove as often as we could and used coupons like currency. We shopped at Goodwill and spent vacations at home. We had an ironclad ten-year plan for financial independence that was strangling my greatest desire. My acutest need.

  “I guess we could take out a loan,” Sam said from the table, his voice barely loud enough to reach me. Just loud enough for me to hear the reluctance that invalidated the promise.

  I couldn’t say anything, just then. Not yet.

  Sam watched as I returned to the table and cleared the dinner dishes that were stacked to the side of his neat and sterile spreadsheets. I loaded the dishwasher, left the slow-cooker to soak, and wiped down the counters.

  Sam was still at the table when I headed toward the stairs. He was staring off, his hands flat against the folded spreadsheets in front of him. I paused at the foot of the staircase and turned, forcing my eyes toward him, trying to inject serenity into the burning void I felt. “It’s okay, Sam,” I said, willing the sarcasm out of my voice. I wanted my statement to be sincere. “If it’s supposed to happen, God will make sure it does.” Something in my spirit flinched at my own words.

  Sam straightened a little where he sat at the table. He nodded. I went upstairs.

  Years four and five were marked not by change so much as by crescendos. Sam increased our revenue by working up the ladder in the firm. I volunteered as an English substitute for the Christian school associated with our church and eventually began teaching three high school classes in journalism, poetry, and short story writing. And as our careers expanded more by chance than by intent, our conversations drifted from pregnancy to projects and from procreating to projecting five, ten, fifteen years forward. We were ahead of the game in paying off our debts. We tried to laugh more. We purposed to breathe more. Our social circle settled and stabilized. Though none of the friendships were as galvanizing as I might have wanted them to be, they dragged us out of the predictability of our well-crafted life, and I was grateful for that.

  I got up early on a Saturday in May for a run to the drugstore. When Sam woke up and turned over, he found me sitting on the bed next to him, trembling with excitement. He checked the alarm clock, as if it would hold an explanation for my cheerful, silent, and upright presence on a weekend morning.

  He frowned. “Am I supposed to … get up? … or … be somewhere?” He ran a hand over his face and looked around the room. Then he squinted at me again. “Are you okay?”

  I leaned over and whispered, “We’re pregnant” against his lips.

  “We’re what?!” He shot out of bed and stared, slack-jawed and arms akimbo. Then he covered his head with both hands and said again, aghast and elated, “We’re what?”

  When I giggled, he threw himself at me, pinned me down and secured my face between his hands, our noses almost touching. “Say it again,” he said, and tears flooded his eyes when I repeated the words. “Honey …”

  “I know.”

  He wiped a tear from my cheek with a shaking thumb and smiled with the kind of abandon I hadn’t seen in him since … since I could remember. He kissed me. Passionately and exuberantly. Then he slid down the bed, pulled up my T-shirt, and stared at my belly, a goofy grin aimed straight at my navel. He kissed my stomach and laid a warm hand over the spot, looking up at me with tears still brimming in his eyes. “Honey …” he said again.

  Then the calm, rational, wise, and unflappable man I’d married nearly seven years before leapt off the bed and let loose with a demented sort of happy dance—a howling, arms flapping and legs pumping symphony to answered prayers.

  I’d never loved him more ferociously.

  five

  PRESENT DAY

  I HEARD RYAN BANGING AROUND IN THE KITCHEN. THE slam of a cupboard—he’d gotten his bowl. The swish of the pantry curtain being pulled back—he had the cereal. The rattle of the fridge door opening and closing—he’d taken out the milk. The scrape of a wooden chair against the dining room’s tile floor—he’d seated himself at the table. The silence—he’d turned on his iPod and was staring out the window at the chickens as he ate.

  I slipped into my house shoes and pulled on a robe. Ryan didn’t look away from the window when I padded into the dining room with my cup of coffee and sank into the armchair in the corner. It was an unusual place for the chair, but we’d discovered that it was the spot in the house where the neighbor’s Wi-Fi signal came in strongest.

  Ryan stared out the window and I stared at him. His iPod was turned up loud enough that I could hear the hisses of sibilants and the steady boom of the bass. He looked down long enough to shovel a spoonful of granola into his mouth, then went back to watching the chickens—Hannah-Grace and Geraldine—pecking at the corn in the bottom of their pen.

  He had his father’s features. Sharp and classical. He’d inherited my brown eyes and fine dark hair. He wore it longer, like the shag skateboarders had sported in my youth. He had his soccer uniform on this morning: black shorts and a black-and-white jersey, his prized Manchester United jersey pulled on over it. It was red and threadbare, a memento of our stopover at Heathrow on our long flight to Nepal.

  It had taken all my powers of persuasion, after we arrived, to convince him that the shirt would last longer if he didn’t wear it at night too. I’d darned the holes in his armpits and around the frayed hemline several times. My ministrations had left the sweatshirt looking lumpy in spots—besides being faded, stained, and stretched out of shape. But Ryan loved it. And there were so many things in his new life that he despised that I was committed to salvaging that shirt for as long as I could.

  Soccer had been the catalyst that had eventually allowed Ryan to engage with others. It had taken a few months, a time span extended by the sullen reticence he brought to social contact. A long period of adaptation that seemed to chip away at his boyness. The culture, the food, the lifestyle, the uns
afe water, the foreignness … Although many of his peers lived in a tidy Western bubble nestled in Kathmandu’s chaos, we lived in an uncomfortable no-man’s-land—foreigners faking assimilation. Dual alienation.

  What this culture, his parents, and his home had failed to give to Ryan, sports had. Predictability, safety, purpose, and a semblance of belonging. He would probably have denied that his team afforded him those comforts. He was still guarded in his interactions with his peers. Yet there was a sureness in his step when he left for practice that spoke more of soccer’s significance than any admission could have. I wanted to celebrate it, but as his life became increasingly wrapped up in the sport, I wasn’t sure whether soccer was saving my son or stealing him from me.

  I love you, Ryan. I’m so sorry you’re hurting. I know I should have fought for you. Forgive me. Please, forgive me. I wanted to say the words. I wanted him to know how deeply his pain grieved me. But words felt disloyal.

  I leaned forward in my chair and knocked on the table to get Ryan’s attention, signaling for him to pull an earphone out.

  “What?”

  “Good morning.”

  An eyebrow went up. I knew he was tapping a foot under the table. I smiled. “Good morning,” he said back. His greeting lacked a little—a lot—in warmth and sincerity. I’d long decided not to judge him on form.

  “Tell me about the game.”

  He shoveled a spoonful of granola into his mouth and chewed slowly. “It’s this thing where we kick a ball into a big white square.”

  “Ryan.” He kept chewing. “Who are you playing?”

  I already knew the answer. The distance of the game was the sole reason I wasn’t going.

  “Panauti,” he said.

  “Do you think you’ll win?” I hated—hated—the stilted tone of our conversations. I could interact with strangers more casually than I did with my own son. I missed the days when … No. Missing and wishing were an exercise in futility. Still. These conversations wounded me.

  “Yup.”

  “I wish I could come cheer for you,” I said, certain my presence at his games meant nothing to him, but determined to keep up this part of the mom bargain. “You going to Steven’s afterward?”

  “Yup.” He shoveled the last spoonful of granola into his mouth and pushed away from the table. “Nice talk.”

  “You need a ride to practice?” I called as he sauntered into the entryway to retrieve his sports bag and a jacket.

  “On what—your bicycle?”

  Sometimes I forgot, just briefly, that I wasn’t a suburban mom anymore.

  “I’ll be back tonight.” He threw his bag over his shoulder as he headed out the front door and slammed it shut behind him. The lock hadn’t worked right since we’d moved in, and a hefty pull seemed to latch it better than a softer approach. Still, Ryan’s exit felt more like a slap than a slam.

  I was getting used to the feeling.

  As Suman didn’t come on weekends, I had the house to myself. I let Muffin in and he cocked his head when I said, “Don’t tell Sam.” I figured it didn’t hurt to pretend to be an inside dog every once in a while. I lay on the couch and graded twenty-five papers on ethics in journalism written by my advanced English students. It wasn’t light reading. Some of it was downright difficult, given the writers’ often deficient grasp of the English language. But it was a distraction from the Facebook icon flashing on the back wall of my mind.

  I turned a few lights on when darkness fell and lit a couple of candles when the lights went out. I read a chapter from a book on Christ-centered living, then, with “ethics” and “godliness” rattling around in my brain, grabbed the laptop, picked up a candle, and made my way to the bedroom upstairs.

  I lay in bed and scrolled down Aidan’s Facebook wall, past memes and get-well wishes and news headlines, clicking on every picture of his art that I could find. Stopping to take it in. Wondering how much more powerful his creations would be in person.

  We were in grade school when he started showing me his drawings. I knew little about art, except that I liked what he drew. In middle school, his art teacher asked his parents to let him stay after class for private lessons. But Aidan wasn’t interested. He had better things to do than hang out with an adult trying to teach him something he already knew. Aidan was a lot of things growing up—many of them extraordinary. But “humble” and “compliant” didn’t make the list.

  By high school, he had divided his life into three specific categories: art, girls, and nothing good. He painted in the garden shed behind his mom and dad’s house. In part because of the convenience of the location and in part because it got him away from cloying parents who suffocated him with kindness. Aside from an unfortunate incident when Aidan, in a mildly inebriated state, had knocked the paint thinner he was using into the candle he’d lit for “mood lighting,” the arrangement had worked out well. They’d rebuilt the shed for their Child Wonder, and Aidan had installed a dead bolt on the inside of the door.

  Depending on the part of West Lorne one came from—and depending on the relationship one’s daughter had with “that Dennison boy”—Aidan was either considered an unsung prodigy or an unrepentant heartbreaker. Few knew, as I did, how interdependent those two facets were.

  And in the midst of all the drama—in the center of the insanity that was Aidan’s life—stood I. We’d been friends since grade school, an unlikely pair joined by the sensibilities that moved us. The writer and the artist. The introvert and the show-off. The good little girl and the bad-news boy. Calm waters and stormy surf. He showed me every piece he ever created long before he unveiled it to others. He watched my face and gauged the quality of his work by the way I responded. Those were the most intimate moments of my youth.

  Aidan came to me with his girl problems and I went to him with my insecurities and confusions. While I common-sensed him, he live-a-littled me. The leather-jacketed guy with the awful reputation and dangerous vibes was the safest place on earth for me. Right up until he wasn’t anymore.

  ah, ren. there’s something mystical about receiving your messages. thank you for clicking send without editing or whitewashing. we’re both artists enough to recognize the value of rawness—quirks, warts, bad metaphors and all. maybe not the warts. there are products for those. (joking) please … i have no room in my life for sterile communication, so don’t start now.

  husband’s name: check. kid’s story: sorta started. ren at age … 40? not nearly enough info on that. but the picture is getting clearer. it’s like the framed prints i hung on the walls of the shed for inspiration. remember those? when it got really cold and i turned on the space heater, condensation would cloud the glass. but if i stood there long enough for the space heater to do its thing, i could watch the colors and lines and textures taking shape again. that’s what’s happening with you, i think. i’m watching the condensation clear. another tortured metaphor. tell me when to stop.

  tell me about your students too. i’m sure you’re a fantastic teacher. and more about ryan. and about life there. seriously. leave out no detail …

  you asked about work. i’ve made the rounds since you last knew me. did construction during and after college. got a degree in graphic arts … did you know that? just barely, mind you. i might have—maybe just a little bit perhaps, in some innocuous way—used my powers of persuasion on the professor whose design class i was failing my last semester at iu. ‘powers of persuasion’ … euphemisms abound. she was a ‘she,’ by the way. just to keep things clear.

  after construction, i put in some time as a landscaper. when i was (gasp) married, i became an utterly respectable art editor for a magazine known only to graphic artists. seemed like a great idea at the time. got me nowhere. and then i made the mistake of prostituting my first love (art) for the sake of my second love (money). got into painting, but not flowers and trees and unicorns and stuff. blank walls. in houses and offices. and siding too. the occasional faux-finish gig just barely kept me from shooting myself,
but i liked being my own boss so i kept at it and made decent money in the process. pretty much stopped Painting (note the cap) for the sake of painting.

  and then … i quit. four months and two weeks ago. went back to that first love and moved to pennsylvania. just over an hour from downtown new york. sold my car. burned my overalls. got myself an agent who’s been shopping my stuff around. my website is almost ready to unveil. we’re trying to plan a ‘real’ exhibit for this summer and maybe find some other ways to get my stuff out there.

  just had this moment. one of those ‘ah’ things that stopped my thinking in its tracks. didn’t realize how incredibly much i’d missed you until just now. i know there’s tons of catching up to do, but … you already know me better than anyone. so all we’re doing, really, is adding shadows to the painting. the rest is already there.

  you said you’re new to facebook. so you might not know about this little thing called instant messaging. if we’re ever on at the same time, we should try it. what’s the time difference anyway? it would allow us to actually converse. what a concept. or would that be too weird?

  I closed the lid of the laptop with a little more force than I intended. Converse. My heart lurched. I wasn’t sure why. Writing messages to Aidan felt safe. The cloak of time and distance made the exchanges feel more mysterious than real. The thought of instant messaging felt frightening, somehow. Too immediate. Too translucent.

  Though I’d decided, before reading Aidan’s message, that I’d wait until morning to answer, my fingers itched to start writing a response. Still, I hesitated. Would he be able to tell when I was on? Could he initiate instant messaging and know if I ignored it?