Of Stillness and Storm

by Michele Phoenix

  “Does it still?” I asked, standing there like an intruder hoping not to be kicked out.

  He looked annoyed when he turned. “Does what still what?”

  I took a tentative step into his room. “Does it still suck as much? Living here.”

  I wasn’t sure if what I saw was a smile or a sneer. Whatever it was, it wasn’t pleasant. There was a painful clarity to that moment. Me standing by the door, groveling for connection while he leaned back on his desk, arms crossed, offering only silent spite.

  “I just wondered if after two years …”

  “I’m happy?”

  “Happier.” It seemed the best I could hope for, but the look on his face dispelled my cautious optimism.

  He bent over to retrieve his book bag and heaved it onto the desk. “I’m so happy,” he said in a high-pitched, artificial voice.

  “Ryan.”

  “Isn’t that what you want to hear?” He sat at his desk and swiveled away from me, pulling a notebook from his bag and opening it in front of him.

  “No,” I said. “What I want is to hear you. We haven’t talked—really talked—in so long, and … I don’t want to hear pat answers, I want to hear you.”

  He picked up a pencil and tapped it on the desk. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. Hearing my son would require words, and it seemed we’d run out of those. There was a pain in my chest. Intensity and futility.

  “Does it still suck as bad?” I tried again, hoping irrationally for a glimmer of “better” in the debris of “worst.”

  Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. He breathed slowly. Deeply.

  “I hope it’s getting better. Really, Ryan. I hope it is.” There was a desperation in my voice that I couldn’t quite mask. I stopped myself from wringing my hands. Just barely. “With your soccer friends and your grades coming up and just … getting used to everything here. And with your dad coming home soon. That’s a good thing—right?”

  He stopped the tapping and turned on me, incredulity on his face. “I’m supposed to be happy that Dad’s coming home?”

  “I … yes. I want you to be glad when Dad comes back.”

  “Why?” The question was unflinching. So was the stare he leveled at me.

  “Because …” But there was no reason worth expressing. As much as I longed to see contentment in my son, as much as I dreamed of hearing him laugh out loud again—because it would signal growth and healing—I knew the yearning was just as much about myself. My conscience. The permeating guilt that I had stolen Ryan’s life.

  “Because it’s what a mother wants for her son,” I said into the brittle silence between us. It didn’t soften.

  “Maybe you should have thought of that when—” He stopped himself midsentence.

  Our eyes met and held. His combative and mine pleading. The stare-off shamed and wounded me.

  “I’m glad he’s coming home,” Ryan said in the same contrived tone he’d used before. He dropped the pretense. “Now can I start my homework?”

  “I love you,” I said, emotions rendering my voice inaudible. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I love you.”

  Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.

  I left his room.

  six

  Sam came through the front door covered in snow.

  “Daddy!” Ryan shrieked, nearly knocking a plate of mac-and-cheese onto the floor in his hurry to get down from the table. He raced to the entryway and hurled himself at his dad.

  “How are you doing, kiddo?” Sam asked, crouching down to give his son a hug. Ryan was already recounting the day’s events, eyes wide and animated as he talked mere inches from his father’s face.

  “There’s a new kid in my class and he brought a gerbil to school because we were studying dodents—”

  “Rodents,” I interjected, mopping up some spilled milk.

  “—and he bit the teacher on her pinky.”

  “The new kid did?” Sam asked.

  “No,” Ryan said so dramatically that I again considered trotting him out to talent agencies. “The dodent did!”

  “I think you mean rodent, kiddo.”

  “And then we weren’t allowed to touch him anymore.”

  I went to the door and gave my husband a kiss. “Thus ends the story of the first grade dodent,” I said, pulling Ryan back a step or two so Sam could shrug out of his snow-dusted jacket. I instructed Ryan to head back to the table.

  “But—”

  “Now.”

  “But I’m telling Dad about—”

  “Ryan.”

  He ducked his head and skulked back to his seat.

  “Tough day?” I asked Sam, brushing a few flakes from his hair.

  “Just long.” He took a sheaf of colored pamphlets from the messenger bag he kept his papers in and dropped them on the dining room table. “You should take a look at these,” he said as he lowered himself into a chair.

  “Sure,” I said, serving him a large portion of dinner.

  Sam’s hours at Brinkman, Crooks & Krause, a small investment firm near Muncie, had grown longer with the beginning of the year. He never complained, though I knew he got no real pleasure from the job. Sam was a hands-on man who preferred human interaction to theory, and concrete results to protracted processes. Still, he gave to the job all the focus it required, displaying the commitment that had drawn me to him during our months at Christschule.

  Sam listened as Ryan prattled on about the new boy in his class and the rodent that bit the teacher. His eyes were focused on his son, but the light dancing in them seemed a little too bright even in response to Ryan’s animated expansion on the classroom incident.

  I glanced at the brochures Sam had dropped on the table. Then I took a step closer and splayed them out, leaning in for a better look. Suspicion stirred in me. Sam broke eye contact with Ryan just long enough to flash me a smile loaded with excitement and adventure.

  As something vaguely reluctant settled into my stomach, I lowered myself into the chair at the end of the table. The brochures were four-color odes to Nepal—majestic mountains set against stunning blue skies, the deep-rutted faces of elderly people, and the gap-toothed smiles of beautiful children. There were facts about cultural events and weather and local industry and Everest treks. The pamphlets were intended for tourists, and part of me was relieved at that. Still, as I read through the information and contemplated the beauty of the places and people, I wondered how they related to the light in Sam’s eyes.

  We didn’t talk about the brochures until Ryan was tucked into bed. I got a cup of tea and Sam poured himself some coffee, then we stood a little awkwardly by the dining room table while the silence stretched into tension. I had no idea what Sam was thinking, but I knew the brochures still lying where he’d dropped them were part of the answer.

  “I met a guy called Prakash today,” Sam finally said. “He came in with the pastor from the United Church. Wanted some advice on starting a 501(c)(3).”

  “Okay.”

  “He’s an amazing guy. Not even thirty. Comes from this remote Himalayan village in Nepal.” He pulled a pamphlet from the bottom of the stack and dropped it on top. I glanced down at the picture of exotic children posing in front of a brick building. Mountains soared in the background. “He started a school for kids like these,” Sam said. The excitement in his voice and the animation on his face were startling. “Come here.” He took my free hand and pulled me toward the living room, installing me in one of our wingback chairs and pulling the other one up so he could sit across from me.

  “He went to the capital—Kathmandu—to get an education,” Sam continued, “but every time he went home, he felt this … this anger that the kids in the villages around where he grew up would probably never even learn the basics of reading and writing. And he got frustrated enough to do something about it.”

  The story was too compelling to be told sitting down. Sam pushed his chair back and began to pace in front of the fireplace, gesticulating joyously as he continued Prakash’s
story. “So this guy who’s maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven decides to fix the problem. Now bear in mind, getting back to his village from the capital every time—every time—would take two full days on a bus, then four or five days walking over rough terrain and mountain passes.” Sam shook his head, amazement in his expression. “If he wanted to start a school, he’d either have to carve out new roads in places where they’ve never existed before—and for good reason—or find some other way of bringing in building equipment and school supplies.”

  “Let me guess—he found a way to do it?”

  He threw up his hands, laughing in disbelief. “This kid from Podunk, Nepal, wheeled and dealed until he’d raised the funds and worked out the logistics to get eight crates of building and school materials delivered by helicopter to the village.” He laughed again. “Who does that?”

  “A boy after your own heart.”

  He smiled and sat in the chair opposite mine. “A boy after my own heart.”

  I laughed. Then I sobered up. “So … what are you peddling here?”

  The expression on his face scared me a little. I could tell he knew that whatever it was would be a tough sell—and I had a feeling Sam’s “path less traveled” was about to intersect with my “path of least resistance.”

  “Here’s my thinking,” he said. If the living room had been equipped with a blackboard, he’d have pulled out a piece of chalk and started drawing charts and sketches of the future he was envisioning. “He’s just this … this regular Third World kid, and there’s a school in Kalikot District now because he was dogged enough to make it happen. That gives me hope, Lauren.”

  “Hope?”

  “Hope. The kind that says, ‘Don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t possible.’ The kind that says, ‘You commit to the task and I’ll have your back.’”

  I felt myself frown and tried to undo it. I wanted to honor Sam’s enthusiasm with an open-minded response, but something that felt like fear was building in my mind. “What task are you talking about, Sam?”

  “Nepal,” he said, somehow assuming the single word would clarify his thoughts.

  “What about it?”

  “I think …” He paused long enough to hurry to the dining room to retrieve the brochures. “I think this is it. I think this is where God wants us to go.”

  “To do what? Start another school?”

  He shook his head. “I thought so. When Prakash started telling me about his school, I thought that’s what I was sensing. But then …” He looked down at the brochures again, and I watched a smile that looked like passion blended with purpose spread across his face. “Look at these people,” he said, holding up their pictures. “Prakash told me there are hundreds of villages in remote parts of the country that have never heard the gospel.” He pointed at the faces staring out from the glossy pamphlets. “That’s thousands of people just like these who have never been reached. They have huge needs—medical, educational, practical. Lauren”—he dropped the brochures, sat down again, and reached for my hands—“we could do that. We could be the people who reach them!”

  “Sam …” I wanted to share his enthusiasm. I really did.

  “It’s Prakash’s dream too. His next big project. He was in the office today trying to set up a fund with the United Church to keep his school running so he can devote himself to getting to the people in these other places.”

  “And our role would be … ?”

  “I’m not sure yet. It was just one conversation, but as he told me about his project, I … Lauren, think about it. If he and I could do this together. Locate the villages and build relationships …”

  There were so many questions and doubts swirling in my mind that all I could do was stare. Sam took it as an invitation to go on.

  “I don’t speak the language, but Prakash does. He doesn’t have the fund-raising networks and practical resources, but I could find sponsors and aid. He said he wants to weave his way into these villages by living alongside the people and offering help—whatever they need. Extra hands tending to their animals? We can do that. New techniques for increasing their crops? We can do that too. Medical supplies? We can bring those in ourselves. And we can do all that while demonstrating God and faith to them.”

  “It’s just …” I hesitated. “Sam, you’ve got to admit that this is all very sudden.”

  He nearly whooped. The man whose most defining trait was emotional stability nearly whooped with excitement. “But it’s perfect!” he exclaimed. “It’s the path less traveled, and relationships and humanitarian aid. It’s …” He smiled. “Lauren—it’s everything.”

  I let the silence settle for a moment, my eyes on his face, his on mine. After a few seconds, his shoulders sagged a little as the adrenaline rush of laying out his vision filtered out of his system. He stared at my face, expectation in his gaze.

  “So …” I began. Then I stopped. I wasn’t sure where to go with this. If someone had told me earlier that day that Sam would be coming home with a harebrained idea about working with villagers in Nepal, I might have been prepared for the scenario playing out in front of me. I might have had the time to plan a thoughtful response. Some follow-up questions. Different perspectives to consider. But they had caught me completely off guard—Sam and Nepal and this man called Prakash.

  I looked into his face. It seemed lit from the inside with the energy of potential. In Sam’s eyes was an invitation to an extraordinary adventure, a divine appointment he could practically taste. I reached forward and gripped his knees with steady hands.

  “Honey,” I said, “we’re not moving to Nepal.”

  Five weeks had passed since Sam had come home from the office with brochures in his hand, and still we’d reached no conclusion.

  Far from being discouraged, he’d taken my initial dismissal as an invitation to persuasion. Under other circumstances, he would have carefully crafted his approach, like the logical thinker he was. But there was something less measured about his attempts at convincing me this time—a messy fervency perhaps fueled by the certainty that had struck him so immediately, but still eluded me.

  I struggled to give him the space and spontaneity his arguments required, wondering when our roles had been reversed. The idealism of my youth was mired in the dailiness of marriage and motherhood, while Sam’s sober rationality seemed to have been unshackled by this dream.

  Our conversation had gone on, in fits and starts, for over a month. We lived like fighters circling the ring—Sam waiting for the strategic moment to launch a cogent thrust, and me in my protective stance, trying to imbue my deflections with support and reason.

  Though we’d always started our days with prayer, it felt now like Sam was using those times to further press his agenda. It wasn’t an overt thing—just pleas infused with a certainty that I’d come around once I realized this was God’s will for me. And I felt guilty articulating trivial concerns about here-and-now matters when the direction of our lives seemed to hang in suspension. I frequently walked away from our morning intercession feeling more frustration and confusion than I had before we prayed. It saddened me.

  On one Wednesday evening in February, we started the usual conversation in the kitchen while I cleaned up from dinner. We continued the disagreement in the living room, then moved the argument upstairs when it became clear that our hushed exchanges weren’t helping Ryan with his spelling homework.

  That’s where things escalated, as they too often did. “We’ve been talking about this since we were in Austria!” Sam tried to keep his tone measured, but the edge of his voice had a telltale jaggedness.

  “I know.”

  “Am I remembering wrong? Didn’t you want to get involved in ministry too?”

  “I did—I do!”

  “Then—” He held out his arms in incomprehension. “Then why are we still arguing about this?”

  “Because this thing you presented to me like it was a done deal is huge! A huge decision. A huge upheaval. This is more than a coup
le idealistic kids plotting their future on a mountaintop in Sternensee. I don’t know how to say this to make it any clearer than the last ten times I tried, but it’s more than just you and me now. I am not going to leap into something this … this life-altering without being as sure of it as you are.”

  “Lauren …”

  “We have a son.”

  “And this could be the best thing for him. Think of all the experiences he’ll have!”

  I’d done enough online research to be fairly sure the “experiences” wouldn’t all be pleasant. “I need to see a plan, Sam. A concrete, rational plan.” I knew as I said the words that I needed far more than that.

  “I’m working on it.”

  He’d been in regular contact with his new friend from Nepal since their first encounter in his office, trying to hammer out the details of the precise role Sam could play in the work he was doing there. I could tell when he’d received an e-mail from Prakash by the vitality in Sam’s eyes and the excitement he exuded like a force field. I recognized the passion growing in him and resented it. I just couldn’t figure out why.

  “I don’t know how to make you see this from my perspective,” I said. I was leaning against the dresser that bridged the gap between our two bedroom windows as Sam crammed agitated pacing into a space that seemed too small for it. “This has been so … so sudden.”

  Sam stopped his pacing and faced me, hands on hips, apparently at a loss. “And that makes it wrong?”

  I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. For someone who avoided confrontation at all costs, the past few weeks had been an energy-sapping thing. “We’ve always talked about doing mission work. I know that—I was there. And it’s still something I can envision us doing. But there are thousands of ministries out there for us to consider, Sam. And after one brief encounter that came out of nowhere, you’ve become fixated on this one. Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Forgive me if I need a little time to think it all through.”

  He stared at the ceiling.

  “How can you be so convinced that this is the right time and the right project for us?” I asked.