by J. T. Warren
The tension snapped with a huge laugh from Dad that was out of proportion to Brendan’s joke. Still, it felt good to laugh again and Tyler joined in. Delaney did too until she felt the laughter had gone on too long and then she got up from the table. She was wearing her comfies: gym shorts and a T-shirt with a heart on it.
“But vit that outfit,” Dad said in a Count Dracula voice, “vatch out birds, cats, dogs, maybe even small children.” He held up his hands in a mock-vampire attack gesture straight out of those old black and white horror movies. “You even make Dracula recoil vit terror.”
“Really funny,” Delaney said in her most un-amused voice. “I need to get ready and then I need the car to get to SAT prep.”
Still in the Dracula voice, Dad said, “First you can take your brother to bowling.”
“Enough with the voice, Dad.”
“Vhat? This is how I talk.”
“No wonder Mom won’t come out of her room.”
Though Dad continued to hold the vampire posture, arms up, hands arched as if to attack, his face lost the Dracula impersonation and no one laughed. Delaney glanced around, mostly at the floor, and when her eyes found Tyler’s she quickly looked away. “Anyway,” she said.
“Okay,” Dad said without the accent. Delaney left.
“I’ll take him to bowling,” Tyler said after a moment.
Guilt weighed on Dad’s face. “You don’t have to, I can do it if your sister is running late.”
“No big deal,” Tyler said. “I’ll take him.”
Dad nodded, and started washing the pan he used for the eggs.
“When does bowling start?” Tyler asked Brendan, but the kid had turned back to his composition book. What the hell was he writing?
One way or the other, Tyler was going to find out.
5
Anthony had almost forgotten about the guys in the suits and their First Church of Jesus Christ the Empowered, but after he cleaned the frying pan and started to load the dishwasher with the kids’ plates, which they left on the table, he found the flier the men had given him.
The cover was of a painting of Jesus on the cross with blood trickling from all his wounds and his rheumy eyes heavy with the misery man had inflicted upon him. Inside the pamphlet, which was about the size of a mass market paperback, a picture of a gathering of well-dressed men (suits) and women (modest-colored blouses and knee-length skirts) splayed across the bottom of the page. A man stood at a podium before a microphone, Bible open in his hands. A preacher, presumably. The spectators appeared rapt and every ethnicity seemed to be represented. Even an Indian woman with the red dot on her forehead. In large block letters at the top of the page it read: JESUS WANTS YOU TO BE EMPOWERED.
And beneath that: In today’s day and age when every organized religion is claiming the rightful path, it can be confusing to know which direction is correct. In fact, it can be disheartening. It can be easy to lose faith. But Jesus doesn’t care if you follow this faith or that faith; Jesus wants you to be empowered, to feel His grace and bask in His glory. He scarified Himself for all humanity as proof of heavenly empowerment. With Jesus as our teacher, we can learn how to tackle our problems and choose the right path to glory. And, most importantly, we can be empowered with God’s love. No matter the pain from which you suffer, the difficulties against which you struggle, Jesus wants to help. At The First Church of Jesus Christ the Empowered, we seek the fulfillment of God’s will through an honest acceptance of our faults and a faithful inquiry into the magical workings of Jesus.
Anthony smirked. Similar in tone to all those Watch Tower pamphlets the Jehovah’s handed out, this flier claimed to know Jesus’ will (while debunking other religions) and cleverly assured the reader that God’s way was the way of enlightenment and that you too could enjoy it. It was so smart how these organizations preyed on the weak. The two men had no idea if Anthony was experiencing troubles—“you will need this,” he had said—but if a depressed alcoholic happened to read this pamphlet in a particularly self-deprecating moment, he or she might experience a moment of clarity about the choices made and decide that this was God’s intervention. It must be a sign. Three months later, the alcoholic would be sober (though drunk on another kind of drug altogether), dressed well, and handing out similar pamphlets to strangers.
“The Jesus drug,” Anthony mumbled.
The facing page, onto which the well-dressed people spilled, a formal invitation welcomed him to “an important event to discuss the ten steps to Jesus’ empowerment” and a “demonstration of His wonder” on the Thursday before Easter, mere days away. The ten steps would, no doubt, be the Ten Commandments, but all bets were off for the demonstration of His wonder. Perhaps they would turn water into wine. The way the smile on the tall guy with the dark eyes never wavered suggested something a bit more ominous. A blood sacrifice, perhaps.
“Your daughter,” the stocky guy had said, “she’s very pretty.”
The back of the pamphlet read: “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Listen to Jesus and let Him empower you. The image of a cross, without the suffering, bleeding Jesus, was watermarked behind the text. Anthony turned back to the vivid cover. That was another thing about these Jesus nuts—they paraded around the image of a bleeding savior because they hoped it would reduce people to tears and out of their guilt and pity, they would turn to God, however each religion chose to portray Him, and thus increase the size of that church’s congregation. A grease stain from the egg that fell off the spatula had smeared Jesus’ face. It made His eyes even more swollen.
“Hey, Dad.” It was Delaney, showered and dressed in jeans and a turtleneck sweater, hair pulled behind her head.
Though she had startled him from his reverie, he tried to hide the surprise. As a father of three (almost four but, alas, not to be), Anthony was always subject to a surprise appearance from one of the kids. With Chloe in bed more than anywhere else and the bedroom off limits to the kids, better for Chloe to get her rest and hopefully recover, Anthony was the go-to parent for everything. Sometimes the kids could sneak up on him so well that his heart would nearly explode when they spoke. Brendan was particularly good at that, though it always seemed unintentional when he did it. Not so with the others.
“Can I help you?” he asked, dishtowel draped over one forearm, waiter-style.
“Can I take Mom’s car?”
“You’d have to get gas.” This was not true, but he had his reasons.
“Then can I have some money?”
He smiled. “What is wrong with my car?”
She sighed, overemphasizing how annoying this conversation was getting for her. “The car is old and smells bad and it has all those stupid bumper stickers.”
“It’s not that old.” It was, now that he thought of it, almost ten years old. How had it gotten so old so quickly? One day he’d be asking that same question looking in the mirror. “And it doesn’t smell. I took it to the car wash last week and they do the inside, too.”
“Well, whatever, those bumper stickers are just … lame.”
He had gone through a phase where he bought several because he thought they were hilarious. After the fiftieth time reading NEVER BELIEVE IN GENERALIZATIONS or EVERYBODY DOES BETTER WHEN EVERYBODY DOES BETTER and TIME FLIES LIKE AN ARROW, FRUIT FLIES LIKE A BANANA, the phrases he once thought so clever he just had to buy them and seal them to his bumper sounded forced and ridiculous. Still, they offered the occasional laugh, and the one from work, made by Joey the goofy art ad guy as a gift for the department heads at the company’s annual picnic last year still made Anthony smile: READING: EDITORS DO IT FOR MONEY.
“My bumper graffiti is not lame.”
“Graffiti?” She rolled her eyes.
“You’ll be less likely to get pulled over than you would in Mom’s car.”
“Yeah, cause your car can’t go over sixty.”
“And why would you need to?”
She si
ghed again.
“Think of all the fun you and Angela will have making fun of my stickers.”
“You mean your graffiti?” Her smile that could break his heart a million times did it again. He almost let up, allowed her to take the car, but he couldn’t. It might be dangerous. Later, he’d appreciate the irony of that thought.
“And that stupid oldies CD is stuck in your car. There’s only, like, ten songs and they’re all lame.”
“Be fair,” he said. “You like some of those lame songs.” He started to hum “Sleep Walk,” a tune he and Delaney had mock-danced to in his car several times. She said the song sounded like it was drowning.
“You should get an iPod hook-up like Tyler.”
“I like my oldies.”
“You could like more than just ten songs with an iPod.” That smile again.
“The keys—to my car—are by the couch.”
She told him thanks, pecked him on the cheek, grabbed the keys from the table in the living room and was out the door before Anthony could tell her to drive safely. There was no reason he couldn’t let her take Chloe’s car except that it was too fast and even with the dual airbags and all the other safety features, the car wouldn’t save her if she hit a wall going ninety miles per hour. If she tried to push his Honda that fast, the steering wheel would shake so hard she’d hurt her hands. She could handle the embarrassing bumper stickers, which she was only teasing him about anyway. Or so he believed.
There were other reasons he didn’t want her taking Chloe’s car, reasons why even he didn’t want to take it, why it sat in the garage, gathering dust. Delaney knew it and so she didn’t press the issue. He loved her for that.
Colleagues at work told him all sort of horror stories about teenage daughters. Mary Ellen, the head of accounting, told him how she caught her sixteen-year-old daughter having sex in the house and when she found them, her daughter told her to mind her fucking business. Anthony was immensely grateful Delaney was nothing like that. She could lose her patience, just like Tyler and Brendan, but she was never mean and was always a good sport about being the brunt of so many jokes.
He felt bad about this morning. He and Tyler had ganged up on her and she had been okay with it until they, predictably, had taken it too far, and she had resorted to a comment about Chloe. He almost expected her to apologize for that remark just now, but she didn’t need to and she knew that. No harm done. Especially since she had been right, at least partially. He had not been very persuasive motivating Chloe out of her bed, out of her stupor, hell, out of her depression. He had pretty much let her be and gone on being Dad.
He finished cleaning up breakfast and made Chloe her usual two slices of rye toast. While buttering them, he heard Tyler call out that he was taking Brendan to bowling and then the door sucked shut and silence settled inside the house. He felt bad about Brendan’s bowling, too; Anthony hadn’t been to any of the Saturday games since before the incident. The people there understood, of course, and one of the families was always kind enough to drive him back. At least today Tyler and Brendan could experience some brotherly bonding.
Anthony couldn’t worry about Delaney’s SAT prep or Brendan’s bowling. He had more pressing problems waiting for him upstairs, down the hall in the bedroom whose door had seemed perpetually shut for weeks.
The bedroom door squeaked just enough to make Anthony pause but not enough, not even close to enough, to stir Chloe from her slumber. In this room, their room, darkness reigned perpetually. The curtains had been pulled over the windows and Chloe had draped bathroom towels over them to completely obscure the sun. The first time she had done that, Anthony had told her she needed to seek help, that she was letting her good sense slip away. In response, Chloe pulled up her shirt and thrust the cesarean scar, still fresh and swollen, toward him. “And what about me? What about the life that was taken out of me and then from me? What the fuck about that?” He had not mentioned the towels again.
The air was stale and dead. Motes of dust swam in spirals as he moved through the room to the bed. Whenever Chloe managed to will herself out of bed, to shower or eat, Anthony had used those precious minutes to tear down the towels, part the curtains, and open the windows. He hadn’t aired the room for almost four days now, and in those four days, Chloe had only showered once. He had been hopeful when he discovered her out of bed, but once she came out of the bathroom, she crawled right back into bed and went to sleep almost immediately. He couldn’t remember the last time the sheets had been cleaned.
He set the toast on the nightstand and placed a hand on her hip. She squirmed beneath the sheet and curled into even more of a fetal position.
He rubbed her thigh and spoke in a quiet, soothing voice, like cooing to a baby—oh, the irony. “Hey, babe. I brought your toast. You need to eat. You’ve lost more weight. I can tell. You should take a shower, so I can wash these sheets, air out the room. What do you think?”
She mumbled something, which was a good sign. She wasn’t fully in the depths of sleep then. Anthony had discovered that while it might appear she was constantly sleeping, she actually had a few modes that varied in levels of out-of-itness. When under the heavy hand of her magic pills (her own Pillie Billy), she was completely out of it, practically comatose. When falling into or coming back out of that state, she could respond in small grunts and mumblings, and the occasional full, though sometimes incoherent, sentence. When the pill wore off and she waited too long before taking another, she became restless and irritable.
He knew he should break her of her addiction, but he didn’t want to face the beast that would rise from the bed once her Pillie Billys were gone. He had to talk to Dr. Carroll, he knew, but he kept putting it off. What could he say but Chloe is addicted to those pills you gave her and if you don’t cut her off she’s going to sleep away the rest of her life? He’d call later today. Sure, sure he would.
“You want to eat some toast?” he asked.
She squirmed under the sheet, grumbled something. She was headed into comatose country.
“Come on, honey, just a few bites.”
She rolled over so suddenly that Anthony’s hand was almost trapped beneath her thighs, which had shrunk into small pieces of driftwood. Face half-buried in the pillow, eyes closed, she said, “Not now, no.”
With that, Anthony was back to that day last month when Chloe’s screams broke through the entire house and Tyler ran out of his bedroom to find out what happened, who had gotten hurt, and Anthony had already known before he made it upstairs—the heavy stone in his gut told him so—that something terrible had happened to the baby. He took the stairs two at a time and didn’t trip, though he almost wished he had. If he had fallen, broken an ankle or something, the rest of the day would have played out much more directly. They would have waited for the ambulance that Tyler called instead of grabbing their newborn (face bulging dark blue) and speeding down Route 84 in Chloe’s car to the hospital. The paramedics, who arrived three minutes after he had sped out of their driveway, would have been there to administer CPR or some type of aid instead of Anthony pushing the car to ninety-five miles per hour while Chloe screamed for him to go faster for Christ’s sake go faster he’s turning purple he’s fucking dying Anthony don’t you hear what I’m saying our child is dying and you’re behind a fucking truck. And the paramedics might not have saved the child, but they would have been there at least to help shield him and Chloe from the horror they glimpsed when he passed a truck on the left side shoulder, the car’s tires lost their grip, and the car tumbled off the side and into the median ditch, the slope steep enough to flip the car once and Chloe screamed as the baby slipped from her grip and hit the ceiling only to crash back into her lap when the car landed right side up. The paramedics would have placed a sheet over the baby but instead he and Chloe stared down at their newborn’s dark purple face and the blood gushing from his right eye socket, Chloe repeating again and again like a secret spell: “Not now, no, not now, no, not now, no.” There had
been a pulse even then after the accident, but by the time the trooper arrived, the pulse had vanished. Then Chloe tried to run into traffic.
“The kids miss you,” he said and hoped she wouldn’t turn away, thinking of the one kid who would never miss her, the child they had not even bestowed a name upon because they couldn’t agree. She had wanted Clayton; he, Michael.
He started to get up and maybe try to motivate himself to make that call finally to Dr. Carroll when she spoke again. “You’re a good man,” she said. “A good father. I mean that.”
“And you’re a good mother, don’t forget that.”
“You’re raising them now.”
“Why don’t you have some toast?”
Her eyes slowly opened. Even with only the light streaking faintly in from the hallway, Anthony could see the swollen redness of her face. Perhaps nightmares did visit her in that drug-induced sleep.
“I can make you some tea, if you want.”
She touched his arm, her first gesture of affection, of even a connection, in several days. “I’m so sorry, Anthony. So very sorry.”
Her tears were quick and full. He took her in his arms and let her cry against him. She had cried this way when he finally tackled her at the edge of the median before an SUV would have taken off her head. She tried to punch him and kick him, but he clenched her so tightly that all she could do was cry. Eventually, the trooper drove them to the hospital where they sat with their little baby in a cold room for several hours before a nurse told them the room was needed and that, oh yes, she was sorry, so very sorry for their loss.
“Why don’t we go somewhere?” he asked.
“What?”
“Delaney’s at SAT prep, Tyler took Brendan to bowling, so we can do whatever we want.”
She laughed, not quite a real laugh, but still it was something other than crying or sleeping and it stirred something for a moment in his heart. “Like the old days,” she said. “Before any kids at all.”