by Sigrid Nunez
Touch me, his heart boomed. And to his astonishment she did. She put her arms around him, and because she was wearing her hair up today he was able to press his face right into the curve of her neck, where it fit like a puzzle piece. Not marble-cool like he’d always imagined, but very, very warm. She squirmed when she felt his lips move, and then, as if she’d heard a scream for help or smelled something burning, she broke free and fled the room.
Cole waited for gravity to pull him earthward again. He spat the half-chewed cookie into his palm and threw it into the trash. A tingling sensation low in his belly made him want to get behind a closed door as quickly as possible. But first he checked his e-mail.
Still no message from Addy.
THE MESSAGE WAS THERE the next morning. Addy was back in Berlin.
I could not stay in that horrible place even one more day. It was bad enough the power kept failing, but then so many fire hydrants were being opened all over town we didn’t have any water, and they were saying the heat might not break for another week. Lara left first. She went to stay with some friends outside the city, and I was too scared to stay alone. I’ve never seen such chaos, not even when I had the flu. I was amazingly lucky to get on a flight. I had to pay a huge fee—a bribe is what it really was—but I couldn’t lose this chance to get out while the airport was operating, as it hadn’t been for days. I felt like I was escaping from some banana republic.
But she did not want Cole to think she had abandoned him.
Of course, I still want you to come live with me. That’s not going to change. But in the end it’s going to be up to you. If it comes to court, the judge will say you’re old enough to decide for yourself who you want to live with.
If you want me to, I can always fly back to the States. But I’ve been thinking, how would you feel about making a little trip to Berlin, just to see what it’s like?
He didn’t answer right away. He was glad to know Addy was safe, but right now he couldn’t think about her or about going anywhere. Starlyn was leaving tomorrow. He didn’t know when he’d see her again. That was all Cole could think about.
THREE DAYS AFTER she’d driven to Salvation City to take her daughter home, Taffy called her sister Tracy. Her speech was so distorted she had to repeat herself twice before she could make herself understood.
That morning, she’d slept through the alarm (the lovebirds had been out two-stepping the night before) and was rushing to get ready to go to her job at the insurance office where she worked as a receptionist. She wondered about Starlyn, who was usually up before her. She hoped her daughter wasn’t coming down with some bug.
When she was ready to leave the house, Taffy went to Starlyn’s room and found her gone.
“Nothing else is missing. Not her backpack or iPod or even her wallet. No makeup or toiletries, far’s I can tell, and none of her clothes. The things she was wearing yesterday, everything, including her flip-flops and her teensies, the angel locket you got her for her birthday, her scrunchy, her watch, her tears-of-Christ pendant, her purity bracelet—it’s all there in a heap on the floor. And her cell’s sitting on her dresser.”
The shock had knocked Taffy flat. “When I come to, I was laying face down across her bed.”
Later that same day, Lucinda Boyle, who was feeling too unsteady to leave her bed, called her next-door neighbor, Rutha Mae. She didn’t mean to be any trouble, she said, but her son had left the house that morning to get a prescription for her muscle relaxant filled and he hadn’t come back. She’d tried calling him but he wasn’t answering. “Which, you know, ain’t half like Mase.” Who answered his phone even while leading Bible group.
Rutha Mae said she was sure there was a simple explanation, that if anything had happened to Mason they’d surely have heard by now, but she’d be right over anyhow so Lucinda didn’t have to wait all by her lonesome. She’d bring some pineapple loaf cake, Rutha Mae said.
Minutes later, as she approached the house, Rutha Mae was surprised to see Mason’s car parked in the garage. The garage door being open, Rutha Mae stepped inside, where she saw some clothes scattered on the floor.
“Everything he put on that morning,” Rutha Mae reported later. “Plus his wallet and his keys and phone, and that silver stud he always wore in his ear? Everything but his tattoos! He must’ve been just about to get in the car.”
COLE FOUND PW SITTING ALONE out on the back porch. The temperature had finally dropped, and the evening was humid but cool—too cool to be wearing nothing but a pair of baggy shorts. But that was how you’d usually find PW dressed these days.
The rash and the blisters that had itched him to such distraction were gone. But PW was not yet out from under the devil’s whip. He could not bear the weight of even the lightest cloth against certain parts of his torso. A draft of air touching one of those spots was sometimes enough to make him hop up and down in pain.
Postherpetic neuralgia. Something to do with the nerves being confused and sending false messages to the brain. Occurring in about twenty percent of shingles cases, according to the doctor, and PW’s case appeared to be unusually bad. The painkillers the doctor gave him weren’t doing much good. Nor could the doctor say how long the condition would last. Maybe months, maybe years. He did not say maybe forever, but that grim possibility was understood.
The doctor was worried about PW’s mental state. He wanted to put him on antidepressants. PW refused at first (“Rather put my faith in prayer”), and later, when he changed his mind, the antidepressants, like the prayer and the painkillers before them, would not do the trick.
One day worse than usual—the whip lashes raining down especially hard and thick—PW resorted to bourbon, whose medicinal effects he hadn’t forgotten, and discovered that here was something that did help, if only a little, and only if he drank a lot.
“What is it, son? What’s on your mind? Here, come sit closer to me.”
Was it a sin to find the smell of whiskey on a person’s breath so pleasant? (Cole’s parents had drunk only beer and wine, both of which, like coffee, left smells he found gross.)
Not so pleasant was the way the whiskey messed with PW’s speech and sometimes even made him drool. Also, Cole could not get used to him being half naked all the time. Something about those beefy shoulder pads, the tufts and whorls of black hair, and the Hershey’s Kiss-like nipples hidden in there made Cole shy away from sitting too close on the wicker sofa.
“It’s about Starlyn.”
“Yeah?”
“I think Mason kidnapped her.”
“Now, why on earth would you say a thing like that?”
A promise is sacred. Cole chose his words carefully. “Because—because it doesn’t make any sense. Why would just the two of them be raptured and nobody else?”
PW breathed a pungent sigh. “First of all, it hasn’t even been one whole day yet. Second, Scripture tells us very little about the rapture, so we don’t really know what to expect. No one knows the hour or day, not even the angels in heaven, according to Matthew. Only God the father knows. So maybe it was never intended for all believers to be taken away in exactly the same breath. We don’t know. Like we don’t know what’s going to happen in the next breath, either.”
Cole didn’t understand how PW could be so calm. Others, he knew, were nowhere near calm. In fact, something very different from the joyful and triumphant celebration Cole had heard so often and so confidently foretold was now unfolding in Salvation City. To the stream of callers wanting to know such things as whether they should climb up on their roofs or keep their doors and windows open, whether they should eat normally or start fasting, whether it was okay to have sex, or safe to drive, and what should they do about the dog—whether there was any chance they’d actually missed the rapture and were now officially left behind, and how could such a thing have happened (“Weren’t we promised we were saved?”), and how much time did they have before the tribulation began in earnest—to all these confused and shaken souls Pastor Wyatt
responded alike: Be patient. Gather with your loved ones. Stay home. Wait. Pray.
Their own household had been turned upside down. Poor Tracy had already had enough to cope with in the weeks since Addy’s arrival. Now her legs kept giving out from under her as if she’d been struck by a palsy. After she toppled downstairs, spraining her ankle and splitting open her eyebrow, PW had ordered her to bed. He made her swallow a handful of the painkillers the doctor had prescribed for him and which he knew had a sleep-inducing effect. She had slipped into oblivion babbling blessings and prayers, convinced that when she opened her eyes again she’d be resting on the clouds of 1 Thessalonians.
“I’ll be the first to admit I am not sure what’s happening,” said PW. “But I’m also sure the Lord will let us know all we need to know in his own time. Have faith, and the mystery shall be revealed.”
“But there’s no mystery,” said Cole. “There’s an explanation.”
“What? Two people naked as Adam and Eve and without a penny on ’em walk off into the yonder without anyone taking notice?”
“Mason—”
“Oh right, the Great Kidnapper. And how’d he get to Louisville without his car?”
“There are other ways!”
“Hunh!” PW lurched in his seat as if he’d been Tasered. “It’s okay, son,” he said quickly. “I’m all right.” But he spoke through gritted teeth, and his face was milk white. “Don’t look so scared.” He tried to smile. “It hurts worse to see you scared.”
Every time this happened—and it could happen several times a day—Cole felt not only scared but the worst kind of helpless. All he could do was sit and watch as PW struggled, breathing shallowly, skin sheened with sweat despite the cool air. Cole sometimes wondered why the bigger a person was, the bigger their pain could seem. The way a suffering whale was so much worse to imagine than a suffering mouse.
PW reached down to the floor next to the sofa and picked up a bottle Cole hadn’t known was there. He took a few large sips and put the bottle back in its spot. Then he sagged back against the sofa cushion, a fist to his mouth, and bowed his head. Under his breath, but loud enough to be heard, he asked God to forgive his weakness.
If it was part of God’s plan, then suffering was not an evil but a blessing. This was something PW often said when preaching about sickness and pain. Cole had also heard him say that he would not be suffering so severely now unless God was punishing him. “And it’s for me to search my heart for what I’ve done to displease him.” Cole thought he had a pretty good idea what that thing might be. But PW never wavered from his testimony that in everything regarding Cole he had done God’s will.
There was no mistaking the Lord’s voice, PW had told him. It was the morning after Addy’s visit and they were sitting in the den. PW had one hand on Cole’s shoulder and the other on the massive desk Bible. “When the Lord speaks to you, the words enter you in a special way. They become part of your flesh, and they never leave you.”
The Lord had spoken. He had spoken clearly. And his words were save the boy.
Three times in one night he had woken PW with the same message. “And he wasn’t taking no for an answer.”
But why, oh why, Cole had to ask himself, didn’t Jesus send a message to him and Addy, too? Wouldn’t that have helped them all?
PW picked up the bottle again. It was past sunset now, and the dark was like some night animal rubbing its furred flanks up against the porch screens.
PW drank and drank. It was as if they could not start talking again until every drop was gone. Each time he took the bottle away from his lips he let out a heavy sigh, aromatizing the air with bourbon like room spray.
Just as Cole was beginning to think he’d been forgotten, PW reached over and punched him playfully on the shoulder.
“So let me get this straight. You’re saying Mason somehow got himself to Louisville, sneaked into Starlyn’s house, bopped her over the head like a caveman, and dragged her off by the hair?”
Cole refused even to smile.
“Mighty strange he waited till she was gone, don’t you think? When just a couple days ago she was here? How’d you explain that?”
Cole said nothing. What was the point in explaining anything? Why couldn’t PW see the truth? What was wrong with Tracy, and Starlyn’s mother? What was wrong with them all? By the time they caught on (and Cole was beginning to fear this might never happen), Mason and Starlyn would be far away. In his mind, they were headed to Mexico and a life of drugs and sin.
PW spoke as if he’d been able to read Cole’s thoughts. “Okay, then. That’s the case, what we got to do is examine what happened and why it happened like it did. We got to ask ourselves just what is the Lord trying to make us see here. Now, it’s possible he is using those two. Maybe he thought it was a good thing for us to go through a false alarm, just to show us how unready we really are. You see, God—”
“This has nothing to do with God,” Cole said wearily.
“Shame on you, son. I know I’ve taught you better than that.”
Cole was ready to cry. “Aren’t you even worried about her?”
It was the laugh Cole swore he’d never forgive.
“Come on, now, Cole, you know your cousin can take care of herself.”
His cousin! It was the first time he’d ever heard Starlyn called that.
PW reached for the whiskey again, forgetting there was none left. “Tell you who I am worried about, though. I’m worried about Jeptha’s mama.” He was talking about Boots’s daughter-in-law, whose son had just been killed in Israel. “Losing your only son, that’s got to be the worst kind of hurt. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so torn up as that poor lady. Far’s I know she’s always had a powerful faith. But the other day it was like you could see it evaporating off her, like a mist. She would not be comforted. I’d try to get her to pray with me and she’d just give me this smile, this cold, twisted kind of smile. Like I tried to cheat her and she just got wise. Shook me up.”
“She’s only sixteen,” Cole said, his heart breaking.
PW shrugged his big shoulders. “My granny had two babies already by that age. My mama had her first when she was barely seventeen.”
“But aren’t you going to call the police?”
“Dude, just what is it about you and the police? Didn’t you and me already have this conversation?”
Cole wasn’t sure if PW had raised his voice because he was angry or because he was drunk.
A promise is sacred. Cole made a quick decision and plunged ahead.
“I saw them. I saw Mason—I saw them kissing—that’s how I know—”
To Cole’s astonishment PW laughed again.
He must be drunk. How else could he laugh?
“Listen to me, son. You think you’re the only one that’s got eyes in his head? You really think I didn’t know what was up with the two of them?”
Yes, he could see it now. That had been pretty stupid of him. He was seeing a lot, finally. No wonder he’d started to feel sorry for Starlyn.
“So you’re mad at Mason. So you go and make wild accusations, talking a heap of nonsense about kidnapping—and why? I’ll tell you why. Because you’re jealous. Because you think he stole your girl. Isn’t that what this is really about?” He punched Cole’s shoulder again, less playfully this time. “Like you had any business sniffing after her.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Cole said hoarsely. He was mortified that PW had used the word sniffing.
PW kept silent, as if to give Cole a chance to explain himself, and when that didn’t happen he sighed and said, “Look. I don’t mean to be harsh, but you got to understand this has nothing to do with you. We shouldn’t even be discussing the matter, it’s not fitting. I want you to promise you’ll put it out of your mind and leave it to your elders to worry about, okay?”
Cole nodded mechanically.
“Good. Now, let’s talk about something else. What do you hear lately from that aunt of yours?”
“I’m thinking about going to see her in Germany.”
In fact, until that moment he had been thinking no such thing.
“What on earth are you talking about?”
Cole remembered that he had not yet passed on the news that his aunt was back in Berlin. He was about to explain when PW doubled over.
The attack this time was shorter but more vicious than the first. When it was over PW stood up, saying, “Let me go dry myself off.”
Left alone, Cole tried—unsuccessfully—to pray. All his other emotions were now swamped by a new fear. What if PW never got better? What if he could never live a normal life again? What if he just drank and drank and drank?
Cole was distracted by the appearance of a moth that had come indoors and kept banging into one thing or another until finally it knocked itself onto its back. Fantastically large, almost the size of a sparrow, it lay quaking on the floor, filament legs kicking furiously. Then it went still—not dead, Cole figured, just wiped out from struggling. It could rest there all it wanted; no harm would come to it. He resisted the impulse to pick it up. He’d been told that touching a moth or a butterfly could hurt its wings and maybe even kill it.
This time, unlike a moment before, and without trying, he found himself praying. He prayed to God not to be too hard on Starlyn, and if it turned out she was never coming back he prayed that God might bring her, somehow, somewhere to safety. Amen.
PW returned wearing a clean white shirt, left unbuttoned, and carrying a fresh pint of bourbon. He tousled Cole’s hair with his free hand as he sat back down on the sofa. He seemed to have forgotten what they’d been talking about before, and Cole did not remind him. They sat for a few moments without speaking. The second attack had so weakened PW that his arm shook just from the effort of bringing bottle to mouth.