by John Herrick
From around the side of the pump peered Sanders, one of the high school pals with whom Jesse had reunited a few months back. Sanders had stopped by the Saturday Jesse and Blake had played their pickup basketball game. Jesse hadn’t seen the guy since.
Arms crossed, dressed in worn jeans and a printed T-shirt, Sanders walked around the pump to make casual conversation. “Where are you coming from?” he asked.
“Brandywine Falls. First time since I came back home.” Jesse wondered at this old pal. Married, kids and divorced so young? Jesse still found it hard to believe.
Over Jesse’s shoulder, Sanders caught sight of Drew, who scrolled through previews of that afternoon’s shots in the front passenger seat. Sanders nodded toward the car. “Who’s that?”
Jesse pivoted on his heels, his adrenaline in a spike—he’d forgotten about Drew. To Jesse’s relief, he found the boy occupied and out of earshot. Only Eden and Blake knew of Drew and of Jesse’s reunion with Caitlyn. Jesse didn’t want to offer details to anyone else; not even Drew knew the story yet. “Oh, that—I’m babysitting for someone’s kid. Just for today,” he said.
“Babysitting for who?”
“You don’t know them. Someone I knew from the old days. I’ve kind of known the kid since he was born.” To Jesse’s relief, the gas pump clicked off. Desperate to change the subject, he said, “Gotta go.”
“Listen, I’m getting together with some people tonight,” Sanders said. “Having a few brewskies. Want to meet up? I mean, unless you’re babysitting.”
Jesse considered the offer. Since his fateful night in L.A., Jesse had managed without a drop of alcohol, aside from his beer at the Indians game, where Drew had questioned him about the beverage choice. Jesse felt snakebitten by the L.A. incident and veered away from the stuff ever since. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he’d felt quite content without the buzz.
On the other hand, Jesse detested the fear that had dominated his year: fear of failure, fear of fatherhood, fear of what people would think of him. He didn’t want to add fear of alcohol to the list.
To stall for time, Jesse returned the nozzle to the pump and twisted the cap back on the car. Then he glanced at the car window, where Drew continued to scroll. Jesse sensed an inkling of doubt.
Then again, he’d progressed so far. A few beers, no big deal. Jesse could feel the relaxation ooze through his bones already.
“Why not?” Jesse said. “Where should I meet you?”
* * *
At one in the morning, the sky was overcast, the moon invisible. As usual, the streets were empty. They had met at Sanders’s apartment, less than a mile from Eden’s house.
It was a wonder Jesse made it home in one piece. Not that Jesse realized it.
Drunk, he stumbled toward Eden’s front porch. Along the way, he tripped over a step in the darkness and smacked his shoulder against her front door with a loud thump. Though he fumbled with his keys, he managed to find the correct one before he tried—unsuccessfully—to insert it into the keyhole. At last, he gave up, sat on the concrete, and giggled.
The porch light flipped on. Jesse squinted.
“It’s the middle of the night,” Eden hissed as she opened the door. “What are—” She knelt beside him. His clothes reeked of alcohol—and what smelled like a trace of marijuana. “Are you drunk?” she asked in a harsh, low voice. “Look at me,” she said.
Head in his hands, Jesse laughed some more.
Though her eyes looked livid, Eden maintained her composure. With Jesse’s stupor, lashing out would have accomplished nothing anyway. She grabbed him by the arm. “Come on.”
At first he resisted, but then yielded when she tugged again. Eden led him into the living room, where he made it as far as the couch before he decided to settle there for the night.
Impatient, Eden grabbed his arms and shook him. “Drew wasn’t with you, was he?” she demanded through clenched teeth.
Jesse told the truth: “No.”
“Were you doing drugs too?”
“No,” he said, again the truth.
As Jesse erupted in a series of spontaneous giggles, Eden looked closer at his face.
Between bursts of laughter, Jesse’s face winced—back and forth, humor and hurt, pleasure and pain. Overcome by the effects of the alcohol, sadness permeated his eyes, an agony of regret. Even while under the influence, Jesse wished he hadn’t made this mistake.
He began to blather and struggled to construct a cohesive thought. “Painkillers would be bad right now,” he said. “Hide the painkillers, Eden …” Then another wince of pain in his face.
“What? You don’t make any sense.” With another fierce look, Eden got up and flipped off the light. “Go to sleep.”
* * *
His lapse the previous night hung heavy on both Jesse’s mind and heart. He tallied all the people he’d let down in a matter of hours—Eden, as well as Caitlyn and Drew, although they were unaware of what happened. Jesse had also let himself down, but that was the least of his concerns.
His appetite ruined, he skipped lunch. As he sat on the floor of the worship auditorium and polished the woodwork along the platform, he vowed never to touch alcohol again. This wasn’t a religious decision for him; rather, he acknowledged his contentment during the drink’s absence and, well, it marked yet another piece that no longer fit into his life.
He heard a knock on one door, its volume stymied by the immensity of the room. When he lifted his head, he noticed Eden stood in the doorway. Furious, she made a beeline for him before he could get a word out.
“What’s the matter with you?!” she shouted.
At her voice, the final remnant of a hangover-induced headache, which had killed him all morning, clanged along the periphery of his skull. By now, however, the pain felt much less prominent. “I apologize.” He darted his eyes toward the doorway and hoped no one else could hear.
Eden lowered her voice. “You could have gotten yourself killed!” she hissed. “You have no idea how much I wanted to smack you last night! What if Drew had been in the car with you when you drove drunk?!”
Jesse held his palms out to stop her. “I’m sorry. Look, there’s nothing you can say that I haven’t already said to myself.”
She stared at him, her face flushed, but he could tell she tried to determine his sincerity.
Eden shook her head, sat down on the platform steps, and took a deep breath. “Maybe I shouldn’t have blown up at you. I’m not usually so abrupt, but you had me wide awake until sunrise, so now I’m worn out.” She crossed her arms. “Wait, why am I apologizing to you? You’re a guest in my house. You owe me an explanation.”
And Jesse didn’t disagree. He rested his forehead on his hand and cast his gaze toward the floor.
“So what happened?” she pressed.
“All the progress I’d made—I botched it up last night,” he murmured. “Remember Sanders from high school? Guy with the jet-black hair? I ran into him yesterday; he invited me over for a few beers, casual. I was sick of all my fear, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt. When I walked into his apartment, I hung out with a few people I’d never met. It started out with a beer around a ball game on TV, then more people showed up and things snowballed. By that point, I’d had a few drinks and gotten careless. I did stay away from the pot one of the guys brought, though.”
“You mentioned that to me while you were drunk, but I’m thankful to hear it’s true. It explains why I smelled marijuana all over your clothes when I found you on my porch.”
“The rest of the details are a bit fuzzy—I had a bit too much to drink, not that you didn’t notice. Thank you for getting me inside, by the way.”
“Yeah, not a problem,” she muttered.
Because sarcastic replies from Eden were rare, this one pricked Jesse’s heart. “I had a hunch the whole get-together would be bad news, but I went ahead anyway.” Jesse hunched over a tad. “I don’t think I fit into that crowd anymore. And you know what e
lse? I don’t think I want to fit into that scene anymore. If I were to say I enjoyed myself, it would be a lie. Once the drinking turned heavy, I sat alone on a chair in the corner of the room and watched everyone else have a deranged time—that much I remember. I just sat there and stared at them, realized I felt like …”
“Sorrow?” Eden’s face suggested her anger had thawed.
“No, I felt like a stranger. A stranger in a crowd of jumbled voices. I felt purposeless: the opposite of the joy I’ve come to know with Cait and Drew.”
Jesse felt uncomfortable, and Eden must have picked up on it. She folded her hands together, rested her elbows on her knees. She bit her lip in concentration. “What else happened last night?”
“That’s the whole story,” Jesse said. “Actually, it’s not a matter of what happened; more a matter of what didn’t happen.”
“Meaning what?”
“In my old life, I’d walked into many shabby situations, some of them worse than last night—too humiliating to mention.” He flashed through mental images of nights smoking marijuana with Jada, his mistake with Adam Lewis, his suicide attempt. But Jesse kept these memories to himself. “A year ago, I would have considered recklessness normal, but my life has changed since then. And last night, I couldn’t even force myself to enjoy it.” Jesse paused. “I tried; I tried to relieve the stress and confusion and frustration, but I just can’t do it anymore. Not that way.”
“Why not?”
“Drew, Cait. You.” With mounting fervency, he clenched his fists against his lap. “The whole time I was under the influence, one beer after the next, deeper and deeper, I tried to escape—it felt like a thick veil. The further I dove into it, the sadder and lower I got instead of getting free.” He rubbed the polishing cloth against the shiny wooden surface. “Not long before I returned to Ohio, I started to go through a self-evaluation whenever I was under the influence: a guilty conscience, thoughts about Cait and the baby I thought we’d lost. But last night, even though my heart cried out on their behalf, I resisted it and paid the price.”
Jesse felt horrible. In social work, Eden could detect an act when she saw it. But it wouldn’t have taken a social worker to identify Jesse’s regret as genuine.
Jesse turned toward his sister. “Last night, the sense that I’d let Cait and Drew down took a heavier toll: I’m an active part of their lives now. And it became real to me that every step I take, I’m responsible to them. Selfish missteps are a form of betrayal to them.”
Eden eased, even smiled. “Don’t underestimate your progress, despite the hiccup last night. I have hiccups myself—look at the way I barged in here today.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Was your action inexcusable? No question. But I’ve seen so many cases where fathers showed no conscience whatsoever toward their kids, where missteps meant nothing to them.”
Jesse’s eyes became steel. “If Cait and Drew had known what I’d done, it would have hurt them deeply—especially Drew. What a disappointment. I won’t do it again. I can’t.”
His sister patted him on the knee. “I know you won’t.” And her gesture let Jesse know she meant it.
Intrigued, Jesse scrutinized her. “You know what astounds me about you? You carry perpetual hope inside. You see the best in me—better than I see in myself.” Of all his sister’s qualities, this was the one he appreciated most. Regardless of where he’d lived, or what he’d done, or how he’d failed over the years, in the midst of his disillusionment he would talk to her, desperate for the hope that emanated from her. “When you look at me, you see my potential as a good father and brother, an asset, a success in life. But it’s not just with me; you see that hope in pretty much everyone. And I don’t understand it.” He paused. “Why? Why would you see potential in such a hopeless situation?”
She spread her arms as if to wave the answer off as obvious. “That’s what faith is: believing before you see it, knowing in your heart it’s there, even if it’s not evident to your eyes.”
“You mean God.”
“Yeah. Take the wind, for example: When you look outside, you can’t see the wind; it’s invisible to the eye. But you can’t deny its reality because you can witness its effects: leaves rattle on the trees, a chilly breeze on your arms, or the jolt in your car when a gust of wind hits it on the highway. You know the wind is there. But to accept its existence, you need to be willing to look beyond what you see. That’s what faith is—faith in someone’s potential, faith in God. People with faith see with their hearts before they see with their eyes, and they believe.”
“I understand faith,” Jesse said. “I believe God exists. I even had faith in Jesus as a kid, but I started to question it later—not question whether Jesus ever lived or that He’s a religious figure. But when I looked around and saw bad things happen, I wondered how someone could put their whole faith in Him. It just started to seem like religious mysticism to me. Don’t you ever wonder if that’s all it is? I mean, Jesus the religious figure and Jesus the human being, those are historical. But what about the miracle-working Jesus that Dad talks about? Or the Jesus that supposedly healed people? Doesn’t that seem like a myth when you see people in pain?”
Eden didn’t argue or grow irritable; she listened. Then she replied, “I wish I had all your answers; I don’t. But I see the other angle of it, the wind angle: I see the effect of Jesus in people, and I can’t deny it’s there.”
“Well, you and I were raised the same way. Where’d the difference come in?”
Eden thought for a moment. “You and I are accustomed to our quality of life: We take it as a given—and lose sight of the details before we realize it. But two years after you went to California, when I was still in high school, I went on a mission trip to Zimbabwe for a week one summer. A group of us high-school kids from church went with another organization that had established itself in that country, and we built a small shelter for kids who had lost their parents due to HIV. AIDS was rampant over there, the nation’s economy had already experienced sky-high inflation, and those people were so poor. For the Christians in Zimbabwe, Jesus meant everything—He was all some of them had, and the others were just plain downtrodden. The people in that country hurt so bad, and the ones who would listen to us opened their hearts to the gospel.” Eden had an intense longing in her eyes, as though she craved to see the people one more time. “They wanted to know there’s hope.” Eden’s face flushed; she clenched a fist. She seemed to search for words to depict how she felt inside. “I believe in hope. I want people to know there’s hope.”
What she said incited nervousness in Jesse, yet he wanted to hear more. So he sat still. He weighed each word she spoke, absorbed every nuance.
As she recalled details from the past, Eden’s lips tightened and her eyes danced. She continued, “What I said about believing God because you can see His effect—I saw it over in Zimbabwe. People walked up to us, curious about the building. Because English is prevalent there, we talked to people as we worked. A woman came up—this woman had lost her husband and a kid to AIDS, and now tried to raise the rest of her kids by herself. She was desperate for hope.” Eden wiped a tear from her cheek. “I saw that woman give her life to Christ. I know that decision’s not an emotional experience for everyone, but you should have seen her—the peace that overcame her, the tears that poured from her eyes. And she lived in such poverty, Jess. That woman had no money, but she had joy. Granted, I was a Christian before the trip, but that moment sealed it for me. I watched the gospel progress from words in a Bible to something alive: something that can get into someone and change who they are from the inside out—not from the head, like a lobotomy, but from the heart, like falling in love.”
Another knock sounded at the rear of the auditorium and stunted their conversation. Blake walked up, wrapped his arm around Eden, and kissed her. “I had a hunch you’d stop by your dad’s office since you had an adoption placement out this way,” Blake said. He stopped. “Did I interrupt you two?”
“Just small talk,” Eden said.
Blake peered closer. “Babe, are you crying? Are you okay?”
She laughed, and then sniffled by accident. A brush of her hand to her eyes and she said, “It’s nothing. I’m just … thankful.” She took Blake’s hand and rubbed her thumb along his knuckles. “Just thankful.”
“Have you eaten yet?” Blake asked. “Do you want to grab a late lunch?”
“Sure, I’ll be right behind you.” She nodded to Jesse. “Want to come along?”
Jesse declined, and Blake headed out the door.
When Blake was gone, Eden turned again to Jesse. “I have faith in you, Jess.” She got up and grabbed her purse. “I think Caitlyn does, too.”
Jesse mouthed his agreement without a sound.
Eden took one step away, then swiveled back around. “When was the last time you and Caitlyn took time by yourselves—not where it happened by accident, but where you gave her the time?”
“Not since we were eighteen. We’ve talked a lot since I’ve been back, but that’s all.”
“If you think about it, she’s lived under stress for so many years. She could probably use some time together with you, just to hang out for the evening. I’d imagine she’s missed you all along.”
Eden waved good-bye and walked out of the auditorium.
Alone in the room, Jesse pondered what she’d said about Caitlyn. Eden had a point. During the process of getting to know Drew, he had managed to overlook Caitlyn. Jesse wondered what would make his former girlfriend gleam.
Then a smile emerged on his face.
CHAPTER 46
“I need to see so I can lock the door!” Caitlyn said as she closed the front door to her house. Jesse covered her eyes in jest.
On Friday just past six o’clock, the clear sky sparkled at full light. Jesse parted his fingers and allowed her to peek until she got her key into the lock, then closed his gates again. Caitlyn’s giggles proved infectious, and Jesse laughed as he watched her bask in the attention.
“Okay, this way,” he said. As he stood behind her, Jesse wrapped his free arm around her waist and they proceeded from her porch, step by step, down the concrete walkway. “So, how late can we stay out tonight?”