“Ann Marie Stewart writes with immeasurable spirit as she probes the deep currents of faith and love. Abby McAndrews tells her compelling tale of family grief with truth and admirable humor. Stars in the Grass is a powerful novel that will light your way.”
—Alyson Hagy, author of Boleto and Ghosts of Wyoming
“In this remarkable novel, Ann Marie Stewart explores the aftermath of tragedy with intelligence, grace, and subtle humor. Stars in the Grass is a story of great loss, but also of great hope. A beautiful, haunting tale, it is one I won’t soon forget.
—Ann Tatlock, award-winning author of Once Beyond a Time
“Stars in the Grass reminds us that even when we think God has forgotten us, we’re forever on His mind. Ann Marie Stewart’s writing is outstanding and her voice captivating. I fell in love with this intriguing novel from the first page.”
—Bestselling novelist Kate Lloyd, author of Leaving Lancaster, Pennsylvania Patchwork, and Forever Amish
“Ann Marie Stewart’s beautifully crafted prose depicts a family in deep turmoil as they walk through a dark valley…. Told in firstperson narrative by nine-year-old Abby, Stewart gets her voice just right as a precocious child thrust into the world of grief. A thought-provoking and sensitive look into the different paths each family member travels in the aftermath of tragedy, the role of God and faith along the path, and the way time wraps its way around this family until they each can embrace the truth and move forward.”
—Elizabeth Musser, bestselling author of The Long Highway Home and The Swan Hous
© 2017 by Ann Marie Stewart
Print ISBN 978-1-63409-950-9
eBook Editions:
Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-63409-952-3
Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-63409-951-6
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.
Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
Special thanks to Shaunna Bohan for contributing to the discussion questions.
Cover photography: Jolena Long, www.joliemaephotography.com
Published by Shiloh Run Press, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683, www.shilohrunpress.com.
Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.
Printed in the United States of America.
Dedicated to Julia Marie Stewart No matter how far you travel you’ll always be close to my heart
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Letter to the Reader
Discussion Questions
Nick Harrison for always believing in this story and me
Chip MacGregor, agent, for always challenging,
encouraging, and offering sage wisdom
Barbour Publishing for their energy and inspiration
Acquisitions Editor Annie Tipton for listening to Abby’s voice
Holly Lorincz and Joanne Simmons for their insightful editing
Beth Greenfeld and Kitty Eisele, my writing group
Fred Ricker, John Enloe, and Bruce Stewart, all Clock Docs
Michelle Albanese, for her unfailing support, encouragement, and GPS
Gilda Carter, a friend who loves unconditionally
Barb Boughton, my friend and sister in Christ
Lori Galloway, for sharing her journey to hope
on the anniversary of her daughter’s death
Shaunna Bohan for helping with Discussion Questions
The Writers Center, Bethesda, Maryland
Lake Forest Park Presbyterian Church who made God’s house feel like home
Marvin Wayne, for medical information in Blaine, Washington
The Pink Brains Book Club, my favorite book club that never actually bowled
Will Stewart for supporting my writing
Julia Stewart and Christine Stewart, our beloved daughters
Charlie Baxter, my UM professor for “Seeing from the Balcony”
Alyson Hagy for continued friendship
and support beyond being my UM professor
Bill and Ruth Roetcisoender, I love you both so much
James Scott Bell, Lydia Harris, Catron Enloe,
Robert Burroughs, Sherry Larson
My heavenly Father who carries me now and forever
I spent the better part of my childhood sitting on a pew in the balcony of Bethel Springs First Presbyterian Church, listening to my dad’s long vowels as he preached on predestination. Sandwiched between my older brother, Matt, and my little brother, Joel, I counted bald heads, doodled on church bulletins, and studied the stained-glass Jesus.
Reverend McAndrews was godlike and mysterious. Definitely not the same man who read to us from Dr. Seuss, ran through the sprinkler on steamy Ohio summer afternoons, or smiled as we played hide-and-go-seek in his Father’s house.
Though I can’t remember many of his three-point sermons, I have other good memories. One Sunday during a hymn, Matt and I sang loudly, changing the words to our liking, “Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear,” and crossing our eyes for added effect. When we sat back down, I rested the hymnal on the railing and fanned myself by riffling through the pages. Then it happened. Onto one of the fifty-one shining bald heads below, I dropped the hymnal.
It clapped to the floor, and then in the congregational hush, Mr. Ludema winced in surprised pain. I only looked down long enough to see necks craning up toward the balcony and then turning toward my father and then back to the balcony. Dad squinted to see Mrs. Ludema as she nursed her husband’s head and then looked up at the cause of the disruption. Me.
Dad stared at me for fifteen seconds. I know because I counted every one of them. I did not look away; instead I memorized his thick sandy hair fringed with gray streaks. I couldn’t see his eyes because the sun was reflecting on the lenses of his glasses. His mouth was closed, his thick jaw tense. The congregation waited for the Reverend McAndrews, and so did I. At last he said, with a nod to the balcony and a sigh, “And the Word has come down from on high.”
During responsive reading, his voice rose and fell so predictably, I was nearly lulled to sleep unless I pulled out a pencil to sketch the hills and valleys. “‘O give thanks to the LORD, for he is gooood,’” Reverend McAndrews read from Psalm 136. His voice grew louder and the pitch higher until the word Lord, where he paused and let it fall off to a low, soft, long, concluding gooood. We echoed, “‘For his steadfast love endures for ever.’” After repeating it twenty-six times, what I thought everlasting was the psalm itself.
I did not question the psalmist’s message until I was nine and Matt was fifteen and we crossed a crevasse of pain. It took struggling through that jagged blackness of doubt and fear for the girl in the balcony to finally consider the words, and to really connect with the man in the pulpit and the woman at the organ.
My mother looked just like Jackie Kennedy. I don’t know if our former First Lady could play the organ, but my mother could not, despite the expectations of the elders of BS Pres. (Such an unfortunate acronym, but one this preacher’s kid enjoyed flaunting.) The organ faced forward, so my mother’s back was toward the congregation, which could have been symbolic considering her reluctance to play the role. Though my mother’s keyboard technique lacked beauty and grace, her speech did not. My mother’s voice was soft and gentle, full of intricate words she shared, always believing in expanding her children’s vocabulary at every opportunity. Nothing about her projected strength, but I would learn she had enough for all of us.
The summer before I turned ten was idyllic—until August 3, 1970. At the time I didn’t know what that word meant, not having heard it in a sermon or one of Mom’s vocabulary lessons. But it perfectly describes a time when I thought the world was safe and good things lasted forever. What I couldn’t know then, but try to remember now, is how fragile and delicate are the moments we most treasure, and if they break into pieces, repairing means seeing anew.
We rushed upward into the night sky, lifted by an unseen force. The higher we climbed, the cooler the air, the fainter the smell of hot dogs and cotton candy, and the softer the music from the merry-go-round below. With my arms outstretched, I traced a wide curve, embracing a crescent of beach fires, twinkling lights, and dimming pink sunset. Birch Bay was black, nearly invisible, the people now dots on the landscape. I leaned against Dad’s shoulder and stared up at the stars. Then we crested the top and plunged downward.
After a dizzying return up, the Ferris wheel slowed and then stopped, leaving us hanging in the sky.
“What happened?” I asked.
“They’re letting people off at the bottom. The ride’s over.”
Now with each lurch we measured time; my stomach sagged in disappointment. I could see my brothers swinging below at ten o’clock. Kicking my legs up and down, I tried to make our carriage rock back and forth. Was it really over? Each time the wheel stopped, more riders dismounted. And then it was our turn, and the man unlocked our lap bar. As we left the amusement park, I turned to see the carriages filled and beginning another circle, like hands on a clock.
“Joel rode the Ferris wheel,” I told my mom as we returned to our campfire.
“I rode with Matt,” Joel burst out, looking up proudly. Joel’s “wiff” instead of “with” always made me smile. But not Mom, who turned to Dad and gave him a scolding look.
“I’m fifteen, Mom,” Matt reminded her, his arm around Joel.
“But he’s only three,” Mom answered.
“It’s safe, Renee. There was a safety bar across his waist,” Dad explained. “You worry too much.”
I gazed back at the Ferris wheel spinning in the distance, a moving spiderweb in the sky. Mom dug into the grocery bag and pulled out marshmallows, Hershey’s chocolate, and graham crackers.
After s’mores and storytelling, Joel fell asleep, cradled in Dad’s arms at our campfire on the beach. We lay in a circle, our feet to the fire like spokes, our heads pillowed against beached driftwood, the sound of the waves lapping the shore. The air was warm and still, and I wished we could stay there forever. Washington felt so far from Ohio and yet so familiar beneath the same canopy of stars.
“Vega, Antares, Altair, Arcturus. And there’s Polaris—the North Star,” Dad said, outlining the dotted sky. “‘He determines the number of the stars, he gives to all of them their names,’” Dad added gently, not in his minister voice. Poking the fire with his stick, Matt kicked up a hot flame. Sparks sputtered and crackled.
“Cygnus is the swan.” Dad traced his fingers along a band of dots, connecting stars into shapes. I blurred my eyes, trying to see a swan, though it looked more like an umbrella. “And that is Pegasus, the winged horse.” He drew what looked like a hairy spider. I could only find the Big Dipper.
The warmth from the fire made me blissfully drowsy and I closed my eyes. Mom played with my hair, running her fingers through it before letting it trickle downward, just how I liked it.
“Gossamer,” she said softly.
“What’s that?” Matt asked.
“Something delicate.” Mom closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. “Sort of how this night feels.”
“Gossamer …,” I whispered, trying it on for size.
The next day at Birch Bay, after digging for clams, building sand castles, and splashing in tide pools, we headed back to our car, strolling the remaining crescent of beach. Joel picked up a long piece of seaweed tethered to a rubbery ball and dragged it behind him, leaving a trail in the sand. He was slowing, the time for his afternoon nap long past. Now the tide was coming in and we were running out of beach, so we shifted to the narrow strip of sidewalk between the surf and the road, the tide pressing us on the right, cars inching along the road on our left. Whenever we strayed too close to the road, Mom gently nudged us back toward the beach.
“Go to Bossy Cow!” Joel whined.
“We’re not there, Joel,” Dad said. “We can’t stop now. Just keep walking, buddy.” The Bossy Cow, a diner at the tip of the crescent, served the best shakes. Thick, muddy chocolate milkshakes Joel could never finish.
We walked in slow motion, in no hurry to get anywhere, Joel’s pace becoming ours. Even now I wish we had stopped. Like an unwound clock. Time never ticking forward.
“Bossy Cow?” Joel asked again.
“No Bossy Cow, but how about some boats?” I looked to Mom, hoping she’d agree with my suggestion.
“Oh, all right,” she said, seeing Joel clap his hands in excitement. Joel and I had discovered the diamond-shaped caramels covered in white chocolate with an almond for a sail. We crossed the street to the Sea Shoppe to buy half a pound. Matt wanted to play in the game rooms, but Dad said it was time to get back to our campsite. I savored a boat, first licking off the white chocolate, then relishing and finally chewing the caramel.
“Carry me, Matt,” Joel asked, dropping his r’s but not his chocolate sailboat.
“C’mon, Joel, just a little farther.” I pulled him along by his wrist, avoiding the sticky candy in his fist. “Mom, Joel’s tired. He’s too slow.”
“Matt, please?” Joel begged, his polite “pwease” making his whining endearingly effective. “Mattie, Mattie.”
“Hop on board, little buddy.” Matt bent low so Joel could jump on his back. They looked like such a pair, Joel’s head resting on Matt’s shoulder, his arms around Matt’s neck.
“He’s going to fall asleep and let go,” Mom warned as Joel’s eyes closed.
Dad stepped forward. “I’d better carry him.”
“Me and Matt.” Joel yawned.
“C’mon, Dad, he wants me,” Matt argued. “I won’t let anything happen to him.”
“Mattie, Mattie,” Joel agreed sleepily.
But Dad pried him off Matt’s back and stretched out his arms to lift Joel high in the air, Joel’s back blocking the sun’s rays. Dad’s smile was warm and his eyes so tender. He lowered Joel as if he couldn’t resist giving him a hug. Joel’s legs wrapped around Dad and his arms circled his neck, his head nestled beneath Dad’s chin.
I’ve heard that people block out traumatic moments, but I remember it all. The line of cars was moving slowly, like a processional, until a blue Chevy lurched free and swerved off the road. In the filmy haze of that afternoon, it almost looked like the car was heading straight toward us in slow motion.
My mother screamed and pushed me out of the way and I stumbled backward, but with enough time to see the car hit Dad, tossing Joel into the windshield and away. Then all I could see was the car.
I remember the Washington license plate and the broken windshield with spidery veins across the glass.
I remember the driver, a woman who jumped out of the blue car, screaming, “I’m so sorry. I just don’t know what happened. I missed the brake. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry!”
I remember my mother screaming, “Where is he?”
I remember people helping my dad up. I remember him walking, then wincing in pain as his leg buckled beneath him. He stood again and hobbled, searching for Joel.
I jumped up and ran for my dad.
“Abby!” Mom screamed as she crossed the line of cars now at a standstill. I caught up to Dad and followed him, gripping the back of his T-shirt. He staggered toward a group huddled around something on the road. Everybody was pushing Dad away until he yelled, “I’m a minister!”—his ticket to join the circle—and then they all just let him through.
Matt was already there with the group, his fists balled up against his sides. He was shaking his head.
“Let me through! Let me through!” I could hear my mother scream. I turned to see someone holding her back. There was something we weren’t supposed to see. Something Matt had already seen.
Joel lay on his back. He looked asleep but so different from the way he slept on the beanbag chair in our family room at home. There was blood on the road. Was it Joel’s? I knelt down as my dad touched Joel’s damp forehead and whispered to him. I wanted Dad to make Joel open his eyes.
“He’s bleeding,” Mom moaned as she burst through. “Where’s he bleeding? Where’s he hurt?”
I studied the growing pool of blood and realized it was coming from Joel’s ear. Matt stared as if straight through Joel to the pavement below.
“Somebody call an ambulance! He’s bleeding!” Mom cried as she stood to plead with the growing audience. And then Mom saw the woman from the blue car. “You hit my son! It was you! You hit my son!”
Dad grabbed Mom’s arm to keep her close, away from this woman who stood crying, clutching the hand of her little girl. Maybe it was the sight of the little girl holding her mother’s leg, sobbing in fear. Mom turned and knelt back down.
“He needs a doctor,” she whispered.
“Don’t touch him!” Dad warned and Mom gasped. “Not yet,” he said more gently. “Just don’t move him right now.” Dad put his hand on her shoulder.
Mom caressed Joel’s arm and brushed the hair from his forehead. “Oh Joel,” she said, crying. “It’s all right. Mommy’s here. It’s going to be all right. Open your eyes, Joel.” As she pulled her stained hand away, I saw the blood she couldn’t feel.
The strap on Joel’s overalls had slipped off his shoulder, and I pushed it back up. Then I remembered I wasn’t supposed to touch him. Where was the ambulance? Dad took off his T-shirt and put it over Joel, as if he needed it on that warm summer day.
Right then I knew something was very wrong. “He’ll be okay, won’t he, Dad?” I asked.
“He’s my son,” Dad said to someone hovering over us. But not to me. Still, I was satisfied with the answer. Dad had always taken care of everything. “We have to do something,” Dad said, his voice hazy, as if a cloud had suddenly covered the warmth of that day. He looked around at the growing congregation. “We have to get him to a hospital.”
“He’s not breathing, John. I don’t think he’s breathing!” Mom exclaimed as Dad bent over and listened.
“Is there a doctor?” Matt yelled and then ran through the growing crowd, even stopping at the cars stalled in the train of traffic. “We need a doctor! Are you a doctor?” Matt banged on car windows as he ran farther and farther away from us.
“Heal him, God,” Dad said softly. I thought Dad should remind God that He had a Son, too. I really wanted to pray with him, but the only thing I could remember from Sunday school was the Twenty-Third Psalm, which began with “The Lord is my shepherd” and had that scary line about the valley of the shadow of death.
A fire truck, the sheriff, then finally an ambulance arrived in quick succession. A woman with red hair kept repeating, “He was in his dad’s arms.” One officer took her aside to question her while another officer talked to the woman from the blue car. The men from the white ambulance broke our circle and dispersed the crowd, then huddled over Joel, blocking our view. Not a minute later, one man stepped back and announced, “He’s got to go now.“
“I want to go with him,” Dad said as a man in a uniform placed Joel on a cot in the back of the wagon.
“Don’t leave me, Dad!” I cried, choking on the forgotten melting caramel.
“I’ve got to go,” Dad said as he released my grip.
“I’m going, too,” Mom cried.
“Your husband’s been hit,” one officer said, pointing to Dad, who stood with his weight on one leg. “He needs to go with your son, ma’am,” the man explained. “You can ride in the sheriff’s car with her.” He pointed at me. Mom stood, slack-mouthed, as they helped Dad into the ambulance.
“Where’s Matt?” I asked, suddenly feeling strangely alone. I looked across the faces and trail of cars. “Where’s Matt?” I repeated more urgently. “Wait for Matt!” I screamed, but nobody was listening.
“Where are they taking him?” Mom asked, and then I realized we didn’t know the way. We were strangers here. And where was Matt?
“St. Luke’s,” the officer said, “Bellingham.” But where was that? They slammed shut the back of the ambulance.
As the siren screamed and the wheels turned, I saw Matt running to catch the ambulance, knowing he had been left behind.
And suddenly it was over and they were gone, leaving Mom and Matt and me standing there in the summer sun, by the side of the road, which was so very hot on our bare feet.
I’ve always wondered if Joel heard our prayers as we stood over him on that sidewalk.
When we arrived at the hospital, we ran into the emergency room looking for Dad. A nurse at the main desk took us to a waiting room, where we stood around until a doctor arrived. Mom studied his face and then slowly shook her head as she backed away from him.
“No, no, no!” she said, louder and louder, as if she could make it not true.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. McAndrews.” And then the doctor turned to Matt and me. His eyes looked sad.
“No!” Mom cried out. “Don’t say that. He was just here! He was fine! The car wasn’t going that fast!” Her voice pleaded as she gasped for breath.
“His head struck the windshield and then the road,” the doctor continued. “The brain injury was more than he could survive. He never suffered,” he added, as if that would make us feel better.
Matt slipped out the door and I didn’t know if I should go to him or stay with Mom. Mom sat down and began to sob so loudly I couldn’t hear myself cry.
Joel is dead, Joel is dead, Joel is dead. I couldn’t believe it. I started shivering, and I couldn’t make myself stop. Was it my wet bathing suit or was the hospital so cold? I smelled like salt water. My hands tingled and I shook them back to life.
“Where’s my husband?” Mom’s voice was paper thin.
“They’re treating his leg,” the doctor answered.
Mom stood shakily and staggered. I rushed to steady her.
“Oh, Abby.” She wrapped her arms around me. I held her and she held on to me, and I never wanted to let go of her again.
The doctor waited and then escorted Mom into the second room down the hallway. He talked with Mom and Dad in Joel’s room while Matt and I sat outside the door on folding chairs. I could feel wet sand grind against smooth metal. When I took Matt’s hand, he didn’t pull away.
I watched the sterile black-and-white clock on the wall, the second hand circling and the minute hand shifting almost imperceptibly. I could anticipate each subtle movement. How long would they stay in there?
When the minute hand had moved more than seventy-two times and I had stopped counting, the door opened.
A doctor pushed a man in a wheelchair. It was my dad in a blue robe, but not really my dad because he didn’t seem to notice us. I don’t know what he was staring at. I started to say something, then closed my mouth.
“Dad,” Matt said as he slid his hand from mine and stood. But Dad didn’t turn. At last Matt put his hand on Dad’s shoulder and Dad turned to look. That face is the one I don’t want to remember. A rope of fear tightened across my chest. I could hold Mom’s sadness, but Dad’s grief was overwhelming. He seemed broken in a way I wasn’t sure could be fixed. The clock behind Dad now read 4:27, and then the hands blurred with my tears as I watched them wheel Dad down the hall.
I wanted the day to be over. But then again, if the day was over, my brother was really dead. Today Joel had been alive. If only we could go backward, our afternoon would be morning and we’d wake up and Joel would say, “Get up and play with me, Bee!” and this would not be happening.
When we returned to the cabin, Mom rummaged through our suitcases, laying out Joel’s clothing on the bed. The little suit from the wedding, another pair of overalls, a few shirts and shorts.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know.”
Neither did I. What was she doing?
“They asked what we wanted him to wear …” Her voice drifted off. I picked up the suit and threw it back in the suitcase. Definitely not that. Then Matt removed the shirt with the scratchy tag on the back. We were left with a T-shirt and Joel’s blue overalls.
That night we went to bed with our clothes on. Now there were just four of us. This was our family. I closed my eyes and then quickly opened them, staring at the ceiling for so long my eyes felt dry. My stomach growled. We hadn’t eaten since the candy, but I wasn’t hungry. My mind would not stop. Oh, to sleep and never wake up.
“You’re having a nightmare!” Matt whispered as he shook me awake later that night. “No!” I cried out in a strange voice, the memory of yesterday rushing back. I had fallen asleep? I actually fell asleep even though my little brother had just died? How could I have fallen asleep?
In the other room my mother wept, a soft, haunting moan, accompanied by the unfamiliar sound of my dad’s low, muffled sob. Whenever my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see Matt on the cot nearby, his eyes wide open, staring straight ahead. Somehow I wanted it to be a shared secret that we were all awake. As if that could be a secret.
Dad wouldn’t leave Joel in Washington, so the congregation sent money to have Joel’s body transported by train back to Ohio, and Dad would ride with the body. Mom had to drive Matt and me all the way home. Our same bags were loaded into the same purple station wagon, ready to return on the same roads, yet nothing was the same.
I needed to say good-bye to Dad, but he’d left early that morning. It seemed Dad couldn’t leave Washington fast enough, but how could he go without saying good-bye? Suddenly good-byes seemed so much more important. Gossamer. Life was so delicate.
Our car felt empty. Mom in the front, Matt in the middle, and me lying in the back. Matt never talked, and I had yet to see him cry. Mom was silent, too, her eyes locked on the road, occasionally blinking hard as if to stay awake, or sometimes to hold back the tears. If I could have read their thoughts, I wouldn’t have. My sadness was enough for me alone.
“I feel sick,” I said, after two hours on the highway.
“Crawl up here with me and look out the front window,” Mom suggested.
The front seat was Joel’s special place. Joel always sat on her lap or curled at her feet. That was not my place. I climbed into the middle seat and sat next to Matt, then cranked the window open and hung my head out like a dog.
I reached forward and flicked on the radio only to hear about a war I didn’t understand. All those unfamiliar words and acronyms that didn’t want to be explained, Cambodia and Kent State and Tet Offensive and North and South Vietnam and POWs and MIA. Those casualties were too far away to comprehend. Especially when my own battles seemed more real.
When we hit eastern Washington, the temperature soared to one hundred and four degrees, and we were so miserable we had to peel ourselves off the sticky vinyl seats. We rolled the windows up and sweated until we were wet, then rolled them down so the wind cooled us. “It’s evaporation,” Matt explained dully. Was it this hot for Dad in the train with Joel’s casket?
We didn’t ask, “How much farther?” or “When are we going to get there?” After all, would getting home make anything better?
This was the end of our first family vacation. With Dad’s sister getting married and Grandpa’s heart attack, the timing was right for Dad to go home. I had looked forward to standing under the Peace Arch, where I could straddle the border of Canada and America and say I had stood on foreign soil. But life had turned from happy to sad as easily as heading west and returning east. We had left for a wedding and were returning home to a funeral.
I imagined how the journey would be if Joel were still with us. I considered his toes tickling the rear window as we lay in the back of the station wagon. In Montana, when we drove by a bear and a baby cub in the forest, I wondered what Joel would have said. I did a double take when I saw a small boy in overalls with a diaper-fattened bottom, thrown in the air and caught by his daddy. In the Dakotas, we stopped at a roadside park, but I didn’t want to play on the swing set. There were too many preschoolers. When we bought groceries in Wisconsin, I instinctively looked for Cap’n Crunch with Crunch Berries and Hostess CupCakes. But by the time we hit Ohio, when we returned to the car, I stopped counting to check if we were all there.
It was all about split seconds. One followed by another. And we couldn’t make them go backward. If we had known, we never would have gone. We would have unpacked the station wagon and said, “Not this year.” Or we could have played longer on the beach, or we could have skipped buying the candy. I could have stopped complaining for the length of a heartbeat. I could have held Joel’s wrist a split second longer.
I thought about that a lot, and it made me wonder about God. And about what He stops and what He doesn’t. And I know it’s not because He can’t. My dad preached about a good and loving God who can do anything, but now I didn’t know what that meant.
I wish someone had put away his toys. The blocks set out like roads running through the living room were lonely without his beeping and buzzing cars. His color crayon drawings of Curious George covering the coffee table were silent without his narration.
Matt ran up the stairs and I heard a door slam and music blare. Mom walked through the house as if seeing it for the first time. I followed her path until she stopped at the back door, where she knelt down and bowed her head. Was she praying? I stood frozen in sunlight.
“It’s his fingerprints.” She traced a circle in the air in front of the glass door. “All over the glass. Look. It’s Joel.”
Smudges everywhere. I could picture Joel standing at the door waiting for Dad, waiting to call out, “Daddy’s home!” as he pressed his nose and hands against the window. No warm circle of breath remained, just fingerprints everywhere.
Mom took charge of planning the memorial, alone. Her mind was focused. She gathered pictures of Joel—as many as she could find for a third child. She looked for color. Matt’s and my childhood pictures are black and white, but everything about Joel was in color.
On the day of the funeral, I wore yellow and sat in the balcony. If it were July 12 instead of August 12, 1970, Joel would be with me drawing pictures. Someone said they’d never seen a casket so small. I’d seen dozens of funerals because when Dad delivered a eulogy, Mom played the organ, and we sat in the back pew. I was probably more prepared for a funeral than anybody, but I’d never seen one for a child or for someone I loved. This time, it was my family surrounded by men in black suits and women with quiet voices.
I spied my best friend, Rita, and her mom, Miss Patti, and that made me want to cry. I scanned the pews looking at all the people who loved Joel and cared about us and could find almost everyone. But Miss Mary Frances and Uncle Troy were noticeably absent.
Uncle Troy is not really my uncle, but that’s what we call him. He lives three doors away and is married to Miss Mary Frances, and don’t ask me why we don’t call her Aunt Mary Frances. She’s my piano teacher and Uncle Troy is the head usher, a huge, imposing man with thick, black-framed glasses and a broad chest that makes him look like a bear. But I think he’s the sweetest man at Bethel Springs Presbyterian because he gives Matt and me a round peppermint candy every time he hands us our bulletins.
In the dog calendar I hang over my bed, I renamed the dogs with the names of people I know. The big old Great Dane is Uncle Troy and the wiry dachshund is Miss Mary Frances. They make quite a pair.
The kids in the neighborhood are kind of scared of Miss Mary Frances. They think she’s too particular about her plants and crabby about our noise. Mom lovingly refers to her as eccentric or peculiar. She was once the junior high band director, handing out brass instruments to the girls, claiming they were gifted with a high tolerance for pain. “Childbirth,” she explained as if she herself had delivered three or four kids. She’s tough and demanding, but I know her differently from all the Sundays I spent in the church library, hidden beneath her worktable, curled up with a book at her feet, when I was supposed to be in Sunday school or church. The Israelites worshipped in a tabernacle tent, but my church tent, a fellowship hall tablecloth, hid me from anyone who might turn in a kid playing hooky. Where was she when I needed her?
The organist was a stranger, hired from out of town so that on this rare occasion Mom could sit in a pew.
The pallbearers filed in, moving the box slowly to the front, and I found Uncle Troy holding one end. I wondered if the box felt heavy or whether Joel was now even lighter than his thirty-one pounds. Joel would want out. My heart raced. No box should be that small. Someone had asked if I wanted to draw a picture or write a note to slip inside, as if I wanted to think of Joel trapped below the ground with only my shabby artwork or a message he couldn’t read. He wouldn’t like being in a box forever and ever. I secretly hoped Dad had slipped him out of there and put him safely somewhere else. Surely Dad would have known what to do.
The church was warm and my gold polyester jumper felt scratchy. It was all I could do not to roll my knee-highs down to my ankles. I took short, shallow breaths of sticky August air, but the balcony seemed short of good oxygen. What a horrible day for a funeral. Funerals should be in winter. Cold. With snow on the ground. Funerals should be for old people. The whispers of consolation were true, “Nobody should outlive their own child…. He was so young … such a good boy.”
Joel was a good boy. It was Joel who sang the loudest in the preschool choir, dropping his r‘s and l‘s. “Jesus wuvs the wittle ones wike me, me, me. Wittle ones wike me, sat upon His knee …” It was Joel who asked, “Where’s God’s mommy and daddy?” and it was Joel who let go of helium balloons, explaining, “They’re for God.”
The stranger in the pulpit talked about many mansions. Maybe Joel was playing hide-and-go-seek in his. But was anybody else Joel’s age? I hoped he wasn’t lonely.
Sun streamed through the stained-glass window of Jesus, with His pierced hands reaching out toward me and the seven children at His feet. Was Jesus opening His arms to my little brother? Was Joel running to Him?
I used to check how many kids were in the window, to see if anyone had run away. But I didn’t know why anybody would leave someone who looked so kind. Today I re-counted the children. Though the number stayed the same, it looked like somebody was missing.
A black limousine waited for us. I slipped in behind the driver, who looked like he was paid not to smile. I hoped Matt would climb in after me but Mom followed, sliding her long legs into the roomy interior. Dad and Matt sat in the front. A chain of cars lined up behind us, flicking on their lights as if we’d become separated on the four-mile drive from church to cemetery. No one spoke.
As we drove into Shady Springs Cemetery, I looked out the limousine’s tinted windows to see a green tent and chairs. We emerged from the black car into bright sunlight to find a dark pit. I had never been to a graveside service.
A man I didn’t know said words about a little boy he didn’t know, and I can’t remember any of it. Matt was silent, staring out at the field dotted with tombstones. I could read a few nearby. Millers, Smiths, Hughes, Wilmoths. None of them were our family names until now. Polly, Jonathon, William, Sarah. For some reason it was their first names that made me sad, and I didn’t even know them.
I heard them crank down on a handle, and the little box lowered into the ground. My heartbeat quickened. The box disappeared. Someone passed out a few roses. Joel always picked the neighbors’ roses and brought them to us as gifts. Now we were supposed to give them back. Mom’s hand trembled as she dropped her flower into the hole that swallowed my brother. When she gasped, Matt took her arm. My father stood behind them. He coughed to disguise his groan. Dad looked unfamiliar to me—so old and bent. When it was my turn, I kept my flower. No more death upon death.
Before we went back to the car, Uncle Troy took me aside. I looked around for Miss Mary Frances. Why wasn’t she here? She was more than just my piano teacher; I always thought she considered me the child she never had.
“I have something for you,” Uncle Troy said as he opened his car door to show me a red helium balloon. His big fingers fumbled with the knot until he had the string loosened. Then he handed it to me.
“You know what to do.” He pointed upward. “This one’s for Joel,” he added softly. Together we watched the balloon clear the branches of the great oak tree, rising slowly until it became a dot in the sky, and then nothing.
Our house was filled with families and food and words, but I felt lonely and slipped out the alley gate and into Rita and Miss Patti’s backyard. Rita was my best friend; our houses stood side by side, like twin sisters.
Now Rita and I climbed down beside the house and played the game of Life under her front porch while everyone at my house played death. Through the latticework, I could see the legs of Bethel Springs come and go. Car doors slammed, voices murmured, “Let us know what we can do…. I’ll be over this week…. You need any help … Must be so hard for the kids …,” followed by what I knew to be hugs with the obligatory pat pat pat to signal Let go now.
After most of the guests had left, we still hid out in our fort. Miss Patti’s screen door slapped shut. I heard her support hose scratch together and her shoes squeak above my head as she shuffled along. I was probably supposed to leave, but I didn’t want to.
“You girls want some dinner?” she drawled in her thick chocolate-milk voice after knocking on the side of the house and pausing respectfully.
Rita was a girl of few words. She turned to me, raising her eyebrows. I nodded and she shook her bobbed head as if her mom could see her answer. “We don’t wanna get out, though, Mama,” Rita added, as if reading my mind.
“That’s why I brought it to you!” Miss Patti said, her vowels long and warm.
When I was little, I asked Mom why Miss Patti talked funny, and Mom said she was from the South. At the time I thought that odd because Rita said they came from North Carolina.
Miss Patti bent slightly to slip a plate under the deck and above the latticework. Rita reached back up for our glasses of milk. As Miss Patti shifted her feet, the deck groaned under her weight.
Rita’s mom was fat. Since her name was Patti, there was the inevitable neighborhood rhyming chant Fatty Patti, Fatty Patti. I heard Fatty Patti, Fatty Patti in my head even when I didn’t want to think it. I just hoped I never accidentally called her that.
I even asked Mom for a new word, anything not to call her fat, but Mom wouldn’t play the word game with me unless I told her why. Matt looked up words in the thesaurus and found corpulent and obese. I thought they sounded much worse than fat. Finally he suggested rotund.
But Rita’s mom was not just a little fat, and she wasn’t rotund; she was enormous, and I told her so when I was going on five. It was no surprise to her—neither my observation nor that I would actually tell her. She had been kind enough to take Rita and me to the movies. There were no seats in the theater that fit her, so she brought her wheelchair and scooted up to where I sat on the aisle.
“You’re big,” I said, frowning.
“Yes, I am,” she said very seriously, nodding in agreement.
“I mean, you’re huge,” I continued. Rita leaned forward next to me as if she needed another look at her mom.
“Yes, Abby. I am,” she said as respectfully as if I had asked, “Are you Rita’s mother?” Maybe she sensed I was just a curious four-and-a-half-year-old, or maybe she didn’t want her daughter to lose her best friend. Or maybe she appreciated honesty.
“How’d you get so fat?” I asked, as I opened my box of Dots, pouring out two orange ones for Rita and holding out my empty hand for a trade of her Raisinets. Miss Patti paused and then leaned closer to me as if this was a secret for only the two of us.
“I have a monster gene.”
I paused mid-Raisinet. This was something new. I had never heard of a monster gene. If someone could make being fat sound positive, Miss Patti sure could.
“A monster gene?” I pursued.
“Every once in a while, in my family, one generation has one enormous person,” she continued. “I’m it,” she added matter-of-factly as she picked up her soda. “Seems some of us just grow and grow and grow. Unusually large,” she added before taking a long drink of Coke. I turned to Rita, who shrugged. I tried not to cringe, but the thought of a monster gene growing and growing and growing, blowing up like a balloon, scared me. Miss Patti held out her hand for a Dot.
“Yellow, please.”
“How do they weigh you?” I asked, imagining her teetering on our little bathroom scale.
“Two scales. I put one foot on each.” I looked down at her two swollen feet as I sucked on a red Dot, my favorite. “I just add up the total of the two scales,” she concluded.
“Just how much do you weigh, anyway?”
“Well, let’s see,” she said, studying me before she winked. She seemed less willing to share this part of the secret. “Guess,” she said at last, with a smile. “Just how much do you think, Miss Abigail?”
I had weighed thirty-nine pounds for the last three months. Even when I jumped on the scale I couldn’t get it to stick on forty.
“Seven hundred and thirty-nine thousand pounds,” I blurted out with little calculation. I loved big numbers as much as big people and so I shot high. Miss Patti considered this for a minute, respectfully giving credence to my outlandish guess.
“Well, at last count I weighed four hundred and eighty pounds. I can only hope it’s gone down or I might be half a grand.”
“Hmmm.” I nodded, almost disappointed with the truth. Miss Patti grinned and put her arm around me as Mary Poppins began. Her hand was as soft as Play-Doh and she smelled of pine like her kitchen. Oh, how I loved her. “I think you’re more than half grand,” I said with a smile.
Apparently Rita did not have the monster gene. I used to check her daily, but Rita remained one of the shortest, smallest, and skinniest kids in our school. And if Rita was embarrassed of Miss Patti’s size, she never let on. Maybe because in so many ways Miss Patti was the kind of mom everybody needed.
Today she was just what I needed. As well as her offering of macaroni and cheese.
“You girls want anything else?” she asked from above. I looked at Rita and shook my head.
“No, Mama, we’re fine,” Rita answered. I swallowed half the cup of ice-cold milk and took a bite of the mac and cheese. Miss Patti’s macaroni and cheese is full of real cheese and butter, and it slides down your throat in warm and comforting gulps. I haven’t tasted better macaroni and cheese.
“You girls thinking of having a sleepover?” Miss Patti suggested. My eyes went big and we nodded to each other.
I pointed to my house and shrugged my shoulders.
“Could you call her mom?” my spokesperson asked, vocalizing our shared wish. And I began hoping beyond all hope that Miss Patti would say yes and convince my mom to say yes and give me the gift of one night away from everything Joel. One night away from the longing to remember and the fight to forget.
Mom had painted the beadboard ceiling of the porch a pale blue to look like the sky. Lying on the porch swing, I surveyed her world without clouds. Nearby, a few old quilts hung on a rack for cooler evenings and brisk mornings when Mom and Dad did their checking in with one another. That’s what they called it when they had their private chats on the porch. They hadn’t been checking in with each other for some time.
Back and forth, back and forth, the swing swayed. Five more minutes at the candy shop. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked for candy. Did I walk too fast? If I had held his hand, then maybe it would have been me and I wouldn’t be here today.
Or maybe, worst of all, maybe it happened because there were days I wished Joel had never been born. I stopped rocking and sat up, nausea overcoming me.
Guilt is even worse than fear. Guilt gnaws and makes me wonder if I have the flu. But I knew I couldn’t take medicine or hug the toilet and have my mother massage my head with a cool wet rag. I was in this by myself.
If one bad thing can happen, I knew we had to be careful. Dad left every day for a few hours, running somewhere all by himself no matter the weather. Was he safe? I didn’t like the boys Matt was hanging around with. Would he get hurt? And when Mom got in the car, I wanted to go with her in case something happened. I didn’t want to be left alone.
Rita ran up the front steps holding an envelope I immediately recognized to be the annual school letter. I usually counted down the days until school ended each spring and then ironically the days until it began each fall. Then I begged for a new outfit and all new school supplies and couldn’t wait to find out which teacher I had. Not this year.
“I got Mrs. Clevenger!” Rita said, waving the envelope proudly. “Who do you have?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think Mom’s gotten the mail.”
“I’ll get it,” she announced as she ran back down the front walk and opened our mailbox. I knew I had Clevenger or Simpson. More important to me was whether Rita was in my class. “Can I open it?” she called out, waving the envelope like a banner, her excitement so unfamiliar. This was as enthusiastic as Rita got, her smile surrounded by her new haircut, which looked like someone had stuck a bowl on her head and cut around it.
She didn’t even give it to me; she just ripped it open in our front yard. I think that might be illegal. “Clevenger!” she called out. “We’re in the same class!” She ran back up the front walk and sat down beside me on the swing. “See, here’s where it says it. Clevenger,” she said, pointing at the name as if I needed proof.
“Okay.” I smiled slightly. At least she was excited.
“Aren’t you glad?” she asked. “We’re in the same class. Just like in first grade!”
“I’m just not quite ready for school,” I tried to explain.
“I don’t like it when summer ends either,” she sympathized.
Rita folded the letter, put it back in its envelope, and handed it to me. I felt like she wanted to ask a question, but she didn’t know what it was; and I wanted to help her out, but I didn’t know the question and probably not the answer either.
Four days before the dreaded first day, Mom went up and down the grocery aisles of Food Mart and I followed in her shadow. Her hollowed eyes seemed too full to hold more sadness. She mechanically pushed the grocery cart past rows and rows of food, up and down the aisles, her heels clicking on the gray linoleum. I looked for a good time to tell her what was bothering me, but I never found it. When we got in the checkout line, Mom’s grim stare suddenly turned to grief, and I looked around to figure out what had happened or who or what she’d seen.
“I don’t need this stuff,” she whispered to me, biting back the tears, her hands outstretched over the groceries, her fingers holding air and quivering. She looked shocked. “I was just shopping like usual. That’s all. I didn’t think,” she said, as if trying to convince me. Mom was fragile. She was falling apart, and I didn’t know how to help her.
Mom backed out of the line, then pushed her cart behind a rack of bread, hidden, as if unsure where to go next. She grew flustered, blushing as she studied the cart’s contents.
anymore