I threw myself on the bed, and all I could think to say was, "Damn you, Aleese! Go back to your little hell and quit trying to stew me also!"
"Who's Aleese?" Tyler sat down facing me.
"My mother."
"That's right. She died?"
I could argue that. "She's hateful. She's worse now than when she was alive."
And as that would make no sense to him, I could barely believe it when his hand came down to pet my hair instead of him bolting out of here to join the sane-and-normal club downstairs.
"You wanna swap mom horror stories?" he asked enthusiastically. "My mom's in jail for treason. She stole secrets from her office in North Jersey and sold them to the North Koreans. For cold cash."
With that, I stopped. He seemed to like when I rolled to my side to stare, and he stroked my hair less hesitantly. His face was so scabby. And yet he was smiling. Or trying to. The smile wandered around his face and trembled worse when he added, "I turned her in."
I had forgotten about his mom.
I reached for his hand, though mine was a shaky, snotty mess, and I sent all my sympathies into lacing my fingers awkwardly through his. He squeezed my hand, his scabs leaving sandpapery feelings on my palm and between some fingers.
"Your turn," he said.
"I ... she..." If it was hard to talk about her under normal circumstances, this was impossible. I finally managed, "Morphine addict."
"Ouch."
"She hated me."
"I bet not."
"No, she did. You've no idea. And now she's haunting me"
He nodded, trying, I think, not to look blown away. He rattled our hands a little and said casually, "Is she in here right now?"
I looked over to the other side of the bed. I didn't dare answer that. Or I thought I didn't, until he shrugged. "Sometimes in the middle of the night, I hear my mom wailing at me, screaming in these fits of betrayal. Her voice just rolls into the wind from federal prison and finds me, forty miles away, across a river and a harbor. Nobody would believe me, but it wakes me up."
I'd almost forgotten who he was, how important he was, how talented and incredibly brave he had been. He was so honest, so ready to be humble. But it was hard to look at his sore face and forget for more than a moment. I wanted some control over my answer so I wouldn't appall him, but I couldn't find any, and the truth just splattered out.
"Yes, she's in here."
"Where?"
"She's lying on the bed beside me, crying into my pillow." I didn't dare look. I knew she was there. "She does everything I would not expect, and right now, she's got the audacity to try to make me feel sorry for her, when she has spent weeks playing these horrid tricks—"
I stopped, but only because I'd gotten really loud. I heard Scott's sneaker tread on the stairs, finally, and I was such a combination of relieved and mortified that I jammed my face into the pillow and let my sobs be buried there. With one blurring eye, I saw him standing in the doorway, Marg's bag dangling from his fingers loosely while he talked easily to Tyler. I was wigging out, and Mr. Never Shakes had asked to bear witness and assess the damage.
Tyler stood and said something in a mutter.
"She's switching medications," Scott said in a low voice, circling his fingers around one ear to imply I was half drug withdrawal, half silly school girl crazy enough to think the teacher actually had the hots for me. He added, "Thanks, Tyler."
Scott had often taken our vitals for the nurses as part of his stay-busy routine at St. Ann's. And he chatted in his softest and kindest tone while finding my pulse, taking my blood pressure. I held my nose with my opposite hand, thinking it would keep me from crying, but it just turned me into a pressure cooker while he pretended to ignore it.
"Look. I had some serious, big, bad names in high school, of which Heartbreak was one I am not proud of. Still, I've been on the receiving end a couple of times. It doesn't feel great. I know."
What the bloody hell. My heartbreak had only to do with betraying him, but if I let go of my nose at this point, he'd be struck with a T-shirt full of snot, and I held on for dear life.
"If it's any consolation to you, that guy's life is basically over tomorrow. They're downstairs organizing a raid right now. He will rot in jail until he dies, cut off from his money, cut off from everything good in life that his massive brain could have gotten him. That ought to do something for you. Most people who break hearts simply get to move on and break the next heart that—"
He stopped and rolled his eyes, as he now had the thermometer halfway to my mouth, and my nose holding was creating a roadblock. He handed me a tissue with the free hand. I managed to catch the explosion without tainting him, but it was my first stellar movement all night.
He read the thermometer, shrugged, and hit the nurse's button. "You want some synthetic lights-out? You've got an allowance for a sedative, in case the drug withdrawal is causing too much sleep loss."
To sleep and forget all of this for a while sounded like a great escape. Aleese poked me in the back, still sounding weepy. "You want to do like I always used to do?"
"No. Thanks..."
Marg appeared. "I was coming anyway. Tyler just knocked on my door and said your mother is giving you problems again."
I liked the way he'd put it. Scott stood up, talked to her quietly about my vitals being good, considering, and stopped in the doorway, looking helpless.
"Hey. I'm right next door," he said, and when I didn't respond, added, "I mean it."
I was too ripped up to know what he meant and only imagined myself diving under his blankets so he could protect me from the heartbreak of another man. Something was wrong with that picture. And with what Marg said next.
"Yesterday afternoon, I encouraged you to listen to that voice of your mother."
"You said you thought it was my voice," I corrected her.
"Well, let's find out. I'll sit here with you. I'll put my arms around you. You just listen to the voice."
And so I tried. Marg's arms at first felt invasive, but as minutes passed I warmed to them—I felt disoriented but not threatened. And it seemed all Aleese wanted to do was cry at first, which was so out of character. And then she spoke.
"You are my daughter. You need to forgive me."
I can't.
"You need to forgive me—for what it will do for you. Not for me. For the greater good."
Greater good of what? And why don't you ever apologize for my years of enduring you?
She didn't answer. At least not those questions. She picked up my hand. My hand remained on the bed, yet I could see only a shadowy image of my hand laced with hers. And I could feel it.
She asked, "Do you want to love me?"
She didn't say that she loved me. But it was something I could suddenly sense, that filled me like a warm white flame spreading outward from my center. It felt strange, and yet, somehow, very familiar.
You're my mother. What do you think?
"I'm asking you, then, to do one more thing. It won't be easy. Just be totally certain you are ready..."
FORTY-SIX
OWEN EBERMAN
TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2002
1:05 A.M.
TV ROOM
A WHILE AFTER WE LEFT THE PARLOR for the TV room, we heard the door slam and Cora take off up the stairs crying. I stood up in alarm, already feeling awful about having been kicked out of there—too awful to sleep. It had kind of made me realize I had more in common with my brother than I'd been realizing. He'd been saying he needed a job. I'd been saying I needed a calling. I just couldn't hack violence. I guessed Cora couldn't either.
"Don't," Rain said, lifting her head up off the couch, where she'd been lying on her stomach. "There's somebody with her ... one of the secret guys. Maybe they're still telling secrets."
"Why aren't you all stirred up?" I asked, dropping back down. "You got kicked out of that room, too."
"Because I want to be a gym teacher. I want to be a mom. I don't need to be a hero."
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"Rain." I couldn't help myself. "That sounds so ... dull."
She eyed me defensively. I don't think she exactly liked being kicked out of there either, so her response was harsh. "How are you going to spend your life? Striking matches?"
Ouch. She was talking about the candles I lit at St. Ann's, an old habit of Mom's. After she died, I took it up. It had been hard, trying to put myself in terrorists' shoes and think that maybe they had a rotten home life or something. It was not a journey that I could describe to anyone, even Dan Hadley, who had cleared his throat and shifted around in his seat when I told him I lit candles for them, too. He had said, "Maybe you should just forgive them in your mind and not leave the evidence down in St. Ann's chapel for everyone else to have to deal with."
Maybe he was right. So, when I came here, I kept my thoughts but didn't strike matches to them. I hardly ever doubted I had done the right thing.
"That is so not nice, Rain."
"I'm sorry. It's just that, you being the nicest guy I know—that's not something that's very helpful to everyone right now." She waved her hand everywhere, to imply all the people suddenly staying in this house. We'd passed Marg on our way in here, taking Mr. Steckerman's and Mr. Tiger's overnight bags from the foyer to the third floor in the elevator.
"Do you know how hard it is to be the nicest guy you know and take more flack for it than any guy you know?"
"You don't take that much flack," she said.
"If I were totally saying everything I think, I would take a lot more than I do. I wish for an apocalypse. I want to erase this world and start all over again. Yeah, I don't care if I'm dead in this world, so long as I'm alive in the next one. I don't want to chase down these guys. I don't want to have anything to do with them. I don't care. They're not my problem. God keeps good records."
She laid her cheek on the back of the couch. I got under her skin every time I said I didn't care how long I lived. I turned the volume up and the show came back on, but she hadn't moved. I turned my aching back so I could face her and plopped my cheek on the backrest, too. A smile was spreading across her mouth that she was fighting. I sensed a session coming with pseudopsychologist.
The laugh squirted out her nose. "Your teeth are so white."
Oh ... God. I hid them under my lips and ran my tongue over them, trying to wear them down. The ornery grin stayed plastered across her face. In her mind, it would now be her job to get me to smile. I straightened out and looked back at the TV but bit my lips just in case she struck on something. I didn't think it was possible. It was late.
"I ever tell you about the time Dempsey let one rip in the music room?"
Not nearly good enough. Dempsey farted constantly.
"Leddie Wiley was in there. You know, Little Miss Concert Choir?"
Headie Leddie. Weedy Wiley. Wiley the Pot Smokin' Smiley. Leddie had a slew of names. I'd always wondered what Leddie stood for. The girl could sing rock opera.
"Mm-hm."
"She has perfect pitch. She told him what note he just farted, and when nobody believed her, she struck it on the piano, and it was the exact note. I was in there."
"Mm."
"It was something weird like ... F-sharp below middle C."
"Mm."
I grinned but didn't spread my lips. I hoped that meant we both won. But she didn't see it that way. She kept on me, "Oh yeah. When I washed my hair this afternoon, I took your shower-hose suggestion."
I grabbed my lips quickly and held on.
"I can't believe you even inspired me to try that, you dumbwad. I sneaked it out of the handle, and the pressure was way strong, and first thing I got was my sore pinkie. So, I went, 'Yyyow!' and let go, and it went wild. Like a runaway snake. I got the walls, ceiling, toilet roll, medicine cabinet, box of tissues, every snot rag in the wastebasket, and out the window. Hodji was down there on the grass. He got hit. You could hear him clear to Trinity Falls. 'Marg! Something's leaking in the upstairs girls' bathroom!'"
I slid off the couch and onto the floor so I would be in front of her when I flashed my pearls of whiteness into the carpet. "You're making this up!"
"All true, I swear. She knocked on the door, and I was just getting in my towel, so I opened it. 'Is there a problem?' she asked. 'No, I'm ... good.' But she was staring behind me, and when I turned around, it was, like, raining. The ceiling looked like a thundershower—"
Rain's dad came in to kiss her good night and quiz her on her health, and he found us both rolling around on the floor and laughing our sides off. I guessed their secret meeting had ended. I'm sure it did his heart good to find us like that. He said very little except that there would be a lot of people sleeping here tonight, but not to worry ourselves about it. I didn't. I said to her, "You talking about your five boyfriends, you made me laugh so hard this afternoon that I think I actually burned calories. I ate my biggest meal in weeks."
We both climbed back up on the couch. Slowly.
"Too bad you couldn't stay asleep tonight," she said. "It's always something."
And it is always something. Twenty minutes later, Cora appeared in the doorway, almost making me jump. She looked worse than last night. Marg was with her, looking all too calm, considering the question Cora asked.
"Did you guys take a tape from my room?"
"Um ... yeah," I confessed, and she seemed more tense than mad.
"Cora, what's up?" Rain asked. "Maybe you shouldn't be in those meetings if they—"
"May I have it back, please?" Maybe she was mad.
"Look, I'm sorry," I stammered. "It's just that yesterday Rain's dad told us not to watch any TV, and I ... just grabbed the one on top because ... I thought your mom's other video that we watched in March, the one shot after the Kurdish massacre, was, you know, cool..." I trailed off, because she didn't seem to hear me, which was good. I'd never referred to her mother as cool within her hearing distance.
Marg held her hand out to me. Her other hand was laced through Cora's. "Owen, the tape that was in the VHS today. I stuck it behind the couch. Get it for us, please."
I felt around until I felt it where she pointed and handed it over. My head was shaking back and forth and back and forth. Rain saw this.
"Why don't we all watch it together?" Rain suggested.
Marg shook her head. "I already saw it this afternoon when I was cleaning in here. I know what's on it. She needs a private viewing with a trained professional. I'm sure you understand."
They left. I sat straight up, staring helplessly at nothing. After a while, Rain rubbed my back and brushed her thumb across my face, which made me realize I had a tear running down.
"I shouldn't have given it to them," I said. "I should have destroyed it. She's gonna jump out the window."
"What's on it?"
"You really need to hear that from Cora," I said, shutting my eyes, unable to keep the thing from rolling through my head. Aleese had been filming, and Jeremy was talking to a group of soldiers in late afternoon ... Iraqi, Iranian ... I couldn't tell the difference. She tripped or something, and the camera showed the ground. A rock took up half the screen with a plant growing out from underneath it. Every so often the camera would bump, and after five minutes, it really started to bump. We hadn't even had the volume up. I couldn't imagine what these rowdy soldiers must have sounded like. As if that wasn't enough, one of the perverts actually picked up the camera so he could pan, like, the whole thing. You could barely find Aleese in the middle of all these arms and heads.
The thing was filmed New Year's Day 1986, and Cora's birthday was in early September. It wasn't too hard to figure out where she had come from. I supposed Cora had a right to know. And I supposed watching it was somehow better than hearing the words, like maybe they would never stop echoing through your head. Gang rape gang rape gang rape. I hoped Marg knew how to counsel.
I wouldn't know where to start. I had been thinking of asking for a session with Hollis, just from having seen it. I turned onto my back, staring at
the ceiling and stating my case strongly. "When she does tell you what's on it, Rain, you will understand why I'd like to see this world erased, and we could start over. I am sick of this place. Obviously, that is not an exaggeration. And I am sick of being tortured for my views, by my brother, by you, by our friends in sports who love to call me a fundamentalist simply because I go to Young Life meetings and I believe in an apocalypse and a better place after. You're all a pain, and ... I don't want to be here. I want to be with Mom."
"No, you don't," she argued in a whisper that was somehow right in my face. "It is still a good world, Bubba. I swear it is. I promise it is."
I was sort of back to where I was on the porch the other morning, wondering how to choose between my love of locker-room humor and my future in the seminary. It seemed like I hung in some cosmic balance between choosing Rain and her love of life versus giving up on this world and simply moving on. The nurses at St. Ann's had confessed we could do that. Attitude is everything, they said. This world can be weak and dirty, and yet, some people were so great and strong. I knew Rain had her points, somehow, that she was seeing things that I wasn't, because her strength was all over me, and I was absorbing it slowly and coming out of my spiral while she kissed tears off my face. She was lying square on top of me.
I thought it would kill my hips, but it felt really good. I whispered, "Um. We're swapping bodily fluids."
She sighed impatiently and whispered, "Screw it." That kiss that skid and took off again Saturday totally landed. And felt awesome.
I just relaxed.
FORTY-SEVEN
SCOTT EBERMAN
TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2002
6:46 A.M.
DINING ROOM
I HEARD HODJI TRYING TO BE QUIET on his way down from the third floor around six forty-five, heard Shahzad's mild voice and Hodji shushing him, and that got me into the shower quickly.
Heading downstairs, I noticed no cars outside in the parking area where Mike and Alan always parked, but heard more than a couple of voices floating out of the dining room. When I went in, fourteen people were there, all the familiar faces from Trinity Falls and some others. They'd hidden their cars, maybe feeling the place might be watched.