Page 1 of The Confession

“Rachel’s Confession”

  Part One

  THE CONFESSION

  A novel by

  ROBERT LADD

  Sun Literary

  Kansas City

  THE CONFESSION

  by

  Robert Ladd

  www.robertladdbooks.com

  Copyright © 2011 by Robert Ladd

  All rights reserved.

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise – without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. Requests for permission should be addressed in writing to Sun Literary.

  Published by Sun Literary, 7922 Darnell Lane, Lenexa, KS, 66215

  [email protected]

  International Standard Book Number 978-1-4499494-3-3

  This story was written for my children:

  Robert, Michael and Stephanie

  And dedicated to my wife

  Molly

  You are my coat from the cold.

  Entry #43

  …and sometimes extraordinary things happen to ordinary people.

  JD Salinger

  “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”

  By

  Georges Seurat

  ONE

  Entry #17

  In the nature of things, we live in a world of broken hearts.

  Virgil

  It snowed the day my husband died. I was in the kitchen, chopping onions for my famous eat-now-pay-later chili when the phone rang. The voice on the other end informed me, in carefully measured words, “Mrs. Walker, I’m afraid there’s been an accident...”

  That was nine months ago. Two days before Christmas and the afternoon of my twenty-eighth birthday. After I hung up the phone I grew suddenly nauseous and threw up in the sink. I know that’s not a delicate thing to say but it’s what happened. I rushed to the hospital but by the time I got there, it was too late, my husband was gone. And with his death, part of me died as well.

  We buried Joe three days later in his best blue suit. Actually, his only blue suit. As they lowered his casket into the frozen ground, the priest said that my husband’s body was now “delivered into the arms of angels, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” which was such a lovely phrase that I wrote it down on a tissue I found deep in my purse – not the dust part, but the part about the angels. I still have that tissue, safely tucked away in the back of my underwear drawer. Words of comfort on a Kleenex. A wadded-up memory.

  After the funeral, a group of people dropped by my apartment to offer their condolences and heartfelt wishes, plus snack on little sandwiches my mother and Aunt Ida prepared. Everyone was kind and attentive and respectful, but still it was a little awkward, standing around with such long faces and dark clothes, trying to be relaxed without being too relaxed. Funerals are one of the few occasions in life where you have to be somber and social at the same time. It’s a tough combination.

  A friend of my husband’s, whom I’d never met before, told me the funniest story about Joe in college. I’d re-tell it now but it wouldn’t be nearly as good. Sometimes the magic of a story is not in the story itself but in the story-teller, and to be honest I’m not very good at telling them.

  Anyway, it felt wonderful to laugh at something for a change. All I’d been doing for three days straight was trying to figure out how to breathe normally again. The moment I heard the news about my husband, it felt like someone punched me in the stomach. All the wind just rushed out of me, and I crumpled up like a spent balloon. It was awful.

  When Joe’s friend finished his story, he said the nicest thing. He said, “Whatever happens, Rachel, always know that Joe has been given the Morning Star, and shines with the splendor of the sun.”

  There are times when someone says something small, but it fits just right in that empty space in your heart.

  I considered asking how he could be certain that Joe had been given those things, and who gave them to him and why those things in particular, but decided not to. There was simply no way to ask those questions without sounding sarcastic or cynical, which I wasn’t. I really wanted to know.

  Later that afternoon, when all the family, friends and strangers were gone, I went back to the cemetery and removed a single white flower from Joe’s grave. I took the flower home and pressed it between the pages of my Bible, as a keepsake. Once the flower was safe and secure between the words of Jesus, I turned off all the lights in my apartment and, though it was only seven o’clock, went to bed. I dreamed about my husband that night; a dream so strong that when I awoke I could smell him. I still can at times.

  I miss my husband. Every day. I miss his smile, his laugh, his voice. I miss his sweet brown eyes. He was my best friend and I loved him completely.

  Not long after the funeral, I made two discoveries. One: If you have to keep telling yourself over and over again that you’re OK, you’re probably not. And two: I was pregnant.

  I decided to keep the second discovery to myself for a while, just in case the at-home test kit I used proved defective, which I’m told they often are. As for my first discovery, I must have worn my sadness like a hat, because even before I realized how depressed I was, my dad realized it for me.

  “Are you OK?” he asked with a level of concern that told me

  this was more than idle conversation.

  “I’m doing fine,” I replied.

  “You sure? Cause if you need to talk…”

  “No, really, I’m fine.”

  But the look on his face said he saw right through me. I wasn’t doing just fine and he knew it. It was like the word “grief” was tattooed on my forehead.

  “I think you should see a professional,” Dad said. “Someone who specializes in this area.”

  Which I did. I found him in the Yellow Pages under “Bereavement Counselors.” His name was Geoffrey Hart.

  “Rachel,” Geoffrey said at the end of our first session, “you have several symptoms that indicate a Post-Traumatic Bipolar Syndrome with Atypical Features Specification.”

  I recognized most of the words in the first half of that sentence but few in the second half, so I asked what they meant when put together.

  “You’re depressed,” he said.

  Which more or less cleared up the meaning of the diagnosis, but didn’t provide me with any new information. I already knew I was depressed.

  “So what do I do?” I asked.

  Geoffrey handed me a pamphlet titled Healthy Grieving, How to Move From Helpless to Happy. It was written in purple ink and had a picture of a butterfly on it.

  “I want you to take this home,” he said. “And read it. Pay particular attention to page eight, where it discusses the foundations of grief.” He smiled knowingly then winked. “We’ll get you back to normal in no time.”

  I politely thanked him then left his office, fairly certain that I would not return. He seemed nice enough, but I couldn’t get past the wink. Somehow the wink was too confident. Plus the speed at which he diagnosed me as being bi-polar scared me a little. Who knows what else I might become if I saw him again.

  When I got outside, however, just to be on the safe side, I read page eight. It explained, also in purple ink, there are five stages to the grieving process: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance.

  Which was good information to have but something I already knew. I learned it in a college psych class. Trouble was I seemed to have skipped right over the first three stages and went straight to depression. As for denying that my husband was dead, that seemed odd. I went to his funeral. He was dead and no amount of denying that fact was going to bring
him back. I never felt anything close to anger, even at the guy who was driving the other car because he died also. Getting mad at someone who was dead seemed like a waste of time. As for the bargaining stage, I hadn’t the slightest clue what to bargain with or for, so that one was lost on me as well.

  At first, I was worried about not feeling what the experts said I should be feeling. Maybe there was something wrong with me. Maybe I should be mad at somebody. In a way, being mad made sense. But mad at who? Myself? My husband? God? Hmmmmm. I hadn’t thought of him. Maybe God was behind this whole mess. Maybe I should give God a piece of my mind for what he did to Joe and me, not to mention the drunk who plowed into my husband’s car. Now that I had a chance to think about it, maybe there was someone to blame after all.

  I stewed on this idea for most of the day. That’s what I do. I stew on things. I turn them over and over and over again until I practically wear them out. I’m very dedicated to this process. Finally I ruled out anger. I reasoned that if you have to talk yourself into getting angry, then it wasn’t a real emotion to begin with. Either you’re mad or you’re not. Plus the simple fact of the matter was this: I didn’t hold God responsible for Joe’s death. How could I? I mean, well, he’s God. And God doesn’t cause car crashes that kill people just for kicks.

  At least that’s what I thought for a really long time.

  TWO

  Entry # 144

  Not only does God play dice, but he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.

  Stephen Hawking

  If I was going to be saddled with depression, I figured the smart thing to do was find out what it was. So I went where I always go when I need the hard, cold facts: Wikipedia.com.

  The first thing I discovered was that more people in America suffer from depression than I imagined. One source put the number at 20 million, while another reported twice as many. This seemed like a pretty big discrepancy until I realized that half the people who have it are too embarrassed to report it, so the numbers are somewhat skewed by denial.

  I tried a couple other websites. One, titled “Famous People with Depression” was interesting. The famous people it listed weren’t all artists, writers and poets like I expected. Some were lawyers, scientists, and athletes. There was even a Nobel Prize Winner and a couple U.S. presidents. And even though I wasn’t any of those things, I found comfort in knowing that there were a lot of people out there like me. Being sick is bad enough without being sick all alone.

  What surprised me though was how sneaky depression could be. I read that with some people it comes on so slowly they don’t even know what it is until it’s too late. With others, it comes and goes with the seasons. With me, I mistook it for exhaustion. I was just tired all the time. And since everyone gets tired from time to time, I thought I could lick it. I thought that one morning, after a really good night’s sleep, I’d just wake up and be happy again. Of course that never happened. In fact, the more I slept, the more I wanted to sleep.

  My mother understood depression almost as well as I did.

  “When you find yourself in a hole,” she told me, “the first rule is to quit digging.”

  Which is the kind of thing my mother would say. She had a snappy quote for almost every situation. Comfort never produces character, was one of her favorites or Don’t buy criticism just because someone is selling it or Don’t believe everything you think.

  She got most of her sayings from “Dear Abby.” But that was OK, because more often than not, Dear Abby was right.

  “The second rule,” my mother said, “is to find something each day that you can look forward to. Something to get your motor going.”

  Which made sense, even if it was my mother who said it. I have since learned that almost anything makes sense if you don’t know what you’re talking about. But at the time, it was all I had, so I ran with it. Beginning that night, I tried to think of something interesting to do that would help me get out of bed the next day. About half the time, however, when I awoke, I forgot what it was I was supposed to do, so I might lie there, wide-awake but unmoving, until noon. Eventually hunger would get the better of me and I’d toddle off to the kitchen and make myself some toast. By that time, I had usually recalled what it was that I was looking forward to, but by then most of the excitement had worn off.

  As a memory aid, I began writing down those things I would look forward to on small post-its. I placed them in strategic spots throughout my apartment where I was sure to see them: the bathroom mirror, my refrigerator, the coffee pot. But, almost without exception, when I read them the next morning, the ideas weren’t nearly as interesting as they had been the night before. In fact, some were so odd that I had to double-check the handwriting, just to make sure it was mine.

  I went to a medical doctor, whom I liked immediately. Or I should say I liked his appearance immediately. With me, a good physician should be middle-aged, with a little gray hair but not too much. Too old and they’re apt to leave a sponge in you following an operation. Too young and all they want to do is try out the latest thing they just read in the New England Journal of Medicine.

  His name was Dr. Bones.

  I’m not kidding. That was his real name.

  Within minutes of meeting me, Dr. Bones prescribed an anti-depressant, which made me wonder if he handed out drugs this easily to all his patients or if he saw something in me that told him he didn’t have a minute to spare. Either way, I was amazed at how simple it was to get better.

  Except I didn’t.

  So he prescribed a “combination regimen,” which meant two pills instead of one. Two eventually led to three, then four. Evidently, when it comes to pharmaceuticals, more is better. I asked him if there was any danger in mixing pills with pregnancy.

  “No, no, no” Dr. Bones explained, “untreated depression represents a much greater risk to the fetus. The regiment I’ve prescribed for you is perfectly safe. Trust me.”

  I was OK with his explanation until he told me I could trust him. When someone has to tell me they’re honest, I start looking for a crook.

  “And besides,” he continued, “if the baby is born with any chemical dependencies, they can be easily treated.”

  Which told me all I needed to know about Doctor Bones. He considered me a lot more important than my baby. Trouble is I didn’t. I never took another pill after that. I didn’t care how much Dr. Bones looked like a real doctor, as far as I was concerned, he was a quack.

  “What you need is a dog,” my mother announced one day. “Whoever said you can’t buy happiness has never owned a puppy.”

  Mom always said the average dog was a better person than the average person, so we always had one around the house when I was a kid. Sometimes two.

  I went to the pound and began my search. It didn’t take long. I found one that was scheduled to be put down in less than a week. As soon as I discovered his fate, I knew I had to have him. There was no way I could turn my back on a puppy that was on death row.

  I named him Pepper, after Sergeant Pepper, from the Beatles’ song. Pepper was part collie, part shepherd and part something else that must have been smaller because he was smaller than the other collies or shepherds. In fact, he was the runt of the litter.

  Turns out mom was right, too – you can buy happiness. It costs twenty-eight dollars and nineteen cents. Plus they tossed in a rubber chewtoy and some flea powder to boot. It was a real bargain.

  Pepper was perfect. He loved me unconditionally, whether I was scolding him for sticking his nose in a light socket, or hugging him because I’d had a rough day. He peed a lot, but I figured if that was the worst thing I had to contend with, I got the better end of the bargain.

  For a while I was so happy that I forgot how sad I was. Pepper and I slept together, played together and ate together. We were like brother and sister, friends to the end, totally inseparable. That is right up until the day he ran away. I was shocked. I had no idea he was a flight risk.

  I put up “Have You
Seen This Dog?” posters all over the neighborhood with his picture on it, but nothing came of it. I thought I saw him a couple times, and even called out his name once, but there was no reaction except from the person who was walking him. They looked puzzled but unafraid, which told me it was a case of mistaken identity.

  I gave up on pets after that. I couldn’t take the potential rejection.

  My aunt Ida suggested I talk to a priest.

  “Take it to the Lord,” she said. “He’s the great physician. His healing touch can cure any disease. I know. He cured me.”

  The disease she was referring to was not actually a disease but a bad back. Apparently Ida tried every remedy known to man and pharmacy without success. Finally she went to a priest. He talked to her about the power of faith, and how prayer was known to help people overcome all kinds of physical problems, including arthritis.

  “I’ll pray for you, Ida,” the priest told her. “But more importantly, pray for yourself.”

  That night Ida got down next to her bed and prayed. She prayed for comfort. She prayed for relief. She prayed for God’s healing touch. Guess what happened the very next morning? No, the pain was actually worse. But as the week wore on, it lessened. Within a month, it was gone. She was cured.

  “That was two years ago,” Ida told me as she easily bent down and touched her toes. “Once I started praying, it was just a matter of time.”

  I wish I had that kind of faith. The kind that says I believe in something so strong that even when it doesn’t work right away, I still know it’s going to work. With me, instant gratification takes too long. I’m willing to spend the time and effort to get better, as long as I can see immediate progress. So far, all I was getting was heavier.

  And heavier did not help things at all.

  I tried visiting a support group of others who had lost a spouse, but never found their company all that supportive. The leader of our group, a very nice woman who had lost not one but three husbands, told me that a loved one’s death is a “passport to intimacy.” She explained that losing someone close to you makes it easier to share with others the intimate details of how rotten you feel. Armed with this information, I approached my group with an open mind and expectant heart, anxious to get the weight of death off my chest.

  It didn’t work.

  All we ever seemed to talk about was coping with grief and exploring our inner-fears of mortality or the resentment of being abandoned. For a while I pretended as though I understood what they meant, and that I too felt all those things. But after the third or fourth session, I realized I didn’t.

  “You just need to dig deeper,” they assured me.

  And so I dug deeper. Still, I came up empty-handed.

  “Deeper yet,” they said.

  Back to the emotional well I went, digging so deep I was afraid I might come out the other side of me, and still – nothing.

  Despite my failure at being unable to grieve-on-command, they told me I was still a unique spirit and a worthy human being. Which was good to know, although it didn’t do much to cheer me up. In fact, it did just the opposite. A person can take only so much comforting before it begins to backfire a little. I know that those in my group meant well, but there are few things in life that make me feel worse than to have people I don’t know trying to make me feel better by telling me things I don’t believe. Plus, at the heart of it, I think I’m the kind of optimist who deep down knows things are not really going to work out anyway.

  What I needed was someone to explain why things in life are the way they are without trying to stuff them down my throat. Sometimes it’s not the truth I resist but the manner in which it is presented. With that need in mind, I knew where to turn next: a journal I’d been keeping for ten years.

  As a freshman in college I began collecting thought-provoking ideas and quotes that helped me understand the ups and downs of life in general. I numbered each entry and placed them in a spiral notebook. I called my collection “Thoughts and Things.” Whenever I was in a jam, I’d look through my notebook for a quote that spoke to me about the situation at hand. Not long after my failed experiment with my support group, I went to my journal. Sure enough, there it was: Entry #22 from the longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer, who said…

  THREE

  Entry #22

  You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.

  Eric Hoffer

  By this time I wouldn’t say I was getting desperate. Anxious maybe but not desperate. I figured time was on my side. Then again, with each passing day I felt worse than the day before, so maybe time wasn’t the answer. In my quest to overcome depression, the only thing I knew for sure was this:

  Support Groups didn’t work, at least in my case. Nor did counseling. Pills were dangerous and puppies unreliable. I considered going to a priest, but opted not to. Most of the priests I knew were about a hundred years old, and, well, I just couldn’t picture myself crying in front of one. Friends and family were great at feeling sympathy but not much help in the “here’s what to do” category.

  The only remaining choice seemed to be therapy. I did not, however, make the mistake of picking one at random from the Yellow Pages. My husband’s insurance provider picked one for me. Theirs was a much better choice.

  His name was Goldberg. Dr. Isaac Goldberg.

  “It’s perfectly natural to deny your emotions,” Goldberg told me the first time we met. “It’s the brain’s defense mechanism that does it, actually. To prevent a condition known as ‘psychic-overload.’”

  Goldberg was middle-aged, which was a plus, and surprisingly looked a lot like Sigmund Freud, except without the wool suit and cigar. He had a voice like falling water, smooth, comforting, melodic. Although I enjoyed listening to him, I sometimes have the attention span of a gnat. Without realizing it, I lost track of what he was saying, and wound up staring at a large print hanging on the wall in his office. It was “Sunday in the Park with George,” although I think it had a more French-sounding name. I couldn’t recall the name of the artist, but I liked the painting. And the title.

  “Wouldn’t you agree with that, Rachel?” Goldberg said.

  I tried not to act startled.

  “I’m sorry, what?” I replied.

  Goldberg templed his fingers in a way that made him look like he was praying.

  “I said medication is important to recovery. You’re still taking your medication, aren’t you?”

  I told him of course I was then frantically tried to remember the names of the pills I was supposed to be taking, in case he asked a follow-up question.

  Trouble was I tend to classify medicines not by name but by color, size and function. The small blue one was supposed to help me sleep; the medium-sized pink one helped me wake up; the large white one was supposed to make me happy, but never did; and the triangle-shaped gray one, well, I’m not sure what it was supposed to do, but it said on the bottle to take it once a day on an empty stomach, and so I did. Until I quit taking them all together.

  Fortunately Goldberg went on to another topic.

  “Depression,” he said, in his falling-water voice, “is a natural side effect, a by-product, if you will, brought on in your case by the trauma of death. Let’s talk about that, shall we?”

  Actually the last thing in the world I wanted to talk about was death and depression. I found that talking about them was, in a word, depressing. But Goldberg was in his element now. There was no turning back.

  As he began talking about psychosomatic something or other, my mind wandered again, and took me with it. I glanced out a window and caught sight of a woman who looked vaguely familiar, but somehow much older and heavier than I remembered. Suddenly I realized it was me. I stared at my reflection, and thought My god, what happened to you? I looked like my grandmother. Surely my image was distorted in some way. Maybe it was the angle of the light or an imperfection in the glass. Then again, maybe I was just thirty pounds heavier than I remembered, and all the wei
ght had lodged itself in my jowls. That must have been it because the woman in the window was enormous from the neck up. I wasn’t sure if that explained the half-moon bags under her eyes or the blotchy skin, but it might have. I made a mental note to ask Goldberg if fluid-retention was also a natural by-product of depression, or should I blame it instead on being several months pregnant.

  “Tell me what you see when you look in the mirror,” Goldberg said.

  I thought for a moment he’d caught me staring at my reflection then realized he meant something else all together.

  “I see a woman who misses her husband,” I said, proud to have thought of something so quickly. “But a woman who is getting stronger every day. I truly believe that, Dr. Goldberg. I am getting stronger, better, in fact.”

  I sat back, satisfied I’d done a good job, even though it was a totally made-up answer.

  Goldberg shook his head.

  “No, Rachel,” he said. “I mean what do you see when you look in the mirror. Literally. Describe yourself.”

  I told him when I’m not pregnant or depressed, I see a woman who weighs around 150 pounds, which, according to a chart I clipped out of Marie Clare, is about right for a 15-year-old boy my height, but a little heavy for a woman my age.

  Goldberg laughed then realized I was serious and ended up clearing his throat as a cover. Suddenly a look of surprise came over his face.

  “Did you say pregnant?” he asked.

  It got kind of quiet then. I knew I’d said pregnant because I could still hear me saying the word, but I wasn’t about to say it again.

  What I said instead was, “Pardon me?”

  Goldberg put down his pen.

  “Rachel,” he said, “are you expecting?”

  I tried to look nonchalant, but felt pretty sure my voice betrayed me.

  “Probably not,” I said. “It was just an at-home test. False-positives are pretty common.”

  Goldberg smiled. “Congratulations, nonetheless.”

  He sounded pleased, but I couldn’t tell if he was sincerely pleased or was just so well rehearsed at sounding sincere that it came out that way naturally.

  “So, when are you due?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m scheduled to see my OB/GYN on Tuesday.”

  Which was a lie. I didn’t even know an OB/GYN much less have one. Although, I was proud at being able to use the acronym so conversationally, like I said it all the time, which would be a clear indication that I, in fact, did have one.

  “So, how do you feel about being pregnant?” he asked.

  “I think there’s a poetic justice to it,” I said. “With one life gone, another begins.”

  Goldberg seemed to like that answer, even though it sounded like an ad for a Disney movie.

  “Ah, the Circle of Life,” he said.

  “Yes,” I replied. “The Circle of Life.”

  No one said anything for a moment, which gave me time to feel something totally unexpected: a genuine connection with my therapist. I felt maybe, just maybe, that he understood something deep inside me that I did not understand myself. If that was the case, then this therapy thing might have a future in it after all.

  “Very good,” Goldberg said. “Very good. Now then, where were we?” He glanced at his notes. “Ah, yes. The mirror. Tell me, Rachel, what is it you see when you look at yourself in the mirror?”

  “I have more freckles than I would like,” I said. “Plus my hair get kind of frizzy when it’s humid. But I’ve been told those traits make me attractive, in a ‘Sally Fields sort of way.’”

  Which was something someone actually said, but since it was my mother who said it, I couldn’t be sure if it was true or not. A mother’s compliments are almost always suspect. Except with my mother, they’re almost always non-existent.

  “I wish my hips were smaller and my boobs bigger,” I continued. “But I think most women would like that.”

  Goldberg jotted down a few notes as I talked. Probably something about my boob comment. Men usually notice things like that, even therapist.

  I went on for several minutes telling Goldberg what I thought he wanted to hear, but of all the things I said about me that afternoon, what I didn’t say was that sometimes when I look in a mirror I don’t see me at all. What I see is a picture I drew when I was a kid. It was a picture of this beautiful green lawn with all kinds of colorful flowers, shrubs and trees. But right in the middle was this scrawny little blade of grass. The other blades of grass were taller, straighter and a much better shade of green. I never told anyone but the grass represented all the other kids in my class and the scrawny little blade was me.

  Talk about revealing yourself in art.

  I wasn’t about to share that with Goldberg, however. He was sure to read into it all sorts of negative self-imagery, most of which were probably true. I saw no need to get into it now. In fact, I saw no need to get into it ever.

  Finally my first fifty-minute hour was up.

  “Rachel,” Goldberg said. “I’m glad you came to see me.” He smiled and extended his hand. “In fact, I’d like to see you again next week, if that’s convenient.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  Goldberg withdrew his hand and cleared his throat, without necessity or success, making a small noise like a mouse that’s been stepped on.

  “I’d like to continue our discussion,” he said. “You see, therapy is a gradual science. Today, we laid the groundwork. Next week, we start the healing process.”

  To be honest, I could do without the discussion. Since my husband’s death, I’d discussed me until I was blue in the face. But I liked the idea of healing. Healing was something I knew I needed, even if it meant talking about it. Plus, my therapy sessions were free, thanks to Joe’s insurance.

  Goldberg extended his hand again, and I shook it, squeezing especially hard to show him how pleased I was.

  “Thank you, Dr. Goldberg,” I said. “I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

  And it did mean something to me. It meant a lot.

  I left Goldberg’s office then, feeling better than I had in several weeks. Although I did most of the talking, he was really good at listening. And good listeners are hard to come by. They’re practically a dying breed.

  I also left more curious than ever about the painting “Sunday in the Park with George.” I made a pact with myself to find out three things: One, the name of the artist; two, who George was; and, three, where the park was located. I was pretty sure it was in Paris, but if it turned out to be on Lake Michigan, I thought it might be a nice place to visit on my next free weekend.

  FOUR

  Entry #39

  What I’m looking for is not out there, it is in me.

  Helen Keller

  The next morning, I gave the at-home pregnancy test another shot. Positive. Then again the following morning. Same results. Three false positives in a row seemed unlikely so I visited a gynecologist who told me in a bright, sunny voice that I indeed was pregnant.

  “Lucky you,” she said happily. And since I still wore a wedding band, she added, “Tell Dad congratulations.”

  Funny how the happiest moments in life can sometimes lead to the saddest. One minute I was ecstatic, the next crushed. But I tried not to let it show. I figured doctors get enough of the crushed side of life, so I decided to show her the sunny side.

  “Thank you, Doctor. Thank you so much,” I said, beaming like a flashlight with new batteries. “The whole family is thrilled.”

  I left her office, trying my best to keep smiling like the woman I wanted to be and not start crying like the child I knew I was. I made it almost all the way to my car before I broke down. It’s tough being a walking contradiction.

  The next day, I went to the bookstore and bought two books on parenting. One was entitled Your Baby’s First Six Months: How to Create a Stress-Free Environment in a Stressed-Out World. On the book’s dust cover, it explained how critical the first six months are to
a child’s emotional and cerebral development, and how familial stress could lead to a severe reduction in cognitive memory and lower self-esteem. I wasn’t exactly sure what cognitive memory was, but the person who said it was a PhD, an MD and a Board-Certified something or other, so it must have been important. People with three titles rarely make frivolous statements. Also, simple math told me that if the first six months were critical, and if there was going to be one less parent than normal during that time, my baby’s cognitive development phase would likely be reduced by fifty percent. If so, I was determined to do my half of the job twice as well, just to even things up a little. No child of mine was going to suffer because of a labor shortage.

  The second book’s title was 36 Ways to Make a Baby Laugh. It was written by a woman from Atlanta, Georgia, which for some reason I found comforting, probably because I’m from Georgia, also. Plus I liked the title. I figured that, of those 36 ways, there was bound to be one I could use on myself.

  Just around the corner from the baby books, I found the Self-Help section, and was excited to find that they had on display the Top Ten best-selling books on how to help yourself overcome all kinds of problems. I went in for a closer look.

  Two of the top ten were dedicated to helping me have a happier sex life. I had no idea so many people were unhappy with theirs, but apparently they were. Otherwise there wouldn’t be selling so many books on the subject.

  Two more of the top ten dealt with anger-management, which had never been a problem of mine. Happiness-management was more of an issue with me. Not so much how to manage it but how to find it.

  One book with the title Believe in Miracles claimed that, with its help, I could become a better me in thirty days or less. Guaranteed or my money back. I almost bought it until I discovered the guy who wrote it had been dead for three years. I figured if everything didn’t work out the way he said it would, getting my money back might prove to be difficult.

  I was ready to give up on the whole idea and go back to just wishing I’d improve when I ran across what appeared to the perfect choice: it was entitled Be Optimistic NOW!! with capital letters and two exclamation points, which always gets my attention. In it, the author claimed that pessimists are their own worst enemy because they believe three things: that bad events are their fault, will last a long time, and happen only to them. Optimists, on the other hand, believe that bad events are no one’s fault, are typically short in duration, and happen to everyone. Also, the author boasted she could teach me the five skills necessary to change from being a pessimist to an optimist, almost overnight. And this change would ultimately enable the reader to take charge of his destiny, beat depression, enhance his self-esteem and accomplish more in life.

  OK, I was in favor of all those things. Especially the one about beating depression. Plus the one about enhancing my self-esteem would be nice, and I have to admit I wanted to accomplish more in life – I mean, who doesn’t? But once I saw the price tag, I developed sticker-shock. It was $29.99 plus tax. It wasn’t that I didn’t value getting better; it’s just that I valued eating more.

  I ended up buying the one written by the dead guy. Even if it took longer than thirty days for the new me to show up, I was OK with not getting my money refunded. Becoming better was my goal, not getting reimbursed for a delayed miracle.

  I started making regular trips to an OB/GYN, which was I was glad to do because it meant I no longer had to lie about having one. I can’t remember which visit it was, but after examining my sonogram, she delivered the wonderful news.

  “Rachel, you have a healthy little baby,” she said. “Would you like to know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

  I told her yes.

  She smiled and handed me the photo.

  “Then I’d like for you to meet your daughter.”

  I’d seen sonograms before, but could never make heads or tails out of them. Literally. They all looked like squiggly, mushy, misshapen heads of cabbage more than a real baby. But when I saw my daughter, it took my breath away.

  She was beautiful.

  She was lying on her left side, and there was nothing squiggly, mushy or misshapen about her. In fact, you could see her little arms and legs and elbows and knees clear as day, and she was sucking what would soon become her thumb. She had an enormous head but that’s OK because all babies have enormous heads before they’re born.

  “Have you considered any names?” the doctor asked.

  I had.

  “If it was a boy,” I said, “we were going to name him Joe. Teresa if it was a girl.”

  The doctor nodded with approval.

  “Are those family names?” she asked.

  I said Joe was, but Teresa came from Mother Teresa, who we always considered the perfect nun, if not the perfect person.

  The doctor laughed and said she was named after an actress from the 1930s, Fanny Brice.

  “Never got used to Fanny,” she confided with a grin.

  Which only goes to show that naming your child after a celebrity may sound OK at the time, but could come back to haunt the child. We figured Mother Teresa was a shoe-in to become a saint, so we were on solid ground.

  I took the sonogram home with me and kept it on the nightstand next to my bed. It was the last thing I saw when going to sleep at night and the first thing to greet me when I got up in the morning.

  Knowing my pregnancy was for real, I soon fell head-over-heels in love with my daughter. I worshipped the ground she would someday walk on. I found myself wanting to give her all the things my mother never gave me, and tell her all the things I never heard growing up. I wanted her childhood to be better than mine. I wanted her to be safe and happy and filled with wonder. Gradually, however, I found myself wanting something else. Something as lovely as it was awful: I wanted my husband to see all the things I was seeing and feel all the things I was feeling. I wanted him to see the fuzzy black and white photo of the new life we were bringing into the world. Sometimes when I thought that, I’d start crying. Sometimes not.

  I’m not sure when or how it happened, but one day I went from wanting Joe to know his daughter to knowing he would know her. I became certain of it. I knew that someday he would meet her and hold her and love her, just as I would. Don’t ask me how I could be sure of something so far-fetched, but I did.

  I felt it in my bones.

  About this time something else happened. That painting from Goldberg’s office kept popping up everywhere I went. I saw it first on a calendar, then the cover of a book and finally someone at school was using it as a screensaver. I did some research. It was painted over a two-year period from 1884-1886 by the French artist Georges Seurat. Its official title was: A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

  I think what captivated me so much about this particular painting was the woman at its center. She was holding an umbrella in one hand and a small girl by the other. For some reason I identified strongly with her. In fact, over time I became that woman and the little girl in the white dress became my little girl in the white dress, and we were simply out in this lovely park on a sunlit Sunday afternoon, taking a pleasant little stroll, just the two of us. It was lovely. It was more than lovely, it was heavenly.

  I promised myself that someday I would take Teresa to Europe to visit La Grande Jatte, just to see if it was as picturesque as Seurat envisioned it. I printed off a small image of it that I found on the internet, and placed it on my refrigerator door. I stared at it daily. I wouldn’t say it was an obsession but it was definitely something that helped me escape; a reminder that the world I lived in was not the only world out there. That somewhere there was sunshine and grass and trees and people with nothing on their minds except enjoying a slow, lazy afternoon in the park.

  Yes, I was going to La Grande Jatte someday. Someday soon.

  This too I felt in my bones.

  FIVE

  Entry #106

  It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.

 
Aeschylus

  As my daughter put on weight and my stomach swelled, I received all sorts of interesting but useless advice, most of which came from my father’s side of the family. Since then I have become a firm believer that you should never judge someone by her relatives.

  “Smoking can cause a loss of weight in newborns,” my Aunt

  Nina told me, in those exact words, as if reading the printed warning word for word on a pack of Lucky Strikes. I’m sure that what she said was a medical fact, but as I have only smoked one cigarette in my entire life, the information was of little use.

  My Aunt Mertis warned me to avoid alcohol, specifically malt liquors. It seems Mertis once knew a girl named Henrietta Pike, who publicly drank malt liquor during much of her pregnancy, and subsequently gave birth to a baby boy with three testicles.

  “Can you believe that?” Mertis whispered to me, one confidant to another, her hand fluttering to her mouth as she spoke. “My god, two of them are bad enough. But three of them? Just imagine.”

  A baby born with three of anything that was supposed to stop at two was more than I cared to imagine, and I told my Aunt as much. But Mertis wouldn’t let up; she was onto something about which she had privileged information, and was determined I wasn’t going to make the same mistake as that drunkard Pike girl.

  “Henrietta’s doctor said it was genetics,” Mertis whispered in her paper-thin voice. “But I have it on good authority that her husband is ‘perfectly normal’ down there, if you catch my meaning.”

  For a fleeting moment, I considered asking on whose authority Mertis was basing her claim, but decided that was a no-win discussion, so I dropped it. And though I had my doubts that alcohol could produce such anatomical abnormalities in a child, I decided not to chance it. I gave up drinking for the duration of my pregnancy. No booze for nine months seemed a small price to pay for a child to be born with properly-formed gonads.

  My Aunt Ida, however, gave me sound advice.

  “Sing to her,” Ida said.

  “Sing what?” I asked.

  “Something sweet. She can hear you.”

  Which worried me a little. If my daughter could hear singing, that meant she could also hear talking. I decided to clean up my vocabulary, plus I cut out any TV shows that allowed curse words or blatant sex. Correcting what I said was easy. I hardly ever used four-letter words to begin with. Eliminating the TV stuff, however, was tougher. It seemed like every show I watched was chocked full of sexual references and casual cursing, even the ones with little kids in them. Pretty soon I quit watching TV all together.

  But I did start singing to my daughter. Mostly songs like Itsy-bitsy Spider and Puff the Magic Dragon. Occasionally though I’d work in a Beatles song. I love the Beatles. I think Teresa did, too. Every time I hummed Here Comes the Sun, she’d start kicking up a storm.

  Life itself, however, was a continuous adjustment. Some adjustments, like having hot water anytime I wanted it, were pleasant; others, like eating most of my meals alone, were not. For weeks, I made coffee for two in the morning when there was only one to drink it. I was always surprised when the toilet seat was down. I slept on “my side” of the bed. Simple habits, I discovered, are the hardest to break.

  Eventually though I got used to being home alone. In fact, that’s where I was when, right in the middle of doing a load of laundry, I started crying. Only I couldn’t stop. I cried off and on for three days until my eyes were dark and swollen to twice their normal size. I looked like a baby bird.

  I told everybody it was allergies. But after a while that story wore itself out, so I went to see Goldberg again. I wanted to make sure I was still on the road to recovery. Something told me I wasn’t.

  SIX

  Entry #72

  We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

  Eric Hoffer

  “How do you think you’re doing?” Goldberg asked.

  I wonder why people do that: ask a question when they already know the answer. I trusted Goldberg’s intentions, however, so I gave him my standard response.

  “OK,” I said.

  He nodded thoughtfully.

  “What does the word OK mean to you, Rachel?”

  I was at a point, mentally, where I wasn’t sure how much of what I said was true, but I gave it a shot anyway.

  “It means I feel good,” I said then added without knowing why. “Or at least as good as I deserve.”

  Goldberg leaned back in his chair and tapped the side of his nose with his pen.

  “As good as you deserve,” he repeated slowly. “When you hear that phrase, how does it make you feel?”

  He kept doing that – question after question after question, like peeling back the skins of an onion. I mean, I was really beginning to like Goldberg, but I was also dying for him to tell me what he knew and quit asking me to think for myself about stuff I didn’t understand. After all, he was the expert, not me. I tried to think of a question I could fire back at him, to turn the tables a little, but all I could think to say was this.

  “It’s something my mother used to tell me.”

  Goldberg quit tapping his nose and leaned forward.

  “I see,” he said even slower than before. “Your mother used to tell you that.” He scribbled something in his notebook, paused then scribbled something more.

  “Tell me about your relationship with your mother,” he said.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Do the two of you get along well?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” I lied. “We’re very close.”

  “Do the two of you ever argue?”

  “No, never.”

  Goldberg nodded.

  “Never?” he said.

  For some reason I panicked and replied with one of those truths you should never share with anyone, except maybe your best friend, which Goldberg was not.

  “There are two theories of arguing with my mother,” I said. “Neither one works.”

  No one said anything for a moment, and so that phrase just hung out there all by itself, twisting and turning. Finally Goldberg nodded and said the absolute worst thing you could say under these circumstances.

  “I see,” he said.

  Which is exactly what I was afraid of. So I started in on this whole made-up monologue about how nice my mother was and how one time, when I was sick with the flu, she sat next to my bed for two straight days, reading Dr. Seuss aloud as she nursed me back to health with chicken noodle soup and Tang.

  It was such a good story that when I finished, even I had a higher opinion of my mother than when I started. But I could tell Goldberg wasn’t buying it. Apparently he had seen enough of my kind not to be fooled by my fake story of maternal devotion. He was an expert in these matters and I was the amateur, which was a lesson I took to heart. I decided right then and there to be more careful in the future when trying to trick him into believing how wonderful my life was.

  “If you could choose five words that best-describe your mother,” Goldberg said. “What would they be?”

  “Let’s see,” I said. “Five words. Boy, that’s tough.”

  But it wasn’t tough at all. The first word that leaped forward in my brain, as if on a tiny coil, was the word cold followed by distant then intelligent and sad then cold again. But I kept those words to myself; those words would only lead to further questions about my me and my mother, and I didn’t want Goldberg to go digging around in that area of my life. So the words I spoke were warm and fuzzy words. Words like sweet, kind, loving and attentive. Words that sounded like what I thought a mother should be.

  My little ruse failed me though. I know it failed because Goldberg didn’t write down any of the five words I gave him. He was obviously on to me.

  “Do you want me to do the same thing for my father?” I asked.

  Goldberg looked surprised.

  “If you’d like,” he said.

  “I just thought you might want to hear both sides,” I explained.

  Goldbe
rg nodded thoughtfully again.

  “Is talking about your father important to you?”

  “No, not particularly,” I lied again. “It’s just that I want to be fair to them both, that’s all.”

  “Do you think talking about one and not the other is unfair?”

  That sounded like a trick question. One whose answer was simple on the surface and complicated underneath. I hate those kind of questions.

  “Well,” I replied. “I don’t think it’s a matter of being fair or unfair as much as it is about being thorough.”

  Goldberg nodded. “You get along well with your father, don’t you?’

  “Yes,” I said honestly. “He’s my best friend.”

  What I didn’t bother to say was that my mother and father divorced when I was a sophomore in high school.

  “Do you spend much time with him?” Goldberg asked.

  “No. He’s in the Army, stationed in Iraq.”

  Again the nod. “Would you say the relationship with your father is the stronger of the two?”

  “Probably.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  I knew exactly why, but wild horses couldn’t drag it out of me, especially not when Goldberg was there to hear the answer. Suddenly a horrible thought occurred to me.

  “It’s not incestuous, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I said.

  Goldberg raised a single brow, then caught himself and let it fall.

  “Actually,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking that.”

  “Well, you don’t have to because it’s not.”

  “I see. How then would you characterize it?”

  “About normal,” I said, hoping that would end our conversation, which of course it didn’t.

  “How would you characterize the relationship with your mother?” he asked.

  “About the same.”

  “Which would be normal.”

  “Right.”

  “Do you love your father?”

  “Yes, very much so.”

  “Do you love your mother?”

  How I got painted into this corner, I’ll never know.

  “Yes, very much so,” I said.

  There must have been too much of a pause between his question and my answer because as soon as I said it, Goldberg dove back into his notebook, making more notes than usual. It was then I realized that, in my case, clinical therapy has little to do with what you say, and everything to do with what you mean.

  Goldberg finally resurfaced.

  “Excellent then,” he said. “Which five words would you choose to describe your father?”

  Warm was the first word that came to mind, so I said it first; followed by loving, then intelligent, funny and honest.

  Goldberg scribbled, then paused, scribbled some more, then underlined something. Twice. I didn’t mind the scribbling part, I’d grown used to it; but I wasn’t sure what to think about the underlining part. Underlining meant some words were more important than other words, which meant I’d just said something that was more important, thus more revealing, than I intended, which couldn’t be good.

  “Is there anything else you’d like to add?” Goldberg asked. “Anything that’s important to you about your father?”

  I wanted to say yes, but said no instead. I now seemed to be making statements that were being scrutinized beyond the norm, and didn’t want to risk saying the wrong thing.

  But if I had added anything about my dad, it would have been this: I’d give anything if mom hadn’t chased him off.

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Goldberg asked.

  “I used to,” I said without thinking. “A brother. But he died when I was young.”

  As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Goldberg said before I could take it back. “Do you mind if I ask how he died?’

  I minded all right, but since it was too late to change my answer about having a brother, I had to say something.

  “In a swimming accident,” I replied, which was true.

  Goldberg nodded with both sadness and interest.

  “I see,” he said. “That must have been difficult for you. Were you close to your brother?”

  “No,” I said. “I was only two at the time.”

  Which was a lie. I was eleven. But I had to end this conversation somehow. There was no way in heck that Goldberg and I were ever going to talk about my brother. Not now, not later, not in a million years.

  Fortunately my fifty-minute hour ended. I was pretty sure Goldberg had not uncovered anything in me he didn’t already know, but realized one should never assume anything about therapists. They hear stuff you don’t say, and so the secret-you is always at risk.

  “Shall we see each other again next week?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I replied, then asked, “So what do you think about all the crying?”

  Goldberg smiled but did not wink. I liked that.

  “Crying,” he said, “is symptomatic of many things: anger, love, frustration, stress. It’s a physiological release of a psychological condition.”

  It was then I realized something important about Goldberg’s approach to therapy. I was certain he wanted to help me get better again; to help me understand why I felt a little off-kilter and cried for almost 72 hours straight, with only a couple breaks for meals. But not once did we talk about my crying, as if it had never happened. In fact, we talked about everything but my crying, which led me to believe he wasn’t really interested in my behavior as much as what was beneath the surface of my behavior; the “root cause” he called it, or the “symptomatic” something or other. If that was what he was really after, I could have saved him a lot of time. If he had only asked, I could have told him the fact that I didn’t get along with my mother wasn’t nearly as important as how much I missed my husband. My mother wasn’t at fault here; my husband’s head-on collision with a ’98 Oldsmobile was the problem. If Goldberg had known that, it might have helped him understand what makes me tick. It might have helped him understand that what I needed wasn’t therapy or pills or the support of strangers. What I needed to help me sleep at night and to stop bawling like a baby over nothing in the middle of a perfectly good day, was the love of my husband – but I wasn’t going to get that because he was dead.

  As for my brother’s death, that was something Goldberg and I would never discuss. Never. I knew, however, that sooner or later the topic would rear its ugly head again. That’s what therapist do, search for the ugly stuff. But I was positive we would never talk about it. In part because I loved my brother too much to discuss it. But mainly because I was the reason my brother died.

  SEVEN

  Entry #102

  What we got here is...failure to communicate.

  Strother Martin

  My outlook improved over the following week. Whether my improvement was due to therapy or books or both, I wasn’t sure. All I know is that I was able to string together five straight days of feeling normal, and feeling normal for a change felt pretty good. From that point on, I decided to make it a game; to remain positive at all costs. Wallowing in misery is easy – the brave choice is to be happy. And while I don’t consider myself to be an especially brave person, I don’t always look for the easy way out.

  My mother had a suggestion.

  “When it comes to beating the blues,” she said, “better to throw yourself into a job rather than under a bus.”

  Which I decided to do. Throw myself into my job, that is.

  I’m a school teacher by profession. Tenth Grade World Literature. I teach everything from Homer to Hemingway, Plutarch to Poe, and all the other stuff in between: short stories, poetry, plays and the occasional Shakespeare. I enjoy teaching and generally speaking the kids enjoy it, too. Except for the occasional Shakespeare. Four-hundred-year-old Elizabethan English is a little hard for some of them to swallow. To be honest, I have a hard time with Shakespeare myself. Either he’s too deep or I’m too shallo
w, because when I read him, I spend so much time re-reading him in an effort to make it make sense that I forget where I am in the story. Usually, I have to lean on my Teacher’s Guide or Cliffs Notes to help me muddle through.

  In fact, that’s where I was, sitting at my desk after class, muddling through Shakespeare, when Buddy Timmons walked in.

  “Rachel,” Buddy said, “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

  Buddy was the high school principal. His real name was Bernard but we all called him Buddy.

  The bad news was this: state funding for education was being cut and three teachers were not having their contracts renewed. I of course was one of the three.

  “But your salary will continue through August,” Buddy said. “And all your benefits as well, with the exception of vacation and sick days.”

  He paused for a moment, but it wasn’t a pause like he was through talking; it was more like a pause where I was supposed to say something, but since I was fresh out of small talk, we just stared at one another instead.

  Which was not as easy as it sounds. Staring at Buddy Timmons, I mean.

  For one thing, Buddy had a body shaped like a pear: short, plump and pale. Plus he had a really bad comb-over and one eye that didn’t quite track with the other, so that it appeared he was looking in different directions at the same time. He looked like one of those lizards that can move its eyes independently of each other. It was hard to have a normal conversation with him because you couldn’t tell if he was looking at you or the blackboard.

  “Rachel,” Buddy said, “if there was any way I could keep you, believe me I would. I know how tough this is going to be on you and Katie.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “What?” he asked back.

  “You said this was going to be tough on me and Katie. Who’s Katie?”

  Timmons opened a manila folder and glanced through it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you had a daughter.” Finally convinced I was telling the truth, he looked up and sighed. “Believe me, I hate telling you this worse than you hate hearing it.”

  Which I seriously doubted. I mean, how could he possibly know how much my job meant to me? How could he know the absolute sense of hopelessness that threatened to engulf me when I wasn’t at school? How could he possibly know that what kept me going day after dreary day was my students and my books and my precious Shakespeare, with whom I struggled but loved nonetheless. Teaching was no longer what I did; it’s who I was.

  “These things happen,” Buddy said. “Lay-offs are just a side-effect, a natural by-product if you will, of reduced enrollment."

  When I heard the phrase natural by-product, I detected the vocabulary of Goldberg, and my heart sank.

  “I know,” I replied. “It’s just that they’ve never happened to me.”

  Just then a couple strands of hair sprang from Buddy’s scalp, and dangled loosely on the side of his head like wayward antennae. For a moment I was so distracted I forgot which eye I was talking to.

  “If it’s any consolation,” he said. “I lost my job a few years back. I thought it was the end of the world, but turns out it was a godsend. In fact, it couldn’t have come at a better time.”

  I know he was trying to make me feel better but it wasn’t working.

  “God hardly ever sends me things like that,” I said. “All I seem to get from him is crap.”

  I was surprised something so honest and raw came out of my mouth. Usually I’m not that candid or quick-witted.

  Timmons nodded, as if he knew exactly how I must feel, then assured me that a bright, attractive girl such as myself would have absolutely no trouble finding another job elsewhere.

  “Who knows,” he said. “You might choose to get out of teaching all together.”

  Which was pretty much the straw that broke the camel’s back. I suddenly wanted to tell Timmons to go to hell, but somehow that didn’t seem to be the correct response. On the other hand Thanks, Buddy didn’t sound quite right either, and so I continued to say nothing. Buddy patted me lightly on the shoulder, I’m sure to demonstrate how badly he felt, then picked a piece of lint from my jacket, turned and strolled from the room.

  I watched him leave, his antennae swaying to and fro, and found that more than anything in the world I wanted to say something terribly clever, a scathing remark that would indicate how unscathed I felt at the moment, but I couldn’t. For one, I’m just not that type of person. And two, I have to plan those types of remarks in advance – they never come naturally to me like they do to other people. I wish they did. I wish I was more spontaneous or ruthless or both

  Instead, I simply watched Buddy Timmons waddle out of my room and my life without saying another word. That’s me. The eternal pacifist. I hate confrontation so much I bend over backwards to avoid it. It’s a character flaw I will admit to. What I won’t admit to, at least openly, is that there’s a fine line between being a pacifist and a coward. I guess I won’t admit it because deep down I know which side of the line I am on.

  EIGHT

  Entry #60

  I don’t believe in luck, but I do believe in angels.

  Tennessee Williams

  Later that afternoon, a fellow teacher Chrissy, invited me out for drinks, to commiserate my newfound unemployment. Bad news travels fast. I knew I couldn’t drink anything containing alcohol, especially malt liquors, but accepted her invitation anyway. I’m a pushover when it comes to people who feel sorry for me.

  As soon as we reached the bar and sat down, she asked the one question for which I seldom have an answer:

  “So what are you going to do now?” she said.

  This time however it was an OK question. Maybe not an easy-to-answer question, but one I had been thinking about long before I was forced to. And this is what I thought: I’m going to write a novel. A wonderful story had been bouncing around inside my head for years, and now I finally had the time to put it all down on paper. The fact that since college I hadn’t written anything longer than a grocery list didn’t faze me in the least. After all, I was an English teacher, and everyone knows English teachers are closet novelists to begin with. That settles it, I decided: I’m going to be a novelist. Relieved to have reached a decision, I looked Chrissy straight in the eye and surprised even myself when I heard my answer.

  “I don’t really know,” I said.

  I felt a deep shock at those words, because the minute I said them, I knew they were true. I didn’t have a clue. I knew what I wanted to do, but I knew me well enough to know I would never do it. Typically I live my life under a banner of denial, but not this time. This time I admitted I was a ship lost at sea, which scored me some points in the honesty category, but failed to provide me with any real sense of direction.

  Just then a man who, from the look and smell of him, had been at the bar quite a bit longer than Chrissy and I, staggered by. He glanced first at me then Chrissy then me again. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to decide if he knew us or if he was just trying to focus both eyes at the same time.

  “Either of you gals wanna dance?” he said much slower than necessary.

  He addressed both of us but it was clear he had only one of us in mind. Chrissy. He spoke directly to her chest.

  “How’s bout you, sweetheart,” he said. “Want to join me for a swing around the room?”

  Chrissy smiled this radiant smile, thanked him, and said that as tempting as the offer was, we gals were waiting on our guys, who were on their way from work. They were policemen.

  Romeo cocked his head sideways and smiled. He was probably used to being turned down and was now an expert at spotting flimsy excuses.

  “Chicago’s finest, huh?” he said with an air of sarcasm.

  “Yep,” I chimed in. “And they have guns, too”

  Romeo looked at me then, and suddenly didn’t seem as drunk as I’d originally thought.

  “Funny you should say that,” he said. “I got me a gun, too.”

  It go
t kind of quiet then. I didn’t feel nearly as witty as I had a few minutes earlier. I stared at the table, hoping someone would say something without the word gun in it.

  Finally Romeo did.

  “You ladies have a good night,” he said, then shuffled away.

  I looked at Chrissy who was looking at me. We both started laughing, shook our heads and said the exact same thing at the exact same moment.

  “What a jerk.”

  Later in the evening, I caught Romeo staring at us a couple times from across the room, but he never approached our table again. Apparently he wasn’t as desperate as I thought. Either that or he was so drunk he didn’t trust himself to cross the room without falling down. In an odd sort of way I felt sorry for him. There are not many things in life as sad as a grown man trolling bars in search of a dance partner. Nevertheless I kept an eye on him, just in case he might sober up enough to take another run at us.

  After a couple Diet Cokes and a bowl of pretzels, Chrissy and I left.

  “Rachel,” she said as we walked through the door. “These things happen for a reason. So keep your chin up.”

  I told her I would.

  The last thing she said was, “Let’s keep in touch.”

  Which is such a sad statement because it’s the thing people say when they know they will never see each other again.

  I followed her sad remark with one that was even sadder.

  “I’ll give you a call,” I said as we hugged. “We’ll have lunch.”

  And that pretty much did it. We parted company, telling each other we’d call and eat and stay in touch, knowing full well we wouldn’t. Funny the lies we allow ourselves to tell, just to avoid an uncomfortable truth.

  I found my car and had the door half-way open when I heard the man’s voice.

  “I see that Sheriff of yours never showed up.”

  Which I thought was a strange thing for someone to say until I saw who said it.

  It was Romeo.

  He was standing at the front of my car, hands on his hips, a toothpick dangling from the side of his mouth.

  My heart skipped a beat.

  “Guess we got stood-up,” I said.

  Romeo nodded without smiling. It was then I realized how tall, fat and hairy he was, but it wasn’t his size that concerned me; it was his not smiling. Plus the fact that we suddenly seemed to be all alone. A drunk stranger talking to you in an empty parking lot is one thing but a drunk stranger talking to you in an empty parking lot who isn’t smiling is another thing all together.

  He took a step toward me.

  “Well, hell, sweetheart, since you got stood up, why don’t me and you have that dance?”

  “Listen,” I said, “I don’t know what your problem is but I bet it’s hard to pronounce.”

  As soon as I said, I wished I hadn’t. In part because it was just a mean thing to say but mostly because Romeo thought it was mean also. He grabbed me by the elbow and dug his fingers into my skin, to show how much stronger he was than me. Which was a lot.

  “Whassa matter?” he said, his voice full of whiskey and cigarettes. “Not in the dancin’ mood?”

  I began to panic. Unfortunately when I panic, I also begin to laugh. It’s purely a nervous reaction. I know it, and people who know me know it, but unfortunately Romeo did not know it. Romeo took it as a sign that I was laughing at him.

  “Think that’s cute, do ya? Me wantin’ to dance with you?” He pulled me tight to his chest. “Well, maybe we should try something else then.”

  That’s when I heard another man’s voice.

  “Everything OK?” he asked.

  I was never so glad in my life to see someone I didn’t know. Even if he was a total stranger, he was my hero.

  “I’m just trying to leave,” I said.

  Hero opened my door.

  “You can let her go now,” he said calmly.

  “Who the hell are you?” Romeo asked.

  Hero didn’t respond. He just stared at Romeo with a look of amusement. I think bullies hate it when you do that.

  Slowly Romeo’s face changed. Less cocky, more confused. His grip loosened. I pulled free and slipped behind the wheel in two seconds flat.

  Romeo squinted, as if trying to figure out what to do next, when Hero made it simple by telling him what to do next.

  “I think you should leave now,” Hero said firmly. “Go home. Go to bed.”

  Romeo snorted with contempt. He outweighed Hero by at least fifty pounds and was much taller and a great deal hairier but none of that seemed to matter to Hero. Hero kept staring and smiling, cool, calm and collected. Superman still dressed up like Clark Kent, staring down the bad guy with absolute confidence that he could beat the tar out of him without breaking a sweat. It was magnificent.

  “Go home,” Hero said again. “Lie down and sleep it off.”

  Romeo swayed a little, as if thinking and standing were more than he could handle. Instead of toppling over though he did the unbelievable – he turned and walked away.

  I waited until he was gone, then rolled down my window.

  “Thank you,” I said in a trembling voice. “Thank you so, so much.”

  “Not a problem,” Hero said. “You OK?”

  I nodded.

  “You sure?”

  “I think he was just trying to scare me,” I said bravely.

  “Probably. Did it work?”

  “Yep,” I said with a laugh.

  Hero smiled and patted my arm reassuringly. “Don’t worry, he won’t bother you again.”

  Don’t ask me how, but somehow I knew he was right.

  “Be careful driving home,” Hero said, then turned to go. He was half-way across the parking lot when I shouted.

  “Excuse me, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Daniel,” he said without turning.

  And that was it. A moment later, he disappeared into the shadows.

  I didn’t stick around to see who else might show up unexpectedly and want to dance. I’d had enough romance for one night.

  On the way home, something kept nagging at me, however. It was the idea that I’d met Daniel before. I was sure of it. Was it at the grocery store? The building I lived in? At work? No, no and no.

  Then it hit me.

  Daniel was at my husband’s funeral. Rather he was at my apartment after the funeral. He was Joe’s friend who made the comment about Joe having the morning star and shining like the sun.

  But was that possible? What were the odds that the same guy at my husband’s funeral would turn up in a parking lot at the exact moment I was being grabbed by a drunk with an imaginary gun?

  A thousand to one? Ten Thousand? A million?

  It was too strange to fathom. But if life has taught me anything, it’s this: strange things happen.

  It didn’t take me long to quit worrying about Daniel, however. I had way more important things to worry about. Things like how to pay rent and buy food and get along all day on my own without thinking about how lonely I was.

  That night, lying in bed, I listened to the night sounds of my apartment and the world outside.

  A siren in the distance made me think of ambulances, which made me think of Joe, which made me sad, so I quit listening so intently. Of course the more I tried not to listen, the more I heard. The ticking of a clock, the dripping of a sink, the constant clack, clack, clacking of a ceiling fan.

  It occurred to me then that the truth many people don’t understand until it’s too late is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer because insignificant things begin to torture you. Things like sirens in the night or bullies in bars or Buddy Timmons combing his hair the way he did. Under normal circumstance those things would never bother me, but now they did. Now they bothered me like a three-day-old toothache. And the more I tried to think positive thoughts and concentrate on the goodness of life, like that $29 book said I should, the more miserable I became.

  No one said life was supposed to be fair,
but I had reached the point where I didn’t care about fair anymore. Fair seemed like a distant dream. The only thing that made sense, and in a very real way, saved me from going over to the dark side, was this little human being inside me that nudged me from time to time, as if to say, Hey -- I’m here. Don’t forget about me. You haven’t lost me.

  Thank God for little elbows.

  After a while I finally drifted off to sleep. The last thing I remember was a song that was either playing in my head or coming from the apartment next to mine, I couldn’t be sure. A woman was singing in the most beautiful French voice, and although I can’t speak French, I knew it was a love song. One of those lovely French songs they played during World War II that was slow and sad and dreamy. A perfect lullaby for a pregnant woman who had nothing much left in the world to live for except the precious little baby inside her.

  But it was enough.

  NINE

  Entry #13

  And if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Mornings have a way of coming way too early sometimes. So does morning sickness. I was lying on my stomach when I woke up, which is odd because I can’t sleep on my stomach. Especially since my stomach was now bigger than my butt. I peeled one eye open, then the other. I glanced at the clock. It read 8:03, with a little red dot in the corner, which meant it was a.m.

  “It can’t be eight o’clock already?” I actually said aloud.

  I closed my eyes and went back to sleep. When I awoke, I was on my back, which was a good sign. And I felt much better, which was another good sign. I glanced at the clock again; it read 8:22, with that same little dot. I did the math in my head, realizing I had done one of two things: slept for twenty-four hours straight or slept for a total of nineteen minutes. One was too long to be possible and the other was too short to be helpful. I knew it had to be nineteen minutes.

  Earlier, when I said I felt better, that’s because I hadn’t tried to move. When I finally sat up, my stomach flip-flopped, and I spent the next five minutes kneeling over the toilet. Afterwards, I took a shower and had some toast, which at first made me feel better then nauseous again. I quit eating and just sat there in my little all-white kitchen, staring out the window at a scraggly tree across the street.

  A while later I glanced at the clock. It read 2:00, without the little dot, which meant p.m. Once again I did the math in my head, realizing I’d done one of two things: sat in a chair for five hours without moving or, well, there was no “or.” I had sat in a chair for five hours without moving, staring out the window at nothing but leaves.

  I was sinking into the abyss, despite the assurances Goldberg had given me to the contrary. But up until that very moment I thought I could lick it. I thought I was stronger than a little missing serotonin in my brain or a few misfiring synapses. I was wrong. Anyone who can sit and stare at leaves without flinching for the better part of the day is a goner. Or at least on the road to becoming a goner, which was no longer the road less-traveled for me.

  I knew I had to do something and something fast. I ran through the various options in my head, weighing the strengths and weaknesses of each one then settled on the course of action that made the most sense: I went back to bed.

  While asleep I dreamed the most wonderful dream. I dreamed I was flying. Flying high over the little house I grew up in as a kid, sailing like a great white bird on the warm summer winds. Gliding, soaring, sailing, feeling majestic. My flying was oh so graceful – I was oh so graceful… and free and happy and serene.

  Dreams are marvelous. Flying dreams especially.

  When I awoke, it was the next day. I didn’t care what time of day it was because I felt marvelous. More marvelous than I’d felt in months. And I was awake a full ten minutes before I remembered I was suicidal with depression.

  Once again, I climbed out of bed, but this time avoided the kitchen, which had become for me the Bermuda Triangle of my house – a place where someone could lose up to five hours at a time without realizing it. And since I didn’t have any spare hours to lose, I decided to take a walk.

  I made it as far as the sidewalk when it began raining, so I did the one thing I should have done to begin with: I trudged back inside, made myself a bowl of soup and went back to bed.

  And the next day I did the same, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that for I don’t know how long. A week? A month? It was the tyranny of the same old thing. Over and over and over, ad finitium, ad nauseam.

  I read somewhere that the poet Emily Dickinson lived in her home for over twelve years without once leaving it, which is both fascinating and weird. Fascinating that she could write such lovely poetry while staring out a window, and weird because, well, it’s just weird not to leave your house for twelve years. It wasn’t that she was lazy; rather I read she had a social-anxiety condition that made her so shy that apparently the only way she could feel like a normal person was to avoid normal people all together. She was a shut-in by choice not circumstance.

  A lifestyle, quite frankly that I was beginning to appreciate.

  TEN

  Entry #143

  Tell me of your certainties. I have doubts enough of my own.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  The next few weeks were pretty much what I expected them to be: bleak, drab and dreary, plus it seemed like it rained an awful lot. I had a baby on the way, rent to pay, food to buy and no employment in sight. Evidently I wasn’t as marketable as Timmons led me to believe. I thought about calling home, but decided against it. I felt bad enough without having my mom tell me how bad it was.

  I tried watching TV but every time I did, a commercial would come on with attractive people my age having more fun in thirty seconds than I’ve had in three years. It was that way with everything. All my favorite songs sounded like dirges, even the Beatles; and you have to work pretty hard to make them sound sad. I might be ten minutes into a good book before I realized I was still on the first page. Magazines were the same. Even the ones with nothing but celebrity photos and gossip. Food lost all its appeal. Toast tasted like cardboard, bacon like leather and I don’t even want to tell you what eggs reminded me of. But I continued to eat. I wasn’t about to short-change my daughter’s nutritional needs. Even if I couldn’t taste anything, I think she could.

  Aunt Ida sent me a postcard with a smiley-face on it. On the back she wrote that said she was praying for me and that Jesus was the answer. I had the urge to write her back and ask what the question was, but didn’t. For some reason though I placed her postcard on the refrigerator, next to the picture of Seurat’s painting. In some inexplicable way, they seemed to go together.

  Aunt Mertis called several times, along with other relatives, offering to come visit but I kept them at bay, claiming I was doing all these fun and interesting things with my friends from school. Which was more than sad because most of my friends from school had disappeared. Whether I left them or they left me, I’m not sure. All I knew was this: I was alone.

  It’s not an easy thing, being alone.

  You tend to think about all the stuff you keep telling yourself not to think about. And the more you think about the dark side of life, the darker it becomes. So dark, in fact, you begin looking at the common everyday things in a whole new and disturbing way.

  Gradually, everything in my apartment took on ominous features. I’d pass the gas stove and think about the poet Sylvia Plath, and wonder what was going through her mind as she stuck her head in the oven and inhaled herself to death. An open window was how Bruno Whatshisname snatched the Lindbergh baby. The sofa was where they found Mr. Borden, after Lizzy delivered her forty whacks. I didn’t own a gun but the broom in the corner became Hemingway’s twelve-gauge, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the great master of American literature thought as he pulled both triggers and showered that once-lovely mind of his onto the ceiling.
br />   I think it was Nietzsche who said “Stare into the abyss long enough and the abyss stares into you.” Like most of Nietzsche’s stuff, however, I wasn’t absolutely sure what he meant, but I was beginning to get the drift of it.

  Also I started sleeping again. A lot. Little bedsores began popping up on my elbows and heels from the constant friction of the sheets. It didn’t take long before I was spending more time lying down than standing up. It was easier to do nothing than to do anything so I continued doing nothing all day long. It’s remarkable how easily sloth can take over your life.

  Then one day, while lying in bed, watching the ceiling fan going round and round and round and round, and waiting for it to get dark outside so I could go back to sleep, I realized something:

  I was going mad.

  Slowly, surely, ever-so-steadily mad. Quietly mad. Effortlessly mad.

  I wasn’t surprised though. I think everyone has madness inside them, hidden deep in some dark and forgotten corner. Mine had just found its way to the light.

  But the fact that I knew I was going nuts was a good sign. Crazy people don’t know they’re crazy. Recognition therefore meant there was still hope. The question then became what to do with that hope.

  Fortunately, I knew there was at least one place I could take it.

  ELEVEN

  Entry #133

  Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.

  William Penn Adair “Will” Rogers

  “So,” Goldberg said. “How have you been?”

  “OK,” I replied.

  Before he could ask me what OK meant, I asked him a question. One that I’d been mulling over since my aunt sent me that postcard with the smiley-face on it.

  “Do you think the Church might be able to help me?”

  Goldberg looked surprised. “That’s depends on the church, I suppose. Are you a Christian?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Roman Catholic.”

  Goldberg studied the tips of his fingers for a moment.

  “Do you consider yourself religious?” he asked

  “No, not really,” I said. “But I went to church all the time when I was a kid.”

  “Were you forced to go?”

  “I wouldn’t say forced. It sure was expected of us, though. By my father.”

  Goldberg’s mouth moved slightly. It could have been a smile.

  “Did you ever resent having to meet those expectations?”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes, when I wanted to sleep in, but mostly it was fun getting to hang out with my friends.”

  He scribbled something in a notebook.

  “Did your father ever talk about the consequences of not going to church?” he asked.

  “Consequences?” I said. “Like would he get mad if I skipped confirmation class or something?”

  He shook his head. “No. Consequences of not following his Faith.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  Goldberg paused, as if trying to recall the exact phrase from a book he’d read.

  “Substantial damage,” he said, “can be done to the psyche of developing children if they grow up in an atmosphere of, shall we say, judgment and fear.”

  “I still don’t follow you,” I said.

  “Did your father ever speak about life after death?”

  “I’m sure he did,” I replied. “Or at least I’m sure our priest did.”

  “And did either of them ever talk about the concept of eternal damnation?”

  “You mean Hell?

  Goldberg nodded. “Quite a few studies have been done on the long-term effect that religious consequences have on one’s emotional stability. Living in fear of punishment over a long period of time can be very debilitating.”

  I was confused. “But I didn’t live in fear. I loved my father.”

  “I’m not talking about living in fear of your father,” Goldberg said. “I’m talking about living in fear of God.”

  Which made even less sense.

  “Why would I fear God?”

  Goldberg put his pen down.

  “Rachel,” he said. “All religion is based on judgment. Behave well and you’re rewarded. Don’t behave well and you’re punished. But Christianity’s punishment for the sin of not believing in Jesus far exceeds the sin itself. The Christian punishment is physical torture. Eternal physical torture, I might add.”

  Goldberg let those words linger a moment then smiled.

  “Now, I ask you,” he said. “Is that really the act of a loving God? Is that truly a religion you’re comfortable with?”

  I was really puzzled now. Goldberg may not have known what he was talking about, but he sure did sound like it. Suddenly I thought of something.

  “Are you Jewish?” I asked.

  Goldberg slowly leaned back in his chair.

  “Yes,” he replied. “But I don’t practice Judaism.”

  “What do you practice?”

  “Actually, I don’t follow any formal set of religious doctrine.”

  “So you’re an atheist.”

  “Agnostic,” he replied slowly, cautiously.

  “So, it’s not that you disbelieve in God,” I said. “You just don’t care if there is one or not.”

  Goldberg smiled. “Let’s stay on task, shall we? Now, about your Faith –”

  I make it a rule not to interrupt people, even when they interrupt me first, but this time I made an exception.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “May I ask another question?”

  Goldberg’s eye twitched a little.

  “Certainly,” he said.

  “In your opinion, psychologically-speaking, is religion a good thing or a bad thing for someone like me?”

  Goldberg considered his words carefully.

  “I would say any institution that offers moral support and ethical instruction has definite merits.”

  I wasn’t sure his answer answered my question.

  “So does that mean it’s a good thing?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, “as long as it doesn’t become the only thing.”

  “What do you mean, the only thing?”

  “Anything,” Goldberg replied, “can damage one’s health if overindulged. Food, alcohol, exercise – ”

  “Religion?” I said.

  He nodded vigorously. “Especially religion.”

  “How so?”

  Goldberg took in a deep breath.

  “Simply put, faith is a good thing, Rachel. Obedience to that faith is a good thing. But blind faith in a rigid set of dogma can only lead to disappointment and ultimately despair.”

  I stewed on that for a moment.

  “So, it’s OK to be religious,” I said. “As long as you don’t take your religion too seriously.”

  Goldberg shifted in his chair.

  “I think you should keep an open mind,” he said. “And simply ask questions of your faith, regardless of the religion.”

  “What types of questions?”

  “To begin with, is your religion rational? In other words, does your faith ask you to believe in doctrine that is illogical?”

  “What’s illogical about Christianity?” I asked.

  Goldberg leaned forward onto his elbows.

  “The greatest argument against Christianity” he said, “is exclusivity. It teaches that Christ is the only means of salvation. That if you don’t follow him, then you can’t have a proper relationship with God.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” I said.

  Goldberg’s eyes grew even larger than they were normally.

  “Don’t you think that’s a little arrogant?” he said. “What about the four billion people in the world who believe in something other than Christianity? Are they doomed to Hell simply because they don’t believe in your Christ?”

  I’m not sure when Jesus became my Christ, but it was clear I was the only one in the room who believed in him. And alone as I was in my belief, I felt suddenly vulnerable.

  “So what else is wrong with
Christianity?” I asked timidly.

  Goldberg sat back in his chair. He looked toward the ceiling then back to me. He smiled.

  “Well, the problems are manifold…” he began.

  He then proceeded to tell me that Christianity is, as Marx said, an opiate for the masses. A drug that lures people in with eloquent words of peace, love and forgiveness, then empowers its leaders to launch such atrocities as the Inquisition and the Crusades, where thousands were murdered – all in the name of the Church. All in the name of Christ.

  Suddenly I regretted having asked the question, but it was too late now. Goldberg was just getting warmed up.

  “Christianity,” he continued, “is a self-proclaimed moral institution that preaches brotherhood, acceptance and equality for all God’s children, with, of course, the modern-day exception of homosexuals, women and the occasional Democrat."

  Which I realized was true in some cases but not all. But knowing it was true in some cases suddenly bothered me. A lot.

  “How,” Goldberg asked, “in this day and age, can a reasonable human being believe in the sort of god who stands idly by as poverty, AIDS, and cancer – all of which he created – destroys the very creation he supposedly loves?”

  This whole tirade was making my stomach turn. Not because it was heresy, not because it was sacrilegious, not even because it was downright mean. It was making me ill because it made sense.

  “You see, Rachel,” Goldberg said in conclusion. “The issue you have with your religion is not that you believe nothing, it’s that you believe everything.”

  It was then that I realized something important. Something both shocking and unexpected: Goldberg was right. I did believe everything I was taught about my religion. All my life I’d accepted my Faith on, well, faith. All of it. My father believed in it, so it must be true. He was seldom wrong about anything. Plus it was pounded into me by the nuns at church and school. Don’t think, just obey. Don’t question, just follow. Don’t doubt, just believe.

  Consequently, I was a Christian by circumstance not choice.

  Which meant the ugly truth of the matter was this: I really didn’t know the first thing about God. I just thought I did.

  And that ugly truth led to one that was even uglier. Maybe my family members weren’t dying because God was trying to teach me a lesson. Maybe they were dying because there was no God.

  TWELVE

  Entry #117

  We have found all the questions that can be found. It is time we stopped looking for questions and started looking for answers.

  G. K. Chesterton

  One of the most difficult times in life is when you discover up is really down and black may be white. When I left Goldberg’s office, that was precisely my state of mind.

  Faith or no Faith?

  Church or no church?

  God or no God?

  I needed time to clear my head. Fortunately, I do my best head-clearing when I’m walking. I’d taken a cab to Goldberg’s office but decided to walk home instead, glad to have the time to sort things out a little.

  Five blocks into my journey, the one thing I hadn’t counted on, but should have, happened: I had to go pee. I don’t know what I was thinking when I set out. My bladder was roughly the size of a walnut before I got pregnant. Now it seemed to have disappeared all together.

  Luckily I passed a church. The sign out front told me it was St. Michael’s. I was sure the door would be locked but was desperate enough to try it anyway. To my surprise it opened and I went in.

  The sanctuary of St. Michael’s was deserted. I hadn’t been in one for years, but it smelled like the church of my youth. It smelled of roses, cinnamon and furniture polish. Thin shafts of light made a crisscross pattern on the pews and the stained glass windows emitted a surreal glow, as if creating light instead of merely allowing light to enter through them. There’s something about a church sanctuary for me that’s hard to describe, especially in older churches. It’s a hushed silence that’s more than just the absence of noise; somehow it’s quieter than that. It’s as if the room itself is infused with reverence. Even if I had been blindfolded, I’d have known I was in a special place. I could feel and smell it as much as see it.

  A large crucifix hung on the wall behind the altar, and on the cross was the body of Christ, his head turned down and to one side, his eyes closed. I think in the sculptor’s mind he was already dead.

  This Jesus wore a small towel around his middle and his hair was long and tangled, with a crown of thorns pushed low on his brow. His feet were crossed one over the other, his arms spread wide with nail-driven palms. And despite the pain he must have felt, his face was calm in death, serene in fact; I could see that plainly even from fifty feet away. As I looked at him, a line from Emily Dickenson sprang to mind:

  Because I could not stop for death,

  death kindly stopped for me.

  It was odd that I should recall that bit of poetry just now. I suppose I did so because seeing Jesus on the cross made me wonder if he had welcomed death, or fought it until the very end.

  I haven’t the slightest clue why I would ask myself a question like that. Even if someone were to give me the answer, I doubt that I would understand it; it was far too metaphysical, so I quickly dropped that line of thinking all together and went in search of the Ladies Room.

  As luck would have it, the first door I went through led me to another door with the magical sign “Women’s” on the front. Afterwards, when washing my hands I half-expected a nun to walk in, which would have been awkward. For some reason, bumping into people I know in public restrooms is always awkward, but bumping into a nun would have been doubly so. Fortunately none appeared, so I escaped back to the sanctuary and headed for the door.

  I don’t know how I missed it when I entered the church but on my way out, I passed the Confessional. I attended Catholic schools all the way through tenth grade, and Confession was a weekly requirement, or as they liked to call it Reconciliation.

  I stopped and recalled all the things I’d said in them as a teenager. Silly things and made-up sins. I never once told the priest what I was really up to. How could I? How could some guy twice my dad’s age understand all the things that were going on in a girl’s body much less her head? Consequently the Confessional of my childhood was not a place I was drawn to, but a place that was forced upon me.

  Yet for some reason I found myself drawn to this Confessional. But why? I hadn’t been to Confession since high school. Still, something inside me softly whispered that the answers I was seeking were in a small dark room behind this large wooden door. Was that possible? How could I benefit by telling a priest secrets I couldn’t tell my parents or Goldberg or even myself?

  And yet, something deep inside of me, in a place I didn’t even know existed, told me I should do this; I should go through this door.

  Today. Right now.

  Ever so slowly I touched the doorknob. It turned in my hand. Just as it opened, a voice sounded behind me.

  “Good afternoon,” he said.

  I tried not to act surprised but I spun around too quickly for it to be a casual spin. A priest stood a few feet away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, smiling. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “That’s OK,” I said. “I get startled all the time.”

  The first thing I noticed about him was that he was younger than most priests. Probably in his 30s, and he was deeply-tanned with jet-black hair and a really nice smile.

  “Would you like to speak to one of the priests?” he asked.

  “Oh, no, no,” I reassured him. “I just came in to…” I searched for a plausible answer. “… to light a candle for my father,” I said.

  The priest nodded. “I see. Is your father ill?”

  “No, he’s in Iraq. He’s in the Army.”

  “I understand,” he said. And the funny thing was, he sounded like he really did understand. A good priest can do that though. Connect on an emotional level in
a matter of seconds when it takes most people years.

  I suddenly felt the urge to ask him about religion. About the dangers of it becoming the only thing in one’s life, but I didn’t. That question would have led to a whole slew of other questions that I wasn’t ready to get into.

  “Are you a member of St. Michael’s?” he asked.

  I told him no, and asked if it was OK that I dropped in like I was.

  “Of course it is,” he said, again with that terrific smile. “You’re always welcome in God’s house.”

  I thanked him for his generosity then just stood there, waiting for what, I had no idea. The priest waited with me.

  Under normal circumstances, standing in a strange church staring at a priest I’d met only minutes before without talking would have been awkward, but not this time. This time, more was being said in the silence than in any words we could have spoken.

  Finally he broke the silence.

  “I’m glad you stopped by to see us today. Come back anytime.”

  I told him I would, and meant it.

  I left the priest with the nice smile and roomful of flickering candles, none of which I had actually lit, and continued my walk home. I still had a number of things to sort through. Some big, some little. Trouble is, sometimes I get so caught up in the little things that I miss the big ones.

  Which is precisely what just happened.

  I missed a big one. A really big one.

  In that dimly-lit church that smelled of cinnamon and roses called St. Michael’s.

  THIRTEEN

  Entry #41

  You never know the weight of the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

  Sylvia Plath

  It happened on a Thursday afternoon. I’d just finished my bath when I noticed a slight bleeding, which stopped, but just to be safe, I called my doctor, who, as usual was not available. I wound up talking to my doctor’s nurse’s practitioner’s assistant, who told me that my condition was nothing to be concerned with. The next day the bleeding started again, only this time it didn’t stop. This time my situation was much more acute, and so I got straight through to the nurse practitioner herself.

  “You better come in…now,” she said.

  I wished she had been more casual with the way she said now. The tone of her voice told me everything I didn’t want to know, that I – we – were in trouble.

  I called a cab and shuffled out to the curb to meet him. On the way to the hospital the bleeding worsened, and I realized I should have called 911. Of course, realizing what you should have done after you can no longer do it is really counter-productive, so I switched to another subject that had been on my mind lately, which was why things were turning out so rotten for me? I hadn’t done anything I could think of that would precipitate my husband dying or me losing my job. For the most part, I was a decent, honest hard-working woman who waited her turn in line and drove the speed limit, yet here I was on the verge of a miscarriage.

  Just then we drove past St. Michael’s and it made me realize what I should do, what most people do in these situations: Strike a deal with God.

  “Dear God,” I whispered then shut up. I didn’t want the cabbie to get the wrong idea, even though I wasn’t sure what that would have been.

  Dear God, I said to myself, in case God didn’t hear me the first time. Please don’t take my baby. Please, please, please don’t. I can’t bear to lose her. I’m hanging on by a thread as it is. Whatever it was I did or didn’t do, I swear I’ll start doing it or quit doing it. I promise. I’ll commit my life to serving others, if you’ll just help me make it through this OK. I’ll start going to church again. I’ll teach Sunday School, to any age kids, it won’t matter. I’ll serve hot meals for the homeless at that shelter over on Freemont. I’ll do anything you want – just don’t take my baby from me. You took my brother, you took my husband. Don’t take her. Please, God, don’t take her. Please. Please. Please. Amen. Oh, and that time in Goldberg’s office when I almost didn’t believe in you – well, I do believe you’re real. I really do. Amen… again.

  By the time I finished telling God what I’d do for him if he got me out of this jam, we pulled into the emergency entrance of the hospital. They whisked me inside. It was loud and crowded. A baby was crying. A man was moaning. Women dressed all in white hustled back and forth. I sat in my wheelchair for a few minutes that felt like a few hours before they wheeled me into another room. Someone handed me a form and said something I didn’t understand, then put a pen in my hand and I signed my name. Before I passed out, I remember a nurse looking at me with eyes filled with urgency and something else – sadness perhaps. Whatever it was, it was both comforting and alarming at the same time.

  “How long has she been bleeding?” was the last thing I heard anyone say.

  And then it was dark. So dark that it wasn’t even black; it was somehow darker than black. Out of the blackness, I saw a faint light. I walked toward it. The light grew brighter until I saw what can only be described as a white wooden gazebo. Sitting in the middle of the gazebo was a man, wearing a white suit and reading from a book. His hair was very short, spiked and gray. Perched on the end of his nose was a pair of small round reading glasses, the kind Benjamin Franklin wore.

  He looked up from his book, and directly at me, but remained silent. We stared at one another for a few seconds and then he spoke.

  “I’m sorry, Rachel,” he said in this wonderfully rich voice.

  And he was sorry. I could tell. Some people have a certain quality that conveys a sense of honesty, even though you’ve never seen them before in your life. I had no idea what he was sorry for, but I knew he meant it. And somehow knowing he was sorry gave me a warm feeling in the pit of my stomach where up until now it had been ice cold.

  I awoke sometime later, alone in a real hospital bed, dressed in one of those flimsy hospital gowns. The curtains were pulled all around me. There was an IV in one arm and what I assumed was a temperature gauge on the fingertip of my right hand.

  A few minutes later, a man walked in.

  “Rachel, I’m Doctor McCowen,” he said. “How do you feel?”

  “OK, I guess.”

  “Any nausea? Dizziness?”

  “No.”

  “Cramping?”

  “No.”

  He examined the chart in his hand, nodded then looked up. A nurse walked in and stood at my side. She and the doctor exchanged glances before he spoke.

  “I’m afraid I have bad news,” he said matter-of-factly. “There was a problem with your placenta. It detached from the uterine wall and…well, complications arose. We did everything we could. I’m sorry.”

  And that was that.

  My little girl was gone. Dead. As dead as my brother, as dead as my husband, as dead as they come. Now I knew why that man with the spiked hair apologized in my dream. He was apologizing for death. A death that brought with it a raw wound for which there was no relief. An open gash that burned and burned and burned, and there was nothing I could do but sit there and take it. Take it like an animal tied to a post, whipped, kicked, and beaten within an inch of its life. I tried to block out the pain, but most of it crept through, devouring me with its razor-sharp teeth.

  Again the doctor said, “I’m sorry.”

  To which I heard someone say, “Me too.”

  The someone was me.

  And I was sorry. More sorry than I’ve ever felt before. Given the chance I would have gladly traded my life for that of my daughter’s. It’s terrible, but when I try to speak from the heart, I’m rarely comprehensible. Please, God, take me, not her is what I would have said if I’d had the chance. But God didn’t give me that chance. God said this is the way it’s going to be, so deal with it.

  Only I couldn’t deal with it. I wasn’t strong enough. I dealt with losing my husband; I dealt with losing my job; but losing my daughter was more than I could bear. And so I shut off the part of my brain that housed my grief. I slammed the door tight and locked the loc
k on it. My way of dealing with it was refusing to deal with it. No doubt Goldberg would have called it denial, which was OK; just because he was right didn’t mean I was wrong. It might be called denial, but it was also called survival. Physically I was out of danger, but the psychic wounds were real.

  I was bleeding to death.

  FOURTEEN

  Entry #69

  Life is a gift horse in my opinion.

  J. D. Salinger

  They let me go home a few days later. I explained that I had no family and that was why no one visited me in the hospital. Of course the awful truth was I hadn’t told anyone what had happened.

  When I got home, I went straight to bed and slept off-and-on for three days. I got up a couple times to get a drink of water and use the bathroom. Other than that I restricted myself to bedrest and no food. Actually I ate a couple crackers and half a banana that looked like it wasn’t going to make it through another day, but other than that I took no nourishment. Funny thing is I never got hungry. In fact, I felt so full after the banana that I thought I might puke.

  On the fourth day, when passing the bathroom mirror, I glanced at myself, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the last time I washed my hair or took a shower. Not eating is one thing, but not washing is another. Clinical depression is no excuse for poor hygiene. I took a shower that lasted maybe two hours, judging from the way the water went from hot to cold to ice-cold. I was in the stall so long I ended up sitting down. I considered bringing in a chair but that felt like too much effort so I just sat in the middle of the stall, hugged my knees tight, and let the water cascade off my back and shoulders with an unhurried yet determined rhythm.

  As I sat there, I realized that life showed no promise whatsoever of getting better. In fact, it showed quite a bit of promise of getting worse. And since I was pretty sure I couldn’t take worse, I decided the best thing to do was to call it quits.

  Ironically, once I made that decision, I felt a great sense of calm; my life had purpose again. I realized it wasn’t the most positive of goals, but at least it was a concrete thing to strive for. French novelist Honore de Balzac said ‘There is something great and terrible about suicide.’ I’m not sure about the great part, but at the moment, it was all I had. As for being terrible, only time would tell.

  Of course, I’d have to come up with a way to do it. In the back of my mind, however, I always knew the answer; the final solution as it were: sleeping pills.

  I saw a woman on Oprah who talked about a strange experience she had with pills. She battled depression also. Funny thing was she had a fairly ordinary life: no heartbreaking deaths or divorce to deal with. No cancer or financial crisis. In fact, she was married to a nice guy, had two nice kids and lived in a nice neighborhood on a nice little street, lined with trees, homes and flowers. She was the very picture of domestic bliss, yet was so miserable that one day she took a fistful of Quaaludes, drank a half bottle of cherry vodka, and waited for the bliss to end. Instead of dying, however, she threw up all over the kitchen table.

  Now comes the strange part.

  The last thing she’d eaten was alphabet soup. When she threw up, three undigested letters formed the word G-O-D, which startled her into a whole new way of looking at suicide. She rushed herself to the hospital, had her stomach pumped, quit her job, and became a missionary, all inside of a week

  I was determined not to make the same mistake, so I avoided soup all together, choosing instead a toasted cheese sandwich and a glass of milk as my last meal. Odd that it tasted as good as I could remember. With that done, I tidied up the kitchen, took a final look around my apartment then headed to the bathroom.

  Over the past several months I’d accumulated 62 sleeping pills. It wasn’t difficult to do. By the time I quit going to Dr. Bones, I had 50. Plus another 12 my mom sent me for some reason when I was in college. I figured 62 ought to do the trick, especially when combined with a nice glass of Chianti I’d been saving for a special occasion.

  So there I was, in front of the medicine cabinet, holding an amber bottle of life-taking capsules and a long-stem glass of wine. I poured a half-dozen pills into my hand and stared at them. Strange how something so small could be so big.

  The first handful went down without a hitch. I actually said, “Bottoms up.”

  I’ve never had trouble swallowing things. I guess I’ve been blessed with a large esophagus. I popped a second handful into my mouth. Down they went. I took a small sip of wine, as a chaser, then gulped down another ten or so, followed by another sip. Within a few minutes I’d swallowed all 62 pills and drank a half-bottle of wine that tasted strangely like the grape juice they served at church communion when I was a kid.

  That’s when the phone rang. I considered answering it but decided it was probably someone calling to ask how I was getting along. And since I wasn’t prepared to explain why I was too busy to talk, I let it go to voice mail. It was Aunt Mertis.

  “Hello, dear,” she said. “I hope everything is OK. I called to let you know that the funniest thing happened this morning. I was looking through an old scrapbook, and ran across this little picture of you when, oh, you couldn’t have been more than three or four years old, and you were sitting on the porch in your little Easter dress. The one with the pink flowers. And, well, you looked so sweet, and I don’t know, I had the strangest sensation just now that I should call and tell you that.”

  Under normal circumstances, hearing something so sweet would perk me right up, but this wasn’t exactly the best time. I had other things on my mind, and getting sidetracked with an unexpected compliment was throwing me off my game a little.

  “Silly, isn’t it?” she said. “I mean, it’s just a picture.”

  There was a long silence, but I knew she hadn’t hung up because I could hear her breathing.

  Finally she said, “I love you, dear.”

  Click.

  So there I was, a stomach full of sleeping pills and a knot in my throat the size of a golf ball. Was it a fluke that Aunt Mertis decided to call at this very moment, or was God sending me a message that said what you’re doing is even more terrible than Balzac knew?

  But it was too late for second-guesses. The die had been cast.

  I stood perfectly still, half-expecting my fingers and toes to go numb, but realized after a few minutes that apparently it doesn’t work that way. I was a rank amateur when it came to suicide, and it was beginning to show. As a precautionary measure, I finished off the wine and decided to wait it out by lying down on the bed. As it turns out, I didn’t have to wait long. As soon as my head hit the pillow, the room started to spin.

  I was actually surprised how calm and relaxed I was about the whole thing. It’s always easier to think about doing something than it is to actually do it, especially when it comes to killing yourself. I was afraid I’d get started then chicken out half-way through, which meant I’d probably down enough barbiturates to cause brain damage without finishing the job. The thought of becoming a vegetable scared me twice as much as becoming dead. Dead I could handle; half-dead was not something I wanted to experience.

  I was also surprised that my mind seemed to be going blank.

  I’d always read that at the moment of death, your past flashes before your eyes. So, I kept waiting for something, anything, a memory, a thought, a desire, but there was nothing. Just the sour taste of wine on my tongue and a feeling that I was sinking deeper and deeper into the bed.

  Then the strangest thing happened: I heard giggling. I looked across the room, and saw a girl maybe ten or eleven years old lying on the floor watching TV. She had long brown hair and dimples and my freckles and Joe’s eyes. I knew instantly it was my daughter Teresa. She was watching a rerun of “I Love Lucy,” and she was laughing because it was the episode where Lucy thought Martians had landed on the roof of her apartment, and were out to get her, when actually it was Ricky and Fred dressed up like Martians to teach Lucy a lesson.

  Then, without saying a word,
Teresa turned on her side and looked straight at me and smiled, and more than anything in the world I wanted to hug her, and stroke her hair and kiss her cheek and tell her that everything was going to be all right, even though I was going to be dead in a few minutes. And then I started crying. I couldn’t help it – before I knew it I was bawling like the baby that Teresa never became, and Teresa’s smile disappeared and tears came to her eyes and rolled slowly down both her cheeks and onto the carpet. I hated what I had done to her; I hated what I was doing to me. It was wrong and I wanted it to stop. I wanted to live. I wanted to grow older and have more Teresas and… and…and I was getting so tired that I couldn’t keep my eyes open. It got dark. It got quiet. I felt sleep overtaking me… I felt death overtaking me, and I sank slowly, ever so slowly, into the abyss that Nietzsche often spoke of but never visited.

  FIFTEEN

  Entry #77

  To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without  faith, no explanation is possible.

  Thomas Aquinas

  That’s when I started throwing up.

  I only threw up twice but they were doozys. Luckily I managed to turn my head to the side so that most of the puke landed on the floor and not on me. The room was still spinning a little but not like before, so I lay perfectly still until the ride was over. I must have dozed off because it felt like time had passed, although I don’t remember closing my eyes. All I knew was that I felt less nauseous and more like myself.

  Then I had this vision which was kind of like a dream only without going to sleep. In my mind’s eye, I was walking up an impossibly long and steep hill. I felt OK when I started out but the farther I went, the more exhausted I became. Soon, clouds rolled in and blocked out the sun; the wind grew sharp and it turned cold, but still I climbed, walking, trudging ever upward, forcing myself to place one foot ahead of the other. It felt as if chains were tethered to my legs and I was literally dragging an enormous weight up the side of this pitch-black mountain. My legs burned, my side ached, sweat poured down my back. The task before me was impossible, the hill too steep, the effort too great. Then, just when I knew I could go no farther, I came upon a door, standing alone in the middle of my path. I opened it, and from out of the darkness came a brilliant burst of light. The light engulfed me in its warmth and the night became as day and the chains fell away. I walked into the light, knowing I was safe, that I was home, and that the long terrible journey was finally over.

  I opened my eyes then, and looked back to where I’d seen my daughter watching Lucy and the Martians. She was gone. Then somewhere in the distance that sad French song I’d heard in one of my earlier dreams started up again, except this time it wasn’t a dream. I was wide-awake. When the song faded away, a man’s voice spoke to me in perfect English.

  “When you’re ready to talk, he’s ready to listen.”

  Since I’d never had a disembodied voice speak to me, I did the one thing I thought made sense: I waited for it to speak again.

  And it did.

  Except this time it used my name.

  “Rachel, when you’re ready to talk, he’s ready to listen.”

  Instead of getting the willies, I got a sense of Deja Vu. I’d heard this man’s voice before. Twice. It was Daniel. The same Daniel at my husband’s funeral and in the parking lot. I had no doubt. And for the first time in a very long time, I knew exactly what to do and where to do it. I climbed out of bed, cleaned up the floor, which wasn’t nearly as disgusting as I thought it might be, and left my apartment.

  Twenty minutes later I was standing in front of St. Michael’s, filled with a sense of anticipation mixed with dread.

  I opened the door and went in.

  It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they did, I walked forward to the altar, kneeled and stared up at my concrete savior. It was beautiful – he was beautiful. Whether it was the light or the shadow or the aftereffects of my near-death experience, this Jesus looked real. So real, in fact, I was sure that if I reached out and touched him, he’d move or flinch; and that the stone he was made of would turn out not be stone but warm soft flesh instead.

  And since I was already kneeling, I felt like I should be praying, too. But what should I say? How should I say it? I bowed my head and waited. Within minutes, from some dark and desperate place, the words came pouring out.

  Dear, God, I said, why them? Why me? Why now? Am I being punished for something? Something I did or said or didn’t say? If that’s it, why not take me instead of them? My husband, my brother, my daughter. Why? Why?

  If you’re trying to get me to say I’m sorry for something, OK, all right, enough – I’m sorry. I’m so, so, so, so very sorry. Forgive me. Forgive me for everything. Just tell me what it is I’ve done. Just tell me and I’ll try to make it better. I’ll change.

  Or if you’re trying to teach me a lesson, what is it? What’s so important that the only way you can make your point is to take from me the only things in life that matter? I have nothing left. Nothing. Not one thing.

  Dear God, I don’t know…I’m just tired. So tired. So very tired. Help me. Please. I can’t take it anymore. I just can’t…

  Quite suddenly, a lovely warmth, like the breath of my late husband, caressed the back of my neck. My face tingled, my skin went to goose bumps, and I felt the urge to do something besides pray. But what?

  I turned my head slowly to one side. There, directly in front of me, was the answer.

  The Confessional.

  When you’re ready to talk, he’s ready to listen.

  Above the door a small green light indicated a priest was inside. I rose to my feet and walked slowly forward. I paused a moment just outside the door, wondering if I could really tell a priest all the things I could barely tell myself. Wondering if this was, at long last, the answer to my prayers or just another dead end.

  I took a deep breath, opened the door and walked in, ready, I told myself, for anything.

  But there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that could have prepared me for what I found inside.

  SIXTEEN

  Entry #93

  Here comes the sun…

  George Harrison

  The Confessional was similar in size and shape to others I’d been in. It was small, maybe four feet square, with a wooden bench on one side facing a mesh screen, behind which sat the priest in an adjoining booth. I drew in my breath, closed the door and sat down. After a moment’s silence I made the sign of the cross.

  “Forgive me, Father,” I said. “For I have sinned.”

  I waited for the obligatory response, but there was none. I peered into the screen, and could make out the vague form of someone on the other side. Thinking I’d spoken too softly, I cleared my throat and tried again.

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  Silence.

  “Ah, Father?”

  “Yes,” came a man’s voice from beyond the partition.

  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t sure you were there.”

  “I’m here.”

  I began again.

  “It’s been a while since my last confession,” I said. “Quite a while actually. In fact, I can’t remember the last time.”

  Silence.

  “Would you like to hear my sins?”

  “Yes, please.”

  The rules of Confession state that you start with the big sins and work your way backwards. I, on the other hand, started with the little sins and stayed at that level. I had no intention of progressing to the big ones. At this point, I figured any confession was better than no confession at all. I also had to be careful because talking to a priest was not unlike talking to Goldberg, in that both of them were going to find out more about me than I wanted them to know. Plus, regardless of how non-judgmental priests were supposed to be, they were sure to make judgments. I mean, after hearing all my secret thoughts, how could they not form an opinion; and based on that opinion, think more or less of me as a result? Any way you slice it, t
hat’s a judgment.

  So I went on cautiously for a couple minutes, sharing my petty throw-away sins, like not praying enough or thinking mean thoughts about Buddy Timmons, things like that, and all the while the priest was perfectly quiet, as he should be. Once I heard what might have been a sigh, but could just as easily have been the air-conditioning unit kicking on.

  When I was done, I sat there, pleased to have made it through the experience without a major faux pas, expecting to be told that, while regrettable, my sins were not all that bad, and to say some “Hail Marys” and everything would be all right. So it surprised me when I didn’t hear any of that. What I heard instead was this:

  “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

  Over the years, I’d been to Confession dozens of times but not once did I recall a priest asking a question like that. It almost sounded like he knew I was holding out on him, and wanted me to get on with the big stuff.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” I said.

  “How are things in your life? Really?” he asked.

  Suddenly, and with good cause, it felt like I was talking to Goldberg, so naturally I lied without giving it a second thought.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m absolutely, positively sure.”

  As soon as I added the positively I knew it was a mistake. Only really guilty people use two modifiers when one will do. I also racked my brain trying to recall a time when my Confessor challenged me on the quantity and quality of my sins. It didn’t take me long to decide the answer was never.

  And so we sat in the silence. Me waiting for my unconventional priest to say something about how Jesus loved me, and him waiting for me to spill my sin-riddled guts, which apparently neither of us was willing to do. It was a Confessional Standoff.

  Finally, I decided to break the impasse with Father-whoever-was-on-the-other-side-of-the-screen. It wasn’t so much the dead air that got to me as the question that suddenly popped into my head.

  “Father,” I said, “just for the sake of argument, what if my life hasn’t been all that great lately. Can you help me understand why? ”

  I expected the standard priestly response that pain is God’s megaphone to rouse us from our sleep, or that adversity builds character, but again I got the unexpected.

  “Yes, Rachel, I can.” He paused a moment, allowing me ample time to register the fact that he used my name even though I hadn’t given it to him.

  Then he continued. “Regardless of how abandoned you might feel at this point in your life, remember this: the doors of Hell are locked from the inside.”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I liked the sound of it. It sounded like I might have more control of my life than I originally thought.

  “How did you know my name?” I asked slowly.

  “I know a lot about you, Rachel Louis Walker,” he replied. “More in fact than you know about yourself.”

  Normally, if someone I don’t know says something like that, the first thing I do is reach for the pepper spray. But not this time. This time, I had no fear whatsoever.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, Father,” I said. “This is the strangest confession I’ve ever been to.”

  I heard him chuckle. “That’s because all the other times you confessed to a priest.”

  It took a moment for that to sink in.

  “You’re not a priest?” I said.

  “No, I’m not actually.”

  “Then who are you?”

  “Who do you think I am?” he asked calmly.

  Rare moments occur in one’s life when knowledge comes from a strange and hidden place. Without having a shred of evidence to support it, I knew who was in the booth next to me. It felt ridiculous to say it, but I did anyway.

  “You’re God, aren’t you?” I said.

  “Yes,” he replied. “I am.”

  OK, nothing gives me the heebie-jeebies like a whiff of the supernatural. Especially when the supernatural knows my name.

  “How do I know you’re God?” I said.

  He chuckled again, only this time louder. “What, you want me to prove it?”

  “Yes. Do something god-like.”

  “Were you thinking a mighty wind?” he asked, with a hint of amusement. “Lightning ? A burning bush perhaps.”

  “Could you do those things?”

  “Sure I could. I’m God.”

  “Then do them.”

  “Sorry,” he replied. “I don’t work that way.”

  “But I thought God could do anything.”

  “I didn’t say I couldn’t do them. I just said I don’t work that way.”

  Before I could ask another snappy question, God said the most wonderful thing.

  “Rachel, I am so sorry for all the sadness in your life.”

  The words he spoke were not rehearsed. They were a true and authentic expression of sorrow.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” I said. “God is not, well, he’s just not… ”

  “Someone who shows up in the flesh?”

  “Yes. At least not to people like me.”

  “Rachel,” he said. “I want you to do me a favor. I want you to stop thinking for a moment. Allow your mind to empty itself, and listen to what your heart is telling you. Close your eyes and give yourself permission to believe.”

  I wasn’t sure what permission to believe meant, but I knew how to close my eyes, so I did. My heartbeat slowed. My mind cleared. My heart opened. And a rock-solid assurance came to me. The absolute, indisputable knowledge that I was talking to God.

  “That’s good,” he said. “Now do you believe?”

  “Yes,” I said truthfully. “I do.”

  I’d told Goldberg I believed in things dozens of times, just to keep him from probing deeper with his questions, but that wasn’t the case this time. What I said this time was a statement of faith, of resolute conviction in something that otherwise was impossible. I opened my eyes.

  “Can I look at you?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he replied, “I’d like that.”

  Slowly, I pulled back the screen and leaned forward to get my first glimpse of the Creator of the Universe, the Alpha and Omega, the King of Kings, Yahweh himself… and was shocked to see that he was the spitting image of my great-uncle Gordon, who owned a small funeral home in southern Georgia.

  God looked to be in his mid-60s. He was clean-shaven with salt and pepper hair, more salt than pepper. His eyes were pale blue and he had a ruddy complexion that made him look healthy, like he spent a lot of time in the sun. He had on a well-worn green tweed jacket and a cream-colored shirt and brown tie; and the look on his face, his entire demeanor actually, said he was perfectly at ease with me staring at him through my tiny little window.

  “Hello, Rachel,” God said. “I can’t tell you what an honor it is to finally meet you.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Entry #53

  God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full – there’s nowhere for him to put it.

  Augustine

  MONDAY

  I’d read stories of divine apparitions. Stories about the Virgin Mary popping up on a regular basis near some little town in southern France. Or the one where Jesus was spotted strolling around on this huge lake outside Buenos Aires; not around the lake, mind you, but on it. Stories of apparitions, however, don’t hold a candle to the real thing. When you see the real thing, up close and personal, it adds a whole new dimension to your faith. In fact, if someone had told me yesterday that today I would be sitting face to face with, well, God, and that he would say how glad – how honored – he was to meet me, I would have thought him insane.

  But here he was. In the flesh. God. Looking more like Uncle Gordon than Uncle Gordon did.

  “Hi,” I said sheepishly.

  God smiled. “It’s a bit awkward to peer at me through this small window, isn’t it?”

  In answer t
o his own question, he waved his hand, as if cleaning a mirror, and the wall that separated us vanished.

  “There,” he said, obviously pleased with the results. “That’s much better, don’t you think?”

  I told him I did, mainly because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I’d never seen a wall just disappear.

  “Would you mind terribly if we dispense with the Confession?” God asked. “I have a pretty good idea what you were going to say.”

  I started to laugh but wasn’t sure if he meant it as a joke, so I just nodded instead.

  “Perhaps we could just talk,” he said. “Or better yet, do you have any questions you’d like to ask?”

  Questions?

  Sure, I thought to myself, I have questions. Lots of questions. Big questions. Important questions. But the first question to pop out was a little bitty one.

  “Why me?”

  God smiled. “Why not you?”

  I was used to Goldberg answering questions this way, but with God, it was different. It felt like his question was an answer.

  “OK,” I said, “let’s see. There are six billion people in the world and you chose me. Why? I mean, I teach 10th grade English. I’m nobody special.”

  Again that warm and wonderful smile.

  “Which is precisely why I chose you, Rachel. You think you’re no one special.” He paused for a long moment then added, “But you’re mistaken.”

  I wasn’t sure what to do with that compliment, so I left it alone.

  God gently took my hand in his.

  He said, “Let’s just say I’ve been watching you for a while now, and decided, well, I decided you could use some help. I’ve come to make you whole again.”

  I’ve come to make you whole again.

  Seven of the most beautiful words ever spoken.

  Those words meant no more therapy, pills or books. No more counselors, doctors or therapist. No more advice that is supposed to help but can’t. No more remedies that are supposed to work but don’t.

  I’ve come to make you whole again.

  It was just that simple.

  What happened next surprised me almost as much as meeting God. I felt lighter. Physically lighter. It was like some great weight was suddenly removed from my shoulders, and I could breathe again.

  I couldn’t help it. I started crying.

  God wrapped his arms around me and held me close to his chest. He didn’t say a word. We just sat there, the two of us. A girl who’d lost everything and a father who understood what that meant.

  After what seemed like an eternity, I stopped sobbing and pulled back.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “It’s just that…” I couldn’t finish my sentence.

  God brushed back my tears with the palm of his hand.

  “Don’t apologize,” he said, smiling sadly. “I’m the one who should be apologizing.”

  Which was the first of many surprising things I was to hear from him.

  “Rachel,” he said, “why don’t you ask me the question you came here to ask?”

  I was puzzled. Did this mean what I thought it meant? Was God actually asking me to ask him about the deaths in my family?

  “It’s perfectly all right,” he said.

  And his kind, blue eyes told me it was all right. It might not be easy, but it was all right.

  I cleared my throat.

  “Well,” I said softly. “There is something I’d like to know.”

  I studied my shoes for a moment then looked up and straight into the eyes of the Almighty. Here goes nothing.

  “Why did my husband and daughter have to die?” I said.

  It got really quiet then.

  “And by that,” God said, “are you asking did I intentionally cause their deaths?”

  My voice was stronger than I expected it to be.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  The silence grew louder.

  Finally he said, “Rachel, the answer to that question is not as simple as I would like for it to be. Before I share it with you, would you do me a favor?”

  I nodded.

  “I want you to spend some time with me,” God said. “A few days perhaps. I want you to get to know me a bit better. Then, when the time is right, I’ll answer that question. In fact, I’ll answer any question you have.”

  God smiled at me with his eyes.

  “Is that acceptable?” he asked

  I told him it was.

  “Excellent,” he replied. “Tell me, what you think of this idea? I’m working on a project, and I could use your help. While we work, we can talk. How does that sound?”

  I told him I was ready when he was.

  He said today was a good day to start. We both stood. God gestured toward the door.

  “After you,” he said.

  And so began the greatest day of my life.

  EIGHTEEN

  Entry #98

  When I grow up I want to be a little boy.

  Joseph Heller

  I stepped through the doorway, but not into the sanctuary. Instead it was an open field. The change was so abrupt, I lost my balance. God placed his hand on my shoulder to steady me.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I should have told you we were going to have to travel a bit to get here.”

  The field was covered in wheat, three-feet tall and swaying gently in the breeze. The sky overhead was blue and cloudless. There was a hint of honeysuckle in the air. It seemed to be late-spring or early-summer.

  I noticed that God had changed clothes. Instead of the tweed jacket, he was now wearing blue jeans, boots and a denim work shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

  “I love being out here,” he said, inhaling deeply. “The sun on your face, the wind, the smell of the outdoors. Nature is a wonderful thing.”

  God seemed so suddenly human, I almost forgot who he was.

  “Do you live indoors?” I asked.

  “Technically,” he said, “I don’t live anywhere. I exist everywhere, but I don’t have a place I call home.” He looked at me and smiled. “That doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  I assured him that it did, although I’m pretty sure he knew it didn’t.

  “Let’s just say I spend a lot of time indoors,” he clarified. “So when I get a chance to get outside and do something physical, I relish the moment.”

  He turned very slowly in a circle as he spoke, surveying the terrain around us.

  “Before we begin our project,” he said, “we have to find the right piece of ground.”

  At this point in our relationship I wasn’t sure what I should or shouldn’t ask. The last thing I wanted to do was make God think I was a smart-aleck. But the harm in not asking questions is that you have to make up your own answers, and somehow, in this situation, that didn’t seem like a good idea, so I plunged ahead.

  “What happens if we run into other people out here?” I said. “I mean, you know, normal people. Aren’t they going to wonder what we’re doing?”

  God laughed. “Don’t worry, we’re not going to see anyone else. For now, it’s just you and me.”

  Instantly I liked that idea. Spending time away from people was something I had grown to enjoy. Of course spending that time with the Creator of the Universe was an added bonus.

  God scanned the horizon.

  “Now, for that piece of ground,” he said then pointed his finger. “That direction looks promising. What do you think?”

  I looked in the direction he indicated but all I saw was wheat. Who was I to argue though?

  “Yep,” I said. “That direction’s good.”

  So off we went at a leisurely pace, as if we had nowhere to go and all day to get there. God plucked a stem of wheat and stuck it in his mouth.

  “Now then,” he said, “what should we talk about?”

  I figured the best place to begin was at the beginning.

  “How old are you?”

  “The short answer,” he said, “is that I have no age. Time, as you kn
ow it, doesn’t exist for me. I wasn’t born or created. I simply am and always have been.”

  I blinked slowly a couple times.

  “Are all your answers going to be like this?” I asked.

  God laughed, “I hope not. I promise to be as direct as possible. It’s just that the age question is a little complicated.”

  I tried one that was simpler.

  “Is this what you always look like?”

  “Do you mean am I normally this age in this body?”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head. “No, I chose this appearance because I thought it would be easier for you to talk with me.”

  I told God how closely he resembled my Uncle Gordon. He said he was flattered.

  “So what do you look like when you don’t look like one of my relatives?” I asked.

  God thought for a moment.

  “Sunlight,” he said. “Think what a shaft of sunlight looks like when it breaks through the clouds on a rainy day – that bright, effervescent sheet of light.”

  OK, I thought, that makes sense. God looks like a ray of sunshine. I confessed, however, that I’d always pictured him as a white-haired grandfather, with a long beard and sandals.

  “A lot of people think that,” he laughed. “I believe Michelangelo had something to do with it.”

  I told him he was much better looking in person than on any ceiling I’d ever seen. He thanked me for the compliment.

  “Do you ever get angry?” I asked.

  God moved the stem of wheat from one side of his mouth to the other.

  “Yes,” he replied. “From time to time I get quite upset.”

  “Mad enough to blow stuff up?”

  God’s shook his head and smiled.

  “No, Rachel, I don’t blow stuff up. People are punished by their mistakes, not for them.”

  Which was good to know. There was a moment when I thought God might be behind Joe’s car wreck, but I never really bought it. When I thought that, I was at rock-bottom emotionally. And when you’re at rock-bottom, you get all kinds of strange ideas

  “There’s nothing wrong with being angry,” God continued. “As long as you get angry at the right time, for the right reasons and to the right degree. In fact, some things should make you angry.”

  “Like what?” I wondered.

  “Poverty, hunger, injustice. Those types of things.”

  I was thinking much smaller.

  “What about the guy who cuts you off in traffic?” I asked. “Is it OK to get a little steamed at him?”

  God smiled.

  “Getting upset at a bad driver is acceptable,” he said. “It’s a natural response. What’s less acceptable is the name-calling that sometimes ensues.”

  Which made me embarrassed to have ever done it. The name-calling, I mean. I always knew the other drive couldn’t hear me, but I’d never thought about God listening in.

  I made mental note of that. Just because you’re the only one around doesn’t mean you’re really the only one around.

  “If you could change one thing in the world today,” I asked.” What would it be?”

  I expected God to say less war and more love, or something about saving the planet, or maybe just being better people in general. But that’s not what he said. What he said surprised me.

  “I wish people were less solemn,” he replied.

  I wasn’t sure I heard him right.

  “Less solemn?”

  God nodded.

  “Some people,” he said, “have the mistaken idea that in order to be pious they have to be serious. They’ve come to believe that faith in me is more sincere if it is solemn.” He shook his head slowly. “Such a shame. Such a waste.”

  I was confused. “Are you saying we shouldn’t be reverent?”

  “No,” he replied. “I’m simply saying you shouldn’t spend each day as if you’re attending a funeral. Life is a celebration, not a wake.”

  I tried to think of something worth celebrating but all I could come up with was my birthday, which was the day I got the phone call about my husband. Maybe that was my problem. Every time I tried to get happy, I got sidetracked with tragedy.

  “Remember what it was like when you were a child?” God continued, his voice rising with excitement. “How each day was an adventure; how you sang and laughed and ran and played? How you enjoyed jumping through a sprinkler in the backyard or chasing fireflies at night or looking for animal shapes in clouds?”

  I remembered doing all those things, but I was surprised that God considered them a time of celebration. I figured we did it because we’d just loaded up on sugar and had to find some way to work it off.

  “But aren’t kids happy,” I asked, “because they don’t have the responsibilities that come with growing up?”

  Again God shook his head.

  “Not at all,” he said. “Children have all manner of responsibilities. They may not have to pay a mortgage or worry about employment, but they have to learn everything from scratch. Think how difficult that is. They have to learn how to walk and talk and eat and behave. How to study and learn and grow. In a very real sense, that is a much greater responsibility than they will ever face as an adult.

  Of course I’d never looked at it quite that way.

  “So why are kids happy and we’re not?”

  “I gave you a happy heart,” God said, “because I intended for you to live happily. But something happens along the way to that happiness. It gets beaten down to the point where no one recognizes it any more. You lose that simple childlike joy and enthusiasm. You forget how to play.”

  “But,” I observed, “don’t we sometimes lose our childlike enthusiasm because we’re no longer children?”

  God shook his head.

  “The loss of joy doesn’t come from growing older,” he said. “It comes from losing touch with what made you happy to begin with.”

  Which made me ask this question of myself: what was it that made me happy as a kid? The house we lived in? The car my dad drove? The school I went to?

  No, it was none of those things. What made me happy was something different. Something simple.

  So simple it was amazing.

  In my mind’s eye, I was ten-years-old again, playing hide-and-go-seek with a bunch of my neighborhood buddies. It was almost dark and I remember feeling a pure and absolute sense of joy. I was young and healthy and doing exactly what I wanted to be doing with exactly the people I wanted to be doing it with.

  God was right. Life was an adventure then. Not because we were doing something special. But because we were doing something fun. We still knew how to play.

  “It’s not to say that every day is a celebration,” God cautioned. “Some days carry with them pain, disappointment and heartache.”

  “Which can make us feel lousy,” I said. “No matter how young at heart we are.”

  “Exactly,” God agreed. “It’s not that pain doesn’t exist. It’s real, and can’t be denied. But there is a way to find joy in the midst of the pain.”

  “Is that something we’ll talk about later?” I asked

  “Yes,” God said, “and quite a bit more.”

  I felt really good about this conversation. I felt God was trying to share with me the truth. The truth about why the world turns the way it does, and why I am the way I am. Which were two things I was anxious, yet fearful, to discover. Anxious to come face to face with the truth, yet fearful that when I did, I wouldn’t like it.

  Truth can be a double-edge sword sometimes.

  NINETEEN

  Entry #7

  To know all is to forgive all.

  Thomas a Kempis

  By this time in our conversation we had long since left the wheat field and were walking along a trail through a stand of beautiful trees with silver bark and pale green leaves. Aspen I think. Eventually we passed through the woods and into another field, one that was clover-filled, with bright patches of wildflowers and small shrubs with bright red berri
es. I remarked to God that the scenery reminded me of a vacation to Colorado our family had taken when I was a kid.

  “I remember that trip,” God said. “You and your brother Steve thought that if Colorado wasn’t heaven, then it was the closest thing to it.”

  As soon as he said the name, I went quiet. Like some spectral spirit, the physical image of my dead brother suddenly arose before my eyes.

  I quickly switched subjects.

  “You mentioned earlier that you don’t get angry all that often, but you do get sad. So what causes you sadness?”

  God was careful not to look at me when he spoke.

  “His death was not your fault, you know.”

  My breath quickened along with my heart. I didn’t want to do this. I wasn’t ready yet.

  “I imagine a lot of things sadden you,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Like cancer and war, stuff like that?”

  God remained silent.

  “Or that guy who discovered the face of Jesus on a cheese sandwich and sold it for a thousand bucks on e-Bay. Boy, the things some people do, huh?”

  More silence.

  I knew I was babbling, but that’s what I do when I’m rattled, I babble. I’m a compulsive babbler.

  “Then again,” I said, “that cheese sandwich was something else. Did you see it? I mean, it was a dead-ringer for somebody with a beard and long hair, but – ”

  “Rachel,” God interrupted. “You are not responsible for what happened to Steve.”

  I paused. I nodded. I smiled.

  I kept on babbling.

  “But holy cow, a thousand dollars for a cheese sandwich! Come on, there’s just no way that someone – ”

  “It was an accident,” God interrupted again. “Nothing more, nothing less. An accident.”

  Now, it was my turn to go silent.

  Now it was my turn to listen.

  “No matter what you think,” God continued. “No matter what you believe your mother thinks, you did not kill your brother. You are not guilty of anything.”

  But isn’t that what happened? I thought to myself. I didn’t mean to hurt him, but in the end, I’m the one who did. And in the end, he’s the one who died, so how could I not be guilty?

  God chose not to say anything further.

  Slowly, the day my brother died came back to me. Slowly I remembered it all.