Beneath the Night Tree (16 page)

“Michael always brings you surprises too.”

“Candy or a Matchbox car.”

“That’s bad?” I lifted Daniel’s backpack and slid it over his shoulders. Clicking the chest strap, I bent to give him a kiss on the forehead. “I thought you liked the things Michael brought you.”

“I do. But Parker’s science stuff is really cool.”

“You know, Michael is sort of a scientist too. He’s a doctor.”

“Not yet,” Simon said, ambling into the mudroom as if he had all the time in the world.

“I thought you were outside!” I cried, assessing his unkempt form. His hair was sticking up in a million different directions and his shirt was half-tucked in, half-hanging out over the waistband of his jeans. He was still clutching a pair of clean, balled-up socks in his hand. I stifled the urge to tuck in his shirt for him and spit-style his hair and settled for a verbal warning. “Get a move on, mister. The bus is going to be here in a couple of minutes!”

Simon plopped down in the middle of the floor and proceeded to put on his socks one toe at a time. I tried not to let myself get too irritated as I grabbed his jacket off the hook, fished his tennis shoes out of the box by the door, and located his backpack in the corner by our deep freezer. The frayed bag was unexpectedly heavy, full of books, and my stomach clenched as I turned to confront my brother.

“You said you didn’t have any homework.”

Simon wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Why did you take all these books home if you didn’t have any homework?”

He shrugged.

“Answer me!”

“It’s no big deal.” Simon yanked his shoelace into a tight knot and stood to grab the backpack from me.

I held it out of reach. “This is unacceptable.”

“I forgot.”

“How could you forget about a bag full of books?”

“I’ll do it tonight.”

“It’s too late, Simon!”

“I’ll tell my teacher I didn’t have time.”

“You’ll lie to her? like you lied to me?”

He stared at the ground, his jaw so tense I could see the thin line of a vein pulsing against his skin. I half expected a trail of steam to slip from between his clenched lips.

“What is going on with you?” I didn’t like the way my voice trembled, a mixture of disappointment and incomprehension, bordering on the sort of anger I rarely felt toward my boys. “Simon? Simon! I asked you a question. I expect you to answer me!”

I felt Grandma’s presence in the doorway before I saw her. I didn’t want to face her, not after she had just caught me yelling at Simon, but she cleared her throat quietly and I had no choice.

“Maybe this conversation is best left for later. The boys are going to miss the bus,” Grandma said. Everything about her exuded a sense of calm, of peace.

I exhaled—deflated, really—and realized that I was still holding Simon’s bag above my head. Lowering it, I thrust the bulky pack into his hands. “You’d better run,” I told them both, avoiding Simon’s glower and Daniel’s accusatory glare. Grandma’s soothing presence made me feel sheepish somehow, but I clung to a sense of self-righteousness. It was my right, my duty, to punish my children, wasn’t it? Hadn’t Simon lied to me? How in the world did I end up feeling guilty?

A rush of entitlement swept over me and I stepped forward to stop Simon before he slipped out of the door. “We’ll talk about this tonight,” I told him in my best no-nonsense tone.

He gave a curt nod that I could have interpreted a hundred different ways. Then he was out the door and racing down our driveway at a flat sprint. Daniel struggled to keep up.

“I should have gone to work,” I muttered, lamenting the fact that I had banked extra hours so I could take the day off. Although I had wanted the house to be perfect for Michael’s visit, a spotless home wasn’t worth the headache of clashing with Simon in the early hours of the morning. “Aren’t Fridays supposed to be fun? relaxed?”

Grandma laughed from her vantage point in the crooked doorframe. “When there are kids around, I’m not sure anything is ever relaxed. Fun, yes. Relaxed, no.”

“Was I wrong to yell at him?” I asked as I leaned against the closed door, anxious to hear her reaction.

Grandma made a little humming sound and tapped her fingers against the hollow at her throat. “I’m not sure you’re asking the right question. I don’t think it was wrong to yell at Simon, but I’m not sure how right it was.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “You talk in riddles sometimes.”

“How effective do you think it was to shout at him like that?”

Though I didn’t want to picture Simon’s face, I could instantly see the way his features hardened with every word I threw at him. It was as if his defeated expression was imprinted on the back of my eyelids. A reminder of the damage I’d done. I groaned. “What was I supposed to do?”

Grandma smiled a cheerless little smile and turned away from me. As she disappeared into the kitchen, she tossed over her shoulder, “I have no idea.”

“You have no idea?” I raced after her, feeling something akin to terror that my sagacious mother figure didn’t know how to mother in this situation. Grandma was supposed to be all-wise, all-knowing. Full of answers and advice.

“Parenting is hard, Julia. If you read ten different books, you’ll get ten different approaches to discipline. Some say be firm; some say be gentle. Some say spank your kids; others say it’s abuse. I don’t know what you should have done.”

“But you were a mother. You raised Dad. You raised me.”

“More or less,” she agreed. “But I made a lot of mistakes.”

“And I made a mistake with Simon this morning.” I pushed a hard breath through my nose and went to the counter to pour myself a second cup of coffee for the day. It was going to be a caffeine-rich weekend, I could tell.

Grandma came to stand next to me and put her hand over the top of my cup, preventing me from adding the thin stream of half-and-half that I liked swirled into my French roast. It wasn’t like her to interfere, and I raised my eyes to hers in concern. She looked sad, like she was about to say something that she didn’t relish voicing.

“What?”

“You did make a mistake with Simon this morning,” Grandma admitted. “But it’s not what you think.”

“What?” I demanded again.

“You forgot something.” She paused, gathered herself as if she knew that her words would hurt. “Honey, you forgot that you’re not Simon’s mother.”

I very rarely got angry with my grandmother, but her one small observation made me instantly combative. “Excuse me?” I whispered, too stunned and defensive to raise my voice. “I know I’m not Simon’s mother. Janice is. But in case you haven’t noticed, she abdicated that role over five years ago. What would you have me do?”

“We’ve done the best we can with Simon,” Grandma said quickly. “You have. And I think you’re a better mother to him than Janice ever was. But he’s changing, Julia, and I think he’s finally starting to grieve her loss. Haven’t you noticed?”

“Of course I’ve noticed!”

“Then you’ll understand why he was so upset when you shouted at him this morning. It was on the tip of his tongue.”

“What was?”

“‘You’re not my mom.’”

She was right and I knew it instantly. I could almost hear my wounded brother spitting those ugly words at me. The realization flattened me. I was the woman who took the place of his mom, even if I hadn’t asked for the job. I was the physical representation of what could have been and what would never be. When had I become the wicked stepmother?

I sank into a chair, cupping my coffee mug in my palms as if it were a life preserver. As if it could save me. “We are such a mess.”

“I don’t think so.” Grandma shook her head as she sank into the chair opposite me. “More like a work-in-progress. A painting half-done.”

“We don’t even know who we are,” I continued to complain. “We’re people living together, trying to make it all fit.”

Grandma looked hurt. “We’re family, Julia. Don’t ever forget that.”

I had said it a hundred times, a thousand, and I thought that I believed it.
We are a family.
And yet with Simon’s miscalculated resentment still weighting the air with the almost-tangible scent of regret, I couldn’t help wondering if I had spent the past five years spinning a web of lies for the sake of my own blissful ignorance. What if I didn’t want to face the fact that we were falling apart? that our motherless, fatherless quartet of orphans and widows was slowly unraveling at the seams?

Such words were on the tip of my tongue, such harsh, ugly truths, but before I could give my fears voice, Grandma broke the spell of my self-pity.

“I think we’re in good company,” she mused, more to herself than me. “Jesus Himself said, ‘Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.’ And in Ephesians it tells us that God predestined us to be adopted as His sons and daughters. Sounds like a happy, ever-growing work-in-progress to me.” She laughed. “And the family of God includes its share of misfits, outcasts, and sinners.”

“You mean there’s room for Janice?” I said wryly.

Grandma gave me a stern look, but I saw her bite the inside of her lip to stop a smile.

I sighed. “That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t help me much with Simon right now. What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know,” Grandma said for the second time that morning. “But we’ll figure it out. We’ll work through it. How many times have we charted our own path?”

She was right. We were old pros at navigating uncertain territory. But I couldn’t help fearing that whatever road we were currently on was doomed to end in disaster—a bridge out, an unexpected cliff, a fall from a staggering, dizzying height.

I could almost feel the impact of the earth.

* * *

The house was a hopeless mess. No matter how hard Grandma and I tried to keep up with the boys and their proclivity for clutter, we were always a step behind. I had more than my work cut out for me in vacuuming alone—never mind the dust bunnies lurking on the shelves, the stack of papers and mail that was slowly taking over the counter, and the piles of wash in the laundry room—but I abandoned my domestic duties for an hour so that I could get some fresh air. I didn’t even tell Grandma I was going. I just left.

It was a cool day, so still and clear it felt almost surreal. Flocks of birds cut a V-shaped incision in the blue-white flesh of an endless sky, their honks and calls distant but distinct. The leaves underfoot were dry and vibrant, still patterned in hues of ripe wheat and apricot and the color of a geranium in the moment before it spilled petals like drops of blood. Trees stood in various stages of undress, their limbs lithe and ready, waiting for the cold baptism of autumn rain or the quiet consummation of an early winter. A modest blanket of snow to hide their nakedness.

I breathed deeply, took it all in. Sometimes we were already housebound by mid-October, hemmed in by ice or biting winds that howled down from the northwest. But this was my kind of fall, the sort of interim that took me by the hand and led me unsuspecting into the cold. It was a peaceful descent, a slow demise, until one day I woke up and felt trapped. Caged. Claustrophobic.

The eighty acres of our property were divided into two parcels of forty. Though the land wasn’t quite separated into perfect squares, the end result was close enough. I had figured out long ago that the front parcel, from the barn to the first of two creeks, was approximately a quarter mile on each side. Most girls—women—my age ran on treadmills in their basements or joined gyms with snappy names and high membership fees. Not me. I walked our land. Twice around the front section was a solid two miles of undulating farmland. I liked the view. I liked reaching the point where the soft rise of our property hid the rest of the farm, and I was alone in the middle of nowhere. Alone in all the world.

I felt like a new person by the time I had two miles beneath my feet, and I returned to the farmhouse with my cheeks stained pink and my fingers numb. But I didn’t mind the cold. It was as if I had been scrubbed clean, doused in a tub of ice water that left me sharp and purified. Everything seemed much clearer. If the road we were on was about to hit a dead end, we’d simply turn around. Or start laying new blacktop. It was what we did.

Grandma looked up when I joined her in the laundry room, and I saw the satisfied smile that she tried to hide. She was pulling a load of whites from our ancient dryer.

“I feel like a new person,” I told her, bending to take over the task so she wouldn’t have to stoop. “It’s amazing what a little fresh air will do.”

“It’s amazing what a little prayer will do.”

“I wasn’t praying,” I admitted, facing her.

She smiled. “I was.”

Grandma’s prayers or my walk, or a combination of the two, buoyed me as I hustled through the rest of my day. As I dragged our canister vacuum up the stairs, I rehearsed my speech for Simon. I would start off by apologizing for yelling at him, then acknowledge that our situation was something I never imagined I’d have to face. No, that wasn’t quite right. I didn’t want him to think that his presence in my life was an intrusion, a nightmare. Instead I’d say that I had made some mistakes, and together we could figure it out. I’d mention Janice . . . No, I wouldn’t. But maybe I should. Did he want to talk about Janice?

I wound myself in circles trying to piece together exactly the right tone and tenor, but in the end I felt confident that we would be okay. Just like Grandma had said, we’d work through it. But all of that would have to wait. When I saw the boys, I’d give Simon a hug and tell him we’d talk later because Michael was scheduled to arrive shortly after Daniel and Simon got off the bus. The very thought of seeing him made my heart take flight, for even though he had been a part of my life for five years, I still couldn’t believe he was mine.

Late in the afternoon I took a quick shower and got ready for my date with Michael. The house was immaculate, and I wanted to look as good as my polished floors. Better. I had hoped to be waiting at the table with a cup of tea when the boys came in, but as I was sweeping mascara on my lashes, I heard Daniel burst through the door.

There was chatter in the kitchen and the sound of chairs being pulled back as Grandma laid out an after-school snack for the perpetually ravenous young men in my life. When I had disappeared to clean up, she had started a batch of her melt-in-your-mouth peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, and I could tell by the way Daniel’s voice was an octave higher than usual that he was ecstatic about her special surprise.