Sacrifices of Joy (2 page)

“It's a pretty nice day for a flight.” He turned back toward me with a smile. Whatever iciness had been in his eyes moments earlier had thawed back into bright, sunny blue. “Have a nice trip.” He turned to leave.

“Wait,” I blurted. “They are about to start calling rows to board. You're not going?”

“Naw, not to San Diego.” He shook his head, a distant look on his face. “I'm heading out to Chicago this morning.” He pointed to a nearby gate. “I just wanted to sit next to the window over here for a moment. I like to know what's going on around me, same as you.” He winked. He turned to leave, but then abruptly doubled back. “Actually, I do want your card. It might come in handy.”

My stomach wrapped into tighter knots as he took the card from my fingertips and thrust it deep into his pockets.

“Do . . . do you have a card?” What was I supposed to say?

“You'll know my name soon enough.” He walked away and settled into a seat at the opposite gate.

I was missing something about him. I felt it. Knew it.

 

 

My flight was halfway across the country over green and brown patches of farmland when the plane became a flurry of worried whispers and then full-blown chatter. Someone who had not shut off a cell phone as required had gotten word.

A bomb had exploded at Baltimore/Washington Airport.

That's all anyone knew. No further information was available.

A bomb.

I've learned through the years to trust my gut and, despite the lack of information and evidence otherwise, there was only one message my gut was telling me at the moment.

That man I talked to had something to do with the bombing,
everything in me screamed.

And he had my business card in his pocket.

I'd come face to face with a terrorist.

The thought ran over and under and through my mind as I prayed and hoped that it was not true.
Lord, please let my gut feelings be wrong just this once!
I could see those piercing eyes, feel the chill that had gone through me when he'd said that I would know his name soon enough. What was I supposed to do? All I had was a hunch, no more. I was moving, breathing, thinking on autopilot. A familiar voice jolted me back to awareness.

“Mom!” Roman half cried in horror, half shouted in glee as he tackled me just outside the baggage claim area at San Diego International Airport. “I couldn't get through to your cell and I didn't know your flight number or if you were near that explosion back in Baltimore. I heard about what happened. I'm glad you're okay.”

The knots in my stomach had quadrupled. I felt dizzy, weak, and queasy in my intestines.

God, what is going to happen next?
My entire body, inside and out, quivered.

“I know you're tired after all that waiting.” He pointed back to the lines; everyone who'd flown in from Baltimore had to wait through to have their luggage and IDs rechecked, an extra precaution among many extra precautions that were in play at airports across the country.

Yet again, America was on lockdown.

And this time I had been close—too close—to the scene of destruction. I heard myself think of the threat toward my safety in the past tense, feeling, knowing, that the danger I felt was still very present.

Tired did not even begin to explain my emotional state.

I was not ready to ask if Roman knew if there had been any casualties.

Or if the perpetrator had been identified.

I shut my eyes, seeing again those icy blue ones that had pierced mine mere hours ago. I had no proof and no sane reason to think that young blond male had a role in it. We'd only talked for a few moments and the conversation had made me uncomfortable. Nothing about our exchange pointed to “terrorist,” but everything in me screamed that I'd missed something.

“This way, Ma.”

I tried to hide my shaking as I followed Roman to a short-term parking lot. He stopped and unlocked an older-model blue Mazda.

“So you went with the hatchback you told me about?” I collapsed into the front seat, trying to make life seem normal.

The immediate consequences of a terrorist attack: normalcy goes out the window. Roman played along.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “It has a lot of miles on it, but the price was right. I'm saving up the rest of my money to send you and Ms. Ava on a Mediterranean cruise next year.”

Ava Diggs. She was my mentor, my career coach and my former supervisor before she'd retired a few years back. I had not talked to her in a while. As much as she had been a cheerleader for me, I guess she'd also had an impact on my son's life as well.

Leon had an impact on him, too. I swallowed hard, fighting to stay afloat in the churning sea of emotions that were threatening to take me under.

“A cruise? Yeah, right.” I managed to let out a small laugh. “You know full well that I would not expect or accept such a gift from you.”

“You deserve it. Plus, you'll be turning forty.”

“Don't remind me.”

God, please don't let there be any victims.
My mind was still at the airport in Baltimore, my heart in panic mode.
God, please be with everyone who is in the disaster zone right now!

I felt like an agitator in a washing machine, spinning around in prayers, worry, and angst that my gut was right.

“Put your phone down, Ma.” Roman did not look over at me as he drove, but he knew exactly what I was doing as I reached for my smart phone. I was ready to finally look at the news reports, ready to get the gory details, ready to feel the shared national pain.

Ready to confirm my horrific suspicions.

“Don't deal with it just yet, Ma. You can't change anything. You can't fix it. Let's just get through this evening, and then you can figure out how to heal the world.”

I did not miss the bitter note in my son's tone.

I also did not fully understand it.

It took all I had in me, but I turned my phone off. He was right, I guess. I could not change anything that had happened. I would only sink into a sick despair when I got the details, which I would read and watch, and read and watch over again. And, though Roman didn't know my fears about my possible interaction with the suspect, my son would probably think I was overreacting, overreaching in my suspicions. Just hearing myself think that,
possible interaction with the suspect,
sounded ridiculous. Here I was a therapist, having grand delusions and panic attacks over a suspicion that was not even logical. I didn't even know what part of the airport had been targeted. I had suspicions about a stranger I met at a gate, and the explosion could have been anywhere at the airport: the baggage claim, a dining area, maybe even on a plane taxiing down a runway. I needed to take the suggestions I gave to my many clients, and exhale and relax.

After making sure my phone was completely off, I pushed it into the bottom of my purse. I tried to tell my shoulders to ease down, even if just for a few moments, but the swirling taste of bile in my mouth made it hard for my muscles to feel anything less than tense.

“So.” I exhaled, determined to ignore all that I felt. “Why am I here? Why did you want me to come today? Where are we going and why do you need the mola blanket?”

When he didn't respond immediately and instead started licking his lips, I knew I was not going to like any of his answers. We drove for ten minutes in complete silence, and then I could take no more.

“Well?”

He'd stopped licking his lips.

“It's my sister's birthday. She is turning sixteen and having a party. I wanted you to come.”

Really? His sister? This is why I came all the way to the West Coast?
Just hearing him even acknowledge that he had a sister felt like a stab wound to my heart. It was hard enough knowing that he and his half brother Croix were roommates. I had helped Roman move into his dorm last fall before Croix arrived with his mother, Mbali, his sister, and twin little brothers.

I'd only met them all that one time at the airport when Roman ran away at age sixteen. He'd been determined to find RiChard but found the truth and them instead.

“You wanted me to come all the way out here for a . . . sweet sixteen party? I don't even remember her name,” I lied, “and I doubt that she would want the other
other
woman who was also married to her father at her party.”

Absolutely ridiculous.

There was much more I wanted to say, especially as I had changed my week around and flown out to the other side of the country at his request. And for a birthday party for a girl I barely knew?

And didn't really want to know?

I held my tongue, trying to understand Roman's reasoning.

“Mom.” Roman's voice was barely audible. “What Dad did was real. He lied to all of us; he lied to them just like he lied to the two of us. Mbali, Croix, Abigail, Denzi, and Dillon are not liars. They are not responsible for what happened. They were betrayed just like we were. We all have to come together, Mom, so that we can all move forward. They are real, and they are a part of my life. They are my sister, my brothers, my blood.”

His last line had all the markings of Mbali. I was sure I had read those exact words from her in a Christmas card she'd mailed to us two years ago. I didn't mail out any Christmas cards last year on account of the one she'd sent. It was easier to say I had not sent greetings to anyone than to feel like I had singled her out on purpose.

At heart, I knew Roman was right; but at heart, I also knew I was not ready.

“Mom, you have to do this.” Roman's voice, still low, was firm.

“This isn't a good day. This isn't the right time.” I shook my head.

“You're right. It isn't,” he agreed as he parallel parked in front of a cupcake bakery. “Because of the terrorist attack, Abigail wanted to cancel the party, but her mother already booked and paid for the party room here. She scaled it back to a small event. It's only going to be us—family—and a couple of her closest friends. We're just going to sing ‘Happy Birthday' and eat. That's it, Ma. You can handle this.”

He hopped out of the car and headed to the colorfully canopied cupcakery entrance, leaving me alone for a moment to reflect on his words.

Over the past few years, I'd handled a lot. I'd helped a foster child who'd claimed to have a sister nobody said existed. I'd helped authorities find the perpetrator behind a series of unsolved murders. I'd lost and found my only child, survived an attack from an enraged drug addict in an abandoned house, talked my way out of certain death at an off-road creek at the hands of a desperate woman. I'd helped bring healing to broken relationships and answers to difficult questions, though I had often not been able to find those same things for myself.

Sing ‘Happy Birthday' to a sixteen
-
year
-
old. With RiChard's other family.

Address the horror I feel about a too
-
close
-
for
-
comfort terrorist attack. And make sense of my fears that I'd met the suspect.

Maybe I could handle it, but, honestly, I did not want to.

“Roman,” I called after him just before he disappeared inside. I shook my head, gave a weak smile, shrugged my shoulders. “I . . . I'm going to find her a gift first.”

He knew I had no intention of joining them and accepted with a slow, slight nod the excuse I'd given him to give all of them. He went inside.

I studied the busy street around me. I had to get away. Sit down. Breathe. Turn my phone back on. Find out the outcome of the tragedy back home. Laugh at myself for being paranoid about the suspect.

I realized my fear that I was right about the man back at the airport was what had really kept me up to this point from following the breaking news. Would the authorities be contacting me?
Should I be contacting them?
Leon would have helped me figure out what to do.

Too much for a Saturday afternoon.

I gave one last look at the cupcakery before heading down the street to an electronic store. Several people stared at flat-screen televisions displayed in the window.

It was time for me to find out if my gut had been right, though I was not sure what, if anything, I was supposed to do if it was.

“She'd flown into town just to see me off to my prom.” A teenage boy wept in front of the camera. “Here's a picture of me with my grandmother just yesterday.” He held up a photo of himself dressed up in a dapper white tuxedo and standing next to a woman who reminded me of the late, great Lena Horne: bright smile, sophistication, and all.

Along with the sixty-one-year-old grandmother, there had been seventeen other casualties from the explosion at the airport. A man, a woman, and their eight-year-old son. The trio had been on their way to their private villa on a remote island in the Caribbean. A businessman from Tokyo. A newlywed couple returning from their honeymoon. Eight members of a college men's lacrosse team. Two flight attendants headed to their assigned gates. A custodian who friends and family members kept referring to as “Old Joe.” Thirty-four other people were injured, ranging in age from nine to eighty-three, and they were in various conditions, from fair to critical, at area hospitals.

I forced myself to take deep breaths, to not collapse into the grief, anger, and shock that had become my usual mix of emotions when watching disaster coverage on television.

But another emotion, one that I had not had before when following such stories, swirled along with the others.

Dread.

The idea, the remote possibility that my suspicions were correct and that the man who I'd spoken with at the airport had something to do with this tragedy was enough to make me want to curl up, hide, and vomit. I had no firm reason to believe that he was, but his bizarre conversation and behavior, and the haunting memory of his last words, would not shake me:

“Police have a suspect in custody but are not yet releasing any details of his identity or condition.” A news reporter spoke solemnly into the camera. “A press conference will happen soon. That is all we are being told.”

I still had to wait to find out if my fears were correct, although I still wasn't sure what I was supposed to do if they were.

Leon would have known.

It was a fleeting thought, a blurry vision of Leon in his police uniform. I wondered if he'd joined the force in Houston after he'd left Baltimore. When we first met him years ago, he worked at a community center as part of the Police Athletic League, serving as a mentor to many, a father figure to my son. Perhaps, he'd found a human services position in Houston working with other young people and had become consumed with helping them.

It was the only reason I could think of as to why he had not contacted at least Roman.

“Ma'am, we're about to close.” The voice to my left startled me. An Asian man with long gray hair and a long gray beard to match brought me back to reality. The crowd that had gathered to watch the news coverage had dissipated and the flat-screen televisions were blinking off, one by one. “I'm leaving early today. Nobody's buying TVs, just watching them. I might as well do the same.”

“Tragic. For the whole country, but especially for the families involved,” were the only words I could get out.

The man nodded and mumbled some expletive about terrorists as he reentered his shop with a large set of jingling keys.

A café with outdoor seating was farther down the street. If I sat there, I would be able to see Roman come out of the cupcakery when the party ended, and I would have a chance to finally study the news on my phone. Now that I knew there were casualties, I needed to read all about them, see their pictures, learn more about their lives.

Let it all be real.

I knew from unfortunate practice that this was my healing routine when it came to such matters.

Giving honor to the lives and legacies of those lost.

I looked behind me to make sure that Roman was not already coming, and then turned toward the café, digging for my phone in my tote bag as I walked. I turned it on just before heading inside to order a quick bite, knowing that it would take a few moments for the news apps on my phone to fully upload. The food was just to have the right to sit at a table.

I had no appetite.