Sway (29 page)

I’m sorry, Caleb. I can’t stay here.

And then she stood up and left.

When the door slammed behind her, all my prayers—all Scott’s prayers—seemed to bounce off the ceiling of heaven and break apart at my feet. All thoughts of being on the same team, of sharing the same faith, of walking side by side with a girl I’d grown to love like the idiot I am, were gone just like that. I’m glad I never told her.

Now it’s Christmas, my favorite time of year, and I just want to bury myself alive. I’m counting on the coffee to give me a reason not to.

“What’s on tap for today?” Chris asks no one in particular as he leans against the counter.

“Bud Lite, hold the ice,” I say. It’s a lame joke, maybe the worst one I’ve ever told, but the sun has barely cracked the horizon and nothing is particularly funny.

The whole room groans. It serves them right for being so chipper. “We haven’t heard a beer joke in months. We thought you’d forgotten.” I hear the wistful edge in Mrs. Jenkins’ voice, like it was a futile hope.

“Of course I haven’t forgotten. I have a lot more where that came from.”

“Lucky us,” Scott pipes up, grabbing a bowl and a carton of eggs. He begins cracking them and I reach for a pan. Chris grabs a stack of plates from the cabinet and Mrs. Jenkins’ opens the bacon, separating the strips one-by-one and laying them in the pan. She asks me about the kid’s program tonight and I fill her in on the details. Before long I can
almost
forget about the turmoil surrounding Kate. Eventually the food preparation turns to eating and eating turns to cleaning and cleaning turns to talk of opening gifts.

Somehow I forget about my desire to head back to bed and skip this day, and my excitement returns, albeit only on a miniscule level. But miniscule is better than nothing, and I grab onto to it with everything I have. It’s Christmas Eve morning. And even though it took me a while, I manage to find the joy.

Everything might have gone south the past two months, but I still have God. I still have my faith. I still have a family.

For now, for always, it’s enough.

*

It doesn’t take long for me to realize it isn’t enough.

It should be, but right now it isn’t and I can’t take much more.

I’m in my apartment and my phone is taunting me with every minute it doesn’t ring, so I shove it in the top drawer of my dresser to keep from staring at the black screen. I’ve eaten, showered, taken a nap, and straightened up—something I rarely do because who cares? I’m a bachelor. Messiness is expected. Still, I’ve wiped down the bathroom counter, rearranged my desk drawers, and located all the bags of lifesavers and candy canes I bought last-minute to fill the kid’s stockings because someone has to play Santa for them.

I check my watch. Only two-thirty, but I’ve run out of stalling tactics. The kids will start arriving to the center at five. I might as well make sure they have something incredible to show up for. I’ve never actually worn a Santa suit and probably never will again, but this year will be the exception. This year, I’m going to find one.

With no idea where to start looking, I grab my keys off the dresser and head out to find Scott.

Because if I’m playing Santa, his skinny butt is playing an elf.

Kate

“It’s My Life”

—Bon Jovi

I
t’s a few minutes before five, and even though I know it’s too early, I can almost hear the sound of children ripping Christmas paper from those packages. I can hear shrieks. Laughter. Even the sound of Mr. Jenkins’ voice as he shares a message of hope just like the one he shared a couple of weeks ago while I stood in the shadows. I reach for my pillow and cover my head, but the phantom noise only intensifies. I shouldn’t be lying in my bed, anyway. All of it is punishment for my laziness.

In the other room, my mother is making dinner. Lasagna, if she sticks with what she mentioned yesterday. It’s my favorite, but it sounds awful—like a defiled Christmas feast I’ve never eaten before. Tenderloin. Tenderloin is what Caleb eats on Christmas Eve, and tenderloin is what I want, served on paper plates with plastic forks in a bleach-scented gym. It screams Christmas. Somehow I know this, even though—with the exception of that tiny tree in my apartment bedroom—Christmas has never spoken to me at all.

I push the pillow off my face and sit up, then reach for the novel I started reading earlier that morning—wanting to lose myself in the story of another person’s life. I could’ve chosen better than this particular character’s, but sometimes, like music, books are the best way to escape.

I’ve barely made it to the bottom of the page when someone knocks on my door. I’m in my old bedroom in the house I grew up in, sitting on the pink-flowered comforter bought new in the eighth grade. My apartment is only a mile away, and we don’t celebrate this holiday, but I’ve always come home for Christmas, and always at my mother’s request. This year is no different.

And that’s when a strange thought begins to gnaw at me.

This year is no different.

By the time the door opens, I remember the tears my mother shed in the kitchen just a few days ago, and my heart is beating out an odd little rhythm that I can’t quite decipher. When my mother comes in, I stop trying.

“What are you doing in here?” Wiping her hands on a dish towel, she walks over to sit. Angling her head lower, she takes in the book’s title. “
Flowers in the Attic
. An…interesting book,” she says.

“It’s weird,” I say, “but it passes the time.” She looks at me then, but it’s different, reserved. Almost…worried. She looks over her shoulder as if waiting for someone to jump out of a corner. I know she’s checking to see if my father is around, but he isn’t. For now, we’re the only two at home.

“Are you going to stay in your room all night? Your father should be home any minute, and dinner is almost ready.”

I sigh and drag the book off my lap and onto the bed. “I’m really not hungry. I think I’ll skip dinner tonight, if that’s okay. I’m not sure my stomach can handle it.”

A flash of alarm. It’s there, and then it’s gone, replaced with her customary composure. “Kate, please don’t skip. I made lasagna for you. Can’t you at least sit with us? It isn’t often that we get to eat dinner as a family anymore.”

Of course she plays the guilt card. Isn’t it what mother’s do best? But my enthusiasm level is at an all-time low, and I can’t muster up anything fake. Still, I don’t want to hurt her feelings, because she’s right. They’re busy and I’m busy, and in recent years, family time has become all but extinct. I sigh and try to make peace.

“Maybe I could eat some leftovers later while we watch a movie?”

“But Kate, it’s Chris—”

She looks away, and everything in the room goes still. The air. Our bodies. Even the clock on my bedside table that has spent the last seven years ticking off seconds. Nothing is as it was.

And then all at once, everything is.

Her silence when I told her about Caleb. Her tears and departure from the room instead of the stern lecture I’d been expecting. The fact that she rarely…almost never…makes a speech.

It only takes a moment for me to figure it out, for everything to fall into place and shine a spotlight on both of us. On my father too, even though he isn’t home. It’s as if duct tape has suddenly been ripped off my eyes and I see it. Really see it. I stare at my mother’s shirt and it all makes sense. I’ve seen it for years. I’ve worn it as a child playing dress-up. I know it like the back of my hand, but this time I really see it.

My mother tries to cover it up with a hand to her neck.

“Mom, what is that?” I reach for the old brooch pinned underneath her collar and finger the edges, sharp and crooked, but smooth as butter. Made of eighteen karat gold and at least half-a-century old, it sparkles more today than it did when I was younger. “You wear it every year, but you’ve never told me what it is. What is it?”

I know what it is, but I want to hear her say it.

Her hand hides the entire brooch. “It’s just an old brooch of my grandmothers. I like to wear it to remember her.” She stands and walks toward the window to peer out. I suspect it’s only to keep busy, because she fixes her eyes on one spot and doesn’t move.

“Mom, what’s that thing on your shirt?” I’m not asking. I’m trying not to explode.

She doesn’t turn around.

“Kate, it isn’t what you think. I just—”

“I think it’s a manger? Am I right?” All these years, I’ve seen a gold pile of matchsticks on my mother’s shirt—matchsticks and straw arranged in a formation of tiny x’s just above her heart, but now I see it. When I narrow my eyes slightly, I can even make out the outline of a baby’s face. A baby’s face that, until now, looked like nothing more than a tiny orb set inside the sticks. Like an egg in a nest—only it’s not.

“Kate, just let me—”

“Say it. After all these years and everything I’ve done for you and dad, you owe me that much.”

My mother has aged twenty years in as many minutes. With resignation on her face, she slowly lowers herself to the bed, her eyes guarded. It takes only a moment for them to become red-rimmed and watery as well.

“I met your father in my church youth group my senior year of high school. My father was the pastor.”

My blood chills; a shiver runs up my arm. “That isn’t what you told me—”

But she’s lost inside her memories and keeps going. “Your dad was a very charismatic boy, and by the time I figured out he wasn’t there to learn about God—that he was there to learn the ins and outs of how a church works—I was too in love to care.”

From there and almost in a trance-like state, my mother spins a tale of a teenage girl in over her head, of her parent’s—my grandparents—heartbroken and pleading for their daughter to leave him. Of a girl on the verge of doing that very thing, until she discovered she was pregnant. Of a wedding…of silence and broken ties with everyone who loved her. Of a baby and a home and woman determined to make the best life for her and her child. Of a desire to keep the peace and strengthen her marriage—in with both feet despite monstrous misgivings.

All of it is news to me. All of it.

Minutes, hours, days go by before my mother stops talking. When she looks at me, I see fear behind her eyes. She hadn’t meant to tell the story. Like unloading a flood of repressed memories on a therapist’s sofa, she probably wasn’t aware until it was over.

“Kate, you need to understand that I love your father,” she says, her fingers absently caressing the brooch.

“I know you do,” I whisper. “I’ve never doubted that for a minute. I love him too.”

She nods. “He’s a good man. He’s provided a great life for me and for you…” Her voice trails off. I hear the love in her words. I hear the thankfulness.

And also the regret.

The need to reassure her rushes to my mind. “I’ve loved everything about my life,” I say. “Everything…”

Mostly
.

I look her in the eye. “But I told you about that man when I was little, Mom. At Target. How he came out of nowhere after I prayed.” I silently challenge her to look away. She shifts uncomfortably. “You told me I was silly and not to speak about it again. So I didn’t.”

My mother blanches in front of me. In all my life, I’ve never seen someone lose color so quickly. “What else was I supposed to say, Kate? I couldn’t have you questioning things, not with your father around. He has such strong beliefs…”

“What about your beliefs, Mom? What about mine?”

Shock passes her face in an instant. My mother glances at the doorway before turning to me again. Her gaze turns serious, imploring. Like she has something to say and only a few minutes to get it out and she wants me to pay attention to every word. So I do, forcing my mind to clear of everything but her, myself, and the expectation between us. Even the hum of the dryer on the other side of the wall goes silent.

“Are you telling me you suddenly believe in God?”

I swallow. Shake my head slowly back and forth. “I don’t know what I believe anymore. I just…I’m not as sure as I used to be that He doesn’t exist.” I look up at her. “What if He does, Mom? What if all this time…” I can’t finish that sentence. What if I’ve been wrong all along? What if we all have?

“Your father would be humiliated.”

“This isn’t about him. This is about me. What am I supposed to do? Forget about the organization and the lawsuit and the media? As my mother—tell me. What am I supposed to do?”

She picks up my hand and brings it to her lap. For a long moment I can see the struggle, the warring within her to both parent me and be loyal to my father. Finally, her shoulders sag. She looks tired, drawn—obvious by her long sigh.

“I can only tell you this, Kate. I never should have turned my back on my old life. I know that now—I’ve known it most of my adult life. As long as I live, it will be the one thing I’m ashamed of. The biggest mistake I’ve ever made.” She’s kneading my hand like bread dough as moisture gathers in the corners of her eyes. Even though it hurts a little, I let her keep going. She seems to need the distraction.