The Tricky Part: One Boy's Fall from Trespass into Grace (35 page)

“Another month, at least. I’d sure like to hear from you.”

“Oh, well, you’ve got my info, right?” It comes out really cold like a: “We’ll do lunch,” because underneath my thought is,
You’ve had enough of me for this lifetime
.

He backs up his wheelchair a foot or two. “I hope,” he says, looking down at the grass, “I hope you don’t hate me.”

“Bob,” I say, and my words just spill, “whatever else there might have been, there was kindness too. You were kind and I don’t hate you.”

He hunches forward as if hit in the gut and takes the wheels of his chair. “Once,” he says, “we were shopping, you were riding in the cart and you grabbed a box of cereal off the shelf and said: ‘Let’s get this, Dad.’ ” He looks up at me. “Do you remember that?” I say nothing, thinking,
God, that cannot be true
, even as an image floats through my mind—a Friday night, a fluorescent aisle. “You don’t remember, do you?”

“No.”

“Maybe it was just a slip that you said
Dad
, but I nearly fell through the floor. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.”

And my hand moves to his shoulder—whoosh—just like that. And I squeeze the loose flesh. God, there it is, I think,
touch
. Anybody watching from the windows of the hospital might think the two of us a sweet sight.

He extends his hand to shake and we do, like two gentlemen.

“Sometimes I wonder who I might be if I’d never met you.”

“I can understand that,” he says, his face going hard.

I pull away and move down the sunny sidewalk toward the stairs that lead to the parking lot. I can feel his eyes on me. I think he’s waiting for me to turn, to give some kind of sign. When I reach the door of my rent-a-car I spin around and, sure enough, he’s positioning his wheelchair right at the edge of the steps where he can watch me go. He’s silhouetted against the white brick and I am just amazed that he’s there. That he gave me this stab at the past. And, without permission, my hand flies into the air and waves, jauntily. Ever the boy from Christ the King. And when Bob raises his arm to wave back I’m filled with the strangest, strongest feeling that this very goodbye was contained in the first moment I ever laid eyes on him.

I turn away and I get into the car thinking,
That’s it. I came, I met him, I did it. I was frank. This will put an end to all of it. Right? That’s why I’ve come
. But the grip of it, of him, it’s still there. I start the car and I back away wondering what in the world you have to do to get free of it. In another thirty years, I’ll be seventy, he’ll be dead.
Enough
.

And a thought came to me. Something Sister Christine said all those years ago. That with the really rough things it would always come down to grace.
A gift from the beyond that moves us toward our own salvation
. And as I crawled out into the thick Los Angeles traffic, what I kept hearing in my head was this prayer, a plea repeating:
OK, grace, please, to let it go, let him be, for heaven’s sakes. Let him rest
. I mean Bob, of course. But then, I realize I’m really talking about someone else. The twelve-year-old. The sweet kid caught in a photo, still talking his way out. And I’m not sure how in the world to let him rest. Not yet, anyway.

I
SIT ON
the grass of the Getty and wait for Jodi. The elevators rising from the subterranean parking garage open and close continually, disgorging and gobbling up museum guests. Between glances for her I scribble in my notebook.

4 April 02. 2:05 PM. I just left him. I want to feel something momentous, that everything is different for having done it . . .

I take in the sky. Clear blue. A breeze laced with the brine of the Pacific moves by me. I hear my name. She’s already waving, strutting in my direction. She has on dark slacks and a purple blouse that sets off her short black hair. She’s got the swagger of a girl who seems to trust the world. I recall how she moved just this way in high school, but with a Marlboro dangling from her lips.

“Hey, Mart.”

“Hey.” I stand and we hug.

“Ya good?” she asks.

“Yeah, fine.”

Without speaking we move to the tram, ride up the hill, and then stroll straight toward the center of the gardens, which overlook the ocean. It smells of sea and sage. We pass by a guide saying, “Here on your left—the bright yellow, those are called sticks of fire, and on the right, angels’ trumpets.” The path loops through the fire and the trumpets and takes us around to a thick collection of cacti.

“God, this place is stunning,” I say.

“I knew you’d like it.” She points. “Succulents galore.”

“Maybe there’s peyote in here.”

“I doubt it.”

“It’d be a good day, wouldn’t it? To smoke a joint, eat some shrooms, float away.”

“Those days are over,” she says.

“I know. The very thought of pot makes me crave a Xanax.”

We pass a shrub with purple blossoms. “Matches your shirt,” I say.

She takes my arm and steers us toward a bench.

“So?” she asks.

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Start with how he looked.”

“Awful, really. So small. A wreck. Missing part of a foot. Sitting in a wheelchair.”

“Karma. His worst punishment is being himself.”

“It feels so foolish, embarrassing really—this lifelong obsession over a loser.”

“Did you let him have it?”

“I let him have something. I said what I wanted to say, I think. At least he had to face me as a grown person. That felt right. But it was all oddly rational, calm. I kept hearing myself and I sounded so reasonable. There weren’t any fireworks.”

“Is he out of your system?”

“God.” I laugh. “Don’t know. I drove away with this feeling that it was really me, not him, I needed to forgive. That he’s actually, almost, beside the point. I don’t want to be stuck back there anymore. With him. With blame.”

Enormous, billowy clouds are moving swiftly past the high stone walls of the Getty galleries. The stones and the clouds match, they’re the same brilliant white, and each time I glance up at them I have the wild sensation that Jodi and I are moving as fast as the wind, that we’re sailing.

“Did he apologize?”

“Not really. He kept trying to justify, explain.”

“What a shit,” she cries.

“There you go again, getting angry on my behalf.”

“Anger’s a good thing. Tells me what I care to fight for and what I love. I can’t let go of the fact that he hurt you. My best friend.”

“I love you for that.”

She bumps my shoulder with hers.

“I wish I had a cigarette,” I tell her.

A group of schoolkids marches past our bench. The teacher is a man, his voice low and firm as he calls out to his charges. “Isaac, stay with the others,” he says. All the boys have yarmulkes, the girls, lovely skirts and white stockings.

Jodi takes my arm again and we walk.

“You think you’ll ever see him again?”

“Oh God, no. But, then again, who knows?” We hike along a path circling a fountain. Pennies and nickels glimmer in the water. “He said that I called him ‘Dad’ once.”

“OK. That’s . . . strange.”

“I know. I don’t know if it’s true, but it sure makes me wonder just what primordial thing was, is, rumbling under all of this.”

Jodi’s phone rings. She slips it out of her pocket. We sit on a ledge surrounded by bougainvillea. It’s her sitter, checking in. They chat briefly.

“Everything OK?” I ask.

“Logan’s down for a nap. That’s good. I’ll turn this off.”

The Pacific is in clear view beyond the hills. A haze that had been there earlier has lifted. I can see a tall spinnaker moving south along the coast. We continue down the trail through countless flowers and come to a verse etched in stone.

Robert Irwin, December 1997

My toes point to
EVER PRESENT
. Hers to
EVER CHANGING
.

I burst out laughing.

“What?”

“I don’t know. That’s either totally Hallmark or completely profound. Today, I can’t tell which.”

“He’s talking plants,” Jodi says.

“Mortals too, maybe.”

“He’s the artist who landscaped this place. Gorgeous.”

“Yeah, Eden.”

We move up the staircase for the Gallery of Ancient Art and stop on a balcony overlooking the garden.

“If only I hadn’t gone to the ranch,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“You know. If only Eve hadn’t taken the bite. If only my parents had done something different. If only I weren’t raised Catholic—”

“What are you talking about? You’ve always been Jewish.”

“I mean, you have to let go of the if-only’s, you know? This is who we are, what is. I’ve spent so much time thinking that what happened when I was twelve split me into pieces. Maybe pieces is a part of being whole? Maybe it’s tangling with evil that helps us to know good.”

Jodi looks out over the banister, her eyes following the Hebrew school kids.

“Marty, you’re forever letting that man off the hook, distancing yourself from the breach of it. The truth of what he did.”

“I hear you.”

The kids have pencils and paper and are kneeling over the beds, learning the names, it seems, of the various blossoms. We watch them and I wonder how I can explain this feeling I have that somewhere in the middle of the whole tangled mess, the whole story, there has always been something sacred. Something good that was doing its best to grow. And I want to describe this picture I have in my head of waving goodbye to Bob and thinking how possible it is, how amazingly possible, that what harms us might come to restore us. I take Jodi’s hand. She’s still surveying the garden and the students.

“It’s exquisite here,” I say.

“Yes.”

“You know what it is?”

“What?”

“It’s letting go of the sense that the past should have been any different or better.”

“That’s tricky. Are you hungry?”

“I am.”

We climb up the many steps toward the entrance plaza and cafés.

“What are those hills?” I ask Jodi.

“Santa Monica.”

“Saint Monica. She was the mother of Augustine.”

“God, you Catholics are everywhere.”

“Especially him, he was all over the map. Fabulous sinner, famous saint.”

We reach the terrace that leads to the restaurant. The view is spectacular.

“Have you called Henry?” Jodi asks.

“He’s in rehearsal today. I’m going to call him tonight.”

“God, where are you going to start?”

I turn, blinded by the sun, its rays fractured and shimmering across the Pacific.

“By telling him how much I love him.”

We step inside, and a smartly dressed man leads us to a corner table. It is strangely hushed. Green carpet, gracious service, the tinkling of silver against plates. The smell of good food fills the air. We take our seats. On three sides of the spacious room, north, south, and west, walls of glass give way to the mountains and to the bright sky of an April afternoon. The light splashes across the white tablecloths. Across all the couples and families and children gathered, talking softly, eating lunch on a hill overlooking the sea.

T
HANKS ETERNAL
. Editor Amy Caldwell contributed in countless ways to the creation of this work. As did author Cynthia Huntington. This book came into being through the guidance and steadfast support of Malaga Baldi, Seth Barrish, Dr. Carolyn Tricomi, Michael Klein, Jodi Binstock, Melissa Dobson, Catherine Coray, Randolyn Zinn, James Lecesne, Liz Rosenberg, Ellen McLaughlin, Chris Moran and the Gordon guys, Robin Hemley, Reverend Cynthia Heller, Eve Ensler, Elatia Harris, David and Stephanie Fine, Ricky Ian Gordon, Michael and Kelly Schreiber, Marie Howe, Nick Flynn, Jan Crain, the Barrow Group, Paul and Karen Kandel, Sundance Institute, Bill Davis, the Fine Arts Work Center, Jeff Nathanson, Dave Johnson, Winnie Hartman, Sister Theodore Farley, Maggie Black, the Moran family, Ken Weiner, the Rockies, the Maryknoll Sisters, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Phil Baker, Ted Sperling, Dr. Mark Groshek, Steven J. Stone, Dame Judith Blazer, David Pearl, Victoria Clark, Melanie Braverman, James B. Freydberg, David Schechter, Marin Mazzie, David Costabile, Barry and Deb Schwartz, Brian D’Arcy James, Lisa Loosemore, Theresa McCarthy, SCA, Larry Green, Jessica Molaskey, Bill Buell, Amy Ryder, Suzette Sheets, Jason Danieley, Alexa Fogel, and Henry Stram.
ETERNAL THANKS
.