This Side of Salvation, Page 2

  “This is when it happens,” I whisper. “I can feel it.”

  John’s gone quiet, front teeth gnawing the knot in the string of his Phillies hoodie. The hope in his eyes is cautious. He’s afraid to believe.

  I reach into the pocket of my pajama shirt and pull out my lucky frog, the one I won with the claw machine on the Atlantic City boardwalk last summer. It’s round, dull green, with stubby legs—more of a toad, really—and it’s filled with bean bag stuff, so it stays where you drop it. Its name is Plop.

  “Here.” I hand John the frog. “This’ll help you believe.”

  My brother nods solemnly as he sets Plop in the palm of his hand. “Thanks. You don’t need it?”

  “Not as much as you do.”

  The miracle happened: The Red Sox came back that night, then took three more games against their arch nemesis to win the American League pennant. Over the next five years, I made John take Plop with him to the Air Force Academy, then Undergraduate Pilot Training, and finally Afghanistan, figuring he still needed luck more than I did. After all, at twelve years old, I already had a vicious fastball that would get my team out of any jam, which meant I was pretty much master of the universe.

  But John’s luck ran out fast, and I learned that off the field, miracles are scarce.

  My brother’s first deployment ended before we were even used to him being gone. The night the pair of blue-uniformed men knocked on our door, there were still fortune-cookie slips stuck to the fridge, souvenirs from our farewell dinner at John’s favorite Chinese restaurant. As Mom collapsed in the foyer, screaming, “My baby boy! My baby boy!” I tried to slip the fortunes into my pocket, along with the clip-it magnet in the shape of my brother’s fighter jet. I was terrified someone would accidentally throw them away. But my hand was numb, and so, so cold. I dropped it all.

  I stared at the jet lying upside-down on the scraps of papers at my feet and listened to my father sob. Then Mara slipped her own cold hand into mine. Through her tears she whispered, “It’s just us now.”

  CHAPTER 3

  NOW

  Standing at the threshold of my parents’ dark bedroom, I grope for the light switch. In the glare from the ceiling lamp, I stumble toward the bed, my spine a lightning rod of shivers.

  Half under the sheet and comforter, where my mother and father should be, lie their clothes: my dad’s blue-striped pajamas, a white undershirt peeking above the top of the V-neck; my mom’s pale-pink nightgown, magenta roses embroidered on the wide shoulder straps.

  Matching gold crosses dangle off their pillows, in place of their absent necks. I touch my own silver cross, my fingertips cold against my collarbone.

  “David?” Mara’s voice comes from the doorway, but I don’t turn. My feet feel nailed to the floor, yet my head feels far away.

  “See if they left a note in one of our rooms.”

  “Why? Where are they?”

  “Just do it! Please.”

  She runs down the hall, her steps heavy and unsteady. I turn my head—partly to take in the rest of the room, but mostly to stop looking at these two-dimensional remnants of my parents.

  The dresser top is tidy as usual. My mother’s two-foot-high wooden jewelry cabinet sits on one end, my father’s modest box of tie clips and cuff links on the other. Dad’s nightstand, the one nearest me, holds a study Bible with a pair of bookmarks in it. The nightstand on Mom’s side has a family picture from last Christmas, along with the cheesy inspirational plaque I gave her for her birthday.

  From where I’m standing, I can see into the master bathroom. The faucet is dripping, as it has been for months. The shower curtain is closed, quickening my heartbeat with that old childhood fear that someone—or something—lurks behind it.

  “No note from them.” Mara’s voice startles me. “Just this, balled up on the floor next to your bed.”

  She holds out a crinkled sheet of lined paper. I recognize it as the note I left on my pillow a few hours ago, telling my parents I was going out for a while but I was okay. Which I was. And that I would be home by two thirty. Which I wasn’t.

  The note wasn’t crumpled when I left it. Dad probably wanted to do that to my head when he found me missing.

  The image jolts me out of my paralysis. My parents are gone, and it might be my fault.

  “What the hell?” Mara takes a step toward the bed, then quickly backs away, as if the clothes will come to life and strangle her with their sleeves. “Is this a trick, to punish us for going to the party?”

  “Who would do something like that?”

  “Crazy people. Like our parents.”

  “Wait—shh.” I put my hand out like I’m going to cover her mouth—not that I would do that and risk losing a finger. “If it’s a trick, they could be hiding,” I whisper.

  She creeps toward the walk-in closet as I head to confront my bogeyman in the master bathroom.

  I jerk the shower curtain aside. The bottom of the bathtub is empty except for Mom’s big purple comb, whose handle forms a hook to go around the neck of the showerhead. I leave the comb where it’s fallen and start to draw the curtain back the way it was, in case this becomes a crime scene.

  I stop myself. A crime scene? Could they really have been kidnapped, or, or, or—worse? As I stare at the dry maroon tiles in front of me, my mind wrestles with two ugly, competing truths. Which is more of a nightmare, that our parents are in danger, or that they abandoned us?

  Mara and I reconvene in the bedroom. “They’re not in there, obviously,” she says, leaving the closet door open and the light on. “It doesn’t seem like a lot of clothes are missing, either.”

  I bend down and flip up the covers to look under the bed. “Hey there.”

  Juno cowers in the darkness. Her yellow eyes, pupils wide with fear, reflect the bathroom light, making our angelic cat appear demonic.

  Mara crouches on the other side of the bed. “Yo, pretty girl, what happened?” she asks Juno in a high-pitched voice.

  Our tiny tuxedo cat hides for a million reasons: thunder, fireworks, delivery people. She flees when we straighten up the living room, because back when we could afford a cleaning service, our decluttering meant the imminent arrival of strangers with scary Swiffers.

  “Maybe someone came to the door in the last hour.” Like Jesus. No, that’s crazy. “Someone who took them away.”

  “Let me check something.” Mara lets the covers fall.

  I leave Juno to her dark solace and follow my sister into Mom and Dad’s walk-in closet, which is almost as big as my bedroom.

  From the back corner she pulls out a large green-and-brown-plaid suitcase. “Look! They have two suitcases, but one’s missing.” Mara’s shoulders sag with relief. “That means they did leave voluntarily.”

  I unzip the suitcase to reveal a smaller case nested inside. “Turns out, one’s not missing. Let’s check the rest of the house.”

  It takes less than five minutes to complete our frantic search of the remaining closets and rooms, even that one at the other end of the upstairs hall.

  Standing alone on the concrete steps of our garage, I stare at the two empty cars in front of me until a chill courses up through my bare feet. The light from the dim ceiling bulb casts sullen shadows over the clutter in the corners: rakes, cans of wood stain, an American flag carefully wrapped around its pole and sheathed in plastic.

  Everything is in its place, except our parents.

  I find Mara in the kitchen, holding the landline phone. “They tried to call our cells a bunch of times, but stopped at three o’clock.” Her face tight with anxiety, she presses a button. “I’ll try Dad. There’s got to be an explanation.”

  My father’s muffled ringtone sounds from the kitchen table. I fish the BlackBerry out of his Windbreaker hanging on the back of the chair, then hit ignore to silence the metallic rendition of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

  Mara frowns as she hangs up and hits another speed-dial button. “Trying Mom next.”

&n
bsp; I carry Dad’s phone into the living room, where our mother usually leaves hers, either on the coffee table or plugged into the surge protector behind the entertainment console.

  It’s not there.

  “Answer her phone, David!” Mara calls from the kitchen.

  “I would if I could find it.” I start shoving aside the crap on the coffee table—my baseball hat, Mara’s songbooks, three unread issues of Sports Illustrated—desperate to find any sort of clue.

  Don’t panic, I think, though I know from tough innings on the pitcher’s mound that my mind never hears the word “don’t.” It only hears the word “panic.”

  I still myself, trying to focus and listen.

  “David!” Mara barks at me from the foyer. “Why are you just standing there?”

  “I’m looking for the phone.”

  “Check the sofa. Duh!”

  “I can’t hear it ring over you yakking,” I snap, “so please shut up.”

  “Don’t tell me to shut up! Jesus, Mom and Dad are gone for an hour and you’re already breaking their rules.”

  “Compared to going to Stephen’s party—which we both did—telling you to shut up is pretty minor.” I yank up a sofa cushion and toss it on the floor. “Besides, I’m not the one who just started a sentence with ‘Jesus.’ ”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. If you and J. Christ are such BFFs, then why did He leave you behind?” Her voice curls into a taunt. “You must’ve done something to piss Him off. What were you and Bailey up to in the pool house?”

  “Are you seriously joking about the Rush now? That’s not what happened.” I peel up another cushion, throw it farther than the first. My right hand still clutches Dad’s BlackBerry. I can’t lose that, too.

  Mara stalks into the room, shaking the cordless phone at me. “Maybe Jesus is still pissed at you for spray painting one of His houses.”

  “That was a long time ago.” I shove my left hand into the gap between the recliner part of the sofa and the rest of the couch, biting back another “Shut up!” My sister must be as freaked as I am, but I never guessed she’d be a vicious drunk like Dad.

  “Maybe you weren’t as forgiven as you thought.” Now Mara’s full-on cackling. “Or whoever keeps track of that stuff in heaven forgot to cross out your sins.”

  Rage and confusion tangle inside my chest. Suddenly every scenario seems equally ridiculous and equally plausible. Maybe our parents were abducted by aliens. Maybe they’re playing a prank. Maybe they were Rushed, or Raptured, or whatever, into eternal bliss.

  Maybe they’re never coming back.

  My left hand gets stuck between the iron frames of the sofa and recliner. “Can you at least try to be helpful here?”

  “Hey, I’m trying to solve the mystery of why Mom and Dad and God would ditch you after everything you did to appease them.”

  “I don’t know!” I yank my hand free and turn on her. “I just know they left without me. After all I gave up, all I lost, they fucking left without me!” I hurl Dad’s phone across the room with all my might. It shatters against the wall, under John’s folded, framed American flag.

  That felt good. And bad. But mostly good.

  “Uh-oh.” Mara gapes at the cordless phone in her hand. “I think everything we just said is now a message on Mom’s voice mail.”

  “Wait, don’t—”

  Before I can stop her, she ends the call.

  “Mara! You could’ve deleted the message if you hadn’t hung up.”

  “Oops.” She covers the mouthpiece. “I guess we’d better hope they got Rushed.”

  I stare at my barefoot, mascara-smeared sister, her dress missing half its sequins, her gel-encrusted brown hair pointing out in all directions like she stuck her finger in a light socket. Then I look down at myself, still in Stephen’s borrowed swim trunks, dust and crumbs clinging to my sweaty skin from my forays into closets and sofa cushions.

  My throat tickles, and my lips twist. Mara puts a hand to her mouth, but she can’t hide the crinkles around her eyes. Then we laugh, and can’t stop laughing, at the idea that we might be better off with no parents than ones who’d ground us for three lifetimes.

  It’s funny because it might be true.

  CHAPTER 4

  FOUR YEARS BEFORE THE RUSH

  A week after John’s death, Mara and I started taking turns sleeping in his bed. Sometimes I’d wake at night to see my father dozing in the papasan chair across the room, his feet hanging off the edge, John’s blue-and-white Villanova Wildcats throw pulled to his chin.

  My brother’s absence itself wasn’t a shock; it was the fact that the absence would now never end. Since the day he left for the Air Force Academy, he’d lived at home for only a few weeks at a time. John wasn’t ripped out of our everyday lives: He was here, and then he was gone, and then he was Gone.

  That first year, while my family wandered around in the fog of grief, was the best of any year since. We were all lost together in the same way. During the Fog Year, nothing made sense to anybody.

  Then Dad found Jesus, and suddenly John’s death made sense. But only to one of us:

  Dad: God took John away to teach us the miracle of life.

  Me: I can learn that from the Discovery Channel.

  Dad: God is testing our strength.

  Me: I didn’t study for this test. By the way, I’m flunking.

  Dad: John’s death was part of God’s plan, which we’re too small to comprehend.

  Me: I’m big enough to comprehend that this plan sucks.

  By that point we were “finished” with the military’s grief-counseling services. I guess mourning for more than a year was unseemly for respectable families like ours, or it would have insulted God and His fantabulous grand plan for the universe.

  The door to John’s room was shut forever. Mom and Dad told us not to go in there anymore, to sleep or reminisce or wish things could be different. It was time to buck up and move on and be grateful for the good in our lives.

  But late at night, I heard Mara through the wall, crying. I heard John in my head, screaming.

  So I did what any self-respecting thirteen-year-old brimming with rage and brand-new testosterone would do: I hit people. Mostly bullies who deserved it, like eighth graders who tripped sixth graders in the hallway, or that guy at the bus stop who grabbed Mara’s ass when she bent over to pick up her book bag.

  The principal said I was “acting out,” but I preferred the term “taking action.” Whatever the label, I never felt happier than when I was standing over the prone, writhing—preferably bleeding—figure of some jerk who had it coming but didn’t see it coming. I could pretend for one brief, beautiful moment that he was the man who killed my brother.

  Then I broke my pitching hand on someone’s face. For the sake of baseball, my one connection to John, I stopped fighting. When my hand healed, I funneled my frustration into a more elegant, eloquent channel: graffiti. I wrote what was in my heart, big and loud, on any surface I could find, in whatever tone felt right that week.

  Snark at the skate park: WHEN GOD CLOSES A DOOR, HE OPENS A CAN OF TEAR GAS.

  Bitterness on a train bridge: LIFE’S A BITCH AND THEN I KILL YOU. LOVE, GOD.

  These were the ones clean enough to print in the local papers.

  I was more of a spray-paint scribbler than a real graffiti artist. But for my masterpiece, a three-word indictment that would say it all, I aimed higher. I spent weeks learning how to letter in the proper graffiti style, practicing in a sketchbook (which I burned, to avoid implicating myself), and scoping out the perfect location.

  Stony Hill Community Worship Center was one of those megachurches large enough to have their own zip codes. Dad complained about the traffic jams they caused on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. Mom sniffed at their pun-ridden, inflammatory messages on their marquee sign in the parking lot.

  The side wall was whitewashed brick, upon which Stony Hill would flash messages in colored lights during holidays, like CHR
IST . . . IS . . . CHRISTMAS. It was the perfect blank canvas, like God had delivered it to me Himself.

  I gathered the troops. They called themselves the “Blasphemy Boy Gang,” three fellow eighth graders who eased their suburban tedium by finding me transportation, acting as lookout, and procuring my supplies.

  For the Stony Hill job, Patrick Heil blackmailed his older brother Cullen into being our getaway driver, threatening to rat him out for dealing weed to middle schoolers. Stephen Rice snuck a ladder out of his dad’s tool shed. And Rajiv Ramsey bought the spray paint and dust masks—to keep telltale paint from getting on my nose hairs—with cash from a Home Depot way up in Valley Forge, so it wouldn’t be traced back to this crime.

  At 2 a.m. on what turned out to be the hottest night of the summer, we struck. Cullen parked the car around the corner while the rest of us went to work.

  A major crossroad was a thousand feet away, in plain sight of the church, so we had to be fast, alert, and lucky. With Rajiv handing me paint cans like a nurse assisting a surgeon, Stephen steadying and moving the ladder, and Patrick acting as lookout, I was finished in five minutes.

  I descended the ladder and helped Stephen collapse it, sliding it down slow and steady to keep it quiet. Then Rajiv gave me the bag of cans while he helped Patrick and Stephen carry the ladder back to the car. They trotted in perfect synch, like horses drawing a carriage.

  I paused for a second alone beside the church. WHY GOD WHY? loomed over me, stark, simple, and savage. Sweat chilled on my skin at the thought of strangers seeing my rage and pain poured out with such purity. The mural was a mug shot of my insides.

  But a mug shot never tells a criminal’s whole story, only the unhappy ending. It doesn’t reveal that the girl arrested for prostitution needed money to support her dying sister, or that the guy busted for smoking pot had brain-crushing pain from bone cancer.

  I reached into the bag and pulled out the can of black paint.

  If I’m never caught, I realized, those three words will mean nothing. The world will never know who asked “why?” Or why “why?” needed to be asked in the first place.