“Michael, ever since I came back, it’s like something inside of me has been frozen. It’s been hard and cold and dead feeling. But since meeting you and Andrea, all of that has begun to thaw out. I’m not sure I wanted to talk about how it felt until now. I mean, where I went, it’s real. God is there, but I’m stuck here.” Then she laughs, one of those golden, joyful giggles of hers that makes me laugh too. “Besides, my mother would so freak if she knew I went to heaven!”
I nod, grinning, “Yeah, that’s kind of a freaky statement there, Rebecca. By most anyone’s standards.”
Her expression grows serious again. “But Michael, I also wanted you to know because of Alex. I want you to understand that where he went, it’s not like here. All the suffering and inconsequential stuff, it’s all gone. He’s happy there.”
I can’t find my voice. I try, but it just flat eludes me. What I want to tell her is how much I’ve worried about his last moments. Whether he hurt or suffered. Whether he knew he was going to die. That one gets me most: the thought that he saw that car coming and comprehended what was happening to him. It keeps me awake at night, wondering if at the moment of impact an explosion of pain rocketed through his whole six-foot-four frame; if it sounded in his brain like rifle fire.
And it keeps me awake, questioning whether he simply vanished into ether and nothingness.
Reaching for her right hand, I touch her scar, the jagged flame through her center palm where she tried to stop the knife. “How bad did it hurt, Rebecca?” I need to know. More than anything else I’ve ever asked of her, I need this. “When he stabbed you?”
“I—I don’t really know,” she answers. “I can remember trying to breathe, how hard it was. I can remember the feeling of the knife cutting me, the cold sensation of it. How unreal it all seemed. I couldn’t believe it was happening—that’s what I kept thinking, that it wasn’t real. And I remember the fear, but I’m not sure about the pain.”
“Why not?”
She pulls my hand close beneath her chin, settling it there before she speaks. I know that what she’s about to say is important just by the way she’s staring into my eyes.
“Because, Michael, I don’t remember the pain. Afterwards, in the hospital, sure, it was unbearable,” she answers in a hushed, almost reverent voice. “But nothing of how it felt while Ben was stabbing me, or even right after he left me for dead.”
“Rebecca, I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying—”
“Michael, when I went to that place? When I left here and started there?” she says, her voice filled with wonder. “Well, it was so perfect, I think God took all that pain away.”
***
Rounding the hallway, back toward my bedroom, I see that Laurel’s still on the deck. The glowing ember of her cigarette flares in the inky darkness as she takes a drag. I suppose she’s waiting for me, hoping to talk before bed. Then again, this is her ritual, smoking late like this. If she were home, back in Santa Fe, she might paint until the middle of the night, or morning even, if the muse were whispering to her just right.
I want to tell her how sorry I am—sorry that we can’t ever seem to get things right. We should be able to, with as much as we both loved him, with as close as we once have been. But then I think of that day last summer, just a month after he died. The papers being served to me at work; I think of sitting in my truck without the air-conditioning on, calling Marti, my hands shaking so bad I could barely dial the numbers on my cell phone. “Michael, calm down,” she urged. “Calm down and tell me what’s going on.” Marti’s own voice was shaking—it was too soon after losing him; too soon for another shocking phone call not to unsettle her.
“It’s Laurel,” I managed to grind out. “She’s trying to take Andie away from me.”
Marti had known Laurel her whole life, wouldn’t believe it, insisted there must be some misunderstanding. After a few tense moments, I phoned Laurel directly, there at her gallery. Her voice was tight, distraught as she told me that I shouldn’t be talking to her. Only to her attorney.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I shouted into the phone. “Laurel, you gotta be kidding, ’cause you’d never tell me to talk to you through a damn attorney!”
“Michael, there’s not an easy way to handle this,” she answered, and seemed eerily calm. “But we must think about Andrea’s well-being.”
“No way in hell you’re taking my child from me. No way!” I shouted, and then, without even waiting to hear the lame explanation she’d begun to offer, I hung up the phone on her. After that, I lawyered up—fast, just like her—and prepared for an ugly battle. Only when Ellen phoned me the next night did I finally lose it, bawling like a baby into the phone, crying so hard that my whole body shook with it.
Her words, in classic Ellen Richardson style, touched the surface of much deeper veins of emotion. “Laurel has spoken with her attorney,” she said, “and everything is now resolved, darling. She’s so sorry, Michael, you must understand.”
“You fixed it,” I said numbly, realizing that once Ellen had figured out what Laurel was up to, she’d intervened.
“Laurel never wanted to hurt you,” she explained gently. “She is very sorry for what she’s done.”