Some people, despite knowing us, definitely wanted the worst for Stefan. Some people believed he’d doffed the past like an old coat and was now indifferent to the families of victims. Jill had her cause; but no cause existed that could help people like Stefan show their contrition to those suffering families, and to the world; contrition that might give them, if not forgiveness, if not an open door, at least a crack in the black glass wall of absolute denial. There were organizations that provided a means for crime survivors to offer forgiveness, but not the reverse. There was no way forward for offenders who were remorseful to make amends if the survivors were not interested. Was that reverse even defensible? Or was the best that people like Stefan could hope for a life of marginally-productive obscurity? Even if he never did anything wrong before this, and he never does another wrong thing after this, would Stefan’s life always be defined by his one brutal act? Would it always be the only thing people thought about him? Even his own parents?
The landline in our house rang. I picked up and listened to nothing but cavernous gusts of breath. Then the caller hung up. I put the phone down. It rang again, the display a local number. I picked it up again. The caller breathed more slowly.
“Leave us alone,” I said.
The girl’s voice I recognized said, “May I speak to Stefan, please?”
“No, you may not speak to Stefan. Leave him alone! You said you weren’t going to say anything else. How about you stick to that?”
“I want to. But I can’t. I have to do this.”
I hung up. The phone rang again immediately. I grabbed the receiver like a weapon. But this was a new voice, honeyed, almost musical, a Glinda-voice. “You know, Thea, your son really should die.”
I reached down and unplugged the phone. The bland rabidness of such ordinary folk, people with mortgages and microwaves, who ordered pizza on Friday nights, frightened me even more than the fanatics.
“Never pick the phone up again, Thea,” Jep said then, again in that calm, dangerous tone.
“It’s just such a natural response, like a baby crying...”
“Please don’t pick it up anymore. Let it go to voice mail.”
“Okay, okay,” I said.
I waited for him to say more.
“Jep?” I said then. “Do you still love me?” Jep leaned over and kissed me. We hadn’t even kissed, much less anything else, since Stefan had come home. Just the recognition that I had a physical body and emotions above the level of survival flowed through me, shivering deep in my abdomen. “I know it’s not just him. It’s us, too. But I can’t do all of this at once.”
“You don’t have to do it all at once, Thea. I’m not... You know, whatever doubts we have, we’re the counterweight. Against what anyone else says. We have to be the one thing he can count on. The thing is, how?”
We went our separate ways, me to my upstairs office, Jep to a coffee shop, where he was meeting a running back from Jesus the Only Light of the Universe High School. I thought then about Stefan when he was young and begging us not to send him to this terrific prep school, because he did not want to go through life after Portland saying, “Yes, I played for Jesus the Only Light of the Universe.” Jep got annoyed finally and said, “You’d just use a short form.”
Stefan complained, “What? I play for Jesus?”
Unable to concentrate on my emails or writing, I realized after a while that I’d been sitting at my desk for nearly three hours without doing one single useful thing or even prosecuting a complete thought. Jep was already home from his meeting, scrubbing the pile of vegetables I’d set out for stew. Not even four in the afternoon, it was already nearly dark, the kind of late afternoon in winter that coaxes people to eat heavy food and retire early to their caves, like bears. Stefan came into the kitchen and started rummaging in the refrigerator. Like Jep, he had an odd habit of taking out the ingredients for different options—the makings for scrambled eggs, some leftover pizza, cold chicken, a fruit salad, cheese and crackers—before choosing one thing and leaving all the rest on the counter island. Especially as an expression of his freedom, this didn’t usually unduly irritate me. Right now, I wanted to pinch him.
Sharper than I meant to be, I said, “Don’t you see we’re making stew? You don’t need another meal now.”
“I’m starving. I’ll still have the stew. And anyhow, how did I know that stew wasn’t for tomorrow?”
“Put all that stuff away when you’re finished.”
“Well, okay, Mom! What’s eating you?”
Instead of answering directly, as if I were in a TV movie about people like us, I took out an unaccustomed bottle of wine and poured myself a glass. I stared at it. People on TV drink so much—at every meal, at every upset—that I’m surprised they can hold down jobs. On BBC shows, they down a glass of whiskey and a pint four times a day. I finally said, “Well, I lost my job not long ago...well, no, that isn’t true. I didn’t lose my job, but I’m taking a sabbatical I didn’t know I was taking.”
“Is it because of me?”
There was no point in lying. “It’s because of you...this...but it isn’t your fault.”
“I should just take off, go to Montana or someplace where nobody knows me, just be somebody else.”
“Wouldn’t that be great! If you left the only place you know and the people who love you the most and just disappeared into the wild like Christopher McCandless? That would help us all out! Besides, your parole won’t allow it.”
He exhaled sharply. “Okay! Sorry! I just really feel bad about all this. Do you think it would help if I talked to your boss?” Then he said, “Who’s Christopher McCandless?”
Stefan was so young.
“No, honey. That’s a gallant thing to say but no, it wouldn’t do any good. Stuff doesn’t happen every day. This is a sort of flash point. It’s all new. You’re starting over. We’ll get through this.”
We stood there, me leaning my head on his shoulder, him awkwardly patting my back. Jep came in and put his arms around both of us.
There was a knock at the front door. Jep opened it, and there stood Annalee Ribosky, Charlie’s wife. “Jep, let me apologize for what Charlie said. I’m sorry, and the fact is, he’s sorry as well. We’re not the only people who’ve said things, and that doesn’t make it right.” Jep shook Annalee’s hand. “But we will not say one word behind your back. So I’m sorry, Jep. I’m sorry, Thea. Tell Stefan, too. Charlie made a mistake. Please forgive an old man. Those people out front, they get to you. Whatever you need, Jep, we are right here.”
Jep turned back to the room then. “Stefano, if you could get people like them to believe one thing about you, what would it be?”
“That not everyone is the same,” Stefan said.