“Now you know how scary it would be to have someone hit you,” Jill said. “First, I should say thank you, Thea. Thank you so much for coming.”
I said, “Do you remember that time we baked mini-muffins for the kids’ soccer game and, on the way, I went around a corner so fast that we spilled them all onto the floor mats? And we kept trying to pick the dog hair off them? For like ten minutes?”
Even Jill smiled. “Then we wouldn’t let Belinda or Stefan eat them? And we just watched all the other kids scarfing them down? I wanted to throw up.” She said then, “I need to ask you a favor.”
“What is it?”
“In recent months SAY has gotten involved with the forgiveness movement, not quite like your... Stefan’s thing that you’re doing, I mean the one that’s been around for years. And while I’m not at that point, I have learned a few things and one of them is that you’re supposed to ask for what you need, if that is possible.”
“You know Stefan would do anything to take your pain away. But that’s impossible. How could he and I help...?”
“I don’t really know,” Jill admitted. She had recently heard from an old friend, a pastor who had been at seminary with her late husband and was now, like our Merry Betancourt, a part-time prison chaplain. He encouraged her to come to one of the meetings he was brokering with a family in the process of forgiving a man who’d shot a grandfather of five in a home invasion. She did, and left both moved and confused. “It really didn’t have that much to do with the person who did it and everything to do with the victims. It really gives the victims a feeling of power over their own lives. And, Thea, I need that. I really feel like a pebble that’s getting kicked around on the ground.”
I was surprised. I said so. “You founded an organization, Jill, a good one. It’s changing young women’s lives. I don’t agree with it in the case of my own family, but its intentions are really good, Jill.”
“But me, personally. I still feel lost in the world.” Which made heartbreaking sense, but which was something I would never have suspected. There was nothing I could say, so I just waited and listened. “Now as for the perpetrators. A lot of them feel new hope when they’re forgiven. But other ones, they apparently actually feel pretty awful when they’re forgiven, worse than before. I guess they’re the sensitive ones, right? I guess even some of them feel better after some time passes, like they’re more able to go on, like a burden is off their shoulders.”
“Stefan told us all about that. There was a guy he knew who, well, he killed himself. And for Stefan, his regret just got worse for him when he was free. That’s why he wanted to try to do something like what he’s doing.”
“Do you think I should explore forgiveness more?”
Why was she asking this of me, of all the beings in the known universe? In concept, it sounded like the absolute pinnacle of civilization, the best humanity could hope for. How would it work out in reality? The more I thought about it, the more I thought that it might be a gesture that could free Stefan from the endless cycle of genuflection, something he could point to—at least privately: If she of all people can forgive me, so can you, and maybe even so can I.
“Does it feel like time for that?” I said.
“I think so. I don’t want to be held back emotionally. It keeps you from other chances in life.”
“Are you getting married again?”
Jill shook her head, startled. “No,” she said, almost with a snort. “I’m not seeing anybody. I think about it sometimes, though. I think about it more than I used to.”
“I thought maybe that was why you wanted to see me. Although now that I say it, there’s probably no reason on earth you’d want to share that information with me, of all people.”
“Well, no, it’s not.” She turned her face to the failing sun, and I saw how beautiful she was, how like Belinda, clearly something I didn’t want to think about every day. “But it’s kind of like that. I wanted you to know that I’m thinking of adopting a child.”
“You are?”
“Yes. This prison chaplain I met, he said something that really got to me. I was talking about how all the love that I had for Belinda, I poured love into Belinda, and that it was all gone now. And he told me not to think that way. He said no love is ever wasted. No love is ever wasted. I didn’t ever really think of it like that.”
She shrugged her shoulders and walked a few paces away from me, looking toward the dappling light around the trees. She told me about some of the research she had done, looking into adopting from Uganda or Jamaica, a slightly older child, five or six years old maybe, a girl or maybe even a boy. It was difficult for her to think about learning to love another child, but the adoption social worker she’d spoken to said some initial fear was normal, especially for someone who had suffered the kind of losses Jill had suffered. It would be strange, in fact, if she didn’t feel some worry.
“That’s probably true,” I said, still wondering why this particular chat was something she felt moved to share with me, although it might once have been something she would have brought up, on those occasions when we would sit on her porch and drink coffee, when we were friends. Perhaps it was part of her attempt to open her spirit to forgiveness. I asked her then, “Are you still a golf pro?”
“I took two years off, but yes, now I’m doing that again,” she said. “Why?”
“You’re just so, ah, fit.” She was fashion-model slender, her pants and top fitted to defined, shapely arms and a flat belly.
“For a while, I was just too thin. But I’m getting strong again. Slowly. You...you’re thinner, too, Thea. Not that you were ever at all overweight. The truth of it is, I just should eat more.” She paused and said, “I have trouble eating these days, for obvious reasons.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Because she can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“Because Belinda can’t eat. Beet salad or macaroni and cheese or bean enchiladas or twice-baked potatoes or rum raisin ice cream.”
I thought of Stefan eating rum raisin ice cream in that horrible hotel on that horrible winter day. “Oh, Jill, oh Jill, I’m so sorry.”
She said, “I know you are. That’s the real reason I wanted to see you. I want to ask a favor of you. I want you and Stefan to stop speaking about Belinda in public.”
Again, I was caught flat-footed.
“You got so much attention, and it puts Stefan in the position of being kind of, I don’t know, familiar, a decent guy who made a big mistake, like somebody anybody could understand. This whole thing is making Stefan and you look very sympathetic. It’s breaking my heart, Thea, it feels so unfair to the memory of my daughter. And the girls and women who work with SAY are outraged, Thea.”
“I saw that for myself. But the interruption of the evening, that really wasn’t fair, Jill.”
“I had nothing to do with that. It’s their right to peaceful protest, their right under the constitution.”
“But so was the talk.”
“You’re trying to make it like there are two sides to this, and there aren’t.”
“And Stefan said it was his intention to try to support SAY. He still wants to do that.”
“And I said that was impossible, Thea. Even you must see why.”
I finally told her that it was only one speech. I said, “I won’t accept any another invitation. I promise.”
“You should not, and maybe even for your own good. I read about what happened to Stefan’s car recently. Aren’t you worried that something worse could happen to him or to you?”