He returned again to the fundamental questions of humanity. Why did we have suffering, evil, pain? How did we build resiliency? How did we hold steady in the midst of the storm? He closed his eyes to reflect. From the near distance, the noise of a lawn mower reached him, and he was comforted by this ordinary, domestic sound. A few minutes passed. In spite of the chill that had now reached his knees and the discomfort of gas beneath his ribs, his breathing slowed, his chin dropped, and his mind drifted from the task at hand. He closed his eyes and soon slipped into the space his mother used to call twilight time, where he was neither sleeping nor fully awake, a suspended limbo land between dream and consciousness. The chapel grew warmer, as if a heater had been switched on, and he relaxed into this unexpected warmth.
Minutes passed, and later Father Gervase would believe he had fallen asleep. Behind his closed lids, a vision materialized: a young woman clothed in a simple gown of linen, a cowl draped at the neck and a halo of braids coiled around her head. There was a sense of the familiar about her, and as recognition dawned, a sensation spread through his chest that was a blending of pain and joy and pulled him fully awake. The vision was Cecelia, his sister grown into the adulthood she’d never known in life. His family history trembled like a timber hut built on fault lines. The notepad slipped from his hand, and he tried to put the tragedy of Cecelia back in the past where it belonged, but it remained with him like a suitcase he had carried on a long journey. All possibility of finishing the homily faded, and he knew the futility of continuing to struggle with it while haunted by the past. He closed the notebook and clipped his pen to the cover, then stood. He took a moment for blood to flow to his protesting arthritic joints, knew the inevitability of a cane in the near future.
Before he left the chapel, he remembered to pick up the piece of trash beneath the pew. He was relieved to see it was not a needle or worse. Only a child’s toy, a small plastic figure. He slipped it in his pocket and departed, taking care to lock the door behind him. Then as he often did when his mind sought perspective and his heart sought calm, he walked not back to the rectory but down to the harbor and the sea.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I walked across the sand toward the wooden bench where Sophie waited.
Earlier that day when Sophie had suggested we meet at “our bench,” I’d felt a stirring of hope. On summer evenings shortly after we married, we’d formed the habit of taking an after-dinner stroll here, and although alcohol was forbidden on the public beach, we would share the illicit pleasure of drinking Chardonnay while the sun set over the water.
That day, for obvious reasons more compelling than town bylaws, I walked toward my wife with hands devoid of wine. “Hey, Soph,” I said. Her hair had grown out a bit from the severe cut and framed her face softly, making her look more like the woman I married. The woman from Before. I sat at her side, close enough to smell the fragrance she was wearing, something spicy and unfamiliar. I hesitated, then brushed her cheek with a kiss.
She slipped off her sandals and flexed her toes, digging them into the sand. “I’ve been waiting to hear,” she said.
I was lost. “Hear what?”
“About your appointment with the lawyer Payton recommended. How did it go?”
More than a week had passed since I’d seen Donaldson, and in truth, I had put it behind me the moment I’d walked out of her office. “I think we can let it go for now. It’s probably a big to-do about nothing.”
“Nothing? I don’t know, Will. It doesn’t sound like nothing. You’re charged with assault and you call it nothing?”
“Not charged. There’s no charge, Sophie.”
She stared at me, skeptical.
“I’ve got it covered, Sophie.”
“You’ve got it covered?” A couple walking past turned and looked at us. “Exactly what does that mean?”
“What it means is, like I said, a charge hasn’t actually been filed. Jesus, Soph. I didn’t hit the woman. I pushed. She fell down.”
“Still.”
Still.
“Oh, Will, Will. What were you thinking?”
I wondered how many times we were going to go over this. “I wasn’t thinking. I reacted. Okay? I reacted. Look, can we just drop the subject? It’s in the past. Nothing has come of it and I really don’t need another lecture on my behavior.”
A curtain of silence fell between us. Sophie looked down at her hands, now clasped together in her lap as if in prayer. At the water’s edge three children played. The boy was busy with a pail and shovel. Another child, smaller, sprawled prone, making snow angels in the sand while her sister turned cartwheels. Farther down the beach a group of high school kids were tossing a Frisbee. One of them had brought a black Lab, and the dog darted from player to player, following the arc of the toy. I watched as the disc again sailed through the air and the Lab, with perfect timing, made a twisting leap and took it in midair, then ran from the group. Several of the boys gave chase while the girls cheered the dog on.
“Will?”
A tall boy had turned from the pursuit and now veered toward the most slender of the girls, a blonde who stood a head shorter. Sensing his intent, she ran but he caught her easily, then lifted her in the air, as if she weighed no more than a leg of lamb, and headed for the water, threatening to throw her in. Watching them, I remembered what Sophie had once said about the teenage boys she saw each day at school, how their testosterone levels were so high the air around them shimmered with it and a person could get pregnant just walking by. The girl’s shrieks of mock distress floated up to where we sat. The muscles tensed in my thighs, my shoulders, knotted my jaw. I watched as the boy swung her over the surf, her toes skimming the surface. The rest of the group had turned their attention from the dog and gathered at the water’s edge to observe. “Do it, Eric,” one of the boys called. “I dare you to throw her in.” For a minute, it appeared Eric was going to follow through and that the girl, defenseless in his arms, would land in the water, but at the last minute, he set her down in the sand. “Coward,” another boy taunted.
I swallowed against the sour taste rising in my throat, against my intense and sudden hatred of these boys. It could have been anyone, I thought. Anyone.
“Will.” Sophie’s voice yanked my attention back, although the thought still circled in my head. It could have been anyone. I knew not to share this with her.
“Hiss at them,” she said.
“What?” Had she read my mind?
“I miss them.”
“Who?”
“Them.” She nodded toward the group of teenagers. “I hadn’t expected to miss them this much.”
“Them?” I spit the word out. “You miss them?”
“I do.”
“Even knowing . . .”
“Knowing what, Will?”
I could no longer stay quiet. “It could have been one of them. It could have, you know.”
She made a sound.
“What?” I said.
“Oh, Will.” She shifted on the bench until she faced me directly. She reached across the short distance that separated us and laid her hand on my knee, warming the patch of skin beneath the fabric of my trousers. “It hurts me to see you this way.”
“What way?”
“Bitter. Angry. Looking at everything—everyone—with cynical eyes.”
“And what exactly would you have me do? Pretend the world is all good? Pretend evil doesn’t exist? If I’m sure of one thing, Soph, it’s that evil exists. It lives right here in this town. And that’s the truth.”
“There are many truths, Will. We decide what truth we choose to hold.”
“Spare me.”
“We do, Will.”