“I don’t know,” was all I could say.
I left school early and went to Jamie’s, blowing off my classes after lunch. When I knocked at the door, Jamie answered it the way she always did, cheerfully and without, it seemed, a care in the world.
“Hello, Landon,” she said, “this is a surprise.”
When she leaned in to kiss me, I kissed her back, though the whole thing made me want to cry.
“My father isn’t home right now, but if you’d like to sit on the porch, we can.”
“How can you do this?” I asked suddenly. “How can you pretend that nothing is wrong?”
“I’m not pretending that nothing is wrong, Landon. Let me get my coat and we’ll sit outside and talk, okay?”
She smiled at me, waiting for an answer, and I finally nodded, my lips pressed together. She reached out and patted my arm.
“I’ll be right back,” she said.
I walked to the chair and sat down, Jamie emerging a moment later. She wore a heavy coat, gloves, and a hat to keep her warm. The nor’easter had passed, and the day wasn’t nearly as cold as it had been over the weekend. Still, though, it was too much for her.
“You weren’t in school today,” I said.
She looked down and nodded. “I know.”
“Are you ever going to come back?” Even though I already knew the answer, I needed to hear it from her.
“No,” she said softly, “I’m not.”
“Why? Are you that sick already?” I started to tear up, and she reached out and took my hand.
“No. Today I feel pretty good, actually. It’s just that I want to be home in the mornings, before my father has to go to the office. I want to spend as much time with him as I can.”
Before I die,
she meant to say but didn’t. I felt nauseated and couldn’t respond.
“When the doctors first told us,” she went on, “they said that I should try to lead as normal a life as possible for as long as I could. They said it would help me keep my strength up.”
“There’s nothing normal about this,” I said bitterly.
“I know.”
“Aren’t you frightened?”
Somehow I expected her to say
no,
to say something wise like a grownup would, or to explain to me that we can’t presume to understand the Lord’s plan.
She looked away. “Yes,” she finally said, “I’m frightened all the time.”
“Then why don’t you act like it?”
“I do. I just do it in private.”
“Because you don’t trust me?”
“No,” she said, “because I know you’re frightened, too.”
I began to pray for a miracle.
They supposedly happen all the time, and I’d read about them in newspapers. People regaining use of their limbs after being told they’d never walk again, or somehow surviving a terrible accident when all hope was lost. Every now and then a traveling preacher’s tent would be set up outside of Beaufort, and people would go there to watch as people were healed. I’d been to a couple, and though I assumed that most of the healing was no more than a slick magic show, since I never recognized the people who were healed, there were occasionally things that even I couldn’t explain. Old man Sweeney, the baker here in town, had been in the Great War fighting with an artillery unit behind the trenches, and months of shelling the enemy had left him deaf in one ear. It wasn’t an act—he really couldn’t hear a single thing, and there’d been times when we were kids that we’d been able to sneak off with a cinnamon roll because of it. But the preacher started praying feverishly and finally laid his hand upon the side of Sweeney’s head. Sweeney screamed out loud, making people practically jump out of their seats. He had a terrified look on his face, as if the guy had touched him with a white-hot poker, but then he shook his head and looked around, uttering the words “I can hear again.” Even he couldn’t believe it. “The Lord,” the preacher had said as Sweeney made his way back to his seat, “can do anything. The Lord listens to our prayers.”
So that night I opened the Bible that Jamie had given me for Christmas and began to read. Now, I’d heard all about Bible in Sunday school or at church, but to be frank, I just remembered the highlights—the Lord sending the seven plagues so the Israelites could leave Egypt, Jonah being swallowed by a whale, Jesus walking across the water or raising Lazarus from the dead. There were other biggies, too. I knew that practically every chapter of the Bible has the Lord doing something spectacular, but I hadn’t learned them all. As Christians we leaned heavily on teachings of the New Testament, and I didn’t know the first things about books like Joshua or Ruth or Joel. The first night I read through Genesis, the second night I read through Exodus. Leviticus was next, followed by Numbers and then Deuteronomy. The going got a little slow during certain parts, especially as all the laws were being explained, yet I couldn’t put it down. It was a compulsion that I didn’t fully understand.
It was late one night, and I was tired by the time I eventually reached Psalms, but some-how I knew this was what I was looking for. Everyone has heard the Twenty-third Psalm, which starts, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” but I wanted to read the others, since none of them were supposed to be more important than the others. After an hour I came across an underlined section that I assumed Jamie had noted because it meant something to her. This is what it said:
I cry to you, my Lord, my rock!
Do not be deaf to me, for if you are silent, I shall go down to the pit like the rest. Hear my voice raised in petition as I cry to you for help, as I raise my hands, my Lord, toward your holy of holies.
I closed the Bible with tears in my eyes, unable to finish the psalm.
Somehow I knew she’d underlined it for me.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said numbly, staring into the dim light of my bedroom lamp. My mom and I were sitting on my bed. It was coming up on the end of January, the most difficult month of my life, and I knew that in February things would only get worse.
“I know this is hard for you,” she murmured, “but there’s nothing you can do.”
“I don’t mean about Jamie being sick—I know there’s nothing I can do about that. I mean about Jamie and me.”
My mother looked at me sympathetically. She was worried about Jamie, but she was also worried about me. I went on.
“It’s hard for me to talk to her. All I can do when I look at her is think about the day when I won’t be able to. So I spend all my time at school thinking about her, wishing I could see her right then, but when I get to her house, I don’t know what to say.”
“I don’t know if there’s anything you can say to make her feel better.”
“Then what should I do?”
She looked at me sadly and put her arm around my shoulder. “You really love her, don’t you,” she said.
“With all my heart.”
She looked as sad as I’d ever seen her. “What’s your heart telling you to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe,” she said gently, “you’re trying too hard to hear it.”
The next day I was better with Jamie, though not much. Before I’d arrived, I’d told myself that I wouldn’t say anything that might get her down—that I’d try to talk to her like I had before—and that’s exactly how it went. I sat myself on her couch and told her about some of my friends and what they were doing; I caught her up on the success of the basket-ball team. I told her that I still hadn’t heard from UNC, but that I was hopeful I’d know within the next few weeks. I told her I was looking forward to graduation. I spoke as though she’d be back to school the following week, and I knew I sounded nervous the entire time. Jamie smiled and nodded at the appropriate times, asking questions every now and then. But I think we both knew by the time I finished talking that it was the last time I would do it. It didn’t feel right to either of us.
My heart was telling me exactly the same thing.
I turned to the Bible again, in the hope that it would guide me.
“How are you feeling?” I asked a couple of days later.
By now Jamie had lost more weight. Her skin was beginning to take on a slightly grayish tint, and the bones in her hands were starting to show through her skin. Again I saw bruises. We were inside her house in the living room; the cold was too much for her to bear.
Despite all this, she still looked beautiful.
“I’m doing okay,” she said, smiling valiantly. “The doctors have given me some medicine for the pain, and it seems to help a little.”
I’d been coming by every day. Time seemed to be slowing down and speeding up at exactly the same time.
“Can I get anything for you?”
“No, thank you, I’m doing fine.”
I looked around the room, then back at her. “I’ve been reading the Bible,” I finally said.
“You have?” Her face lit up, reminding me of the angel I’d seen in the play. I couldn’t believe that only six weeks had gone by.
“I wanted you to know.”
“I’m glad you told me.”
“I read the book of Job last night,” I said, “where God stuck it to Job to test his faith.”
She smiled and reached out to pat my arm, her hand soft on my skin. It felt nice. “You should read something else. That’s not about God in one of his better moments.”
“Why would he have done that to him?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Do you ever feel like Job?”
She smiled, a little twinkle in her eyes. “Sometimes.”
“But you haven’t lost your faith?”
“No.” I knew she hadn’t, but I think I was losing mine.
“Is it because you think you might get better?”
“No,” she said, “it’s because it’s the only thing I have left.”
After that, we started reading the Bible together. It somehow seemed like the right thing to do, but my heart was nonetheless telling me that there still might be something more.
At night I lay awake, wondering about it.
Reading the Bible gave us something to focus on, and all of a sudden everything started to get better between us, maybe because I wasn’t as worried about doing something to offend her. What could be more right than reading the Bible? Though I didn’t know nearly as much as she did about it, I think she appreciated the gesture, and occasionally when we read, she’d put her hand on my knee and simply listen as my voice filled the room.
Other times I’d be sitting beside her on the couch, looking at the Bible and watching Jamie out of the corner of my eye at the same time, and we’d come across a passage or a psalm, maybe even a proverb, and I’d ask her what she thought about it. She always had an answer, and I’d nod, thinking about it. Sometimes she asked me what I thought, and I did my best, too, though there were moments when I was bluffing and I was sure that she could tell. “Is that what it really means to you?” she’d ask, and I’d rub my chin and think about it before trying again. Sometimes, though, it was her fault when I couldn’t concentrate, what with that hand on my knee and all.
One Friday night I brought her over for dinner at my house. My mom joined us for the main course, then left the table and sat in the den so that we could be alone.
It was nice there, sitting with Jamie, and I knew she felt the same way. She hadn’t been leaving her house much, and this was a good change for her.
Since she’d told me about her illness, Jamie had stopped wearing her hair in a bun, and it was still as stunning as it had been the first time I’d seen her wear it down. She was looking at the china cabinet—my mom had one of those cabinets with the lights inside—when I reached across the table and took her hand.
“Thank you for coming over tonight,” I said.
She turned her attention back to me. “Thanks for inviting me.”
I paused. “How’s your father holding up?”
Jamie sighed. “Not too well. I worry about him a lot.”
“He loves you dearly, you know.”
“I know.”
“So do I,” I said, and when I did, she looked away. Hearing me say this seemed to frighten her again.
“Will you keep coming over to my house?” she asked. “Even later, you know, when . . . ?”
I squeezed her hand, not hard, but enough to let her know that I meant what I said.
“As long as you want me to come, I’ll be there.”
“We don’t have to read the Bible anymore, if you don’t want to.”
“Yes,” I said softly, “I think we do.”
She smiled. “You’re a good friend, Landon. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
She squeezed my hand, returning the favor. Sitting across from me, she looked radiant.
“I love you, Jamie,” I said again, but this time she wasn’t frightened. Instead our eyes met across the table, and I watched as hers began to shine. She sighed and looked away, running her hand through her hair, then turned to me again. I kissed her hand, smiling in return.
“I love you, too,” she finally whispered.
They were the words I’d been praying to hear.
I don’t know if Jamie told Hegbert about her feelings for me, but I somehow doubted it because his routine hadn’t changed at all. It was his habit to leave the house whenever I came over after school, and this continued. I would knock at the door and listen as Hegbert explained to Jamie that he would be leaving and would be back in a couple of hours. “Okay, Daddy,” I always heard her say, then I would wait for Hegbert to open the door. Once he let me in, he would open the hallway closet and silently pull out his coat and hat, buttoning the coat up all the way before he left the house. His coat was oldfashioned, black and long, like a trench coat without zippers, the kind that was fashionable earlier this century. He seldom spoke directly to me, even after he learned that Jamie and I’d begun to read the Bible together.
Though he still didn’t like me in the house if he wasn’t there, he nonetheless allowed me to come in. I knew that part of the reason had to do with the fact that he didn’t want Jamie to get chilled by sitting on the porch, and the only other alternative was to wait at the house while I was there. But I think Hegbert needed some time alone, too, and that was the real reason for the change. He didn’t talk to me about the rules of the house—I could see them in his eyes the first time he’d said I could stay. I was allowed to stay in the living room, that was all.
Jamie was still moving around fairly well, though the winter was miserable. A cold streak blew in during the last part of January that lasted nine days, followed by three straight days of drenching rain. Jamie had no interest in leaving the house in such weather, though after Hegbert had gone she and I might stand on the porch for just a couple of minutes to breathe the fresh sea air. Whenever we did this, I found myself worrying about her.