Chasing Forgiveness (19 page)

And why can I still see his horrible hand on that awful gun?

I round the corner spinning past my old school, the junior
high, where I made friends and enemies. Where idiot kids spread rumors about things they didn't know.

It doesn't matter how busy I keep myself. How fast I run, how many passes I catch, how many friends I have. It doesn't matter because he still did it. I can't change that.

I ride over the railroad overpass and past the spot where Jimmy Sanders made me blow a gasket. I could have killed Jimmy, I think. If adults hadn't pulled me away, I could have killed him. I've got that in me, too, don't I? It's like my whole life comes down to my dad. It always has. It always will.

I hate Grandma and Grandpa for making me still love him. Uncle Steve is right. We're all crazy. We're all deluded. I should never have let him in my life again.

It's dark now. I turn into the long greenbelt that runs on either side of the railroad tracks, and I race along the grass, my bones acting like shock absorbers, until the bike flies out from under me and I crash to the hard earth.

God, what's wrong with me?
I'm crying like a baby—I'm shaking.

I love my father. I do. I love him so much it kills me, but I hate him more than anything in the world. How can anyone feel both at the same time and still be in one piece?

I want to make him hurt as much as I do, but I want him to be happy.

I want him to suffer for the rest of his life, but I want him to be healed.

I want him to hold me, but I want him locked safely away in that burning closet of my dreams forever and ever.

Love and hate. Why can't those feelings just cancel each other out, so I feel nothing at all? That's what should happen.

A train whistle rattles my brain. The shadows of eucalyptus trees begin to march like an army. I begin to run, picking up speed, running alongside the tracks. I'm at my peak now. I'm the fastest I've ever been, fueled by all these awful feelings.

But the train.

It races past me like I'm standing still, and in a moment the marching shadows are gone, the train is gone, and I fall to the ground in exhaustion.

I'm just not fast enough to outrace it, and no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I push myself, I never will be.

•  •  •

When I get home, Grandma and Grandpa's house is dark, empty, and clean. Dad cleaned it all by himself. I can hear the TV over in Dad's house next door, and it takes all my courage to go over there and walk in.

Dad says nothing as I come in. I say nothing to him.

But as I turn to walk upstairs, I hear him talking calmly from the living room. In control of his emotions. In control of me.

“Taking the bike out like that was dangerous,” he says. “You broke our agreement. Tomorrow I'm taking the bike back.”

I don't turn to him. I don't dare to look at him now. I bite down and swallow my anger and my pride. “All right,” I tell him, “take it back.”

•  •  •

When Grandma and Grandpa come home the next day, I go and stay with them for a while. As always, they're understanding and glad to have me there. But being there doesn't feel right. Nothing I do feels right anymore.

“I could never figure out how it could be so easy for you,” I tell Grandpa one morning while we're alone in the kitchen. “The way you could just forgive Dad like that, and get on with it.” Sometimes I think they're absolute saints.

Grandpa lets out a halfhearted snort of a laugh. “Easy? You call this easy? Football practice is easy, Preston. Fighting a war is easy. But this?” Grandpa sips his bitter coffee and shakes his head. “Every morning I still have to wake up and remember that my little girl is gone because of Danny, and I have to remind myself that in spite of it we still love him, and I have to pray that I can keep on loving him. That's not easy, Preston. It never has been.”

Dad decides not to ask Sarah to marry him just yet. “This is all happening too fast,” he confides to us one day. “I need some time to think things through.”

Smart move on Dad's part.

I speak to Jason almost every day to keep him informed of the latest developments. He's the only one I can talk to about this.

“Sarah's been acting awfully weird lately,” I tell him over the phone, hoping it's not bugged. “She calls Dad seven or eight times a day at work to complain about the painters, or the fact that Dad hasn't finished building the gym in her garage, or some other stupid unreasonable thing.”

“Go on,” says Jason, “I'm listening.” He laps it all up like it's a soap opera. Sometimes I feel like my life
is
just God's
little afternoon drama—something to keep Him entertained when hanging clouds with Mom gets dull.

“She even calls him out of important meetings, because she thinks she's more important.”

“No way!”

“She gets him in trouble at work, right? And then when he stops by her place in the evenings, she complains that he doesn't work hard enough for her. She drives him like a mule—worse than a mule, like a slave.”

“Lose this woman,” advises Jason. “Lose her in a big way.”

I agree with him, but I don't think it's going to be easy.

•  •  •

At first Dad's plan was just to cool it with Sarah for a while—but after what she did when Dad talked to her about it, we all think it's a better plan to pull out entirely. She has us all really spooked.

“I knew she was high-strung,” says Dad, “but she's worse than that. She's just plain crazy!”

She scares him. She scares all of us.

“When I said we needed a break from each other, she just went nuts,” Dad tells us. “She started throwing things. Books, bottles.” And then Dad looks down. “I was afraid she was going to kill me,” he says. Sarah might be small, but when she's angry, she's powerful and frightening.

The last thing Sarah said to him was that he had better come back and take away the whole workshop of tools he had
been using to fix up her place. Grandpa suggests that Dad go get his things when he knows she's not home.

“It'll make it easier on everyone,” says Grandpa.

But Dad won't do alone. “I want a witness,” says Dad, “because no matter what I take, she'll accuse me of stealing from her. And who are the police going to believe, an ex-convict or a woman with three children?”

So Grandpa goes with Dad, and they come back before dusk with some of the smaller stuff.

“Thank the Lord that's all over with,” says Grandma once the truck is unloaded.

But it's not over with. In fact, as far as Sarah is concerned, it's only just beginning.

•  •  •

It's about midnight when we hear the first crash. We're all sleeping at Grandma and Grandpa's house because Sarah's been threatening all week to come over and do all sorts of things. We figure we're safer if we're all together in a different house.

The first crash is the window. It wakes me out of a sound sleep. I know right away that it's our place next door. Then more crashes. I hear things tearing, things thudding against the wall and hitting the ground in pieces.

“Dad!”

Dad is up, and I can hear him bounding down the stairs. Grandma and Grandpa awake from a deep sleep and don't
know what to do. It's robbers, I think, robbers breaking into our place, looking for valuables to steal.

But it's not robbers, it's vandals. In fact, it's one single vandal.

I look out the window and see it sitting right there, halfway up the curb—Sarah's car.

“Call 911,” cries Grandma.

“No,” says Dad. “No police!” The last thing Dad wants is a run-in with the police now that he's off parole. He races outside and to our house next door to do battle with Sarah, who seems to be very drunk and very, very angry.

“I want my key!” I hear her scream to Dad. “I want my key back now. You broke into my home. I want my key now, or I'll call the police.”

And somewhere deep down inside me there's a part of me that's resting very comfortably and satisfied while the rest of me sits on pins. The demons aren't huddling or waging war at the moment. Instead they're sitting in the jury box, passing judgment, and they tell me that this is just what I wanted to happen, that Dad is getting a taste of what he deserves.

And I sit upstairs listening to Sarah rave like a madwoman, I can't help but think that I was the one who wished this upon my father.

•  •  •

Round One ends. Sarah drives off, but Round Two begins even before Dad has a chance to tell us what happened.
Sarah returns in five minutes with reinforcements. Two huge, scuzzy-looking men with arms as wide as my head drive up behind her in a beat up black sports car. She must have picked them up at the 7-Eleven down the street.

Their fists are already curled, ready to do damage to my father. My God! What lies did Sarah tell them to get them here? What are these men going to do to my dad when they find him?

If it was up to Sarah, they'd . . .

. . . they'd kill him.

Their heavy fists bash against the front door. Grandma's hands tremble as she dials 911. But it will take too long for them to get here—we should have called before. Maybe we'll get lucky—maybe the neighbors called.

Dad stands back in the foyer, pacing and waiting. The door bulges in. The whole house shakes with each pound of the door.

“I want my key!” screams Sarah.

This is all too unreal. If it weren't so terribly awake, I'd think it was just another one of my awful nightmares.

Tyler stands safely at the top of the stairs, but Grandma stands downstairs, too close to the door. I grab her and force her back.

“They'll hurt you, Grandma,” I say as I push her upstairs. “They want to hurt all of us. I don't want them to hurt you!”

Now the two men kick at the door. The sharp crashes
seem loud enough to crack the house in two. The lock won't hold much longer.

And then finally we hear sirens.

They approach from the left and the right. They are outside our house in an instant. I can see the blue and red lights chasing each other around the living room.

The kicking finally stops, and then everything is quiet for a moment. And then there comes the politest of rappings on the front door.

•  •  •

Two policemen pace around my grandparents' living room. The 7-Eleven thugs talk outside to a third officer, explaining their side of the story. The neighbors all stand outside and gawk, probably thinking that this murderer who moved in down the street just murdered someone else. Sarah sits in the kitchen, just beginning to calm down, and Dad sits in the dining room. Sarah's anger turns to tears, which she blots away as quickly as she can. “We were going to get married,” she mumbles to a policeman. I begin to feel a bit bad for her.

“He has my key,” she says. “He broke into my house—I want my key back!”

“Do you have her key?” the policeman asks Dad—as if this were all Dad's fault.

“Do you have Miss Walker's key?” the officer asks again. Dad doesn't answer. Is he going to lie to the police? I know what he's thinking—if he gives back Sarah's key then Sarah
has won. Most of Dad's tools are still there. She has the gym equipment, which is ours. She'll never give it back to us.

“Do you have Miss Walker's key?” says the policeman, about ready to slap the cuffs on Dad for not answering.

Dad looks up at him. “Yes, I have it.”

The policeman puts out his hand. “Then give it back.”

•  •  •

In Dad's house it looks as though everything we own has been dropped out of an airplane. Our furniture is shredded and overturned. Pictures are broken—paintings taken off the wall and split over chairs. Clothes are torn and strewn everywhere. She went as far as to take food from our refrigerator and grind it with her furious hands all over our nice white carpet—and all this in a matter of a few minutes.

She even took my trophies and smashed them against the stone mantel.

Our whole lives are here, smashed about us on the floor. And Dad stands in the middle of it, looking around, helpless to really do anything about it other than collect the debris. Some of this stuff just can't be saved. We all know it.

“I don't have much luck with women,” he says. There's nothing funny about it, but I smile feebly anyway. Next door Grandma and Grandpa put Tyler to bed and calm their own nerves. I'm glad they're not here now. I'm the one who should be cleaning up with Dad. We're in this together. We've been
in this together ever since I first sided with him on the day he and Mom broke up.

“I've had this coming to me for a long time,” says Dad. “Maybe Sarah is possessed by your mother,” he says, only half joking, “and she's trying to pay me back for what I did to her.”

I shake my head. “Mom wouldn't have done something like this,” I tell him, “no matter how angry she was. She has more class.”

Dad bends down and picks up the ruined sofa cushions, gently putting them back into place.

“It's better this way anyway,” he says. “Even if none of this happened, I couldn't love Sarah the way she needs to be loved.” I can see Dad's eyes getting moist. “How could I love Sarah when I still love your mom?”

A tear flows from his eye. He dries it quickly and hurries to busy himself with work. There's so much work to do. He stands up a broken lamp and carefully puts on its shade.

I go to pick up an armless, headless trophy. Looking at it, I can see it's only a cheap piece of plastic. I thought it would mean more to me, but it doesn't.

It's half past three in the morning now. At half past three, it's easier to ask those questions that never see the light of day.