Read The Blessings Online

Authors: Elise Juska

The Blessings (5 page)

  

She talks occasionally to friends from high school.
How are you doing, Lauren?
They pause, the silence stretching on the line.
With everything?
They don't mention cancer; maybe they think you're not supposed to. They have no experience with a thing like this. Lauren was the first of them to get married, and they helped her plan the wedding, gushing over the dresses and bouquets. Now they're all catching up to her. Having their first babies, buying their first houses, modest twins with postage-stamp backyards. When Lauren and John moved into their house in Chestnut Hill, the girls had come to see it, awed by the size of it, envious of her new adult life.

  

John goes in to work, half days. Twice a week, or once. A gesture. Then nothing. He shaves off what's left of his hair. He wears a knit Eagles hat every day. He's grown so thin—Lauren is startled by the contrast, her thigh next to his. The thermostat is cranked to seventy-five. Max scrambles around in just a diaper, hair damp and curling. Outside, it is early April, and when Lauren drags the trash to the curb, the nights are cool and sweet, but the house is always the same temperature, its own climate. A world apart.

  

Friends come—John's friends from high school, a few of his co-workers. A guy who, at their dinner party in October, had done a loud, drunken impression of their boss. Now he refuses the beer that Lauren offers. He makes jokes—business jokes.
Couldn't you market this thing as a diet plan?
he says, and John offers the obligatory laugh. Lauren almost can't bear to look at the guy's face, the terror in his eyes:
A guy like me, reduced to this
.

  

On warm afternoons, if John is feeling strong enough, the four of them sit by the pool. John dressed in layers, Lauren holding the baby, Elena carefully dunking her feet. When they had the pool dug last summer, John had imagined all the family barbecues they would be hosting.
It'll be fun for the kids
, he'd said, and Lauren had cringed inwardly at the thought of their house becoming the locus of all John's family gatherings for the rest of their lives. Now she makes a promise to herself: to keep hosting, no matter what.

  

Mrs. Blessing is there every other day, like clockwork. Fixing meals, doing laundry, washing dishes. Lauren is too exhausted to refuse. She knows John likes having her there, and there is something steadying about John's mother: the dependability of her habits, the flowered half apron she keeps folded neatly in a kitchen drawer, the warm, simple dishes she pulls from the oven. Macaroni and cheese, potato soup, vats of rice pudding. Another promise Lauren makes to herself: She will never eat rice pudding again.

  

Lauren's mother flies up from Florida and stays for six days.
My poor little girl
, she says, stepping from the cab in the driveway, as Lauren collapses in her arms. Her mother lines up her travel-size shampoos and lotions on the dresser in the guest bedroom. She coos over the baby, teaches Elena to play Go Fish and Old Maid. Sitting on the couch beside John, she is so tan that it seems an affront. John's mother surrenders the kitchen for the week, but Lauren's mother makes grape leaves, which are too difficult for John to eat. At night, when the rest of the house is sleeping, she quizzes Lauren about things: life insurance, health insurance, items on a list prepared by her dad.
We don't talk about that yet
, Lauren snaps. She thinks she'll be glad to see her mother go until the moment her cab pulls away.

  

When John is too weak to leave the house, Lauren takes the children to church alone. She feels like a fake martyr, folding her hands, bowing her head to pray.
Say the word and I shall be healed
, she recites along with everybody else. But there is nothing in her head, just words in space. On her knees, she concentrates.
God, please help us.
Please.
Still, she feels nothing. Maybe she is just not a religious person; maybe she's doing it wrong. Walking to the car, she notices people's sorry smiles and realizes they must be wondering if John isn't there because he's dead.

  

I wish there were more we could do
, the doctor says.

  

Lauren wants to pull Elena out of preschool, but John insists on keeping things as normal as possible, as long as possible. To bring her home would be conceding something.
Not yet
, he says.

  

When the baby is running a temperature, he is whisked away, quarantined at Ann and Dave's house until the fever goes down.

  

Around John, Elena is careful. She can't sit on Daddy's lap because it hurts his bones, so she plays by his feet. She can't kiss him because of germs. Instead, they touch heads. She does these things gently, without complaining. Whatever other emotions are building inside her are reserved for Lauren alone. One day in the Thriftway, as Lauren is shopping for things John can eat—nothing hard or chewy, nothing spicy—Elena throws a box of Oreos on the floor. “Elena!” Lauren exclaims. Elena stares back at her, unmoved. She throws another box, sending it skidding across the floor, and starts to laugh. “Elena! Stop that!” Lauren says, shocked, thinking:
This is not my daughter. This is not my life!
Elena keeps throwing boxes, one after the other, laughing, until Lauren takes her by the elbow. The spell breaks, Elena's face crumples, and she starts to shriek. People look at Lauren, surely thinking she's a terrible mother. She yanks Max out of the half-f cart, grabs Elena by the hand, and leaves the store.

  

When I'm not here, you can talk to me anytime.

Lauren is listening from outside Elena's bedroom door. She is struck by how weak John's voice is, weaker because she can't see him.

But where are you going?

Heaven.

Can I come?

I'm afraid not, sweetheart.

But why?

It's not the kind of place you can visit
, John says solemnly. He has answers at the ready. Lauren has to push her hands in her mouth to keep from screaming.

But where is it?

It's all around
, he tells her.
It's in the air. In the sky.

  

Outside the house, everyday things have a quality of unreality. The beep of the grocery belt in the Thriftway. The cashier with the blotchy skin asking in a bored tone:
Would you like to donate a dollar to UNICEF today?
The car in the parking lot, the fearless teenagers inside it, music blaring from its windows. Sometimes it startles her, the world. How bright and sharp and loud things are.

  

Lauren knows she shouldn't keep breast-feeding but can't make herself stop. Probably she's using Max to comfort herself, embedding some attachment issues that will cripple him when he's older. It will be a struggle, getting him on a bottle later. But there is no later. Nursing her baby, pressing his warm skin against hers, gazing out the window of the nursery at the backyard, is the only time she doesn't feel abject terror—the dew on the grass in the mornings, the unkempt purple flowers, the pool cover strewn with leaves, and in late spring, the wild growth of daffodils and tulips, bursting up in bunches, untended.

  

Two days to two weeks
, the doctor says.

  

Lauren. Something isn't right.
She will always recall every facet of this moment, like turning a diamond in the light: how John looked standing there in the bedroom doorway, hand pressed against his back. How he called her Lauren, not Laur, which meant that it was serious. How for a split second she thought he was unhappy with
her
—that the
something
was about their marriage—sending a geyser of panic up her middle. But then she saw his face and knew it was something else, something worse. His expression was so vulnerable—she will always remember this, too—and it occurred to her then that maybe his family had known something about him she didn't, that John did have a strain of helplessness that Lauren had just never seen before, never needed to. And she would remember thinking, despite the quickening of her pulse, how handsome he looked, and how sweet life seemed just then, her husband standing in the light streaming through the bedroom window, Max nestled in her lap, Elena calling upstairs from the kitchen where she was finishing her waffle:
Daddy! I'm done!

S
tephen didn't want to go through with it but there he is, standing in the parking lot behind the Wendy's on Rhawn Street. Lately, everything in his life felt like this. He doesn't want to do something, knows he shouldn't, but suddenly there he is, doing it anyway. It's like something just goes slack inside him, the way he lets his right eye wander when he's tired. In the end, his friends start hassling him or cheering him on and it seems like too much work to resist, and he thinks,
Fuck it
.

They're standing by the Dumpster next to the red Chevy Impala. The air is warm and smells like trash. At eight o'clock on a Sunday night, the Wendy's parking lot is less than half-f, the sky above the roof the deep yellow of a deviled egg. Pigeons stalk the Dumpster lid.

“Where the fuck is he,” Mark says.

“Fuck if I know.”

Mark toes a burger box on the ground, nudging it with his Chucks. Stephen has known Mark Rourke since they were in kindergarten at St. Bonaventure's and swears the kid gets uglier with each passing year. Mark has a square head, eyes set too close, and serious acne peppering his sideburns, which are black and flecked, like ants. One of those guys so ugly that his best bet is to play it up and go uglier, be so ugly that it turns into something else, like cool or scary.

“Sure we shouldn't wait until it's less crowded?” Stephen says.

“No, asshole,” Mark says. “That's part of it.”

“What's part of it?”

“You know. The risk.”

“Right,” Stephen says, smirking at Mark for taking it all so seriously, though in fact this is what makes Mark a good partner for things like this.

“Here,” Stephen says, and passes Mark the sticky, near empty bottle of Jameson he stole from his parents' liquor cabinet. Mark grabs it, takes a deep swallow, and swipes at his chin. At least, Stephen thinks, guys like Mark have reasons for doing stupid shit like this. No one in the world cares what happens to Mark Rourke. His dad took off when they were in ninth grade, his mother drinks too much. Stephen has no such excuse. His is a big family, a nice family that taught him right from wrong. Maybe that
is
his excuse—they have enough good kids already. His brother, Joey, working up a shelf of basketball trophies. His cousin Alex, some kind of nerd superstar at his public high school out in the suburbs. He'd be better off in Catholic school, where they'd make him cut his hair. He looks like a tool.

“Give me that,” Stephen says, grabbing the bottle back and taking a swig.

Stephen feels rattled tonight, jittery. For dinner, he and his dad ate pizza in front of the TV. Lately his mom has been visiting his uncle every night, which means his dad is in charge of dinner, which means that nine times out of ten they have pizza in front of the TV. Joey is usually out playing ball, so it's just the two of them. At six fifteen, his dad gets home from work at the ShopRite, smelling like the deli counter, and drops into his big brown tweed chair. Stephen makes the call. At seven, his father watches the lottery numbers while Stephen carries in the pizza and two plates. Tonight it was sausage and pepperoni and
America's Funniest Home Videos
when his father said:
You know John is gonna die, right?

Stephen froze with a half-chewed glob of pizza in his mouth.

His father added,
Your uncle
.

I know that
, Stephen managed, swallowing, but didn't clarify which part. He knew, obviously, that John was his uncle. And knew that he was sick.
Uncle John is very, very sick
, his mother said constantly, eyes teary, rubbing her locket like she was praying on a rosary. But being very, very sick wasn't the same thing as dying. Earlier that day, Stephen had visited his uncle—his mother drove him and Joey over to Uncle John and Aunt Lauren's, and it seemed like a good sign that Uncle John was home. If you're that sick, hospitals don't just let you go home. But his uncle looked terrible. Bony, with sunken cheeks and yellow skin. He was bald under his Eagles hat, and his voice sounded thin. Later, talking to his father, Stephen understood this was what dying looked like, but in the moment he was shocked. The joint he'd smoked before he left the house was starting to wear off and he was sweating. It felt like something was crawling on his skin. Uncle John had always been a good-looking guy—how could a good-looking guy end up like this? Their house was warm, too warm, because Uncle John was always cold. Uncle John had started asking Joey about basketball in that thin voice, eyes bulging in his head. Harry Kalas was calling the Phillies game on the radio while they watched it with the sound turned down on the TV. His mom was holding Max, jiggling him and making these kind of desperate cooing noises, while Aunt Lauren hovered over everything and Elena brushed her doll's hair.
Pretty dolly!
she kept saying. Stephen needed to get the fuck out of there.
Eat anything you can find!
Aunt Lauren called after him as he headed for the kitchen. Stephen wished she weren't so nice to him. Lately, he felt like some kind of impostor with his family; they gave him too much credit. None of them knew about all the dumb shit he'd been getting into, and what his parents knew they were too ashamed to tell. Last Thursday, the day of the locker room “incident,” Father Malcahy had called his dad at home.
Vandalism
, his father had repeated after he hung up, his big face flushing red.
Obscenities
of a religious and sexual nature.
His mother had looked at Stephen with tears in her eyes. He'd thought she might cry, but instead she spoke through clenched teeth. “Now, Stephen?” Her voice was hissing, shaking with fury.
“Now?”
Then she'd left the room. Even his father, who Stephen could usually count on to go easy on him—even seem a little bit proud if he was caught drinking or fighting, chalk it up to normal kid stuff, guy stuff—looked angry. More than angry: disgusted.
Cut the shit
, his father had said. And that was it. They never spoke of it again. It was worse than being punished.

Standing in Uncle John's kitchen, Stephen felt weirdly nervous. He found a can of orange soda rolling around the cheese drawer, chugged half, then stared out into the backyard. He used to look forward to coming to Uncle John and Aunt Lauren's. It was quiet here, and kind of shielded from the neighbors. The backyard was five times the size of their square of burnt grass in Northeast Philly and backed up onto a little grove of trees. They had a pool, too—a real one, in-ground, put in last summer. A basketball hoop, a deck. But now it all had a sad look about it. The soft basketball planted in the driveway, the things that looked like flowers but he knew were really weeds. His mom had made Joey and him come mow their lawn a few times, but that was weeks ago, and now the grass was shaggy, the ivy growing wild. The entire place felt like sickness, inside and out. At the back of the yard, the trees swayed softly, though it wasn't windy. Stephen's pulse hammered in his throat. He was convinced suddenly that this fringe of woods was haunted, that there was something—not something stupid like a werewolf or a zombie, but something real, like death—lurking in those trees. His hands shook a little, like they had when he sprayed the lockers, and suddenly he needed to not be alone. He drank down the rest of the soda and went back to the living room, where he and Uncle John shot the shit about the Phillies for a minute—
Looks like they're going to be contenders again
, Stephen said; for the rest of his life, he would remember this as a particularly fucking stupid thing to say—and as they walked back to the car, his mother looked at him with those teary eyes, as if seeing—what? a young person? a not-sick person? Was she remembering how Stephen broke down crying the night Pop died? Was she feeling bad that Uncle John was dying and nobody had told him? That he wouldn't be a mentor for poor Stephen, get him back on the right path? Fuck knows.

“What?” he snapped, slumping low in the front seat, his brother's knees digging into his back.

  

It's a warm night, too warm for a hooded sweatshirt, but Stephen's palms are damp and cold. “Where the fuck is he,” Mark mutters, giving the burger box a hard kick. It flies open and half a bun falls out. The pigeons go nuts. Of course Timmy is late; he's the one who started this whole thing. Timmy's always late, always the one who starts things. He's also dumb. Mark might be the world's ugliest human being, but at least he isn't stupid. In fact, Mark's combination of ugliness and intelligence and general lack of morals would probably make him an excellent criminal in the real world. Timmy's just a loose cannon, a dishwasher at Wendy's with the same long, loping stride he's had since the first grade, pants always an inch too short, that stupid hemp necklace. He always has a crush on a girl he's convinced he has a shot with. Mark has no luck with girls, even ugly ones, but he doesn't pretend to. In this department, Stephen is their hero. He's had sex with three girls and is currently screwing Molly Healy, who isn't especially pretty but is nice, and comes over whenever he calls.

“There he is,” Mark says, and sure enough, Timmy is slouching across the parking lot, backpack hooked over one shoulder, grinning as he heads toward them. He angles his head toward the Impala, as if to say,
What did I tell you?

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Mark exhales, annoyed.

Timmy had promised them the red Impala would be parked by the Dumpster. It was always there on Sundays, he swore; he saw it whenever he worked Sunday nights, went out back to dump the trash and smoke a joint. This one, apparently, had some kind of high-end stereo system, a piece of information Timmy got from some guy named Bruno, an ex–pro wrestler who works the French fry station and who Stephen suspects is half-invented. Whatever. He justg wants to get this over with.

“See?” Timmy grins. “Here it is. What did I tell you?”

“We get it,” Mark says. “Do you want a medal?” He scratches hard at his chin.

Stephen looks at the ground, at the pigeons swarming the ketchup-stained bun. He's done plenty of dumb shit before and sometimes gotten in trouble for it—for the locker room, he got a week's detention and (worse) had to talk to the school shrink—but that was just school. He's never done anything in real life, nothing beyond shoplifting or buying pot off his neighbor. He's never done anything so personal and planned. But he reminds himself this isn't personal; he doesn't know the car's owner. It isn't about people, just stuff. The locker room incident wasn't personal either, despite what the shrink was driving at—
Your brother is a very good athlete, isn't he, Stephen?
Yes, yes, he is. He's fucking Dr. J. But Stephen didn't vandalize the locker room because he's jealous of his brother. Timmy had the spray paint, his friends were hassling him to do it, and he got pissed off, so he did it—
Fuck you, assholes!!
streaming from the nozzle. This got a laugh. Then, there was the other stuff. The shrink just smiled and sat there, letting the silence drag on and on, thinking it would break him. Stephen didn't say a word. If she thought he was going to make it easy, she was nuts. Finally she asked:
Is there anything going on at home?

“Okay,” Mark says, looking both ways. The parking lot is about half-f, cars inching toward the drive-through window. “Take your positions.”

Stephen might have chuckled at this, but he knew Mark was dead serious. Earlier that day, Mark had doled out their assignments. Timmy's popping the lock, because he claims to know how. Mark is covering Timmy's back. Stephen is the lookout—standing by the bumper, watching for oncoming trouble—and, if necessary, the muscle. That's how Mark put it:
if necessary, the muscle
. Stephen wasn't thrilled about this, but of the three of them, he made the most sense in the role. He's the biggest, and can bench-press 250. Sometimes he practices keeping his face perfectly still.

Timmy and Mark move to the driver's-side door. Stephen steps up next to the bumper, yanking up his sweatshirt hood and tightening the cords under his chin. Behind him, he hears the backpack unzipping and then Timmy's loud breathing as he jams the hanger into the crack at the top of the window. The sun is setting, the orange edged with bright pink. It looks almost pretty, even though Stephen knows it's just pollution from the oil refineries near 95. A fan on top of Wendy's starts to crank and whir, blowing the smell of stale grease in his direction. The back of his neck is sweating. He thinks about Molly Healy, sitting on the edge of his bed yesterday, fully dressed, the way she twisted a single strand of hair around her thumb. She was asking him about the stuff he'd sprayed on the lockers. She'd heard some crazy things, she said, with a little laugh.
Fuck God?
she said nervously.
Jesus loves pussy?
Stephen could barely remember—it wasn't like he thought about it first. He aimed the can and that's just what came out. But hearing the words spoken in Molly Healy's small voice, Stephen winced. He hated himself for making her say those things.
I mean, that's kind of really weird, isn't it?
Molly said. Then she told him her stomach hurt and she better go home.

“What are you
doing
, Tim?” Mark hisses. “Hurry the fuck up.”

Stephen looks over his shoulder. Both of them are hunched over the lock, Timmy guiding the bent hanger, metal scraping the inside of the glass.

“Hang on,” Timmy says. “It's stuck.”

“You asshole,” Mark whispers. “I thought you said you knew—”

“I do. Just give me a minute. Jesus.”

Stephen faces forward again. Cars are rolling slowly past them, toward the drive-through lane, glancing over and away. They don't want to know.

Behind him, Timmy's breathing is getting louder. “Shit.”

“What?”

Stephen looks back, sees Timmy's face reddening as he fishes with the hanger, trying to grab the button. “I almost had it.”

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