The Heaven Trilogy (17 page)

She was starting to accept God’s judgment in the matter. Much like a housewife might accept her husband’s leadership—with a plastic smile to avoid confrontation. Of course, this was God, not some man brimming with weaknesses. Still, she could not let him so easily off the hook for what he had done. Or at the very least, allowed—which, given his power, was the same thing. Her time seemed to be divided equally between two realities. The reality in which she cried pitifully, chastising God for this mad plan, begging for relief, and the reality in which she bowed and shook and wept, humbled to have heard God’s voice at all.

Chastising God was foolishness, of course. Utter nonsense. Humans had no right to blame their difficulties on God, as if he knew precisely what he was doing when he breathed galaxies into existence but was slipping now in his dealings with the beings on planet Earth.

On the other hand, it was God himself, in all of his wisdom, who had created man with such a fickle mind. Believing one day, doubting the next; loving one moment, forgetting within the hour. Mankind.

“Oh God, deliver us from ourselves,” she muttered and turned the corner leading toward Kent’s.

She no longer struggled with the believing, as most did. But the loving . . . Sometimes she wondered about the loving. If human nature was a magnet, then self-gratification was steel, clinging stubbornly. And loving . . . loving was like wood, refusing to stick to the magnet no matter how much pressure was applied. Well, like it or not she was still human. Even after all she had been through before this mess. Yes indeed, Kent here was a
saint
compared to what she had been.

“Why are you taking us here, Father? Where does this road end? What have you not shown me?”

In the five weeks since she’d first seen the heavens open, together with Gloria and Spencer, she had seen a glimpse of the light every day. But only on three occasions had she seen specific visions of the business up there. That first one when she had learned of this whole mess. The second showing Spencer’s death. And a third, a week ago, just after Spencer had joined his mother.

Each time she had been allowed to see a little more. She had seen Gloria laughing. And she had seen Spencer as well, laughing. She didn’t know if they laughed all the time—it seemed the pleasure of it would wear thin. Then again, wearing thin would require time, and there was no time in heaven, was there? And actually it had not been one big laughter up there. Not every moment was filled with laughter, if indeed there even were such things as moments on the other side. Twice in the last vision she had seen both Spencer and Gloria lying still, neither laughing nor speaking but hanging limp and quivering, their eyes fixed on something she could not see. Wallowing in pleasure. Then the laughter came again, on the tail of the moment. A laughter of delight and ecstasy, not of humor. In fact, there was nothing funny about the business her daughter and grandson were up to in the heavens.

It was the business of raw pleasure. If she had not seen that, she might very well have gone mad.

Helen blinked and turned onto Kent’s street. His two-story rose like a tomb, isolated against the bleak, gray sky.

In her last vision, Helen had caught a glimpse of this thing’s magnitude, and it had left her stunned. She had seen it in the distance, beyond the space occupied by Gloria and Spencer, and for only a brief moment. A million, perhaps a billion creatures were gathered there. And where was
there?
There was the whole sky, although it seemed impossible. They had come together in two halves, as though on cosmic bleachers peering down on a single field. Or was it a dungeon? It was the only way Helen could translate the vision.

An endless sea of angelic creatures shone white on the right, clamoring for a view of the field below. They appeared in many forms, indescribable and unlike anything she had imagined.

On the left, pitch blackness created a void in space filled only with the red and yellow of countless flickering eyes. The potent stench of vomit had drifted from them, and she had blanched, right there, on the green chair in her living room.

Then she saw the object of their fixed attention. It was a man on the field below, running, pumping his arms full tilt, like some kind of gladiator fleeing from a lion. Only there was no lion. There was nothing. Then the heavens faded, and she saw that it was Kent and he was sprinting through a park, crying.

She had gone to him that afternoon and offered him comfort, which he’d promptly rejected. She had also asked him where he’d been at ten that morning, the time of her vision.

“I went for a run,” he’d said.

Helen pulled into the drive and parked the Pinto.

Kent answered the door after the third buzz. By the rings under his eyes the man had not been sleeping. His hair lay in blond tangles, and his normally bright blue eyes peered through drooping lids, hazed over.

“Hello, Kent,” Helen offered with a smile.

“Hello.” He left the door open and headed for the living room. Helen let herself in and closed the door. When she walked under the catwalk he had already seated himself in the overstuffed beige rocker.

The odor of day-old dishrags hung in the air. Perhaps week-old dishrags. The same music he had played for days crooned melancholically through the darkened living room. Celine someone-or-other, he had told her. Dion. Celine Dion, and it wasn’t a tape; it was a CD, like the initials of her name. CD.

She scanned the unkempt room. The miniblinds were closed, and she blinked to adjust her eyesight. A pile of dishes rose above the breakfast bar to her right. The television throbbed silently with colors to her left. Pizza boxes lay strewn on a coffee table cluttered with beer bottles. If he permitted, she would do some cleaning before she left.

Something else had changed in the main room. Her eyes rested on the mantel above the fireplace. The large framed picture called
Forgiven
was missing. It had been of Jesus, holding a denim-clad killer who held a hammer and nails in his hand that dripped with blood. A faint, white outline showed its vacancy.

She slid onto the couch. Kent was not being so easily wooed.
Father, open his eyes. Let him feel your love.

Kent glanced at her as if he’d heard the thought. “So, what do you want, Helen?”

“I want you to be better, Kent. You doing okay?”

“Do I look like I’m doing okay, Helen?”

“No, actually you look like you just returned from hell.” She smiled genuinely, feeling a sudden surge of empathy for the man. “I know there’s little I can say to comfort you, Kent. But I thought you might like some company. Just someone to be here.”

He eyed her with drooping eyes and sipped at a drink in his left hand. “Well, you think wrong, Helen. If I needed company, you think I’d be in here watching silent pictures on the tube?”

She nodded. “What people need to do and what they actually do are rarely even remotely similar, Kent. And yes, I do think that even if you did need company, you would be in here watching the tube and listening to that dreadful music.”

He shifted his stare, ignoring her.

“But your situation is not so unique. Most people in your position would do the same thing.”

“And what do
you
know about my position?” he said. “That’s asinine! How many people do you know who’ve lost their wife and their son in the same month? Don’t talk about what you do not know!”

Helen felt her lips flatten. She suddenly wanted very much to walk over there and slap his face. Give him a dose of her own history. How dare he spout off as if he were the sole bearer of pain!

She bit her tongue and swallowed.

On the other hand, he did have a point. Not in her being clueless to loss; God knew nothing could be further from the truth. But in his assertion that few suffered so much loss in such a short time. At least in this country. In another time, in another place, such loss would not be uncommon at all. But in America today, loss was hardly in vogue.

Father, give me grace. Give me patience. Give me love for him.

“You are right. I spoke too quickly,” she said. “Do you mind if I do a little cleaning in the kitchen?”

He shrugged, and she took that as a
Help yourself.
So she did. “You have any other music?” she asked, rising. “Something upbeat?”

He just
humphed.

Helen opened the blinds and dug into the dishes, praying as she worked. He rose momentarily and put on some contemporary pop music she could not identify. She let the music play and hummed with the tunes when the choruses repeated themselves.

It took her an hour to return the kitchen to the spotless condition in which Gloria had kept it. She replaced the dishrags responsible for the mildew odor with fresh ones, wondering how long they would remain clean. A day at most.

Helen returned to the living room, thinking she should say what she had come to say and leave. He was obviously not in the mood to receive any comfort. Certainly not from her.

She glanced at the ceiling and imagined the cosmic bleachers, crowded with eager onlookers, unrestrained by time. She stood behind the couch and studied the man like one of those heavenly creatures might study him. He sat dejected. No, not dejected. Dejected would be characterized by a pouting frown, perhaps. Not this vision of death sagging on the chair before her. He looked suicidal, devastated, unraveled like a hemp rope chewed by a dog.

“I cleaned the kitchen,” she said. “You can at least move around in there without knocking things over now.”

He looked at her, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. Maybe her voice reminded him of Gloria—she hadn’t considered that.

“Anyway. Is there anything else I can do for you while I’m here?”

Kent shook his head, barely.

She started then. “You know, Kent, you remind me of someone I know who lost his son. Much like you did, actually.”

He ignored her.

She considered leaving without finishing.
Are you sure, Father? Perhaps it is too soon. The poor soul looks like a worm near death.

God did not respond. She hadn’t really expected him to.

“He was crazy about that boy, you know. They were inseparable, did everything together. But the boy was not so—what shall I say—becoming. Not the best looking. Of course, it meant nothing at all to his father.” She dismissed the thought with a wave. “Nothing at all. But others began to ridicule him. Then not just ridicule, but flatly reject. They grew to hate him. And the more they hated him, the more his father loved him, if that was possible.”

Helen smiled sweetly. Kent looked at her with mild interest now. She continued.

“The boy was murdered by some of his own peers. It about killed the father. Reminds me of you. Anyway, they caught the one who killed his son. Caught him red-handed with the weapon in his hand. He was homeless and uncaring—headed for a life behind bars. But the father did not press charges. Said one life had been taken already. His son’s. Instead, he offered love for the one who’d killed his son.”

She looked at Kent’s eyes for a sign of recognition. They stared into her own, blank. “The unexpected affection nearly broke the young killer’s heart. He went to the father and begged his forgiveness. And do you know what the father did?”

Kent did not respond.

“The father loved the killer as his own son. Adopted him.” She paused. “Can you believe that?”

Kent’s lip lifted in a snarl. “I’d kill the kid.” He took a swig from that drink of his.

“Actually, the father had already lost one son. To crucifixion. He wasn’t about to let another be crucified.”

He sat there like a lump on a log, his eyes half closed and his lower lip sagging. If he understood the meaning behind her words, he did not show it.

“God the Father, God the Son. You know how that feels, don’t you? And yet you have murdered him in your own heart. Murdered the son. In fact, the last time I was in here, there was a picture of you above the fireplace.” She motioned to the whitewashed wall where the picture had hung. “You were the one holding the hammer and nails. Looks like you got tired of looking at yourself.”

She grinned.

“Anyway. Now he wants to adopt you. He loves you. More than you could ever know. And he knows how this all feels. He’s been here. Does that make sense to you?”

Kent still did not respond. He blinked and closed his mouth, but she wasn’t about to start interpreting his gestures. She simply wanted to plant this seed and leave.

For a moment she thought that he might actually be feeling sorrow. But then she saw his jaw muscles knot up, and she knew better.

“Think about it, Kent. Open your heart.” Helen turned from him and walked toward the door, wondering if that was it.

It was.

“Good-bye, Kent,” she said, and walked out the door.

She suddenly felt exhilarated. She realized that her heart was pounding simply from the excitement of this message she had delivered.

Her Pinto sat on the driveway, dumb and yellow. She withdrew her keys and approached the car door. But she didn’t want to drive.

She wanted to walk. Really walk. An absurd notion—she had been on her feet enough already, and her knees were sore.

The notion stopped her three feet from the car, jingling the keys in her hands. She could not walk, of course. Helen glanced back to the front door. It remained closed. The sky above hung blue in its arches. A beautiful day for a walk.

She wanted to walk.

Helen turned to her left and walked to the street. She would walk. Just to the end of the block. Granted, her knees were not what they once were, but they would hold her that far if she walked slowly. She hummed to herself and eased down the sidewalk.

KENT SAW the door swing shut, and its slam rang like a gong in his mind. He did not move except to swivel his head from the entry. But his eyes stayed wide open, and his fingers were trembling.

Desperation swept in like a thick wave, and on its face rose a wall of sorrow that took his breath away. His throat tightened to an impossible ache, and he grunted to release the tension in the muscles. The wave engulfed him, refusing to sweep by alone, carrying him in its folds.