Homefires (34 page)

Soon, strains from the
Sound of Music
filled the air and I faced another staggering challenge. Preparation for the big Spring Concert had been launched before the accident. Two ensemble numbers on the program featured my voice and I felt the crunch of responsibility. Three weeks earlier that opportunity thrilled me. Now, it was torturous because for me, singing must come from the heart – is joyful.

Today, I felt leaden and mechanical. Every time we sang, “
do, a deer, a female deer – Re, a drop of golden sun,”
the next phrase choked me until no sound issued forth. The intrinsic sweetness of the words “
Me...a name I call myself”
encapsulated the childlike essence of Krissie. How she’d loved that music. My mind’s eye glimpsed her face during the recent December Christmas Concert, upturned rapturously to listen to Mom’s Winter Wonderland solo. And though still part child, she stood poised on the brink of the womanhood glimmering in her cerulean gaze.

I could not control my mind’s eye because a hundred, two hundred times a day, tiny reminders flashed images before me: the slender blonde girl in English Class with enormous blue eyes and soft voice...
Krissie would have looked like her in years to come...
the empty chair at the kitchen table...
Krissie smacking her lips, “Oh boy! Pork chops and gravy!”

Each memory jolted and left me trembling and keening to see and touch my child.

Dr. Reinebach, our choral conductor, would, each time I broke down, sensitively avert his gaze and proceed as if everything were normal. The hour left me shaken and limp and when the dismissal bell sounded, I bolted for the door.

Guilt sat heavily upon me this morning. Along with the grief, it seemed insurmountable. I headed for Dr. Jordess’s office.

Psychology had, from the beginning of my scholastic jaunt, beckoned, secondary only to English. I’d taken every psych elective permitted and now, in my senior year, found myself a minor immersed in a mainstream of senior psych majors, tutored primarily by bespeckled Dr. Reese Jordess.

Rather short and squat, his wispy nut-colored hair was vintage
Julius Caesar,
minus the ivy-vine headband. He paced incessantly, chain-smoking as he lectured, surprisingly light-footed given his thickness. I imagined all that nicotine vapor had enlarged and shaded the nostrils of a blunt nose that always sounded as if it were recovering from an eruption of sneezes.

At first, I’d considered his precise movements posturing, convinced he reeked of pomposity. But humor lurked behind mud-colored eyes and rode Cupid’s bow lips that perpetually twitched before bursting into laughter. It was a frequent occurrence during lectures, one that, at first, confused me as I tried to classify
why
the mirth and
who
the man behind the thick glasses really was. Now, familiarity and hindsight determined his humor unfailingly appropriate and his crispness to be conviction and decisiveness.

Today, he didn’t smoke but listened to me pour out my guts, weeping and crying aloud my damning secret.

“I-it’s my fault she died.” My confession rode out on a hoarse whimper as I fisted my hands against my mouth to stop
its wretched wobbling and wailing, not from embarrassment but from desperation to
unload
and weeping prevented that. I’d waited until this moment to face up to the thing. “I – I don’t want to live at times. Honestly – I truly want
to die.”

“Janeece,” Dr. Jordess said gently, “you’re reacting normally to your situation. Any time a child dies, parents inevitably blame themselves in some way. Even in cases where a child dies of a rare, incurable disease, parents are known to say ‘
if only I’d taken better care of him – not exposed him to certain elements... he’d have been stronger and wouldn’t have contacted this.’
”

Something inside me, coiled and tightened by guilt during recent days, started to slowly unwind as his words sank in.

“You see, Janeece – what really bothers people, parents in particular, is facing the fact that
we do not control circumstances.”
His sonorous laugh spilled over and today, I understood – it punctuated absurdity. “We
humans
don’t like to deal with that. We want to believe we have a handle on everything.”

Realization rippled like soft light over a dark ocean during instant replays of the former smug Janeece Crenshaw spiraling to the bottom of the
helpless sinkhole.
In my self-recrimination, according to Dr. Jordess, I’d discounted all the variables at play.

“Five minutes earlier or later,” his stocky tweed shoulders shrugged, “the kids would’ve had their adventure and gone home unharmed. Thing is, you didn’t know, Janeece. Sure, if you had, you’d have kept her home. Heck, hindsight is always great to have. But we never have that during decisions.”

Another wave of liability struck me from left field. “But I should have thought about – ”

“You wanted her to have a good time, didn’t you? Wasn’t that your motive?”

I pondered for a long moment, being brutally honest... then nodded. I
had
back-pedaled after suggesting she go, had, in fact, tried to dissuade her, gave her a reason not to go. When she’d persisted, truly wanting the outing, I’d seen how much it pleasured her to be included. I
had
wanted Krissie to have fun. In the end, that had been the deciding point in allowing her to go that ill-fated afternoon.

“You had her best interests at heart, Janeece. Don’t ever forget that.”

He peered at me through thick lenses that augmented his tawny-hued concern. “Write down your feelings, Janeece,” he said succinctly. “Keeping a journal will help you heal. It won’t be overnight. But eventually – you’ll want to live again.”

Thus began my in-earnest preoccupation with rhetoric, one I’d laid aside in recent days. For three years, I would pour heart and soul onto paper, words to purge, analyze, shape and define the emerging
me
. Never would I recover my former trust of self nor shake entirely free of accountability, not when pondering my fateful suggestion that Krissie join the others that day.

But Dr. Jordess’ counsel marked a pivoting point in my grief.

It enabled me to begin to forgive myself.

The following week, Jessica and Deborah Montgomery visited us for a wild wonderful weekend, during which the kids took Deborah to Skateland, where loud music and the rumble of skate wheels drowned out Toby’s friend’s outbursts. Kirk and I relaxed at home with Jessica, absorbing her sympathy and wisdom like thirsty sponges. The twenty-four hour visit passed all too swiftly, save the sleeping hours, when Deborah, being in strange surroundings, wandered about at times, mumbling and – despite Jessica’s harried attempts to quiet her – keeping everybody awake.

Except Toby, who, exhausted from his bucket-toting labors, slept through it all.

While I wandered in the melancholy wilderness, Kirk threw himself into pastoral duties with unprecedented fervor. Heather had her friends and activities and youthful resilience to cushion the grimness of loss. Toby – well, Toby simply kept on sprinting over that darned hill every minute of his free time.

Then, one day, I was folding laundry when he burst into my room.

“Mama! It’s ready!” His blue eyes danced with excitement. He grabbed my hand, pulling me from the laundry, through the hall, out the door, his grin stretching wider and wider.

“Wait till you see it!” He continued to tug me up the hill, down the slope, then right to the digging site.

I stopped dead in my tracks. My mouth fell open in wonder. He looked up at me, beaming with pride. “I made it for Krissie.”

There before my eyes was a miniature pond. A small bridge of stacked split logs formed a crude ramp, big enough for one to walk right out to the center of the water.

From atop a tall pole on the shallow shore flapped a white banner. Meticulously printed in Toby’s neat handwriting, it read:
KRISSIE-SOLOMON POND.

“Well, Mama, what do you think about it?” He gazed expectantly at me.

I was so choked I couldn’t say anything. Emotions invaded, pummeled me. Grief, pride love, admiration...
shame.
How could I have questioned Toby’s depth of love for Krissie? I felt like sinking into the marsh and never coming up.

Suddenly, I understood why I’d not been able to talk with him about it: God was telling me to entrust Toby into his capable hands.

I swallowed audibly and groped for words. “I think it’s a very sweet gesture. Krissie could be so proud to know that you built this in her honor.”

Later that night, Toby called me to his room, and as he dressed for bed, I sat beside him. The warmth of the shared afternoon lingered.

“Mama, you know why I built that pond, don’t you?” As he tugged off his sock, I noticed the grubby, callused little hands.

“I think so, honey, but why don’t you tell me anyway?”

“Well – I just had to do something, y’know –
big
.” Blue eyes turned up to my face. And that’s when I saw the sorrow in their depths. And the dark shadows beneath them.

“She didn’t have much of a life, did she?”

My heart lurched. “What do you mean?”

“Eleven years isn’t long to live, is it?” He grimaced as he pulled off his other sock. “That’s why I couldn’t just doa – dime thing. I wanted to doa – a
dollar
thing.” He grew still for a long moment, reflecting solemnly on that. “I think she knows, Mom.”

I nodded, too choked to speak, grasping his second-grade logic. Such was his love for his sister.

And I knew in that moment that of all the tributes, Krissie’s very, very favorite was his.

“I can’t believe she had the gall to say that.” Kirk paced around the den, stopped, shoved his fingers through his hair and gazed helplessly at me. His four o’clock appointment with Sarah Beauregard had left him in tatters.

I sat planted on the sofa, Psych books and notes littering my lap. “Let me get this right – ” I shook my head. “She actually asked ‘what’s happened to you, Pastor? You’ve
changed?’
”