Rooms: A Novel (17 page)

“Yes.” Micah watched Flash loosen the thin brown laces on his glove, then retighten them. “I’m sorry about what happened today.”

When Flash spoke, Micah strained to hear. “I don’t really want to live anymore.” Flash picked at his shoe.

As the words rang in his ears, the dream faded, as if something was pulling him awake. Part of him wanted to give in, get free of the pain.
Just wake up.

“I’m so all by myself. Have been since Mom went away during Memorial Day weekend.”

Wake up!

No. He had to face it, finish it.

In that instant every infinitesimal detail of the day erupted out of the deepest vault of his heart. Not the day he was seeing now, the day the horror started.

The baseball diamond vanished, and he stood on the beach watching his nine-year-old self beg his mom to save his beach ball.

“Mom! Wind’s got it! It’s going into the ocean!”

“I’ll get it.”

“But those waves are big monster waves—”

“They’re much bigger to you than they are to me.”

“But what if—?”

His mom stopped and smiled. “I’ll be fine, Micah. Really.”

They ran up to the edge of the water as the wind shoved the ball farther out into the ocean.

Micah tried to smile.

“Don’t worry, honey, it’s just a few strokes away.” His mom jogged into the water, and the waves were soon up to her waist. “Stay there; I’ll be with you again in two shakes of Peter Rabbit’s fluffy tail.”

But she didn’t come back. Ever.

“No,” Micah whimpered as his mom struggled against the riptide that dragged her out faster than he could believe. “Mom, where are you going? Mommy, come back!”

Once more Micah watched himself scream up and down the beach, “Help her! Help my mom!” He took two halting steps toward the houses behind him. A step north. One south. Then he froze, not knowing which way to go. What to do. He stood on the beach shaking, moaning.

Time seemed to slow as his dad appeared over the crest of the tiny dune his brother, Mick, and he had parked behind. A moment later his dad dropped the bag of groceries and sprinted down the sand, past Micah, out into the surf.

Micah bounced on his toes, trying to keep the sound of his whimpers inside his throat.

Faster! Why couldn’t his dad get to her faster? She’d be okay. She’d be fine. She’d promised.

Twenty-five minutes later paramedics carried his mom’s lifeless body off the beach toward the ambulance parked next to his dad’s car, the gray blanket they’d placed over her fluttering in the breeze.

His dad turned to him, his face white and full of disbelief. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me!”

“Mom and I were playing and . . . my beach ball . . . it went into . . .” Micah looked at the sky, the sand, back to the sky. “And . . . and . . . and I asked Mom if she could get it, and she said . . . so she went into the ocean . . . and—”

“Why didn’t you—?”

“I didn’t know what to—”

“Why didn’t you go for help?”

“I tried to, Daddy, I tried, but . . . I was scared.”

“You should have found someone!”

“I wanted to . . . but I couldn’t move . . .”

“What have you done?” His dad took Micah’s shoulders and shook him hard.
“What have you done?”

Tears rushed up, filled his eyes, and ran in little rivulets down Micah’s cheeks.

A few moments later his father turned and walked away.

“Daddy?” Micah stumbled after him. “Daddy!”

“Leave me alone.” His father didn’t look back; the only sound was a slight swish of his feet through the sand.

Micah ran; it didn’t matter where, tears blinding his vision.

His foot caught on a twisted piece of driftwood just below the surface of the sand, sending him hurtling through the air. A lone cluster of jagged rocks stuck up a few inches out of the sand.

He threw out his hands to break the fall and was silent as the sharp point of one of the rocks sliced into his left palm.

The scream came an instant later as pain surged into his hand and blood oozed into the miniature canyon that started at the base of his forefinger and ran down his palm to the start of his wrist.

He found his father ten minutes later, sitting with his back to the front tire of the family van, his eyes vacant.

“I hurt myself, Daddy.”

His father looked at Micah’s hand for a long time. Thirty seconds, maybe a full minute, then out toward the ocean. “Sorry, but you’ll have to figure it out yourself.” He stood and opened the van door. “I’m going to the hospital.”

Micah sat and watched his dad and brother drive off, the blood on his hand drying, along with the tears that covered his cheeks.

In that moment his heart changed.

Six weeks later on that baseball diamond, it had shattered.
“Just like you killed your mom.”

“I’m so sorry, Flash.”

The boy didn’t speak.

At nine years old he was alone in the world. No one would love him, no one would guide him. From then on he’d taken control of his life: the good, the bad, and the hideous parts.

“You think there’s no one who loves you,” Micah said.

“There isn’t.”

“You feel abandoned, totally alone.”

Flash nodded. “I am.” The words were a whisper.

Tears flowed from the boy and turned into racking sobs. Micah grabbed Flash and pulled him close, and they cried together.

The tears eventually slowed, and a strand of hope weaved its way into the pain till it overshadowed the sorrow. Healing.

“It’s better,” said the young Micah. “But I probably won’t forget.”

Micah hadn’t forgotten. How could he ever? As hard as he’d tried, that day at the beach had caused this day on the baseball field and so many other memories like it as he grew up under his father’s loathing.

Are you ready?
the Voice inside said.

“Yes.”

Let’s bring the broken part back to where it belongs.

“Flash?” Micah said. “Jesus is going to talk to you now.”

“Okay.”

I will never leave you, Flash. Ever. You are not alone. I’m here now. I’ve always been here, and nothing can separate us. Nothing. Do you know that?

Flash nodded.

And I love you with a love that nothing can stop. Do you believe this?

Flash nodded again. Huge tears dropped from the boy’s eyes as he crawled up on Micah’s lap and wrapped his thin arms around Micah’s neck. He held his younger self for ages.

Your turn now, Micah.

“What? Mine? I can’t forgive my dad.”

I’m not asking you to. That will come. You must first forgive another that will bring great healing.

“Who?”

Yourself.

“For what?”

You did not kill her. It is a lie you have believed for too long. There is nothing you could have done to save her. We must break the lie now.

“I know I didn’t kill her; I was nine when I believed that.”

Your mind knows the truth, but your heart still believes the lie. In this area of your life, you are still nine. We must heal that part of your heart. Are you willing?

In the dream Micah began speaking.

||||||||

The next morning at 6:30, Micah woke with only a slight recollection of the dream. But the dream didn’t slowly fade from consciousness as most did. It went the opposite direction. After two minutes every nuance of the encounter with the younger Micah was etched into his mind.

The healing he’d experienced in the dream went to his core. But was it real?

He mulled it over as he walked toward his weight room. He was up. Might as well get in a workout.

On the way there he stopped by the library to pick up a book on kayaking. Perfect way to stave off boredom in between sets. He stepped toward the bookshelf but stopped cold. Something was definitely out of place. One door was all the library ever had. But now, in the far wall, was a new door.

He inched toward it as his heart pounded. No doubt. It was the door from his dream. He didn’t hesitate. He had to know. The door opened without a sound.

There was no baseball field, no grass. Just a small room with a single spotlight shining on a Wildcats baseball jersey. Number 11. His.

His fingers barely touched the jersey as he slid them slowly down its surface. The tear down the middle was gone. No evidence it had ever been torn.

As Micah sank to the floor, a peace he’d never known swept over him. It billowed around him like a space heater pumping out warm currents. He opened his left palm and pulled his finger across it like he was touching a newborn’s cheek. He gasped and a puff of laughter escaped his lips.

For the first time in twenty years, it didn’t hurt to touch the scar.

He looked at the clock on the wall: 6:45. At 6:48 he was speeding down Highway 101 toward Rick’s garage.

CHAPTER 26

Micah was convinced Rick was an iceberg, that he knew far more about the home than he’d ever revealed. It was time to throw on some scuba gear and get to Rick’s hidden knowledge, especially about the Wildcat room.

At 7:05 a.m. Micah watched Rick’s truck pull into the gas station, Carrie Underwood blaring out the windows. Micah chuckled. Country? Was he kidding?

“You’re late,” Micah called out to Rick as he eased out of his truck.

“For what?”

“Breakfast. Can you?”

“If we keep hanging out together, I’m going to need a new belt,” Rick said.

Their usual waitress stood ready with pad and pen moments after they sat down.

“French toast scramble please. Link sausage and—”

“—over medium on the eggs. Got ’er, Rick. Micah?”

“Eggs Benedict. Thanks.” Micah smiled. “There are things on the menu other than the French toast scramble.”

“What menu?” Rick raised his coffee cup and looked over the top of it. “How’s Sarah?”

Micah couldn’t keep a grin from rising to the surface. “Having lots of dinners together. Movies. Walks on the beach. Running together. We’re going to do a triathlon. Spending a ton of time hanging out. Plus lots of phone time.”

“Have you mentioned the L-word yet?”

“Yeah, most definitely.” Micah laughed.

“And the latest on Chateau Taylor?”

When Micah finished telling him about the Wildcat room, all Rick said was, “Sounds good,” and stirred his coffee.

“Sounds good?” Micah snorted. “Don’t you mean sounds bizarre?”

“How so?”

“Are you kidding? Anyone else would think I’m ready for a white-coat fitting. When’s the last time you heard about someone having an encounter with themselves from childhood?”

“Does that make it bizarre?” Rick cocked his head. “Or just rare?”

“Both, maybe. I don’t know. I had things happening to me that would never happen in real life. Time to tell me what’s going on, Rick. I know you know more than you’re telling me.”

“How do you know it wasn’t real life?”

“I was dreaming.”

“So was Joseph when an angel appeared and told him not to divorce Mary. And what about the repaired jersey?”

Micah just shook his head and took a bite of his sourdough toast.

Rick continued. “As you’re wrapping your mind around this latest room and trying to decide if it’s good or bad, be sure to remember the fruit test.”

“Fruit?”

“Jesus says you’ll know them by their fruit. What is the fruit that’s come out of this? Are you more free?”

“I’ll give you that at least.”

“When Jesus said He came to heal the brokenhearted, He meant it literally. We talk about people with broken minds wandering around our streets pushing shopping carts full of aluminum cans or sitting in institutions counting ceiling tiles. Their minds are literally broken. So when we say, ‘It broke my heart,’ we need to realize our hearts are truly broken.”

“So that explains why parts of me—”

“—have been broken off and never fixed.”

Rick doused his French toast in maple syrup, careful not to let it touch his sausages. “You wondered why you lost it in front of your VPs? Now you know. You wouldn’t ask an NBA basketball pro to dunk on a broken leg that had never healed right. All humans have buried wounds that need mending.” Rick paused to take a swig of coffee. “Explains a lot, doesn’t it?”

“Let’s say you’re right—and I’m not saying you are. What other parts of me need fixing or healing or whatever?”

“How would I know?” Rick laughed. “The Counselor does the counseling.”

As Micah drove home he threw a prayer up, only half serious. “All right, Lord. You want to do more work on my heart? Have at it.”

||||||||

The next morning Micah walked down the hallway to his bedroom and noticed a new door just past the linen closet.

Another room. He was almost getting used to it.

Micah was positive it hadn’t been there before, yet it was so small there was the ever-so-slight possibility he’d overlooked it. Yeah, right. As if telling himself that would make him feel better.

It was hardly a door, about two-and-a-half-feet tall by two-feet wide, curved at the top with no trim and no doorknob. But still a door. There was nothing to pull, so he dropped to his knees and pushed it open. He ducked his head inside but saw nothing. After a few seconds a sound like a giant lawn mower straining to get up a steep hill roared toward him. Then came voices, men by the sound of it, shouting to be heard over the din.

“Hello!” he hollered into the shadows. No response.

He crawled forward. The instant Micah’s head popped through the door, he found himself staring at the interior of a small plane with no seats. A large, dark-haired man, who looked to be in his early sixties, bellowed at him over the roar of the screaming plane engine. “Ready?”

The man had a massive grin and amber eyes that bored into Micah’s head. A harness dug into his shoulders, and he reached up to feel goggles on his head.

Skydiving.

Micah glanced around at the other faces staring at him. No question. They expected him to jump. He scooted backward into the hallway of his house, but his heel smacked into something hard. He turned and stared at the cold gray steel kissing his Nikes. The door he’d come through had vanished.

“What’re you looking at, mate?” the big man roared, his Australian accent thick.

“The door where I came in! Where is it?”

The Aussie laughed and pointed to the open door across from them. “That’s the door we all came in, and that’s the door we’re all going out!”

Micah pressed himself into the steel of the plane, and his body went numb. Heights and he refused to dance. He’d fallen out of a tree at eleven and been in the hospital for five weeks. To imagine jumping out of this airplane was to contemplate the impossible.

“No way. Indulge your lunacy if you want to. I’m staying here.”

“Suit yourself, mate. But paying $325, then backing out at the last second, that’s what I call crazy.”

A crystal blue sky framed Mount Rainier shimmering in the distance. Ten thousand feet below cars moved like ants in slow motion along pencil-thin roads. No way. If he jumped, there would be no control, no influence on whether the chute opened or not. But a protest started deep down inside.

Do it.

“Well, mate? Ya coming?”

This wasn’t happening. He was still in his house in Cannon Beach. But his head lost out to his heart, which screamed it was most assuredly real. The plane, the sky, the danger, the fear—all sickeningly genuine. Then another impression fluttered up from his heart.

Let’s do it. Risk it.

His legs ached above his knees, and he looked down. His fingers were white where they dug into his thighs like iron claws.

The big man watched him intently. “Hey, get some blood back into those hands of yours and give your legs a break. No pun intended; you’ll need them when we land.” The Aussie looked at him with a kind, knowing expression.

Micah loosened his grip as he watched the other obvious first-timer get ready to jump. The man turned to Micah. “Why are you jumping?”

“I have no idea.”

“Exactly!” The other jumper laughed. “Seriously, I just think it’s something I gotta do. My heart’s pounding like a jackhammer, but it’s one of those life things. Big risk, big reward, you know?”

Micah knew.

The man and his tandem-jump instructor scraped along the bottom of the Cessna, then eased up to the edge of the door.

“Ready?” his tandem partner said.

The man nodded, a wild look in his eyes. “Tell me it’s going to be okay!”

“It’s going to be okay.”

“No! Tell me over and over again!”

His tandem instructor laughed. An instant later they plummeted toward Earth. Despite his fear, Micah’s morbid fascination compelled him to look, and he watched the pair shrink from life size to a small dot, like an old TV being shut off, faster than he’d thought possible.

“All right, mate, we’ve rumbled up to the crossroads. Gotta jump within the next fifteen seconds or it’s too late. We going?”

Micah closed his eyes and pressed himself for a decision. Every fiber shrieked no. Why risk something that wasn’t even real? What would he prove? He would tell the man no, hope that ended this nightmare, and be out of this “room” and be back in the more normal places of the house.

“Ten seconds. We going?”

He turned to say no but the words stuck. And his head nodded yes.

“You’re gonna love it.” The big man slapped him on the back.

Micah eased over to the door. “Whether it’s real or not, Lord, keep me from dying.”

“Good prayer, mate!” the Australian yelled, all his teeth showing. “All right, I’m going to count to three and on three we jump. I want you to push off with everything you have. Then arms out, legs out, and we fly like a gonzo eagle shot out of a cannon.”

Micah nodded. He imagined hearing his heart over the roar of the engines, pounding out a beat in triple time.

“One. Two. Three. Go!”

He pushed off hard. In that instant his heart changed. Control vanished. Only faith remained; faith that the rivets securing him to the Aussie would hold, that the parachute would open. That jumping was the right choice.

The world turned upside down like being on a monstrous roller coaster somersaulting through the sky. The wind tore into his face and clothes, and his stomach surged with a double shot of adrenaline as the ultimate thrill ride started.

Fear vanished. There was no room for it. The speed intoxicated him, and the rush of nothing above or below for thousands of feet grabbed him, shook him, then released him only to grab him again seconds later harder than before.

“Whoooohoooo!” He let the scream out with abandon. Micah flew 120 miles per hour straight down.

The chute snapped open, and he floated down with nothing but three thousand feet of empty air between the soles of his Nikes and the lush green carpet of spring wheat below. He gazed at Mount Rainier lying before him like a gigantic, white mud pie.

He had done it.

The quietness surprised him—the noise of the airplane, the rush of the wind now gone.

“Well?” His instructor clapped him on the shoulder.

“Never felt more alive.”

“Chuting will do that for you. What else makes you come alive, risk it all?”

Coming to Cannon Beach made him feel alive. Starting RimSoft had made him come alive. That had been a huge risk. Actually it wasn’t true. He’d been young with nothing to lose. Now? He had everything to lose. And he had little desire to risk what he’d gained.

“You’re not taking anything with you, so you might as well store up some treasures in heaven,” the Australian said. “Gotta risk your life to save it.”

A parachuting preacher, Micah mused.

“Enough theology, Micah. The ground is coming up quick to say hello, so let’s get prepped.”

After landing they joined the other jumper for a group picture, then walked toward Micah’s car. The Aussie threw his arm around Micah’s shoulder and squeezed hard. “I’m proud of you. You did well . . .”

During the last three words the Australian’s accent faded, and Micah turned to face the man. He was gone. The only thing around his shoulders was a heavy blanket as he sat in his leather chair in front of the Mariners game that played softly on the big-screen TV in his bedroom.

He threw the blanket aside and raced back to the little door. It opened on silk hinges. There was no plane, no roar, nothing but a small closet with a cloth wrapped around something rectangular. Pictures wrapped with a rubber band. He gasped at the first one. A group of men stood in front of a plane holding a sign that said: WE FLEW LIKE EAGLES! September 2, 1996. Micah was one of the men.

He looked down at the T-shirt he had on right then and grabbed a handful. It was the same shirt as the one in the picture. A memory flooded his mind. A few months before his sixteenth birthday his three best friends bought him an early present: a skydiving certificate. But when the day came, his fear of heights emerged victorious and he’d stayed home. He’d always regretted it.

Now, somehow, the house had made the day happen.

This room brought a different kind of healing, a wound of lament healed through the idiotic act of jumping out of an airplane. But it wasn’t idiotic. It was the physical form of a long-buried desire.

It was time for another jump.

He walked into the mahogany-rich den that served as his office in Cannon Beach and called Shannon at home. He asked her to put together a meeting with the board as soon as possible.

Micah was about to jump out of another plane.