Sometimes Never, Sometimes Always (5 page)

“Oh, you know. I have … an English project.” True, in a way. Won’t hold up under scrutiny though. “And how about you?” I stumble into a subject change. Talking to adults can be so freaking awkward. “Did you enjoy your holidays?” Holidays, yes. Totally safe topic.

“A blessed time, to be sure,” she says with a happy sigh. “The kids all came home, except for Mark, of course. You know he’s doing missionary work in Ecuador, right?” She chuckles. “Oh, silly me, of course you know. You were at the sending service, weren’t you?”

As if she doesn’t know. At the Joyful News Bible Church, church attendance is a matter of great importance. I would bet that Ruth Marie Johnson could tell me exactly how many times I’ve missed services since my baptism.

I nod. “Oh, yes, it was a beautiful send-off. Is he doing well?”

“Very well, hon. Doing the Lord’s work.” Mrs. Johnson
clears her throat and my stomach plunges. I can tell that something is coming—something tart and slightly unpleasant, which she will try to roll in sugar before serving to me. “But tell me, Cass. You can tell me. Is something wrong at home?” Her foot lets off the accelerator a little as we approach the turnoff for God’s Armpit, delaying the end of this conversation.

I shake my head and smile, my right hand sweating around the plastic handle of my shameful birthday burden. “No, everything’s great at home!” My voice is bright and chirpy, oozing with happiness. A baby bird on Prozac. Three blocks. Two and a half. The car slows down, impossibly slow. A toddler on a big wheel could pass us up.

“It’s just … ” She lowers her voice and leans closer until I have no idea how she can see out the windshield. “We’ve noticed your brother has been staying home sick an awful lot. I know your family has been through a lot already, so we’ve been worried … is there … something
serious
?”

I scoot a tiny bit closer to the door. One more block. “Oh, no, nothing serious, really.” A smile, a nonchalant toss of my hair. Nothing serious, but I also can’t let her think he’s not coming because he isn’t a good churchgoer. “He’s got, like, a sinus infection or something? Headaches. Lots of headaches.”

Mrs. Johnson makes a clucking sound and straightens up in her seat. She nods slowly as she makes the turn into my driveway. “He’s in our prayers,” she says, serious and stern—is it a promise or a threat? “We’ve been worried about you all.”

I have no idea who “we” includes. Has the entire church been worrying about Eric’s absence, about the lamb straying from the fold and the family that’s failed to shepherd him? Or is this a more personal “we,” maybe Mrs. Johnson and God?

I fold the top of the bag down as I switch hands and tug at the door handle, forcing another smile. “Oh, we’re fine, Mrs. Johnson, but thanks for your prayers. I’ll tell my family you’re thinking of us. And thanks for the ride.”

I’m out of the car and up the drive before she can respond, praying in my own way that the path to my room will be clear.

9. Something new to you …

When I peel the plastic off the box, I am half expecting the screaming chaos of a legion of demons. That would certainly get my attention. Just because I’m not the world’s most faithful flock-member doesn’t mean I wouldn’t listen if the evidence were in front of me. But the cards slide out of the box without so much as a whisper from the devil, and they feel, in my hands, like any other new deck of cards. Slick and springy under my fingers, and slightly oversized.

I set the cards on the floor, tucked behind an old stuffed pony pillow of mine, and pull Pumpkin out of the pig cage for some floor time. “Hi, girls.” I wave my little finger-face at them and imagine that they’re amused. Pumpkin squeaks a few times until I get her settled on the floor with a newspaper on top of her head and a treat. For a moment I feel bad about not getting something for the pigs with my birthday money. Still, the deck of cards calls to me from behind the pillow. I take it out and flip through, admiring the pictures.

Despite the seemingly simple artwork—line drawings and what looks like colored-pencil shadings—the pictures are so compelling. I slide the thin guidebook out of the cardboard sleeve and start looking through it randomly. The meanings read like nonsense to me, strings of simple words.
Prudence. Circumspection. Attraction.
The book lists some of the cards in four suits, like regular playing cards, except the suits are Cups, Wands, Swords, and Pentacles. I frown at that last one. Pentacles—the five-sided star makes my hand shake a little. It looks like a legitimate devil worship symbol.

I pull a card from the deck and try to match it to one of the meanings. It’s a picture of three smiling women, each of them holding up a big golden cup. I assume this means it’s in the Cups suit, so I look up the three of cups in my book.
Fulfillment and abundance
, it says. I guess that makes more sense when I look at the corresponding picture. The three women are dancing or celebrating, and they have flowers in their hair and bunches of grapes and gourds around them.
Abundance. Fulfillment. Celebration. Partnership. Marriage.
A nice card, this three of cups. I turn over another card.

There’s a tap at my door and my heart lurches; my hands race to shove the cards, the book, the box out of sight behind my pony pillow. Pumpkin squeaks in annoyance at my sudden movements.

Of course, it’s Eric. Anyone else would already be in here by now, staring at me with shock and horror as I sit here surrounded by sorcery and evil. Maybe this was a bad idea. I’m going to have to be more careful if I want to keep the balance of peace I have going with my family. But there’s something about this—my jumping pulse, my flushed cheeks. It’s exciting. It’s
interesting
. It’s all mine.

“Cass?” Eric hovers in the doorway, biting his lip. “You weren’t in study hall.”

“Went to the mall.” I wave him into the room and he pulls the door closed behind him.

“The mall?” He laughs. “Is the Armageddon approaching?” He takes Nutmeg out of her pen and cuddles her close.

“Yeah, pretty much.” I feel my eyes slide over to the pony pillow. “I bought myself a birthday present.”

“That was lame of me, Cass. I didn’t mean to make you pick out your own present, but … I don’t know. Things change, and I probably haven’t done the best job keeping up with you and your interests. I know I’ve been … preoccupied with Gavin. Did you get something for the girls?” He tries to wave Nut’s little paw at me, but she squeaks.

“She’ll nip you.” I turn my hands over on my lap, searching for a hangnail or something to worry. Again, the smiley face grins up at me, and for some reason I think of Darin’s eyes. My heart makes a crazy move, like a fish flopping in the bottom of a boat, and I have to catch my breath. “Apparently I haven’t done the best job of keeping up with my own hobbies and interests lately,” I say. “I was thinking that a lot of what I’m interested in is really me following along with your interests, or Kayla’s. So I’m taking up a new hobby.” I force my voice to levels of brightness that rival my Mrs. Johnson tone. Maybe I
should
try out for drama.

“Oh yeah?”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Cass, of all people.”

“Well, maybe there’s, like, a limit on secrets. Too many and you pop like a balloon, you know. Ka-pow.”

He shifts on the carpet, and this time it’s Eric who examines his hands, as if he could ever discover an imperfection. “About that,” he says.

“About what?”

“About my secrets.”

I shake my head. “Eric, no. Not yet. Seriously, just get through high school, okay? Go off to the Cities or to Madison, like you planned.”

It’s too hard, making a change. Here in Sterling Creek, everyone knows you, but they also know all the yous of the past. Yesterday Eric. Fourth-grade Eric, in the neatly tucked white polo in the Christmas show, his palms skimming the legs of his pants. My thoughts stray for a moment to the tarot cards, to my promise. It would be easier to find myself if I could escape the connotations of all those Other Cassandras.

Eric shakes his head. “I’ve been talking about it.”

I take his hand. “I can’t … ”

I can’t protect him from this town, from our church. It’s not like there aren’t any gay people here in Sterling Creek, Minnesota, but it’s no San Francisco either.

“I needed … I needed to talk to someone about my faith, about what’s right.”

“I can tell you what I think, but you already know I don’t buy the idea that God hates gay people,” I say. “It doesn’t make sense that a loving God would set you up for failure like that. Fall in love, commit a grave sin. I hope you’re not talking to Pastor Fordham about all this, because he’s the kind of guy who would send you off to be reprogrammed or something.” I shiver. I’m exaggerating, but there’s a bit of zeal in our new minister’s eyes that makes me nervous.

“Cass. You’re not being fair.”

“And you’re not being logical.”

Eric shakes his head. “God doesn’t have to be logical. It’s all a part of the mystery, little sis.” He sighs, as tired as I am of this repeat conversation. “So, what’s your secret?” He nods toward the pony pillow.

“No way. You’ll tell the God Squad about me and they’ll send over an exorcist. Pea soup everywhere. It will completely ruin the décor. Probably better keep it to myself.” I feel my eyes dart over to the pillow again, even though I’m willing them not to.

“That bad, huh?” He shoots a hand behind the pony and pulls out the tarot cards. Nutmeg squeaks in alarm. “Cassandra, seriously. Do you know how crazy Mom would go if she saw these?” He drops the box onto my floor as though it burns his hands, and I wonder if maybe there
are
demons, fire and brimstone. Maybe the cards can’t hurt people who are already going to hell.

“She’s not going to find out.” I reach out my finger and touch Nutmeg on the top of her head, the spot between her ears that calms her. I’ll have to do a better job of hiding them from Mom than I did hiding them from Eric.

“But if she does.”

“She won’t. And don’t worry. If she does, I’ll make sure she knows you had nothing to do with them.”

“Because I don’t.” He stands up. He runs his hands down the legs of his jeans, the nervous gesture left over from childhood. “I don’t want any part in it.”

I stand too, reaching for his arm, but I only catch the edge of his sleeve for a second and then he’s halfway across the room. “I could ask the cards about you,” I offer. “About your secret.” I look at the box on the floor between us. “About how you can tell them.”

He stops.

I could do this. Just to see.

“It’s only a game, a parlor trick,” I continue, picking up the cards and showing them to him. I know he’s wavering because his hands are back on his jeans, and I can remember him as a little boy, twisting from side to side in Sunday School as he struggled to recite his weekly verses, his mouth refusing to form the syllables, his hands running lightly up and down across the navy blue corduroy as he squeezed his eyes tightly shut to keep in the tears.

He shakes his head. “I can’t, Cass. You know it’s not right. Even if you don’t believe in sorcery, you have to see that this isn’t the kind of decision I should entrust to a deck of cards. It’s more important than that.”

“What are you going to do, pray over it?”

I don’t mean to say it, really. I especially don’t mean to sound so sarcastic. Okay, so I wish my brother would see how messed up this whole church situation is. I can’t understand his insistence on believing in something that basically condemns him to a life of suffering or self-denial or whatever. But I do love him, and I try hard to respect the fact that these beliefs are, for him, very real and reasonable. I try to hold my tongue. Sometimes it slips.

“You can be a real jerk, you know that?” Eric says. He slams my door behind him, but a half second later he opens it again and sticks his head in to glare at me. “This is why I can’t talk to you about this. Because you have to act like anyone who believes is completely stupid.” He narrows his eyes, and for the slightest of moments I see his mouth working on his words, and I wonder if he’s going to stutter.

My stomach clenches. “Eric—” Of course he’s not stupid. He’s my brother. He’s the only one who ever treats me like I have my own thoughts and opinions, or the only one who ever bothers to find out if I do. “I didn’t mean—”

“You play your card games, Cassandra. But games can get serious sometimes without much notice. And please. Keep me out of it.”

10. If you were to
describe your style …

Except for the WWJD bracelets and the fact that we gather together on Wednesdays and Fridays for team-building activities, discussions of “teen issues,” and occasional acoustic guitar sing-alongs, the members of my youth group have very little to do with each other outside of church. In Sterling Creek, the Joyful News Bible Church remains a sort of fringe operation
—an oddity to the stolid Minnesotans, whose habit of worshipping in the same congregation as their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents means that sometimes there are four or five church services occurring on a single block, several of them the same denomination.