Sweet Jesus (27 page)

You okay? It was Zeus. He had walked over to Connie and was crouching beside her chair with his hand on her back. I fell asleep. Do you know what time it is?

It’s late, Connie said, sitting up straight and bending her spine from side to side. She turned to Zeus and looked at him imploringly. Why is the Bible, she said, full of stories about favoured children singled out for greatness, when most of us will never be? There’s this constant feeling of falling short. And a great pressure to conceal it, by keeping up appearances. I know my mother found it very difficult being the wife of a vicar, but talking to her, sometimes, was like talking to someone on
TV
.

Yeah, but you can’t just tell someone like that to drop the act, Zeus said.

I know, Connie said, because if you persist with it for long enough, the person behind the act just shrivels up from neglect and disappears. They turn to dust – that’s all that’s left. Connie
brushed her hair back with both hands. No, that’s wrong, she said, speaking very slowly and deliberately. What’s left is the awful but acceptable murder, of a beautiful if flawed and ambiguous life. I even know how a thing like that starts, I’m just not sure how you stop it.

Connie knew that her mother carried a wound at the heart of the very thing that saved her – her faith in God – because her father had refused to go to her baptism when she was fifteen years old. He thought a church that would deign to baptize his spirited teenaged daughter was a church incapable of wisdom. Rose ached to serve God. She, too, had grown up with the dream of becoming a missionary, like her mother, but her own father thought she was unworthy. It gave Rose a feeling that would infect the rest of her life, that she was a sham Christian. It was the worst blow to her confidence – to be accused of fraudulence when she felt so sincere. Connie knew all this because Rose had told her daughters this story and it had made them so sad, but it was the kind of sadness that drives a wedge into closeness.

When you’re a child and your mother’s sad and you can’t help her, Connie said to Zeus, you have to run away.

I know about running away, he said.

We all did, in our own ways, run away from Rose and Tim. I think that’s why she’s coming now. She knows it too. And this time she wants to make sure we all make it home, wherever that is exactly.

Caiden dropped Hannah off back at the hotel. Before she got out of his
SUV
, he said, I’m sorry if I was an asshole all those years ago.

You weren’t an asshole, Hannah said.

I mean, all that groping and stuff. I wouldn’t want you to feel like I’d –

Hannah shook her head.

You know, it always surprises me, he said, but the more I get to know you, the more I like you.

Why should that surprise you? Hannah thought. What should have surprised him was how little effort he’d made to get to know her in the first place. Hannah wanted to say that it seemed the opposite for her, that she liked him less, that he would never know her, that she’d played devil’s advocate in the car, had only told him about what wasn’t going well in her life in reaction to his exaggerated claims of personal fulfillment, his smug self-satisfaction. She’d asked him if God had a message for her, seeing as he had this ability, and he’d said that it didn’t work that way. I never ask for it, he said. It just happens. And Hannah looked out the window, annoyed at herself for having fallen for it in the first place, having caved into her curiosity.

Now, standing on the curb, she felt a quick, ferocious gallop of disappointment. She’d wanted Caiden to say that he was still in love with her, would always be, though there was nothing to be done about it now. That would have redeemed everything. To make exuberant desire the cause of his behaviour, not turn it into something depraved. That’s what sullied the memory. It was the idea of sin. She’d had no regrets about it until now. Until now, the memory was pure. She’d been irresistible to Caiden. She’d had that power over him, but now he’d taken that away from her by apologizing and turning his desire into a weakness. Desire wasn’t shameful. It was Jesus who made sinners of us all.

Hannah watched Caiden drive away, then covered her mouth. An overwhelming need to cry was coming to the
surface. She moved away from the hotel entrance. All through dinner, she’d been repressing this sad, new, painful knowledge that had revealed itself to her, that he’d never really loved her. She walked around behind the building and stood beside a dumpster, put her hands on her knees, bent forward and sobbed. It was more like vomiting than crying, and it passed soon enough, and afterwards she felt purged.

In the lobby, Hannah spotted a payphone, went over, shoved her credit card in the slot, and dialled her number in Toronto. Norm was home.

I’m sorry about our last phone call, he said.

Me too, she said. I miss you.

Hannah told Norm about arriving here, the church, and how Zeus had stayed with her sister and gone in. She could see Norm shaking his head with that knowing grin of his. I think I’ve realized something on this trip, she said.

What, an epiphany? Norm said. On the road to Damascus?

I’m happy with you, Norm.

I’m glad to hear that, he said.

We’re sort of made for each other, don’t you think? I don’t want to be with anybody else.

I love you too, Hansky Polansky.

I know you do, she said. And that’s the funny thing. I’ve never really felt that with anyone before, or believed it, or trusted it, or whatever. And I don’t question it with you. Let’s just be with each other and see how things turn out, okay?

You know, we’re going to be all right, he said, you and I.

When she got up to the room, Zeus was unpacking. Thanks for bringing our bags up from the truck, he said, and Connie came out of the bathroom holding two glasses of water.

So how was dinner with Caiden Brock? Connie said, her tone full of innuendo.
That
was fast.

Can you give it a rest?

Sorry, she said, putting the glasses down on the bedside table. How’d it go? Connie was taking off her sweater. Seriously, she said.

It was awful, Hannah said and collapsed onto one of the beds. Apparently, the more he gets to know me, the more he likes me.

Well, that’s nice, isn’t it?

Not really, Hannah said, because I kind of feel the opposite. I don’t think he’s ever really been interested in
me
. He’s just been fascinated, all this time, by all the things I made him feel about himself.

Sounds a bit adolescent, Connie said and her cell phone rang. It was Rose. When did you get here? Why didn’t you tell us you were coming? We had to hear it from Dad. She paused. Then, What do you mean, the hospital? What happened? Connie took the address down and said they’d be there right away. She hung up, shaking her head, and explained how Rose had had an asthma attack, passed out, cut her head open, and had to have stitches.

What
is
it with her? Hannah asked in wonder.

The sisters were amazed at how often Rose’s drama overtook anything else that might be going on. This is, like,
so
the last thing I want to do right now, Connie said, pulling her sweater on again.

Hannah was digging in her bag for the keys to the truck. It’s so typical the way Mom’s just totally managed to hijack this entire trip. And as usual, irritation got the better of whatever concern they may have been feeling about their mother.

I’ll go get her, Zeus said, and the sisters looked at him, then at each other.

Connie said, If you want to.

Hannah said, Will you recognize her?

It hasn’t been
that
long, he said. So Zeus went to get their mother, and Connie and Hannah were thoughtful and a little repentant as they got undressed and ready for bed. Maybe we should’ve gone with him, Hannah said in the doorway to the bathroom. Do you think she’ll mind that we didn’t?

No, it’ll be good for them to have a little time together, Connie said.

I suppose, Hannah said and went in to take a shower. When she came out, Connie’s blue cashmere sweater was arranged on the table so the cuffs of both sleeves were soaking in their own glass of water. What’s with the sweater? Hannah asked.

Connie looked embarrassed. Sometimes I soak my sweater cuffs before going to bed at night, she confessed. So they’re tight again in the morning.

Hannah let this sink in like the marvellous thing that it was. Then she said, You know, the best thing a family member can give another is the privilege of not having to worry about them. When you tell me something like that, for some reason, I don’t worry about you, Con. I find it reassuring.

You’re so weird, Connie said, but you can make my heart feel light and happy.

That sounds like a direct translation from the Chippewa.

Connie smiled and wrung out her cuffs and hung her sweater over a chair.

S
itting alone in the truck, Zeus thought of the day he’d driven Fenton to the lake. His death announcement. Where are you now, Fenton? Where did you go when you died? Zeus felt a movement like the stroking of a thousand soft, tiny feathers down the front of his torso. I don’t want to cry, he thought, and out came a mournful
hoo hoo hoo
. It was dark outside and there was no one around, but he felt exposed. He took out the directions the guy at the reception desk had drawn on a piece of paper and put it on the seat beside him. Pull yourself together, he said out loud, and began driving towards the woman who’d adopted him fourteen years ago out of the sheer goodness of her heart. His stomach was in knots.

The hospital, when he pulled up, was bright as a spaceship. He parked near a neon red cross, got out of the truck, and walked into Emerg, activating the enthusiastic welcome of the automatic doors.

Immediately there was a ruckus around a gurney as an old man was pinned down and sedated. A nurse lifted an
IV
bag
into the air, filled with silvery liquid. A woman was being held back by a strong-looking male intern and asked to let the doctors do their job now. The antiseptic smell had its own encoded memory bank, and it made Zeus feel a little panicked.

He walked into the Emergency waiting room. It wasn’t very crowded. On a row of seats sat a woman with greying hair, reading a magazine, wearing a mask attached to a portable compressor, a faint mist coming out of the side ports, like she was bubbling. At her feet a small red suitcase on wheels.

Zeus walked over and sat down beside her. She turned towards him with a polite reaction, and he reached out and pulled the mask away from her face. Rose leaned backwards, the mask taut at the end of its elastic. For a moment, neither of them moved. Then a recognition dawned on her face and she look embarrassed, then said, Some pickle I got myself into, eh?

Zeus gently replaced it and leaned forward in his chair with his elbows on his knees.

Rose checked her watch and pushed the mask up onto the top of her head. How are you, Zeus? I wasn’t expecting
you
to come get me, she said. I didn’t recognize you at first. You’ve got no hair.

It’ll grow back, he said and sat up again. For a moment, he was distracted by a noise on the
TV
. Some protest at an election rally.

Are the girls here? Rose said.

They’re at the hotel, Zeus said.

Did they send you here on your own?

They were going to come, but I offered and –

It’s so good to see you, she said and pressed his knee briefly with her hand. I’m very pleased you’re here. And she started to blink, as if her eyes were welling up.

Zeus looked up at the chemical mist rising from the mask on top of Rose’s head. It’s hard, he said, being back in a hospital.

It must be, she said. I’m very sorry about your friend.

Rose removed her mask and turned off the compressor. That was my last dose, she said and rubbed her face where the mask had been. Her face was older and had a more vulnerable quality.

Zeus took a deep breath and said, So what about you? How are
you
feeling?

It’s been a long day, she said. I’m sorry, causing all this trouble. She turned her head to the side and lifted her hair to show him a shaved patch of white skin with six stitches.