Watch Over Me (16 page)

It’s not your fault.

She curled the end of her ponytail around her finger. “Is it hard?”

What part?

“Any of it.”

This part.
The communication. His inability to say everything he had pent up inside. It was easier before he moved to Temple, when he lived with his mother in Sioux Falls and had daily interaction with others who used sign language—a few hard-of-hearing classmates, teachers, volunteers at the after-school center. And there were those who grew up with him, who had grown accustomed to his odd vowels and scrambled syllables, and understood him. When he came to Temple, the kids teased him about his deaf accent, and he stopped talking; now he had to concentrate so much to remember tongue angle and lip position, he didn’t bother trying. And he didn’t know anyone who signed, except the speech therapist that came to the school once a month, and Mrs. Healen at church, who remembered maybe a hundred words from her college days, and tended to improvise others, more charades than ASL.

He put his pen to his pad, lifted it again. Then he decided to be honest.

It’s hard to fit everything I want to say on a scrap of paper.

She drove him home, and they both looked at each other and then away, not knowing how to end their night. Matthew finally wrote,
I’ll save you a seat in math,
ripped the page from his pad and gave it to Ellie.

“You won’t have to. I hear there’s only four of us.”

Three. Jennifer Metternich bailed.

“Great. Now I’m the only girl.”

You shouldn’t be such a high achiever.

She laughed, and again he heard Woody Woodpecker in his head. “Me? You’re the one graduating a year early.”

Maybe.

“What do you mean, maybe?”

He shrugged.
I don’t know. Just, we’ll see.

Ellie turned quiet; her cheeks fell, and she stared at her fingers, twisting the corner of the paper she held. Matthew guessed she thought he meant his illness. He didn’t.

He meant Lacie.

He was a fixer. A caretaker. As a child, he had made certain to tuck a pillow under his mother’s head and cover her with an afghan when he found her on the floor, passed out from too much coke. By the time he turned ten, he could sometimes shimmy her up onto the bed, or couch, depending on how far he needed to drag her. His first thoughts were always of her—when he joggled his key in the door, wondering if she’d be home or if he’d have to make his own supper of toast and peanut butter; when he woke in the morning, looking to see if she had bothered to wash his laundry the night before, or if he’d have to go another day without clean underpants.

And now those concerns fell on Lacie. Born only weeks after he came to live with his aunt, she was more a sister than a cousin, sometimes more a daughter for all the time he spent caring for her. He didn’t want to leave her behind, alone, to witness the river of men flowing through the apartment, the constant cussing and bickering. He needed to believe there was more for her than all that; maybe, somehow his presence gave her more than that.

It’s late.

“Okay.”

Come by next week, if you want.

“You, too. You know where I live, right?”

I can find it.

“I work for my dad during the day, but at the house. And I can take a break whenever I want. So, anytime. And bring your swimsuit. We have a pool.”

He couldn’t imagine swimming in front of her, letting her see his too-big head bobbing around on his twiggy neck and narrow shoulders. But he nodded and smiled an ill-fitting half smile before stepping out of the minivan and back into the real world.

Skye wasn’t waiting for him; he’d expected her on the couch, ready to scratch out his eyes, or something equally estrogen-laced. The next morning, though, after he dressed, he stood outside the bathroom until Skye finally opened the door, and held his notebook up in front of him, for protection,
I’M SORRY
written in huge, dark letters over the entire page.

“You don’t have a clue, Matty,” she said.

You hate me.

“No.” She reached up and shoved him in the head. “You can, I don’t know, go to church and beg forgiveness or something.”

Want to come? There’s time for you to get ready.

“Buildings like that collapse on people like me.”

Oh, stop.

“Well, just in case. I don’t need any more surprises, do I?” And she closed her bedroom door behind her.

Chapter NINETEEN

When his parents came, he and his father left the women at the house and headed to the Badlands. It was their place, had been since Benjamin was a child, when he and Harish would go hiking there, first the small mounds on the side of the road, with the well-worn paths, then some higher peaks, and finally up and down the deep, craggy fissures carved by moisture and time. The prototypical scientist, Harish documented the erosion of the rocks, the changes in landscape, photographing the same areas of the terrain at least twice a year. Sometimes more. He’d then gather his pictures together and pore over them with magnifying glasses, engineer’s scale, and grease pencils, marking and turning and documenting. “Benjamin, this is the overlook ten years ago, and here it is today. Do you see?”

“Yes, Baba.”

“Fascinating.”

The Badlands saved them as Harish slowly allowed himself to accept that his son wouldn’t be following in his scientific footsteps. And Benjamin understood his decision grieved his father almost as deeply as if he had rejected Harish’s faith in Christ.

The summer before he began college, the two of them went together into the buttes and spires for three days, came out covered in a chalky white dust. They didn’t talk about anything outside the scope of their camping trip, but somewhere during that time they both came to an unspoken truce, neither one willing to lose the other over a career choice.

The forty-minute drive ended when Harish paid for the pass permit and parked at the side of the road near a collection of striated mounds, red and brown and yellow stripes banded around each butte. Sandstone, volcanic ash, and paleosols.

They strapped on their packs and climbed, first over a few packed footpaths, then up sheerer faces, jamming their boots into the soft rock and testing each handhold, having learned early on that even the firmest-looking ledges could crumble under the weight of a man. Benjamin hadn’t done such climbing since he lost his toes and found his footing a bit hesitant, a bit unsure. He favored his left leg, going behind his father, debris spilling down into his face as Harish scaled the peak above him.

His father stopped, sat, and Benjamin caught up; they drank water and ate cashews, staring over the majestic formations. “ ‘Lead me to the rock that is higher than I,’ ” Harish said. “ ‘For You have been a refuge for me, a tower of strength against the enemy.’ ”

Benjamin tossed handfuls of stones down into the gaping crevice; they scrambled and bounced over the craggy outcroppings, and then fell silent. His father capped his canteen. “You did the same when you were a child.”

“I like how it sounds.”

“And how is that?”

“Like dragon scales.”

On the way home, Harish wanted to stop for a meal, and inside the diner he picked up all the free publications near the counter— real estate magazines, weekly newspapers, tourist guides. They sat and ordered, Benjamin asking for a large coffee. The air-conditioning had dried the sweat on his skin, chilling him. “You’re not going to say anything?” he finally said.

“If you want to talk, I will listen. You know that. But I do not think you want to. If you did, you would have said it to me by now.”

“Maybe I want you to pry it out of me.”

Harish paged through the
Beck County Register
. “Do you?”

“Don’t read that,” Benjamin said, sipping his coffee. More gossip column than journalism, the thin newspaper reported who went to whose birthday party, who had houseguests over the long holiday weekend, and the dates of the United Methodist Church’s next ice cream socials. And included the sheriff ’s log.

“You are mentioned in here.”

“Come on, Baba, you can’t seriously look at this stuff and think . . .” He grabbed the paper from his father. “You want to hear how I’m in here? ‘July twenty-ninth. Deputy Patil responded to a report of three cows and eleven calves in the middle of I-90, about four miles south of Temple. The owner’s neighbor assisted the deputy in putting the cattle back in the pasture.’ ”

“Benjamin—”

“Wait. There’s more. ‘August first. Deputy Patil responded to a church in Lippmann for an out-of-state subject needing ministerial aid.’ Another incident on August first. ‘Deputy Patil responded to a motorist assist at the westbound rest area east of Temple. A wrecker was called for assistance, and Deputy Patil transported four people to a motel in Hensley.’ ”

“Tell me, what is the matter?”

“You have to ask? It’s this—” Benjamin folded the paper and shook it. “All of this. Livestock and lost travelers. This is how I spend my days.”

“And I fiddle with test tube, and lecture freshman who take my chemistry class because they know my teaching assistants will grade them lightly.” Harish took off his silver-rimmed glasses and bent one bow before repositioning them on his nose. “We can trivialize all what we do. It does not change whether we do it well. You saved a life,
nannubala
. Do you not think the Lord put you in your job, in that field, for that reason?”

“Okay, fine. I saved one unwanted child. But how many lives have I taken?”

“You are angry.”

“What was your first clue?”

The waitress brought their food; she slid the plates from her brown plastic tray to the table without making eye contact and hurried away.

Harish cut his baked potato down the center, and Benjamin watched his ritual. Butter pressed onto the back of the fork, painted over the entire white surface. Three shakes of salt over each half, then cut into fifteenths—four slices widthwise, two lengthwise. That was his father. Deliberate. Steady. Unmoving. No, unmoved. “Tell me, at whom are you so angry?”

Everyone
.

Abbi, of course. Stephen, for getting himself killed and leaving Benjamin alone to deal with it all. Everyone who looked at him and thought he was fine. Everyone who looked at him and pitied him.

And he was so, so angry with himself. He had no idea where that list began, or ended.

Benjamin stabbed his overcooked carrots. “I don’t know.”

“You have been in prayer, yes?”

“No.”

They ate, their eyes not traveling past the other’s chin. Harish diced his steak into polite bites. Benjamin hacked at the tough poultry, gnawing on chunks, working his jaw as he did as a teenager with braces, when he snuck Bubbalicious in the bathroom and chewed three or four pieces at a time. A thread of chicken lodged between his molars, and he tried to work it out with his tongue. It didn’t come loose. He dropped his knife and fork on the table and cupped his forehead in his hands, palms pressing into his eyes until he saw violet and blue and green blobs swirling behind his lids, and flashes of crackly white lightning.

“This is your dark night of the soul,” his father said.

Benjamin looked up, blinked until his vision cleared. “What did you say?”

“ ‘Oh, night that guided me, Oh, night more lovely than the dawn, Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved.’ ”

“How do you—?”

“Benjamin, Benjamin. Do you think honestly I would know nothing of what my son holds closest to him?” Harish slid his napkin under the lip of his dish. “You were seventeen, I believe, and you carried that book with you all the places you went. Always it was curled in your back pocket. What kind of father would I be if I failed to notice?”

“You read it.”

“The librarian laughed when I checked it out. In all my years at USD, I did not ever take anything from the library unrelated to the sciences. And not since.”

“You read it,” Benjamin said again. He’d never doubted either of his parents would have worked their fingers to bloody nubs for him, even though the words “I love you” weren’t common—or uncommon—in his home. His father supported them. He came to all Benjamin’s spelling bees, debate matches, science fairs. He stood on the sidelines in November, shivering, while Benjamin played soccer, and played badly. All good parent things to do. But in that instant he saw the depth of his father’s love for him. The book. A book the man would never have glanced at on his own, but for his son he slogged through it, the archaic language, the poetry, the abstract theological musings he and his plain analytical faith had little use for.
O God, this is the love
I have for Silvia. Is your love for me really infinitely more than this?

Why can’t I feel it?

“Yes, Benjamin. I read it,” Harish said.

“I’m sinking,” Benjamin said.

“You cannot sink. Nothing can snatch you from His hand.”

“What if I let go?”

“No.”

“You don’t know I won’t. Neither do I.” Benjamin shredded his napkin. “Can we get out of here?”

“Of course.”

Harish folded the newspapers, tucked them under his arm and paid. The sun beat on the car, and when Benjamin got in he shivered from the heat, folded his arms behind his back. They pressed into the leather. It burned for a minute, and then his bare skin adjusted, and he closed his eyes so his father wouldn’t speak to him.

He had found the book at a used bookstore, one not far from the college, a deceptively small storefront, but inside room after room after nook filled with all kinds of printed pages. He hadn’t been looking for anything in particular when he found the coverless paperback, picking it up because the title intrigued him.
Dark Night of the Soul
.

He almost put it back when he read the author, St. John of the Cross, was some sort of mystic, and a Catholic at that, but when he skimmed the first line of the poem, it drew him in, and he had to read the entire book, to follow the journey of the bride of Christ—the soul—to her love, the Lord himself. A journey through darkness to light. A journey home. But in no way an easy journey. In fact, there were times in the night where the soul was desolate, lost, and feeling completely disconnected from God.