When Heaven Weeps (17 page)

“Hello.” The sound of her baritone voice brought the morning's events crashing in on Jan.

“Hello, Ivena. It's Janjic.”

“Well, Janjic. Nice of you to call.”

“I have some news,” he said, but suddenly he wasn't thinking of the news. He was thinking of the woman. “How is she?”

“Helen? You wish to know how Helen is? Perhaps you should join us for dinner and see for yourself. She was your catch, after all.”

“I wasn't aware I was fishing. But dinner may not work. I'm meeting Karen at eight.” He paused. “Is she okay?”

“You will have to see for yourself, Janjic. What is the news?”

“They want to make a movie of the story.”

The phone went silent.

“It won't be made without your consent, of course. But it would be a wonderful opportunity to bring our story to many who'd never read it. And it'll pay well.”

“The money is nothing. You remember that, Janjic. Never think of the money.”

“Of course.”

“When you left this afternoon, Janjic. There was a look about you.”

Suddenly the phone felt heavy in his hand.

“You saw something?” she asked.

He swallowed. “Not really, no. I . . . I don't know what it was.”

“Then perhaps you should come to an early dinner, Janjic.” She said it as a command. Funny thing, it was now precisely what he wanted to do. He could eat with Ivena and meet Karen for dessert at eight.

“Come, Janjic. We will wait.”

“Okay. I'll be there at six.”

“We will have the kraut ready.”

And that was that.

JAN GAVE Steve the night off and drove the Cadillac himself. Maybe it was time to stop the chauffeuring altogether. Of course, he'd have to find another position for Steve; he couldn't just let the man go. But being driven around was feeling silly today.

He drove to the Sandy Springs district where both he and Ivena now lived, though on opposite ends. It was an upper-middle-class neighborhood, neatly cut into perfect squares, each heavily laden with large trees and manicured flowering bushes. Roald had recommended the area when they had first arrived and it had seemed far too extravagant for Jan. But then most things in America had seemed extravagant to him during those early days. Now the old custom homes and the driveways lined with their expensive cars and boats hardly made an impression at all.

For the second time that day Jan walked up the path to Ivena's small house, surrounded by sweet-smelling rosebushes in full red bloom. He rang the doorbell and stood back. His palms suddenly felt clammy. Something had happened this morning when Helen caved in on herself at Ivena's table—a shock of emotion had lit right through him. He could hardly explain it, but it had struck a chord in his mind. Like a tuning fork smacked too hard and left to quiver off key. The note had filled him with sorrow.

Jan pushed the bell again and the door swung in. Ivena stepped aside and invited him with an open arm. “Come in, Jan. It's good of you to come.”

He stepped in. A kettle sang in the kitchen; the smell of sausage and kraut hung in the warm room. Dinner in Bosnia. Jan smiled and kissed Ivena on each cheek. “Of course, I would come.” He straightened and looked about the living room. “So where's Helen?”

“In the kitchen.”

Then suddenly she was in the doorway that led to the kitchen, and Jan blinked at the sight of her. She stood in bare feet, it was the first thing he saw. The second was her bright blue eyes, piercing right through him; those hadn't changed. But everything else had. For starters she wore a dress, one of Ivena's dresses; Jan recognized it immediately. It was the blue one with yellow flowers, a dress Ivena hadn't worn for some time, complaining that it was too small. It fit Helen's thin frame remarkably well, certainly a bit large, but not ridiculously so.

It wasn't the only change; Helen had showered as well. Her hair lay slightly unkempt, short and very blond. He couldn't tell if she wore makeup; her face shone with its own brightness.

Jan smiled wide, unable to hide his amusement. Helen and Ivena giggled together as one, as if they had just shared this secret with him and expected him to be pleased with it.

Helen lifted both arms and curtsied. “You like?” She turned slowly, unabashed, posing with an arm cocked to her hairline, as if this were a fashion runway on which she stood instead of a checkered vinyl kitchen floor. Ivena rocked back and laughed. The levity was infectious. Jan stared at them, stunned, wondering what they'd gotten into over the afternoon.

“So, you like, Janjic?” Ivena asked.

You like?
Since when did Ivena use such words? “Yes, I like,” he said.

Helen twirled around and let the dress rise up until it showed well-tanned thighs. “First dress I've had on in ten years. I guess I'll just have to get me some of these.”

Jan chuckled.

“You see, I clean up pretty good, don't you think? Of course, I had some help from Ivena.”

He was at a loss for words.

She walked toward him now, one hand on her hip, strutting for show and lifting her chin just so . . . Goodness, she was quite beautiful. She moved without a hint of presumption, as if he and Ivena were children and she the baby-sitter showing them how it was really done out in the big world. She walked right up to him and presented her hand to him. “Then let me show you your seat, good sire.” A twinkle skipped through her eyes and she grinned.

Jan looked over at Ivena, hoping for rescue, but she only smiled, quite pleased to watch, it seemed. He felt his jaw gape slightly, but felt powerless to pull it shut.
Don't be silly, Jan. It's a harmless game!

He reached out and took her hand.

Now, up to this point in the day, Jan had taken everything pretty much in stride. It wasn't the most usual day to be sure. Not with rescuing Helen and the odd emotions he'd felt at seeing her cry. Not with seeing Karen again or the announcement from her that his book was about to sell to Delmont Pictures for an ungodly amount of money. It wasn't a usual day at all. But he had taken it all in stride, if for no other reason than his life had been filled with unusual days.

But now his stride faltered; because now, when his fingers made contact with Helen's, his world erupted.

Pain surged through his chest, igniting a flash of light in his mind. It happened so suddenly and with so much force that he couldn't contain a gasp. His vision filled with a white field, flowered as far as the eye could see; a flowered desert. A sound carried across the desert—the sound of crying. The sound of weeping. A chorus of voices crying and weeping in dreadful sorrow.

Jan stood there, holding her hand, and he gasped, unable to move forward. Immediately a part of him began to back-pedal, scolding him to collect himself. But that part of him consisted of nothing more than a distant wailing, smothered by the raw emotion that seemed to reach into his chest and give his heart a good squeeze. It was an
ache
that surged through his chest at the vision. A profound sorrow. Like the emotion he'd felt at seeing her cry, amplified ten times.

And then it was gone, as quickly as it had come.

He bent over and coughed, hitting his chest as he did so. “Oh, boy. I'm sorry. Something caught in my chest.”

“You okay?” Helen asked with a furrowed brow.

“Yes.” He straightened. “Yes.”

She turned for the dining room. “Then follow me.”

He followed, pulled by her small hand. Had they seen his face? It must have turned white. He couldn't bring himself to look at Ivena; surely she'd seen.

The table was set with Ivena's china and three crystal glasses. A large red candle cast flickering light over the silverware; a bouquet of roses from Ivena's garden stood as a centerpiece; steam rose lazily from the sausages. Helen ushered him to the seat at the table's head and then slid gracefully into her own on his left.

“Ivena and I decided that the least we could do was to prepare your favorite dish,” Helen said. “Seeing as how you rescued me with all that bravery.” She grinned.

Jan's heart still hammered in his chest. He'd had a waking dream or a flashback to the war, but not of any setting he could remember
.
Still, something felt vaguely familiar about it.

Ivena's voice came distant. “Janjic?”

“I'm sorry. Yes, thank you. It reminds me of home,” he said. The tension he felt was in his own mind, he thought. Helen at least seemed oblivious to it.

Ivena asked him to bless the meal, which he did and they dished food onto their plates. Much to Jan's relief, Ivena launched into a discussion about flowers. About how well the rosebushes were doing this year, all but one. Apparently the rosebush she'd brought with her to America was suddenly dying.

Jan nodded with the conversation, but his mind was occupied with the electricity that still hung in the air, with the unusually loud clinking of their forks on china, with the flickering of the flame. With that white, weeping desert that had paralyzed him at her touch. At Helen's touch.

And what would Karen think of this little dinner at Ivena's? What would
he
think, for that matter. But he already was thinking, and he was thinking that Helen was an enigma. A beautiful enigma. Which was something he had no business thinking.

He ate the sausage slowly, trying to focus on the discussion and entering it as he saw fit. Helen's hands held the utensils delicately; her short fingernails were no longer rimmed with dirt. She was a junkie, that much he could now see by a tiny pockmark on her arm. Heroin, most likely. It was a wonder she wasn't thinner. She chewed the food with small bites, often smiling and laughing at Ivena's antics over the differences between America and Bosnia. In some odd way they were like two peas in a pod, these two. This most unlikely pair. The mother from Bosnia and the junkie from Atlanta.

Slowly a deep sense that he'd been here before settled over him. He'd seen this somewhere. All of it. This mother and this daughter and this sorrow—he had seen it in Bosnia. It was in part the reason behind that bolt of lightning. It had to be. God was opening his mind.

“. . . this movie of yours, Janjic?”

He'd missed the question. “I'm sorry, what?”

“Ivena says that they're making a movie of your life,” Helen said. “So when are they making it?”

“Yes, well we don't know yet.”

“And how can they show a film of a life that is not yet lived?” Ivena asked. “Your life's not finished, Janjic.”

Jan looked at her, tempted to ignore the comment. “Of course my life isn't over, but the story's finished. We have a book of it.”

“No, the book explains some events, not your entire life. You've seen the finger of God in your youth, but that hardly means it is gone.”

“Ivena seems to think that I'm still Moses,” Jan said. “It's not enough for me to see the burning bush; there's still a Red Sea to cross.”

Helen chuckled nervously. “Moses?”

Jan glanced at Ivena. “Moses. He was a man in the Bible.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “It was also a name given to me in prison. Did Ivena tell you about the village?”

She stared at him with round eyes and he knew that she had. “Some.”

Jan nodded. “Yes. And when I returned to Sarajevo I was arrested for war crimes. Did she tell you?”

“No.”

“Hmm. Karadzic persuaded the council to throw me in prison for five years. The warden was a relative of Karadzic's. He called me Moses. The deliverer.” Jan took another bite of sausage, trying now to ignore the weight of the moment. “I'm surprised I survived the experience. But it was there that I first read the words of God in a Testament smuggled in by one of the other prisoners. It was after prison that I began to write my story. And now Ivena seems to think it's not finished.” He put another bite of sausage in his mouth.

“Yes, we've all had difficult lives, Janjic,” Ivena said. “You don't possess the rights to suffering. Even dear Helen has seen her grief.”

Jan looked at Helen. Twenty-nine, she'd said. “Is that so? What's your story?”

Helen looked at him and her eyes squinted very briefly. She looked away and took a bite of sausage. “My story? You mean you're wondering how a person ends up like me, is that it?”

“No, I didn't say that.”

“But you meant it.”

Ivena spoke quietly. “Don't be defensive, child. Just tell him what you told me. We all have our stories. Believe me, Jan's is no prettier than yours.”

She seemed to consider that for a moment. “Well, my dad was an idiot and my mom was a vegetable and I became a junkie. How's that?”

Jan let her stew.

After a few seconds she spoke again. “I was born here, in the city. My dad disappeared before I really knew him. But he was pretty well off and he left us some money; enough to last me and my mom for the rest of our lives. We were okay, you know. I went to a normal school and we were just . . . normal people.” She smiled in retrospect. “I even won an eighth-grade beauty pageant down at O'Keefe Middle School—that's where I went.”

She sipped her tea and the smile faded. “There was this kid at my school two years ahead of me, white trash we used to call them, poor and from the dirtiest part of town back then, down by the old industry district. At least that's where everyone said he was from, but I don't think anyone really knew for sure. His name was Peter. He used to watch me a lot. Ugly kid too. Mean and fat and ugly. Used to just stare at me across the schoolyard with these big black eyes. I mean, I was pretty, I suppose, but this sicko had an obsession. Everyone hated Peter.”

Helen shuddered. “Even thinking about it now makes me sick. He used to follow me home, sneaking around behind me, but I knew he was there. Some of the other kids said he used to kill animals for the fun of it. I don't know, but it scared me to death back then.”