When Heaven Weeps (20 page)

She'd meant the drugs, of course. They both knew that. But now he was daring her to say anything but him. “I want you, of course,” she said.

She hoped it would appease him. It did not. His hand flashed from his hip and across her head before she could react. The blow sent her staggering to her right. This time she cried out and sprawled to the floor. It felt as though her ear had been ripped off by the blow, but she knew better. She gritted her teeth and pushed herself to her knees. She could kill the monster! If she had a knife now she would rush him and stuff it into the folds of his belly.

“You want me, do you? And that's why you were off with another man?” he thundered. He was red in the face now.

“That was nothing,” she returned, standing unsteadily. “You sent two men after me, what do you expect?”

“I expect you to stay home, is what I expect! I expect you to at least try to stay alive, which means staying away from other men.” His hands were balled into fists at his sides.

“Well, if you'd quit hitting me I might want to stay home!”

He grunted like a bull and swung again, but this time she stepped out of the blow's path and skipped back. “You fat pig!” She had entered his game now. “I came back, didn't I?” That was it. That was her ace. The fact that his men had not caught her and still she was here of her own will.

She sidestepped and ran across the room.
Come on, baby. Play the game. Just play the game and it'll be okay.

Glenn lumbered after her. “I swear, if you ever, and I mean
ever
, leave me again, I swear I'll kill you!” he said. Someday he might actually make good on that promise to kill her, she thought.

She leaped behind a large couch and faced him. “Unless you die of
heartbreak
first!” She said it with a grin and tore out of his way just as he crashed into the sofa. “Give me some dope, Glenn.”

Glenn pulled up in the center of the room, threw his fists to either side and roared at the ceiling. She spun around, the first genuine smile now spreading her mouth.
Now
he was playing. Now he was definitely playing. And that was good. That was really good. Adrenaline rushed through her veins.

“Give me some snort, Glenn. I'll be your girl.”

He ripped his shirt open, popping the buttons with a single pull. His flabby belly bulged white. She couldn't stand to touch him without the drugs in her system. “Give me the drugs, Glenn!” She called out frantically now. “Where did you stash them?”

He taunted her with an ear-to-ear grin. “Drugs? Drugs are illegal, dear. You want to be illegal in my palace? You want some dope?”

“Yes. Yes I do.”

“Then beg. Drop to your knees and beg, you dirty pig.”

She did. She dropped to her knees, clasped her hands and begged. “Please! Please, tell me . . .”

He grinned like a kid. “In your bedroom.”

Of course! Helen twisted to the door leading to the apartment he referred to as hers. She clambered to her feet and ran for the door. Glenn pounded across the room in pursuit. She slammed through the door and scanned the room for the dope. Her bed lay exactly as she'd left it—a comforter strewn cockeyed across it, three pillows bunched at the head. When he'd first presented the hidden apartment to her, its psychedelic yellow decor had taken her breath away. Now it made her head spin. She only wanted the stuff.

And then she saw it; a small pile of white powder on the mirrored end table across the room. Glenn's hot breath approached from behind and she bolted for the stash. She stumbled forward and fell to her knees just out of the stand's reach.

His big hand landed on her shoulder. “Come here, precious.”

She clawed her way to the end table, desperate now. She had to have the stuff in her system. Had to. She swung her elbow back hard and landed it on his bare chest. He grunted.

The blow stalled him enough for Helen to reach the powder, shove her nose into the mound and inhale hard. Her nostrils filled with the suffocating drug, and she fought the urge to cough. A bitter pain burned at the back of her throat and through her lungs.

Then three hundred pounds fell on her back and rolled off to the floor, squealing like a stuck pig. Glenn squirmed on the carpet and giggled.
You are a sick man,
Helen thought.
A very sick man.
But the drug had already started to numb her mind and she thought it with a twist of irony. Like,
I am with a sick man. With a smelly pig and I'm feeling good. And that's because I'm sick too. We're just two sick pigs in a blanket. Glenn and me.

She dived on top of him, slapping his fat and squealing along with him. Suddenly he wasn't a pig at all. Unless pigs could fly. 'Cause they were flying and Helen thought that maybe she was in heaven and he was her angel. Maybe.

Then Helen just let herself go and held on to her angel tight. Yes, she decided, she was in heaven. She was definitely in heaven.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

JAN'S MANSION, as Ivena called it, lay at the end of a street, its arched entrance bordered by tall spruce trees, its front door bearing a simple greeting etched on a cross.
In living we die; In dying we live
. Behind the house a scattering of maple leaves drifted across a blue swimming pool nestled in a manicured lawn—an absolute necessity in this heat, Roald had told him. Jan had yet to use it. The house was of Southwestern decor, inside and out, from its ceramic shingle roof to the large rust tiles that covered the kitchen floor.

In all honesty, Jan felt awkward in the large house. He used the master bedroom, the kitchen, and the living room, which left four other rooms untouched. The exercise room sat collecting dust down the hall and the dining room had seen use only once—when Karen and Roald had first come to christen the house. The whole thing had been Karen's idea—give Jan an elegant house that completed the rags-to-riches image she was building around him. Roald had jumped on the idea and found the house.

Jan and Ivena sat in the living room under the indirect lighting of two amber floor lamps, staring past a large picture window at the shimmering pool late that night.

“So then,” Jan said. “She's gone. What can I say?”

“We have to find her. Don't you see, she's doomed.”

“Perhaps, Ivena, but so are a million other women in this country.”

“Yes, but that doesn't mean you can ignore the one that comes begging for help. Where's your heart, Janjic?”

“My heart's where it should be: with Karen.”

“That's not what I meant. This has nothing to do with her. I'm talking about Helen.”

“And Helen's an adult. It was her decision to leave.”

Jan had battled conflicting emotions from the moment he'd heard of her disappearance. He'd come home to an answering machine stuffed with messages from a distraught Ivena. Helen had disappeared. At first a chill of concern had spread through his bones, but after collecting himself he realized that they should hardly have expected differently. Helen had come into their lives like a whirlwind and sent their minds reeling. So now she had gone as quickly and it was just as well, he thought.

And the vision he'd had upon their touch? He had responded already. Just because his eyes had been opened for her didn't mean he now carried a responsibility for her. Besides, the day with Karen had all but washed the vision from his mind.

“What did you expect?” he continued. “You can't adopt her.”

Ivena stiffened beside him. “And why not? Is it so unwise to take in a wounded soul?”

“She's twenty-nine, Ivena. A full-grown woman, not some child. You don't just spend a thousand dollars on a full-grown woman and expect her to change.”

The reference to the money fell on deaf ears. “Twenty-nine. Nadia would have turned twenty-nine this year, Janjic. Did you know that?” Her eyes misted.

“No. I'm sorry, Ivena, I had forgotten.”

“Well,
I
have not forgotten my daughter.”

“That's not what I meant.”

Ivena turned to face the pool outside. “She could be her, you know. Blond hair, blue eyes, so frail. Like a child.”

So, Ivena had seen her own child in Helen. “I am so sorry, Ivena. I wasn't thinking about—”

“You are not remembering so well these days, Janjic. You speak of it all the time, to so many men all puffed up in their white shirts, feeling so important. But do you
remember?”
She turned to him. “Do you remember what it
felt
like to see Nadia die?”

He stared at her, blinking. “But Helen is not Nadia.”

“No, she isn't. But then she is, isn't she? It's why you wrote your book, isn't it? So that others could feel Father Micheal's and Nadia's love the way you felt it twenty years ago? So that they could show that love, not for Nadia or Father Micheal, but for others. For people desperately needing a touch from God. For street girls like Helen. Isn't that why you wrote your book? Or have you forgotten that as well?”

“Don't patronize me, Ivena. I may not have lost my daughter, but I did lose my innocence and five years of my life. I was there as well.”

“Then perhaps your memory isn't so sharp. Is Helen really so different from my Nadia?”

“Of course she is! Nadia sacrificed her life, like a lamb. She was pure and holy and she embraced death for the love of Christ. Helen . . . Helen doesn't know the
meaning
of sacrifice.”

“No. But what about you, Janjic? You couldn't stop the slaying of my child, but can you stop the destruction of this child?”

Jan stood to his feet. “I tried to stop the slaying of Nadia. You shouldn't rub that in my face! You have no right to heap this burden on my head. It's one thing to suggest I look into my heart for the love of Christ, but it's another thing to suggest I lay down my life for every vagrant who crosses my door.”

“And you have no right to assume that just because it is I who
speak
the truth, it is also I who
make
that truth. I can't change the fact that you were at the village when my daughter was killed, no more than I can change the fact that it was
you
who showed up on my doorstep yesterday with a stray girl who was in desperate need. So I'm simply telling you, we all know about the love of Nadia—the whole world knows about the love of Nadia; you have written of it well. But what about the love of Jan?”

He wanted to tear into her; to tell her to hold her tongue. She was consumed with this resurgent focus on love. And now, because he'd made the mistake of bringing Helen to her, she had in her hands a tangible example of that love. He collapsed on the overstuffed chair and stared out at the swimming pool without seeing it. “You think that lowly of my capacity to love?”

She sighed. “I don't know what I think, Janjic. I'm simply struck by a deep desire to help Helen. Because she reminds me of Nadia? Perhaps. Because we spent a day and a night together and I grew to like the child? Yes. But also because she's desperate for love, yet she does not even know it. What good is our love if we do not
use
it?”

She was right. So very right! This wasn't some vagrant who'd waltzed across his doorstep. Helen was a woman; a grown Nadia, suffering and lost.

Ivena spoke quietly now. “You felt something, Janjic. Both times in my house with her you felt some things. Tell me what you saw.”

The request took him off balance. Thinking of it now, his objections over the past hours seemed absurd. He had felt God's heart for Helen, hadn't he? And if Ivena knew how clearly . . .

He sighed. “I told you, it was strange.”

“Yes, you did. So then, tell me what strange looks like.”

“Sorrow. I looked at her and I felt the pain of sorrow. And I heard crying. White light and weeping.” Yes indeed, she would tell him straight now. And he deserved it. He shook his head. “It was so vivid at the time. Goodness.”

They sat in silence for a moment. “So, you feel this breath of God on your heart and still you argue with me about whether Helen needs our help?”

He closed his eyes and sighed. Yes, she was right about that too, wasn't she? And yet he didn't necessarily
want
to feel the breath of God when it came to Helen.

“Why do you resist?” she asked.

“Maybe the idea of playing nursemaid to this street girl scares me.”

“Scares you? And what you saw in her presence does not scare you?”

“Yes, Ivena. It all scares me! I'm not saying it's right, I'm simply telling you how I feel. I have a full plate already and I don't need a tramp camping out on my doorstep right now. I have a trip to New York in a couple days, I have wedding details to work out with Karen; I have the movie—”

“Oh yes, the movie. I had forgotten. How silly of me! You have a movie to make about what love really looks like. God forbid you take time out to try loving a poor soul yourself.”

She is right, you know.

“Ivena!”

“No, you are right. It all makes perfect sense now. Christ has already died for the world's pain; there is no need for the rest of us to suffer unduly. A small girl here, perhaps. A priest there. But certainly not we who live in our fancy palaces here in God's backyard.”

She is right! She is so right
.

“Ivena, stop it!”

They sat in silence again. It was a thing with them; they either spoke with meaning or they did not speak.

“You know, Janjic, there are very few who have witnessed the unconditional love Father Micheal taught in the years before his death. He spoke of it often, about the hope of glory as if it were a thing he could actually taste.” She smiled reflectively. “He would speak and we would listen, imagining what it would be like, wanting to go there. American Christians may not have hope for anything beyond what they can put their fingers around in this life, but we hoped for the
afterlife,
I tell you. ‘
When you have a desperate love for God
,' Father Micheal would say,
‘the comforts of this world feel like paper flowers. They are easily put aside. If you really have God's love.'”
She paused. “Have you thought about our discussion the other day, Janjic?”