Nineteen

“Hey, Mom, what’s shaking?”

I couldn’t believe my son was here, standing at my front door. “Kurt!” I threw my arms around him and hugged him tight, relishing the thrill of the unexpected visit. Until … the dark possibilities of what such an unexpected visit could mean. “Is something wrong?” I sniffed the air for any telltale sign of alcohol or smoke. Only the fragrance of the jasmine climbing the side of my garage met my nose. I studied his face for any hints and saw that his eyes looked clear and bright.

He reached down, picked me up, and swung me around in a circle. “I wish you wouldn’t worry so much. Everything is fine.” His laughter was as clear and bright as the sound of children playing at the beach on a warm summer’s day. “Monte gave me the day off, and I thought I’d drive down and see how you’re doing. Where’s the rest of the herd?”

Now was obviously the right time to tell him about Rick and me being separated, but I just couldn’t ruin this moment. It could wait just a little longer. “Your father and Caroline are out and about. They should be here a little after four.”

He nodded. “Tight. I’m needing a Caroline fix. Nobody latches on quite like that girl does.”

I laughed as I remembered watching her try to eat with both her arms wrapped tightly around his. “You say that now, but if you stick around long enough, you’ll either change your mind, or you both might die of starvation.”

“Speaking of which, how ’bout we partake in a little motherson snack? What do you say?” He put his arm around my shoulder and led me inside as if this were the home he’d never left.

I grinned up at him, enjoying the moment for what it was worth. “What kind of snack are you thinking about?”

“Have a seat right here, and I’ll figure it out.” He deposited me at the kitchen table, then stuck his head in the refrigerator a split second later. “There is a shocking lack of food in here, I’ve got to tell you.”

Well, the timing wasn’t going to get any better than this. It was time to come clean. “That’s because I’m only shopping for one and a half these days.”

“Huh?” He closed the refrigerator, a block of cheddar cheese in his hand, and came to sit beside me at the table. “What’s up?”

“Your father and I have been separated for a couple of months now.”

He flopped back against his chair in a way that would have earned him a lecture about good posture just a few carefree years ago. Somehow, things like posture didn’t matter so much anymore. “But … the other night at dinner. He was here, you were here. Everybody was here.”

I reached over and put my hand on his slumped shoulder. “Of course everybody was here. We all wanted to see you. Your father still has dinner here every Wednesday, when he comes to pick up Caroline. Sometimes he stays for dinner on Saturday after he drops her off, too. I’m sure since you’re here, he’ll stay tonight.”

“Are you getting divorced?”

The question would have drawn an immediate “no” just a few days ago. After Caroline’s revelation of Rick talking custody, I wasn’t so sure anymore, but I wasn’t ready to admit that aloud. “We just needed some time away from each other. We’ve been having a rough go for quite a while now.”

“Yeah, like after one son died and the other became a worthless bum.” He shook his head slowly side to side. “This is all my fault. Every bit of it.”

I heard that sadness in his voice again, the exhausted frustration that tinged his words in the weeks after Nick’s death. Nothing good could come of that, and I needed to snap him out of it.

“Kurt. Look at me. Do you remember anything about your father before you left?”

He raised his eyes to mine, surprised, I supposed, by my change in tone. Then we both started laughing. Rick had always had a quick temper, long before the tragedy, but he had also had a great heart. It was only in the aftermath, with the increasing pressure of constant pain, that the eruption of his temper seemed to bury the good heart under too much debris to still see it.

“We’re going to work things out, I’m sure of it.”

“Are you going to counseling?”

I looked at him and smiled. “You really don’t remember your father, do you?”

“Yeah, he never did believe in shrinks, did he?” He flipped the block of cheese over in his hands.

There was no reason to deny the obvious. “Not so much.”

“He must have freaked out when he found out I was in rehab. You spend most of your time there in therapy. I’ll bet he yapped plenty about that.”

“Actually, I think you just may be the thing that changes his mind about a lot of things. Especially now that he can see the turn your life has made. See there, it might be you alone that gets us moving in the right direction to save our marriage.”

He nodded, his expression focused elsewhere. Was he thinking about drug dealers and baseball bats? I knew I would lose my sanity if I didn’t block this thought, and block it quickly. “How about I get us some crackers to go with that cheese?”

“Hmm? Oh yeah, sounds good to me.”

I went to the pantry and pulled out the box of saltines, then reached below and got a couple of cans of cream soda. “I guess we’ll need some ice for these. If I’d known you were coming, I would have had some in the fridge.”

“Not another word. I’ll take care of it.” He swept past me and filled a couple of glasses with ice, then poured each full with fizzing cream soda. He held up his glass. “To new beginnings.”

As I brought my glass up to clink it with his, our eyes locked. I continued to hold his gaze as I said, “For all of us.”

“Kurt, what are you doing here?” Rick’s question sounded a bit more accusatory than I supposed he’d meant it. At least, I hoped he didn’t mean it the way it sounded.

Kurt laughed. “Well gee, Dad, it’s good to see you, too.”

A slight hint of color went across Rick’s cheeks. He actually leaned over then and gave Kurt a distant kind of embrace. “Didn’t mean it that way.”

“ ’Course not.” Kurt returned the brief hug and said, “I hope you’re hanging around for dinner.”

I realized that every ounce of me hoped he wouldn’t. I knew it was wrong, definitely not biblical, but having Rick around would ramp up the tension. And frankly, there’d been more than enough tension around here lately. But I looked at him and nodded. “There’s plenty.”

“Well, uh, well, I guess so.”

“Yay, Daddy!” Caroline, who had remained silently wrapped around Kurt’s leg during the exchange, actually disentangled herself long enough to jump up and down. “I knew it, I just knew it.”

“What did you know, Short Stuff?” Kurt shoved her playfully.

“Now that you’re okay, we’re all going to be one big happy family again.”

I looked at Rick, thought about his custody conversations, and realized that I had been hoping that, too. As far wrong as things had gone between us, I had always hoped and believed things would someday work out. Only, now that they should be improving, things actually seemed to be slipping farther away. And I might just have to accept that some things could be too broken to ever be fixed.

Dinner didn’t answer that question one way or another, and a few hours later, I walked Kurt out to his car.

“Are you sure you can’t spend the night? You could come to church with us tomorrow. There are tons of people there who would love to see you. Mr. Wall, your old Sunday school teacher. Mrs. Marston, the children’s choir director. They both ask about you all the time. So do a lot of people.”

“Hmmm, I don’t think I’m quite there yet. All those people have a pretty good idea of how I’ve spent the last few years. Embarrassing, you know?”

I reached up and stroked his cheek. Just a slight hint of stubble tickled my palm. “It shouldn’t be. Everyone there is saved by grace. We’ve all been forgiven by God for our sins. Maybe your sins were a little more noticeable than some others, but a sin is a sin. Right?” I needed to hear these words, probably more than Kurt needed me to say them.

“That’s what Uncle Monte says, too. And maybe in God’s eyes it’s true, but I’m not so sure all the good churchgoing folk would agree. And to tell you the truth, it’s still a little hard for me to accept that God can just forgive me for everything. You just don’t know, Mom.” He looked past the driveway in the general direction of downtown, and I wondered if he was thinking about Rudy Prince.

God could forgive anything, I knew that. God would want my son to live a productive life, the one he’d been intended to live all along. “Your sins have been removed as far as the east is from the west, never forget that.” I reached out and hugged him.

“Maybe next time I’ll stay.”

He opened the door to the old beater Datsun he’d acquired at some point in his past. I wondered what had happened to the blue sports car he once owned. He’d spent years saving up his money, and the day he turned sixteen he went to the used car lot and found the car of his dreams—well, the car of his dreams in the under-ten-thousand-dollar category, anyway. Had it been stolen? Wrecked? Had he sold it to pay off a drug debt?

It hurt to think about all the things my son had gone through, but I was determined to stay positive right now. I put my hand on a large patch of rust. “You know, one thing you can say about this car, at least the red blends nicely with the large bouquet of rust.”

He laughed. “A bouquet of rust. It sounds ever so much better than the reality, doesn’t it?” He sat in the driver’s seat but didn’t close the door. “Mom, there’s something I need to ask you, but I really don’t want to.”

Was he going to ask me directly if I’d found a bat in his things? I wasn’t sure I could play that off as easily as the last time when he’d asked if I’d found anything else. I braced myself for it but tried to appear calm and relaxed. “You know you can ask me anything. That’s what mothers are for.”

“Well, you’ve more than fulfilled your quota of motherrequired help for me at this point. It’s just that … I need some money. When I found out you and Dad were separated, I promised myself I wouldn’t ask, but here I am being a selfish pig and asking anyway.”

“How much do you need?” I looked at his car and realized that whether or not Monte was paying him a decent wage, he probably did need more to help get him back on his feet again.

“A couple thousand.”

Thousand? A couple thousand? I had been expecting a few hundred at the most. He stared at his steering wheel, unable to even lift his head to look at me, and I knew that it was killing him to ask for this. The right thing to do would be to ask what he needed the money for. What kind of parent would give two thousand dollars to a kid who, until a few months ago, was a hard-drug addict? Was I just foolishly ignoring all the signs again?

No. I’d been fooled once, but the Kurt who ate with us tonight was a new person. Someone who, more than anything, needed to feel trusted, and I didn’t want my son to think that I didn’t have full faith in him.

“I don’t keep that kind of money at the house. I could have some for you the next time you stop by. How soon do you need it?”

“As soon as possible. Maybe I’ll drive back down next Saturday.”

“Is everything all right?” The question gave him the wideopen opportunity to ease my mind with what he planned to do with the loan.

He chose not to take it. “Fine. Just needing a little help right now, that’s all.”

Needing a little help right now? Would that help take the form of white powder up my son’s nose? Little rolled smokes? Or injections that I didn’t even want to think about? With all my heart I believed that was not the case, but if I needed to trust him, he also needed to trust me. The question would stay in no longer. “Kurt, what are you planning to do with the money?”

“It’s not for drugs, Mom.” He smacked his hands softly against the dashboard. “I knew that’s what you’d think.”

“That’s not what I think, but two thousand dollars is a lot of money to hand to someone, anyone, without some idea of what it’s for.”

“I still owe the rehab place. I have upcoming tuition bills.” He turned and put his hands on the steering wheel. “Keeping this hunk of metal rolling. It’s taking a lot of money to get back on my feet, but I’m clean and I’m staying clean.” He pulled at his eyelashes, a habit so familiar from his childhood.

Shame poured over me like scalding water. I was starting to sound more and more like Rick. “I didn’t mean it that way.” We both knew that wasn’t the complete truth, but I think he understood I at least regretted asking the question. “I can have it for you by next Saturday.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

As he drove away I stared after him, still hearing Rick’s warning in my mind, “Don’t you dare give him money.” Well, I was going to give him money, quite a lot of it. I only hoped and prayed that he was telling the truth about where it was going to go.

Monday morning I was still agonizing over Kurt’s request. For every five signs I could list showing how he’d changed, part of me just knew he was holding back something. I was pretty sure I would still give him the money, but the whole process made me squirm. And that wasn’t helping at work any, as Monday was the day the magazine came in to profile our church.

“Hold still,” Marsha chided me. “Do you want to be perfect in your photo or not?”

I looked at her reflection in the mirror. “Honey, there’s not enough makeup in the world.”

“Never underestimate me.” She took my chin in her fingertips and turned it side to side. “A tad more color on the left cheek.”

“I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of this.”

“Because it is a big deal. A spread in American Christian magazine, complete with photos, is a big deal. Besides, you’re the only really pretty one on staff. We’ve got to play up your assets, because that makes us all look good.”

“That is so not true. Carleigh is beautiful, and so are Jana and Beth.”

“Carleigh is pretty enough in her outdoorsy sort of way. If she’d do something with her hair and makeup she’d look a lot better. As for Jana and Beth, well … they are beautiful on the inside and that’s what counts. It just doesn’t translate well onto film.” Marsha’s tone was matter-of-fact as she applied dark brown eye shadow to her brush. “Now close your eyes and hold still.”

I did as I was told, thinking about her comment about Beth and Jana being beautiful on the inside. The same could no longer be said about me. Even though I’d more or less come to terms with what I’d done, the fact that there were Louisville Slugger ashes in a trash can in my side yard burned a gaping hole in anything of beauty that might have been there. I was certain of it.