When Madi got about halfway up the aisle, she dropped our hands and ran to Aidan. When Aidan knelt, she flew into him, almost knocking him back. “Mister Pole-ow-ski, the necklace didn’t work.” She wailed again as she rubbed her tear streaked cheeks into his lapel.
“I’m sorry, Madi, I’m so sorry.”
Madi back-handed her nose. “God had a plan for Cass, Mister Pole-ow-ski,” she said matter of fact. “And you know what?”
“No, what?” He drew a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and dabbed her cheeks.
“Even all our love couldn’t keep him here.” Aidan took Madi into another embrace, as his tears ran free. “I still love you, Mister Pole-ow-ski, even though you were wrong.”
“And I love you, too, Madi, and Cass loved you very much,” Aidan said reverently.
That night when I desperately sought sleep as an escape, that exchange was the only coherent conversation I remembered because the hundreds of others that followed seemed to be ghosts and echoes of the one so simply explained by a six-year-old. I didn’t know that night, or even the next day, or even the weeks, or the months that followed, but that night Madi showed me that forgiveness is a four letter word: Love.
She drew me a portrait of it, vividly splashed across my consciousness with the feelings straight from her heart, but I’d have to open that conversation and watch it over and over again before the colors of its lesson were raw and exposed on the canvas. And like most great works of art, whose value is sometimes not renowned until long after the signature is dry, so were the truths that I was yet to learn.
33
BURIAL MOUND
To understand is to forgive, even oneself. Alexander Chase
Aidan 2:30 a.m.
As I approached the gate of the cemetery thunderstorms broke open the night sky. A bright flash of light fizzled along the sky, as if searching for something to electrify into oblivion. It had rained every day since Cass passed away, as if all the angels in heaven shed tears for him.
I felt as if I hadn’t breathed through my constricted lungs for days; the dull cinching in my chest did nothing but tighten. Nothing before—not even losing my brother—had made my body ache with such misery. I felt as if my torso might explode, as if my heart were the conductor through which the crackling light that blazed the sky would surge through and destroy.
During the wake, the groundskeeper had called to say that the plot was frozen. They had dug as deep as possible; enough to clear the top of his casket, but the balance would have to be hand-dug. I knew his casket needed six feet of earth over it—if only to keep me from coming back and digging it out, so I could hold my son one more time. I didn’t want anything to lure me to the barren, snow-covered cemetery until the mound was flattened and perhaps the grass had started to grow over it.
So after all the prayers were spoken, when all the condolences were given, when everyone left and after I rocked Libby to sleep, I stole away here on the blackest night of my life. I wanted nothing more than to parachute from a towering skyscraper or swim the icy waters of Lake Michigan during a tempest, but duty awaited no man’s pleasure.
I vaulted myself over the fence with enough ease to imagine myself a track star. My camp lantern threw strange distortions across headstones in the windy rain and intersected with faint wavering lights from nearby mausoleums. I knew my way around Ascension Cemetery. Andy was buried here, and I couldn’t comprehend putting Cass in the cold dead ground at all, but at least I could place him alongside my brother. The two people I should have understood better, both gone before I had the opportunity to demonstrate the depths of my affection.
By the time I reached the grave, I was soaked to the bone. The temperature was hovering at thirty-six degrees, the rain falling at a steady pace. The chilled temperature did nothing except keep me from combusting. I should have been freezing, but my anger was so hot that it rose off me in still blocks of steam.
Each chunk of frozen earth I pulled from the mud was a testament to my fury. I laid out all my recriminations for Andy who lay listening in cold silence. They were as raw and as rigid as the frigid soil. Any tenderness I had left, I used to hold Libby. She was delicate, she hadn’t been able to keep much food down, and I watched her constantly. I knew at some point she would collapse, and I wanted to be there to catch her.
I schooled myself from taking her again. I was afraid the livid monster just below my surface would unfurl itself, and I didn’t want to hurt her. I wanted her with a whole new sense of desperation, and it was foreign from the tender way I usually took her. I knew she would go where I led physically, but gentle caresses would heal her faster. And so, I took my anguished body and put it to good use—digging a tomb.
I excavated half gallon chunks which I hurled out onto the deserted field of markers. I raised the pick-axe and pictured Espinoza’s face in the bottom of the hole as I slammed into the earth, imagining blood spurting from gaping eye sockets. My desire for recompense wouldn’t require a weapon. I could kill him with my bare hands. The idea of murder suddenly became palatable. I threw back my head and shrieked, the drizzling silence and grumbling thunder my only reply.
The deeper I dug the more frozen the earth. I had rainwater up past the ankles of my boots, when I slipped and landed on all fours. I dropped the shovel and dug into the loosened soil with my bare hands. I tore through the terrain, throwing rock and roots, and decaying leaves. My hands should’ve hurt, but all I felt was an acute sense of loss, the grief as thick and cold as the mud, took away my ability to breath.
Tears pounded with the rhythm of the rain, and then sobbing filed along diligently in the parade of pain. Why did I waste so much time? Why did I wait so long? Why had I refused to feel the love Libby had so generously laid at my feet back then? Why had I avoided happiness in my life?
If I had those years with Cass and Libby, I would have more memories to live off and cherish. I would have the exact smell of him burned into my consciousness, but as it was, it was already fading. I had been carrying around one of his t-shirts with me, sealed in a plastic baggie. I stowed it in my underwear drawer, and I’m not ashamed to say that I had gone to that drawer and pulled it out and taken deep mouthfuls of it many times today, to steel myself, to steady my resolve. I wondered how many times I’d do it tomorrow, and how many times I could do it before it was nothing more than a plastic-smelling little boy’s T-shirt.
I managed to rise from my knees and drive the pick-axe into the grief-soaked soil again, loosening another section of earth, which I hauled onto the pile, ignoring the pain searing through my arm. I heard heavy feet sloshing through puddles of muck, rapidly approaching me, when the man came up alongside the hole he stopped.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Penance.” Tony climbed into the hole with me.
I swiped my sleeve across my brow, clearing my vision. “This isn’t your sin, it’s mine.”
“Come on, Palowski, this is a hell of a lot more my fault than it is yours. Your kid’s dead because I didn’t calculate how far the guy would be willing to go to get his back.”
“How’d you know I’d be here?” I asked
“I overheard your conversation with the caretaker.” He pressed his shovel into the earth with his foot, making it sink up to the neck.
“If I was a better man, maybe neither one of us would be here.” My voice was loud; it carried over my shoulder and into the macabre night.
“I would have ended up here, one way or another. There’s always collateral damage with the crap I’ve been playing with.”
“What exactly have you been doing?”
“Trying to right a wrong,” he said over his shoulder.
“Then you have nothing to apologize for.”
He turned up large chunks of soil. “You do when you let your pursuit become vengeance.”
I contemplated that in the silence of the never-ending rain. “Napoleon said vengeance has no foresight.”
“He was right.” We bumped shoulders and continued to dig, and after a moment, he spoke, “
Bella
says stuff like that.”
“Like what?”
“She has this way with words, the words you need to hear.” Tony set his shovel aside, wiped his brow, before gripping my shoulders. “This is not your fault. I know you blame yourself, but what both of you did to help Evita was a good thing. I’m familiar with the kind of man who thinks there are no repercussions for his actions, and I should’ve anticipated what he might do.”
I met Tony’s eye. “If the law doesn’t make this right, you’ll help me.”
Tony dropped my gaze and started to turn away. I grabbed a fistful of his jacket. He turned back and slowly raised his eyes to mine. “I will personally make sure he pays.”
We dug into consecrated ground as heartache wove through me, the head of its needle piercing me with the regularity of a sewing machine, but this thread didn’t bind together. It frayed and disintegrated, like old bones beaten into dust.
5:42 a.m.
Dawn was breaking, when, showered, I slipped in bed alongside my wife. I had a new reverence for what that meant and how desperately happy it made me to know I had her to come back to. To hold and love. Today might be the hardest day I would ever face, the only thing I could imagine being worse would be losing her. She turned to me in her sleep. I felt tears twisted in her damp hair. I kissed her brow gently, and she came awake.
“Where have you been?”
“Sleep with me.” I ran my raw fingertips over her jaw.
She flinched away with their roughness and examined my hands. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” Even in her grief she was the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on. My hands encircled her waist, resting on her hip bones, which were much too thin. I made a mental note to feed her more often.
“It looks like you beat the crap out of someone.”
I looked at my blisters and welts. Even the blood boil didn’t hurt as I flexed.
“Did you decide to become a third shift lumberjack?”
I nodded my head no.
“Good thing we’re already married because if you asked me now I’d have to sight failure to communicate as a reason to decline.” She placed her face into my chest and drew a deep breath. “You smell good,” she said on a sigh before she drifted off again.
10 a.m.
During Mass, Libby was as agitated as Cass had usually been; she hummed with nervous energy. The sanctuary was full, but the security I had hired had made sure that only those on my list would be allowed in. The only welcome member of the media was Winslow O’Leary. I would have given Melinda a green light, but she was in LA covering Vanessa’s pre-trial publicity.
As I kept an eye on Libby, I caught phrases and lines of the speakers. ‘
When we lose God, it is not God who is lost
.’ Madi sang a song with Evita, which touched everyone, but Libby remained stoic. ‘
He who kneels in front of God can stand in front of anyone
,’ echoed across the coiffure ceiling.
Steve gave the eulogy and his carefully chosen words reverberated between the pews. Libby asked me to deliver it before she had asked Steve, but I didn’t think I’d be able to get through it, and I wasn’t sure if I had the courage to stand in front of all the people who loved him and tell them about his life, when I had chosen to be absent from so much of it. ‘
Peace is not the absence of affliction but the presence of God.’
We were standing for the last time, and Father Ski was giving his closing prayer. After Cass was buried, I didn’t have a plan. Up until the moment he died, I’d had a plan. It was a map, a charted course, and Cass was the needle on the compass. Libby and I were the arrows pointing the way. Now the compass was broken, and I didn’t know which road to take. The revelation overcame me with clarity. I was completely and utterly uncertain for the first time in my life. “When we put our cares in His hands, He puts His peace in our hearts,” Father Ski’s final words for Cass.
In the vestibule I steered Libby toward her mother by the small of her back. Jeanne hugged Libby before directing us to the corner where Dr. Seuss was waiting. He had been good for Libby’s mother, regardless of what Libby thought.
“I don’t know what your plans are in the near future, but I didn’t want to bring you all the way to my office to tell you what I could simply say now.”
Libby didn’t speak.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“The last day I saw you in my office,” he cleared his throat. “The day Cass died; we had drawn blood for normal blood work.” He pulled out a printed lab results. “The lab brought this to my attention.” He extended the paper toward me.
I looked at the form, and then at Libby.
“The lab ran the tests, even though we already knew Cass had died. They didn’t want to close Cass’ file until everything was complete. The blood work revealed Cass’ cancer had already returned and had spread to his lymph nodes.”
I looked up from the results and Libby grabbed onto my arm for support. “What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means that if he wasn’t thrown from a moving car, the cancer would have spread through his system in a matter of weeks. It was a very aggressive, and I’m surprised he hadn’t complained of any pain.”
Libby brought a hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God.”
A few heads turned toward us.
Dr. Seuss took her hand. “I wanted you to know, so you wouldn’t blame yourselves, or even each other. Cass was going to die, and there was nothing any of us could have done. It doesn’t make it easier, but the cancer would have caused more suffering. So when your priest says God works in mysterious ways, He does.”
“Thank you Dr. Seuss,” Libby choked out.
Dr. Seuss caught her easy dismissal and reached out to halt her retreat. Like any good disciple, he continued to sell his story. “We couldn’t have saved him, Libby. Not my science, or your love, or even your strength, Aidan. None of us are to blame, we all did our best. I hope someday this will make it better for you.” He’d started to move away, but turned back. “When I was a child, my father used to say, ‘Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.’ I didn’t know it was a saying from Dr. Seuss until he had been gone many years. I never told you, but he died of cancer.”