Hallowed (19 page)

The meadow fills with an angelic hum, and then the hum becomes a word in Angelic, the word
love
, I think, coming across in that multitoned music of the language of angels, or maybe it’s a combination of words, everyone saying a different word that ends up all meaning the same thing, something that transcends translation.

I realize I’m crying, tears sliding down my face and off my chin and falling down into the grass at my feet. And I’m smiling. I have a sense that no matter what, no matter what darkness lies ahead, there is nothing that can overcome this power.

All it takes to punch a big old hole in that joy is seeing Mom struggle as we hike back to the car, Jeffrey, Billy, and I flanking her so we can catch her if she starts to fall. It’d be easier to fly, but we all have gear to carry, which is cumbersome, and Mom’s not safe to fly alone. She keeps saying she’s fine. She’s not. She’s sweating, and twice we have to stop to rest.

“What’s the point?” Jeffrey spits out when we’re stopped the second time.

“The point?”

“The point of the whole congregation. It’s not like they really do anything. It’s not like they could heal her.”

“Of course not,” I say, although the thought did cross my mind, what with all the light and power spilling everywhere and the fact that glory heals people, maybe somewhere deep down I’d hoped that Mom would be miraculously saved, at least strengthened for a few days or something.

But eventually that spectacular light faded into regular sunshine, and the congregation dropped their hands, and Mom went back to dying. “Don’t be a jerk, Jeffrey. The congregation cares about us, or weren’t you there when they all said they were coming to Mom’s funeral?”

“We’ll see,” he replies like he couldn’t care less. “We’ll see who actually shows up.”

“They do come.”

“Why, because you saw them in your dream?”

“Yes. I saw them.”

“And what if your dream doesn’t mean anything?” he asks with sudden bitterness. “What if it’s only a dream?”

“It’s a dream, yes, but it’s also a vision,” I say irritably. “Of course it means something.”

“You think it’s part of your purpose?”

I stare at him. I wish I knew the answer to that question.

“It’s the future,” I say.

Jeffrey’s eyes are a blaze of silver fire. “What if it’s not? What if it’s a practical joke somebody’s playing on you? Maybe we don’t even have a purpose, Clara. Just because someone told you that you were put on this earth to do something, to be something, doesn’t make it true.” I don’t know what’s gotten under his skin, but I do know that he’s questioning everything we’ve ever been taught, and it bothers me. “You don’t believe Mom?”

“Right, because she’s been so upfront with us so far.”

“Hey, what are you two arguing about over here?” Billy interrupts, jogging over to us from where she left Mom sitting at a picnic table at a campground under the trees. “Do I need to break this up?”

“Nothing,” says Jeffrey, turning away from her. “Are we ready to go yet? I have homework I have to do before tomorrow.”

“Yeah, we can go. I think she’ll make it the rest of the way,” Billy says, looking at me. I study the laces of my hiking boots. I wonder if Mom heard any of that. I wonder if what Jeffrey said hurt her, each bad thought, each doubt like a dart striking her. I swallow painfully.

“Everything okay?” Billy asks.

I lift my head and try to smile and nod. “Yeah. I’m good. I just want to go home.”

“Okay then, let’s go,” she says, but as Jeffrey moves away from us, she grabs my arm.

“Keep your chin up, okay?”

“I know.”

“Storm’s coming, kid,” she says, smiling in a way that reminds me of how she looks at my mother’s graveside. “I can feel it. Things are going to be rough. But we’ll make it.”

“Okay.”

“You believe me, right?”

“Right,” I answer, nodding.

Even though the truth is, not all of us are going to make it, and I don’t know what to believe.

Chapter 12

Don’t Drink and Fly

It all starts happening pretty fast, then. Mom quits her job. She spends a lot of time in front of the television wrapped up in quilts, or out on the back porch with Billy, talking for hours and hours. She takes long naps. She stops cooking. This may not seem like a big thing, but Mom loves to cook. Nothing fills her with more domestic joy than putting something wonderful on the table, even if it’s something simple like her signature coffeecake or five-cheese macaroni. Now it’s too much for her, and we fall into a predictable pattern: cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, frozen dinners. Jeffrey and I don’t complain. We don’t say anything, but I think that’s when it really hits us, when Mom stops cooking. That’s the beginning of the end.

Then one day she says to Billy and me, out of the blue, “I think it’s time we talk about what we’re going to tell people.”

“Okay,” I say slowly. “About what?”

“About me. I think we should say that it’s cancer.”

I suck in a shocked breath. Before that moment I hadn’t given any thought to what we would tell people, how we would explain Mom’s “illness,” as she likes to call it. Cancer would definitely explain it. People are starting to notice, I think. How she stays seated now at Jeffrey’s wrestling matches. How quiet and pale she’s become, how this one strand in the front of her hair has turned silver and she always wears hats now to cover it. How she’s gone from slender to just plain thin.

It seems so sudden, but then I think, I wasn’t paying attention before. I was so consumed with my own life, my dream, with the idea that it was Tucker who was going to die. She’s been getting weaker all this time, and I didn’t really notice until now.

Some stellar daughter I am.

“What kind of cancer?” Billy asks thoughtfully, like this is not at all a morbid topic.

“Something terminal, of course,” Mom says.

“Okay, so can we not talk about this?” I can’t take this anymore. “You don’t have cancer.

Why do we have to tell them anything at all? I don’t want to have another lie I’m going to be forced to tell.”

Billy and Mom share this amused look I don’t understand.

“She’s honest,” remarks Billy.

“To a fault,” Mom replies. “Gets it from her father.”

Billy snorts. “Oh come on, Mags, she’s like a carbon copy of you at that age.” Mom rolls her eyes. Then she turns her attention back to me. “A rational explanation will help everybody. It will keep them from asking too many questions. The last thing we want is for my death to appear mysterious in any way.”

I still find it crazy that she can say the words
my death
so calmly, like she’s saying
my car
or
my plans for dinner
.

“Okay, fine,” I concede. “Tell them whatever you want. But I’m not going to be involved.

I’m not going to call it cancer or lie about it or anything. This is your thing.” Billy opens her mouth to say something smart-alecky or maybe chew me out for how insensitive I’m being, but Mom holds up her hand.

“You don’t have to say anything at all,” she says. “I’ll take care of it.” So, cancer it is. But Mom was wrong about me not having to deal. Maybe it would have worked before I got slammed by the power of empathy, but now it’s impossible not to know how everyone is feeling about me. The news that my mother has terminal cancer is like an atom bomb going off at Jackson Hole High School. It doesn’t even take a whole day before everybody, and I mean everybody, knows. First it’s people looking away, some of the nicer girls shooting me sympathetic looks. Then whispers. I quickly know the script by heart. It starts with, “Did you hear about Clara Gardner’s mom?” and it ends with something like, “That is
so
sad.” I keep my head down and do my work and try to act normal, but by the second day I’m suffering through overwhelming waves of sympathy, and this from people who didn’t even bother to learn my name last year. Even my teachers are solemn, with the exception of Mr.

Phibbs, who just looks at me like he was quite disappointed in the half-assed paper I wrote on
Paradise Lost,
for which he gives me a D minus and demands that I rewrite. It’s like I’m a tiny boat adrift in an ocean of pity.

For instance: I’m in a stall in the ladies’ room, minding my own business, when a bunch of freshman girls come in. They chatter like squirrels, even while they pee, and then one of them says, “Have you heard about Jeffrey Gardner’s mom? She has lung cancer.”

“I heard it was brain cancer. Stage four, or something. She’s only got something like three months to live.”

“That is
so
sad. I don’t even know what I’d do if my mom died.”

“What’s Jeffrey going to do?” asks one. “I mean, when she dies. Their dad doesn’t live with them, does he?”

Amazing, I think, what they know about us, this group of total strangers.

“Well, I think it’s tragical.”

They murmur their agreement. The most tragical thing ever.

“And Jeffrey’s so broken up about it, too. You can totally tell.” Then they move on to discussing their favorite flavor of lip gloss. Either watermelon or blackberry cream. From my dying mom to lip gloss.

Tragical.

“
O goodness infinite, goodness immense! / That all this good of evil shall produce, / and
evil turn to good; more wonderful / than that which by creation first brought forth / light out of
darkness!
Wait,” I say, laying my book on the floor next to my feet. “I don’t even know who’s talking here. Michael, or Adam?”

“Adam,” supplies Wendy, homework buddy extraordinaire, looking down at me from her perch on my bed. “See where it says,
So spake the Arch-Angel Michael
,
then paused, / as at the
world’s great period; and our sire, / replete with joy and wonder, thus replied
. So now it’s Adam speaking. He’s our sire, get it? I love that line, ‘as at the world’s great period.’”

“Ugh! What does that even mean?”

“Well, Michael was telling him about redemption, about how good is going to triumph over evil in the end, all that stuff.”

“So now he’s okay with it? He’s going to get thrown out of Eden but everything’s great because someday, thousands of years after he dies, the side of good is going to win out?”

“Clara, I think you’re taking this a tad too seriously. It’s only a poem. It’s art. It’s supposed to make you think, is all.”

“Well, right now it’s making me think that my physics homework looks really super fun and I should get to it.” I close the offending book and slide it away from me.

“But Mr. Phibbs said you had to turn in that rewrite tomorrow. No more dragging your feet, he said.”

“Yep, and I’m probably going to get a D on that paper too, whether I study or not. I swear, he’s trying to torture me.”

Wendy looks concerned. “It will probably be on the AP test.” I sigh. “I don’t want to think about the AP test. Or college. Or my stupendously bright future. I want to live in the now, I’ve decided.”

She closes her book and looks at me with this ultra let’s-be-serious expression.

“You should be excited, Clara. You applied to all these awesome schools. You have a great chance at getting in to at least one of them. Not everybody has that.” She’s nervous. Our acceptance letters should be coming this week. She’s already gone to the post office like three times since Monday.

“Okay, okay, color me excited,” I say to placate her. “Woo-hoo! So. Excited.” She gets out her chemistry book, apparently done talking. I open up my physics book. We study. Suddenly she sighs.

“It’s just . . . Tucker’s the same way,” she says. “My parents kept trying to talk him into college, but he wasn’t even a little bit interested. He didn’t apply to a single school. Not even University of Wyoming, as a backup.”

“He wants to stay here,” I say.

“Do you?” Wendy asks.

“Do I what?”

“Do you want to stay here? Because Tucker does? Because I think that’s romantic and everything, Clara, but don’t—” She stops, tugs at the end of her braid in an agitated way, trying to decide if she’s going to go ahead and say this to me. “Don’t give up your life for a guy,” she says then firmly. “Not even a great guy. Not even Tucker.” I don’t know what to say. “Wendy—”

“I’m going to break up with Jason,” she adds. “And I like him. A lot. But when it’s time to leave for school, I’ll have to cut him loose.”

“He’s not a fish, Wen,” I point out. “What if Jason doesn’t want to be cut loose? What if he wants to try the long-distance thing?”

She shakes her head. “He’ll be in Boston, or New York, or one of those fancy schools he applied to. I’ll be in Washington, hopefully. It wouldn’t work. But that’s being a grown-up. You have to think about the future.”

I want to remind her that we’re not grown-ups yet, we’re only seventeen. We shouldn’t have to think about the future. Besides, my future, the one I see almost every night when I close my eyes, is a cemetery. An incredible, staggering loss. What happens after that, my life after that day, is like a videotape that’s been deleted: gray and static. Yes, I will probably go to college. I might make new friends, go to parties, and end up thinking that life is okay. But right now I’m trapped inside a single sunny day on a hillside.

“Are you okay?” Wendy asks. “I’m sorry. I don’t have the right to lecture you. I know you’re having a hard time, what with your mom and everything.”

“It’s okay,” I try to reassure her, shake the bad feelings off, ignore the pity I’m starting to feel from her.

“Hey, I have an idea,” I say to change the subject. “Let’s go check the post office.”

“It’s different than what I thought it would be,” Wendy says as we walk along the boardwalk in downtown Jackson.

I hold the door open for her as we duck into the post office. “What is?”

“You and Tucker. I thought you were so perfect for each other, you’d balance each other out, your yin to his yang, something like that, and I thought he’d be so happy all the time, but—” She chews on her bottom lip for a minute. “Sometimes you’re so intense, so focused on each other that you don’t even seem to notice anything else. Like, um, me.”