Rapture Practice (33 page)

“Holy crap!” Bradley is wide-eyed. Even the girls are quiet. The rest of the party is raging upstairs, but Jacob and Bradley are both staring at me like they’ve seen a ghost.

“So, who cares if this Taylor guy saw you here?” Paula isn’t quite as smart when she’s plastered.

“Tyler,” says Bradley, correcting her.

“You were holding your drink?” Jacob starts laughing. “Did his head explode?”

“He didn’t know there was anything in it,” I say. “It’s not like he knows for sure we were drinking.”

“Who cares if you’re drinking?” Tamara is genuinely confused.

“The school,” Jacob explains. “If it gets back to the administration that he’s here drinking, he’ll be kicked out.”

“Why did he come over?” Bradley asks.

“Said he was looking for Janice. Then he asked for you.”

“What did you say?” Bradley doesn’t even look worried.

“Told him you were making a pizza run. Then I invited him in and offered him a Diet Coke,” I say, raising my glass.

Bradley’s eyes go wide. “Oh my god. Are you
serious
?”

“It was the only way I knew he’d leave,” I say.

Jacob and Bradley collapse into laughter. “Man!” Jacob says shaking his head, “You’ve got balls of steel.”

“I need to sit down.” I slide down the wall next to the bar, and land on the carpet.

“Barkeep!” Jacob shouts at Bradley. “Get this guy a drink.”

Bradley mixes me a fresh rum and Coke. Jacob leads the girls upstairs to the hot tub as Bradley hands me the drink and sits down next to me on the floor.

“I don’t think you need to worry about Tyler. Even if he did want to get you in trouble, he doesn’t have any proof.”

He doesn’t need any
, I think to myself, but I smile at Bradley, and nod. The rum makes me feel like everything is going to be okay. Bradley’s here, we’re hanging out, and having some drinks. That’s all I’ve wanted since he was here at Thanksgiving.

We clink glasses and wish each other a Happy New Year, then Bradley stands and offers me a hand. When he pulls me up, he keeps my hand clasped in his, between our chests like we’re arm wrestling, and he pulls me in toward him.

“I’ve missed you, Hartzler.”

I am so close to Bradley at this moment I can feel his breath on my chin. My whole body is electric again, like that night in the hot tub. The air is thick in the family room, and I search his eyes for some flicker of recognition, some sign that he might feel something similar.

Bradley smiles, then drops my hand and heads up the stairs. “C’mon, man. Can’t keep the ladies waiting.”

I take a gulp of my rum and Coke as I watch him go. All at once, I’m worried about what just happened. I’m so buzzed everything is hazy right now.
Was that weird?
Maybe I’m just feeling paranoid. I feel hot and my head is spinning a little, so I pause and grab the banister to steady myself for a few seconds. Then I take a deep breath and follow Bradley up the steps to the party above, the hot tub out back, and the New Year beyond.

It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.

I am the resurrection and the life
…

Seven days after Bradley’s New Year’s bash I am back in Memphis, standing on the frozen lawn of a cemetery next to my cousin Sadie. Papa died on Monday, and Dad drove us all back down to Memphis for the funeral.

The minister wraps up the graveside service with Psalm 23, and at the final “amen,” I turn and walk with Sadie back toward the warmth of our cars, waiting in the parking lot. Tears slide slowly down her cheeks, and I reach down to take her hand. At some point in the past ten years we stopped climbing the trees in Nanny’s front yard, but we still tell each other secrets.

“Remember that time when we were kids and Uncle Hank gave us the stickers out of the price gun from the grocery store? We pretended Papa was sick, and you were the nurse. He let us stick those little price tags all over his forehead.”

Sadie laughs and wipes her eyes. “I’m so glad we’ll get to
see him in heaven,” she says. “Just think! The next time we see Papa, he won’t have smoker’s lungs anymore. He never has to struggle for breath ever again.”

I’m quiet as I consider this. I can’t imagine seeing Papa again. I know everyone here would tell me the
real him
—his soul—is up in heaven. They’d say that’s only his
body
in the coffin being lowered into the cold, hard clay behind us. Will there really come a time when we all see each other again in heaven? When I was in fifth grade and Grandpa Hartzler died, I didn’t think about it much. It was a given: When Christians die, our souls go to heaven, and our physical bodies will be resurrected on the day Jesus comes back. I accepted as fact that we’d all see Grandpa alive again. But today, I feel something different.

My mental image of Papa and Grandpa coming back to life and shooting out of their graves to meet Jesus in the clouds during the Rapture makes me angry. This idea seems to mock the man we’ve laid to rest, a man who taught me how to make life a little more beautiful one loop of yarn at a time. I haven’t cried since Papa died, but now I feel the tears on my cheeks, and Sadie stops to hug me.

“I can’t remember what I said to him last week before we left,” I tell her. “Did I whisper good-bye? Did I say I loved him? I’m not sure that he heard me.”

“He can hear you now,” Sadie whispers. “He can hear you now.”

I want to believe her.

But I don’t.

Help thou my unbelief
…

I can see my breath as I whisper these words. A white cloud of steam escapes from my lips, then floats away on the breeze like a puff from the tip of every cigarette that brought us here in the first place.

Bradley is back in Iowa by the time we get home from Memphis. January and February are cold and gray. I turn eighteen, but without Bradley to throw a party, it feels anticlimactic.

By early March, the Carriage Club ice rink is dead. No one is in the lodge area, or on the ice. It’s only me and Carla on the final Saturday night of the season.

“You wanna go home early?” she asks.

It’s only eight o’clock. I’d be home by eight thirty.
And then what?

I feel a familiar ache. I wish Bradley were still in town. Only two more weeks and he’ll be home for spring break. Megan is visiting her brother in Nebraska this weekend, my homework is done, and I’ve already practiced the piano today. At least if I stay at work I can ice skate.

I shrug. “I could use the money,” I say.

“You should go skate,” Carla says, smiling. “Somebody should be using the ice.”

I lace up my black leather figure skates and walk outside to the rink. Peter Cetera and Chaka Khan are singing a duet on the loudspeakers over the ice. The music is one of the reasons
that Dad was hesitant about letting me work here, but as I step out onto the smooth, white expanse and practice back crossovers, Dad and Mom and all of the rules seem to leave my head.

I love these moments at the ice rink. When it’s only me, and the music, and the sound of my blades scraping over the ice. Picking up speed as I come back around to the door, I see Carla standing at the windows watching me. I reach back and stretch into a waltz jump as high as I can leap. It’s a beginner’s jump, but impressive enough with the speed you can muster on a rink free of six-year-old girls. As I sail backward into the landing, I hear shouts and cheers.

I turn to see two girls and a guy clapping and cheering as they walk down the sidewalk toward the rink lodge.

“That was awesome!” The guy has an infectious smile.

I laugh at myself, embarrassed. “Sorry, didn’t realize anyone was here.”

I skate over to the break in the wall of the rink, step off the ice, and hold the door to the lodge open.

“You guys here to skate?”

“Yes,” says one of the girls. “Skate, then have a drink at the bar.”

Carla and I get their skates, trading in sizes for one of the girls, helping the other pull her laces tighter.

“Looks like you’re all set,” I say as the three of them wobble to their feet.

“You’re coming back out there with us, aren’t you?” the guy asks.

I glance at Carla. “Go,” she says. “There’s nothing to do in here but the crossword.”

Out on the ice, the girls hang on to the railing and each other at the edge, flailing and laughing until they are red in the face. The guy skates toward me clumsily, his ankles collapsing in toward each other in the plastic rental skates. He slips about three feet away from me, and I reach out and catch him. His arms grab at my waist, and I hold him up as I feel him struggle to regain his footing.

“I’m Kent,” he says, straightening up and extending a gloved hand.

“Aaron.” I smile.

We shake, but when I try to drop his hand, he holds on to mine. I feel the air grow heavy around me as if a message is hanging there between us in a frequency I cannot hear.

“Thanks,” he whispers in a tiny puff of breath that steams against the cold night air. I can see his words.

“You’re welcome,” I say, and smile. I take my hand out of his and do a couple of back crossovers away from him.

“Whoa—hang on! Where you going?”

I look over my shoulder. He is standing on the ice, arms outstretched, gloved hands hovering at his sides about waist level. He looks like he’s trying to keep his balance on a rope bridge that might give way at any moment, his whole body locked, like he’s bracing for an impact.

Frozen.

“C’mon.” I laugh. “You gotta learn to do this on your own sooner or later.”

“If I move one inch, I swear I will fall down.”

The girls have their backs to us, clutching the rail, hauling themselves around the ice like bulldozers, dragging the load of their legs and floundering skates behind them. I circle back to his right side. As soon as I’m close, he grabs for me in a panicked tremor. I hold my arm firmly up against his grip.

“You’re fine,” I say. “Take little steps. Think of marching.” This is how we teach the three-year-olds in tot classes. “Gliding comes later. You just need to feel your edges.”

I do a quick outside turn so I can skate backward in front of him. He grabs both of my hands in his and hangs on for dear life.

“Relax.” I smile. “Don’t watch your feet. Look up.” He does exactly that. His eyes are the brightest blue I’ve ever seen.

“You’re right,” he says, and smiles back at me. “That’s a much better view.”

I feel myself start to blush, and I drop my gaze.

“Unh-uh.” He laughs. “Don’t watch your feet, Aaron. Look up.”

I’m short of breath, but I haven’t been skating hard. We come to a complete stop on the ice, and I raise my eyes to meet his. I feel silly, standing here, staring at him, but I can’t look away.

The girls are squealing and giggling as they reach the door in the side of the rink.

“Hey, Kent! We’re going up to the bar. We’re freezing, and I’m getting a blister.”

He doesn’t look away from me. “That’s cool,” he says. “I’ll meet you guys up there in a minute.”

I hear the door to the lodge open, then close. It’s completely quiet on the ice now. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears.

“Let’s try again,” he says, softly.

My mouth feels dry, and hot. When I try to speak, I croak, then cough.

“Try what?” I finally ask.

“Another lap.”

There must be a reason to say no. It feels like there should be, but I can’t think of what it is.

We start to skate again, this time side by side. Kent takes my hand in his, tightly, and when he does, I feel my knees go shaky over my skates, like I’ve been skating for many hours. I’m afraid someone is going to see us holding hands on the ice.

And think… what?

“You live around here?” Kent asks.

“Lee’s Summit. You?”

“Not far—over on the Plaza. Studying music at UMKC.”

“Cool. You’re a musician?”

“Dunno about that,” he smiles. “I play the cello.”

“You grow up here?”

“No. My dad’s the music pastor at a little church in the middle of Missouri. Got to the city as soon as I could.”

“My dad teaches at the Bible college in Belton.”

Kent glances over at me, and smiles. “So, we’ve got a lot in common.”

We talk and skate around the rink for a long time. He’s still holding my hand for stability. I keep my arm bent tensely at the elbow to give him some support. Slowly, but surely, he gets more comfortable on the ice. He stops looking at his skates and leaning on me heavily. Gradually, my arm relaxes.

But he doesn’t let go of my hand.

After another few laps around the rink, Kent looks up at the bar, and sees his friends in the window over the Zamboni garage waving him up.

“Guess I should go meet the girls,” he says.

I check my watch. “Yeah, I have to get ready to close up.”

“You should meet us up at the bar when you get done,” he says.

Then he lets go of my hand, skates effortlessly across the rink, and throws his hips sideways in an expert hockey stop, sending a spray of ice into the wall. He looks back at me over his shoulder with a mischievous smile.