Rapture Practice (38 page)

“But people were drinking at this party at Bradley’s over New Year’s?” Dad asks.

“I don’t know,” I insist. “I wasn’t.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Dad is firm.

The fury of the situation bubbles up inside me again, and I have to tamp it down.
Do not blow your cover.
I speak slowly. I try to keep the sarcasm from creeping into my voice, and only barely succeed. “We all walked around holding glasses of liquid. Everyone was drinking
something
. The only thing in
my
glass was ice and Diet Coke.”

“Were there other students at the party from Tri-City?” Mom asks.

“It was mainly public-school kids—friends from Bradley’s old school. I was the only current student.” There were a
couple other guys there from the basketball team, but Mom and Dad certainly don’t need to know that. If this all goes south, the last thing I need to deal with is a witch hunt.

Dad looks at Mom, then shakes his head. “This is exactly the kind of situation that happens when you don’t avoid the appearance of evil,” he says.

“Dad, nothing evil was going on.”

“But was anything
good
going on, my son?” Mom’s eyes are sincere and search mine for an answer.

I am stuffing graduation announcements into envelopes at the dining room table. There are two envelopes for each announcement. I’m writing the mailing address on the outer envelope, the first names of the people at that address on the inner envelope. The announcements are embossed on front with a loopy purple foil that spells out a shiny
GRADUATION
’93 over the Tri-City Christian crusader and shield in gold.

I have fantastic handwriting. I taught myself calligraphy in third grade with the Sheaffer fountain pen calligraphy set that Mom got me for my eighth birthday. I used to sit at the desk by the window in my bedroom during the summer, practicing calligraphy and listening to the Kansas City Royals game on the radio. As I write addresses in my angular script, the phone rings.

Mom answers. It’s for Dad.

Each invitation has a feathery edge along the bottom, ragged, like it was torn. I insert a tiny name card into the
precut slots of each announcement, then stuff it into the inner envelope.

Dad takes the call in the kitchen. It’s Mr. Friesen.

After a while, I hear Dad hang up the phone, then I hear him talking to Mom quietly. Both of them come into the dining room. Dad sits down at the head of the dining room table. Mom crosses her arms, and leans against the door frame, as if she’s bracing for what may happen next.

“That was Mr. Friesen,” Dad says as I lick a stamp and press it onto the envelope of another completed announcement.

There is silence for a moment as Dad decides what to say next. I continue to put little cards into precut slots.

The Senior Class

of

Tri-City Christian School

announces its

Commencement Exercises

Saturday afternoon, May twenty-ninth

Ninteen hundred ninety-three

two o’clock

“Pastor Spicer wants to meet with us tomorrow morning. Tyler Gullem will be there, too.”

I pick up two senior pictures and put them into the announcement I’m holding. Friends and relatives who live far away are getting two senior pictures. Both are wallet-sized.
One is a profile picture of me in my purple cap and gown. I lick another envelope closed, then take up the pen to write an address.

“I’m ready to go in there and go to the mat on this with them.”

The tone of Dad’s voice makes me pause and lower the pen. He is looking me directly in the eyes. “I think they’re going about this the wrong way. They’re on a witch hunt here.”

I glance at Mom. She is watching intently from the door.

“I think they mean well, but, Aaron, if you say you didn’t drink, I believe you, and they should, too. Before I go in there and defend you, I’m going to ask you one last time: Did you drink at that party?”

There’s no proof. It’s my word against Tyler’s.

I try to imagine the meeting tomorrow. Dad and Mom and me and Tyler and Dr. Spicer and Mr. Friesen. I would maintain that there was only Diet Coke in my glass. Dad and Mom would stick by me, but Tyler would be telling the truth, and my parents would be sticking up for my lies.

I run my finger along the feathery edge of an announcement on the pile.

Torn.

I look up at my dad. I love him so much. He’s always been on the other side of this equation, calling in students and their parents when their kids have done something wrong. I don’t want him to be embarrassed.

The pile of graduation announcements under construction covers the table. At least thirty are complete: stuffed,
sealed, stamped, addressed—ready to mail. It would be so much easier
not
to mail these than it would be to mail them, then have to call people and tell them not to come.

You can’t hide forever.

I decide to be exactly who I am, and to let Mom and Dad catch a glimpse of who that is. I take a deep breath, and look Dad in the eye. “Yes, I drank at the party.”

Saying what is actually true about this situation instead of what I wish were true causes something to break free inside me. Maybe sticking to my roots has given me wings. I steel myself for their response, something big and loud and dramatic. Instead, Dad only nods, then reaches across the table and places his hand on mine. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”

When I look up, I see tears in Mom’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.

She walks over and puts her arms around me.

“Me, too, honey” she whispers. “Me, too.”

In a flash, the version of myself so carefully constructed for Mom and Dad’s eyes crumbles all around me. I have let them see my truth. Not the son I pretend to be, or the son they thought I was, but the son I really am.

We all know what this means. There will be no first son’s high school graduation. There will be no open house. No one will have to iron the purple gown I will never wear. The invitations on this table will not be mailed.

There have been moments prior when I have disappointed Mom and Dad, and I can feel the crush of their disappointment
now, but somehow their sadness is not the main thing I feel. It’s the things that are missing I’ll remember most about this moment.

There is no yelling.

There is no anger.

There is no praying.

There is only “thank you,” and “me, too,” and hugging—a pulling together, a tangle of arms, and tears, and hearts.

For this moment, there is only love.

Dad is wrapping up his message in chapel. He’s been preaching from Psalm 1, about being like a tree planted by the water that bears fruit instead of like the chaff that the wind drives away.

We’re supposed to take a lesson from this: We should want to be like trees, firmly rooted next to the living water, not like chaff, unstable, able to be blown about by the suggestion of others.

On most days, Kansas City feels like the middle of nowhere. Today, it feels like the center of everything. Dad has taken the morning off from teaching at the Bible college to speak in chapel at the school where his oldest son is being expelled. There are only two weeks of school left, and Principal Friesen has agreed to give me my diploma if I’ll apologize to the student body today. Dad could have let me do this on my own, but he didn’t. Instead, he asked if he could speak in
chapel today. He asked to be here so he could stand by me on the hardest, most humiliating day of my life. He wanted to be here for me, to support me, to let me know how much he loves me. He wants to be here when I say, “I’m sorry.”

The thing is I’m
not
sorry. I only regret how much I’ve disappointed Dad.

When he’s done preaching, he’ll call me up to the microphone like he’s done so many times before, but this time, I won’t be up front to sing, or play the piano, or perform a dramatic scene. There will be no music or lyrics or lines to hide behind. I’ll inch past everyone sitting in this pew next to me, walk down the center aisle, step up to that mic in front of all one hundred thirty-seven students, and confess my sins. I’ll let them in on my secret: I haven’t been living like a tree. I’ve been chafflike, not Christ-like.

Or at least, that’s the plan.

Dad finishes his sermon. I hear him say my name. He tells the student body I’ll be coming to the mic next to share something with all of them.

“But first, let’s pray.”

One hundred thirty-seven heads bow. Two hundred seventy-four eyes close. My dad surveys the room, and sees me looking at him. His gaze lands on mine for maybe one one-hundredth of a second, but that’s enough. I can see it fifty pews away. I can feel it all at once: the love, and the grief, and everything he didn’t say in all the words he’s spoken today. My handsome, tall, smart, charming, charismatic, well-groomed dad is one more thing today:

Heartbroken.

He bows his head, and no one else but me hears the catch in his voice when he says, “Heavenly Father.” Suddenly, my eyes are full, and one stray drop leaps down onto my khakis.

No one else knows this is the hardest thing my dad has ever had to do. I want to spare him from the next twenty minutes. What I did in private has suddenly become about what he does in public. Now, everyone will know the guy who trains people how to teach their kids to do the right thing has a son who didn’t learn the lesson. Dad follows all the instructions he gives out with his own kids. Now, people will know it didn’t work. I wish I could take it all back. I wish I could run down the aisle, grab the mic, and tell everyone this isn’t his fault—that he did everything right. I wish I could protect him from this moment, from the shame of everyone knowing who I really am.

Before I can, he starts to pray.

“Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity we have today to learn the principles from your word. We know, Lord, that we live in the end times, and that your Son Jesus is coming back at any moment—”

If only Jesus
would
come back right now. If only we’d hear a trumpet sound, and an archangel shout, and then everybody in the room would shoot out of their clothes and up through the four-story ceiling into the sky over Interstate 70, to meet Jesus in the air over the Independence Center shopping center across the highway. We could forget about the confession, and the cap and gown, and we would be in heaven where God
would wipe away the tears from my father’s eyes like it says he will in the Bible. If Jesus came back right now, I wouldn’t have to tell the whole student body about what happened at Bradley’s party in December because it simply wouldn’t matter anymore.

Maybe it doesn’t matter now.

I look up at the cross over the choir loft, and it hits me: I’m not so sure Jesus is coming back anymore. I don’t know when it happened—it wasn’t any one specific moment. Somewhere along the way this year, that certainty and excitement I once had just drifted away. I’m not saying Jesus won’t come back; I’ve just decided I can’t keep hoping to be rescued from my life. Maybe it’s up to me to change things. It’s time to start saving myself.

I look back up at Dad. He’s still praying. Every head is bowed, every eye is closed. I wonder what would happen if I got up and walked into the hall? And then into the parking lot? And then got in my car, and drove away from here, from Kansas City, from everything?

Get up now. Walk away.

Dad is wrapping up his prayer. If I go right now, no one will see me. No one will stop me.

“—and we thank you and praise you for all of this, and it’s in Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.”

One hundred thirty-seven heads are raised. Two hundred seventy-four eyes flutter open. I’m still sitting here in the pew near the back. I’ve waited too long. If I walk out now I’ll cause a scene. Miss Favian will look up from the papers she’s
grading at the end of the row. She’ll follow me through the foyer in her powder blue cable-knit sweater with the collar that looks like a neck brace. She’ll ask me where I’m going.

I’m stuck.

“Aaron’s going to come say a few words now.” Dad steps back from the microphone, and every head in the room swivels back to look at me.

I guess saving myself starts here.

As I walk, down the aisle toward the front of this cavernous auditorium for the final time, I feel the three-by-five card in the pocket of my pants. It has a Bible verse written on it that I’m going to read when I make my apology speech. I practiced in my bedroom yesterday. I used my dresser as the podium and I stood at it and practiced my apology to the bedroom wall. No one was home. I don’t remember where everyone was.

I don’t remember writing down the Bible verse. I don’t remember who told the rest of the family. Did Dad tell my brothers and sister that I was getting kicked out of school? Did Mom?

I walk past Megan, then Erica, their faces full of questions. At least Bradley is away at college. I don’t know if I could have handled him watching this.