The God Project (8 page)

If he was stung by her words, he showed no sign. “Tell you what,” he said. “You do what you think is best, and I’ll keep at it with the police. It’s all we can do. Okay?”

Lucy took another puff on her cigarette and nodded, even though there was no one to see her. “Okay. But call me if you find anything. Anything at all!”

“Sure.” There was a long silence, and then Jim’s voice came over the line once again. “Lucy? Are you going to be all right? Do you want me to còme over?”

“No. I mean, yes, I’m all right, and no, I don’t want you to come over.”

“Gotcha,” Jim said, and the word almost made Lucy smile. It was a word he had used throughout their marriage on those rare occasions when he understood exactly why she was angry with him and was trying to apologize for having gone too far with whatever excess he was currently involved in. Now, as the word echoed in her mind, she could almost feel the warmth she knew must be in his eyes. “If you need anything,” he went on, “you know where to find me.”

The line went dead. Lucy held the receiver in her hand for a moment before hanging it up. As she poured herself another cup of coffee, she suddenly made up her mind.

Jim was right—she couldn’t hang around the house all day. She quickly drained the coffee cup, then began dressing for work.

   For Sally Montgomery, there was a chill to the morning that even the spring sun couldn’t penetrate. She stared at herself in the mirror for a long time, studying the strange, haggard image that confronted her—slender arms wrapped protectively around a body she barely recognized as her own, hair limply framing a face etched with lines of exhaustion that even careful makeup hadn’t been able to erase—and wondered how she was going to get through this day.

The sounds of morning drifted up the stairs, unfamiliar, for it should have been herself rattling around the kitchen, murmuring to Steve, urging Jason to hurry up. Instead it was her mother’s voice she heard, and even the sounds of the coffeepot beine put back on the stove and the frying pan clunking softly as it was placed in the sink bore the unmistakably purposeful tenor of her mother’s efficiency. She moved to the closet and tried to decide what to wear.

She owned nothing black, never had. Navy blue? Her hands, shaking slightly, plucked a suit from a hanger. Something caught, and instead of stopping to disentangle the unseen snarl, Sally simply yanked at it. The rasping sound of a seam giving way raked across her nerves, and she knew she was going to cry.

I won’t, she told herself. Not now. Not over a torn seam. Later. Later, I’ll cry. She glanced at the tear in the lining of her suit jacket and felt that she’d won a small victory.

She went to her dresser next, and as she was about to open the second drawer where all her blouses lay neatly folded in tissue paper, her eyes fell on a picture of Julie. The tiny face, screwed into an expression somewhere between laughter and fury, seemed to mock her and reproach her at the same time. Now the tears did come. Sally backed away from the picture, sank to her bed, and buried her face in her hands.

That was how Steve found her a few moments later. He paused at the door, watching his wife, his heart aching not only for her, but for his own inability to comfort her, then crossed the room to sit beside her. With gentle hands he lifted her face and kissed her. “Honey? Is there anything …” He left the sentence unfinished, knowing there was no real way to complete it.

“…  anything wrong?” Sally finished for him. “Anything you can do for me? I don’t know. Oh, Steve, I—I just looked at her picture, and it all came apart. It was like she was staring at me. Like she wanted to know what happened, wanted to know if it was a joke, or if I was mad at her, or—oh, God, I don’t know.”

Steve held her for a moment, sharing the pain of the moment but knowing there was nothing he could do to ease it Then Sally pulled away from him and stood up.

“I’ll be all right,” she said, more to herself than to her husband. “I’ll get dressed, and I’ll come downstairs, and I’ll eat breakfast I’ll take each moment as it comes, and I’ll get through.” She took a deep breath, then went once more to her dresser. This time she kept her eyes carefully averted from the picture of Julie as she opened the drawer and took out a soft silk blouse. Then, taking her pantyhose with her, she disappeared into the bathroom.

Steve stayed on in the bedroom for a while, his eyes fixed on the picture of his daughter, then suddenly he turned the picture face down on the dresser top. A moment later he was gone, back to the kitchen where his son was waiting for him.

T
HE CAR MOVED SLOWLY
through the streets of Eastbury, and Sally found herself looking out at the town and its people with a strange detachment she had only felt a few times before. The last time had been when her father had died, and she had been driven through these same streets toward the same cemetery. On that day, as their car passed through the center of town, where the charm of old New England had still been carefully preserved, the people of Eastbury had nodded respectfully toward Sally and her mother. They had understood the death of Jeremiah Paine and been able to express their sympathy toward his family.

But today, Eastbury looked different. People seemed to turn away from the car. What Sally had always perceived as Yankee reserve, today seemed like icy aloofness. Even the town had changed, Sally realized. It had begun to take on a look of coldness, as if along with the new technology had come a new indifference. Where once the town and its inhabitants had seemed to fit each other comfortably, now the people Sally saw moving indifferently through Eastbury’s picturesque streets were mostly newcomers who looked as if they had been cut from a mold, then assigned to live in Eastbury. Cookie-cutter people, Sally thought, who could have lived any
where, and nothing in their lives would change. The new breed, she reflected sadly. It seemed to her that there was some vital force lacking in them, and as the car moved into the parking lot next to the First Presbyterian Church and its adjoining cemetery, she wondered if she, too, had become infected by the malaise that seemed to have chilled the town.

A few minutes later, as she stood in the cemetery where her father was buried, and where, she supposed, she herself would someday lie, Sally Montgomery still felt the chilly, though she knew the day was unseasonably warm. There were few people gathered around the grave. Apparently most of Sally’s friends were feeling the same way she was feeling: numb and unable to cope. Funerals were to pay final respects to old people and to comfort the living for the loss of someone who had been part of their lives for years. What did you say when an infant died?

Suddenly all the soft murmurings sounded hollow.

“Perhaps it was a blessing …” for someone who has been sick for years.

“At least it happened quickly …” for someone who had never been sick a day in her life.

“I know how you’ll miss her …” for a mother or a sister or an aunt.

“I don’t know what I’ll do without her …” to share the burden of loss.

But for a six-month-old baby? Nothing. Nothing to be said, nothing to be offered. And so they stayed away, and Sally understood.

She watched the tiny coffin being lowered into the ground, listened as the minister uttered the final words consigning Julie Montgomery to the care of the Lord, moved woodenly toward the grave to deposit the first clod of the earth that would soon hide her daughter from the sight of the living, then started toward the car, intent only on getting home, getting away from the ceremony that, far from easing her pain, was only intensifying it.

From a few yards away, Arthur Wiseman watched
Sally’s forlorn figure and wondered once again why he had come to Julie Montgomery’s funeral. He rarely attended funerals at all, and particularly avoided the funerals of his patients. To him, a funeral was little more than a painful reminder of his own failure.

But this one was different Julie Montgomery had not been his patient, not since the day he’d delivered her. No, this time his patient was still alive. But he had delivered Sally herself, as well as her two children, and she had been on his roster for as long as she had needed the services of an obstetrician-gynecologist. Over the years he had come to regard her with an almost paternal affection. One of his special girls, as he thought of them.

So he had come today, even though he hated funerals, and now, as the service drew to a close, he was beginning to wish he’d stayed away after all. He was going to have to speak to Sally, and he knew the words of condolence would not come easy to him. In the familiar surroundings of his office, the right words always came easily. But here, faced with a patient whose problem was beyond his medical expertise, he was at a loss. And yet, something had to be said. He started toward Sally.

She had nearly reached the car when she felt a hand on her arm. She turned and found herself looking into the troubled eyes of Arthur Wiseman.

“Sally—” he began.

“It was good of you to come, Dr. Wiseman,” Sally said, her voice barely audible.

“I know how difficult this must be for you …” Wiseman said. Then his voice faltered, and he fell silent.

Sally stared at him for a moment, waiting for him to continue. “Do you?” she asked at last. Suddenly, with no forewarning at all, she found her entire being flooded with anger. Why couldn’t he find the right words to comfort her? He was a doctor, wasn’t he?
Her
doctor? Wasn’t it his
job
to know what to say at a time like this? She glared at him, her face a mask of pain and anger. “Do you know how difficult it is for me?” she demanded. “Do you know what it feels like to lose your baby and not even know why?”

Stung, Arthur Wiseman glanced around the cemetery as if he were looking for a means of escape. “No, of course I can’t feel what you’re feeling,” he muttered at last as Sally’s gaze remained fixed upon him. “But I hope I can understand it” He could see that she was no longer listening to him as she searched the cemetery for—what? Her husband, probably. Wiseman kept talking, hoping Steve would appear. “I do know how hard it is, Sally. Even for doctors who see death all the time, it’s still hard. Especially in cases like Julie’s—”

“Julie?” Sally repeated. At mention of her daughter’s name, her attention shifted back to the doctor. “What about Julie?”

Wiseman paused, looking deeply into Sally’s eyes. There was something in them—a sort of flickering glow—that told him Sally was on the edge of losing control. He searched his mind for something to say, anything that might ease her pain. “But we’re learning, Sally. Every year we’re learning a little more. I know it’s no help to you, but someday well know what causes SIDS-”

“It wasn’t SIDS,” Sally interrupted. “Something happened to Julie.” Her voice rose and took on a shrillness that Wiseman immediately recognized as the beginnings of hysteria. “I don’t know what it was,” Sally plunged on, “but I’m going to find out. It wasn’t SIDS—it was something else. Julie was fine. She was just fine!”

Wiseman listened helplessly as Sally’s hysteria soared, certain that he’d been wrong to come to the funeral, wrong to speak to Sally Montgomery right now. Here, today, he could see the true depths of her grief. When the time came for her to begin dealing with the reality of her loss, would he be able to help her? He was glad when Steve Montgomery, accompanied by Sally’s mother and Jason, appeared beside her.

“Sally?” Steve asked. Sally’s gaze shifted over to him, and Steve, too, saw the strange light in her eyes. “Are you all right?”

“I want to go home,” Sally whispered, the last of her energy drained by her outburst “I want to go home, and
get away from here. Please? Take me home.” She moved once more toward the nearby car, Steve by her side, Jason trailing along behind them. Only Phyllis Paine stayed behind to speak to Wiseman, and there was an anger in her voice that he had rarely heard in the long years of their friendship.

“Arthur, what did you say to her?” she demanded. “What did you say to my daughter?”

“Nothing, Phyllis,” Wiseman replied tiredly. “Only that maybe someday we’ll have some idea of what causes SIDS.”

“At the funeral?” Phyllis asked, her voice reflecting her outrage. “You came to the funeral to talk about what killed Julie?”

Wiseman groaned inwardly, but was careful to maintain a calm façade. “That’s hardly what I was doing, Phyllis, and when you think about it, I know you’ll realize I would never do something like that. But it’s important that Sally understand what happened, and I wanted to let her know that if there’s anything I can do, either as her doctor or her friend, I’ll do it.”

As Wiseman spoke, Steven Montgomery came back to escort his mother-in-law to the waiting car. “There
is
something you can do, Dr. Wiseman,” he said. “Just try to let us forget about it. It’s over, and nothing can be done. We have to try to forget.”

He led Phyllis to the car, helped her in, then turned back to face the doctor once again. “You understand, don’t you?” he asked with a bleakness in his voice that Wiseman had rarely heard before. “There’s nothing we can do now. Nothing at all.” Then Steve, too, got into the car, and Wiseman watched as the Montgomery’s drove away. When they were gone, the agony of Sally’s eyes and Steve’s words remained.

As he left the cemetery, Wiseman pondered the true depth of the tragedy that had befallen the Montgomerys.

For Julie, the tragedy was over.

For her parents, it had just begun.

* * *

Jason Montgomery jammed the shovel into the ground, jumped on it, then pulled on the handle until the clod of earth came loose. He repeated the process again and again, then stopped to inspect his work.

There was a square, four feet on a side, from which he’d stripped the topsoil. He’d been working for almost an hour—ever since he’d gotten home from his sister’s funeral. So far, no one had come out to tell him to stop.

Maybe today, no one would.

If it happened that way—and Jason thought the chances were pretty good—then he would have his fort done by suppertime. It would be four feet deep and covered over with some planks he’d found behind the garage last week. His father had said they were going to be used for a chicken coop, but Jason had decided that since they had no chickens, he might as well use them for the roof of his fort. Besides, all he had to do was lay them on the ground side by side. They wouldn’t even have to be nailed. The work was all in the digging. He wished Bandy Corliss were there to help him, but he hadn’t even been allowed to call Randy today, so now he had to build the fort all by himself.