He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. For the moment his eyes were dry. Stinging dry.
SPENCER SAT in his favorite green chair across from Grandma Helen with his legs crossed Indian style. He’d pulled on his white X-Games skateboard T-shirt and his beige cargo pants that morning because he loved skateboarding and he thought Mom would want him to keep doing the things he loved most. Although he hadn’t actually hopped on the board yet. It had been a long time since he’d gone more than a week without taking to the street on a board.
Then again, things had changed a week ago, hadn’t they? Changed forever. His dad had lost his way, it seemed. The house had become big and quiet. Their schedule had changed, or gone away, mostly. His heart hurt most of the time now.
Spencer ran his fingers through blond curls and rested his chin on his palms. This hadn’t changed though. The room smelled of fresh-baked bread. The faint scent of roses drifted by—Grandma’s perfume. The brown carpet lay beneath them exactly as it had two weeks ago; the overstuffed chairs had not been moved; sparkling china with little blue flowers still lined an antique-looking cabinet on the wall. A hundred knickknacks, mostly white porcelain painted with accents of blue and red and yellow, sat in groupings around the room and on the walls.
The large case Grandma called a hutch hugged the wall leading to the kitchen. Its engraved lead-glass doors rested closed, distorting his vision of its contents, but he could see well enough. A small crystal bottle, maybe five inches high, stood in the middle of the top shelf. The contents looked almost black to him. Maybe maroon or red, although he’d never been good with all those weird names of colors. Grandma had once told him that nothing in the hutch mattered to her much, except that one crystal bottle. It, she said, symbolized the greatest power on earth. The power of love. And a tear had come to her eye as she said it. When he had asked her what was in the bottle, she had just turned her head, all choked up.
The large picture of Jesus rested quietly on the wall to their right. The Son of God was spread on a cross, a crown of thorns responsible for the thin trails of red on his cheek. He stared directly at Spencer with sad blue eyes, and at the moment, Spencer didn’t know what to think about that.
“Spencer.”
He turned to face Grandma, sitting across from him, smiling gently. A knowing glint shone in those hazel eyes. She held a glass of ice tea in both hands comfortably. “Are you okay, Honey?”
Spencer nodded, suddenly feeling strangely at home. Mom wasn’t here, of course, but everything else was. “I think so.”
Helen tilted her head and shook it slowly, empathy rich in her eyes. “Oh, my poor child. I’m so sorry.” A tear slipped down her cheek, and she let it fall. She sniffed once.
“But this will pass, son. Sooner than you know.”
“Yeah, that’s what everybody says.” A lump rose in his throat, and he swallowed. He didn’t want to cry. Not now.
“I’ve wanted to talk to you ever since Gloria left us,” Helen said, now with a hint of authority. She had something to say, and Spencer’s heart suddenly felt lighter in anticipation. When Grandma had something to say, it was best to listen.
“You know when Lazarus died, Jesus wept. In fact, right now God is weeping.” She looked off to the window opened bright to the afternoon clouds. “I hear it sometimes. I heard it on that first day, after Gloria died. It about killed me to hear him weeping like that, you know, but it also gave me comfort.”
“I heard laughter,” Spencer said.
“Yes, laughter. But weeping too, at once. Over the souls of men. Over the pain of man. Over loss. He lost his son, you know.” She looked into his eyes. “And there weren’t doctors clamoring to save him, either. There was a mob beating him and spitting in his face and . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence.
Spencer imagined a red-faced man with bulging veins spraying spit into that face on the painting over there. Jesus’ face. The image struck him as odd.
“People don’t often realize it, but God suffers more in the span of each breath than any man or woman in the worst period of history,” Helen said.
Surprisingly, the notion came to Spencer like a balm. Maybe because his own hurt seemed small in the face of it. “But can’t God make all that go away?” he asked.
“Sure he could, and he is, as we speak. But he allows us to choose on our own between loving him and rejecting him. As long as he gives us that choice, he will be rejected by some. By most. And that brings him pain.”
“That’s funny. I’ve never imaged God as suffering. Or as hurting.”
“Read the old prophets. Read Jeremiah or Ezekiel. Images of God wailing and weeping are commonplace. We just choose to ignore that part of reality in our churches today.”
She smiled again, staring out of that window. “On the other hand, some will choose to love him of their own choosing. And that love, my child, is worth the greatest suffering imaginable to God. That is why he created us, for those few of us who would love him.”
She paused and directed her gaze to him again. “Like your mother.”
Now a mischievous glint lit his grandmother’s face. She sipped at her tea, and he saw a tremble in her hand. She leaned forward slightly. “Now, that’s a sight, Spencer,” she said in hushed voice.
Spencer’s palms began to sweat. “What is?”
“The other side.” She was grinning now like a child unable to contain a secret.
“The other side of this pain and suffering. The realm of God.” She let it drop without offering more. Spencer blinked, wanting her to continue, knowing that she would—had to.
Helen hesitated only a moment before dropping the question she had brought him here to ask. “Do you want to see, son?”
Spencer’s heart jumped in his chest and his fingers tingled cold.
Want to see?
He swallowed. “See?” he asked, and his voice cracked.
She gripped the arms of her chair and leaned forward. “Do you want to see what it’s like on the other side?” She spoke hushed, eagerly, quickly. “Do you want to know why death has its end? Why Jesus said, ‘Let the dead bury the dead’? It will help, child.”
Suddenly his chest felt thick again, and an ache rose through his throat. “Yes,” he said. “Can I see that?”
Grandma Helen’s mouth split into a broad smile. “Yes! Actually you would’ve been able to see it that first day, I think, but I had to wait until after the funeral, see? I had to let you mourn some. But for some reason things have changed, Spencer. He is allowing us to see.”
The room was heavy with the unseen. Spencer could feel it, and goose flesh raised on his shoulders. A tear slipped from his eye, but it was a good tear. A strangely welcomed tear. Helen held his gaze for a moment and then took a quick sip of her tea.
She looked back at him. “Are you ready?”
He wasn’t sure what
ready
was, but he nodded anyway, feeling desperate now. Eager.
“Close your eyes, Spencer.”
He did.
It came immediately, like a rush of wind and light. A whirlwind in his mind, or maybe not just in his mind—he didn’t know. His breath left him completely, but that didn’t matter, because the wind filled his chest with enough oxygen to last a lifetime. Or so it felt.
The darkness behind his eyelids was suddenly full of lights. Souls. People. Angels. Streaking brightly across the horizon. Then hovering, then streaking and looping and twisting. He gasped and felt his mouth stretch open.
It struck him that the lights were not just shooting about randomly, but they flew in a perfect symmetry. Across the whole of space, as if they were putting on a show. Then he knew they
were
putting on a show. For him!
Like a million Blue Angels jets, streaking, hair-raising, perfect, like a billion ballerinas, leaping in stunning unison. But it was their sound that made little Spencer’s heart feel like exploding. Because every single one of them—one billion souls strong—were screaming.
Screaming with laughter.
Long, ecstatic peals of barely controlled laughter. And above it all, one voice laughed—soft, yet loud and unmistakably clear. It was his mom’s voice. Gloria was up there with them. Beside herself with joy in this display.
Then, in a flash, her whole face filled his mind, or maybe all of space. Her head tilted back slightly, and her mouth opened. She was laughing with delight, as he had never seen anyone laugh. Tears streamed over bunched cheeks, and her eyes sparkled bright. The sight did two things to Spencer at once, with crushing finality. It washed some of that joy and desire into his own chest, so that he burst into tears and laughter. And it made him want to be there. Like he had never wanted anything in his whole life. A desperate craving to be there.
The whole vision lasted maybe two seconds.
And then it was gone.
Spencer slumped in his chair like a blubbering, laughing, raggedy doll.
When Grandma Helen finally took him home two hours later, the world seemed like a strange new place to him. As if it were a dream world and the one he’d seen in Grandma’s house was the real one. But he knew with settling certainty that this world, with trees and houses and his dad’s Lexus parked in the driveway, was indeed very real.
It made him sad again, because in this world his mom was dead.
Week Four
KENT PUNCHED the numbers again, hoping that this time, Borst would be in his office. In the last two weeks he’d left three messages for his supervisor, and the man had yet to return a call. He had called the first week and left word with Betty that he would be taking two or three weeks off to collect himself, put things in order.
“Of course,” she’d said. “I’ll pass it right on. Do what you need to do. I’m sure everyone will understand. Our hearts are with you.”
“Thank you. And could you ask Borst to give me a call?”
“Sure.”
That had been seventeen days ago. Goodness, it had not been
he
who’d passed on. The least they could do was return a call. His life was in enough disarray. It had taken all of two weeks for him to take the first steps back to reality. Back to the realization that aside from Spencer, and actually because of Spencer, his career was now everything.
And now Borst was avoiding him.
The phone rang three times before Betty’s voice crackled in his ear. “Nipon-bank Information Systems; this is Betty.”
“Betty. Hi. This is—”
“Kent! How are you?” She sounded normal enough. Her reaction came as a small wave of relief.
“Okay, actually. I’m doing better. Listen, I really need to speak with Borst. I know he must be busy, but do you think you could patch me through for a minute?” It was a lie, of course. He knew nothing of the kind. Borst had not had a busy day in his life.
She hesitated. “Uh, sure, Kent. Let me see if he’s in.” A butterfly took flight in his belly at her tone. Borst was always
in
. If not in his office then in the john, reading some Grisham novel.
Let me check?
Who did they think he was?
Betty came back on. “Just a minute, Kent. Let me put you through.”
The line broke into Barry Manilow’s “I Write the Songs.” The music brought a cloud to Kent’s heart. That was one of the problems with mourning; it came and left without regard for circumstances.
“Kent!” Borst’s voice sounded forced. Kent imagined the man sitting behind that big screen in his office, overdressed in that navy three-piece he liked to wear. “How are you doing, Kent?”
“Fine.”
“Good. We’ve been worried about you. I’m sorry about what happened. I had a niece who died once.” Borst did not elaborate, possibly because he’d suddenly realized how stupid that sounded.
Don’t forget your pet ferret, Monkey Brains. It died too, didn’t it? Must’ve been devastating!
“Yeah. It’s tough,” Kent said. “I’m sorry for taking so much time off here, but—”
“No, it’s fine. Really. You take all the time you need. Not that we don’t need you here, but we understand.” He was speaking quickly. “Believe me, it’s no problem.”
“Thanks, but I think the best thing now is to get back to work. I’ll be in on Monday.” It was Friday. That gave him a weekend to set his mind in the right frame. “Besides, there are a few clarifications I need to make on the funds processing system.” That should spark a comment on the Miami conference. Surely the reception to AFPS had been favorable. Why was Borst not slobbering about it?
“Sure,” his supervisor said, rather anemically. “Yeah, Monday’s good.”
Kent could not contain his curiosity any longer. “So, what did they say to AFPS?” he asked as nonchalantly as possible.
“Oh, they loved it. It was a real smash, Kent. I wish you could have been there. It’s everything we hoped for. Maybe more.”
Of course! He’d known it all along. “So did the board make any mention of it?” Kent asked.
“Yes. Yes, they did. In fact, they’ve already implemented it. System wide.”
The revelation brought Kent to his feet. His chair clattered to the floor behind him. “What? How? I should have been told. There are some things —”
“We didn’t think it would be right to bother you. You know with the missis dying and all. But don’t worry; it’s been working exactly as we designed it to work.”
We
nothing, Bucko. It was my program; you should have waited for me!
At least it was working. “So it was a big hit, huh?” He retrieved his chair and sat down.
“Very big. It was the buzz of the conference.”
Kent squeezed his eyes and gripped his fist tight, exhilarated. Suddenly he wanted to be back. He imagined walking into the bank on Monday, a dozen suits thumping his back with congratulations.
“Good. Okay, I’ll see you Monday, Markus. It’ll be good to get back.”
“Well, it’ll be good to have you back too, Kent.”
He thought about telling the man about the changes he’d made to the program before leaving for Miami but decided they could wait the weekend. Besides, he rather liked the idea of being the only man who really knew the inner workings of AFPS. A little power never hurt anybody.
Kent hung up, feeling decent for the first time since Gloria’s death. It was settled, then. On Monday he would reenter his skyrocketing career. It would breathe new life into him.