How many times had he heard that and laughed with glee regardless?
As she headed toward the stairs, she saw Benjy dive into his bed. “I thought you were asleep!” she said.
“He was standing right behind you in the doorway when you were in here, Mom!” Bruce yelled.
“Shut up, Big Mouth!”
“Benjamin!”
“I mean, âShut up, Bruce!'”
Elisabeth ran a hand through her hair. How could three so different children have come from the same womb? Downstairs she swept debris from in front of the fireplace, set the logs, replaced the screen, and watched as the fire leapt. Back in her room she lay on her side of the bed. She would never again have to worry she was crowding Will or hogging the covers, but she avoided his side as if doing otherwise would besmirch his memory. She gathered his pillow to her breast, buried her face in it and smelled his essence, and cried herself to sleep.
She awoke gasping for breath, a child atop her, shaking her. It was Betty. She was wheezing so badly she could barely get out the words. “Mama! Mama!”
“The flue's probably shut!” Elisabeth said, pushing Betty toward the stairs. “Get outside where you can breathe! I'll get it open again!”
She followed Betty down the steps and tried to get near the fireplace. The smoke was so thick she couldn't see and didn't dare inhale, but one thing was frighteningly clear: the fire had escaped the fireplace, and that entire end of the room was on fire.
Betty stood frozen at the front door, coughing and gasping. Elisabeth recalled how dangerously cold it was as she backed toward the stairs. The oxygen from the open front door fueled the fire and it filled the room. “Betty! Get out! Go next door and call the fire department!”
Elisabeth eluded huge licks of flame that singed her hair as she charged up the stairs two at a time, screaming for Benjy and Bruce. “Get up!” she shrieked. “Get up! Fire! We've got to get out, boys!”
Benjy's room was the farthest, so she went to get him first, planning to grab Bruce on the way back. “Get up, Bruce!” she screamed as she passed his door. He lay motionless and she feared that the smoke had already gotten to him.
She burst into Benjy's room, yelling for him. Nothing. No movement. She felt all over his bed, then dropped to her hands and knees and checked underneath, then the rest of his floor and the closet, all the while frantically calling him. She hollered down the hall, “Benjy, are you up here? Get out! Get out now! Bruce, get up!”
She moved to Benjy's window and peered out. The neighbors' lights were on, Betty was huddled with a woman in the driveway, and it looked like Benjy was with a man. She raised the window and shouted, “Is that Benjy down there?”
“Yes!” the man shouted. “Firemen are on their way! Get out!”
Elisabeth whirled to see the hallway lit bright orange. The draft from the window had drawn the fire up the stairs. She tried to shut it but it was jammed. “Bruce!” she screamed. “Get up! Get out!”
She moved into the hall where the flames lapped at the walls around Bruce's doorframe. She leaped into his room and found him curled in a ball in his bed, the covers over his head. She yanked them off and used all her strength to lift him. He was limp as a doll and she was sure he was not breathing. She had forgotten how heavy a boy could be. How long had it been since she had carried him?
She slapped at his face and shook him, hoping to rouse him so he would be more than dead weight. But the fire burst in from the hall and enveloped her. She nearly dropped Bruce, flailing at a ribbon on her nightgown that had caught fire.
Elisabeth was out of options, standing there in the middle of the night with her youngest child in her arms, the two of them about to be incinerated. The fire, originated in the fireplace, fueled from the front door, and drawn by the open window in the back bedroom upstairs, was a raging monster hungry to devour everything in its path.
Elisabeth shifted to hold Bruce tighter, buried her seared face in his neck, and backed toward the window. The room was engulfed in flames now, and she had seconds to get out or burn. She felt for the window frame with her backside, then moved forward a step and drove herself back. The twenty-foot fall might kill them, but they had a better chance in the snow than in the inferno.
She was upright when she hit the window, the center of the wood frame catching her at the waist without any give. Her sleeves were afire, now her hair. She screamed, bent over as far as she could without dropping the boy, and backpedaled through the window, her seat smashing through the pane.
The back of her head caught the middle of the frame, and it seemed she was watching her own death in arrested time. Her dark-haired boy was sandwiched between her torso and her legs. She hung out the window, the arctic wind biting into the sweat on her neck. Her bare feet seemed but inches from her face, and again the draft drew the fire.
Elisabeth hung there for an instant, suspended between heaven and earth, the soles of her feet and the top of her head roasting while her seat and her back froze. If she couldn't dislodge the back of her head she knew it would serve as kindling to the holocaust. Mustering her last trace of strength and exhaling to make herself as thin as possible, even with a boy attached to her middle, she tucked her chin as deep into her chest as she could.
Gravity pulled her farther out the window, the window frame catching her hairline at the back and tearing it away from her skull. With the hem of her gown ablaze, Elisabeth rocked hard, felt her scalp tear free, and knew if she felt anything more, it would be a horrible collision with the cold, cold ground.
Elisabeth was amazed at the amalgam of images that passed through her mind in the next split second. She must look like a burning marsh-mallow, all white and puffy, flung off a stick at a midnight roast. Her instinct was to throw out her arms and try to turn so she would land any way other than on her back or her head. But she would never let go of the boy. She believed their only chance was together. Separate free-falling objects would likely both be smashed beyond mending. She and Bruce were in this together, for life or for death.
She was aware of smoke above, stars peeking through, the wind rushing up under her nightclothes, Bruce suddenly weightless as they seemed to float together. She hung on to him for all she was worth, and in the next instant the wind was driven from her lungs in a great gush and she heard the crack, crack, cracking of twigs and branches and then a big branch. The leafless tree on the east side of the house had broken her flight.
Bruce and her feet rotated above her as she continued to hold him tight. Even in the face of death, modesty made her grateful that any audience was on the other side of the house. She feared landing, unable to move, her nightgown over her head.
For a flash she thought she had stopped, lodged between branches, but they gave way and she rolled, another branch changing her direction yet again. Then she landed roughly on her side in the snow and felt Bruce's sternum smash into her ribs. That drove air from his lungs and he expelled smoky, blackened phlegm and mucus that allowed him to breathe.
A fire truck slid up to the curb, and half the crew sprinted for her, diving to douse the fingers of fire that flitted about her. She ached all over but was able to sit up, then help get herself on a stretcher as she watched the men attend to Bruce. He was shaken, puzzled, scared. But fine.
A nasty tear above Elisabeth's neck at the hairline in back would require stitches. Her feet and face and hands were blistered, her hair singed, her eyebrows and lashes gone. She had cracked a rib in back and one in front. And she had suffered damage to her upper spine that would never be accurately diagnosed or treated. It would bother her for the rest of her life, but she would also let it remind her of the night of the fire and another miraculous deliverance of her blessed son. God had allowed her to pluck him from the jaws of death yet again.
As she was carried to an ambulance, her attention was drawn to the west side of the house where a figure stood next to the neighbor man and jumped up and down, seemingly unable to stop. It was Benjy, shouting hysterically, laughing with each breath.
“What's that crazy boy saying?” a fireman said.
Suddenly the wind shifted and they heard him clearly. “Now there's a fire!” he screeched. “There's a fire all right!”
“I'd lock him up,” another fireman said.
“I'd shoot him.”
“If this turns out to be arson, he's the first one I'd talk to.”
Which it was, and which they did.
The night had been so cold that the remaining shell of the house was ice encrusted for the next several days. Fire investigators found that there was still a pile of logs near the fireplace that had been only charred. The cause of the smoke and fire, they said, was a stack of huge books thrown on the fire that probably blocked the exhaust when the pages flew up to the wire mesh near the top of the chimney.
Bruce would never have done something like that, especially with his precious volumes. All the evidence pointed to Benjy, who denied the charge with everything he could muster. The closest investigators got to a confession, they said, was when he allowed, “If I had anything to do with it, it had to be in my sleep, because I don't remember anything about it.”
Because of his age, nothing more could be done anyway. The most incriminating evidence: Betty said Benjy was already outside when she got there. He claimed he had heard someone yelling “Fire!” and he had run.
The family was shuttled from member to member of Christ Church during the months it took to rebuild the house. Elisabeth was never so glad to move back home, but she lived in fear for their safety as long as Benjy was around. She could hardly believe he was her own son. She loved him and prayed for him and scoured her memory for some key to his despicable behavior. And she was scared to death of him.
Elisabeth took the kids to see Will every Saturday for a few months until it became too difficult for all of them. He was soon unable to walk, to dress, to feed himself. His speech became childlike, then nonsense, then just sounds. He drooled. His hands and feet curled. He did not recognize his family, though sometimes he maintained eye contact with Elisabeth and with Bruce for several seconds at a time. Elisabeth detected wonder if not recognition, and she constantly talked to Will as if he could hear and understand.
She went back to work at Snyder's Pharmacy, accepting all the overtime she could get. Still she had to take in laundry again, and she even watched a few other children frequently. Anything for enough income to keep making the interest payments on the house, which she had restored after the fire to its original design. Elisabeth knew that would mean a lot to Will. Their clothes, the car, nearly everything else fell into disrepair and could not be replaced. But she vowed to keep the house. It represented Will to her if anything did.
With all she was doing, Elisabeth still somehow found time to keep coming to church. The new pastor, a young man named David Clarkson, fresh out of seminary with a wife and small children, urged her to cut back from all her service. And she did. Some. “But I'm going to be there Sundays anyway,” she said. “I might as well keep teaching.” Often she did her devotions and studied her lesson while sitting at the State Hospital with Will. Tomorrow and every day.
She no longer had the time or energy to go to choir practice or practice the piano, nor could she attend missionary society meetings. She tried to keep up her share of missionary letter assignments anyway, but often fell asleep in Will's room while writing.
Will had become helpless. She greeted him every day, opened the curtains, looked into his eyes, ran her hand through his hair, cupped his face in her hands, talked to him, prayed with him, and sometimes just stood and caressed him as he stared blankly. She knew her husband was somewhere in that wasted body, that shriveling frame that sometimes hummed but mostly grunted or groaned. Will hardly ever moved on his own and could not roll over.
Elisabeth held pictures of the kids before his face, never able to tell if he had an inkling what he was looking at. But she told him anyway. Countless people told her she needn't feel obligated to come every day or even at all. The pleasant chaplain, doctors, nurses, orderlies, other patients' visitors she had gotten to know, neighbors, her pastor, church friends, people from Fairbanks-Morse, coworkers, everyone had the same opinion: she should not come every day. The cost. The toll on her. “And dare we say it, Elisabethâthe waste of your time.” They said they knew she meant well and that her loyalty was admirable, but â¦
What they didn't understand was that duty was only part of her motivation. Yes, she had promised herself to this man for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health. And she knew if she were the one ravaged by the disease, Will would be there for her every day. But beyond that, she
wanted to
be there. There was nowhere she would rather be.
She loved this man in the present tense. She didn't love only his memory. And while the grotesque body no longer looked like him and she could no longer communicate with him, couldn't everyone see it was still him? The man in the bed, the man in the diaper, the man whose very soul had seemed to leave him overnight was Will! Where else should she be? She had no interest in arguing the point. She knew that people meant to be helpful; fine, she would smile and listen. And while she did not counter, neither did she agree. Neither did she stop coming, driving from Three Rivers or taking the bus. Every day. Tomorrow and every day.
When she missed because she was ill, she could hardly wait to get there again. She repeated her routine every time and wondered if he was aware when she missed. It made no difference. If she was a fool, she was a fool. A fool for Christ, and a fool for Will.
B
enjamin became more than Elisabeth could handle. When he finally began the eighth gradeâthe first year of high school in Three RiversâElisabeth hoped being around older kids might help him mature.
Exhausted from a long day at the State Hospital with Will, Elisabeth made certain she was home when Benjy arrived from school that first day. She wanted to ask, “So how was it?” but his demeanor made the question moot.
“Ma, what's a
Rhinie
anyway?”
“A
Rhinie?
How are you spelling that?”
“How should I know? It's what the older kids call eighth graders, and I'm about to pop the next one of 'em who does.”
Elisabeth told Benjamin that most schools have traditions for initiating newcomers, but he didn't want to hear it. She could tell he was embarrassed to be by far the oldest eight grader, and she feared he would make good on his threat.
The next day the school tracked her down through her emergency numbers, finally reaching her in Kalamazoo. “Mrs. Bishop,” the discipline dean told her, “your son bloodied both a tenth grader and the physical education teacher assigned to break up the fight. Benjamin will be suspended for a week, and then one more incident will become a matter for the police.”
The suspension punished her more than Benjy. What was she supposed to do with him for a week? She made him ride along to Kalamazoo, but he refused to go in and visit his father. Once she came out to the car during lunch, only to find that he had somehow hot-wired it and was joyriding around town.
By the end of the school year, Three Rivers High was glad to see Benjy go, but within a week he had been fired from a summer job and found enough mischief to get himself sent to the Audy Home for Juvenile Offenders in Kalamazoo. His sentence was to last until the next school year, when he was expected to make another attempt at passing eighth grade.
Seeing the bright side even of this, Elisabeth slept better without him in the house and visited him as often as was allowed on her way to or from seeing Will. He clearly didn't care whether she visited or not, and she could tell he was becoming more hardened than rehabilitated.
The next fall he returned to high school briefly, using home as a rest stop between parties and getting in trouble with his friends, many of whom had cars. When Benjy did make the occasional appearance at home, he smelled of alcohol and tobacco.
One morning at breakfast, the usually chipper Bruce looked as if he hadn't slept. “Reading all night again?” Elisabeth said.
Bruce shook his head. Betty, whom Elisabeth feared was becoming as petulant as Benjamin, gave her a look. “You didn't hear? You must sleep like a rock.”
“Hear what?”
“Bruce was up all night again, tending to the prodigal.”
“What are you talking about?”
Betty pushed away her cereal bowl and began a coughing jag that left her groaning and pounding the table. “I'm going to kill myself if you don't get me some relief from this!”
“Betty! Don't say that! I've tried and tried toâ”
“Well, you've failed, Mom! You spend so much time bailing Ben out of the drunk tank and going ape over little Mr. Perfect here, you might as well let me die.”
“Oh, Betty!”
“And since you slept through it, you might as well know that Bruce takes care of Benjy
every time
he comes home in the middle of the night to vomit his guts out.”
Elisabeth didn't want to ask how frequently. She was losing Benjy and apparently Betty too, and worse, she was abdicating her most distasteful responsibilities to Bruce. Desperate to show Bettyâwho rose to leaveâshe was still in charge, Elisabeth said, “That's it! Benjy's out of this house.”
Even sleepy Bruce looked up at her as Betty stopped. “You'd do that?” she said. “Ben bet me you'd never have the nerve.”
Elisabeth was mad. “Well,” she said, “you win.”
“Can I tell him?” Betty said.
“I'll tell him,” Elisabeth said. “Where is he?”
“I couldn't get him off the floor this morning,” Bruce said. “He might still be in the bathroom.”
Elisabeth found Benjy, a smelly mess, draped across his bed. “Get up and get out,” she said. “You're no longer welcome in this house.”
He did not stir, and she feared he was not breathing. She knelt to put an ear next to his face and smelled more than cigarette smoke. Benjamin reeked of gasoline and woodsmoke. What now? At least he was breathing. She wrote him a note, telling him she had come to the end of her patience and reminding him that she had prayed about this. She was on her way out the doorâwith him still dead to the worldâwhen the Three Rivers Police called, asking if Benjamin Phillip Bishop was home.
“He's sleeping,” she said. “What's he done?”
“You're certain he's asleep?” the desk sergeant pressed.
“Yes, now what?”
“We're coming to get him. If he is not there when we arrive, you will be responsible.”
“For what?”
“Aiding and abetting a fugitive wanted for arson.”
Benjamin had been identified by a neighbor of the same phys ed teacher he had assaulted the year before. The woman had seen him in the alley behind the man's house just before his garage burned to the ground.
Benjy's life as a free man was over. He would be in and out of jail for the next several years over a series of disorderly conducts, petty thefts, parole violations, and two grand theft autos; finally, an armed robbery would send him to the Michigan State Penitentiary in Jackson.
Elisabeth gave up trying to visit him there after the fourth consecutive time he refused to see her. Still she wrote him and sent him gifts and necessities at least twice a week. She proffered more prayer and shed more tears over that boy than the rest of her prayer list combined. She reminded him constantly that she and God still loved him unconditionally. His only reply, dictated to the prison chaplain, said he considered her “a raving religious lunatic.”
Maybe she was, she decided. The chaplain wrote that he had discovered Benjamin had “never mastered reading, suffers from a puzzling inability to differentiate between similarly shaped letters and numbers, and seems still to possess the nervous energy of a schoolboy.”
Elisabeth fired off this reply: “You may find any number of excuses for aberrant behavior, as this seems the fashion of the day. But as a man of the cloth you surely know that the root problem of base human nature is sin. No amount of remedial education or calming therapy will rehabilitate men who need to deal before God with their sin problem.”
The chaplain let time pass before responding, but his reply humiliated Elisabeth. “You are apparently blind to your own narrow judgments. While I might agree there are no excuses for crime, being open to reasons outside the sinfulness of man might prove fruitful. You profess unconditional love, but have you ever looked beneath the surface? Is it possible the answer to how a hardened criminal could emerge from your family might be found in some less black-and-white area?”
Having finished her special school course by her sixteenth birthday, miserable, sickly Betty wanted outâout of Michigan, and out from under her mother's influence. “Where will you go?” Elisabeth asked her. “What has happened to you?”
“Thankfully, I met some students like me who are tired of being controlled by their families. We need to take charge of our own destinies so we aren't dependent victims all our lives.”
Elisabeth bit her tongue. She wanted to say, “What about that oxygen bottle strapped to your side?” but she wasn't sure Betty's declaration of independence was all bad. Until Cliff.
Betty first exercised her self-announced freedom by insisting on her own hours, but Elisabeth was encouraged by her desire to do volunteer work in the church. She helped package foodstuffs for needy families and also coordinated a church food co-op, which helped finance social ministries. When Betty first mentioned Cliff, one of the co-op farm's truckers, his significance was lost on her.
But when Betty began referring to him more frequently, Elisabeth took note. “Who is this Cliff again?”
Betty sat filling her pill containers. “I told you, Mother. He's a truck driver. And he's just landed a long-haul job out of New Mexico.”
“They let young drivers have those jobs?”
“I didn't say he was young. He's driven cross-country before.”
“How old is he?”
Betty shrugged. “I'd sure love to live out west. Dry climate. They say lots of asthma sufferers go there for relief.”
“Who's âthey'?”
“Everybody.”
“Everybody like Cliff.”
“Yeah.”
“Do I need to meet this boy?”
“For one thing, Mother, he's no boy. He's a man.”
“Are you dating him?”
Betty fell silent and went upstairs. Elisabeth called after her.
“Just leave me alone!” Betty shouted from the top of the stairs. “I'll bet Ben is happier in prison than he was here!”
Elisabeth couldn't imagine what she had done to so alienate her daughter. Betty rebuffed every attempt at reconciling, so Elisabeth finally confronted her. “You won't talk to Pastor with me and you refuse to tell me where you are at all hours of the night. Do I need to ban you from the house the way I did Benjy?”
“That worked well, didn't it?” Betty said. “He never came back either.”
“What do you mean âeither'?”
“Just what I said.” And she began packing.
Elisabeth did not want to plead, to break down, to show weakness. She had somehow lost Betty and didn't know why. And she couldn't risk pushing this girl farther away.
God,
she prayed silently,
I can't do this alone!
That night Betty did not come home. Late in the afternoon the next day, when she found out Betty had not been at the church all day, Elisabeth was about ready to report her missing when Frances Childs called. “Betty asked if I would give you a letter from her.”
“Where is she?”
“Shall I give it to Bruce when he brings Trudy home, or do you want to come get it, or what?”
“Bruce has the car.”
“Art's working second shift, but he got a ride. I'll bring it over.”
“I don't want to make you come all this way, Fran.”
“Nonsense. I'm on my way.”
Elisabeth could not mask her dread over the letter from Betty. She and Frances sat in the parlor as Elisabeth tore at the envelope.
“She's a very unhappy girl,” Frances said.
“I know. Have you met Cliff?”
“Of course.”
Elisabeth slid the letter from the envelope. It read: “Mother, by the time you read this, Cliff and I will be married. I know you dreamed of a big church wedding, but you would not have approved of him, no matter what I said. I'm going with him to New Mexico. Mrs. Childs can give you more details. I love you. I really do. Don't worry about me. Betty.”
Elisabeth pressed her lips together as she replaced the letter. “âDon't worry about me'?” she echoed. “I haven't even met this man!”
Frances nodded.
Elisabeth glared at her. “You couldn't have told me? We've been friends since childhood, and you didn't think I should know?”
“I'm sorry. Betty asked me not to.”
“She's a teenager! What does she know?”
“She knew you wouldn't understand.”
“This man is going to take care of her? Does he have any ideaâ?”
Frances shifted in her chair. “There's no easy way to say it, Elisabeth. Cliff is older than you are, twice divorced, and a grandfather.”
Elisabeth balled her fist, the letter crumpled between her fingers. “I could have it annulled.”
“She's of age, Elisabeth. And Cliff claims to be a Christian.”
“Lots of people do.”
“Betty believes him. So do I.”
“You would.” Frances looked wounded. “Forgive me, Fran. I don't know why I said that. It's just, I'm soâI don't know what I am.”
“It's all right, dear,” Frances said. “Anyone would be upset.”
Elisabeth spread her arms, raised her brows, and announced, “I'm a failure. That's all there is to it.”
Frances rose and sat next to her, wrapping an arm around her. “I know this is a cliché, sweetie, but this too shall pass. No one can call you a failure when you have a son like Bruce. And let me tell you something, Betty has more of a head on her shoulders than you give her credit for.”
Elisabeth folded her arms around her stomach and rocked. “That's not saying much.”
Unable to afford train or bus fare and feeling unwelcome in New Mexico anyway, Elisabeth had seen only pictures of her son-in-law. Cliff was a large, swarthy man given to leather and red bandanas. It pained Elisabeth to see that Betty still had to carry a portable oxygen tank. She was mortified that Betty so enjoyed Cliff's grandchild that she had taken to calling herself a grandmother.
Against her own inclination, Elisabeth felt the urging of God to maintain contact with them. Believing this was part of her experiment in obedience, she forced herself to write regularly with news about the church, about Bruce, and even about Benjamin. She was intrigued, though skeptical, to learn that Cliff and Betty were members of a small Bible church in Albuquerque.
Thank God for Bruce,
Elisabeth often thought. While it was clear her older two had always been jealous of him, she found it difficult to keep from praising him. Betty wrote that she hoped her mother was not “being as effusive about Bruce to Benjy as you have to Cliff and me.” Weren't they proud that Bruce had finished in the top ten percent of his class, that he was a three-sport athlete (all-conference in baseball), and that she had become a sports fan just watching him?
Were they so small they couldn't be as thrilled as she that he belonged to the Bible Club, competed in speaking at Boys' State in Lansing, and taught his own junior boys Sunday school class? Why, he was only doing the things they should have done.