This Side of Salvation

CHAPTER 26

FORTY-THREE TO FORTY-TWO DAYS BEFORE THE RUSH

Of course, on the last weekend of my quasi-normal life, Bailey was out of town on a Sierra Club outreach trip to inner-city Harrisburg. Early Saturday afternoon I texted Kane:

Can we leave for practice a half hour early? I need your help.

When I got into the car, Kane was yelling at his phone. “We’ll discuss it later!” Then he thumbed the screen and shoved the phone into the console between the seats. “Or never.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“No one. I was texting my mom.”

“So you were talking to yourself.”

“Shut up. Yes.” He pulled out into the street. “She wants me to goto Villanova so I can live at home. I refuse to apply.”

“It’d be cheaper. And you’d have daily access to Campus Corner’s cheese fries.”

“This is true. But plenty of other colleges like Maryland or UVA would be cheaper, even if I lived on campus. Plus no priests.”

I envied Kane’s college choices. I’d be going to whichever college gave me the biggest baseball scholarship—if any did at all.

“It’s not the money,” Kane continued. “Mom wants me where she can keep me on the ‘straight and narrow.’ If I get any narrower, they’ll canonize me.”

“St. Kane of Wayne.”

“And if we lived one town over, you could be St. David of St. Davids.” He gestured to the small chalk-white train station building on our left.

“So what’s going on? What prompted this little shopping trip?”

“My parents said I can’t see Bailey, starting Tuesday.”

“What?! Why?”

“Because of the Rush. We have to spend the forty days before it getting ready, and that means retreating from the world. Repenting.”

“Sort of like Lent?”

“Yeah. Monday night could be our last chance for a while.” Maybe forever, if she won’t wait for me and decides to find someone less dysfunctional.

“Makes sense.” He tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel. “Seize the day, right? Like in that Edward Norton movie where he had twenty-four hours of freedom before he went to jail.”

“It’s exactly like that.” The Abandoning did feel like a prison sentence.

“You think Bailey’ll do it?”

“I know she wants to. I mean, she hasn’t pressured me or anything.” Unless getting me so worked up I can’t think counts as pressure. “But she said she’s ready when I am.”

“And you’re ready now?”

“I think I have been for a while, but—never mind, it’s stupid.”

“What’s stupid?”

“Being intimidated by her, you know, experience.”

“So she’s not a virgin.” He said it like a statement instead of a question. “I wondered.”

“She had a boyfriend in Montreal.”

“No way! A French-Canadian guy? They’re, like, practically European.” He swung out intot he busy Lancaster Avenue traffic. “I can see why you’re intimidated.”

“Why? What have you heard about Europeans?”

“They’re more adventurous.”

“Great,” I said under my breath.

“Hey, you of all people can handle performance anxiety. I’ve seen you pitch your way out of some seriously hairy situations. Bases loaded, no outs, you’re totally wiped—somehow you put all that out of your mind and just do it.”

“Not always.” I shrugged and admitted, “Usually.”

“Sex is probably the same way. So when you’re with her, just pretend you’re on the mound. Relax and focus.”

“Hmm.” I did have years of experience coaching myself through stressful moments. Maybe I should start applying those skills to my life.

Kane veered onto the ramp for the Blue Route, the interstate highway cutting through the heart of the Main Line. “Bailey loves you, man, and she’s totally hot for you. So you don’t have to be perfect. Just get it across the plate.”

His metaphor was starting to break down, but I got the general idea: Don’t make sex more complicated than it has to be. And definitely don’t think about adventurous French Canadians.

I stared at the bewildering array of condoms on the racks before us, feeling like a tourist gaping at New York skyscrapers for the first time.

“They don’t come in sizes?” I whispered to Kane.

“I think it’s one size fits all. Well, two sizes: regular and large.” “How do you know if you need large?”

Kane scratched his forehead. “I think you just know.” “They should have fitting rooms like in clothing stores.” He cracked up, drawing the attention of a drugstore worker our moms’ age. She started to ask if we needed help, then changed her mind when she saw what we were buying.

“Good idea coming to Broomall instead of our friendly neighborhood pharmacy.” Kane lowered his voice again. “People mgiht talk if they see us doing this together.”

“Not if we buy different boxes,” I said, attempting a joke to calm my nerves.

“They might think we want variety.”

“Then we should each get a box of the same kind.”

“Then they’ll think we’re planning a really big weekend.”

“Kane, I don’t care what people think. If you care, that’s your problem. Now shut up and help me decide.”

He shut up, and we contemplated the choices before us. I had a vague memory of a middle school sex ed class where we’d learned why condoms should be used, and how to discuss them with your “partner” (which I always thought sounded businesslike and the opposite of hot), but there’d been no lesson on how to choose among them:

Her Pleasure, Double Pleasure, Extended Pleasure . . .

I wish John were here.

Large, Lubricated, Latex-Free . . .

John would know which ones to get.

Extra-Thin, Extra-Thick, Extra-Strength . . .

Better yet, John would get them for me.

Candy-Flavored, Rainbow-Colored, Patriotic-Themed . . .

Maybe Dad—no, no way.

In the end I picked the box with the fewest adjectives.

“I think Bailey’ll wait for you,” Kane said when we were in the car again. “But it sucks that your parents are depriving you of a girlfriend for forty days.” He turned the key in the ignition, then gasped. “That includes prom, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” I waited until he’d backed out of the parking space and maneuvered around a few incoming cars before dumping all the disappointment. “Also, I can’t see you.”

His head whipped around at me before he drew his eyes back to the parking lot we were cruising through. “Just me?”

“All my friends.”

“But we’ll still see you at practice, right?” He came to the stoplight at the road and put on his blinker. “David?”

I shook my head, unable to meet his eyes.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“It’s just temporary.”

“Not to them it isn’t! Your parents think your life is over in forty days, and they want you to spend the rest of it without Bailey or your friends or baseball? That’s abuse.” Kane was becoming livid in two senses of the word: super angry, and kind of bluish in the face.

“It’s okay.” I knew it wasn’t okay, but I wanted to calm him down before the light turned green. “With everything going on at home, I don’t need the extra stress.”

“Yes, you do! You need baseball. I swear to God, if you quit baseball, I will call Social Services and have them take you away.” He jammed on the accelerator to pull into the intersection. “I’ll say I saw your parents beat you with soap bars in pillowcases on a daily basis for years.”

I grabbed the door handle as he swerved to avoid a crow scavenging a fallen fast-food bag. “Don’t swear to God.”

“Shut up! I am sick of this shit. I’m sick of being understanding and supportive while you ruin your life.”

“You act like I’m on drugs. I’m just trying to help my family.”

“Your family sucks. Sorry, man. I just can’t take it anymore.”

We stayed silent all the way up the Blue Route. Our exit’s off-ramp was flanked by two steep hills, one topped with a twenty-foot-tall cairn—a big pile of rocks, basically—and the other displaying a huge flat griffin made from hundreds of white stones. Both monuments were installed to honor Middle Merion Township’s Welsh heritage.

Like Bailey’s family. She’d told me that her last name, Brynn, meant “hill” in Welsh. Now I’d never be able to drive on the freaking Blue Route without missing her.

“Will you really call Social Services on my parents if I quit baseball?” I asked Kane when we got out of the car at the high school.

Kane leaned on the hood with his knuckles, elbows angled out, not answering. He looked like a bowlegged bulldog.

“I can still play league ball this summer,” I reminded him. “Scouts are already following me, they’ll come see me whenever and wherever I pitch.”

“Yeah, they’re following you. Which means they’ll find out you left the Middle Merion team. You think all they care about is your fastball and changeup? They want guys they can rely on. Guys who don’t quit.”

He was right: I might as well pin a scarlet Q on your chest. Maybe I could explain to the scouts that my parents were forcing me to leave the team. Then again, they might see family turmoil as a risk factor. What if one day my parents made me drop out of college on another whim?

“Will you at least have my back with Coach Kopecki?” I asked Kane.

He straightened up and turned toward the ball field. “No, but I’ll have your side.”

Kane did have my side with Coach Kopecki, in that he stood by it while I delivered the bad news. Kane also picked up the batting helmets and rosin bags that Kopecki threw in his uncharacteristic fit of rage.And Kane was the only one on the team who tipped his hat when I walked away.

Other than grace, no words were spoken at dinner that night. I couldn’t bring myself to say, “I quit baseball.” It felt like the statement would scorch my tongue on its way out.

Sunday morning I found my mother sitting alone at the end of the kitchen table, clutching her “Keep Calm and Drink Coffee” mug as if it were her only source of warmth. A plastic grocery bag lay crumpled on the table next to her.

She was still wearing her bathrobe, though it was almost time to leave for Stony Hill. “Isn’t service at ten o’clock?” I asked her as I poured a bowl of cereal.

“Your father’s left on one of his trips, Mara’s refused to go anywhere with us—and I’m not feeling up to it. You can drive yourself if you want. Or go back to bed.”

From the fridge I pulled out my carton of almond milk, which gave me a twinge. Every vegan food reminded me of Bailey. “We’ve missed church a lot lately. How come?”

“I’m tired of their judgments. Those people look at us like we’re crazy.”

“Not all of them. When we first started going there and people found out about my graffiti, some of them judged me. But they got over it.” I set the milk on the counter instead of adding it to my cereal, then went over and sat next to her. “I have a question. Promise you’ll answer honestly?”

“I’ll answer the best I can.”

That sounded more honest than a promise of honesty.

“Sophia says the righteous will be Rushed, but why would she think I qualify after the things I’ve done? I spray painted ‘God Sucks’ on the side of a school bus. I replaced the baby Jesus with an Elmo doll in the church nativity scene.”

Her brow creased. “That was you?” I nodded, and Mom took my hand. “David, you wouldn’t have lashed out at God if you didn’t love Him.”

“I don’t get it.”

“When your brother died, you were angry at God. We all were. It’s natural. But instead of turning away, you struck back. At least you respected Him enough to shout at His face.” Her cool fingers tightened on my wrist. “And finally you repented, like the prodigal son. God celebrates the returning sinner more than the righteous person who never left.”

“It’s not fair,” I told her. “People who never screw up in the first place, should get bonus points.”

“Grace doesn’t work that way,” Mom said. “It’s all about faith. You have it.” She let go of me. “And Mara doesn’t.”

This shocked me. “What? How do you know?”

“I see it in her eyes when she looks at the cross. I hear it in her voice when she prays. She goes through the motions. All the good behavior is worthless without faith.” Mom lifted her coffee cup with both hands, as if it was heavy, but didn’t sip. “If we can see into her heart, so can the Lord.”

“Didn’t Jesus say we should forgive people seventy times seven times?”

“But one has to ask for forgiveness,” Mom said. “Mara just wants to be free of us.”

Because Dad is sick, and you won’t help him. I couldn’t take the thought of Mara leaving us, leaving me alone with them.

I got up and went into the hall, to the table by the front door where I’d left my baseball glove. I carried the glove into the kitchen and set it reverently on the table before my mother. “I gave this up for you and Dad. So he’d better have been telling the truth about getting help.” Please say it was all just a test and I can go back to the team. Say you’re proud of my faith, but you just can’t make me give up everything that matters to me. Please.

She rubbed circles over her temples with her thumbs. “He’s trying very hard.”

I yanked my chair around to face her and sat down hard. “No, Mom, he’s not trying. Why should he? We haven’t stopped him, we’ve just learned how to avoid him. Like when he was drinking.”

“He got over that, thanks to the good Lord. Your father hasn’t touched a bottle in years.”

“He doesn’t need the bottle when he has the Bible.”

“Of course not, it—” She stopped as she realized what I was saying. “Don’t you dare compare his faith to—to that disease he had. Don’t you dare.”

I put my palms out in pacifying mode before she could go ballistic. “Mom, I’m not saying it’s the same thing.” Actually, I was, sort of. “It just feels like it sometimes.”

“If you say so.” She slowly pushed the plastic bag toward me. “These were in the kitchen trash can last night.”

The bag was from the drugstore, I noticed, not the grocery store, and it wasn’t empty after all. In fact, the shape and color of the condom box inside was all too familiar.

“Uh.” Heat swept up my face with the speed of a wildfire.

“Your father said he found them in your jacket pocket and threw them away. He said those things are for tomorrow people.”

Of course. When there’s no tomorrow, pregnancy and STIs are irrelevant. I didn’t want to know which Bible verses he employed to make that point. “I haven’t used them. The box isn’t even opened.”

“David, listen. Don’t have sex. But if you do, for crying out loud, use those.” Mom glanced at the bag I was now clutching. “Promise?”

I should’ve asked her if she believed in the Rush the way Dad did. I should’ve played divide and conquer. If there was a drop of sanity between the two of them, it dwelled in her brain. I should’ve searched for it.

But my mother and condoms were in the same room, and that had to change.

I leaped to my feet and headed for the stairs. “Promise.”

I waited until Mom left the house to go grocery shopping before I ate breakfast. Afterward, I came back upstairs, where Mara’s bedroom door was shut tight, with Florence + the Machine blaring behind it.

I knocked hard, right over the no dorky little brothers allowed sign.

“What?”

I opened the door to find her sitting at her desk, laptop open. “I’m coming in.”

“Are you illiterate, or did my sign fall down?”

“I’m not little anymore, Mar.”

She waved me in. “Bring the sign so I can edit it.”

I pulled it off her door, accidentally ripping it almost in half. “Sorry. Here.”

Mara took a thick Sharpie from her Air Force Academy mug and crossed out the world “Little” on the sign.

“Mom says you don’t believe. Not just in the Rush but . . . at all.”

“Busted.” She carefully taped her sign back together. “Guess I’m a sucky actress.”

I felt supremely stupid. “You fooled me.”

“Because you’re a dork, remember?” She tapped the sign. “You want to believe the best about everyone. Or at least what you think is the best.”

“But when you sing, you sound, I don’t know, holy.”

“Aw, thanks. It’s the only time I feel holy. Music is great at making you believe in things that aren’t real. That’s why love songs are so popular.”

I thought of the playlists Bailey and I had made for each other over the last six months, and the one I made for her before we started going out. How much of our feelings were real, and how much had been musically induced affection?

No, that was a paranoid way to think. I couldn’t let my faith in everything evaporate.

“Aren’t you worried about what’ll happen when you die?” I asked Mara. “What if you end up in hell? Won’t you feel sorry?”

“No,” she snapped. “Because if I were sitting up in heaven knowing that people were suffering for all eternity and there was nothing I could do to help them? That would be the real hell.”

It seemed logical but made me feel like a jerk. “Sounds like something Bailey would say.”

“I don’t know why she puts up with you. You’re not that cute.” Mara turned back to her computer. “I am sooooo ready to get out of this house.”

With every minute, this Abandoning felt less like something I was doing, and more like something that was being done to me.

“Fine. Just what we need, someone else leaving. We can be the incredible shrinking family!” I stalked out of her room and into my own. But before I could close my door, Mara followed me in.

“You should get out too,” she said. “Go be a baseball star at some faraway college.”

“I can’t do that to them! They need me. They need us.”

“They’re destroying us. And while you’re busy worrying about them, I’m worried about you.”

“I’m fine.” I sank onto my bed, feeling claustrophobic with her standing between me and the door.

“You’re this close to cracking.” She held her thumb and forefinger together, with no space between their tips. “Maybe you should go to grief counseling.”

“I did, remember? We finished.”

“Did you get a ‘happily ever after’ certificate? Because I didn’t. In fact, I’m pretty sure they said to come back whenever we needed to.”

“It’s probably a whole new grief group now. I’d have to tell my story all over again. I can’t even tell Bailey.”

“I get that. You had it worse than any of us. But what about a regular counselor, with no group, just one-on-one?”

“Those cost money. Dad needs it more than I do.”

Mara threw up her hands and turned to face my open doorway. “I hate that Mom and Dad never talk about John. I hate that they leave his room the way it was.”

“And with the door always shut.”

“It makes the hallway so dark.” She picked up my A-10 fighter jet model from the top shelf of my desk.

“Plus it—it makes it seem haunted, like he could still be in there.”

Mara raised an eyebrow. “Do you check to make sure he’s not? Like when you were little and you had to look behind shower curtains for vampires?”

“Werewolves. Geez, Mara, everyone knows vampires are allergic to running water.”

She laughed. “You may not be little anymore, but you’re still a dork.” She stroked one of the A-10’s ghost-gray wings.

“Be careful with that. It’s more fragile than it looks.”

“Sorry.” Mara set down the plane, centering it on the shelf. “If John were here, he’d be laughing at this whole Rush thing.”

“Probably. But if he were here, they wouldn’t be . . .” My voice trailed off as a horrible realization hit me.

“They wouldn’t be preparing for the end of the world,” she finished. “Are you okay?”

I pressed my feet flat against the floor to stop the world from tilting. “I think I get it now. I can see it all from inside their heads.”

“That’s a scary perspective.”

“Listen. If John were alive, Mom and Dad would never have fallen for the Rush.”

“Because they see it as instant grief relief.”

“Right. But the Rush isn’t only about no more suffering; it’s also about salvation. So maybe to them, his death made our being saved by the Rush possible.”

She drew in a soft gasp. “You mean, John dying was part of some divine plan?”

“They’d say he died so that we might live. Our souls, at least. But I guess only if we’re Rushed. Otherwise, his sacrifice is in vain.”

“No.” Mara covered her face. “How can they even imagine that?”

“They probably think it gives his meaningless death some meaning. Finally.”

“David, his death wasn’t meaningless! He died trying to save someone’s life.”

“Someone who didn’t want to be saved.”

“Doesn’t matter. He’s still a hero for trying.”

“You weren’t there.”

“No, I wasn’t. But I know that John would want us all to live.” As she left my room, Mara added over her shoulder, “And not just our souls.”