Sway (16 page)

Except Caleb doesn’t have a cruel bone in his body.

And I’ve seen these kids firsthand. No matter what their lives are like in the outside world, at the center they’re happy. Well taken-care-of and content. This makes every one of these news stories a lie.

Because of that, now I don’t know what to think.

So I’m trying hard not to. Except Lucy won’t let me.

She climbs into the bed beside me and curls into a pillow, her not-so-subtle way of hinting for me to make coffee to help shed her new hangover. I flip my head the other way and pretend to not to notice her. She spent the weekend away again with some random guy whose name she can’t remember and whose number she already deleted from her phone. If she ever has a pregnancy scare, she’ll have no idea who to call, even though she insists her memory is to her brain what 20/20 vision is to a person’s eyeballs. Perfect. A perfect memory to recall a perfectly irresponsible partner who would make a perfectly awful baby-daddy. The whole thing screams of romance and happily-ever-after.

Lucy lets out another long-suffering sigh. It’s the last straw, and I get up with a growl.

“You know, in the time it’s taken you to beg for coffee, you could have made four pots by now and been on the road to recovery.” I sail past her, bumping into the doorframe on my way out of the room. Instantly, my shoulder throbs and I can feel a bruise forming. “But no, it has to be me because apparently I’m the only one who knows how to work an appliance around here.”

With my eye on the washing machine, currently spinning the load that
I
started earlier this morning, I snatch the carafe and slam it under the sink, watching as it slowly fills with water because of our lousy water pressure, which is non-existent when the neighbors above us are taking a shower. I can hear Mrs. Combs singing some song about being fifteen and walking the halls of high school in her off-key voice that would make even the world’s most tone-deaf coyote howl.

I don’t know Mrs. Comb’s, but I’ve seen her a few times. The woman hasn’t been to high school in three decades—two if she’s one of those people whose hard life makes them age before their time, which is what I suspect because the male company she keeps when her husband isn’t looking seems a whole lot younger than her.

Some days I find this whole routine funny, even her sordid—albeit gross—affairs. Today I’m not laughing.

“Could you please not talk so loud?” Lucy appears with a hand to her temple. “My head is killing me.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say, with tons more volume than the small apartment requires. I bump the carafe against the counter on my way to return it to the machine, then accidently on purpose drop the unopened metal canister of coffee grounds. It clatters into the sink and I reach for it. At the last minute, I decide to forgo that brand and grab a whole-bean bag from Starbucks, then scoop out a handful and flip on the grinder. “Is this too loud for you too?” Maybe it’s mean that I’m shouting over the obnoxious whirring sound, but whatever.

When Lucy grimaces in pain, I’m suddenly not proud of my cranky mood. Still, she’s the only one around for me to take it out on, and I need the outlet.

I should have known she would see through me.

“Why don’t you just call him? You’re going to be miserable until you do, you know.” She’s trying to encourage me despite the obvious throbbing in her brain, and because of that the remnants of my hostility fizzle like cool water over flaming embers. I close my eyes for a second.

“Call him and say what? ‘I know there’s zero hope of working this out, but want to get together for tea anyway?’ Something tells me he’ll say no.”

“Kate, you didn’t know it was his center,” she says quietly. “Besides, if he’s really a man of faith, he’ll forgive you and move on.”

She’s right; at least I think she is. But it isn’t that simple, and both of us know it. “But is it really fair for me to ask? Besides, I think he has the ‘moving on’ part down pretty well.” I flip off the faucet and reach for the overflowing carafe and pour out some water, then fill the coffee pot. “Lucy, you didn’t see the look on his face when he realized who I was. It was, like…” I stare into the living room, searching for the words, hating it when I find them. “Like I punched him when he wasn’t looking. He almost looked defeated. Like life could not possibly get worse. But at the same time, he seemed resigned. Like he expected it.” I shake my head, aware that I’m not making sense. “Besides, how I’m I supposed to ask for forgiveness when I don’t even support his kind?”

Without warning, a memory flashes across my mind like a short clip of a silent movie, but I shut it off. Usually it’s easy to convince myself that what happened when I was six wasn’t real. It’s gotten harder to do this week.

“God and forgiveness aren’t the same thing,” Lucy says. For the first time ever, I’m suddenly not so sure.

“Do you need anything else?” I want to be done with this conversation. It’s doing nothing but sending my mood in a downward spiral. “Because I’m going back to bed.”

Lucy frowns. “It’s ten-thirty. Don’t you need to get ready for class?”

I fill my own coffee mug and head for my bedroom. “I’m cutting today.”

“Kate, you cut every day last week. Your parents won’t be happy when they find out you’re failing.”

“I’m not failing,” I say as the door closes. “Yet.” Actually, I have no idea, because I haven’t bothered to check. One semester away from graduating, one semester that might flatten my grade-point average for the first time since I began my educational career, and I can’t work up the ability to care.

A couple seconds later, I’m grasping for sleep while buried under a wall of blankets. It isn’t until I’m suspended in that space between awareness and slumber that it finally hits me. I know why I’m so restless. It isn’t the media attention or the news outlets or even the fact that I haven’t heard from Caleb all weekend and likely never will.

It’s that I don’t like to hurt people. For twenty-one years, I’ve gone out of my way to make people comfortable, to speak gently, to never intentionally give another human being a reason to feel bad. Strangers in the grocery store, the down-and-out hanging out on Meridian Avenue, even the protesters that show without fail to my parent’s rallies. I’ve never once heckled back or shouted obscenities, even during the times I’ve felt threatened. Few things bother me, but the idea that another person’s pain could ever be directly attributed to me is more horrifying than just about anything.

But I’ve hurt Caleb.

Worse, since he won’t take the silly nativity scene down, I’m not sure how to fix it.

*

I’ve never been one to sleep in, mainly because I haven’t been allowed. As a child, at the first sign of sun, my mother would throw open my blinds and tell me to seize the day, to walk toward the light, to embrace another day or some other useless cliché I didn’t want to hear. And if I didn’t bound out of bed, she would force me up with a ringing bell or a cold glass of water poured straight onto my forehead. My mother: Waterboarding expert.

But she isn’t here now. So why can’t Lucy leave me the heck alone?

The door hinge stops squeaking, and she pops in for the fourth time today.

“Are you awake?” she whispers.

“No,” I bark, groaning into my pillow. What I really want to do is cuss her out and tell her to leave, but my mother didn’t raise an impolite child. Only, apparently, a grumpy one.

“You’ve been back here four hours.”

“That means I have twenty more to go before the day is over, but thanks for the status update.” I didn’t realize it was this late, and I mentally try to calculate out how long I can lay in this bed without food or bathroom breaks. I figure I’m good for at least another hour. There’s a little pressure on my bladder from the coffee I consumed this morning, but it should be a while before it hits the “I’m-about-to-burst” stage, so for now I decide to ignore it. Lucy sighs. Ignoring her is slightly more difficult. “Don’t you have somewhere to be? Like, class? Or Wal-Mart?”

She sniffs, the first sign of irritation. “It’s your turn to go to the store, so don’t pass it off on me.” The bed lowers on one side as Lucy sits next to me. Oddly, she’s still whispering. Maybe it’s her hangover. Against my better judgment, I crack an eye open and study her. Along with having an almost inhuman tolerance for cold, Lucy is also the most expressive person I know. One look at her face tells me it definitely isn’t the hangover.

“What’s wrong?”

She looks at me with what seems like the weirdest look of apology on her face. Or maybe it’s dread. Then she glances at my door, and something in the way she does it causes me to grow alarmed. Almost like…

“Lucy, what’s the matter?” I prop myself on an elbow to brace for the worst. But even my lyric-loving, imaginative mind couldn’t have conjured up the next string of sentences that come out of her mouth.

“When I opened the door to go to class, someone was standing on the other side. You have company, Kate, so you might want to throw on some clothes.” Before I can ask what she’s talking about, she tells me.

“Caleb is waiting in the other room.”

Caleb

“Second Chance”

—Shine Down

I
t takes the Department of Human services less than forty-eight hours to call up every living family member, every neighbor, every acquaintance, and every John Doe in the phone book with the last name Stiles to try to compile information. And when it becomes uncomfortably obvious that no one wants you, it takes another twelve hours or so to find a foster family willing to take you in. Twelve hours isn’t much time. Not nearly enough time to get your bearings, glance around your old bedroom, and gather up a few possessions to take with you into your new life.

For me, that was a blanket my mother knitted me for my second birthday and a picture we took together at JC Penney during a hunt for bargain back-to-school clothes. I can still see the black Spider Man tee that I wore in the photo—a size too small, faded from too many washings, the ketchup stain near the rounded collar that my mother tried to cover up with her hands as she wrapped them around me and leaned close to my ear.

Smile
, the photographer said.

I smiled wide. Wider than I’d ever smiled before.

I lost that photo somewhere between my third or fourth foster home. The move was so abrupt that there wasn’t time to gather many belongings. My social worker told me she would retrieve them for me, promised to bring them with her to her next visit. She lied.

Her next visit never came. Another lady showed up instead, and all she brought was a Happy Meal. I’m not sure why I remember this, but I do.

I wish I could remember what my mother looked like.

The Bible talks a lot about having honor—about keeping your word, about your yes being a yes and your no being a no, about the power behind a man with strong convictions. I believe in the Bible. I believe it’s God’s word. And so I believe in things like honor and strength of character and firm principles and the Golden Rule. All four, I’ve been told, are the mark of a good man.

But right now I want to take that honor, shove it into a black box labeled “Do Not Open Under Penalty of Death,” slap a stamp on it, and send it straight to hell where it can burn for all eternity. Good riddance. No love lost. Adios, sucker.

That’s what I’m thinking as I stand staring at the sofa in Kate’s living room, at the same time trying not to recall images of violent retching and lacy pink robes but having a tough time with it. Even tougher? The memories aren’t nearly as unpleasant as they should be. I turn to look at Kate’s bedroom door. Lucy disappeared through it five minutes ago, and judging by the look on her face when she saw me standing outside, I’m not entirely sure she’s coming back. I’m not entirely sure I want her to.

What was I thinking coming here? When I woke up this morning, all I wanted to do was shoot some baskets with Ben. Maybe head to the mall to buy a couple new shirts because one of mine shrunk in the wash and another got ripped when I tried to change a flat tire yesterday. Maybe head to the office. My conscience had other ideas.
I’ll bring her back next week
. That was the last thing I said to Ben, and even though my words usually have a way of coming back to bite me in the butt, darn if I’m going to be that guy who goes back on something he says. So I’ll take her, let her do the interview, and bring her back to the apartment as fast as my car will drive. Duty fulfilled. Honor intact. Word kept. Done.

I just wish I wasn’t so nervous about seeing Kate again. I
really
wish I wasn’t so excited about it. In order to distract myself, I eye her record collection. If I squint just right, I can almost make out the titles on the spines of the albums again, but a couple are hard to see even though I think I know what they are. I walk closer and lean forward a little to be sure.
Carole King
. It’s stupid, but I mentally high five the empty room for being right.

“Caleb?”

Of course I knew she would appear eventually, but I’m not prepared for the way her voice rips through my insides and turns them to shredded remnants of what used to be decently functioning organs. Right now, nothing is functioning, least of all my brain. And when I turn around and look at her…
Oh sweet Lord in heaven,
even in sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt, she’s prettier than she was on television. It took two days, but I finally deleted that stupid news footage after a few dozen more viewings that I’m not proud of and will never admit to. Still, a big part of me had hoped the image of those gorgeous curls had been exaggerated in my mind. That in reality they were nothing more than stiff strands of dried-out hay—unattractive, bland, no resemblance whatsoever to spun gold.