The Law of Moses (37 page)

Surprisingly enough, it was Dad that convinced Mom that I’d survived Moses once and I would survive him again. I didn’t especially like his choice of words, but I held my tongue. Dad had been awfully quiet since our morning conversation the day after my very first run-in with Moses. Eli’s death was in the air again, the anniversary approaching and making us all cringe and hold our breath, wishing for it to pass us by. Moses coming into town this month, of all months, felt like an omen. And not a particularly good one. Mom was jittery, Dad was pensive, and I was a wreck, if I was being honest with myself.

It was probably a good thing that I had a few days to myself, that it was only me in the corral. The horses were tuned into me, and they didn’t like my mood at all. It took me a good hour, brushing them down, cleaning their hooves, getting my head straight and working out my own stress before I conducted a session with a small group I saw every week.

But my angst returned in full force when Moses wandered over at the end of my class. I didn’t want to draw attention to him or to myself, and when I realized he wasn’t going to talk or interrupt, I finished the session and bid the group goodbye as they loaded back into the treatment center van and drove off. I returned to the corral, hoping Moses had gone, but he remained, as if waiting for me. When he saw me coming, he climbed down from the fence and walked toward me. His brow was furrowed, and I tried not to give any credence to the way my breath caught and my hands shook when I watched him approach. He still appealed to me on a very primitive level. And I didn’t want that. I was afraid of it. I despised myself for it.

“He keeps showing me random things,” he said, shaking his head, not even pausing for a greeting or small talk. That was just like the old Moses, and I didn’t want to question him. I didn’t want to know what he was talking about.

“Eli keeps showing me random things,” he repeated, and I felt myself soften even as my heart lurched wildly. I could not resist the lure of Eli, of hearing about him, even if it was all a fairytale told by a man who I really wanted to hate.

“Like what?” I whispered, not able to help myself.

“His toes in the dirt, chicken noodle soup, Legos, pine cones, and Calico. Always Calico.” He shrugged and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “What do you think he’s trying to tell me?”

I suddenly found myself smiling. It was the oddest thing. It was the oddest and most wonderful, horrible thing. I was smiling and my eyes were filling with tears. I turned away, needing a moment to decide whether or not I was going to accept a new truth.

“Georgia?”

Moses waited for me to take several long, steadying breaths while I found my voice.

“Those are his favorite things. He’s telling you his greats.” My voice cracked and my eyes sought his.

His face went blank for a second and then his jaw dropped slightly as if a gong had sounded in his brain. He looked stunned. Flabbergasted even.

“His favorite things. He’s telling me his greats,” he repeated, almost to himself. “I thought he was trying to communicate something. Maybe teach me something.” Then Moses started to laugh.

“What? What’s so funny?” His baffled amusement was hard to resist, and I found myself smiling even as I wiped my eyes.

“That’s what they’re all trying to tell me. I never understood it before. The random items. The everyday stuff. It’s always driven me crazy.” He choked on the words, trying to speak around the mirth. And it really wasn’t that funny. In fact, maybe it wasn’t funny at all.

I just shook my head, still smiling at his wheezing laughter. “I don’t understand.”

“Do you know how many times I’ve painted a still life of the most mundane thing? Mundane things that never made sense, but that people, the dead, seemed to care about. Buttons and cherries, red roses and cotton sheets on the clothes line. Once I painted a picture of a worn-out running shoe.” He clasped his hands over his head, the laughter abating as the truth seemed to sink in. “And I always just assumed it had this great meaning that I just couldn’t grasp. The families love that stuff. They come see me, I paint whatever their loved ones show me. They leave happy, I make money. But I never understood. I’ve always felt like I was missing something.”

I wasn’t smiling anymore. My chest hurt and I couldn’t decide whether it was joy or pain that made it ache.

“And I
was
missing something, wasn’t I?” Moses shook his head. He turned in a circle, almost as if he couldn’t believe he’d just solved the puzzle that wasn’t ever really much of a mystery.

“They’re telling me what they miss. They’re telling me their greats. Just like Eli . . . aren’t they, Georgia?”

Moses

THE PAIN WAS A ROLLING, all-consuming wave inside of me. It had started small. Just an ache in my back and a weakness in my legs. I ignored it, pretending I still had time. It was early yet. But as the hours passed and darkness fell, the heat from the street found its way into my belly, and I was ripping at my clothes trying to escape the searing pain. I was being burned alive. I tried to run from it when it paused for breath, and it would abate as if it lost track of me for a few minutes. But it always found me again, and the wave of pressure and pain would roll me under.

But worse than the pain was the niggling fear in the back of my jumbled brain. I’d prayed so hard, just like I had been taught. I’d prayed for forgiveness and redemption, for strength and for a chance to start over. And mostly I prayed for cover. But I had a feeling my prayers didn’t rise much farther than the simmering air above my head.

It hurt. It hurt so much. I just needed it to stop hurting.

So I begged for a pardon. Just something to take me away for a minute, something to help me hide. Just for a minute. Just something that would give me one last moment of peace, something to help me face what came next.

But there was no cover granted, and when the fog lifted and the fever broke, I looked down into his face and knew my scarlet sins would never be as white as snow.

I came awake with a start, breathing hard, the pain of the dream still gripping my stomach and curling my legs and arms into my chest.

“What the hell was that?” I groaned, sitting up in my bed and wiping the sweat from my forehead. It felt like the dream I’d had about Eli and Stewy Stinker, the dream that wasn’t a dream. And then I’d woken up and seen the girl, the girl Lisa Kendrick said was her cousin. She’d walked through my house and touched the wall. And I’d made the connection.

But I didn’t see the connection yet. Not this time. I stood from my bed and stumbled to the bathroom, washing my face and throat with cold water, trying to ease the heat on my skin that always came with episodes like this.

It hadn’t been my pain—in the dream—it hadn’t been my pain. It had been a woman. A girl . . . and she was having a baby. Her thoughts and her agony and then the child in her arms as she’d looked down into his squalling face all indicated child birth. His squalling face? I suppose that was right. She’d thought of the child as a boy.

Maybe it was Eli, showing me his birth, the way he’d shown me his bedtime ritual. But that didn’t seem right either. It hadn’t been Eli’s eyes I’d looked through. It hadn’t been Eli’s thoughts in my head. But nothing with Eli had been like any other experience I’d ever had. The connection was different. More intense, more detailed. More everything. So maybe it was possible.

But it didn’t feel right. Eli showed me images and perspectives relative and relevant to his understanding. As an infant, being born into the world, he would not have had that perspective. It was Georgia’s perspective. It was as if I was looking through her eyes, feeling her emotions, her pain. Her despair. She had been filled with fear and despair. I hated that. I hated that she had felt so alone. Eli should have been celebrated. But in the dream, there was no joy or celebration. Just fear. Just pain.

And maybe it was just a dream.

That was possible too. Maybe I wanted to rewrite history so badly that my subconscious had re-created a moment that fed into my guilt and my regret, putting me there, in the room with Georgia as Eli had come into the world. I mopped at the water on my neck and walked down the stairs without turning on any lights, needing a glass of water or maybe something stronger.

I’d left the lamp on in the family room. I’d sanded down the entire wall where the girl had revealed her face. Last night I’d painted it again, covering Molly and Sylvie and the other, nameless, somewhat faceless girls beyond them with a thick coat of yellow. I wanted yellow in the room. No more plain white. I was tired of white. I got a beer from the fridge and held the can against my face, eyeing the cheerful, buttery wall, thankfully devoid of any dead faces. For now. I would paint the other walls when morning came.

My eyes skipped to the side as my thoughts mentally moved on to the next section of painting that needed to be done. The paint was bubbled on the far wall.

“Ah, shit.” I’d been afraid of that, afraid that the other walls would need to be sanded down too. But it had been more than a week since the paint on the back wall had begun to peel. The other walls had shown no signs of bubbling or peeling. I walked to the adjacent wall and smoothed my hand across the ripples. And just like that, the paint came off like tissue paper being unwrapped and pushed aside.

My mother’s face stared out at me with sad eyes and a slightly wistful smile. And I knew who sent me the dream. It hadn’t been Georgia’s perspective in the dream, it wasn’t Georgia’s memory. It was my mother’s.

***

Moses

IT WAS STRANGE. I’d been painting frantically since coming to Levan, though I’d controlled myself, resisting abandoned buildings and barns and cliff faces, and limiting myself to canvas. Every day it was another painting about Eli. I couldn’t stop. Some of them I left for Georgia, wanting to share them with her the way she had shared her photos with me. I was almost afraid she would come storming over and throw them in my face and accuse me of mocking her pain. But she never did. I almost wished she would, just so I would have an excuse to fight with her. An excuse to see her.

I had kissed her and then doubted the wisdom of the move for days afterwards. That kiss was like a living, throbbing pulse of fuchsia in my head. Maybe that’s why I felt compelled to paint. Eli came and went, showing me the same fleeting images and bits and pieces of his life with Georgia. But for the first time, my painting wasn’t for the dead. The painting wasn’t even for Eli. It was for me. I wanted to make him permanent. And I wanted to give permanence to Georgia.

But the dream of my mother shook me, as did the walls that wouldn’t stay painted. For several days I just worked on the house and left my art alone. I didn’t want to start channeling my mother in my paintings. I sanded down the entire living room once more, retreating all the walls with everything 4D’s, the hardware store in Nephi, had in stock for pre-treating old walls. The new coats of yellow seemed to be holding, and I moved onto other projects, keeping myself busy with physical work, doing what I could on my own and hiring the rest out, watching Georgia from afar and wondering how I was ever going to bridge the gulf between us.

I had temporarily stopped painting, though Eli hadn’t stopped sharing pictures with me. But he had started showing me new things. Flowers. Clouds. Cupcakes. Hearts. Drawings pinned to the fridge with chunky magnet letters. They were still things he loved, as far as I could tell. The images were fleeting and focused. Fat red hearts, cupcakes piled with white fluffy icing, and flowers that I wasn’t sure even existed beyond a little boy’s imagination. They were riotous and multi-colored, a garden of Dr. Seuss blooms. I didn’t think these were his greats. This time I was pretty sure he really was trying to tell me something. I found myself talking to him, to the boy who danced in and out of my vision, never staying long, never making a whole lot of sense, but I talked to him anyway, hoping my limitations were not his.