Times and Seasons (9 page)

Annie swallowed hard and looked at her mother with misty eyes. “Mom, what am I going to tell people?”

“I guess the best thing would be the truth. It’s going to come out anyway, if they don’t know already.”

“But when I think about having a brother who’s been convicted of a crime, I just think of scumbags and sleazeballs. Not Mark. He’s just some little mixed-up kid. He doesn’t know any better.”

“He knows better,” Cathy said. “He absolutely knows better. Don’t ever fool yourself into thinking he doesn’t.”

“But, Mom, he’s just dumb, that’s all. He does stupid things. He always has. He shouldn’t have to pay with a year of his life.”

“Well, maybe if I’d made him pay a little more when he broke those little rules, the government wouldn’t have to make him pay now.”

Annie wiped her eyes. “Well, I guess that means you’re going to really crack down on Rick and me now. Turn into some kind of Hitler.”

The thought had crossed Cathy’s mind. “No, honey, I’m not going to do that. You don’t have to worry. You haven’t done anything wrong, and neither you nor Rick is headed for prison.”

“Well, thank you for that, at least,” Annie said, falling onto the bed next to her mother. “I’m glad you agree. As a matter of fact, I’ve spent most of the day patting myself on the back ‘cause I’m not in jail.”

Cathy almost laughed, but the humor quickly melted into despair. Annie hugged her. It was something the girl rarely initiated, and it moved her. “I can’t believe he did this on the day of your shower,” Annie said. “That was really low.”

Cathy laughed without humor. “There’s really no good time to break the law and wind up in jail.”

When Annie went back to her room, Cathy went to bed and stared at the ceiling, wishing for sleep. But it wouldn’t come. Peace was a gift that God had withdrawn from her. She didn’t know if she’d get it back in the next year.

Wednesday
finally came, and as Cathy prepared for her first visit with her son in prison, she took great pains with her appearance. She knew that her grief would be apparent on her face, but at least she could look like someone who knew how to get along in society. She didn’t want anyone mistaking her for the mother of a houseful of criminals.

How would they process the visitors? Would they take her purse and search her clothes? Would she have to pass through a metal detector? Would she be able to sit side by side with Mark, hug him, kiss his cheek, cry with him? Or would they have them separated by glass and make them talk on telephones? How was a mother to behave when she visited her son in juvenile detention?

All of those questions would be answered soon enough. And she knew Amy Vanderbilt hadn’t covered them in her etiquette book. Steve had asked to go with her, but Cathy had felt it was best if she went alone this first time. Mark would want to vent,
and she didn’t want anyone there to interfere with his freedom in doing so. But she had to admit, the thought of going alone terrified her.

She would just have to feel her way through this, and pray that God would accompany her every step of the way.

Because it wasn’t a maximum security prison, the guards only made the visitors walk through metal detectors and asked them to leave their bags in a holding room. Anything they wanted to bring to the inmates had to be approved, and to get it approved, they were forced to stand in a long line in a poorly ventilated room.

But Cathy hadn’t brought Mark anything, so she went into the visitation room and took a table. She was the first one there, and she looked around, thankful that she would be allowed to sit at a table with her child and hug him, even though the guard had given them each a stern warning about public displays of affection. That
couldn’t
apply to mothers—if so, the guard would just have to call her down.

She sat fidgeting at the table as other visitors came into the room to wait for the inmates to come in. A teenaged mother of three took a chair at the back of the room. The baby cried a hungry cry, but the girl ignored it as she tried to keep her two- and three-year-olds corralled.

Next to her table, a grandmother came in with a stack of books she had gotten permission to bring. At another table, two boys who looked like they might belong here themselves slouched in chairs tipped back on two legs.

The door opened, and a guard began escorting inmates in. She watched their faces, watched them head for their families. When Mark stepped into the doorway, she almost didn’t recognize him. She hadn’t been prepared for the shaved head. It startled her, and she knew her surprise showed on her face.

She got up and waited for him to approach her, and all the emotions of the day he’d been arraigned came rushing up again. She reached out for him, but he shook her off.

“Don’t touch me.”

Without waiting for her reaction, he stormed to the table, scraped a chair back, and dropped into it. Wearily, Cathy accepted his rebuff and sat down.

“Mark, how are you?”

His eyes bored into hers. “Look what you got me into.”

Cathy sat back. “
I
got you into? What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the guilty plea. You’re the one who made me do that, and if I hadn’t, maybe I would have gotten off. A year, Mom! I’m in here for a year! Do you have any idea what this place is like?” He lowered his voice as he looked around. “These other guys, they’d just as soon slit my throat as look at me. The same kind of people you wouldn’t let me hang around with before, now I’ve got to live with them. They put me in this big room with like a hundred other guys. I’ll never have any privacy. I can’t keep any stuff because they’ll take it. I have this tiny little locker where I can keep my shoes at night when I sleep. And a change of these stupid orange pants. I can’t believe you did this to me!”

“Mark, I didn’t do this to you,” Cathy said. “You did this to yourself. You broke the law. The guilty plea was a gamble. You’re right. We didn’t know what we should have done. Nobody had any answers or guarantees. We did the thing that we thought was best.”

“So are you going to appeal this or what?” Mark asked.

Cathy’s head was beginning to throb. “Honey, there’s nothing to appeal. You got caught red-handed. You pled guilty. The prosecutor has lots of evidence. The judge has made a ruling.”

“But I can’t stay here, Mom!” He burst into tears and grabbed her hand. “Mom, please. If you’ll just get me out of here, I swear I’ll never do it again. I’ll never see those guys again. I’ll just hang around with Daniel ‘cause he never gets into any trouble. And I’ll study hard and I’ll make straight A’s with Miss Brenda. You’ll see. I’ll start helping you in the clinic every day for free. And I’ll keep my room clean and I’ll even start supper sometimes. Please, Mom!”

As hard as she tried, Cathy couldn’t hold back her tears. “Mark, there’s nothing I can do. Don’t you understand?”

“Of course there’s something you can do,” Mark said. “You’re my mother. They can’t decide where I live. I have the right to live with my family.”

“You don’t have any rights when you break the law,” she said. “You gave up those rights when you decided to sell those drugs.”

He pressed both fists against his temples. “If this is one of those lessons where you’re trying to teach me something, trying to scare me to death so I’ll straighten up, it’s working, okay? You can stop it now. You can just go tell the guy that I’m finished, I’m changing. I’ll do anything I have to do, but please get me out of here.”

“Mark, this is not something I’ve chosen for you. You’re stuck here for a year, because of what
you
did, not because of anything else. And, honey, I know it’s horrible. I know you never even dreamed that this could happen. But it did. And I’m not able to do anything about it.”

“I wish they had the death penalty for something like this,” he said. “Maybe I’ll just kill myself and get it all over with. Then I won’t be a bother to you or Dad or anybody, anymore.”

“Mark, don’t talk like that.”

“Why not?” he said. “Why should I care? If I’ve got to spend the next year of my life in this place, I might as well be dead. A year is practically an eternity.”

“No, it’s not an eternity,” Cathy said. “Do you want to know what eternity is? Eternity is a billion times longer than the sentence you’re serving in here, and then some. And, Mark, when you do die you’re going to stand face-to-face with God. Whether it’s sooner or later, I’m not going to be able to stand there with you any more than I was able to stand with you in front of that judge.”

“Don’t talk to me about God,” Mark said. “If God cared about me, I wouldn’t be here in this stupid place.”

“God does care about you, Mark,” Cathy said, “and he’s a better parent than I am. If I had any power at all, I’d jerk you out
of here so fast these people wouldn’t know what hit them. But I don’t have that power. I don’t have any power at all.”

She rubbed her face and tried to calm herself down. “Come on, Mark, can’t you just tell me about the place? What’s it like? Who are the people in that room with you? What are they here for?”

“Want to know what it’s like, Mom?” he asked. “They treat me like dirt, that’s what. And then they put me in the room with more dirt. And what are those guys in for? For acting like dirt. And for the next year that’s all I’ll be. Dirt. And when I come out, I’ll still be dirt.”

“You’re not dirt, Mark,” Cathy said. “You are my son.”

“Well, enjoy it, Mom, because your house will be empty as soon as Annie goes to college. Then you won’t have me to kick around anymore. It’ll be just you and the empty house. Oh, and yeah, your new husband and his perfect kid. This is pretty convenient, isn’t it? Get rid of the kid who’s probably going to make the most problems in your marriage. Then you don’t have to be bothered.”

Cathy felt as if he had struck her. She sat back hard in her chair and gaped at him through her tears. “Mark, I know you’re upset,” she managed to choke out, “but you can’t possibly think for a minute that either of us wished this on you. I did everything I could to keep you away from kids like that, to keep you from walking down the wrong path, but you went anyway, Mark. It wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t Steve’s fault.”

She felt that tugging on her heart and obeyed it. “And it wasn’t your father’s fault either,” she added. “It was
your
fault, Mark. And if you don’t own up to it, you’re never going to get over this. Never. It will be the longest year you’ve ever lived.”

Mark drew in a deep breath as if filling himself with strength, then pushed himself up out of his chair. “I guess I’ll just have to do what I can to get along here,” he said.

“What does that mean?” Cathy asked.

“That means I’ll act like dirt. I’ll be what everybody expects.” Then he turned around and headed back to the guard.

Cathy tried to stop him. “Mark, don’t go. Come on back. We can talk.” Some of the others turned and looked, and she sank back down, trying to be less conspicuous.

“I don’t have anything left to say to you,
Mom.
” His emphasis on the word was filled with sarcasm.

As the guard took him back through the metal door, she looked around at the other families visiting at the tables. They looked very much like her. Some were having pleasant conversations. She supposed they were the ones who accepted their plight. Others were crying, just as she was. How had she wound up here? This wasn’t how her life was supposed to turn out. This wasn’t where her son was supposed to be at age fifteen.

Feeling nauseous, she headed to the door, anxious to get out of this place, but devastated that she had to leave her son behind.

When
she got home that night, Steve was sitting in his car, waiting in her driveway for her. As soon as she pulled into her garage, he got out and came to meet her, a look of caution on his face.

“How was your visit?”

She was too tired to cry any more tears, and as she reached out to hug him, she let herself lean on him for the first time since the arraignment. “It was about as bad as you could expect,” she said. “Mark’s blaming everybody, even you.”

“
Me?
” Steve asked.

“Oh, yeah.” She took his hand and led him inside. She dropped her keys and purse on the table with a clash. “He even had this scenario in his mind that you and I were secretly delighted that this had happened, because when Annie goes off to college it will leave my house empty, then you and I will be free to get married with no problems. The only child in the house will be Tracy. Where is she, by the way?”

Steve seemed momentarily confused, as if he couldn’t concentrate. “Oh—I got a baby-sitter to come stay with her after she went to bed. I wanted to come over and see if you needed me. He actually said that?”

“Yeah, but I think it just came to his head as he was talking,” Cathy said. “He also blamed his friends…and God. And, of course, he blamed me from several different angles. Just one wouldn’t do.” She tried to stop her tears. “I don’t know how I’ll get through this, Steve. I really don’t.”

“I’ll help you,” he whispered. “I’ll be here for you.”

She breathed a laugh and pulled herself away from him. “Steve, you can’t be thinking that we can still get married, can you?”

She saw that look of dread coming across his face. “Of course I am, Cathy. What do you think? That
I’m
going to call it off just because of what’s happened?”

“No,” she said. “Maybe you should be thinking that
I’m
going to call it off. I mean, I can’t think about getting married when my son is sitting in a prison.”

“It’s not a prison, Cathy,” he said. “He’ll be all right.”

She knew he didn’t mean to downplay her grief, but the comment made her angry, anyway. “That’s easy for you to say,” she told him. “It’s not your child that’s in there.”

His face instantly softened, and he stepped toward her. “Cathy, I didn’t mean that you shouldn’t grieve. And I hurt when you hurt. I love Mark, too.”

That made her even angrier. “You can’t love him,” Cathy said. “You don’t love somebody just by saying it. His own father doesn’t even know how to love him.”

He dropped his hands to his sides, frustrated. “What do you want me to say, Cathy?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess maybe we ought to just call off the wedding for now.”

“Until when?” Steve asked. “Cathy, it’s time. Please don’t do this again.”

“It can’t be time,” she said. “Not when my son is in trouble. I can’t
think
right now, Steve. I can’t plan. Everything feels like
it’s just hanging in limbo somewhere, like it’s all going to come crashing down on me.”

He breathed out a laborious sigh, then dropped into a chair and stared at the wall for a moment. Finally, he slapped his hands on the armrests. “All right. We can postpone it, but I won’t call it off. I’m going to marry you, Cathy.”

“Fine,” she said. “We can postpone it. That’s all I want.”

“And you’ll keep wearing the ring?” Steve asked.

She looked down at the diamond he had given her for Christmas over a year ago. It was beautiful and had been such a sweet surprise. Neither of them had known just what they were getting into at the time. The ring sealed the promise they had made to marry each other when the time was right. But she wondered if it ever would be.

“Yes, I’ll keep wearing the ring,” she said. “I just need some time right now. I need for you to understand.”

“I do understand,” he said, and she saw the emotion battling for control of his face. “I’m disappointed. Tracy will be disappointed.
Everybody
will be. And I don’t really see how waiting will make things easier for you. If we could just combine our households and become man and wife, I could be here with you night and day to support you and be with you when you’re upset. I could help you through this.”

“Won’t you, anyway?” she asked.

“Of course I’ll help you.” He got up and crossed the room and looked into her eyes. “I’ll do whatever I can, but it’s not the same. I won’t be in your bed at night to hold you when you cry.” He tipped his head to the side and gazed down at her. “Cathy, I love you. It’s hard to wait.”

“I know it is,” she whispered. “But I just need more time.”

“How much?” he asked.

She shrugged. “How long will you wait?”

He sat down on the couch and leaned his head back, thinking. She wondered what was going through his mind. Was he wondering if it was even worth hanging on?

“I guess I’ll wait as long as it takes,” he said.

“Well, if he’s going to be in there a year…”

He looked up at her with that look of dread again.

“I don’t want him coming home to a whole different family, to a household that’s not what he left. I don’t want to jolt him like that, make him feel like he lost a whole year out of his life. Or give him the feeling that he’s not a part of things here.”

“If he feels
that
way, Cathy, it has nothing to do with you. He’s losing a whole year out of his life no matter what you do. There’s no way around that.”

“But if we could just wait until he got out, set the date for some time after that. We could do it, Steve. I know it’ll be hard. It’s been a hard wait already, but we can wait. Can’t we?”

He looked like a child who had just been told Christmas wouldn’t come until July.

“Steve, look at it this way. If you marry me now, you marry all my problems. You marry my kids. You marry the smart-aleck remarks and the screaming fights. And you marry this prison sentence that I can’t even deal with yet. You and Tracy are so much better off without us right now. This is not what you bargained for when you gave me this ring.”

“I bargained for you, Cathy,” he said. “I wanted you, and I knew everything that came with it.”

“You didn’t know about jail.”

“No, but neither did you,” Steve said. He grabbed her hand and pulled her down next to him. Framing her face with both hands, he looked into her eyes. “We’re going to get through this together whether we’re married or not, Cathy. Okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Will you count on me?” he asked. “Will you lean on me? Will you let me help and stop being such a tough guy?”

“I’ll try,” she said.

He held her with his eyes a moment longer. “I’m not promising to wait a whole year.” He smiled then, and she saw the mist swelling in his eyes again. “That doesn’t mean I’m walking out on you. What I mean is that I’m going to try my best to talk you out of waiting until Mark gets out. I don’t think waiting that long
will do him
or
us any good. Maybe the time will come before then when you’ll feel more peace about it. Maybe when you see light at the end of this tunnel. Besides, if we break up, we have to return all those gifts.”

She smiled. “I can’t open them, you know. I don’t know whether I should return them now or not.”

“You don’t have time,” he said with a grin. “Just leave them right where the neighbors put them. They’re not in the way. And since the wedding was going to be so small, we don’t have a lot of planning to undo. My mother was going to make the cake, so that will be easy to cancel. I’ll call our guests and cancel the florist. Meanwhile, I’m going to go on acting like a man about to get married.”

He stayed a while longer. By the time he left, she felt a little better. But depression quickly fell back over her.

She walked aimlessly around the house, trying to straighten things up. Rick and Annie were out, and her every movement seemed loud and hollow. She avoided Mark’s room, knowing that there wasn’t comfort there—only more recriminations.

The blinking light on her answering machine told of stored messages. She dreaded hearing them. Most of them were probably shocked reactions from friends as they heard about Mark’s mess. But what if his lawyer had called with a new idea for getting him out?

She pushed the button and cringed at the first pity-filled platitude from the women’s minister at her church. She pressed fast-forward, and made her way through several more. When Sylvia’s voice came on, she sat back and listened.

“Honey, it’s me, Sylvia. I came by before going to the airport, but you weren’t home. I hope you’re all right.”

She could hear Sylvia pause to control her voice.

“Tory and Brenda are taking me. I have a 9:00 red-eye flight, so I can get there in the morning. I don’t know when I’ll see you again. But I love you, and I’ll be praying. Hang in there, honey.”

Cathy pulled her knees up on the couch and closed her eyes. Tears squeezed out. She felt lost, as if she’d let her life raft slip out of her reach.

Sylvia was leaving, and she didn’t know when she’d see her again. It could literally be years.

She looked at the clock, saw that it was only eight-thirty. If she hurried, she might make it to the airport before Sylvia left.

She grabbed her purse, stumbled into her shoes, and bolted out to her car.

It had begun to rain, and the scent of wet summer was heavy on the air. Darkness fell over Breezewood like a good-night blanket tucking them in.

Mark slept hard when rain pattered against his window. She wondered if he could hear it tonight.

She reached the airport and parked at baggage claim, then checked the monitor for Sylvia’s gate. Then dashing up the escalator without waiting for it to carry her to the top, she checked her watch.

Nine o’clock.

She ran down the wide hall, checking gates, until she came to one overflowing with people. Her eyes fell on Sylvia, Brenda, and Tory, huddled in the corner.

She was breathing hard when she got to them. “I thought I’d missed you!”

Sylvia sprang up. “Cathy! Oh, honey, you didn’t have to come!”

“Yes, I did. I couldn’t let you leave without saying goodbye.” She pulled Sylvia into a crushing embrace.

Brenda laughed. “Well, this just couldn’t be more perfect. Sylvia’s plane is late because of the weather.”

“Looks like a God-thing to me,” Tory said.

Sylvia pulled Cathy down into the chair next to her. “We can sit here and visit and pretend it’s one of our porches. Did you see Mark?”

Cathy sank into the seat and leaned her head back against the wall. “I saw him. He’s angry. Blaming me. I don’t know what to do.”

“It could be a long year,” Sylvia said. She looked down at her knees. She was wearing a pair of shorts, and Cathy noticed
that her legs were thinner than they’d ever been. Sylvia was working too hard in Nicaragua, she thought. She wasn’t getting enough to eat.

“I was thinking about how awful this was today,” Sylvia said, “and then I started thinking back on Joseph’s illness, and Tory’s pregnancy. We thought both of those were horrible crises, too.”

“They
were
crises,” Cathy said. “No way around it. Don’t try to sugar-coat it. They were awful.”

“Yeah, they were,” Tory said.

“But remember when they were all over?” Brenda cut in. “That night in the hospital, when we all sat around and talked about the best moment of the crisis, the pivotal ones where we learned something and grew?”

“I’m tired of learning things and growing,” Cathy said.

“Well, aren’t we all?” Sylvia agreed with a smile. “I was tired of learning and growing in the fourth grade when we started doing multiplication tables, but I still had to learn them.” She gave Cathy a thoughtful look. “We did it again with Tory, you know. After Hannah was born and all was well, we were able to look back and think of the best moments. There were lots of them.”

Cathy knew what she was getting at, but she rejected it. “Sylvia, there aren’t going to be any best moments when my son is in jail. I’m not going to grow from this. I’m not going to learn from it. I’m just going to grieve for a very long time.”

“That’s what I thought,” Tory said, “but Barry came back…and we have Hannah. As hard as things have been with her, I wouldn’t undo any of it.”

“If we learned anything from those days,” Brenda said, “it’s that sometimes God uses crises to bless us.”

“Thanks, guys, but this isn’t just your run-of-the-mill crisis.”

“No crisis is run-of-the-mill,” Sylvia said. “And we know you’re in pain. I’m not trying to make it sound easy. I’m just saying that I think some day, maybe not so far away, we’ll all be able to sit around and think back on this year and what happened with Mark, and we’ll see some things that we can’t see now. Who knows, Cathy? Maybe this will be a wake-up call for Mark.”

“I wish I’d taught him better,” Cathy said. “I should have taught him responsibility. I should have taught him consequences. I shouldn’t have waited for the state to do it.”

“You tried,” Sylvia said. “Don’t kid yourself. You haven’t been sitting around letting him off the hook.”

“You haven’t, Cathy,” Tory said. “Every time I’m at your house, Mark’s been grounded for something. And for the last couple of years he’s been home-schooling with Brenda because of what he did in the public school. You did the best you could to keep him away from the friends who were a bad influence.”

Brenda nodded. “He’s building a testimony, Cathy, and you have to let God finish the work that he started on him.”

Cathy wanted to believe that God had a plan in all of this, that things were going to turn out well, but she knew Mark’s heart was not where it needed to be. She wasn’t sure he was going to allow God to work in him.

The ground clerk’s rapid-fire voice amplified across the terminal. “Ladies and gentlemen, Flight 531 from Memphis has arrived at Gate 15. We will begin boarding momentarily.”

The reality of Sylvia’s departure hit Cathy in the heart, and she grabbed Sylvia’s hand. “Don’t go,” she whispered.

Sylvia smiled. “I have to. I have work to do.”

Tory pulled a tissue from her purse and dabbed her eyes, and Brenda struggled valiantly to hold back the tears welling in her own eyes.