Once Beyond a Time (5 page)

“You could work full-time till school starts. After that, you can work
after school and weekends.”

“Weekends?”

“Saturday nights, mostly. We’re closed on Sundays.”

“Saturday nights, huh? Well, I don’t know. It might interfere with my dating life.”

“I can offer ten cents over minimum wage.”

“Yeah? Wow, I’d be rich.”

“Well, you think about it and let me know.”

She hands me the ice cream cone with a smile. I take it and mumble thanks. I’m about to join everyone else at one of the tables when Digger comes back up to the counter. “What do you want now?” I ask him because I can see he’s finished his cone.

“I just want to ask this lady a question,” he says, pointing with his thumb toward Gloria Reynolds.

She’s wiping her hands on her apron, but she stops and looks at Digger. “Ask away, little man,” she says.

“I’m just wondering,” Digger says. “Do you happen to know where Mac lives?”

Gloria’s face scrunches up like she’s tasting something sour. “Who’s Mac?” she says.

Digger shrugs. “Just some kid I met. His real name’s Malcolm and he lives around here somewhere.”

“Where’d you see him?”

“Up at my house.”

“What’d he look like?”

“I don’t know. Like a regular kid, I guess.”

I’ve been licking my ice cream cone, but I stop long enough to say, “There hasn’t been anyone at the house besides us and the cousins.”

“Well, Mac was there too,” Digger says.

“He was not,” I say. “You’re making that up.”

“Am not.”

“Yes, you are.”

Next thing I know, Gloria Reynolds is hollering across the room at my cousins, “Hey Jeff, Marjorie! You two know a boy by the name of Mac?”

They shake their heads and shrug. They don’t say anything because they’re too busy eating their cones.

Gloria looks at Digger and gives him that I’ll-play-along-with-you kind of smile that grown-ups are always giving kids. “You’ll see Mac once school starts, I bet,” she says.

“But that’s a long time from now,” Digger says. “I was hoping he could come over and play sometime.”

“Well, now he knows you’re here, he’ll show up again. Don’t you worry. And if a boy named Mac ever comes in for ice cream, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him.”

“Thanks, lady.”

“Now what’s your name again?”

“Digger Crane.”

“All right, Digger. Listen, you like Wrigley’s spearmint gum?”

“You bet!”

“Here.” She picks up a pack from the display and hands it to him. “It’s on the house. Sort of a welcome gift. But you got to share it with Mac.”

“Thanks, lady! I will!”

I roll my eyes and wander off to pretend like I’m looking at the movie posters. The thing is, though, I just don’t feel like sitting with my cousins the Clampetts and the bunch of circus freaks who are supposed to be my own family. I mean, can my life get any worse? Dad’s a two-timing hypocrite, Mom’s a gutless pushover who won’t divorce him, and now my kid brother has an imaginary friend named Mac. Criminy. If somebody put a bullet through my brain right now, I’d thank him before I died.

Sunday, July 14, 1968

S
HELDON INSISTED WE
come to church this morning, though he didn’t bother trying to extend his authority as far as Linda. He knew it would do little good—might even make matters worse—to force her to come with us. She was still in bed, asleep, when we left for Valley View Baptist Church. Steve and Donna had invited us to the Presbyterian Church with them, but Sheldon declined. A lifelong Baptist, he has never been a fan of Calvin and predestination.

Valley View is a quaint little church, white clapboard built upon a foundation of fieldstone. As the name implies, it’s cradled in a valley. The side windows are open to let in the air while the large window over the altar is a stained glass recreation of the resurrection of Christ. He stands there in a white robe showing us his upturned palms, his nail-scarred hands.

A sign outside says the congregation was established in 1893. Most of the congregants here look as though they are from among that original group. Oh, I know, it’s unkind and sarcastic to say that, even to myself, and yet the pews are swimming in gray hair. We are drowning in age. It was beginning to be like this in Abington too. The church everywhere is dying out. In fact, judging from the size of the cemetery rolling through the surrounding fields, I’d say a far greater number of congregants are out there than in here.

As the preacher climbs up to the pulpit, I glance sideways at Sheldon. His skin is ashen, his mouth drawn down. A muscle in his jaw twitches. I wonder how he feels, being down here rather than up there. Humiliated? Possibly. Like a failure? Probably. In my opinion, he had no business being a pastor in the first place. He certainly wasn’t one when I married him.

When I married him he was a junior executive at a plastics plant. He was on the bottom rung of the corporate ladder, but he was poised to work his way up. We were already comfortable and things could only get better … but then he came home from work one day and told me he’d gotten the call.

“What call?” I asked.

“The call to serve God,” he said.

I didn’t even know what that meant, but next thing I knew, I was a cashier at Woolworth’s, working to put Sheldon through seminary, and when he was done with that, I was a pastor’s wife, ready or not. Like it or not. Cut out for it or not.

Through it all, I loved him. And I tried to be the best pastor’s wife possible, in spite of the frailty of my own faith.

Digger sits between Sheldon and me, bored, fidgeting, swinging his feet back and forth beneath the pew. I put a hand on his knee to still the double pendulum he has made of his legs. He looks up at me and smiles his irresistible smile. I can still count on him to love me. For now, at least.

But someday he’ll grow up, like Carl, and that will change his devotion to me. Oh, he may still love me, as Carl does, but he won’t need me anymore. If only I could stop time and keep Digger this age forever, at least then I’d have one person I could count on.

Linda, it seems, is completely lost to me. How did that happen? If I shut my eyes, I can still experience it perfectly: she as a very small child, sitting in my lap, her head resting gently against my shoulder as I read to her at bedtime. I kiss the wispy curls on the crown of her head and tell her I love her. “I love you too, Mommy,” she says. We were bonded then, heart and soul. And now?

No matter what I say to her now, it’s the wrong thing. If I ask a question, she responds with sarcasm. If I make a suggestion, she responds with rage. If I say, “I love you,” she rolls her eyes.

Where did my little girl go? Does any part of her exist anymore? If so, how can I find her?

Yesterday, our tour of the town ended at Steve and Donna’s house. Their new house. That incredible dwelling they built for themselves. Afterward, when we got home, Linda followed me into the kitchen where I’d gone to get a glass of milk for Digger. She didn’t even have to speak. Her eyes said it all:
See what you got for marrying Daddy? If you’d married someone else you could be living in a palace like Aunt Donna.

I poured the milk and put the bottle back in the fridge. “What’s the matter, Linda?” I finally asked.

She crossed her arms and scowled at me. How does one slim body hold so much anger? “You should have divorced Daddy,” she said. “Then we could have stayed in Abington instead of coming down here and living in this shack. We’d all be better off, if you’d just left him.”

“You know,” I said, trying to sound calm, “most kids don’t want their parents to get divorced.”

“Yeah?” Her eyes narrowed the way they do so often now. “Well, I’m not most kids.”

“Listen, Linda, I know you’re unhappy about the move, but I wish you’d get that chip off your shoulder and try to make the best of things. Anyway, I know you better than you think. You’ve always loved Daddy, and you love him now, whether you’re willing to admit it or not.”

We stared at each other for a long moment, neither willing to look away. I waited. Finally, she said, “Sure, I love him. But right now, I don’t like him very much.”

With that, she turned and went upstairs to her room.

And with that, too, I understood my own self a little better. I still love Sheldon, but I can’t say I like him very much anymore. The pain of
betrayal is just too deep. Do I want to spend the rest of my life hurting like this? And do I want to spend the rest of my life with the man who caused the pain?

I can still divorce Sheldon and start a new life. It’s not too late. I do have biblical grounds, after all. Infidelity. I could leave Sheldon and not even God could blame me.

A jarring chord from the organ draws me back to the service. I reach for the hymnal, and we all stand to sing. I glance again at Sheldon, this stranger beside me. He stands there with a hymnal open in one palm, but his lips don’t move in song. He used to love to sing the old hymns. Now he has no voice.

A person grows lonely when her loved ones change into people she doesn’t even recognize. And, for crying out loud, if the love of your own family isn’t certain, what are you supposed to lean on?

Monday, July 15, 1968

“H
EY
, M
AC
! W
HERE
ya been?”

I jump off the big rock and run across the yard when I see Mac come around the side of the house.

He shrugs and says, “Around. Where’ve
you
been?”

“Right here, mostly.”

“Oh.”

“Whatcha been doing? You got black stuff all over you.”

“Me and Austin been down in the town poking around at the damage from the fire.”

“What fire?”

His eyes bug out. He looks at me like he’s looking at a ghost. “Don’tcha know about the fire?”

I shake my head.

“Jumpin’ Jiminy, Digger! The whole town just about burnt down. Well, most everything down on Sutton Street, anyway.”

“It did?”

“Yup. Yesterday. Didn’t you see the smoke or hear everybody shouting? Just about everyone was down there with buckets trying to put out the flames.”

I shake my head again.

“Where
were
you yesterday?”

“I was here.’ Cept for in the morning, when we were at church.”

“Well, you must be blind or deaf or maybe even dead because everybody in town knows there was a fire.”

He starts looking mad. I can’t help it if I didn’t know about any fire. I’m thinking he might be lying.

“How’d it happen?” I ask.

“Sparks from the train, they think. Nearly burnt the whole street before they finally got it put out.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. And you didn’t know about it?”

Now I’m sure he’s mad at me, and I’m mad at him because one of us is lying and it ain’t me. “No,” I say again, “I’m telling you, I don’t know anything about any fire.”

His hands are the color of charcoal. He stuffs them in the pockets of his overalls. “Well, you missed it, then.”

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

“I can show you the burned down street if you want.”

“You want to walk from here to town?”

“Ain’t that far. I do it all the time. Austin says it’s only a couple of miles.”

“Who’s Austin?”

“He’s my brother. And he ought to know.”

I stick my hands in my own pockets and feel the pack of gum the lady at the ice cream store gave me. I haven’t even opened it. I tug it out now and figure I might as well offer Mac a piece.

I show him the pack. “Want some?”

“What is it?”

“Wrigley’s chewing gum. Spearmint.”

“Sure,” he says.

I open the pack and pull out a stick. “Here.”

He reaches out for it. I let go of the gum, and it falls to the ground. “Sorry,” I say. He’s saying it’s all right while I’m already bending down to pick it up.

“Here you go.”

Mac’s holding out his hand and I give him the gum, but it just ends up falling to the ground again. Mac and I look at each other.

“What’s the matter with you?” I ask. “Can’t you hold on to it?”

Now he really looks mad. “This some kind of magic trick or something?”

“No, it isn’t. Honest. I’m trying to give you the piece of gum.”

“Well, it isn’t funny.”

“I’m not trying to be funny. I’m just trying to give you the piece of gum. Hey—”

But Mac has already turned and stomped away. I run to catch up with him. I want to go to town; I do, to see whether he’s telling the truth about Sutton Street getting burned down. But by the time I get around the corner of the house, Mac is gone.

I’m not sure Mac and me are going to be very good friends, the way things are going.