17

Maddie didn’t think through how things might play out. How to skip from convincing Vincent to visiting the Children’s Hospital cancer wards?

But apparently there was to be an order. There were chains of command, or lines of communication, anyway. Vincent wasn’t to be a rogue healer hitting the streets of Pittsburgh with his stunning blessing. To Maddie’s displeased surprise, it wouldn’t be done like that. Rather, Nicky Tedesco must—with Vincent’s permission—have a conversation with Pastor McLaughlin, which resulted in Vincent’s subsequent conversation with Pastor McLaughlin, which then resulted in a conversation with the elders and deacons. Vincent requested Maddie’s presence in both of these and she—how could she say no?—complied.

The upshot was no heroics (yet) in the oncology ward, but definite expressions of quiet astonishment, some of bold belief and none of doubt. “Proceed with caution” seemed to be the order of the day, by which was meant that Vincent’s gift would be kept—for now—a secret.

What this did not mean, apparently, was starting small, testing out the miraculous in doses, where there wasn’t much at stake. Instead Vincent was to join an already-planned prayer for a man very nearly on his death-bed.

And why not? This was the Bethel Hills Church of the Expectant, after all.

Maddie didn’t like the smell of hospitals, and she had a vague discomfort at the idea of entering the room where Mr. Pavlik lay with a tumor expanding in his brain. There was something unpleasant about the whole thing: the body making something destructive to itself, the tumor growing beyond control, pressing against the brain, making the head swell. She imagined the inescapable closeness of a tumor in her own head. It was distressing.

Vincent teased her about this aversion: “It isn’t contagious, Mads,” he said, and she answered him swiftly and annoyed:

“I know you can’t catch a tumor.”

He had asked her to come along, had promised her silly things like a ride in the first vacant wheelchair they could find or going out for ice cream afterwards even though it would only be ten o’clock in the morning.

She gave in, because when did she not want to give in to Vincent? But she agreed to go, too, because she felt their coming here was her fault, borne of her confidence. Yet so quickly it had taken on a life of its own, with players she hadn’t intended to include: Pastor McLaughlin and the elders would be there. And, again, when she had imagined the hospital visit, it had been for sweet little children in an oncology ward—not for an old man’s brain tumor.

They stood shoulder-to-shoulder around Mr. Pavlik’s bed, a wall of resolve built on cautious hope, and Pastor McLaughlin had asked if Vincent would reposition himself up by Mr. Pavlik’s head, there by his right shoulder. Maddie had been summoned from her position at the window: Pastor McLaughlin called to her, and Mrs. Pavlik beckoned, smiling, gesturing with her plump hand.

Gathered in this way, they reached for Mr. Pavlik’s covered body, finding limbs through the blanket. The elders and Pastor McLaughlin flanked his sides, Mrs. Pavlik gripped his right foot, Maddie rested her hand lightly on his left. Then they bowed their heads and closed their eyes—except for Maddie, who raised her head to watch Vincent lay both of his hands on Mr. Pavlik’s shaved head.

She hadn’t wanted to look at Mr. Pavlik when she entered the room. He had come to church after his last surgery, months ago now, confined to a wheelchair, his head mercifully wrapped in a bandage and then covered in a hat. But she thought for certain today when finding his head bare that she noted swelling near his ear, and the thought frightened her. Pastor McLaughlin prayed aloud, and Maddie wondered how Vincent could bear to put his hands on that venous head where pink scars traced its contours and then disappeared into the pillow.

Next to her, Mrs. Pavlik sighed. Maddie stole a glance at her face to see it red and tear-streaked. Her eyes were closed, but tears spilled from them nonetheless, and her lips were moving. Maddie considered the Pavliks’ partnership. He was tall and thin; she was short and heavy-set. He was quiet, given to making one laugh with his dry humor, but only if you hung around to listen. Mrs. Pavlik, on the other hand, talked constantly, so much that you found yourself tuning her out. She was the busy sort, always doing something. She was responsible for the kitchen at church and for many of the decorations in the church building. Even there in the hospital she was constant motion, always fussing over her motionless husband, adjusting his blanket or his bed sheet, patting his leg, stroking his arm. During the prayer she rubbed his foot vigorously, and briefly the blanket came away and exposed bare toes, long and somewhat yellowed.

This unanticipated nakedness, innocent as it was, shocked Maddie. Suddenly she had a vivid sense of Mr. Pavlik’s body there in front of her—all of it. His long limbs motionless, their muscles flaccid and sagging, his torso and the organs at work inside it: spleen, liver, lengths of intestine. He was unconscious—or maybe only sleeping—but his heart continued its mindless contractions, pushing the blood out to his extremities and drawing it back again. And what other crucial fluids pulsed among the membranes of tissue and bone?

She marveled at the body as container, grotesquely complex and having far too many distasteful needs. Yet here Mr. Pavlik wasn’t making use of his body at all: something had taken root in the brain, had grown there and now was commanding his stillness. For a moment, the idea that he should be living—lying there mute, blind, unmoving—seemed absurd.

And yet she had seen that his toenails were neatly trimmed. Maddie could imagine Mrs. Pavlik bent over her husband’s bare foot, wielding the nail scissors. She would have chatted away as she cut his toenails for him, now accustomed to his silence but talking to him nonetheless, tending to the heedless growth of these nails. She would have thought nothing of the length of those toes and their hairlessness or the yellowing of the flesh. To her, Maddie supposed, it was all familiarity, as customary to her as her own two feet. She probably didn’t find it disgusting.

Maddie did. She couldn’t imagine fondness over such a thing. She couldn’t imagine an aging lover; she couldn’t imagine loving Vincent in any way other than the way he was now. Even if he were to age—which was almost inconceivable—he wouldn’t age like this.

Through the blanket, Maddie could feel the bony thinness of Mr. Pavlik’s left foot, and she closed her eyes as if to shut the image away. She thought instead of Vincent’s toes, which she had seen often enough. They were strong and brown, like his whole body had been during the summer. She remembered swimming with him and the tautness of his torso and the bulk of muscle in his arms.

He had swum up and caught her from behind. He was pinning her arms against her chest, teasing and threatening to force her underwater, and she had screamed and struggled against him but hadn’t failed to sense his chest against her back. She had been acutely aware of that naked contact between their bodies, more than she was aware of his arms around her shoulders or his hands on her wrists. Even then, when everything about him had been new to her and when every physical interaction felt alive, she had wanted more.

The prayer was over. She hadn’t heard the closing words, but everyone around her was straightening, withdrawing the hands that had taken hold of Mr. Pavlik’s body. There were exhalations and clearings of throat, bleary-eyed blinking as the room returned to focus.

Before she knew what to do with herself, Maddie found that Mrs. Pavlik had taken her hand.

“Oh, you young people are just so wonderful,” she said. “It’s so good of you to come. So good of you.”

“We’re glad to do it,” Maddie found herself saying.

“Just wait until Dean finds out you were here,” she said, and she gripped Mr. Pavlik’s left foot, the one Maddie had instantly released at the close of the prayer. She clasped his feet with both hands and went on: “He doesn’t know now. He doesn’t know you all are here. He’s sleeping now. But when he wakes up, I’ll tell him. You were in his Sunday school class, weren’t you, Maddie?”

“Yes. Fourth grade.” She remembered his retelling the story of the Genesis Joseph: it had been compelling the way he extended the saga from one week to the next, this Sunday leaving Joseph in the bottom of an abandoned well, next week in the bottom of a prison, and the next as second-in-command over Egypt. For the first time in years, Maddie had been interested in going to Sunday school; attending Sunday school had been, prior to the fourth grade, decidedly old hat: she knew every story they were going to teach her; she’d been going to Sunday school since she was two.

Mr. Pavlik had made it exciting again.

“Well, Dean will be delighted that you were here. He talks about you, you know. He talks about all of you. He hasn’t forgotten a single one of his Sunday school students,” she said. She was still holding on to both of his blanketed feet, and now she was smiling at his face: the closed eyes, the sallow complexion, the loose skin that hung down in folds below his jawbone.

R

The news was not good. Mr. Pavlik had taken a turn for the worse; the tumor had grown. That disappointment came on Sunday morning, the first day after their hospital-beside prayers, and it continued trickling out after that, day after day of bad news. He was drifting in and out of consciousness. He would be home and in hospice care before the week was out—and after that, maybe he had another week left. Family was coming in from out of town.

Maddie found this incomprehensible. What could it mean? Had there been some mistake? Her mind stabbed wildly at guesses, and time and again she returned to the same fears: they should have kept Vincent’s gift a secret; or worse, they had been mistaken from the outset—Vincent had never healed anyone.

She traced the history. Her own healing hadn’t been immediate—not quite. The pain hadn’t dissolved right away. The healing had taken time—much of the ambulance ride, at least—to sink in. And Willy’s healing hadn’t been instantaneous either—or had it? When he stumbled away from them, he had still clutched his crippled arm to his chest. She tried to reconstruct the memory, but always his retreating image dissolved in the rain, his back turned against her.

She asked Vincent about it, pressing him for answers that she inexplicably believed he could offer: “Do you think maybe it just takes time, Vincent? Do you think it will still work?” The healing had to work. It had to. If Mr. Pavlik’s tumor continued on the way it seemed to be doing… The ramifications were too many. Maddie didn’t like to consider them.

Vincent answered gently but without encouragement. “I don’t know, Maddie,” he said. “We can keep praying, I guess.”

Which is what the whole church had been doing for years, Maddie thought with some resentment. Mr. Pavlik had been diagnosed over two years ago. No one had done anything more or less than pray for years.

This was all Vincent could muster? If he couldn’t produce miraculous results, then he might at least show more concern. Worry, maybe, or a sense of pending loss. He seemed immune to fears of failure and all that it would mean.

Justine was more sympathetic. She, too, had known Mr. Pavlik her whole life. But she was nonetheless somewhat surprised by Maddie’s distraction over it. After all, the church had known its losses over the years, and neither she nor Maddie was terribly close to Mr. Pavlik. “Why are you so concerned about him, Maddie? I mean, he’s a nice guy and everything,” she said.

This was a lunchtime conversation, and as usual, their table was crowded. At Justine’s question, Maddie stole a look at Vincent, who didn’t appear to be listening. He seemed blissfully unbothered by Dean Pavlik’s plummet towards death and therefore was able to enjoy his lunch, his friends. At that moment, he was creating goalposts with his fingers on the tabletop, waiting for his friend Brad to send a paper football flying between them.

Maddie felt exasperated, and also, suddenly, profoundly alone. Other than the Tedescos and the group who had prayed in the hospital room last Saturday, no one knew about Vincent’s gift. Within that number, perhaps only Nicky and Amy truly believed it, while Vincent, gift-bearer himself, didn’t really seem to care about it one way or the other.

Maddie wanted desperately to tell Justine everything. She wanted that matter-of-fact approach to weigh in on all of it. She felt sure that, better than any of them—Nicky and Pastor McLaughlin included—Justine would know what to do.

And then Maddie corrected herself: What was there to do? No one, it seemed, could stop Mr. Pavlik from dying. The latest report had come to her mother via phone that very morning: Mr. Pavlik had been unconscious for two days. The end was certainly near, likely in less than a week.

So instead, Maddie tried to feign nonchalance. She agreed with Justine that Mr. Pavlik was a nice guy and said something about how she had loved having him for Sunday school. But she didn’t actually remember details of that year; she just remembered the lessons. It was Justine who reminded her of the candy jar he kept in the classroom as incentive to memorize Bible verses. In a sudden burst of laughter, she recounted the story of the Sunday when Tim Douglas had gagged on a butterscotch, and a panicked Mr. Pavlik lunged across the room to give him the Heimlich.

“Remember that, Maddie? Do you remember that? Mr. Pavlik was hilarious. I can still see the look on his face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so scared in my life.”

Maddie recalled the incident and laughed with Justine, but inside she felt sick. She thought through the previous Saturday morning, all of them around his body, with Vincent standing by his head. Was it because she herself hadn’t prayed? She hadn’t meant not to pray, but she had been distracted. Was there a secret to how it was done? Were there hoops to jump through? Right things to say—like a magic trick?

Worse still, she recounted how she had been distracted during the prayer. It had been Vincent’s body. She hadn’t meant to think about it. The thoughts and memories were always empowered by wills of their own: thoughts of him kissing her, touching her.

She was suspended by sudden horror, hearing Mrs. Pavlik’s cheerful voice bubbling on and on. Her house would be empty: the hospice nurse, their family, Mr. Pavlik gone. Who would she talk to? She talked all the time; who would Mrs. Pavlik be without her unceasing chatter? Maddie imagined it, heartsick: Mrs. Pavlik would continue to talk; her voice would fill the silent rooms of the house, percolating in kitchen, bath, bedroom, and no one to hear her.

“God doesn’t always heal people, you know,” said Justine, who believed that Maddie’s interest in Mr. Pavlik turned on butterscotch and peppermints in the fourth grade. “Think of Mrs. Moorland. She was on the prayer chain for years, and she died.”

Mrs. Moorland had indeed died. What was it? Congestive heart failure or something like that. Maddie knew that Justine was right, and besides, no one lives forever. But given Vincent’s gift, there was something vulgar in mild acceptance. Maddie had seen four people unaccountably healed—none of whom had needed healing the way that Mr. Pavlik did. If healing was a possibility, then it was wrong for it to be withheld. Mr. Pavlik’s dying smacked of cruelty.

“It’s true,” Vincent said. “People pray for people to get better all the time, and they die anyway.” It was his turn with the paper football now, and he hunched down to align his eye with its projected path. Maddie was amazed by his apparent indifference. He had laid his hands on that scarred head. He was the one with the gift. How could he be so casual about this?

But she wouldn’t question him about it. Not now, in the middle of this terrible situation, and not at the lunch table filled with their friends. Maddie would sooner pick a quarrel with anyone else.

“Doesn’t it make you kind of wonder about God?” She ventured the thought quietly, surprising herself. She hadn’t realized that she was wondering about him, and now that she knew, she wished immediately she hadn’t said so aloud.

“No,” said Justine and Vincent, simultaneously. Impressive, really, their coming together like this now, of all times.

“It depends on what you believe about God. I mean, you have to believe he’s good,” Vincent said.

Of course Maddie believed he was good. She had been told all her life that God was good. It was wrong to think otherwise.

“Yes, God is good,” Justine answered Vincent. “It’s not a question of him being good. But there’s evil in the world. Bad things happen. People get sick. People die. It’s part of life.”

Maddie digested this. Justine was right, she reasoned, but it was a terrible state of affairs. Again she heard Mrs. Pavlik’s voice going on and on, unanswered. And she thought, too, of Matthew, Justine’s little brother. They had prayed for him to be cured of leukemia. They had asked for wisdom for the doctors. They had said all the things they always say, she was sure of it. She herself had prayed for him at the time, lisping six-year-old that she was, when her parents came to tuck her in at night. He was only four years old when he died.

Maddie remembered his funeral. The coffin had been small, engulfed in white flowers. Was God good?

“So are you saying that stuff happens without God in control of it?” Vincent was asking.

“All I’m saying is that there’s evil in the world,” Justine said. The other conversations at their lunch table had grown quiet, and Maddie caught sight of the absurdity: high school students, some of them church-goers, some completely disinterested, entertaining this conversation in the cafeteria.

“I know there’s evil in the world,” Vincent was saying, not dispassionately, but with something reserved, his energies given to reason. “I’m asking is God in control of the evil?”

What is evil exactly, Maddie wanted to know. Death seemed a likely suspect. She had one strong memory of Matthew: he was sitting in church next to Justine, his legs straight out in front of him, his heels coming just to the edge of the pew. He was driving his toy pick-up truck over his knees and making puttering sounds with wet lips.

Did God make Matthew die? Did God let evil make Matthew die? What was the difference?

“God doesn’t make bad things happen, Vincent,” Justine said. Maddie had missed something. The shift was almost imperceptible, but she knew they had squared off—or Justine had, anyway. There was a defensive edge in her voice, her gaze locked on Vincent. Their common ground had evidently been a very small territory.

“What I’m saying is, is God in control or isn’t he?” Vincent maintained his conversational tone, as if this debate over God’s authority was suitable for casual banter.

No, Maddie thought. Not always, anyway. He hadn’t been in control on Saturday night—the very same day she and Vincent had prayed for Mr. Pavlik. On Saturday night, God had been nothing but a pitiful afterthought, while she and Vincent had been alone in her living room, her parents gone to bed.

And then a new thought came: the church altar on Sunday evenings, people kneeling there weeping. Sin was evil, Maddie realized, and you had to be sorry for your sin—or else suffer and be punished for it.

Was that what this was? Punishment? God was taking Vincent’s gift away—Mr. Pavlik was dying—because of their sin?

“No, Vincent. You are saying that God makes people sick and he makes people die.” Justine was angry now, and Maddie felt that familiar impulse to defend Vincent.

“But Justine,” Maddie said, “You yourself said that people get sick and people die. Remember Mrs. Moorland—“

“Right,” Justine said. “Because there’s evil in the world. That’s not what Vincent is saying. Vincent is saying that God makes it happen.”

Maddie didn’t need the summary. She got it. She had arrived there along with Justine, but to say so would be—wouldn’t it?—to make some terrible accusations. How could Justine’s words possibly be true—about God? About Vincent? And yet she couldn’t bring her own growing realization to the conversation: evil, punishment, death—all of it as consequence.

“No,” Vincent said. He was quiet a moment. “I’m not saying God makes it happen…” His voice trailed off, but Maddie nonetheless felt some relief in his words. Surely Vincent would have an explanation.

Justine wasn’t waiting, and she wasn’t mollified.

“Then what?” she asked, and Maddie again remembered Matthew. Would Vincent argue that God allowed Matthew’s death? That he let it happen? Even that he wanted it to happen?

Vincent, rational, quiet, seemed determined to meet Justine’s anger with calm. “I’m just saying that God has bigger things on his plate, is all,” he said.

Justine expelled a stunned gasp. Maddie grasped for meaning. This was appalling! Matthew had died, Mr. Pavlik was dying—and God had bigger things on his plate? How could Vincent say that? Didn’t he know that Justine had lost her baby brother? Surely Maddie had told him. Hadn’t she told him?

“What?” she said, shocked and in unison with Justine.

“I mean—“

But Justine cut him off: “‘His eye is on the sparrow,’ Vincent. God cares about everybody. Everybody. Even sparrows, and even Mr. Pavlik, who is dying, as we speak, of a brain tumor.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Vincent said.

“Really? Then what do you mean by, ‘God has bigger things on his plate’?” She was furious, her voice lined with contempt.

Vincent remained calm, but he seemed to be reaching for words. “Not on his plate,” he said. He was looking around him as if trying to find a way to explain himself. “That’s not what I mean.”

“What do you mean, then?” Maddie asked, and she heard her voice, coaxing, a little desperate, trying to make peace and also trying to understand.

Justine answered for him. “You mean that God is busy dealing with other issues,” she said. “Maybe like world peace? Or the arms race.” Her words were coated in sarcasm. “Is the arms race on God’s plate, Vincent? Is that what it is? He has so much on his plate that he can’t be bothered with human life. He can’t be bothered with stuff like Mr. Pavlik. That’s what you mean.”

Maddie wanted to break in. She wanted to defend Justine’s anger, to remind them all about Matthew, to defend Vincent’s defenseless position, to defend Vincent. But she was afraid to try. She was afraid to say anything. Her situation—in every way—felt frighteningly precarious.

Everyone else at the table was frozen, listening, surely horrified at the ramifications of Vincent’s words, because anyone would be horrified at Vincent’s words—even an atheist.

“No, Justine. Give me a minute to say something,” Vincent said.

“I’ve given you more than enough minutes, Vincent Elander,” Justine said. “Everybody has. And I’m more than just a little tired of you thinking you know so much.” She was gathering her lunch things. A dramatic exit was in the making, and Maddie couldn’t blame her. She herself wanted to walk away, if only to collect her thoughts, to mentally align Vincent’s words—so empty of compassion—with his ability to heal people.

Couldn’t he heal people?

Justine stood to her feet, a stack of books in one arm and the remainder of her lunch in the other. Maddie braced herself for the parting shot.

“I’ll remind you of something, Vincent,” she said, “or maybe you don’t even know: Mr. Pavlik is a really good man. I’ve known him my whole life. Now he’s dying. And everybody is sad about that—including God.”

They all watched her go. She walked quickly, swerving between the round cafeteria tables and their occupants, never looking back.

No one said a word.

Maddie surveyed the table: a chocolate bar wrapper, two crumpled lunch bags, a few folded paper footballs, crumbs. And there, lying potent if invisible among them, an invulnerable brain tumor, God’s caprice, Vincent’s inscrutable theology, and sin—insistent, unavoidable.

Maddie didn’t know where to begin, but she thought she might try in defense of Justine—someone who had never, until that moment, seemed in need of defending. “You have to be more careful, Vincent,” she said.

“I am careful,” Vincent answered, his voice heavy with an unfamiliar frustration. “She wouldn’t even let me talk—Ow.”

The paper football had hit him in the cheekbone. Bryan had thrown it, or maybe Brad—two of the lunchtime entourage who had silently suffered through this loaded philosophical debate, now clearly looking for a little levity. Maddie was sure they were glad Justine had swept up her anger with her lunch.

The dutiful thing was to follow her friend, but how to move toward resolution? She herself was reeling with confusion and a dreadful fear.

She found Justine fuming in the Student Commons, sitting on a bench against the wall, her arms and legs both crossed, right foot twitching at the ankle. There she sat, her church and family history inextricably combined and wedged against her chest. There was no room for Vincent in that complicated knot, no room for him or his unconventional—and disturbing—ideas.

“Sometimes that boyfriend of yours is a real asshole,” Justine said, staring stonily over the room. Maddie sat down.

Surprising, yes. Confusing, absolutely. But asshole? Maddie was perplexed by Vincent, but she was also perplexed by Justine, by her friend’s persistent mistrust of Vincent. And now they’d had this terrible conversation. Justine wouldn’t want to hear anything spoken in his defense. Frankly, Maddie couldn’t think of anything, except the unexpected memory of her asshole boyfriend in Pittsburgh’s pouring rain, helping a drunk and crippled man stand to his feet. Maybe if she could get Justine to see Vincent differently, then she could hear—they could both hear—whatever it was he was trying to say.

“He cares about Mr. Pavlik,” she said.

“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t care about anybody but himself.”

“Justine,” Maddie said, as gently as she could, “I don’t think he even knows about Matthew.”

“What does Matthew have to do with it?” Justine’s eyes filled with tears. They never talked about Matthew.

“I just mean that Vincent was talking—he was probably talking—you know, in theory. Theoretically. He didn’t realize—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Justine cut her off. She was searching in her pocket.

Maddie tried again. “He doesn’t realize how this feels to you.”

“It’s not a question of how it feels to me,” Justine said, wiping angrily at her nose with a tissue. “It’s a question of what he’s saying.”

“About Matthew?” Maddie prodded.

“About Matthew, about Mr. Pavlik. About anyone.” She raised a hand in a gesture loosely resembling a wave. “About God,” she said.

Maddie was quiet for a moment, again wondering what Vincent meant. In her mind, she saw him running through the church parking lot toward screams on the parsonage lawn, leaning over the football player lying on the field, kneeling beside her—when was it?—almost a year ago now. He hadn’t even known her name.

And so Maddie felt she had no other choice but to tell Justine. She told her all of it—about how he had prayed for her that day in the school parking lot, about Willy, about the football player, about Joey Amoretti. And then she told her about Mr. Pavlik and how Vincent had spent a Saturday morning in prayer for a man he hardly knew.

It seemed a wise choice. See? She was trying to say. See? Vincent does care about other people.

This was not Justine’s take.

“So you’re telling me that your boyfriend can heal people?” Any sadness over Matthew’s mention, any softened edge, was gone.

“Yeah.” There was nothing left to say. Maddie’s small hope began to dissolve.

“Vincent Elander can heal people,” Justine said, flatly, sarcastic, annoyed.

“Yeah,” again. Maddie didn’t want to mount another defense, and it occurred to her that she wouldn’t be able to. Where was the proof?

“And Nicky and Pastor McLaughlin and all the elders believe it?”

“Well, yes, I guess so. They were beginning to.” She paused. And then a last, feeble effort: “They think it’s possible, anyway. Nicky does. And Amy.”

Justine sighed. She straightened. She uncrossed her legs and looked around the room, taking in a couple making out on a bench across the way, a loud game of ping-pong, two members of the boys’ basketball team sauntering through the room. Then she looked squarely at Maddie.

“I think that everyone needs to think long and hard about this, Maddie. Everyone. Has anyone even bothered to notice that Mr. Pavlik is dying? He isn’t healed, Maddie. He’s dying.” She took a deep breath and sighed loudly, slowly, then bent her head to her open palms.

Maddie waited a long moment. The music was loud in the Student Commons.

Justine spoke again, looking at Maddie earnestly, her anger set aside. “Vincent can’t heal people, Maddie. It’s great that he’s coming to church. It’s great that he seems to have become a Christian. And he’s a great athlete and fun to be with and all that. But like everybody else, he’s a person. He’s just a normal person.” She looked away from Maddie again, around the room, addressing these final words, so it seemed, to anyone. “For God’s sake, everyone needs to wake up.”

And she stood and walked off—to the bathroom, maybe, or the student store, abandoning her books and her lunch. This time, Maddie felt no obligation to follow her. She was glad, even in the din of the Student Commons, to be alone with her thoughts for a moment.

Steeling herself against Justine’s words, Maddie took stock of what she knew, reciting it as she might a Bible verse in fourth grade Sunday school. Vincent had most certainly become a Christian. Vincent could heal people. Vincent had healed people. Maddie said it to herself as much as to Justine’s retreating back. Regardless of what Vincent had said in the cafeteria, regardless of how he had sounded, she knew that he cared about them all.

And Maddie decided that she knew—or thought she knew—that God also cared about Mr. Pavlik. Certainly he did. And also Mrs. Pavlik. Here again she heard the cheerful, bubbling voice going on and on unanswered.

It wasn’t that God didn’t care, Maddie reasoned. It was simply that he cared more about sin, maybe, and it was sin he was punishing.

God punished sin.

She felt the realization, heavy and true, an ache in the middle of her chest. That was it. God was punishing her sin—and Vincent’s—and he was doing it by taking Vincent’s gift away. Which meant letting Mr. Pavlik die.

That must be how it worked.

R

The adult Maddie, weak from cancer and its treatment, sat at the computer. Its screen glowed with a satellite view of North America. The entry of her parents’ address at the prompt found her plummeting toward earth, and immediately the roads and treetops of the familiar suburb rose into existence. It was a strange view, like one from a plane, stretched flat. A bird’s-eye view, or God’s. But the roof of her parents’ house looked right, as did the lay of the land around it. There was the deck her father built during the summer after eighth grade, replacing their concrete patio.

Just down the street, inches away, was where she had waited for the bus, and now she traced the bus’s route to the high school. She revisited, turn for turn, length for length, the road to church. She followed the way to the mall, the way to the grocery stores, the hardware store, even the free-standing butcher where her mother had shopped when Maddie was very young. Maddie made all these outings while sitting at the computer desk, again and again venturing out of her parents’ driveway, noting by their rooflines the houses and businesses that landmarked the way.

She adjusted the satellite’s view to a horizontal gaze and with it gained the sense of spying, looking into a moment of life on the street when she had not been there, watching unseen. These actual, street-line views occasionally made her gasp: the scenes were vivid and life-like, for the most part exactly as she had left them. Her house, the paved driveway; her parents were not at home. The church, its parking lot empty. She found Justine’s house: it had been remodeled. Vincent’s house, still tired.

Maddie shuddered with recollection. Those spring days had been dark ones. The whole congregation had been stricken spectators of Dean Pavlik’s pending death. Maddie had felt pinned in the front row, and also a tragic and unwitting background player, guilty both of his demise and of a blighted effort to heal him.

Once upon a time, she had looked for interaction with God, but he had left her blissfully anonymous, sitting unbidden in her pew. Prior to Vincent, she had been chosen by no one, for no one—and so also was innocent of Justine’s doubt, Mrs. Pavlik’s loneliness, and the wanton, perplexing urges of her own body.

A body designed by God, purportedly given to her by God in some kind of holy game that she could never win.

She had been only sixteen years old, and she was convinced that a man’s imminent death was her fault. She’d had faith in God, and she had acted on it. If God wanted holiness, then she would do what she could to muster it. How had Vincent said it? They might want each other, but they needed to want God more.

If she were to tell this part of the story—and she never had—then she would admit that here—just here, perhaps—the sixteen-year-old Maddie had been admirable.