Peter would have granted me more leave, but the days had piled one on top of another, over a month now, and already they’d become a wall nearly too high to scale. If I didn’t return on Monday, I probably never would.
Evangeline was to start the same day. She had insisted on checking the box that said “Junior,” though I’d warned her she might be desperately behind. It wasn’t until Sunday evening that she began to fret, asking if the teachers were nice, if they’d give her a break. The next morning, I offered to drive her, but she refused, promising to walk the mile herself. Despite her new outfits, she wore her old jeans and red sweater. As I watched her march down the drive, her new backpack stuffed to bursting, I thought, That’s the last I’ll see of her.
After she disappeared from sight, I managed only a few bites of toast before I grabbed my keys and rushed to my car. I had to find her. Twenty minutes later I pulled into the school’s lot, having followed the most logical route and circled others. There’d been no sign of her. I told myself the girl was gone, that it was for the best, yet a paralysis claimed my arms, left me unable to open the car door.
Jackson Matthews and Wyatt Berg, football teammates, stood outside the school’s front doors, chatting and smiling at the girls, no different from any other day. I’d prepared to feel angry at the living, at the way life refuses to stop for death. But the students were innocents in this. It was the building itself that infuriated me. With its poor ventilation and mold, its crumbling bricks and swollen windowsills, it indicted all of us, practically shouting, All the failed school levies! Such reckless indifference to the well-being of your children! How had we grown so selfish? When had we begun not to care? No wonder children were lost.
I managed to escape my car and push toward those students who had this day and tomorrow and the next before them. Jackson and Wyatt stopped mid-word when I passed, as if I’d caught them in a cruelty. As I entered the building, the bustling, noisy heat of teenagers, the shouts across hallways, the bursts of laughter and banging lockers collected in a wave before me, a concentrated aliveness that threatened to drown me. A few students noticed me and fell silent. Whispers rose and rippled, and there was a general sweeping to the sides.
Opposite the front doors, at the counter of the main office, Peter stood talking to Carol Marsten, the new vice principal. With the atmospheric drop, his head jerked in my direction, and he swung around the counter.
“Isaac!” He had to yell, because I’d dashed down the hall.
When I stopped, he jogged up, his purple tie flopping against his blue dress shirt. He pulled me into an empty classroom, gave me a quizzical look. “Were you running away from me?”
I shrugged, unable to explain myself.
“If I’ve done anything—”
“No. No, you haven’t. I just . . . It’s just that there’s . . . so much.”
“Yeah,” he said, sighing. “So damned much.” He shifted. “I’ve been worried about you.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Damn it, Isaac, don’t be sorry. That’s the last thing I want. Just talk to me, okay? What’s going on? You wouldn’t see me last week. And this morning, I learn from Carol that you registered a new girl to start today—”
“Is she here?”
His head cocked. “Not that I know of. Didn’t you bring her?”
“She insisted on walking.”
“Is she a niece or something? Anything I can help with?”
Before I could answer, the warning bell rang. “I know you’ve got to go,” he said. “If you get a chance, stop by the office before you head home.”
I said I would try and started down the hall. Dick Nelson, a jovial social studies teacher, patted my shoulder solemnly as he walked by. Someone touched my arm, and I turned to find Connie Swanson, her face more florid and blustery than usual. Though her chemistry classroom adjoined mine, she’d been strangely absent from Daniel’s search parties. Now she blinked back tears and produced a pitiful moan before turning in embarrassment.
As I watched Connie escape, I wondered why someone her age and weight would choose such a short, tight skirt. Strange what’s left behind when all that matters is scraped away.
MY CLASSROOM SEEMED FOREIGN. Mike Fuentes had arranged the desks around the perimeter, left the center empty. Break dancing had made a recent comeback at the school, and I imagined students blaring music, spinning on their heads, Fuentes yelling in frustration. But as I settled at my desk, the center transformed, became a place where—like meetings for worship—its emptiness allowed insights to rise.
Apart from Daniel’s memorial, I hadn’t been to meeting since my son’s death. I understood the burden I presented. What do you say to the parent of a murdered child? How do you behave? People’s fear of hurting me caused them pain and confusion, and their suffering added to mine. I wanted to spare Friends my presence. Besides, what was left for me there? Certainly not Divine connection. God had reduced me to rubble, had stolen Katherine and my son. God, it seemed, had taken even the girl and the promise of her baby.
No, I would not be seeking that God, the one who even now taunted me with students who straggled in, who mocked me with a morning light that fell over the room like glowing rain, that lit the large veins of my hands, full and pulsing, as they rested on the desk. Not the God who delighted in this Divine torment, this nagging, insistent whisper: I have left you with nothing, but you are alive, alive, alive.
You are alive. You must come to grips with that.