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Brad went to work the next day and sleepwalked through his tasks. When he returned to his own apartment at the end of the day, he couldn’t say that he’d accomplished much.
But even his own apartment had ceased to be a refuge. Brad tried to stave off the emptiness he felt by smoking; watching television, which he soon found unbearably irritating; and reading a book, which bored him.
He went to replace the book on its shelf and noticed his old photo album crammed in between a biography of Buckminster Fuller and a history of baseball. The album was skinny – he had very few photos of his own childhood, or of his parents. Most of the pictures had been given to him by his grandmother, or had been taken by her, and were relatively recent.
Brad opened the album, sat down on his bed, and sputtered out a wry laugh.
There was a wedding photo of his parents that his grandmother had kept. He stared at it, thinking that it must’ve been the only day in their married lives that they didn’t fight. His Dad was wearing a brown tuxedo and a yellow boutonniere, and his Mom was wearing a white satin slip dress. She was holding a bouquet of yellow roses. They were both smiling, and his Dad’s arm was around his Mom.
Then there was his own baby picture. He’d never liked that photo. He didn’t know why his Mom thought it was cute to take a picture that he’d have to spend the rest of his life denying, but there he was, smiling up at the camera from a fake bearskin rug. His face hadn’t been the only thing shining. He flipped the page.
There was the one school photo of him when he’d been in fourth grade, the one with his hair sticking almost straight up. He’d been wearing a goofy striped shirt that he’d had to pick out himself. To make things worse, the colors had faded strangely, and the photo looked almost pink now. He sputtered and shook his head.
That was the year Bobby Jenkins had tried to bully him, and he’d taught Bobby the definition of “left cross.”
Brad moved the fingers of his left hand, and turned the page.
Then there was a picture of him and his grandmother. It had been taken by a friend of hers, not long after he’d gone to live with her. They’d been standing out in front of her little white house, on the lawn. He shook his head, thinking how skinny he looked, and his grams – he let his gaze linger on her face. She was scowling, her hair was pulled back into a severe bun, and her dress was a blue print bag.
He flipped the page, and smiled faintly. His grandfather’s service medal was stuck in between the next pages. His grams had given it to him one day, long before he’d had any idea how big a deal that was for her.
“You never knew your grandfather,” she had told him gruffly. “He grew up real poor. But he worked hard, and he made something of himself. See this? This is his service medal. He rose to the rank of a major in the Navy. It goes to show you what you can get, if you work hard.”
She had pressed it into his palm, and leaned over and stared at him with an almost crazy intensity in her eyes.
“You take this. Maybe it’ll remind you that you can make something of yourself, too.”
He smiled faintly.
Yeah.
He flipped the page. There was his high school graduation photo of him standing there in his cap and gown. His grandmother had been by his side, but he’d had to hold her arm to keep her steady. By that time she’d been sick, and a month later, she’d been gone.
He still missed her.
He cut off that line of thought abruptly, flipped the book shut, and stretched out on the bed. He blew smoke contemplatively toward the ceiling.
The milestones of his life, in five photos.
But it was what had happened between the milestones, and the carefully posed portrait shots, that had shaped his life most. The things he didn’t want to remember.
The things that had made an agnostic of him. He frowned.
Things like the recurring nightmare he’d had as a child, except that it had been real: the sound of his father screaming, of him knocking things off the kitchen table and yelling at his Mom. His earliest memories were of hiding behind the couch as his parents fought.
He took a pull at his cigarette. When he’d been very small, he’d prayed to God – he supposed because his Mom had taught him a bedtime prayer once and put the idea in his head. But if there was a God, He hadn’t chosen to listen to those prayers. His parents’ fights got more frequent and even more frightening.
One night when he was six years old, his old man had come home drunk and had beaten his Mom up. The sound of her screaming had driven him into the darkest corner of his bedroom closet, where he’d stayed all night with his hands clamped over his ears.
The next morning everything was deathly quiet. His Mom had been curled up in bed with a bruised face and cuts on her hands.
His Dad had gone, and he never returned.
Anger whisked up in him, like sparks from a lighter. He glared up at the blotchy ceiling of his apartment and prayed his first prayer in years. All the pent up resentment and rage of his childhood came pouring out suddenly, like flood waters breaking through a dam.
Why?
If You exist at all, why did You let all that happen? Why did you let my Dad take his issues out on Mom, and then leave us both alone? Why did You stand by when she started doing meth? Why didn’t you save her?
Why didn’t my Dad ever call me, even once? He didn’t even come to Mom’s funeral! If you’re a God of love, why did You let all that mess happen?
Brad’s mouth twisted down bitterly. You abandoned us before Dad did.
He lifted blazing eyes to the ceiling, and his face contracted in fury. And how can you let an innocent girl like Jemima believe in the fairy tale, and sacrifice her own happiness because of it, when one day something will go so wrong that she’ll see the truth? She’ll see that there’s nothing to all those stories she was told. But then it’ll be too late to get back what she lost. It’ll be too late to get back her life!
What did she ever do to You?
If this is the kind of God you are, then You’re a God of hate, not a God of love, and I want nothing to do with You!
Brad shook his head, and leaned over, and crushed out the cigarette.
