Chapter Thirty-Five

It had been a tough year. Walt sat on the steps of St. Andrew’s looking out at the cars that brushed back and forth across the street. He had a meeting with a few members from their original grief group in the basement of the church, but he had left the house early so he could walk to clear his head. Pastor Luke joined them on occasion, his grief being closely tied to his wife’s dwindling memory. Agnes wasn’t quite yet a detriment to herself or others, but she routinely left water boiling on the stove or the front door wide open. Luke said she always played it off like she was the female Mr. Magoo. “But it’s about that time, I suppose. No spring chickens,” Luke said one evening into his tepid cup of coffee.

Agnes never came to the meetings anymore. Walt wondered if that was because her heart had healed or because she couldn’t remember it needed healing in the first place. Considering his own problems, he said a small prayer of thanks to God. Marge wasn’t the type to forget a thing, even if he’d want her to.

They had lived comfortably and relatively peacefully these past several years. That day Marge returned to the bakery had been a new sort of test that only brought them closer together. Nothing could have made Walt leave, not after years of nursing the new bruises to his heart, the ones derived from not being able to protect Marge in the first place.

There were bouts of anger he knew were fear based. One night, he punched the wall of his bedroom, the same room where his parents used to sleep, and left a raw blemish in the plaster. He had been thinking of the man that had done that terrible thing, the man that had ruined their lives and taken away all those years they could have had together. Forgive. It was the strange pulse, a feeling, a soft breath here, there, and everywhere. He wanted to punch the wall again, but his hand hurt, and the voice wasn’t letting up. Forgive.

That night he combed his Bible for forgiveness. He read about Joseph and his brothers and God reconciling Himself back to Israel because of Moses’s pleas. He realized that God was never going to leave His people. But He needed Moses to know it on a gut level too.

You’re not going to try and leave me, too, are you?

No. Never.

The type of love he felt from God was beyond anything he had ever experienced, even from his own parents. And he took his time trying to explain this to Marge who just saw the world as a series of fires she was forced to put out. God wasn’t the lover of her soul. He was an unwieldy arsonist.  

The day was settling down and the light was a soft, warm glow above the edges of the buildings that lined Main Street. He sat watching people, one boy in particular who delighted in running straight into a few birds gathered at a parking meter. He instantly thought of Garrett, his son. He knew on some level Marge didn’t see it that way. Garrett was hers, another problem to solve, and she wasn’t going to cheat and ask for help. So, Walt decided to help regardless, taking Garrett under his wing and showing him what it meant to be a man. That’s what Walt couldn’t stand, how everyone (except Marge) seemed to write the boy off as if he were broken.

Garrett certainly wasn’t broken. In fact, Walt often thought Garrett was the only of them who was getting it right.

He studied the boy sometimes, watched his movements like watching the flight pattern of birds. He wasn’t disorganized. No, he was quite methodical, his brain working to watch the movement of the clouds or the fish flopping on the line at the lake. He wasn’t constantly processing and working out his place in the world.

Garrett already knew, and Garrett was at peace.

The tantrums he threw with Marge were nearly nonexistent when they moved into Walt’s house. Walt knew that bothered Marge, like she was being made a liar. There was a silent gratitude for her life now, for how much easier things were between her and her son. But because Walt knew Marge so well, he also knew there was a tiny bud of resentment she had taken to nursing.

And boy did that bud grow when he taught their son about God. “Oh, he doesn’t understand all that,” Marge would say, verbally swatting away Walt’s attempts to read Genesis to Garrett at the kitchen table. But what Marge wouldn’t notice is how eerily calm the boy would get, his mind silently storing the reality of God’s initial world instead of rocking hard against the back of his chair.

Walt never held this against her. He knew the type of people her siblings were, wearing religion like a badge on their sleeve, but never really getting the essence of who Christ was. Same old story, same old tune.  He prayed every day that God would open Marge’s eyes and see His love for her in the way Walt loved her even in the wake of her temper tantrums and hard headedness.

They weren’t always pleasant, but Walt was so grateful to witness them because it meant Marge was his to love and protect.

A car door slammed down the street. It was Luke parked in one of the parallel spots next to the sidewalk. The fresh young pastor Walt once knew was an aging old man with slumped shoulders and a penchant for studying the ground. He watched as Luke made his way down the sidewalk, the years of disappointment and fear slowly breaking down a once ironclad faith, and Walt prayed God would have mercy on them all.

“Hey there, Luke. Nice night,” Walt said, digging around and pocketing one of his usual go-to greetings. He shamefully understood how he didn’t want to get too close to Luke, not like this. He was afraid Luke’s fear was contagious, and he didn’t like the ironic taste of it.

“Yeah,” Luke said softly and looked for the night in the tops of his orthopedic sneakers.

They entered the front double doors, a small church people-wise, but quite large in the interior. It was the same as Walt had remembered entering it the very first day when he joined the grief support group, save for a few extra coats of paint. They weren’t a struggling church, but they weren’t well off either, and even if they had been, the building would have still stayed the same. Luke wasn’t one for flair, another reason Walt had always admired him.

They were quiet as Luke unlocked the door to the basement and they felt their way down the stairs. Luke turned on the light and that’s when Walt could see him clearly. He had been crying.

“Luke, buddy. You okay?” It was another dug-for bit of communication that sounded as trite as it felt. No, Luke wasn’t okay. And Walt wasn’t sure what to do about it.

“I think God hates me, Walt.” Luke slunk into a lone metal folding chair that hadn’t been stored away like the rest. Walt knew the feeling. The whole grief group knew the feeling. But Luke had never had to know how terribly hard life was when the only thing you had left was God. Luke had led a blessed life. Until now.

“No. That’s a lie. Always has been. You see, He didn’t create the hard stuff. I know that now.” When Walt said it out loud, he felt it vibrate in his gut. His hand was on his stomach, the small paunch that would never cease to exist no matter how much walking he did around their block. The truth carried its way through his nerves and into the air where it hung between them.

“Then why does He let it happen? Why not remove it?”

“He already did, Luke. With His son.” It was strange sharing the Gospel with his own pastor who couldn’t have looked worse if he had been run over by a Mack truck. But it reminded Walt of the Israelites wandering the desert, sometimes in obedience to God, sometimes in complete rebellion. They always needed to be reminded of God’s goodness. And Walt realized how often he did too.

“That doesn’t change anything. Agnes is still sick. She has a hard time remembering who I am, Walt. I just don’t know how I’m supposed to live through this and pretend I’m not mad at God.”

“Then don’t pretend. He can handle it.” Walt was met with bad memories. There was an ocean of pain and panic that set in once Tammy had died. Everything he had ever known about love and hope had thrown themselves out the window, so there he was in his bed at night, praying to a God he hardly believed in to take him too. But then Luke reached out, the same man who kept rubbing at his face right now like he was rubbing away his existence. And Walt spotted it there in the balance between them—the aching heart of a man alone.

The group trickled in, and Walt kept his eyes on Luke the entire night. Part of him was afraid of Luke bolting out of the building and into oncoming traffic. Part of him was worried that the death in his pastor’s eyes would permanently stay there.

When he got home, Marge asked him how it had gone. It was always a slight point of contention that he still went to group even though he’d “moved on with his life” according to Marge. He didn’t tell her he was there to pray for everyone else and to encourage them because Marge would smell weakness in it. “Can’t they all just stop belly aching and realize life could be worse?” He knew it was her way of protecting herself, simultaneously ignoring what happened in the alley and reconstructing the way she felt. Marge was as alone and scared as that night she had called him about Whitney’s crime. In the beginning, he had placed a finger to the pulse of her fear, and it spooked her away. So, Marge loved him. Marge had changed a lot. But Marge was insistent on hiding the hidden parts of herself.

Oh Lord, soften her heart. It was a silent prayer he played on repeat. Sometimes it was a groaning of his soul when he had forgotten the words and watched her agitated hands cut potatoes for the pot roast. There was a long line of nerve that ran through Marge, always on fire, and it would take an act of God for her to feel at peace.

“It went well,” he said, sitting on the side of the bed, taking off his red-striped tube socks, “old man socks,” Marge called them even though she was the one who bought them for him. She was already in bed in her night gown, a much softer version of herself than all those years ago. Is this proof, Lord, that you’re working? He ached to tell her about Luke and felt the words knocking on the door of his throat.

“Some hussy called tonight wanting to represent, Travis,” she said, and Walt carefully marched his words back to where they had come from.