Anything Is Possible(7)

“My father showed remorse. He’s what you’re talking about, in one person. The contest.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

The sun had grown so high in the sky it could not be seen from the car.

“I never have talks like this,” said Pete, and Tommy was struck once again by how young this boy-man seemed. Tommy experienced a tiny physical pain deep in his chest that seemed directly connected to Pete.

“I’m an old man,” said Tommy. “I think if we’re going to have talks like this one I should stop by more often. How about I see you two Saturdays from now?”

Tommy was surprised to see Pete’s hands become fists that he banged down on his knees. “No,” Pete said. “No. You don’t have to. No.”

“I want to,” said Tommy, and he thought—then he knew—as he said this that it was not true. But did that matter? It didn’t matter.

“I don’t need someone coming to see me out of obligation.” Pete said this quietly.

The pain deep in Tommy’s chest increased. “I don’t blame you for that,” he said. They sat together in the car, which was now warm, and the smell, to Tommy, was palpable.

In a moment Pete spoke again, “Well, I guess I thought you were coming here to torture me, and I was wrong about that. So I guess maybe I’d be wrong to think you were just obliging me.”

“I think you’d be wrong,” said Tommy. But he was aware, again, that this was not true. The truth was that he did not really want to visit this poor boy-man seated next to him ever again.

They sat in silence for a few moments more; then Pete turned to Tommy, gave him a nod. “All right, I’ll see you then,” said Pete, getting out of the car. “Thanks, Tommy,” he said, and Tommy said, “Thank you.”



Driving home, Tommy was aware of a sensation like that of a tire becoming flat, as though he had been filled—all his life—with some sustaining air, and it was gone now; he felt, increasingly as he drove, a sense of fear. He could not understand it. But he had told what he had vowed to himself never to tell—that God had come to him the night of the fire. Why had he told? Because he wanted to give something to that poor boy who had been smashing the sign of his mother so ferociously. Why did it matter that he had told the boy? Tommy wasn’t sure. But Tommy felt he had pulled the plug on himself, that by telling the thing he would never tell he had diminished himself past forgiveness. It really frightened him. So you believe that?, Pete Barton had said.

He felt no longer himself.

He said, quietly, “God, what have I done?” And he meant that he was really asking God. And then he said, “Where are you, God?” But the car remained the same, warm, still slightly smelling from the presence of Pete Barton, just rumbling over the road.

He drove more quickly than he usually did. Going past him were the fields of soybeans and corn and the brown fields as well, and he saw them only barely.

At home, Shirley was sitting on the front steps; her glasses twinkled in the sunlight, and she waved to him as he drove up the small driveway. “Shirley,” he called as he got out of the car. “Shirley.” She pulled herself up from the steps by holding on to the railing, and came to him with worry on her face. “Shirley,” he said, “I have to tell you about something.”

At the small kitchen table, in their small kitchen, they sat. A tall water glass held peony buds, and Shirley pushed it to the side. Tommy told her then what had just happened that morning at the Barton home, and she kept shaking her head, pushing her glasses up her nose with the back of her hand. “Oh, Tommy,” she said. “Oh, that poor boy.”

“But here’s the thing, Shirley. It’s more than that. There’s something else I need to tell you.”

And so Tommy looked at his wife—her blue eyes behind her glasses, a faded blue these days, but with the tiny shiny parts from her cataract surgery—and he told her then, with the same detail he had told Pete Barton, how he had felt God come to him the night of the fire. “But now I think I must have imagined it,” Tommy said. “It couldn’t have happened, I made it up.” He opened both his hands upward, shook his head.

His wife watched him for a moment; he saw her watching him, saw her eyes get a little bit bigger then begin to break into a tenderness around their corners. She leaned forward, took his hand, and said, “But, Tommy. Why couldn’t it have happened? Why couldn’t it have been just what you thought it was that night?”

And then Tommy understood: that what he had kept from her their whole lives was, in fact, easily acceptable to her, and what he would keep from her now—his doubt (his sudden belief that God had never come to him)—was a new secret replacing the first. He took his hand from hers. “You might be right,” he said. A paltry thing he added, but it was true: He said, “I love you, Shirley.” And then he looked at the ceiling; he could not look at her for a moment or two.





Windmills


A few years ago, with morning sunlight coming into her bedroom, Patty Nicely had had the television on, and the sunlight had caused whatever was on the screen to be unseen from certain angles. Patty’s husband, Sebastian, was still alive then, and she was getting herself ready for work. Earlier, she had been making sure that he was set for the day; his illness had only begun back then and she was not sure—they were not sure—what the final outcome would be. On the television was the usual morning show, and Patty watched intermittently as she moved about the bedroom. She was sticking a pearl earring into her earlobe when she heard the woman announcer saying, “Lucy Barton will be with us after the break.”