We Are the Light(17)

When the sun rose, Darcy faded into the soft morning light, slowly disappearing, although I wondered whether she was still there, only the sunlight had made her invisible somehow. I have never seen winged Darcy during the day, so it’s a working hypothesis for now.

I’ve googled on the internet but have found there isn’t much reliable information regarding angels. The first thing that comes up is the professional Major League Baseball team, which tells you a lot, right there. When I went deeper into the search results, much of what I discovered conflicted. One article says this and then another says that. I read so much incompatible material, I decided to discard it all and take up the task of learning about angels myself, relying only on what I can observe, stockpiling empirical evidence, which I have and will continue to share here.

“Did you get any sleep at all?” Jill asked, when—just before leaving for breakfast duty at the Cup Of Spoons—she stopped by my lawn chair.

The sun was already up, so I said, “Aren’t you late?”

Apparently, she was able to reach her kitchen assistant in the middle of the night because he was up playing video games. Randy had agreed to open so that she could get an extra hour’s sleep, which was when I realized she must have been watching me watch Eli until the early morning. I never turned around and looked back at the house, so maybe she was in the window the whole time. I didn’t know. Then Jill bent down and kissed my right cheek, before saying, “You be careful, okay?”

I wanted to know why she said that, and ask, What was the danger? but part of me was also afraid to know the answer, so I let her walk away.

I sat there for another half hour or so before I yelled, “Eli?”

I yelled his name twice more and the deafening silence made my heart beat a little faster.

But then, finally, he said, “I’m coming,” right before emerging from the orange tent with his hair all mussed and a tired, sad look in his eyes.

I led him into the kitchen, where I cooked us breakfast, and then we ate in silence, once again listening to the sounds of our utensils banging against our plates. Then—just after slurping down the last sip of my coffee—I said, “What if we continued the work we were doing at the high school together, only this time we’ll be free of the rules I had to follow when you were a student and I was a faculty member?”

“What do you mean?” he asked from behind the coffee mug he was cradling with both hands, and I noted the skepticism.

So I quickly pivoted to talking about my experience with Jungian analysis and began telling him all about you, which I realize violated the covenant we had made and risked letting all the steam out of the pot before the metaphorical rice finished cooking. But desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say. And I do believe I did a good job selling Jungian analysis. I told him about the embarrassing anxiety attack I had in my office during a counseling session with one of his classmates—how the EMTs were called to the high school and I was wheeled out clutching my chest because I thought I was having a heart attack.

“So you didn’t have a heart attack?” he said, because—as I told you when I first started analysis—I had let everyone in the high school believe I had. Then I told Eli how you helped me understand my father and mother complexes as you slowly built a temporary scaffolding around my psyche so that we could fix the broken parts. The whole time I was speaking, he returned my eye contact and nodded in all the appropriate places.

“We’d be starting at ground zero here. But I do believe that I can help you heal and then you must get your life together and launch yourself into the world as a man,” I said to Eli.

He asked what I meant, and so I told him about phallic energy and the need for a goal or target and the necessary drive to insert yourself confidently into the world, saying I would initiate him into the world of men, like men had done for boys throughout the ages, before modern times.

“How exactly are you currently inserting yourself into the world, Mr. Goodgame?” he asked, but without sounding sarcastic. He was genuinely interested.

So I told him that my goal was to redeem and ultimately save him, by any means necessary. Eli’s resurrection was my singular mission and I was willing to do anything in service of making him whole again, which kind of stunned the boy, I know, because he frowned at his lap.

When he didn’t say anything for a minute or so, I said, “What is it?” which is when he said he didn’t believe I had done anything wrong, regarding his brother, and therefore I wasn’t required to make him my “pet project.”

“And yet, you set up a tent in my backyard,” I said, surprising myself, because my words sounded more weighted with authority than I had previously thought possible.

He searched my eyes for a long time, just like I used to search yours, looking for whatever I could latch on to, whatever would make me believe I could trust you.

“Fate has brought us together, Eli,” I said with even more authority. It felt like I had left my body and some higher force had temporarily taken control.

Then I had a good idea. I pulled out my phone and called Isaiah. As it rang, I pushed the button that allowed everyone in the room to hear the conversation. When my best man friend answered, I said, “Good morning, Isaiah.”

“Lucas! You caught Bess and me walking from the car into the Lord’s house, where we will be praying very hard for you this beautiful blessed morning.”