The Song of David(75)

I swerved and swiped at my eyes, trying not to kill myself, at least not yet.

“I don’t care what you say. I already knew. I’m happy for you, man. She’s kind of a miracle.”

“Yeah. She is.” The tears were streaming down my cheeks, and I gripped the wheel with both hands.

“I wasn’t sure you’d get one . . . or even that you needed one. But you did. We both did. How the hell did that happen?” He had relaxed with my confession, and I could hear the smile in his voice.

“You believe in miracles, Mo?” I wasn’t smiling. I was searching.

“I got no choice. I’ve seen too much.”

“You think I’ll get more than one?” It was all I could do to spit the words out.

“More than one miracle? Why? Millie’s not enough?” He laughed at me, but I heard the surprise too.

Millie was more than enough. I wasn’t greedy. I just wanted to be around to enjoy my miracle.





Moses




TAG HAD ENDED that phone call too quickly. I should have realized something was wrong. But I could tell he was driving and had let him go without protest. I had thought he sounded off, but he’d had me on speaker, and everything sounds a little distorted when you’re hearing someone that way. I thought that was all it was. I told myself that was all it was. I don’t know when I started believing my own lies.

I had grown complacent with the dead. I painted them in pretty pictures, and they no longer hounded me like they once had. They weren’t portends of destruction. They didn’t look like zombies or haunt the halls of my house. They had become manageable. Life had become sweet and soft. Georgia had done that for me. She’d settled me and smoothed out my edges, and with the loss of those edges I guess I wasn’t as sharp as I used to be.

So when I saw Molly Taggert, a soft mirage from the corner of my eye, I refused to be suspicious. Eight years, almost nine? It’d been a long time since she’d demanded my attention. I was in the middle of something, communing with the dead of a wealthy client. His dead were not particularly interested in keeping in touch, and I was pushing, opening myself up wider, trying to find inspiration, something worthy of a paint brush, something I could work with. So far, they were giving me the middle finger, and I didn’t think that would please my client.

I told myself seeing Molly was nothing more than happenstance, that I’d simply opened myself up wide and attracted an old ghost who knew how to slip around my walls. She had flooded my mind with color, streaks of red fear and blue despair shot with purple-hued passion and green regret, all washed in white and dipped in black. Before I knew it, I was painting something completely irrational, completely at odds with the girl we’d laid to rest, years before.

Two hours later, I stepped back from the canvas and stared, dumbfounded, at the picture I’d created. It looked like something from one of my Grandma Kathleen’s books, the ones she’d taken from the church library because they were a tad too erotic and disturbing for the people in the pews. It was David and Goliath in violent detail, and the details were troubling, the details were specific, and I’d let myself miss them.

So I’d called him. And I’d let him tell me what I wanted to hear. What I needed to hear. He said he’d taken a blow to the head. Such a clean, simple truth that left out all the pertinent details. All the violent details. The details were troubling, the details were specific, and I’d let myself miss them.

As Georgia requested, I came straight home from the gym, walked in the house, and without a word, my wife had cued the cassette tape. Then I listened to my conversation with my friend, I listened to all the things he hadn’t told me. Now the fear was twisting in my gut, and I was pacing. Millie was standing when I arrived, as if Tag’s revelation had lifted her out of her seat. Her face was petrified rock—layers of shock imprinted in her expression. By the time we reached the end of the tape and Tag’s voice had broken, Millie broke with him, and she’d bowed her head, fumbled for her chair, and collapsed into it. Henry sat nearby, and for the first time, he seemed to be aware that something was very, very wrong.

“He came looking for you that night, Moses. Remember? You weren’t home, and he didn’t stay very long.” Georgia’s voice shook, and she held Kathleen to her chest, rocking and swaying, something she did even when she wasn’t holding the baby. It had become a habit that I teased her about. Keep moving and the baby won’t cry. Keep moving and the baby won’t wake. I wanted her to hold me too. I wanted her to move with me in her arms so that I wouldn’t wake up, so I wouldn’t cry. If I was asleep then none of this was real. But there was more. And it was all too real.