Marcia Talley - Through the Darkness

I sat down heavily between two deep pink azaleas on a bench dedicated to a parishioner who had been killed in the explosion of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. With my back to the plaque, I tried to put all thoughts of death out of my mind.

The sun was just inching over the trees, touching the garden here and there, awakening the butterflies that clustered on fence posts and flat rocks, sluggishly stretching their wings, preparing for a busy day gathering nectar. On my right, a hedgerow of forsythia was a blaze of yellow, separating me from the traffic whizzing by on Ridgley Avenue.

Bathed in sunlight, I closed my eyes, wincing as the inside of my eyelids scraped over my eyeballs like dry sandpaper. In spite of all the caffeine I’d consumed in the previous twenty-four hours, I felt I could fall asleep on this bench, uncushioned hardwood and all. I could sleep here for days and days and days. Yet I had to keep going, do whatever it took, for Timmy’s sake.

“Hannah?” Eva’s voice spiraled down, as if through a tunnel, to wherever it was I had gone. “Hannah, it’s Eva.”

I felt a hand on my shoulder and dragged myself into consciousness. “Eva, I’m sorry. I was somewhere in La-La Land.” I rubbed at a crick in the back of my neck.

“I hated to wake you.”

I managed a weak smile. “It’s so peaceful here in the garden. Sitting here, a gal could almost pretend she didn’t have a care in the world.”

“Would you like some coffee? I just put on a fresh pot.”

“Thank you, yes. Although I’m pretty wired.”

“Come.”

Although Eva wore black slacks and a rose-colored short-sleeved silk blouse with a clerical collar, something about the way she stood there with her arms extended, palms up, reminded me of a picture in a book of Bible stories I’d had as a child. Suffer the little children to come unto me . My head swimming, I rose from the bench, staggered, and grabbed her hands for support. “He’s just a little boy,” I sobbed. “He’s only ten months old. How could anybody…?” Eva folded me into her arms, and I began to weep, refusing to be comforted. I threw back my head and screamed to the sky, “Why, God, why?”

Eva shook me gently, peering deep into my eyes as if searching there for my lost faith. “It’s all right to be angry. Yell at God if you need to. God is not afraid of you , Hannah Ives.”

Quietly, holding me close, Pastor Eva waited me out.

“I don’t think I have any more tears left.” I pulled a tissue out of a fresh packet in my handbag and blew my nose. “And damn, now I’ve got the hiccups.”

“Roger told me about Timmy,” Eva said. “And of course, we heard it on the news.”

“I kept the TV turned off.” I scrunched the tissue into a ball and stuffed it into the pocket of my jeans. “We watched Finding Nemo instead. My grandchildren are staying with me,” I added by way of explanation.

“You know,” I said as we strolled side by side down the path toward her office, “Finding Nemo used to be one of my favorite cheer-up flicks, but last night while I was watching it with the kids, every time I laughed, I was faking it.”

“Roger took me to see the movie when it first came out,” Eva said, smiling slightly. “And he bought the DVD when it came out, for St. Catherine’s nursery, or so he said. Roger’s particularly fond of the seagulls going ‘mine, mine, mine.’ ”

“I used to think it was hysterical, too, until last night, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Finding Nemo is all about a kidnapped child! Think about it. Marlin watches helplessly as a diver scoops up his son, Nemo, who ends up held captive in the aquarium of a sadistic dentist.”

“I never thought of it like that, but you’re right.” Eva held the door open for me, and waited until I stepped inside. “But it has a happy ending, doesn’t it? Marlin and his friends rescue Nemo. Perhaps we should focus on that.” She took a deep breath. “How’s your daughter?”

“Not good. Dante said she’d taken a handful of pills from a bottle in the medicine cabinet, then when the police showed up to search Timmy’s bedroom, she took a handful of something else. He thought he might have to take her to the emergency room to get her stomach pumped, but then she threw it all up.

“They couldn’t stay in the house,” I continued, “and if they stayed with us, it would be too upsetting for the children. Paul got them situated in a room at the waterfront Marriott. Although I don’t think they’ll be appreciating the view.”

“If Timmy disappeared from the spa, why are the police searching his bedroom?”

“I don’t know exactly. But they took away his hairbrush, and some of his toys in Ziploc bags.”

Eva nodded. “Scenting objects, I suspect. They must be bringing in the dogs.”

I nodded. “Sometime this morning. They’re waiting for a bloodhound from Baltimore. They’re the best at this kind of work.”

Eva fished a key ring out of her pocket, located a key, and unlocked the door to her office. “And how’s Paul?”

“Hanging in. We’ve appointed him family spokesman. He’s at the Academy now, making arrangements to be away.”

“Did he get any sleep?”

“Not much. The bags under his eyes are even darker than mine, if that’s possible.”

Eva’s office was a small but agreeable twelve by twelve. When she pulled aside the drapes, I saw that the window overlooked the garden. “Lovely,” I said. “If this were my office, I wouldn’t get much work done.”

“That’s why God invented draperies,” she said, indicating a chair at a round conference table in the corner.

While Eva puttered-closing the door, turning off the telephone so it wouldn’t ring during our visit-I paced, studying her walls. The wall to my left was covered with photographs and framed diplomas. In addition to a B.A. from Wellesley, Eva had earned a Th.D. at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, and was ordained from St. James Church in Los Angeles. The wall to my right was hung with wooden, brass, and ceramic crosses, several dozen of them. In addition to the familiar Latin cross, I recognized a Jerusalem cross, a Greek cross, the cross of St. Andrew, one Maltese, several Celtic.

“What’s this one?” I asked, pointing to a cross that appeared to be an X superimposed over a P , or vice versa.

“It’s called a Chi-Rho,” she said, pulling out one of the chairs. “Do you know the story?”

“Tell me,” I said, sitting down in the chair opposite her.

“Chi and rho are the first two letters of the Greek word for Christ. They’re also similar to the pagan emblem used as a standard by the Roman cavalry. Constantine was the chief priest of the pagan Roman religion, so when he converted to Christianity, it’s easy to see why he chose the Chi-Rho for his emblem.

“It’s a warrior’s cross,” she continued. “It urges us to follow Christ’s example, to wage war on terror, persecution, oppression, and all forms of evil. And the surest thing to overcome evil is love.”

“How can I feel love toward Timmy’s kidnapper?” I scoffed. “All I feel is a dark, gut-wrenching hate.”

“I can understand that.”

“And God’s on my shit list, too. I’m falling seriously out of love with a God who could allow such a thing to happen to an innocent child.”

Eva smiled and patted my hand. “God is with us, Hannah, but he may not always be in control.”

I sat quietly for a while, mulling over what Eva had said, staring at her bookcase through a film of tears. Office bookshelves have personalities, I always thought, personalities defined by that curious mix of books needed for the job and those photographs and tchotchkes that remind workers that they actually have private lives. Eva’s shelves contained Bibles in many versions, Greek and Hebrew lexicons, commentaries, concordances, and collections of sermons. On one shelf, the Quran was sandwiched between the Book of Mormon and the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and on the shelf below that, next to the Bhagavad Gita, stood a Barbie doll dressed in an alb, cincture, and pure white stole.