Jeri Smith-Ready: This Side of Salvation

I bend down and flip up the covers to look under the bed. “Hey there.”

Juno cowers in the darkness. Her yellow eyes, pupils wide with fear, reflect the bathroom light, making our angelic cat appear demonic.

Mara crouches on the other side of the bed. “Yo, pretty girl, what happened?” she asks Juno in a high-pitched voice.

Our tiny tuxedo cat hides for a million reasons: thunder, fireworks, delivery people. She flees when we straighten up the living room, because back when we could afford a cleaning service, our decluttering meant the imminent arrival of strangers with scary Swiffers.

“Maybe someone came to the door in the last hour.” Like Jesus. No, that’s crazy. “Someone who took them away.”

“Let me check something.” Mara lets the covers fall.

I leave Juno to her dark solace and follow my sister into Mom and Dad’s walk-in closet, which is almost as big as my bedroom.

From the back corner she pulls out a large green-and-brown-plaid suitcase. “Look! They have two suitcases, but one’s missing.” Mara’s shoulders sag with relief. “That means they did leave voluntarily.”

I unzip the suitcase to reveal a smaller case nested inside. “Turns out, one’s not missing. Let’s check the rest of the house.”

It takes less than five minutes to complete our frantic search of the remaining closets and rooms, even that one at the other end of the upstairs hall.

Standing alone on the concrete steps of our garage, I stare at the two empty cars in front of me until a chill courses up through my bare feet. The light from the dim ceiling bulb casts sullen shadows over the clutter in the corners: rakes, cans of wood stain, an American flag carefully wrapped around its pole and sheathed in plastic.

Everything is in its place, except our parents.

I find Mara in the kitchen, holding the landline phone. “They tried to call our cells a bunch of times, but stopped at three o’clock.” Her face tight with anxiety, she presses a button. “I’ll try Dad. There’s got to be an explanation.”

My father’s muffled ringtone sounds from the kitchen table. I fish the BlackBerry out of his Windbreaker hanging on the back of the chair, then hit ignore to silence the metallic rendition of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Mara frowns as she hangs up and hits another speed-dial button. “Trying Mom next.”

I carry Dad’s phone into the living room, where our mother usually leaves hers, either on the coffee table or plugged into the surge protector behind the entertainment console.

It’s not there.

“Answer her phone, David!” Mara calls from the kitchen.

“I would if I could find it.” I start shoving aside the crap on the coffee table—my baseball hat, Mara’s songbooks, three unread issues of Sports Illustrated— desperate to find any sort of clue.

Don’t panic , I think, though I know from tough innings on the pitcher’s mound that my mind never hears the word “don’t.” It only hears the word “panic.”

I still myself, trying to focus and listen.

“David!” Mara barks at me from the foyer. “Why are you just standing there?”

“I’m looking for the phone.”

“Check the sofa. Duh!”

“I can’t hear it ring over you yakking,” I snap, “so please shut up.”

“Don’t tell me to shut up! Jesus, Mom and Dad are gone for an hour and you’re already breaking their rules.”

“Compared to going to Stephen’s party—which we both did— telling you to shut up is pretty minor.” I yank up a sofa cushion and toss it on the floor. “Besides, I’m not the one who just started a sentence with ‘Jesus.’”

“Oh, for God’s sake. If you and J. Christ are such BFFs, then why did he leave you behind?” Her voice curls into a taunt. “You must’ve done something to piss him off. What were you and Bailey up to in the pool house?”

“Are you seriously joking about the Rush now? That’s not what happened.” I peel up another cushion, throw it farther than the first. My right hand still clutches Dad’s BlackBerry. I can’t lose that, too.

Mara stalks into the room, shaking the cordless phone at me. “Maybe Jesus is still pissed at you for spray painting one of His houses.”

“That was a long time ago.” I shove my left hand into the gap between the recliner part of the sofa and the rest of the couch, biting back another “Shut up!” My sister must be as freaked as I am, but I never guessed she’d be a vicious drunk like Dad.

“Maybe you weren’t as forgiven as you thought.” Now Mara’s full-on cackling. “Or whoever keeps track of that stuff in heaven forgot to cross out your sins.”

Rage and confusion tangle inside my chest. Suddenly every scenario seems equally ridiculous and equally plausible. Maybe our parents were abducted by aliens. Maybe they’re playing a prank. Maybe they were Rushed, or Raptured, or whatever, into eternal bliss.

Maybe they’re never coming back.

My left hand gets stuck between the iron frames of the sofa and recliner. “Can you at least try to be helpful here?”

“Hey, I’m trying to solve the mystery of why Mom and Dad and God would ditch you after everything you did to appease them.”

“I don’t know!” I yank my hand free and turn on her. “I just know they left without me. After all I gave up, all I lost, they fucking left without me!” I hurl Dad’s phone across the room with all my might. It shatters against the wall, under John’s folded, framed American flag.

That felt good. And bad. But mostly good.

“Uh-oh.” Mara gapes at the cordless phone in her hand. “I think everything we just said is now a message on Mom’s voice mail.”

“Wait, don’t—”

Before I can stop her, she ends the call.

“Mara! You could’ve deleted the message if you hadn’t hung up.”

“Oops.” She covers the mouthpiece. “I guess we’d better hope they got Rushed.”

I stare at my barefoot, mascara-smeared sister, her dress missing half its sequins, her gel-encrusted brown hair pointing out in all directions like she stuck her finger in a light socket. Then I look down at myself, still in Stephen’s borrowed swim trunks, dust and crumbs clinging to my sweaty skin from my forays into closets and sofa cushions.

My throat tickles, and my lips twist. Mara puts a hand to her mouth, but she can’t hide the crinkles around her eyes. Then we laugh, and can’t stop laughing, at the idea that we might be better off with no parents than ones who’ll ground us for three lifetimes.

It’s funny because it might be true.

FOUR YEARS TO THREE YEARS BEFORE THE RUSH

A week after John’s death, Mara and I started taking turns sleeping in his bed. Sometimes I’d wake at night to see my father dozing in the papasan chair across the room, his feet hanging off the edge, John’s blue-and-white Villanova Wildcats throw pulled to his chin.

My brother’s absence itself wasn’t a shock; it was the fact that that absence would now never end. Since the day he left for the Air Force Academy, he’d lived at home for only a few weeks at a time. John wasn’t ripped out of our everyday lives: He was here, and then he was gone, and then he was Gone.

That first year, while my family wandered around in the fog of grief, was the best of any year since. We were all lost together in the same way. During the Fog Year, nothing made sense to anybody.

Then Dad found Jesus, and suddenly, John’s death made sense. But only to one of us:

Dad: God took John away to teach us the miracle of life.

Me: I can learn that from the Discovery Channel.

Dad: God is testing our strength.