Нил Шустерман - Antsy Does Time

Gunnar joined me in the kitchen. It kind of surprised me on account of we now had a perp/victim relationship. He seemed unfazed by my unprovoked attack. Maybe because there were plenty of other things to faze him.

“I don’t think we’re going to be a National Blue Ribbon school,” he said, and he explained to me the madness that ensued after my family and I had left the rally.

“I couldn’t give anyone back their months,” he said. “You can’t have them either. Because last week my dad found them, and burned them all in the fireplace.”

And there they went, all my hopes of redemption up in smoke. Without those time contracts, I could not undo what I had done. But I had already regained enough of my senses to realize getting those pages would not help my father.

Gunnar went on to tell me how his dad had officially left the minute his mom came home.

“They’re splitting up,” he told me.

I almost started to say how that wasn’t such a big deal, considering—but realized that I would sound just like Aunt Mona. Trauma? You don’t know from trauma until your father’s had a heart attack. And they’re much worse in Chicago.

I wouldn’t invalidate his pain. Every problem is massive until something more massive comes along.

In a few moments Mrs. Ümlaut came in with Kjersten. Mercifully she did not have the meat tenderizer. Mrs. Ümlaut sat beside me, far more sympathetic than when I pushed through the front door.

“Your father?” she asked.

“They’re still working on him,” I said. “At least they were when I left.”

She nodded. Then she took both my hands in hers, looked into my one useful eye, and then Mrs. Ümlaut said something to me that I know I will remember for the rest of my life.

“Either he will live, or he will die.”

That was it. That was all. Yet suddenly everything came into clear focus. Either he will live, or he will die. Simple as that. All the drama, all the craziness, all the panic, didn’t mean a thing. This was a gamble—a roll of the dice. I don’t know why, but I took comfort from that. There were, after all, only two outcomes. I could not predict them, I could not control them. It was not in my hands. I had been afraid to say the word “die,” but now that it had been said, and with such strength and compassion, it held no power over me.

For the first time all night, I found myself crying like there was no tomorrow—although I knew there would be a tomorrow. It might not be the tomorrow I wanted, but it would still be there.

I could feel Kjersten’s hand on my shoulder, and I let comfort come from all sides. Then, when my tears had gone dry, Mrs. Ümlaut said, “Come, I’ll take you to the hospital.”

When I got to the hospital, there were more familiar faces in the waiting area. Relatives we didn’t get to see this holiday season, Barry from the restaurant, a couple of family friends—and in the middle of it all were Lexie and her grandfather. I went straight to Lexie. Moxie got up when he saw me, and so Lexie knew, even before someone called my name, that I was there.

“We came as soon as we heard,” she said. “Where have you been?”

“Long story. Is there any news?”

“Not yet.”

I looked around. Mona had come back, and Christina was asleep in her arms. I wondered if they had made up. Mona didn’t look at me.

Crawley, who never came out of his apartment unless he was kidnapped or pried out with a crowbar, came up to me. “All expenses shall be covered,” he said. “Either way.”

For a second I felt like getting angry at that, but I had had enough anger for one evening. “That’s okay,” I told him. “We don’t want your money.”

“But you’ll take it,” he said, and then added with more emotion than I’d ever seen in him before, “because that’s what I have to give.”

I nodded a quiet acceptance.

“Your mother’s up in the chapel,” Lexie said.

I gave a quick greeting to relatives and friends, then went to find her.

The place wasn’t much of a chapel—there were only four rows, and the pews seemed too comfortable to be effective. There was a small stained-glass panel, backlit with fluorescent lights. There was no cross on account of it was a spiritual multipurpose room, that had to be used by people of all religious symbols. The chapel’s best feature was a huge bookshelf stocked with Bibles and holy books of all shapes and sizes, so nobody got left out. Old Testament, New Testament, red testament, blue testament. This one has a little star—see how many faiths there are. (This is the moment I realized how exhausted I really was.)

Mom was alone in the room, kneeling in the second row. It was so like her to take the second row even when she was alone in the room.

“Did you fall asleep in the car?” Mom asked, without turning around to see me.

“How did you know it was me?”

“I can always tell when you need a shower,” she told me. Between her and Lexie, who needed sight? At least if she didn’t look at me too closely, she wouldn’t see my swollen eye.

“Come pray with me, Anthony.”

And so I did. I knelt beside her, joining her—and as I did, maybe for the first time in my life, I understood it. Not so much the words as the whole idea of prayer itself.

I’ll never really know if prayer changes the outcome of things. Lots of people believe it does. I know I’d like to believe it, but there’s no guarantee. Some people pray and their prayers are rewarded—they walk away convinced that their prayers were answered. Others pray and they get refused. Sometimes they lose their faith, all because they lost the roll of the dice.

That night, as I prayed, I wasn’t praying for my own wants and needs. I prayed for my father, and for my mother, I prayed for my whole family. Not because I was supposed to—not because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t. I was doing it because I truly wanted to do it with all my heart, and believe it or not, for the first time ever, I didn’t want it to end.

That’s when I realized—

—and excuse me for having a whole immaculate Sunday-school moment here, but I gotta milk it since they don’t come that often—

—that’s when I realized that prayer isn’t for God. After all, He doesn’t need it. He’s out there, or in there, or sitting up there in His firmament, whatever that is, all-knowing and all-powerful, right? He doesn’t need us repeating words week after week in His face. If He’s there, sure, I’ll bet He’s listening, but it doesn’t change Him, one way or the other.

Instead, we’re the ones who are changed by it.

I don’t know whether that’s true, or whether I was just delirious from lack of sleep ... but if it is true, what an amazing gift that is!

I let my mother decide when it was time to stop. Like I said, I could have just gone on and on. I think she knew that. I think she liked that. Then I think she started to worry that I might become a priest. This wasn’t a worry of mine.

It was still the middle of the night. Three-thirty, and no word. Mom looked at me, and seemed to notice my swollen face for the first time, but chose not to ask. Instead she said, “I think you were right. Maybe I should call Frankie now.”

She took out her phone and called. When it connected, the sheer look of horror on my mother’s face even before she said a word got me scared, too.

“What? What is it?”

But in a moment her terror resolved into something else I couldn’t quite read. “Here,” she said. “Listen to the message.”

I took the phone just as the message started to repeat.