Rebecca Coleman - Heaven Should Fall

We all sat down to supper, and I’d made sure to put in the extra chair next to Elias, so he and Piper could sit right beside one another. Eddy and I sit at opposite ends of the table, so I made sure to put Piper’s seat closest to mine, because now and then Eddy gets off on some tirade during the meal and I didn’t want to risk the girl getting spooked.

Elias pulled out her chair for her, all gentlemanly. It made me smile. In all that time I’d never once seen him touch her, but that was just how he was. Elias wasn’t a hugger, but none of us were, really, except for Cade. Cade was fifteen then and I had to watch him like a hawk when he brought a girl over. First floor only , that was my rule. They could watch television or play a game or what have you, but there would be no going upstairs or, heaven help us, down cellar. At least upstairs I could have overheard if he had anything funny going on, but that cellar was so solid you could hold a party down there and, so long as you had the door shut, nobody would ever hear a thing. Plus Eddy’d stored up enough wool surplus blankets and army cots to tide us over through a nuclear blast, which was about how angry I’d be if I found out my son had gotten some town girl in trouble.

At first supper went fine, but then I got to noticing a strange feeling around my legs, like there was a mouse beneath the table or something. I felt my heart flutter a little—embarrassment was why—and real quietly I slid my foot forward to see if I could stir it up, to confirm whether we had some kind of rodent running around. And what do you know but my calf knocked right into Cade’s. At first I thought, now why in the world is his leg all sticking out under the table like that, and then I looked from him to Piper and I figured it out. He was stroking on her leg with his own, right across from his own brother. I didn’t have any idea right then if she was offended by that and just too polite to say anything, but the way things worked out later, I suppose she must not have minded.

After supper, as soon as Elias went to drive Piper home, I came up to Cade in his bedroom and asked him, “Now, what was the meaning of all that nonsense?”

He knew what I was talking about. Cade was never one to play dumb. “She’s not his girlfriend or anything. We’re both friends with her.”

“Let him be, Cade.” He was sitting cross-legged on his bed with a schoolbook open on his lap, that big old American flag pinned to the wall behind him, and looking at me with his defiant eyes. I remember thinking, Son, Eli’s never going to have all that you do. Leave this town for him and you can have the rest of the world. Do him that one kindness .

“It’s a free country,” Cade said. “Women have equal rights here. It isn’t like he won her at a farm auction.”

“Just give him a chance. That’s all I’m saying to you. Things aren’t as easy to him as they are to you.”

He laughed. “Piper isn’t easy,” he said, which wasn’t what I meant and he knew it. Then he said, “Whatever,” which was the thing he always said to put his foot down on a conversation. It could make me so mad when he said that, because you knew nothing was ever a whatever to Cade, no matter what he said. It just meant he didn’t want to listen to your part anymore.

It wasn’t too long after that when Piper started coming around with Cade instead. Elias didn’t react one way or another when he saw them, but I knew that way of being, too. On Eve’s birthday every year, nobody had ever looked at me and furrowed their brow and sensed something was wrong, or asked if I was feeling poorly. So I knew Eli might be dying inside and never show a soul. Or he might be all right and here I was just pushing my own feelings onto one of my children, like the kind of mother who can’t see the break between herself and her young ones, or admit that they might be better and stronger than she is. I just couldn’t tell which it was.

If I had it to do over again, I would have flat-out told Cade he wasn’t welcome to bring that girl home. For Eli’s sake I would turn on her the way Eddy turned on Randy, cast her out with all that prejudice, and take my punishment from God for my cruelty when it was time. I would never have made Eli look at all that, if I’d known for certain. But I didn’t, and the fact was, I didn’t want to lose my chance to have her as a daughter-in-law someday. I think that was in the back of my mind, that I just couldn’t quite let that girl go. Whatever Cade’s guilt is in everything that happened, it’s my guilt, too. It’s a sadness and a shame, the things loneliness can do to you.

That night, after my morning with Leela in the craft room, I lay awake feeling the baby tumble and kick inside me, jabbing its little feet against my diaphragm muscle in a slow jog. From downstairs I heard the clicks of a magazine being pushed into a gun, then the slide pulling back. Elias was up and settling into his routine. Sometimes when I heard him downstairs I’d think about how lonely I’d felt in the dark living room of Stan’s apartment, long after Cade had come and gone from his daily visit to me, lying there listening to the gentle clatter of the vertical blinds above the air vent, their movement letting in shards of harsh light from the courtyard lamps. If Stan was asleep in the bedroom alone, somehow the loneliness seemed to echo. I felt right only when he’d come out and sit beside me, channel surfing with the volume down low as I drifted off to sleep, resting his big heavy hand on my shoulder. It wasn’t Stan that I wanted, not especially; it was just the presence of another human being. The touch of one.

Go down and say hello , I thought. Make an excuse. You promised Scooter . I slipped out of bed and crept down the stairs, letting the boards creak once I reached the bottom two. I was 98 percent sure Elias wouldn’t do anything hasty with that gun, but that 2 percent gave me pause. He glanced over and nodded as I reached the landing.

I murmured a hello and got to work searching through the cupboards. I’d decided to make us a batch of Fudgies—a camp treat made up mostly of rolled oats, which we’d kept around in Olmstead-sized quantities, along with peanut butter and the scraps of chocolate from s’mores-making. In the kitchen I found no chocolate chips, but stuffed in the back of a cabinet was a stash of miniature Hershey bars; they might be Candy’s private hoard, but if so, I could claim ignorance later. As I moved ingredients to the kitchen island I caught the sound of a familiar voice from the television: Just be breezy, y’know? Abruptly I laughed, and Elias whipped his head around to look at me.

“Sorry,” I said. “I like Kendra. She’s funny.”

“You about startled the piss out of me.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” I abandoned the ingredients and came around his chair to watch the segment. “This is the one where she gets into the fight with the girl in the chow hall. I’ve seen it, like, twelve times.”

“I was just channel surfing. I hate this show.”

“Oh, really? That’s too bad. I love it. My mom and I used to watch it together all the time.”

“Your mom?” He shot a quick glance at me. “Never even heard you mention your mom before. I figured you didn’t get along.”

I shook my head. “She died four years ago this October. I try not to bring her up too much. People get uncomfortable hearing stories about people who are gone.”

“That they do.” He set down the remote, as if changing his mind about switching to a better channel. “How’d she die?”

“In a plane crash.”

“A plane crash? Shit .” He was quiet for a minute as I watched the show, leaning on one arm against his chair. “That’s why you moved in with us instead of your own people, then, huh?”