Rebecca Coleman - Heaven Should Fall

“I guess I expected a girl,” I continued, “because I’d know how to raise one. With a boy I don’t have the first clue. So I thought obviously it would be a girl, since my mom used to always tell people that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.”

Leela uttered a small but disparaging laugh. “Well, that isn’t true, is it?”

I turned to her, feeling my eyes tighten with confusion.

“God gives people more than they can handle all the time,” she said, her voice lilting with the obviousness of her words. “Shoot, babies in the Third World aren’t dying because they just didn’t try hard enough. You’d be a fool to try and predict how God will hand out pain. We all just love the world enough that we want to stay in it. See the day through to a better day past it.”

“But you believe in God.”

“Of course I do. But I believe in hunkering down till life gets better, too. And it does. You’re here, after all.” The baby’s cap had slipped, and she slid it back over his head. “Besides, your child might surprise you. Maybe he’ll love chasing the hens around the yard and helping people in little quiet ways that make them happy, and he won’t care a thing about power or influence. You just never know. He might be a mama’s boy.”

“I’m sure Cade wouldn’t like that.”

Her mouth went tight and, even as she touched my arm in a soft way, her voice was firm. “You let him be who he is, no matter what Cade or anybody else says or thinks. In the end he isn’t either of you. You remember that. He’s himself. If I could go back and do just one thing over again as a mother, I’d hold tight to that and never let anybody make me feel bad for it.”

But Cade is his own person, I thought. I looked down at the baby, batting his loosened fist against my chest, and stroked his brow that was creased high by the effort of his nursing. I tried out the idea that I might one day see elements of myself in him after all, and the thought of it cheered me. But most of what Leela said was beyond me then. I filed it away for later, not even realizing that she had not been speaking of Cade at all, but of Elias.

I stayed in the hospital for nearly a week. Once TJ and I finally came home—walking in under a paper banner made by Candy’s boys and treated to a celebratory dinner of roast beef and buttery Potato Pearls with a messily frosted cake for dessert—we found ourselves carried in by the tide of a household that had been taken over by hunting season. Men from the gun club gathered on a nightly basis to clean their weapons, discuss strategies and trade tall tales about their past successes. Eddy sat in his recliner in the midst of all this, nodding and making approving comments, looking deeply pleased to be, for once, at the center of a social gathering. As they spread out their equipment all over the living room, I retreated to the chair beside Elias’s to nurse TJ in front of the TV. But Elias was almost never there anymore. He stayed in his room constantly, either to detox himself, get away from the crying baby or avoid the pressure to participate in the hunting expeditions. It could have been any one of those things, but I was too exhausted to give it much thought. For once I was distracted from my annual dread of the upcoming month of October. It was difficult to reflect on the events of four years ago while caring for someone whose needs kept me lodged in the present moment, and I didn’t mind at all.

Once bear season officially started, the men mostly vanished, and even at mealtimes we saw little of Dodge. He and Scooter spent nearly every evening, deep into the night, sitting in a tree stand watching for bears. They dressed head to toe in camouflage, sprayed themselves down with scent-eliminating chemicals and wore their rifles slung on their backs like jungle commandos. Matthew copied his father, dressing in his own miniature set of fatigues and carrying his rifle around the house in a similar fashion, even during his dining-table school lessons. Candy thought this was adorable.

“Look at him, Eli,” Candy prompted one afternoon, nudging Elias as she served him a sandwich during one of his rare awake hours. “Looks just like you at that age. Remember you used to get dressed up and chase me around with that BB gun of yours?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Always the soldier even then. What do you think, Matty? You going to be a soldier like Uncle Elias?”

Matthew grinned. “Uh-huh.”

“You hear that?” Candy smiled at her brother. “Remember? Those were some good times, huh? Running around like a bunch of ninnies, crawling around under the porch getting filthy dirty. Kids don’t hardly ever play like that anymore. All they want to do is watch TV and fool around on the internet.”

“They ought to be playing with their cousins,” said Elias.

The room went silent. Dodge, who had been sitting in a dining chair pulling on his boots, shot Elias a sharp look and let the stare linger. Candy set down the plate beside Elias with a muted thunk, and even Matthew cast a nervous gaze between his parents. Elias, for his part, didn’t shift his gaze from the television. On it, Rachael Ray sprinkled pepper flakes into a pot of chili, her wooden spoon moving energetically to match her voice.

“They don’t have any cousins,” said Dodge.

Elias’s expression didn’t change. When he spoke, his voice had a shrug to it. “Family’s family.”

Dodge slung his gun over his shoulder and left. Candy had retreated to the kitchen, where she tidied up from the sandwich-making in chilly silence. From my nest in the chair nearest his, a cotton blanket thrown over my shoulder and the baby nursing beneath it, I watched him steadily. My eyes implored him to look at me, but he only shifted in his seat, flicking the ash from his cigarette without even looking to see if he’d hit the glass ashtray. I missed the sense of connection I’d once had with him—the rolled eyes when Candy misspelled a word on her lesson chalkboard, the shadowy smirks at the corner of his mouth when Dodge said something even more ignorant than usual. But now he seemed to have turned inward, not bothering to send those subtle messages. His mind was as impenetrable to me now as it had been the day I met him. And speaking his mind about Randy made me wonder all the more what was going on in there.

Maybe he’s angry at you, I thought. The idea caused anxiety to well up inside me, but I knew I couldn’t blame him if he was. In the five weeks since the baby’s birth I had paid little attention to him, easy enough to do when he was almost never awake. The more time I spent apart from him, the more unnerving details wormed their way into my memories of the hours before TJ’s birth. I remembered the power I felt in Elias’s arms when he threw my hands off him, and the muted electric thrill it stirred in me. When he hugged me and pressed his face into my hair, I heard him inhale deeply. All along there had been so many solid walls that made our friendship safe: our filial relationship, my growing pregnancy, his heavy and hurting body, the complete lack of privacy. I had meant no harm, but I loved him in a way that wasn’t fair to him. It was so easy for me to share my affection generously, knowing at the close of each day I would lie down with Cade and offer him the best of it. But Elias spent each night alone, and there was no place for him to channel whatever feelings welled inside him. Without ever meaning to, I had been cruel.

Now that TJ was here, I felt chagrined by it all. I needed to learn to live beside Elias in a way that would not hurt, or tempt, either of us. I needed to get over my judgment of Candy and look to her as a model for how to be with Elias. She knew how to care for her brother without adding complications to his already overburdened mind.