“I can’t believe you people. Acting like it’s all going to be fine.”
“What would you do?”
“It’s nothing to be proud of, is all.”
Jep hurled the snow shovel at the base of Charlie Ribosky’s neatly buzzed privet hedge. Charlie jumped back, then swore softly and stomped off into his house. I had never seen Jep so angry. When we argued, he was always the one to call time until we could both get a good night’s sleep. He wasn’t the coach who called his players sissies or told them that if they weren’t puking, they’re weren’t really playing. He treated them like what they were—boys—and coaxed forth their agility and toughness with humor and patience. They revered him. Now he bent over, hands on his knees, red-faced and panting. He finally picked up the shovel, came back into our yard and shut the gate behind him, banged the shovel against the trunk of a tree, just once but hard, and went inside. Feeling exposed, I followed both of them.
Jep was making a cup of tea in the kitchen. When he was sure that Stefan was out of earshot, he said, “Charlie shouldn’t have said that. But a part of me agrees with him.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was almost easier when Stefan was in prison. Now I have to look at him every day and wonder, what are people thinking about him? And, Thea, what am I thinking about him? I love my son, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel.”
He wasn’t the only one. I finally told him about Keith’s reaction, which I had so far avoided. I told him about my enforced sabbatical too. He kept his face neutral, but John Paul Christiansen and I were hardly newlyweds. While he could still surprise me, most of the time, if I couldn’t tell the gist of what he was thinking before he said it, it was because I didn’t want to know. He and the neighbor were anything but the only ones. I recalled uneasily my own trill of fear when I glanced over in the car at the size and strength of Stefan’s hands. My own mother kept calling and telling me about how Jill’s stance against dating violence was undeniably inspiring, and how, now that Stefan was finally home, her own friends were looking at her in a funny way. I wanted to be furious, but I wasn’t. When Stefan was in prison, I put myself out there, almost defiantly. Now, I found myself hesitating. Before today, was it because deep down, despite my stance to the contrary, I was ashamed of my son? Yes. A part of me resented the way his wrongdoing had muddied up my security, my serenity, my own space on earth. And now, the door to our front porch suddenly looked like the portal to hell. I felt I had lost my defenses. What was out there, and how much worse was it than the worst I’d already imagined?
Some people, despite knowing us, definitely wanted the worst for Stefan. Some people believed he’d doffed the past like an old coat and was now indifferent to the families of victims. Jill had her cause; but no cause existed that could help people like Stefan show their contrition to those suffering families, and to the world; contrition that might give them, if not forgiveness, if not an open door, at least a crack in the black glass wall of absolute denial. There were organizations that provided a means for crime survivors to offer forgiveness, but not the reverse. There was no way forward for offenders who were remorseful to make amends if the survivors were not interested. Was that reverse even defensible? Or was the best that people like Stefan could hope for a life of marginally-productive obscurity? Even if he never did anything wrong before this, and he never does another wrong thing after this, would Stefan’s life always be defined by his one brutal act? Would it always be the only thing people thought about him? Even his own parents?
The landline in our house rang. I picked up and listened to nothing but cavernous gusts of breath. Then the caller hung up. I put the phone down. It rang again, the display a local number. I picked it up again. The caller breathed more slowly.
“Leave us alone,” I said.
The girl’s voice I recognized said, “May I speak to Stefan, please?”
“No, you may not speak to Stefan. Leave him alone! You said you weren’t going to say anything else. How about you stick to that?”
“I want to. But I can’t. I have to do this.”
I hung up. The phone rang again immediately. I grabbed the receiver like a weapon. But this was a new voice, honeyed, almost musical, a Glinda-voice. “You know, Thea, your son really should die.”
I reached down and unplugged the phone. The bland rabidness of such ordinary folk, people with mortgages and microwaves, who ordered pizza on Friday nights, frightened me even more than the fanatics.