“Doesn’t your heart hurt when you hear your child crying for you?” they used to ask each other at the beginning when their littles were all much littler. “Can’t you just not stand it?”
Apparently, Katia had withstood. The attack happened in the middle of the night, when Asher snuck down from his bedroom, the way another child might go in search of a glass of water. His mother’s screams must have startled them both because he latched on to the edge of her armpit and wouldn’t let go. Likely nicked an artery with his canine. Her husband thought she was being murdered—which was nearly true.
The vocabulary was undeniable—an attack. A child attacked a grown-up and now all the adults in the room seem to be unsteadily attempting to catch their balance.
Pastor Ben pulls up a flimsy folding chair in front of the small semicircle of kids. “Who here is sad?” he asks with a frown.
Several of the parents tentatively raise their hands along with the children.
A year ago, she sat in this exact same spot, part of the three-year-old curriculum to celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday. （Mud, crud, dud, flood, blood, she rhymes in her head.） Now she listens to Ben describe angels and beautiful songs and a white-fluffy-cloud version of the kingdom of heaven.
“Have any of your families ever moved to a new house? Or maybe when your grandmother comes to stay, she has to go home to somewhere far away? You can think of it like that,” he suggests. “Miss Ollie came to visit and then it was time for her to return home to heaven.”
“Do you mean Miss Ollie moved to heaven?” Maggie crawls onto her knees.
What Mary Beth likes about Ben is how seriously he’s taking the children’s questions, as though they are brilliant, insightful questions from esteemed theology professors, not four-year-olds. He trains his entire being on Maggie and her Instagram-scrolling mother. “She did. You can think of it as her new home address.”
Ah, that’s perfect, thinks Mary Beth. Very palatable. Just what they need.
When she floated the idea of the counseling session to the other parents, she endeavored to be thoughtful and respectful. She used a very inviting font in her email. All faiths welcome, please come if you believe your child may benefit from processing the pain with a trained professional. No pressure. That was her other motto. It’s just that kids listen to strangers far better than they listen to their parents; it’s a scientifically proven fact.
“Will she send us postcards?” asks Zeke. “Because my grandma sends us postcards from Boca sometimes.”
“Great question,” answers Ben, all Johnny-on-the-spot. “She will, she definitely will, but they’ll be heaven postcards. Like when a bird sings an extra-pretty song or a flower blooms or a butterfly flutters by, those are heaven postcards and you can bet some of those are from Miss Ollie when she’s thinking of you.”
This morning, as she was walking onto campus, Mary Beth saw a bright red cardinal perched on the playground fence. Did you send that, Miss Ollie? Was that your doing? Mary Beth uses the gauze still wrapped around her poor hand from the X-Acto knife incident to dab at her misty eyes.
“But—but— If Miss Ollie moved, how come she didn’t say goodbye? How come we didn’t have a party with pizza and cake?” Sweet Bodhi. He might have developed a bit of a crush on Miss Ollie.
“Miss Ollie would have loved that, wouldn’t she have? She probably loved cake. But she loved all of you even more. The truth is, some people know way ahead of time that they’ll be leaving to go to heaven. They can pack their bags and talk to their family and write letters, but others don’t get any warning at all. They have to go right away. They have no choice. But you know what? She told me to tell you all goodbye and to keep an eye on each and every one of you so that I can let her know how you’re doing.”
“But how will you do that?” She can tell Bodhi is on the verge of tears. He is slurping his air. The heave of his slender back gives him away—he really is so skinny. His shoulder blades stick out from underneath his T-shirt like discarded chicken wings.
“I’ll pray. That’s why I’m a pastor at the church. It’s my job.”
She doesn’t envy Ben. Does anyone really want to explain to a room of complete innocents that life isn’t just unfair, it ends? And yet here he is, assuming the mantle, volunteering as tribute. Ten young faces gather round at an event that, in less capable hands, could usher in the end of their youth and he says, Not today, not on my watch. I’ve got you.
So there you go. Once again, Mary Beth is proven right: People are nice. People are good. She can remember that, even in the midst of murder. In fact, she must.
Ben asks the kids to get up off their bottoms and follow his lead. First, he slumps his shoulders and takes a walk around the group looking dejected. He looks like a sad, mopey mime. Then, the very next moment, he does a ridiculous jig, his elbows and knees jutting up and down like he’s on a marionette string. The kids laugh and then stop short and he catches them—aha!—it’s okay to be sad one minute and silly the next. It’s okay to feel their feelings. They should normalize big emotions.
Mary Beth is feeling a feeling right now, this very instant. She is seeing Ben in a new light. Not as just some sexy sausage, but a man, a man who is good with kids. And the beauty of it, the perfection of him, hurts her. A lump forms in her throat.
“Excuse me,” she announces at the end once the lump has cleared. “Would anyone like to take this opportunity to donate to the new youth center? We’re planning a bronze plaque on the front of the building in honor of our dearly departed Miss Ollie.”
Every parent raises hands.
* * *
“I just got off the phone with Asher’s dad, Bill,” Mary Beth tells Doug at home. “I’m thinking about baking some cookies for Katia, but…” She trails off.
It was only last semester that a girl a year below Noelle had developed leukemia and Mary Beth sprang into action, organizing a blood drive and a fundraising effort for medical bills. She baked cookies to offer blood donors after their contribution. But now the thought of more of those delicious sugar cookies feels grotesque. Completely the wrong thing. “I’ll think of something else,” she finishes half-heartedly, as if Doug cares what she does or doesn’t make Katia Brazle.
It’s a Friday evening and Doug tips his head back onto an armchair, resting his eyes. The soles of their daughters’ shoes squeak as Noelle and Angeline kick them off against the wall of the hallway and jockey for position toward their bedrooms. Usually, they’d be busy arguing their cases for which movie to watch. But for the first time in as long as Mary Beth can remember, no one’s mentioned movie night. Instead, the weekend is a hollow stretch yawning out before them, all of their typical plans having vanished in the wake of what happened at Little.
She and Doug used to live for weekends, waking to their internal alarm clocks only when it was already light out—can she even imagine? They had dinner plans at restaurants where they didn’t have to ask for the check the second the food arrived while still tipping extra to make up for the buffet left on the floor. They were spontaneous. They flew to Vancouver on a Friday night and took a redeye back on Monday. They saw live music and weren’t terrified of drinking too much for fear of payback the next morning. There was a thing called brunch and on Saturdays it was the ultimate, that sliver of time before the dread of the weekday slog set in, while Sunday nights were depressing. Five whole days stretched ahead before another taste of freedom. Now the whole construct’s been flip-flopped. The weekend stretches long before them. All that unstructured time that had seemed so luxurious in their twenties is a barren wasteland in their late thirties.