~ Luther's Cross ~

by

Therese Kinkaide

Memorial Day is for remembering, and she does. She remembers picnics in the backyard that consisted of raw hotdogs, which she still thinks are disgusting, and grape soda. Oreo cookies, because for him, she didn’t mind splurging. A one-on-one baseball game, which always involved more giggling than baseball, and lying on their backs in the grass, finding shapes in the clouds. He was good at that, just like he was with stargazing.

That last Memorial Day, he’d seen an elephant in the clouds, and she’d looked for several long silent minutes without seeing it and finally turned her face to look at him. He’d grinned, and she’d thought he was joking with her, but when she looked again, she’d seen it. An elephant with its trunk raised. And then she’d seen a cloud that looked like a big hand, reaching out to her. She supposes some people would say it was the hand of God, and she supposes that it just might have been the hand of God reaching to take back what was His. The billowy outstretched fingers had climbed her spine and left her chilled. She’d tried to hide her unease by suggesting another inning.

This kind of remembering is dangerous. The good kind has such narrow boundaries she’s almost always doomed to fail. She can live with memories, but sometimes the ghosts of the past haunt her and break her down to nothing, and she hates to become that person. She hates to feel, and she hates to lose control, and she hates to break. Each time it happens, it gets just a little bit harder to put herself back together.

Sometimes she runs. She runs to escape, and she runs to search, and she runs to turn the sorrow into a physical hurt. It’s always so much easier to deal with physical pain. She’s not the squeamish type; she doesn’t get all girly and sick at the sight of blood. In fact, when she was twelve, she and Tony Spinelli had bumped noses while they fought over a rebound. The crack of the bones and the jolt of pain had slowed her down, but she’d taken the rebound, put the ball up again for two points, and then turned to see if Tony was okay. They’d ridden to the ER together, had their noses set at the same time in different exam rooms, and then ducked off to the corner of the waiting room to whisper while their parents talked by the triage desk. She’d promised him she wouldn’t tell anyone that his nose had bled and hers didn’t and therefore she must be tougher than him. He’d kissed her; her first kiss on her mouth, and they were both taped up like hockey players after a night on the ice.

She supposes, as she rides her bike south on Eighth Street, Tony Spinelli was her first love. When her mind starts to click, to remind her of things best left alone, she pulls herself to her feet and pedals like the hounds of hell are following her.

~ * ~

There are moments in time when everything kind of comes to a standstill, and life sort of takes a freeze-frame photo of itself. It’s that half a second hang-up when the heart sort of stops, then the blood feels thick and hot when everything sets back into motion, and it’s like fire in the veins. Jay’s had several of these moments in his life; just yesterday when he’d sped past Forty-Eighth Street on Broadway and saw the cop car tucked neatly behind the bank and had waited for the telltale siren that never came. And the moment when the deathbed vigil over his father had ended, when he’d taken that last breath and only silence had followed. Jay had looked to his older sister in fear, and the dancing, rhythmic line that showed the life left in his father’s heart had fallen flat.

And the other day, the moment when Ellie had first realized he was watching her. The moment when she’d turned her head and looked at him, and he’d crossed the classroom to sit with her and talk to her.

He hates that he and Ellie never talked until the final exam. Well, he hates a lot of things, really, but that’s his newest and biggest hate. He wishes, since his mouth had invited her to the picnic, that she would have agreed to go. He wishes that he had a reason to call her or go see her. Since she told him she lived on Lincoln, he’s ridden his bike past her house a few times. He figures that since she told him where she lived, it’s less of a violation to ride past her house than it would be if he’d only known this about her through her school files.

She has never been outside when he’s ridden by. He’s never really had the inclination to stop and knock on her door. He’s decided that she keeps a meticulous yard and wonders if her house is as neat inside. He wonders, too, if he’ll ever see the inside of her house. The house itself is tiny, but somehow that seems to fit her. When he rides by, he imagines her sitting on the front porch, watching the stars. Since she’d told him about stargazing, he’s found himself up later most nights, sitting out on his patio, looking at the stars and wondering if by chance they are looking at the same one.

Memorial Day is for remembering, and he did spend part of today remembering. He and Maeve always take their mother to mass at the cemetery, and Maddie meets them there. He remembers his father then, of course, and his grandparents. But he spent half the day eating and the other half pounding his little brother into the pavement, playing one on one. Ellie had been on his mind all day, and he’d caught himself wearing a shit-eating grin more often than not. She was sort of like his own little secret, only there wasn’t much to the secret because they’d only had one conversation, and the rest of the summer stretched out before him boring and lonely as hell without any hope of seeing her until classes started again next fall.

Apparently his poker face needs some work though, because Maeve had followed him to his truck when he’d made excuses to leave early. It wasn’t like it was that early; he’d eaten a second meal there, one he sure as hell didn’t need. But in years past, they’d lingered at his mom’s house until dark settled in.

Maeve had leaned inside his truck window and simply asked if he was going to go see her. He’d fallen into her trap and said maybe. And that had been the beginning of their game of twenty questions, the one in which Maeve being the pain-in-the-ass older sister asked all twenty and insisted he answer all twenty. He’d failed, though, hadn’t even been able to answer half of them, because he still really knows nothing about Ellie Jordan.

~ * ~

He thinks it takes a pretty shallow person to fall for another shallow person, and by extension, a damned fool to let said shallow person break his heart. Rylan was shallow, so shallow he could almost see through her. But he’d never stopped to notice that. Instead his eyes had gotten sidetracked by her luxurious brown curls and her big blue eyes. He likes to throw the blame anywhere he can, just so it’s not on his shoulders. Yes, it was Rylan who had broken their vows. But he figures the marriage was his fault. He wants to believe he was too young, as if that alone is excuse enough for lusting after a gorgeous woman like Rylan. But he wasn’t really that young when they’d gotten married. He was twenty-five years old, old enough to know that beautiful doesn’t equal compassionate, and hot, nasty sex doesn’t necessarily mean love. He’d taken the chance and asked her to marry him. He doesn’t know what the hell she was thinking when she said yes, but he knows it wasn’t ‘till death do us part.’ Six years later, he is a divorced, “Summer Vacation Only Dad,” and he hates her for doing this to him. It is one thing for her to leave him; he couldn’t have stayed with her after the things she’d done anyway. But taking his son with her had left him with a sadness inside that he can’t shake. It has settled into his bones, like a cavity decays a tooth.

Dating is a pointless cat and mouse chase, and he’s only participated in that game half-assed since the divorce. Kind of like he’s doing the hokey pokey but only with his right side. He’s had fun with a few of the women he’s dated, but he’s never felt that sinking feeling in his heart. The sinking feeling that oddly enough goes up into your heart and your throat as your stomach plummets to your knees and trips you up and makes you act like a jackass in front of that one woman you desperately want to impress. At least not until now. There’s something about Ellie Jordan that makes him feel whole enough to want to put himself right back out there on the railroad tracks with an Amtrak train speeding at him faster than he can blink. And that’s why he’s not surprised when he finds himself on his bike, back in front of her house. Here comes the train. He’s going to stop this time.