The Sky Beneath My Feet - By Lisa Samson Page 0,18

fat drum, beating a tempo while a half dozen others chant slogans at the top of their lungs. Even with my window cranked down, the noise of the traffic drowns out everything but the beat. Ramming speed!

How nice it must be, how wonderful, to set up in the middle of the bustling world and give yourself permission to scream. Even if your voice is overwhelmed, even if no one can make out a word you’re saying, to fill your lungs and let go, emptying yourself into the sound . . . It must be liberating. I can see why they’d do it, no matter what the cause. The rest of us, we keep our opinions to ourselves, and we certainly don’t yell about them. Or if we do, we only yell at the ones who love us and know us best, the ones least able to hear a word we say.

The light changes and the east-west traffic yields to us north-southers. As the VW chugs up to speed and I coast past them, I extend my hand out the window. I wave. Not good enough. I lean closer to the window, letting the wind buffet my face, and yell—“Whooooooo!”—as loud as I can. Chas Worthing doesn’t look up. The Rent-a-Mobbers can’t hear me any more than I can hear them.

But the driver behind me beeps his horn.

“Sorry!”

I say it out loud, then mouth the words into the rearview mirror, then give an exaggerated shrug. Sorry, you big SUV. Sorry for costing you a second of time. Sorry for swerving a little in my lane. Sorry for opening my big mouth and trying to speak.

chapter 4

Blue Throbbing Fullness

If it was Jed’s birthday looming, everything would be different. Weeks in advance, his brow creased with anxiety, he’d want to talk through all the details with me, explaining what he wanted and what he didn’t want, which of his tiny circle of friends should be invited and which shouldn’t. He’d have a list of presents for my consideration, mostly arcane widgets for his computer that can only be ordered online. There is never any chance of Jed’s birthday slipping past us. He wouldn’t let that happen.

By contrast Eli seems so laid back that, on the way to church, I feel the need to remind him.

“Don’t forget what’s happening next week.”

In the backseat of the van, he looks up from his iPod screen. An absent smile forms on his lips. “Ha, ha.”

I’m driving the boys—or rather, Jed drives while I ride shotgun. Rick always leaves first thing in the morning, meeting with the staff for prayer and then helping with the 8:00 a.m. service. This morning he asked me not to say anything about his plans for October, worrying that if the men of the church knew he was still in town, they would expect him to show up for handball and midweek Bible studies and hot wings at the sports bar. “Are you at least going to tell the boys?” I had asked. He said it would probably be better coming from me.

“Before we go in,” I say, “there’s something you need to know . . .”

As I explain, I try to gauge their separate reactions. Jed flares up immediately, while Eli seems to shrug off the unpleasant news. I know better, though. Like whisky in a sauce, Jed’s wrath will burn away quick enough. In the long run, Eli will take it harder.

“So no beach,” he says. “No Florida.”

“It doesn’t have to mean that. The three of us, we can still go.”

He glances at the screen again, then tucks it away. “Yeah, I guess.”

“And anyway, I won’t be surprised if he changes his mind.”

In the church parking lot, I give them final instructions. Don’t say anything to anyone. Act normal. If Stacy says something about the beach house, just thank her profusely. As soon as I’m done, Eli trots off to his youth group class. Jed hangs back, walking beside me in solidarity.

“We should go,” he says. “We should go without him.”

“We’ll see.”

Crossing the lot is a challenge all its own. The various quadrants are labeled and color-coded, and you file through hundreds of cars to approach the building, a bit like a crowd of ancient Romans on their way to the Coliseum. Once the international headquarters and East Coast manufacturing hub of a now-defunct plastics company, the building had to be gutted and rebuilt from the ground up when the church signed the lease. Despite the vast size, I never feel