The Sky Beneath My Feet - By Lisa Samson Page 0,30

old-fashioned,” she says. “One day that car is going to break down for the last time and your phone is going to die, and you’ll be forced into the twenty-first century.”

“Kicking and screaming. Anyway, it’s not the twenty-first century I have a problem with. It’s all the stuff that goes with it.”

“Same difference. You can’t have Now without all the stuff.”

At dusk, the lights inside the shed switch on. It would be easy to walk across the yard. Rick didn’t lay down any rules. He didn’t forbid us to interrupt his isolation. But no, I can’t bring myself to do it. He has to come in before I can go out.

I let the boys talk me into pizza. Jed takes the keys and they return in a half hour with a large pepperoni, devouring most of it between them. I have no appetite. They don’t ask whether we should save any for Rick, and I don’t suggest it. On his way upstairs, Eli tells me he’s going to his room until God decides to talk to him. I smile. It’s the first reference to Rick’s self-imposed exile all day.

“Mom,” Jed says. “Are you going back to that group?”

“You mean the Rent-a-Mob? I don’t think so.”

“Well, if you do . . . I might want to check it out.”

“Really?”

He shrinks under my scrutiny. “Or maybe not. I’m just saying.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

Now, this is a surprise. Maybe I’m right about that freshman crush. While Eli is the son who’d tease me about Chas, Jed would be more likely to scold. In his early teens, chafing at Rick’s expectations, he took a sudden interest in Christian doctrine so he could argue with his dad. For a while, they went at it about everything, constantly butting heads to my exasperation and Eli’s detached amusement. Whatever Rick would say, Jed would take the more conservative, in his mind more biblical, position. At the private Christian school we sent him to, his teachers started sending home notes about how much Jed was applying himself, never imagining the reason why. Then he got into computers and started spending hours on discussion forums. He progressed in leaps and bounds. Instead of arguing with him, Rick now didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

“It’s the Christian tradition,” Jed would shout. “Deal with it!”

To be honest, this phase impressed me and scared me all at once. This was just how Gregory had acted at the same age—though his rebellion went in the opposite direction, which is how he ended up as a self-professed Marxist literature professor (albeit at a community college in northern Virginia, thanks to the glut of PhDs in the world). Jed’s mental acuity amazes me sometimes. The fear comes from realizing how easily a rift could open between father and son. I know firsthand.

All this to say, if Jed is suddenly interested in hanging out with a bunch of lefty war protestors, he must have really had a thing for Marlene. Of course, I suspect she didn’t have a nose ring or dreadlocks when she was in the youth group at The Community.

With the downstairs all to myself, I brew some decaf tea, put some music on, and stretch out in front of the television. By the time I find out there’s a series worth watching, it’s usually off the air. Fortunately the library has most of the good stuff. I pick through the pile of movies on the shelf—a three-to-one split between science fiction thrillers (Rick, Jed, Eli) and quiet dramas set in stately English manors (yours truly), but nothing looks interesting. I flip channels, watching five minutes of a singing competition, five minutes of reality housewives (most of whom aren’t even technically wives), five minutes of cooking, five more minutes of cooking.

Through the side window in the living room, I have a view of the Smythes’ house. The fairy lights are on around back. Roy and Deedee are sitting at the wrought-iron table, a silver cocktail shaker between them along with a pair of glasses. He’s a sharp dresser, Roy, in gray flannel pants and a thick navy shawl-collared cardigan, a gentleman at leisure. It’s hard to figure those two out. He’s in his sixties, a widower, and I get the impression he’d propose to Deedee at the drop of a hat if he thought she was even a little bit interested. They spend enough time together it seems like a no-brainer. Clearly there is history I know nothing about. When