The Sky Beneath My Feet - By Lisa Samson Page 0,57

course, last time we met, Marlene thought everybody was prochoice too. It’s surprising how much we can know, and still not know the world as it really is.

Eli comes in through the back door, carrying his new messenger bag. He stops in his tracks, looking at Marlene. Then he smiles. “You’re not the same girl.”

“This is Marlene,” I say.

“Nice to meet you. I thought for a minute you were the junkie from the other day.”

“The what?”

“It’s an inside joke,” I say. “Eli, have you eaten?”

He’s already heading for the stairs. “Over at Damon’s.”

“My son,” I explain. “He just turned sixteen. You were in the youth group with my other son, Jed.”

“I remember. He’s really tall.”

“He’s grown a lot since then.”

As if on cue, Jed appears. He recognizes her at once, despite the facial jewelry and the hair. If anything, these changes make her more fascinating to him. He stands there, staring, answering my motherly questions in monosyllables. Marlene notices the attention and glances away bashfully. They are nothing like the couple on the book cover lying faceup between them, but I can’t help seeing the similarities.

Oh, Jed.

“I was just telling your mom about this demo in D.C., trying to get her to come. A whole bunch of us are going down for it. You should too.”

Jed clears his throat. “Okay. Sounds great.”

“Awesome,” she says, glancing away again.

My turn to interrupt. “You know, I haven’t said I’m going.”

“Mom,” he says, managing to pack so much into the word. I’m embarrassing him just by being here, and betraying him by not going along with the plan.

Unlike Eli, Jed won’t clear out. He lingers silently, which pretty much kills the conversation. Suddenly the age gap between Marlene and me seems a mile wide. She finishes her tea and apologizes again and practically begs me not to back out of the D.C. trip. Jed burns holes in me with his laser beam eyes as she makes the final appeal.

“I guess I’d better get going,” she says.

“Let me write my number down, in case you want to call.” I jot my mobile number down on a pad, then get her to write down hers. Then I walk her to the door, Jed following a few steps behind.

After she’s gone, I turn to confront him.

“Now, don’t get any ideas, my boy.”

“Ideas about what?”

He doesn’t stick around for an answer. Now that Marlene’s gone, there’s nothing to interest him downstairs. I return to the kitchen to clean up. I switch on my phone, now that I have an excuse to give Holly. When I reach for the pad to program Marlene’s number in, the page is missing, ripped out, the perforated leftovers sticking out of the coiled wire.

“Oh, Jed.”

After microwaving the last of my tea, I take the mug out back. Sitting in one of the outdoor chairs, I gaze up at the sky overhead, a soft throw somebody from church gave Rick for Christmas a few years ago around my shoulders. The moon and stars are hidden behind thick clouds, bringing heaven closer to earth, almost to the treetops, or so it seems from my seated position. As I watch, the cloud cover shifts. The wind pushes it gently from left to right. It’s easy, watching this movement, to imagine the earth spinning, to imagine myself perched on the uppermost curve of the world. Some ancient, experiencing it the same way, would have mistaken this for a spiritual experience. I wonder sometimes how much of our understanding is based on what amounts to optical illusions.

The shed is dark tonight. What is Rick doing in there? I try to imagine and find that I can’t. As near as the structure is, it seems more distant to me than the clouds above. Rick feels less present somehow. I no longer sense him out here the way I did at the beginning of his exile.

That’s progress of a sort.

I could feel him everywhere once, during the first weeks after we met. I was a senior in college, pre-law, excellent grades, already on track for my stellar career. My parents loved the idea of a lawyer daughter, and I loved the thought that I could help people. Already I’d interned at a firm that did lots of pro bono work. One of the partners had even told me I had an affinity for the law.

All of that ambition turned fuzzy when I met Rick. It slipped into the region of memory where the distant past is stored. I spent all