He stopped on the altar rail’s other side and offered Roger Eames his hand. His father rose and towered over Colin. Roger’s hand felt carved from stone. There was no warmth to his grip, nor his gaze. Roger Eames eyed his son with brutal coldness.
Despite how the contact had left Colin trembling, he did as Celeste instructed and worked his way down the row. Shaking hands with Roger’s second wife, then the two sons. Finding the same frigid hostility in all their gazes. And something else. Roger’s new family all shared a tight uncertainty, as if they could not identify who this person truly was, the kid who had gained the power to defy Roger Eames.
By the time Colin took position on the front aisle’s left corner, the chapel was almost full, everyone dressed in what he could only assume was politically correct attire. Colin’s only contact with his grandmother had been during her stay in hospital. The minister spoke words he could not be bothered to hear. Twice Colin thought he saw his father start to lean forward and glare in his direction, then stop.
Colin found himself recalling an event from his childhood. They were returning from a backyard barbecue at the home of a Rocky Mount police officer. The family lived a few blocks from their own home, and the two of them had walked. There had been a lot of laughter and easy talk among the gathered officers, some gentle joshing, a lot of drinking. As he and his father had returned home, his father’s footsteps had become slightly off cadence from the alcohol. Suddenly his father had waved at the vague distance and declared, “You got no idea what we face out there.”
All Colin could see was the stately orderliness of their Rocky Mount neighborhood. But suddenly Colin felt as though he could see danger radiating far in the distance, strong as summer heat. He had no idea what to say, so he remained silent.
“Take one step into the county’s bad areas, you’d get your wake-up call. Believe you me.” He stumbled over a ridge in the sidewalk, righted himself, said, “Bad as bad can be.”
They walked on another half block, when abruptly his father wheeled about and stared down at his son. “You’realways so quiet. You’re the quietest kid … Just like your mother was. Did you hear a word I just said?”
“I heard everything, Daddy. And I remember.”
Roger Eames weaved slightly, like a boxer preparing to ward off blows. “Why can’t youspeak?”
Colin said the first thing that came into his head. “Sometimes when you come home, I think the shadows are trying to come in with you.”
Another fractional weave, one foot to the other and back again. “I can’t let that happen.”
Colin could almost read what his father wanted to hear, written in the chalk-blue sky beyond his father’s head. “Thank you for keeping us safe, Daddy.”
As Colin sat in the chapel, he wondered how it might have been for a different son. A boy who shared his father’s attitudes and perspective on life. A son born to confront, to fight, who wanted to grow up and cross the line and enter the state’s dark zones. He had never felt any need to blame his father. The only rage he had ever felt toward Roger Eames had come when the man’s desire for control, his need to do battle with anyone who opposed him, had hurt others. Never Colin. He sat there and wondered if the reason for this was because he had always sensed that it was at least partly his fault. For never being the son his father desired.
Soon as the service ended, Colin rose and left. After the chapel’s crypt-like frigidity, the hot sunlight felt good on his head and shoulders.
Celeste asked, “You want to attend the gravesite service?”
For what, he wanted to ask. But the thought felt disrespectful. So all he said was, “I’m ready to go now.”
In the weeks that followed, a coffin began to litter his dreams. The distance was often so vast he could not actuallysee the casket. But the vacuum that had carried him through the meaningless ritual was stronger now, deep as the unseen currents of his life. They enveloped him and dragged him forward. Up ahead loomed his own empty grave.
He always woke up gasping from those dreams, terrified he had become another student whose scream shattered the night. But Grant never appeared at his door, so Colin had to assume his terrors had all remained trapped inside.
The renovations to the downstairs apartment dragged on. Problems appeared, deep-set issues that required rewiring one entire side of the house. Then they discovered major plumbing leaks. For weeks the house echoed to the sounds of hammering and power tools. Dust gathered in all the downstairs rooms, despite the builders’ best attempts to shield their work. Camila fretted and fumed and added daily mopping of all the downstairs floors to the students’ chores. Colin despised the sense of being trapped yet again inside emotions and forces over which he had no control.
The last week in September, he took his troubles to Celeste.
They tried to meet or speak by phone every six weeks or so. The day and time changed according to her schedule. She wanted him to have this chance to release, away from the school, in an environment he knew was safe. That day, Celeste was back in the Wilmington Child Development Center for meetings. Colin journeyed in a state of high unease, as if his skin was uncomfortable with containing the tumult and conflicting energies.
Once he started talking about the nightmares and his turbulent emotions, he wondered at why it had taken him so long. The confession did not come easy, however. He stumbled, he stopped, he struggled with both hands grasping at the empty space before his face. When he went silent, his only consolation came from the sense that Celeste understood.
She took her time responding, a few breaths through tight lips, almost but not quite whistling. She turned her chair slightly, so as to study the sunlight dappling the office’s side window. Then, “We’re moving into some very deep territory. So I want you to understand going in, you might not grasp everything I’m saying. This isn’t like your next algebraic formula, you’re not building on things you’ve come to terms with. This is new.”
“I understand.” And he did. She was not just speaking words. He could almost see her laying out a course, guiding him through this new portion of his life’s map.
“Many people go through their entire lives without ever getting a clear fix on what you call your inner void. But the truth is, very many of us are defined by this specific issue. This is especially true with young people. All these connections that are coming up through social media, the young people I’m seeing, they’re totally in sync with these new apps and what they mean and what they can do. They’reconnected.They talk and they share online all the time. But when they come to me, you know what I hear them saying? I go to meetings with my associates from all over the nation, you know what we talk about? It’s the same thing everywhere I go.”
She paused, and then spoke the next three words very slowly. Like each was a complete sentence. “They … feel … lonely. Disconnected. Some are genuinely frightened by how empty their worlds feel.”
Another pause, then her speech resumed its normal rapid cadence. “Their contact with the outside world is limited to what they can put down in a dozen words, a single thought. Depth is something they find in the wrong end of the swimming pool. As a result, their yearnings for a deeper experience, for true and lasting love, become lost to the torrent ofnow. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Colin nodded, but he wasn’t sure Celeste even noticed. She continued to inspect the sunlit glass as she went on, “For so many young people, they don’t know who they are, where they’re going, not even what they want to do with tomorrow. Forget next week or with their own future lives. Those sort of questions frighten them. They have let themselves be defined by whatever is hot in these new mediums. This shapes how they view love, the partner they’re seeking, what will make them happy and fulfilled. All too often they come to me after getting exactly what they think they want, and it turns out to be just an awful experience. They come face-to-face with just how alone they truly are. And they’re terrified.”
She planted her elbows on her knees. Getting in close enough for Colin to see the dark flecks in her gaze. “Your problem, what you’re facing, is both the same and it’s different. The same, in that you’ve been sheltered in an artificial environment for going on seven years. It’s allowed you to develop, but it’s also kept you from developing. You see where I’m headed?”
There was no reason why her words should cause his heart to hammer in his chest, hard as a bird frantically trying to escape. None whatsoever. He nodded.
