Stories: All-New Tales

“Can I ask you something?” Sarah said. “Why her?”

“I don’t understand…”

“I get the whole God thing. I get the kingdom of heaven. But there are millions of seven-year-olds out there. Why did God take mine?”

The pastor hesitated. “God didn’t take your daughter, Sarah,” he said. “Illness did.”

Sarah snorted. “Sure. Pass the buck when it’s convenient.” She could feel herself dangerously at the edge of breaking down, and wondered why on earth she’d thought it was a good idea to come here.

The pastor reached for her hand. His were warm and papery, familiar. “Heaven’s an amazing place,” he said softly. “She’s up there, and she’s looking down on us, right now, you know.”

Sarah felt her throat tighten. “My daughter,” she said, “can’t ride a ski lift without hyperventilating. She panics in elevators. She doesn’t even like bunk beds. She’s terrified of heights.”

“Not anymore.”

“How do you know that?” Sarah exploded. “How do you know that there’s anything afterward? How do you know it doesn’t just…end?”

“I don’t know,” the pastor said. “But I can hope. And I truly believe that your daughter is in heaven, and even if she does still get scared, Jesus will be there to keep her safe.”

She turned away as a tear streaked down her cheek. “She doesn’t know Jesus,” Sarah said. “She knows me.”

ABE FOUND HIMSELF DEFYING gravity. He’d be standing in the kitchen, getting a glass of water, and he’d find himself rising to the balls of his feet. He could not walk fast down the street without starting to float between strides. He started to put stones in the pockets of his pants, which were all too long for him now.

He was sitting on his daughter’s bed one Saturday, remembering a conversation they’d had. Can I still live here when I get married? she’d asked, and he’d grinned and said that would be perfectly fine.

But what about your husband? he’d asked.

His daughter had considered this carefully. Well, we could set up the cot, like when I have a sleepover.

The doorbell rang, and when Abe went downstairs, he found the little girl his daughter had considered her best friend-the last one who’d used that cot, actually-standing red eyed beside her mother. “Hi, Abe,” the woman said. “I hope this isn’t too much of an imposition.”

“No!” he said, too brightly. “No! Not at all!”

“It’s just that Emily’s having some trouble, with, well, you know. She drew a picture, and wanted to bring it here. She thought maybe you could hang it up.” The little girl thrust out a piece of paper toward Abe: a crayon drawing of two little girls-one dark-haired, like his daughter, one fair, like Emily. They were holding hands. There was a melting sun overhead, and grass beneath their feet.

Abe realized he was nearly at a level with Emily; he barely had to crouch down to look her in the eye. “This is beautiful, honey,” he said. “I’m going to put it up right over her bed.” He reached out as if to touch the crown of her head, but realized that this might hurt him more than it would offer comfort, and at the last minute pulled his arm back to his side.

“Are you all right?” Emily’s mother whispered. “You look…” Her voice trailed off as she tried to find the right word, and then she just gave up and shook her head. “Well. Of course you’re not all right. I’m so sorry, Abe. I truly am.” With one last look, she took Emily’s hand and started to walk down the driveway.

Abe held the crayon picture in his hand so tightly that it crumpled. He watched Emily kick the unraked leaves along the sidewalk, setting up small tornadoes as her mother looked straight ahead, not even aware that she was missing this one small, wonderful thing.

SARAH AND ABE DID not really speak to each other, not until Abe walked into their daughter’s room and found Sarah taking the books off the shelves and putting them into boxes. “What are you doing?” he asked, stricken.

“I can’t move past this,” Sarah said, “knowing it’s all right down the hall.”

“No,” Abe answered.

Sarah hesitated. “What do you mean, no?”

Abe reached into one of the boxes and took out a fistful of picture books, jammed them back onto the shelf. “Just because you’re ready to give her up,” he said, “doesn’t mean I am.”

Sarah’s face bloomed with color. “Give her up?” she whispered. “Is that what you think I’m doing? For God’s sake, Abe, all I want to do is function like a normal human being again.”

“But you’re not normal. We’re not normal.” His eyes filled with tears. “She died, Sarah.”

Sarah winced, as if she had taken a blow. Then she turned on her heel and walked out of the room.

Abe sank onto the floor, his fingers speared through his hair. After a half hour, he stood up and walked down the hall to their bedroom. He found Sarah lying on her side, staring at the sun as it shamefully scuttled off the horizon. Abe lay down on the bed, curling his body around hers. “I lost her,” he whispered. “Please don’t tell me I’ve lost you.”

Sarah turned to him, and rested her palm on his cheek. She kissed him, all the words she could not say. They began to comfort each other-a touch here, a brush of lips there, a kindness. But when their clothes had dissolved into pools on the floor, when Abe braced himself over his wife and took hold of her body and tried to settle her curves against his canyons, they did not come together seamlessly, the way they used to. They were off, just enough to make it uncomfortable; just enough for her to say, Let me try this and for him to say, Maybe this way.

Afterward, when Sarah had fallen asleep, Abe sat up and stared down at the end of the bed, at his wife’s feet hanging long and white over its edge.

THE NEXT MORNING, ABE and Sarah lay in the dark. “Maybe I need to be alone for a while,” Sarah said, although it wasn’t what she’d hoped to say.

“Maybe you do,” Abe replied, although it was the opposite of what he meant. It was as if, in this new world, where the impossible had actually happened, nothing fit anymore: not language, not reason, not even the two of them.

When Sarah got out of bed, she took the sheet with her-a modesty she hadn’t needed for fifteen years of marriage. It prevented Abe from seeing what he would have noticed, in an instant: that the growth Sarah had experienced was exactly the same amount Abe himself had diminished; and that, if you could measure anything as insubstantial as that, it would have been exactly the same size and scope as the daughter they’d lost.

SARAH REACHED THE SUITCASE, even though it was stored in the top rafters of the attic. Abe watched her pack. At the door, they made promises they both knew they would not keep. “I’ll call,” Sarah said, and Abe nodded. “Be well,” he answered.

She was going to stay with her mother-something that, in all the years of their marriage, Abe never would have imagined coming to pass; and yet he considered this a positive sign. If Sarah was choosing Felicity, in spite of their rocky relationship, maybe there was hope for all children to return to their parents, regardless of how impossible the journey seemed to be.

He had to pull a chair to the window, because he was no longer tall enough to see over its sill. He stood on the cushion and watched her put her suitcase into the car. She looked enormous to him, a giantess-and he considered that this is what motherhood does to a woman: make her larger than life. He waited until he could not see her car anymore, and then he climbed down from the chair.

He could not work anymore; he was too short to reach the counter. He could not drive anywhere, the pedals were too far from his feet. There was nothing for Abe to do, so he wandered through the house, even emptier than it had been. He found himself, of course, in his daughter’s room. Here, he spent hours: drawing with her art kit; playing with her pretend food and cash register; sifting through the drawers of her clothing and playing a game with himself: can you remember the last time she wore this? He put on a Radio Disney CD and forced himself to listen to the whole of it. He lined up her stuffed animals, like witnesses.

Then he crawled into her dollhouse, one he’d built for her last Christmas. He closed the door behind himself. He glanced around at the carefully pasted wallpaper, the rich red velvet love seat, the kitchen sink. He climbed the