God is in the Pancakes Read online

  My heart starts racing. If they do an autopsy, they’re sure to find evidence of the pills I gave Mr. Sands. And then they’d be forced to launch an investigation . . . and then the missing report card envelope with trace evidence, which, once I’d heard funeral plans were set, I stopped obsessing over, would come back to haunt me . . . Sweat begins to bead on my upper lip.

  “Hello Ronnie, hello Shirley,” Isabelle says when she reenters the room, “so nice of you to come.”

  “I’m going to go,” I say to Isabelle quickly.

  “Well okay, Grace, thank you again for stopping by.”

  “Uh-huh.” I nod, mopping my forehead with my hand and walking to the door.

  “Grace, wait,” Isabelle says, and I see her scanning the room for her purse.

  “No.” I shake my head at her, silently trying to convey that I desperately don’t want to take any of her money.

  But she either doesn’t understand my signal or is choosing to ignore it. I see her discreetly take a bill from her wallet and crush it in her palm as she walks over to me by the door. “And if not before, can I expect to see you Wednesday afternoon?” she asks, pressing the cash in my hand, without saying the words “at the funeral.”

  “I’ll be there,” I respond, now wondering if that funeral could also be my own.

  I stare at the ceiling in my room and think about the time I broke my wrist. I’d never realized how important my wrist was until suddenly I couldn’t use it anymore. I broke it when I tripped in my flip-flops. I’d put out my arm to break the fall and wound up breaking the wrist in two places instead. I wore a fiberglass cast for eight weeks and it was only during that time that I realized how much I’d relied on that wrist and how I’d always just taken it for granted before. When the cast finally came off, the wrist was much scrawnier than my other one since the surrounding muscles had atrophied. But getting that wrist back was like a gift, and for the first few days, I stared at it like it hadn’t been a part of my body for my whole life.

  My father’s presence was also something I took for granted. Until he left. And in Dad’s absence was Mr. Sands, who didn’t replace him but helped fill the hole. Now that he’s gone, too, I’m just left feeling broken, and I could use help picking up the pieces.

  Since no one else seems to be answering my messages, I think, staring at the blank ceiling above, I wonder if it’s time to call my father back and tell him he’s needed? That I need him. But before I can bring myself to make the call, I lock myself in the bathroom and rehearse what I’m going to say in the mirror. I try to imagine what his face will look like after I’ve said my piece. My hands shake as I hold the cell phone, but thankfully I have him on speed dial so I won’t have to worry about hitting the right keys. Still, even pushing the TALK button takes concentration. On the first ring I remind myself to act cool. By the second, my index finger hovers over the END button. On the third ring he picks up.

  “Hullo?”

  “Dad, hey, it’s me. Grace.” I stare at my face in the mirror and wonder if I would look different to him now, if I’ve changed at all in the months he’s been gone, or in the events of the past few weeks.

  “Grace! Hey! Wow, great to hear from you. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you, you know. Left a lot of messages on your cell phone.”

  “Oh, yeah, I guess I never got them.” Hadn’t planned to start out with a lie, but I can’t seem to help myself.

  “Well, that’s okay, I’ve got you now, right? So how are you? How have you been?”

  “It’s kind of been a tough year.”

  Dad pauses. I’ve caught him off guard, and in the momentary silence I can almost hear him wonder what the best response to my statement will be. “Oh, yeah?” he replies. “Your classes are hard, huh?”

  He chose the wrong one. “I guess,” I say.

  “So how’s your social life? Breaking a lot of hearts, I’ll bet.”

  Breaking a lot of hearts? “Yeah, I guess you could say that,” I reply, and Dad laughs too loudly. I’ll give him another chance. “So, Dad, I was just wondering, think you’ll be coming back home anytime soon?”

  Dad stops laughing and I hear him exhale. “Well, that’s a tough question, Gracie.”

  I want to tell him that he has no idea what a tough question is. I want to tell him that he’s the adult, so he’s supposed to have the answers. Instead I manage, “Yeah. Okay. So?”

  “Well, there are a lot of factors. And your mother’s probably pretty angry with me, which I can understand.”

  “Me too,” I reply, hoping he’ll catch both meanings of my response.

  “But maybe I can take you and Lolly out to IHOP this week? Whaddya say? I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since I’ve seen my girls. I miss you.”

  “I don’t know, Dad.” This conversation is not going at all in the way I wanted it to. Not that I even knew what that was supposed to be. “I might not be able to.”

  “Your mother can’t stop me from seeing my daughters,” he says, his voice swelling with righteous indignation.

  “No, I just meant I’ve got some stuff that I’ll be dealing with, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it, that’s all.”

  “Well, how much more important could the stuff be than seeing your dear old dad, huh? We haven’t seen each other in months.”

  His words are like the final straw on the load. “It’s not like you didn’t know where to find us,” I reply, pissed.

  “Look, Grace, I am sorry you haven’t gotten my calls, but I have been trying to get in touch,” he offers. Insufficiently.

  “Is your new life better, Dad?”

  “You’re angry.”

  “You think?” I reply, noticing the red flare in my cheeks in the mirror. “I’m not even sure why I called. I just thought, in case you started hearing things—maybe that I’d done something some people might consider bad—I wanted you to know I did it for the right reasons.”

  “Grace, I’m not really following you,” Dad says.

  “I know,” I reply, “I’m probably not making much sense, but I just wanted you to know that I did what I did because I thought it was the right thing. And I’m not sorry about that.”

  “Honey,” he says, his voice softening now, “that’s how I always tried to raise you, to be a good Christian and to do the right thing . . . What did you do, Grace?”

  “I gotta go, Dad.”

  “Well, can I call you again another time?” he asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’ll actually pick up when you see it’s me?” He laughs.

  “Probably.”

  “Thank you,” he says, then, “You know I love you, right?”

  “Okay, bye, Dad,” I reply, and hit END.

  I toss and turn the whole night. My eyes burn open every few minutes, drawn to the bright green numbers on the clock, which seem to be mocking me. It’s as if I’m being told I don’t deserve sleep. Innocent people get to sleep, but this is how the guilty conscience is punished. No sleep for the wicked, isn’t that how it goes? I try to bargain my way into it somehow: “Let me fall asleep now and I’ll be good—I’ll be a better student. I’ll be nicer to my mother. I’ll make sure Isabelle is always comfortable. I won’t do anything wrong again.”

  No deal.

  But why should I be surprised? Who am I even trying to bargain with? I’ve put in a lot of requests over the past few weeks and it’s not like I’ve gotten any evidence that anyone’s out there. Or listening. Or giving a damn. So what’s the point?

  When it’s absolutely clear to me that regardless of how tired I am, I won’t be able to sink into oblivion, I get out of bed. It’s so early it’s still dark outside, and for some reason it occurs to me that I should go for a run—clearly I’m not in my right head. But maybe it’ll let me feel like I’m leaving my problems behind at least temporarily.

  I put on a T-shirt, sweats, and since I don’t have proper running shoes, I just lace up my Pumas extra tight before heading
out the door. When I get to the end of the block, I realize I should have brought my music with me, but I’m not going to go back for it, because I’ll probably just stop if I don’t keep running.

  So that’s what I do: I keep up my pace and I keep moving, one foot in front of the other until I can hear myself breathing heavily. It doesn’t take long before I get a stabbing pain in my left side, but I run through it. At least the pain is something for me to focus on outside my head.

  I don’t have a destination in mind, but when I see the hill at the far side of the community park, I know that’s where I’ll head. The grass in the park is still wet with dew and I kick up some of the water and mud against my calves. I can feel myself gaining speed as I take the hill, and though pain is radiating up my shins, I have no intention of slowing down. I push myself to get to the top and when I do, sweating, out of breath, and with pinpricks of pain shooting through my legs, I look across the horizon.

  I stare at the orangey ball of sun that is now rising through the tree line in front of me. I bend over, dropping my hands to my knees without taking my eyes off the sight before me. I don’t remember ever having been present at a sunrise before, and as I watch the fog start to burn off and the air clearing in front of me, it’s hard not to be taken with the absolute beauty of a new day dawning. I’ve never really pondered the sunrise before. But standing here now, watching it happen, it’s amazing and it’s powerful, and it happens every single day with or without us. That’s when it strikes me that if you have nothing else to believe in, there’s always this. This is universal. This is something to be thankful for. Whatever else you accept as true—God or no God—this can’t be denied, and it’s the same for all of us, which means even in our darkest hours, we are all connected; we are not alone. I don’t know if this is what having faith means, but I get the feeling that wherever Mr. Sands is, he remains with me, part of the dawn.

  Chapter Sixteen

  There’s a quiet hum in the air Wednesday afternoon, like that slightly electrical feeling that remains in the atmosphere after a summer thunderstorm. I never understood the phrase “quiet after the storm,” since things are never perfectly quiet really. Quiet by comparison, maybe, but there’s always some splashing around, tree limbs falling, animals shaking off their coats. I think what people are really talking about is the sound of things settling. That’s what I’m hearing inside my own head right now. And as I walk to the Bartel Funeral Home to attend the service of Frank Sands, I don’t think I’ve ever heard such an eerie non-sound before.

  The service is taking place in the home’s main chapel, and I sit at the end of one of the pews a few rows from the back. I examine the packed crowd but barely recognize any of the faces. Who are all these people? Sure it’s great that so many of them showed up, but why did so few visit Mr. Sands at Hanover House while he was still alive? I don’t even know if I should be here. Yes, Isabelle asked me to come, but if I’d confessed and told her what I’d done—that I’m the one responsible for this day—I’m sure she’d hate the thought of me sitting in this room with her and her family.

  Isabelle sits in the front row, flanked by her daughters. She’s wearing large dark sunglasses that cover half her face, so it’s impossible to tell what she’s focusing on right now. I can’t help but think that she’s not just mourning the loss of her husband here. As the person left behind, she must also be mourning her own life. The life she knew died with him.

  When the minister enters he nods to her, then walks to the podium by the casket, which is draped with a large arrangement of flowers. I can practically hear Mr. Sands complaining about them. “Look at all those damn flowers, Grace!” he’d say. “What are they trying to do, make me look like I won the Kentucky Derby? If they really wanted me to rest in peace they would have buried me in my La-Z-Boy with a glass of scotch in my hand.” This thought makes me smile.

  “Let us pray,” the minister says. “Compassionate and loving God, we gather to commend Frank Sands into Your most gracious hands. Lift us into the joy and peace of Thy presence. Grief is never an easy burden to bear, but in times like these often it’s best to hear from those who were so directly influenced by the departed. So I invite Frank’s daughter Jill to share some thoughts of her own.”

  Jill Sands stands and tugs her jacket down as she walks to the podium. “Hello, everyone, and thank you for being here today,” she says, looking up from her notes and nodding at certain individuals in the crowd. “I guess every child knows and fears that this day will come, and yet that doesn’t make it any easier or the words any easier to find.” She takes a deep breath before looking down again. “Many of you know the wonderful accomplishments of my father. When he came back from Korea, literally starting with one shovel, he built his small construction company into a successful real estate development firm. Over the course of his life he was an active member of the PTA. He was an expert woodworker, an avid wine collector, a gourmet cook, and yet—and yet none of that matters to me today.

  “Because all I can think about right now is the time he taught me to drive.” She smiles. “One weekend, right before I turned sixteen, he took me out to the parking lot by his office and told me to get behind the wheel. After I’d gotten into the driver’s seat and he’d buckled himself in on the passenger side, we sat there for a few minutes not moving and not saying anything. ‘You nervous? ’ he finally asked. And when I nodded my head, he nodded back. ‘Good, I thought it was just me,’ he laughed. Then he said, ‘I could have used a shot of bourbon before I left the house.’ ‘Me too!’ I replied.

  “Anyway, when I finally mustered my nerve, I turned the key, put the car in reverse, and stepped on the gas hard. Well, not two seconds later we hear that sickening sound of something being crushed to oblivion beneath the tires. I screamed. Dad screamed. Then he jumped out of the car to see what I’d just killed. And as I sat there for what felt like an eternity—but what was probably three seconds—I silently sent up a prayer that if I hadn’t, in fact, killed anything, I’d never drive again. Next thing I know I hear Dad laughing. Turned out I’d only run over a bottle of Coke that had rolled under the car.

  “Well, when Dad got back in and told me to start her up again I just shook my head and told him I couldn’t. I explained to him the deal I’d just made with God, and that this had probably been God’s way of telling me that I shouldn’t be on the roads anyway. Dad looked at me very seriously, and then, in that manner that those of us who knew him best would recall, he said, ‘Cut the shit, Jilly, and get on with it.’ ”

  Yeah, that does sound like Mr. Sands, I think.

  “And that was Dad,” Jill continues, laughing herself. Then her breath catches. “That was Frank Sands. A man who was perfect and flawed and wise and selfish. He was smart and he was stubborn and sometimes I hated him. And sometimes he hated me, and a lot of those times he wasn’t wrong to do so. But he always taught me the importance of keeping perspective on things. He launched me into the world and taught me to appreciate life. It’s how I’ll get through today because I know he’d tell me to ‘cut the shit’ and to keep in mind that he’d led exactly the life he wanted to lead. That he’d married the woman he’d always wanted to be with and they loved each other fiercely. He’d tell me that he had no regrets, that he’d been blessed in life and that it was his time to go. I know how much he valued the members of his extended family and his friendships and I know he thought that’s what made life worth living. Thank you all for being here today to honor that memory.” Jill gives one of those unhappy smiles, then walks back to her seat.

  Isabelle stands and hugs Jill, and the two keep holding on to each other. That’s when I feel the tears sliding down my cheeks, and I can’t stop them. I cry for the loss of my friend Mr. Sands, who genuinely lived the life he wanted. I cry for my friend Izzy and her loss. I cry for the relationship they had, and for the love they shared through years full of curves. They stayed friends and stayed in love despite it all. I cry because, after all, I think that’s
what having faith really means.

  “In its most raw form today we feel the homily ‘the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,’ ” the minister says. “But that we grieve, that we mourn, that’s a testament to the impact of that life and it reminds us that though Frank is no longer with us in corporeal form, his spirit remains. Please join me in reciting the twenty-third psalm.”

  As we start reciting the prayer, I realize how reassuring it is to hear all of those voices coming together, echoing against the marble. Everyone is probably thinking about slightly different things—my mind usually wandered to my own stuff during group prayer—but when everyone chants together, at least your own voice is amplified.

  “And let us say, ‘Amen.’ ” Amen.

  People stand and begin filing out to the main reception area and that’s when I catch sight of Jeff Potts from Hanover House.

  “Grace,” he says, putting his arm around my shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “So good of you to come today.”

  “Mrs. Sands asked me to,” I reply, then add, “But I wanted to come. I couldn’t have missed it. Do you come to all of these?”

  “No.” He shakes his head. “But I probably do go to more funerals than most—occupational hazard,” he says in a slightly jokey manner.

  “And are they all like this?” I nod my head back toward the room we were just in as the coffin is being wheeled out by some of the maintenance men.

  “Uh.” Jeff nods, his eyes fixing on a far-off place so that I can tell he’s recalling some of the others. “Yes and no. Of course there’s a certain similarity just in the prayers that are said—and I think that’s done almost as a comfort, you know, like marching orders, so people can sort of mindlessly repeat the message, go through the experience as ritual. But I’ll tell you, all you need is one person to really speak from the heart, the way they tell the story of how much a gesture that person did changed their life, influenced their thinking, or touched them in some way, it can just hit you. And phew, it’s all over.”