The Project, page 16
But there’s no one.
I reach for my forehead absently and scratch at my freshly-tended-to skin. Lev pulls my hand from my face. All of this registers somewhere past the surface, everything I’m doing wrong after I’ve done it. Some part of me still not connected.
“I can take care of myself.”
I feel the blood drain from my face. Nausea washes over me. Lev says, “Lay back, lay back, lay back…” pressing against my shoulders until my head meets the pillow beneath me.
“In the hospital,” I manage, “every time I woke up, I was alone.”
I stare at the ceiling and then I reach for my forehead. I can’t seem to leave it alone. Lev grasps my hand and holds it tightly between both of his own. I slowly return my gaze to his. Once he’s sure I won’t worry at the bandage, he rests my hand gently on the mattress and moves to leave. I reach for him.
“I take care of myself,” I say again.
But I’ve reached for him.
He hesitates, then sits down beside me.
“I am so sorry,” he says, “that no one has taken care of you.”
2013
She finds Lev naked, studying himself in their bedroom mirror.
She follows his gaze as it roams over his body.
His hair, his beautiful curls. She loves the feel of them through her fingers, loves lying with him, pushing them back from his face while he looks at her. His eyes are a deep, rich brown and there is no end to their intensity. She had to train herself to keep eye contact with him those first few months in The Project because it felt like he was seeing more than she had agreed upon and she wasn’t sure anyone could withstand such scrutiny. He told her sometime later, when she confessed this to him, that he often felt the same way, in his own way. He saw with God’s eyes—and that was often more than any man could take.
Their gaze trails past his broad chest, his strong arms, the skin tight across his muscles, both of them arriving at his mother’s abuses at the same moment. She cried the first time she saw the constellations and continents of burns on his body, the cuts across his hip bones. Who would do something so ugly to a child?
Don’t you understand? he’d whispered, wiping her tears. She made me what I am.
She’s a terrible woman, calls Lev asking for money and complains bitterly about the way he’s spoken of her to the public. Her health is failing and Bea relishes in this.
Lev forgave her but Bea doesn’t have to.
She crosses the room and wraps her arms around him, pressing herself against him from behind. He leans back against her, breathes her in.
If anyone doesn’t provide for his own, he says quietly, he has denied the faith—
No, Bea says, bringing her lips to his shoulder. No …
And is worse than an unbeliever, he finishes, staring at himself in the mirror. She closes her eyes, resting her head into the crook of his neck and continues to refuse his words.
I have failed to keep one of God’s chosen, he says.
Rob’s departure has weighed heavily on Lev in ways that no one but she, and Casey, can see. He doesn’t sleep well, paces at night murmuring to himself, trying to understand when and where he lost his hold. Rob had been one of the very first to express faith in Lev and to trust so completely in his vision, and that faith strengthened Lev’s resolve to carve out a path like no man before him. Lev doesn’t understand where things soured. Everything Lev does for them is what he has been asked to do by God, and if he is failing to convey the Word, if his followers now run from it, there can only be one reason: I’ve failed God.
Bea doesn’t agree. No one knows what it takes from Lev to answer to God and then to answer to His Chosen. To be all things to all of them. It’s not so much to ask they meet him in all they do and no consequence should surprise them when they don’t. If you serve God in all things, if you are dutiful and obedient as you promise to be, there is no consequence.
Lev’s hand drifts to his scars. He presses against them with his fingertips, wincing as though they’re still as raw and painful as the day his mother made them.
I have to go to Indiana, he tells her, to seek revelation.
* * *
She can’t stop Lev from sacrificing himself on his mother’s altar, but Bea is not ready to accept any of this as his failure.
When Casey accompanies Lev to the airport, Bea heads into Chapman. They all know where Rob lives; they’ve kept a close eye on him since his defection. A one-bedroom basement apartment on the bad side of town. He didn’t leave with much in his pockets.
He couldn’t have expected to.
She knocks on his door, tries to imagine trading the safe and sturdy walls of Chapman House for what she sees here. Flaking plaster, mold on the walls, water damage on the ceiling, a crack in the door. She raps her knuckles against it and waits for Rob to answer.
After a moment, he does.
He makes no case for leaving. He’s drawn, shrunk in on himself, his skin sickly pale. He doesn’t look like he’s sleeping or eating well.
He looked whole in The Project.
I never thought Lev would send you, he says.
He didn’t. I’m here on my own.
He eyes her skeptically, but he opens the door. She steps inside and it’s worse inside. There’s nothing to it, no furniture. A rolled-up yoga mat on the floor and some blankets—from where, she wonders. There’s a card table and two folding chairs in the center of the room. As they make their way to it, Bea’s eyes linger on the mess of the kitchen counter. She spots a Bible Tract with a ringed coffee stain on it. She picks it up. St. Andrew’s. She knows this church. Her parents are buried in its cemetery. She eyes Rob, holding up the tract, a question in her eyes.
He knows how Lev feels about church.
Rob has no patience for the things she’s not willing to say.
What do you want, Bea?
She sits across from him at the card table. He is too big for it and she is just small enough. She reaches for his hands, wrapping them in her own.
Come home.
His lip trembles and he closes his eyes and Bea holds her breath. It can’t be that easy but part of her believes that it should be. After a long moment, he opens his eyes and says: No.
Your family misses you, Rob. Lev misses you. I miss you.
I—He chokes, presses his lips together, and shakes his head. A flush of anger wells up inside her; she doesn’t understand. He says, I want everything back. I want everything back that I gave to him in the name of the Word. I want my things, I want my money, I want my—He can’t seem to finish the sentence, the things he wants becoming less easy to define, impossible to return. But The Project does not take what one is not willing to give.
You would betray Lev like this? He did everything for you—
Lev betrayed me.
Lev loves you.
Rob stands abruptly, ripping his hands from hers.
That’s not love.
Then what is it?
He opens and closes his mouth several times before clenching his teeth and moaning through them. He presses his knuckles against his head, then his fingers drift through his hair, pulling at it, her question at the forefront of the war he’s waging against himself.
It scares Bea.
She keeps herself very still.
He lets out a sob.
It’s not love, he finally whispers. It’s not love. In one swift movement he’s in front of her, his hands on the arms of her chair. Look at me and tell me it’s love. He leans closer, his breath sour on her face. Tell me it’s love, Bea.
It has only ever been Lev’s love. And how badly and how far Rob has fallen in such a short amount of time is proof of this.
This is what life looks like without it.
What else could it be? she asks.
Rob moves away from her, disgusted, shaking his head.
He tells her to leave.
* * *
Three days later, Lev calls her from Indiana. His mother is dead.
He sounds so relieved.
JANUARY 2018
There’s still time, someone yells.
There’s still time. Maybe he just had to get this close to the other side to realize it was there all along because sometimes that’s the moment life brings you to. But more often than not, it feels like it’s this one: you lie down on the tracks.
You lie down on the tracks and the train is coming.
The boy, trembling, lifts his head to be sure.
I turn away, my heart pounding, forcing myself back through the bodies until I’m free of the crowd, only to be trapped by another, greater swell of onlookers.
One of them whispers in my ear: Don’t do it.
Do what? I think hazily, staring at the sky, the world shaking underneath me.
I’m on the tracks.
I raise my head, trembling.
A semi is coming.
I roll off the tracks just before impact, falling through the sky. I hit the ground, gasping, and Bea’s face hovers above mine, worried and full of love. She’s so much younger, somehow, than she should be—and so am I; when I reach for her, my hands are small.
I’m so afraid of all the things I don’t know could happen to you, she whispers. She fades slowly out as the hospital fades in and I feel the itchy tug of tape on my skin, the scratchy blankets against my skin. This is not a state of being, it’s a halfway place between awake and not quite asleep. And then he comes into view: the man at the end of my bed.
He reaches for me.
My eyes fly open, my chest rising and falling violently as I bolt upright, feeling the strange pull of tubes attached to me, in me. The first word out of my mouth is, “Bea,” and then, realizing my mistake: “Patty.”
Then, realizing it again, the room comes sharply into focus.
The Garrett Farmhouse.
I roll over slowly, my body aching in the way I imagine a body is meant to ache after a minor car accident—a novel experience for me. Sunlight creeps along the outside edges of the window blind and I can’t tell if it’s the end of a day or the start of one.
I slowly take in the room, registering the things I couldn’t manage to before. It’s small, doesn’t really feel like it belongs to anyone; a guest room for strays. The twin bed I’m currently occupying is wedged in a corner, a nightstand at the head of it—a glass of water and a lamp atop it—a desk in the opposite corner. I exhale when I see my bag rested neatly on it.
The bedroom door is partway open.
I touch my forehead and it bites back. I hiss. My shoes are off and there’s a blanket covering me. I don’t remember either of these things happening and I hate, so much, that I can’t. It was one of the worst parts of my hospital experience, to be so beyond my own control, and so wholly at the mercy of anyone or anything else.
I get out of bed gingerly, ignoring the protestations of my bones, and make my way to my bag. I find my phone in the front pocket, still intact.
9:30 a.m.
I replay the previous night in my head.
I was in the car.
I’d left the road to the farmhouse … I was headed toward the intersection.
There was a semi.
I sit back down on the edge of the bed with my arms draped over my knees, my head bowed, trying to remember the drive to the farm. The car was fine. The car was fine, I know this. I made it in one piece—but I also didn’t see a single semi. I curl my fingers into fists and bite my lip, trying to ignore the burn of shame across my skin, of Lev’s voice in my head. You live inside your accident … and you are so afraid of the next.
And it happened.
But it wouldn’t have, if I just …
If I wasn’t so weak.
After a long moment, I feel eyes on me. I raise my head and turn to the door, and there, peering at me through its narrow opening, is Emmy.
I stop breathing, seeing her.
She’ll never not be a perfect vision of Bea. Maybe she’s even more perfect because she’s free of all her mother’s mistakes and still young enough to grow up halfway decent in spite of the damage that’s already been done.
It is still so painful to look at her.
“Hi,” I manage, my voice raspy. “Emmy.” She brings her hand up to her cheek, like she did when she first met me. My scar, forever fascinating. “You remember me?”
For some reason, the question spooks her. She races down the hall.
I can’t stay in this room forever, so I shove my things into my bag and shrug it over my shoulder, using the camera on my phone to do a quick self-assessment because there’s no mirror in here. My clothes are rumpled, dried bloodstains on my collar.
No wonder Emmy ran away from me.
I smooth my shirt as much as I can. I run my fingers through my tangled hair, wincing when they catch. I knot it into a sloppy bun and then I open the door and face the hall. I make my way to the kitchen, where I find Lev at the stove, working two frying pans. He glances at me out the corner of his eye.
“What would you like?” he asks.
“Coffee. Please.”
He reaches overhead for a mug resting on a shelf above the stove, hands it to me and gestures to the carafe on the kitchen table. I pour myself a cup, ignoring the nervous tremor in my hands, and notice Emmy’s little body camped out under the table, not quite hiding, but not quite participating either. She’s playing with a puzzle, fitting big wooden numbers into their spaces on the board. I take a sip of my coffee. There seemed to be more people here last night, but maybe it was just the same two, my brain refusing to track …
“It’s quiet.”
“I asked for privacy. Foster is around. He took care of your car—”
“Took care of my car?”
“We’ve got a mechanic in town, a member. He towed it last night.”
“What’s the damage?”
He turns off the burners and faces me. “It’s totaled.”
I set my coffee on the table, closing my eyes briefly.
“I hit that hard?”
“You don’t have to hit hard, you just have to hit right.”
He grabs a small plate and spoons some scrambled eggs and hash browns onto it. He opens up the fridge and grabs a bottle of ketchup, dousing the breakfast with an ungodly amount of it, grabbing a kiddie fork from a drawer. He crouches down to set it in front of Emmy. It’s so sweet, it makes me sad.
“How much do I owe you for…?”
“Nothing,” he says, straightening. “What happened yesterday, Lo?”
The question hangs between us.
“I saw a semi and I … I panicked.”
He crosses his arms, leaning against the counter thoughtfully. “You don’t remember the first accident, do you?” I shake my head. “I think some part of you must. Deeply. Because that’s where you were last night. You had a thousand-yard stare.”
I look away from him.
“But there was also a part of you that was trying so hard not to be there anymore, to be present,” he adds. “You can live outside of it, Lo. You clearly want to…”
I ask him how in spite of myself.
Before he can respond, Emmy pushes her plate out from under the table. Most of the egg and half the hash browns remain, but the ketchup is gone. After a moment, she crawls out. She’s so small. Her clothes seem hand-me-down: a sweater with a faded picture of Rainbow Brite on it and brown corduroy pants, threadbare. Her sneakers are faded gray.
She makes a point not to look at me as she walks over to Lev, who scoops her up into his arms. She presses her head against him, her face fitting neatly into the curve of his neck. He rubs her back, kisses the top of her head.
“Who’s that, Daddy?”
It’s the first time I’ve heard her voice and the sound of it is startling. Its sweetness ripples through me. The words marble in her mouth the way a toddler’s words tend to. She can’t quite get the th sound out, turning that into dat.
“I’m your mother’s sister,” I say, before Lev can answer for me. Emmy doesn’t acknowledge my contribution, just stares at him expectantly until he answers because the answer can only mean something to her so long as it comes from him.
She asks it again: “Who’s that?”
Lev seems to hesitate. He kisses Emmy’s head once more, pressing his cheek to her forehead, and then murmurs quietly: “This is Lo. She’s Bea’s sister.”
Emmy’s eyes light at this in a way that takes me a moment to understand, and when I do it makes me feel sicker than anything else that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours.
* * *
When Foster comes back, Lev leaves Emmy with him.
He sits with me on the porch outside, while I wait for a taxi to come. Lev offered a ride, but I refused, desperate for time and space from him to think. My hands are shoved in my pockets, my eyes watering from the cold.
I ask him to explain it to me.
“Who is Bea to Emmy?”
How do the words mother and Bea live so separately in that little girl’s head.
“She’s just Bea.” He pauses. “She loved her daughter, Lo.”
“That’s not love. It’s cowardice.”
“No.” He shakes his head slowly. “I can’t let that stand. Bea may have been afraid, but she was no coward. I had a mother who never recognized her limitations and her failure to do that resulted in so much pain. Bea made sure Emmy was surrounded by people who loved her and Emmy has never wanted from Bea what Bea was unable to give her. She made sure of that.”
Unlike me, I guess.
I bite my lip, trying to keep from crying.
“How are you okay with this?”
“I have to be. I choose to be.” I feel his eyes on me. “Don’t misunderstand me. What Bea did hurt me badly, and I was angry at her … for some time, I was so angry. But there has to be something after the hurt and the anger. These things cannot sustain you. I look at you, Lo, and I see how tired you are. Last night, I saw it.” He pauses. “I don’t know how you do it.”
I swallow hard. It’s a relief to see the taxi pull onto the road. I get to my feet and make my way down the steps.
