Night, Forgotten: Draft 1

Chapter 19: Then

"What are you thinking, Juju Bear?" Owen asked me one morning on the davenport, back when we used to share our inner worlds with each other there. It was right after Paul's suicide and we hadn't yet told Diana about the pregnancy. This was one of the rare occasions when I wasn't so sure I wanted to answer Owen's question honestly.

I was thinking about God.

Owen still called himself a Catholic, and it sometimes felt uncomfortable to be completely open with him about the depth of my agnosticism. I had been raised in the Catholic religion, too, but the Biblical stories and all the dogma had never resonated for me the way they seemed to for Owen, for Diana, or for any of my other practicing family members. Most of them attended Mass every Sunday and at least went through the motions.

I decided to be honest with Owen.

"I'm thinking about God, I guess. And Heaven."

Owen raised his eyebrows, intrigued. "Good morning to you, too!"

I laughed. "You asked what I was thinking!" Relieved at the opportunity to avoid the topic, I started to stand up from the davenport. "Never mind."

"No, no," Owen wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me back down next to him. I flinched a little when his hands made contact with my abdomen. Now that we both knew what was growing inside there, no touch was devoid of meaning. But his hands were tender and comforting, so I let him leave them there.

"Well," I cleared my throat. "I guess I'm thinking about how all any of us really wants out of life is to have a story we can be proud of. Right?"

"I guess." Owen shrugged. "But I thought you said you were thinking about Heaven."

"Well," I continued, "Paul didn't lean over the railing at the mall and make everybody watch his body splatter on the floor because he was proud of his life."

"Okay, okay." Owen winced.

"Sorry. That's not what I mean, really. Just – we look for symbols everywhere, you know? Hidden messages, coincidences – "

"Miracles," Owen offered, erring on the religious side.

"Sure. Anything to convince ourselves that there is some meaning..." I had to trail off. This was a thought I'd never put into words before and now I understood why. It felt too big for words.

Owen pulled my feet up onto his lap and pressed the ball of my right foot between his palms. "To convince ourselves that there's meaning in what? In life?"

I nodded. "We need to convince ourselves that there is some kind of meaning – meaning of any kind – being conveyed to us from another place. Another, wiser place."

"God in Heaven," Owen said so matter-of-factly that it startled me.

That's the way Catholics are – we recite these specific little phrases as answers to everything, in the same intonation and rhythm as we have heard them repeated to us since childhood. God in Heaven. As if just saying things over and over somehow makes them real.

"Maybe," I said carefully. "But – whether it's God in Heaven or whatever you want to call it, it insists on remaining a mystery. To us, anyway. It just reveals the truth to us by kind of fucking with us, and we have to try to put that together into a story we can be happy about."

"So that's what you meant about the story." Owen watched his hands as he kneaded my socked foot. "I guess I don't think of it like God is fucking with us, but more like life is just – life has a lot of trials. Like God's testing us."

"But for what?" I snapped, more aggressively than I intended. "Why does God stage these – these random and just – emotionally devastating trials, then? For what? Why did Paul have to live like that?" I sniffed, angry with myself for getting emotional about religion.

We hadn't had the space to mourn properly for Paul, with all that was going on. We had tacitly agreed to let his death remain an ugly, untreated wound for now, while we dealt with the tragedy currently growing inside me.

I forced calmness into my voice. "What is the right answer to this?" I placed my hands over his, on top of my newly rounded belly. "If it's a test, then I must be failing." I realized what I was saying was true as it came out of my mouth. "It does feel like that sometimes. Like I'm just constantly failing a test about nothing with no right answers."

"I didn't mean it like that, JuJu Bear." Owen had tears in his eyes, too. "I'm sorry." His voice broke on the last syllable. "But – I get what you mean about creating a story out of our lives and needing to be proud of it."

He scooted closer to me, letting go of my foot and wrapping his arms around me. "I'm proud of our story," he said into my hair.