Spirits

By Michael Jesse

Chapter 7

Johnny's high school years were largely uneventful. He did well in school, had a handful of friends, and worked at a hardware store in the evenings. His favorite topic in school was American History because, according to his textbooks, the United States always did the right thing -- rescuing Europe in two world wars and then spending millions to help them rebuild afterwards. He knew America was fighting in Vietnam to save Southeast Asia from Communism, but he hoped the war would be over before he turned 18.

From a romantic or sexual perspective, very little happened. He kissed a few girls at parties (or they kissed him), and he had another brief church camp girlfriend named Melody that he made out with a few times. He rarely saw Millie because she was off at college and was not home very often. That summer, she was only home part of the time because she had a job at the VacationLand Amusement Park acting out skits in one of the show houses. He had been to the park once, in 6th grade, and remembered a strip of fake buildings like on a movie studio lot. They were like life-sized dollhouses, and each had a different theme. One was a cowboy saloon, and another a 1920s mobster hideout. He hadn't bothered watching any of the shows because he just wanted to go on the rides.

In his imaginary life, there was more going on, though he was not usually a direct participant. The sketchbook in which he had written his first stories about Millie had grown to include other stories — about other girls. A couple were based on real girls from school. Most, however, were girls whose photos he had cut out of Playboy magazine.

After he turned 16, Johnny started buying Playboy at a downtown news shop where one could buy newspapers from all over the world and magazines on every possible hobby, interest and political persuasion. The men's magazines were along the side wall where a convex mirror enabled the shop proprietor to keep an eye on men who lingered too long flipping through magazines. John was far too self-conscious to actually open a magazine right there in the store. He just grabbed the latest Playboy and hid it under a newspaper until he was at the counter. Once, he bought a Penthouse but was alarmed because the models all had their legs spread wide as if they were ready for sex. He preferred Playboy photos in which the girl seemed to want to get to know you better first.

Whenever he bought a new magazine, he would examine each of the photos to decide whether it was a candidate for inclusion in his sketchbook. Most did not pass because the photographers always seemed to want the model to be half-wearing some random article of clothing or posing in some odd position. Johnny just wanted the girl to be fully nude and posing in a natural, casual way so he could fit the image into a story.

Inspired by Millie's journal, Johnny wrote tales about girls who lived in exotic lands where they were free to go about their ordinary daily routines in the nude. The tricky part was explaining that this freedom only applied to pretty young women, which he generally left to the “cultural traditions” in those imagined places.

Most of the girls were blonde or brunette, but occasionally he came across a photo of a redhead. For these, it was best if one could not quite see the girl's face, so he could imagine it was Millie. His favorite of these showed the girl from the side, sitting at a table. He pretended this was Millie in college doing her homework in the common room of her dorm, and although the girl in the photo was alone, he pictured her surrounded by other girls. Although he conjured reasons for his non-redhead models to be nude in public, Johnny tended to keep the Millie character in a “real” setting because he liked to imagine, perhaps, this was what the real Millie might actually be doing.

Shortly after Johnny started his senior year in high school, his mother told him what she had found out that day at the doctor’s office. She had a tumor on her liver. And it was cancer. But they’d caught it fairly early, and it was still treatable.

Although he was stunned by this news and asked many questions that she seemed not to have asked the doctor herself, Johnny was not sure what he was actually feeling that night up in his room. He absolutely loved his mother and wanted more than anything for her to survive this illness, and yet he did not feel emotional enough to cry. He remembered crying in elementary school when the other boys teased him, and that just made it worse. He decided one day that he would never cry again, and he hadn't. Sometimes he felt happy and sometimes he was sad or angry, but he never — ever — lost control of what he was saying or doing at any particular moment. Other people seemed to experience emotions in a more extreme way than he did. They cried. They yelled. They did things they would later apologize for. That didn't happen to Johnny. No matter how strongly he felt about something, he never lost control. He sometimes wished he could because other people appeared to have more fun than he did— screaming on carnival rides or celebrating with abandon when their team won. On the night he learned of his mother's cancer, Johnny decided he was probably better off without emotions. Maybe his mother would be okay, but maybe she wouldn't. Maybe she would die, like Grandma had. The thought of this made him sad, but it did not make him cry.

Johnny's senior year in high school played out against the backdrop of his mother's battle against cancer. People always used the word “battle” when they talked about cancer, but Johnny decided it was more like a siege. Like you were barricaded in your castle, and the invading army was swarming around your walls, looking for any weak spot to break in. And eventually, they usually did.

Bessie Mayfield Goddard maintained a positive attitude and became more religious than she had been most of Johnny's life. She began attending church with him, and one Sunday evening, she went to the altar. Johnny, by this time, had stopped going to the altar himself, though he was certain he had committed many sins that would send him to Hell if he were to die or if Jesus were to return. He had come to terms with that and prayed for her in his seat.

Like most of the others who went to the altar, his mother wept with emotion as she prayed, and tears still ran down her cheeks as she stood to testify to her faith that God would help her beat cancer. Johnny's own silent prayer was very rational. She was a good person and had so much left to do with her life, so there was no logical reason for God to let her have cancer. He could easily change things, and Johnny politely asked him to do so. He pushed down a feeling of resentment. If God was good, and if God could save his mother, why did He need to be asked? Why wouldn't He just do it because it was the right thing to do, whether He was asked or not? Johnny could sort of understand if her death somehow “had to” happen because of God's Plan, but ... if His Plan was for her to live ... why did Johnny have to beg Him to let that happen?

At first, Johnny's mother was all fired up and confident that she would beat the odds. She felt no symptoms of the cancer -- just of the chemo -- and she had looked up Bible verses that told her that if she really, truly had faith that God would heal her. Johnny had felt similarly confident at first, but by Christmas, her stomach was protruding because of the tumor. By March, she looked like she was pregnant.

She was tired most of the time and stayed in bed or on the couch. Sometimes Johnny read to her from one of her tattered paperback mystery novels. She knew how all the stories ended, but that didn't seem to matter. Other times, they paged through the thin family photo album. The first photo was from 1909, shortly after his grandmother had come to America with her parents. It was a formal studio portrait of the period in which no one smiled because they had to keep motionless for several seconds due to the long exposure times.

"Grandma was about eight years old," Johnny's mother said, pointing at the stern-looking little girl standing next to her equally stern-looking parents, who were seated on a fancy couch in what was clearly a photographer's studio. Two younger boys sat on the floor, the younger boy's face slightly blurry because he had moved.

"And those are her cousins from the old country," Johnny said, having heard the story many times before. "But we don't know their names."

"Your grandma said she didn't remember their names because the boys only lived with them briefly and then she never saw them again."

On the next page was his mother's birth certificate. Born Aug. 1, 1929, in New York City to Walter and Bessie Mayfair. "I have no memory of my father," she said. "He died in a train derailment in New York when I was an infant. That's why Mother and I moved back to Brayton."

The next photo showed his grandmother in 1931 wearing a black dress. At her side was his mother, then a toddler. "I've always assumed this was at someone's funeral," she said, "but not my father's because this was a couple of years after he died. Grandma said she didn't remember when it was taken. I'm not sure that was true, but you know how she was."

Although he'd seen the photo many times, Johnny noticed a detail he had not paid much attention to before. The little girl was gripping her mother's dress. Grandma had her purse over one arm, but had both hands free. She could have been holding her daughter's hand, but she was not. In the little girl's eyes, he could somehow see that this was normal. She held onto her mother's skirts because her mother would not hold her hand.

The next few pages showed his mother's school pictures from first grade to graduation, but there were no other photos in the album representing those years. Next was the only photo they had of his father, but when she started to talk about it, Johnny said, "We can skip that one. I don't need to hear anything about him." After that page, there were snapshots of him growing up. Grandma was in a few of those, but she was never smiling.

As the year wore on and her health continued to decline, Johnny's mother maintained her faith -- that God could heal her. She just needed to show Him that she had faith. Johnny prayed too, but had begun to worry that maybe God wasn't listening to his prayers because he hadn't repented for all of the lustful thoughts he'd had since the last time he went to the altar nearly a year before. He had given up. He was pretty good on all of the other major sins, but he was just not able to stop his brain from imagining naked women. He could not promise to make his brain stop doing that, but if God wanted him to burn his sketchbook as a sacrifice for his mother's life, he would gladly do so.

And then he knew. Yes, God wanted a sacrifice from him, but it wasn't about giving up his unclean fantasies (though those were still sinful). At this moment, what God wanted was for him to go to the altar. It didn't matter why; God required him to perform the ritual — to walk up to the altar during a church service and kneel down and ask God to forgive him, once again. And if he did that and was at least for a brief moment pure in heart, then God might take a moment to listen to his prayer that his mother be healed.

Yes, he would go to the altar again, if that's what God required from him, and in that moment, he would mean it, and his soul would be spotless again for at least a few minutes (less than that if Millie was home from college that weekend). Although he had gone to the altar many times when he was younger, now it embarrassed him. It hadn't been so bad during those fiery revival services when there were so many people coming forward, he could blend in. But at a regular church service with only 35 or 40 regulars in the congregation, he might be the only one. Everyone would be looking at him and wondering what he had done wrong. He vowed that at least he would do it on a night Millie wasn't there. He did not want her to see him like that.

He considered his options. At the Sunday morning and evening services, the preacher would deliver a sermon, and he would always end it with an altar call. The congregation would sing one of the plaintive hymns like “Where He Leads Me I Will Follow” and “Just a Closer Walk With Thee,” and in between verses the preacher would say things like, “I can feel that there is someone here tonight with a heavy heart” and “Jesus will come back like a thief in the night, and it will be too late.”

That reasoning had been very compelling the first few dozen times Johnny had heard it, but it no longer impressed him. And besides, he didn't need any persuading. He and God had already worked that part out. He was not even getting salvation out of it -- not for long anyway. God just wanted him to perform the ritual for Him, and then He would consider healing Johnny's mother -- if it also happened to be His will.

At first, Johnny did not include the Wednesday evening service in his consideration because there was no sermon and no altar call. It was just a prayer meeting, so adults of the church, other than the preacher, would take turns leading a prayer or singing a hymn. Brother Paul and Brother Lee would sometimes sing a duet in which they attempted to harmonize, but it was a skill that largely still eluded them. At the end of one such prayer meeting, while the 20 or so people in attendance began heading for the exit, Johnny walked up to the altar and knelt down to pray. He formally asked God to forgive him for having lustful thoughts about Millie, and girls at school, and . . . girls on TV, and especially for the fictional girls going naked in his sketchbook.

When he felt he had covered it all, Johnny asked God to please, oh please, let his mother live. On his knees before God, Johnny felt no response at all . . . until a hand pressed onto his left shoulder, and another hand on his right. It was Brother Lee and Brother Paul, kneeling down to pray with him. They prayed out loud, saying things like “Lord, help this young man,” and “lift the burden from his heart.” Johnny kept his eyes closed and stayed focused on his message: Please let my mother live. We made a deal, and I have fulfilled my part. Please let my mother live. We have a deal, we have a deal.

Johnny stood, and Brother Paul and Brother Lee stood with him. In addition to them, a few people had stayed in the room when they saw what was happening. They all looked at him expectantly, and he felt he had to say something. The truth would have been fine -- that he was asking God to heal his mother. And yet he did not want to acknowledge any part of his bargain with God. Having been a churchgoer for some time now, he had learned some handy lines. “The Lord put something on my heart,” Johnny said without emotion, “but now I've been washed in the blood.”

The weeks and months went by, and neither his prayers nor his mother's kept her from getting steadily worse. On Sundays before the main prayer, the preacher would ask the congregation to offer the names of those in need of special prayers. One by one, congregants would stand up and ask for prayers for a loved one or themselves, sometimes telling a long story of what they were going through. Johnny would always stand and say, “Please pray for my mom.”

And yet she only got worse.

Johnny had one more sacrifice he could offer. He told God he was taking back his previous request that God let him and Millie be together someday, in each other's arms. Technically, he wasn't asking God to prevent such a future, but was only withdrawing his prayer that God actively help make that happen. God was known to be a stickler for contractual details, so in the back of his mind, Johnny still held onto a small chance.

His crush on Millie no longer preoccupied him, though it hadn't entirely gone away either. He was interested in some girls at school, and other girls were giving signals that they were interested in him. Little came of this, but these girls had gained some prominence in his mind.

Even if he had been bold enough to ask a girl out, Johnny could no longer spare the time. He had to be home from school to help care for his mother. Her friend June was coming to their house in the daytime to be with her. They'd met a few years earlier when his mother was selling Avon products to make ends meet. After working all day as a secretary and walking home in high heels because she had no car, Johnny's mother would go back out and knock on doors, singing out “Avon calling!” to whoever answered the door. That's how she met June.

A few more weeks passed, and they were getting close to graduation. They knew she would not be able to attend, but she wanted to see him in his cap and gown and holding his diploma, and she made that milestone. By mid-summer, the end was near. She was in a hospital bed in their living room, no longer eating food but just sucking on crushed ice. Johnny was with her around the clock, and people from the church came in twos and threes to pay their respects.

One hot and humid afternoon in early August, Millie came to the door with Todd, her boyfriend from college. Johnny let them in the screen door, and Millie went to Johnny's mother and got a smile out of her as only Millie could do. After a short while, Johnny's mother dozed off again, her breath ragged, and the three young people sat on the couch in front of her. Suddenly, Johnny knew with certainty what was about to happen.

“I think . . . I think this could be her last day,” he said.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Millie asked.

Johnny had made a last-day list. “Her friend June,” he said. “She should be here.”

“I'll get her,” Todd offered. “Just give me her address and call ahead so she knows I'm coming.”

When Todd was gone, Johnny and Millie sat next to each other in front of Johnny's emaciated mother in her hospital bed.

“Johnny, I need to tell you something,” Millie said. “Todd and I are getting married . . . and … and I'm having a baby. I wanted you to know before we announced it to everyone because . . . well, just because.”

A year ago, this would have been the worst news Johnny could imagine, but he had become hardened since then. “Okay,” he said, feeling nothing but a sense of relentless, expected, inevitable loss. “Um, congratulations.”

Millie did not seem happy, but at this moment, it seemed normal to Johnny that everyone was unhappy. She started to say, “I wanted to tell you myself because--” when they were interrupted by a sharp gasp from Johnny's mother. Without waking, she sucked in a gulp of air and slowly let it out of her lungs until there seemed to be nothing left. Johnny and Millie held each other and cried, assuming she had passed, but then she jolted and sucked in air again. They watched together as, again, the air she had gulped in hissed out of her lips until she was empty again. A few seconds passed, and again they clutched each other and wept for her, but again she seemed to come back from the dead for one more gasp. After the third time, she did not recover and remained unmoving as Johnny and Millie watched and waited, still holding each other. This time, she did not move again.

After some time, Johnny gradually became aware that he had his arms around Millie Jenkins, and her arms were around him, their faces inches apart, but he was not in the right frame of mind to appreciate these logistics. She pulled him close and kissed him on the cheek and neck, leaving her tears on his skin. “I'm so sorry,” she whispered into his ear as he heard the screen door slam.

Todd had returned with June, but it was too late.

Before the funeral, Johnny packed his clothes and a few personal items into his car, including the sparse photo album and a few of his mother's favorite paperback mysteries. He called one of the rummage stores to take everything else. When the graveside service ended and he had accepted hugs and kind words from those who came, Johnny got into his car and drove straight to the highway, intending never to return.