Sing You Home Read online

  "Max?" she said, and I grimaced--I'd forgotten about caller ID.

  "Hey," I said.

  "Is everything okay?"

  It was ten at night, and we'd left in a major storm. Of course she was panicked.

  "There's something I need to ask you," I said.

  Do you know how you light up a room?

  Do you ever think about me?

  Then I heard Reid's voice in the background. "Come on back to bed, honey. Who's calling so late, anyway?"

  And Liddy's response: "It's just Max."

  Just Max.

  "What did you want to ask?" Liddy said.

  I closed my eyes. "Did . . . I leave my scarf there?"

  She called out to Reid. "Sugar? Did you see Max's scarf?" There was some exchange I couldn't quite make out. "Sorry, Max, we haven't found it. But we'll keep a lookout."

  A half hour later, I let myself into my apartment. The light over the stove was still on, and the little tree that Zoe had bought and decorated herself was glowing in the corner of the living room. She absolutely insisted on a live tree, even though it meant lugging it up two flights of stairs. This year she'd tied white satin bows to the boughs. She said each one was a wish she had for next year.

  The only difference between a wish and a prayer is that you're at the mercy of the universe for the first, and you've got some help with the second.

  Zoe was asleep on the couch, curled beneath a blanket. She was wearing pajamas with snowflakes all over them. She looked like she'd been crying.

  I kissed her, to wake her up. I'm sorry, she murmured against my lips. I shouldn't have--

  "I shouldn't have, either," I told her.

  Still kissing her, I slipped my hands under the edge of her pajama top. Her skin was so hot it burned my palms. She dug her fingers into my hair and wrapped her legs around me. I sank to the floor and tugged her down with me. I knew every scar on her body, every freckle, every curve. They were markers on a road I'd been traveling forever.

  I remember thinking our lovemaking that night was so intense, it should have left behind some kind of permanent record, like the beginnings of a baby, except it didn't.

  I remember that my dreams were full of wishes, although, when I woke up, I couldn't remember a single one.

  By the time Liddy gets to wherever she's planning on going, my buzz has worn off and I'm pretty much pissed at myself and the world. Once Reid finds out that I was pulled over by a cop for drunk driving, he'll tell Pastor Clive, who'll tell Wade Preston, who'll lecture me on how easy it is to lose a trial. When all I wanted, I swear, was to quit being thirsty.

  I have been riding with my eyes closed because I'm also suddenly so tired I can barely keep upright. Liddy throws the truck into park. "We're here," she says.

  We are in the lot in front of the storefront that houses the administrative offices of the Eternal Glory Church.

  It's after hours, and I know that Pastor Clive won't be around, but that doesn't make me feel any less guilty. Alcohol has already messed up my own life, and here I am using it to mess up a whole bunch of other people's lives, too. "Liddy," I promise, "it won't happen again . . ."

  "Max." She tosses me the keys to the church office, which she has because she is the head of the Sunday School program. "Shut up."

  Pastor Clive has set up a small chapel here, just in case someone needs to come in to pray at a time other than our weekly service at the school auditorium. It's got a few rows of chairs, a lectern, and a picture of Jesus on the cross. I follow Liddy past the receptionist's desk and the copy machine into the chapel. Instead of turning on the lights, she strikes a match and touches it to a candle that's sitting on the lectern. The shadows make Jesus's face look like Freddy Krueger's.

  I sit down beside her and wait for her to pray out loud. That's what we do at Eternal Glory. Pastor Clive carries on a conversation with Jesus and we all listen.

  Tonight, though, Liddy folds her hands in her lap, as if she's waiting for me to speak.

  "Aren't you going to say something?" I ask.

  Liddy looks up at the cross behind the lectern. "You know what my favorite passage in the Bible is? The beginning of John 20. When Mary Magdalene was grieving after Jesus's death. He wasn't Jesus to her, you know, he was her friend and her teacher and someone she really cared about. She came to the tomb, because she just wanted to be close to his body, if that was all that was left of him. But she got there, and his body was gone, too. Can you imagine how lonely she felt? So she started crying, and a stranger asked her what was wrong--and then said her name, and that's when she realized it was actually Jesus talking to her." Liddy glances at me. "There are lots of times I've been sure God's left me. But then it turns out I was just looking in the wrong place."

  I don't know what I'm more ashamed of: the fact that I am a failure in the eyes of Jesus, or in the eyes of Liddy.

  "God's not at the bottom of that bottle. Judge O'Neill, he'll be watching everything we do. Me and Reid, and you." Liddy closes her eyes. "I want to have your baby, Max."

  I feel electricity run through me.

  Dear God, I pray silently, let me see myself as You do. Remind me that none of us are perfect until we look into Your face.

  But I am staring at Liddy's.

  "If it's a boy," she says, "I'm going to name him Max."

  I swallow, my mouth suddenly dry. "You don't have to do that."

  "I know I don't have to, but I want to." Liddy turns toward me. "Did you ever want something so bad you think that hoping is going to jinx it?"

  In all the spaces between the words, I hear ones she hasn't spoken out loud. So I grasp the back of her head, and I lean forward and kiss her.

  God is love. I've heard Pastor Clive say that a thousand times, but now, I understand.

  Liddy's arms come up between us, and with more force than I would have expected her to have, she shoves me backward. My chair screeches across the floor. Her cheeks are bright red, and she's covering her mouth with one hand.

  "Liddy," I say, my heart sinking, "I didn't mean to--"

  "You don't have to apologize, Max." Suddenly there is a wall between us. I may not be able to see it, but I can feel it. "It's just the alcohol, acting out." She blows out the candle. "We should go."

  Liddy leaves the chapel, but I stay behind. For at least another minute, I wait, completely in the dark.

  After my car wreck, when I let Jesus into my heart, I also let Clive Lincoln into my life. We met in his office, and we talked about why I drank.

  I told him that it felt like a hole inside me, and I was trying to fill it up.

  He said that hole was quicksand, and I was sinking fast.

  He asked me to list all the things that made that hole bigger.

  Being broke, I said.

  Being drunk.

  Losing clients.

  Losing Zoe.

  Losing a baby.

  Then he began to talk about what could patch that hole in me.

  God. Friends. Family.

  "Yeah," I said, looking down at the floor. "Thank goodness for Reid."

  But Pastor Clive, he can hear when you don't mean what you say, and he leaned back in his chair. "This isn't the first time Reid's bailed you out, is it?"

  "No."

  "How does that make you feel?"

  "How do you think it makes me feel?" I exploded. "Like a total fuckup. Like everything comes so easy to Reid, and me, I'm always drowning."

  "That's because Reid's given himself over to Jesus. He's letting someone else lead him over the rapids, Max, and you--you're still trying to swim upstream."

  I smirked. "So I just let go, and God takes care of it?"

  "Why not? You sure as heck haven't been doing a bang-up job lately, yourself." Pastor Clive walked behind my chair. "Tell Jesus what you want. What does Reid have that you wish you could have, too?"

  "I'm not going to talk out loud to Jesus--"

  "Do you think He can't read your thoughts anyway?"

  "F