My boy, Herb thought. While Vera had prayed for a miracle, Herb had prayed for his boy to die. It was Vera’s prayer that had been answered.. What did that mean, and where did it leave him? And what was it going to do to her?
He went into the living room. Vera was sitting on the couch. Her feet, encased in elastic pink mules, were up on a hassock. She was wearing her old gray robe. She was eating popcorn straight from the popper. Since Johnny’s accident she had put on nearly forty pounds and her blood pressure had skyrocketed. The doctor wanted to put her on medication, but Vera wouldn’t have it – if it was the will of the Lord for her to have the high blood, she said, then she would have it. Herb had once pointed out that the will of the Lord had never stopped her from taking Bufferin when she had a headache. She had answered with her sweetest long-suffering smile and her most potent weapon: silence.
‘Who was on the phone?’ she asked him, not looking away from the TV. Oral had his arm round the well-known quarterback of an NFC team. He was talking to a hushed
multitude. The quarterback was smiling modestly.
…. and you have all heard this fine athlete tell you tonight how he abused his body, his Temple of God. And you have heard…
Herb snapped it off.
‘Herbert Smith! ‘ She nearly spilled her popcorn sitting up. ‘I was watching! That was…’
‘Johnny woke up.’
…. Oral Roberts and
The words snapped off in her mouth. She seemed to crouch back in her chair, as if he had taken a swing at her.
He looked back, unable to say more, wanting to feel joy but afraid. So afraid.
‘Johnny’s…’ She stopped, swallowed, then tried again. ‘Johnny… our Johnny?’
‘Yes. He spoke with Dr. Brown for nearly fifteen minutes. Apparently it wasn’t that thing they thought … false-waking… after all. He’s coherent. He can move.’
‘Johnny’s awake?’
Her hands came up to her mouth. The popcorn popper, half full, did a slow dipsy-doodle off her lap and thumped to the rug, spilling popcorn everywhere. Her hands covered the lower half of her face. Above them her eyes got wider and wider still until for a dreadful second, Herb was afraid that they might fall out and dangle by their stalks. Then they dosed. A tiny mewing sound came from behind her hands.
‘Vera? Are you all right?’
‘O my God I thank You for Your will be done my Johnny You brought me my I knew You would, my Johnny, 0 dear God I will bring You my thanksgiving every day of my
life for my Johnny Johnny JOHNNY -, Her voice was rising to an hysterical, triumphant scream. He stepped forward, grabbed the lapels of her robe, and shook her. Suddenly time seemed to have reversed, doubled back on itself like strange cloth – they might have been back on the night when the news of the accident came to them, delivered through that same telephone in that same nook.
By nook or by crook, Herb Smith thought crazily.
‘O my precious God my Jesus oh my Johnny the miracle like I said the miracle…’
‘Stop it, Vera!’
Her eyes were dark and hazy and hysterical. ‘Are you sorry he’s awake again? After all these years of making fun of me? Of telling people I was crazy?’
‘Vera, I never told anyone you were crazy.’
‘You told them with your eyes!’ she shouted at him. ‘But my God wasn’t mocked. Was he, Herbert? Was he?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I guess not.’
‘I told you I told you God had a plan for my Johnny. Now you see his hand beginning to work.’ She got up. ‘I’ve got to go to him. I’ve got to tell him.’ She walked toward the closet where her coat hung, seemingly unaware that she was in her robe and nightgown.
Her face was stunned with rapture. In some bizarre and almost blasphemous way she reminded him of the way she had looked on the day they were married. Her pink mules crunched popcorn into the rug.