As I Lift Up My Hands 3/8

[keire_ke]

Fortunately, if one can speak of fortune at all, at a time like this, their insurance policy is substantial. The investigation is a formality – with the flickering lights and the point of origin of the fire it’s easily attributed to faulty wiring. The insurance company wastes no time paying out the money, not when the beneficiary is one of their employees. Any delays would be bad for business. With the help of Deborah’s parents and their friends they manage to find a place to live, until they could get back on their feet. Jacob goes to work the following Monday, enduring the wishes and condolences with good grace.

Jacob finds the Jones file waiting on his desk after he escapes the well-wishing crowd. He stares at it for a few moments then gets up, intent on making himself a cup of coffee. Before he can get as far as an upright position, a steaming cup enters his vision. It’s Nancy, standing there with tearful eyes and an envelope in her other hand.

“Double sugar, single cream, right?” she says, placing the cup on his desk.

“Yes, thank you.”

“You’re welcome. This arrived for you this morning.” She places the envelope by the coffee. “It’s from Dr Burns.”

Jacob smiles and Nancy all but runs back to her own desk. Jacob sits down and tears the envelope open. “Dear Mr Lake,” the first sheet reads, “My sincere condolences. Signed, Leticia Burns.” He stares at the paper for a few seconds. He turns it over, just in case. He’d expect that kind of brevity from Dr Burns at her funeral, if ever.

The next page is even more surprising. “Autopsy results confirm that the majority of damage occurred post mortem. Cause of death was most likely a blow to the back of the skull, caused by a broken tree branch.”

Brief and sparing him the chore of reading through the gruesome report. Dr Burns apparently has a soul. On a good day Jacob might have looked into it more closely, because "most likely" could potentially get him into trouble with the higher-ups. Today, he feels it is more than enough. Jacob opens the Jones file and stamps “claim approved” in the relevant field.


The following days prove that Dr Burns show of humanity was the beginning of a trend. No one is keen on overworking him, for which he is grateful. He has trouble focusing, which is only worsened by his inability to sleep at night.

Every time he closes his eyes he sees Tim.

He doesn’t ask, but he knows it is the same for Deborah.

They are never asked to identify anything even remotely resembling remains, most likely because what has been found on site could fit into a shoebox. Jacob happened to have seen the fireman who exited the ruins of their home with a cardboard box and he was violently sick in the bushes. He hopes rain washed it away soon enough – Mrs Thompson didn't deserve such a decoration on her lawn. This was all what remained of his son?


The funeral takes place exactly one week after the fire. The sun is bright and high in the sky, all the clearer for the violence of the recent storms. The number of people who show up to pay their respects is astonishing, considering neither he nor Deborah have bothered to invite anyone in particular. Their families, of course – Mark and Fiona Lake have flown in from Miami, taking the first flight they could get on. They are standing together with Danielle and Tom Collier, consoling each other in their silent grief. Jacob finds the comfort fleeting and uncertain. He stands in the grassy graveyard, staring at the little coffin being lowered into the ground as the priest intones a Psalm, per Deborah's request.

Rachel is silent and somber in Deborah's arms. Jacob doesn’t know if she understands anything about what happened, but he noticed more than once that her eyes search for something when she is being held by one of them. He feels his heart break when he realizes she is looking for her brother.

Their respective parents have to return home soon after the funeral, but Anne chooses to stay with them for a couple of weeks, or until they throw her out. Jacob is grateful for that, too. Deborah doesn’t speak to him, and he really cannot find the words to talk to her, either.

It isn’t his fault Tim died in the fire, he knows. It isn’t hers, either. The wiring might have been faulty, and he might have been drunk, but he had seen something that defied gravity and common sense that night. He wishes his denial were stronger, maybe he could convince himself he didn’t actually see it. He cannot.

He also knows that Deborah knows it isn’t his fault. Well, he suspects, at any rate. Hopes. Wishes. Any and all of the above. But he understands she doesn’t want consoling and that’s what he’d do, the moment they start talking. So he allows the silence to grow between them, until he is no longer sure they are on the same continent, as far as the chasm between them is concerned. He wonders if they ever find their way back, then immediately he berates himself for that line of thought. They will, of course. They still communicate, just not verbally.

Every evening there’s dinner on the table – Deborah decided to stop working for a while. He would have disagreed, had she told him before she made the call. As it stands she spends her time alternating between cooking and knitting, yet the weight seems to melt of her frame. Jacob is grateful to have something to do. His job is providing him with ample distraction from the harsh reality. He does understand her concerns though. Deborah, as a psychologist, shouldn’t be working until she regained her equilibrium. Her choice of alternative occupation of her time is puzzling, all the same – she throws herself into knitting, which is starting to scare Jacob, because of the amount of woolly additions to their new house. Everything requires a woolen tablecloth or a serviette. He apparently requires two new sweaters, never mind the fact that it is July. Rachel has acquired a new blanket, and God only knows how many new scarves are hanging in the closet, waiting for winter. Jacob knows he has come to hate spending time in the kitchen when Deborah is preparing meals, because her affinity to chop things has grown way out of the realm of the comfortable and into the land of creepy and bizarre. That is why he carefully stirs any plate she puts before him, searching for fingers, spoons, mice, or even food substances that do not belong.

By mutual silent agreement they stopped consuming meat.

Rachel is the one they both worry about, Jacob probably more so. He is not sure how much does a baby see, or remember. How good a baby’s eyesight is, for instance. Does she recognize her family? How soon and from what distance? Most important is the question Jacob tries with all his might to avoid phrasing, even in his head. Did she see?

If nothing else, that’s what Jacob prays for every night. “Lord, please make her unsee, if she’d seen,” he beseeches in the privacy of his mind. “Make her forget.” He dares not say it out loud, for fear Deborah might hear and question the sight that weighs so heavily on his conscience. He knows he’d have to tell her, one day, but he is not keen on doing it any sooner than absolutely necessary. For one thing, he cannot believe it himself, so how can he convince his wife that is the case?

Anne is a blessing, in their silent house. She’s the only one to coddle Rachel. Jacob can hear her hum lullabies and read books – he’s been meaning to talk to her about her choice of literature to read to the baby, because Gray’s Anatomy isn’t best known for stimulating the infant’s intellect, but he cannot bring himself to find the words. At least his baby can hear a human voice, he reasons, even though it utters phrases like “mucous membrane” and “costal cartridges.”

“You need to do something,” Anne tells Jacob one evening. He is sitting in front of the TV, ignoring the news broadcast because it really isn’t all that interesting. He is staring at a bottle of beer Deborah has placed on the table before him, daring himself to take a swing. The game has been going on for months now. He hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol since the fire. By the looks of it he won’t today either. Anne’s eyes stray to the bottle. “Aren’t you going to drink it?” she asks and when he shakes his head she gulps half of it down.

Jacob is impressed.

“Anyway. Look, you’ve got to start talking to Deb.”

“Probably,” he agrees. With the bottle gone, his eyes return to the TV. The news has given way to commercials and it strikes him how badly he doesn’t need a new car at the moment. Then a baby food ad comes on and he winces. The TV is off before he has a chance to think about it.

“You realize she is going nuts.”

“I noticed.”

“Doesn’t speak more than one word at a time.”

“Yes.”

“Stares at the wall whenever she isn’t covering the house in wool or chopping up things.”

“I know.”

“I’ve enrolled her in a capoeira class,” Anne says. “I think she needs to burn some of that knitting out of her system.”

“Good.”

“So, if she comes home one day and kicks your ass…?”

“Let her.”

“Jimmy,” Anne says and Jacob turns to give her a semblance of a glare. “Jimmy, you’re worrying me.”

“I know.” Jacob sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Just- Give me some time, okay?”

“It’s September. Rachel will be coming up with her first words soon, and neither of you will talk to her. At this rate you’d only notice when she paints it on the wall. She’s crawling now, and you actually tripped over her yesterday.”

Jacob looks at Anne, speechless. “I did what?”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. No, you didn’t literally trip over her, you noticed. And fell over trying to avoid stepping on her. That’s how you got that bruise.” She pokes his cheekbone and Jacob remembers – he had fallen the day before, he just didn’t realize Rachel was there too. On second though, Anne did come running, oddly panicked. He couldn’t understand why, at the time.

Then something else registers. “Capoeira?”

Anne grins and finishes the beer. “Yeah.”

“She’ll kill me.”

“She won’t.” Jacob wishes he had that kind of conviction. “But to avoid being killed you have to talk to her. No, shut up. School starts again soon, and I won’t be here all the time anymore. You have to start talking, or you’ll really get Rachel’s first word in the mail.”

“I am talking.”

“To me. We’re not married.” Jacob mutters something non-committal. “Why don’t you want to talk to her, anyway?”

“We’re scared,” Jacob says, “That if we start talking we’ll start blaming each other.”

“There was nothing you could’ve done, either of you,” Anne says. She’s gripping the bottle so tightly her knuckles turn white. “It’s not your fault! It’s a miracle you woke up when you did, that you survived.”

“You weren’t there,” Jacob says, and it comes out just harsh enough. For a moment he is certain the words will come spilling out – Anne is that easy to talk to – that he’d finally get the weight of his chest. He doesn’t say anything more, just hides his face in his hands.

“It’ll be okay,” Anne says and moves to the couch to wrap her arms around his shoulders. “It’ll be okay.”

Jacob feels his shoulders shake and he knows he’s crying. He tries not to move, but his body needs the comfort, so her wraps his arms around Anne in return and cries. He can’t cry forever though, so when the worst of it passes he doesn’t move. He’s not comfortable, tangled in the arms of his sister-in-law, but at the same time her embrace is offering more comfort and protection he’s had since the fire. So he stays.

Deborah walks in some time after that, and sees them on the couch. She doesn’t speak and Jacob knows her enough to imagine her expression – eyebrow raised in a silent question – and he is so close to Anne he can feel her shrug in reply. He straightens then, stretching out the kinks in his neck and gets up. “I think I need to sleep,” he says to the room at large. He isn’t looking at either Deborah or Anne. He thinks he can hear them talk, when he leaves. He hopes they don’t talk about him. In all likelihood Deb is getting the same scolding he’s just been subject to. Anne mentioned something about leaving – now that he thought about it, he realized Deborah has been hinting at it for a couple of weeks now. Anne has her own life, even if it consists mostly of books, and she’s spent the past two months coddling them.

Jacob throws himself onto the bed and stares at the ceiling. Five seconds tick by, before he turns onto his side and stares at the wall instead. Anne is right. They need to talk, he and Deborah. Problem is, how can they and where do they start?

He lies in the dark for hours, staring at the wall. Deborah comes in eventually, silent as she’d been the past few months, and gets into the bed on the other side. She doesn’t fall asleep any sooner than Jacob does, but she pretends she does anyway. Jacob guesses Anne’s talk didn’t do as much good as she might have hoped.

Deborah is already up by the time he awakens the next morning, up and out judging by the silence in the house. Anne is gone too. Jacob is forced to guess again. They fought last night, and Deborah finally got Anne to go home. Oh, boy, now life is going to be more silent than an afternoon in outer space, he thinks and mostly he is correct. Every morning they say good morning and separately they also talk to Rachel, but whenever the house forces them to stand face to face they lower they eyes and drift apart. Sometimes words are exchanged, but these are meaningless; Deborah says she’s got her classes to attend, so Jacob promises he’ll put Rachel to bed; Jacob has a meeting so he’d be late for dinner… They coexist, they share the space, the utilities but something fundamental is still missing, and now that Anne is back home it hurts more than ever.

Jacob wishes with all his heart that he knew how to fix it. It takes up most of his time, until one morning a few days after Halloween. He sits on the bed, staring at the wall and thinks. Beside him the clock chimes seven a.m., and in a sudden blaze of epiphany Jacob calls in sick. He leaves the house and walks to the St Mary’s. He is just it in time for the morning service.

The church is cold and empty, which shouldn’t be too strange on a Thursday morning. Jacob sits in the back, listening. Father Matthews smiles at the congregation as he delivers the morning sermon. He is properly enthusiastic about what he is saying, but Jacob doesn’t really listen. He watches the angels on the windows, and the light flickering on the altar. He doesn’t move when the few people present wander to the altar to receive the Holy Communion. Jacob sits still, waiting. The parishioners leave, and he stays in his pew.

“Can I help you, son?”

Jacob looks up. The priest is standing by him, smiling kindly. “I was hoping you’d listen to my confession, Father,” he replies.

“Of course.”

Jacob rises from his chair and follows the elderly man to a confessional. He kneels on the narrow bench and waits for the priest to make himself comfortable. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been four months since my last confession.”

“You had much on your mind,” Father Matthews says gently and Jacob sighs.

“Yes. I have- I lied to my wife,” he admits, suddenly. He is surprised with how easily that comes out, and from the silence on the other side he assumes the priest is as well.

“Lied?” Father Matthew prompts when Jacob is silent for a longer while.

“Didn’t tell her the whole truth, in any case, which is not so different.” He falls silent again.

“We are entitled to certain amount of privacy, my son.”

“Except this concerns us both. Even if it is just me, and I need to commit myself to an institution, it still concerns us both.”

“Why would you need to commit yourself?” the priest asks, a mixture of worry and wry amusement in his voice.

“I saw something, the night Timothy died,” Jacob enunciates the words. They are painful to say and he doesn’t want to use any more than strictly necessary. “Something I still cannot believe.”

“That is why you never talked to your wife about this.” That, and the fact they haven’t exchanged a single meaningful word since the fire. “What was it that you saw?”

“I saw Timothy during the fire. Right before the fire broke out. I told Deborah I didn’t, that he wasn’t in the nursery, but he was. I saw him.”

Father Matthews fell silent. “Did you abandon your son in the fire?” he asked. Jacob is silent, trying to figure out if it was judgment or compassion he’s heard in the man’s voice. Then he allows the indignation to the front of his mind.

“I wouldn’t! He’s my son, of course I would try and save him!” If only I could, he added in his head. If only I could have.

“Calm down, son. I didn’t mean to accuse.”

Jacob twists his hands together so tightly he feels his fingers strain with the pressure. “I know. I’m sorry.” He takes a deep breath. “I saw Timothy on the ceiling.”

“The image of Timothy?”

“No, Tim. Tim was on the ceiling, he was lying on the ceiling. As if the gravity wasn’t working. And he was alive, he was terrified, he was staring at me! And he was on the ceiling. On the ceiling, for Heaven’s sake.”

“You are aware that it is impossible, Jacob,” the priest says with a great deal more acceptance than Jacob expected.

“With all due respect, that is why I’m here, and not talking to Deborah. Or the fire department.”

“Yes, either of them wouldn’t be easy to convince,” Father Matthews said. “Your wife is a psychologist, correct?”

“She is.”

“I’m a little more accustomed to people making wild claims.”

Jacob smiled to the confessional door. “I guess so.” He relaxed his fingers and took a deep breath. “I’d been drinking that night. I am aware it’s not going to make me a reliable witness, but I can’t say I’ve got enough of an imagination to come up with something like that. Who does imagine things like that, anyway?”

“So what is it that you wanted to ask?”

“What should I do, Father?”

“For starters, you might want to finish your confession,” Father Matthews says. “Then, I suggest you pray. You are in pain and prayer will grant you focus. Say the rosary. Contemplate it. Today is Thursday, fortunately; I daresay the Luminous Mysteries will guide you to the light.”

Rosary is simple and familiar, but it holds little answers. Jacob bows his head. “But what do I do?”

“I think you know what you have to do.”

“You mean I should talk to Deborah.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to talk to her. How can I talk to her?”

“Tim is her son, also. She deserves to know.”

“Yeah. I know. Doesn’t make it any easier.”

“Few things are easy, and those worth having are usually not easily maintained.”

“It’s not helping, Father.”

“What would you like me to say?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’d like you to tell me I’ve imagined it.”

“I can, if you wish. But I don’t think it’d do you much good. Things that exist in our minds can be no less real than those that happen in reality.”

Jacob leaves the confessional feeling worse and better at the same time. The church is still mostly empty when he slides into a pew. He looks up at the altar, to Jesus Christ stretched on the crucifix. “I believe in God, Father almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth,” Jacob tells the sculpture after crossing himself. The metal of the rosary’s crucifix is warm in his fingers. “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.” Father Matthews was right. It is soothing. By the time he gets to announcing the Mystery he is calm enough to admit to himself what he needs to do. He hopes saying the rest will give him courage to actually follow up and talk to Deborah. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” Jacob says, over and over again.

An hour passes and Jacob rises from his knees. He is calm enough to at least try and approach Deborah with something vastly unreal and hugely unbelievable. Calm about the possibility of having to sleep on the couch, being thrown out of the house and possibly threatened with the loony bin. Not that Deborah would actually throw him into a loony bin, he is entirely too balanced for that and one hallucination does not make a man insane. Worst-case scenario, they stop talking, but since he’s born the brunt of that for the better part of the last few months, Jacob is not worried. He walks to their house with much lighter heart, now that he’s decided on a course of action.

Deborah isn’t in yet when he returns. Jacob wanders around the house finally going into the kitchen. He realizes he’s hungry, which catches him by surprise. He hasn’t been hungry for a while. It’s just short of eleven, way too early to start making dinner. Jacob makes himself a sandwich and a coffee, and eats both while watching a completely asinine show on TV. He switches the set off, thoroughly confused by the fact that people keep paying money to watch this drivel, and returns to the kitchen.

It’s still too early to make dinner, at least the kind of dinner he feels confident he can make without wasting too much food. Jacob ponders the problem and starts rummaging in the fridge. They have eggs and butter. In a sudden bout of inspiration he tracks down flour and sugar. He is halfway through mixing the ingredients in a bowl when it occurs to him to look up a recipe in a cookbook. Baking powder surprises him a little, but apparently there is some in one of the cabinets. He spreads the batter evenly in a baking tray and shoves it into the oven. The question of how hot is moderate arises briefly, but is largely ignored. It is a cake, how difficult can it be?

“You baked?” Deborah says, which causes Jacob to jump out of his skin.

“Yeah,” he answers, amazed that a cake got a word out of her. “Did Anne leave?”

“Yes, finally.”

“Deb, we need to talk,” Jacob says taking a deep breath.

Deborah looks at him, her hair hiding most of her face in the shadows. “Yes,” she says. “We probably do.” Rachel gurgles against her shoulder and Deborah pats her back. “Rachel needs a nap, I’ll put her to bed and come on down. Perhaps you could make us some tea?”

“Sure.”

The tea is steaming by the time Deborah comes back and sits down on the couch. “Why aren’t you at work?” is the first question out of her mouth.

Jacob shrugs. “I needed time to think,” he says.

“I hear you,” Deborah mutters. “I’m sorry.” The apology is unexpected. “I’ve been angry with you. For no reason at all.”

Jacob blinks. “I get it. It’s okay.”

“Not really.” Deborah smiles and Jacob is positively gleeful to see the crookedness of the smile and the merry twinkling of her eyes. “But if you say so…”

“Deb, I need you to listen to me now. I know it will sound crazy, but I need you not to try and have me committed to a mental institution.”

“Okay… I think I can try. I reserve the right to change my mind, if it’s really crazy.” She is tense now, and Jacob regrets wiping that smile away, but it needs to be done.

“I saw Tim in the nursery, the night of the fire,” he says and waits for an explosion. Deborah doesn’t move, but her eyes are boring into him. Jacob can taste the bitter and wrathful “what” hanging on the tip of her tongue as keenly as though it were in his own mouth. “I know I’ve been saying I haven’t, that he wasn’t there. But I did see him. That’s- that was why I started screaming.”

Deborah relaxes a fraction and sits back. Her face is blank. Jacob sees the clinical glint in her eyes and groans. He’s going to be analyzed, which is probably better than screaming, but not exactly wife-like. “Fair enough. The situation was dire, I’m assuming his state was beyond your capabilities to handle and the fire was breaking out.”

“It’s not that part that worried me,” Jacob admits and Deborah sits up again.

“Then what?”

“I saw him on the ceiling.”

“Excuse me?”

Jacob repeats. Deborah’s face betrays complete incomprehension. “I know how it sounds, believe me. But I’m not lying, and I’m not crazy. I saw Timmy, flat on the ceiling, like he was held there.”

“Held there by what? Jacob, gravity.” Deborah picks up the remote and drops it onto the couch. “Gravity doesn’t just go away.”

“I know that. I’m just telling you what I saw.”

“Fair enough.”

“That’s it?”

“A mind is a fickle thing, dear. You were drinking, you were already unsettled, and then you walk into the nursery and find your son,” Jacob is a little relieved to hear her breath catch at those words, “Dead, and a fire breaking out over the head of your infant daughter, sweetheart, that is traumatic, the kind that most people struggle with for ages. For the rest of their lives, even.”

“The fire didn’t start from the wiring.”

“The investigation proved it had.”

“The investigation was sloppy. Everyone was in a hurry to get us paid off, because it looks good when the company takes good care of its employees.”

“Wow.” Deborah’s eyes are round and fascinated. “I’ve never thought I’d live to see the day when you are cynical.”

“I’m realistic, it’s all. Look, I have read the report. The origin of the fire was slightly off, compared to the wiring – it started a couple of feet from the chandelier. There is nothing in that spot that could have possibly caused it. I know the difference isn’t much, and frankly, I’d dismiss it too. But Deb, I was there when it started, I saw it start. And wiring had nothing to do with it.”

“What else could start such a fire, Jacob?” Deborah asks gently, though still hiding behind her psychologist’s mask. “Logically?”

“I don’t know. But I know what I saw, and before you say it, yes I was drunk, but I wasn’t that drunk. Not enough to hallucinate something like this.” He pauses. He needs to say it, he reminds himself. “Tim was on the ceiling, and something slashed his stomach open. Then the fire started, just like that, all around him.”

“You are aware this makes no sense.”

“Yes.” Jacob is a little hurt that Deborah doesn’t believe him. A little hurt but resigned to the fact, and has no intention of losing any sleep over it. After all, it’s taken him three months to believe the testimony of his own eyes. He cannot fault Deborah for her disbelief. “It happened, Deb,” he tries again.

She sighs and closes her eyes. “Okay,” she says eventually. “I believe you.” What she means to say is that she believes he believes it. Which means the loony bin is still a distinct possibility. Jacob stares at the floor, clenching his jaw.

“I’d better start making dinner,” Deborah says. Jacob hears her walk into the kitchen and curse. Belatedly he recalls the cake and the smell that’s been nagging him for the past ten minutes. To his relief there is no smoke and cake turns out to be edible, if a little overcooked. Smothered with whipped cream and punch it will be a decent dessert. Deborah puts it on the window to cool. “What cake is that?” she asks, poking it curiously.

“I have no idea.”

“Which recipe did you use?”

Jacob looks at the floor, feeling stupid. “None. I just mixed the stuff together. Then it turned out I also needed to add baking powder.”

He hears a snort, which transforms into a giggle. Before he knows it Deborah is laughing, like all sanity has left the building. “I’m sorry,” she says clutching her tummy. “It wasn’t that funny.”

“Yeah, it kinda was,” Jacob says and kisses her.

They are on the kitchen table when Rachel’s cry sounds throughout the house. Jacob rests his head against Deb’s naked shoulder. “She’s probably hungry,” he says, trying to catch his breath.



Part Two :: Master Post :: Part Four