Later that Day
Back at his office, Eric couldn't get Jaye out of his mind. In fact, she bothered him. Who did she think she was, asking such personal questions? And what did she want? He decided he should stay clear of Jaye for awhile.
He tried to work on his sermon but couldn't concentrate. That made him mad too. He looked at the pictures on his desk. Matt's graduation picture. He thought about Matt and Sarah going to New York to medical school, and how difficult it would be for them to negotiate a marriage in the middle of that. But he had grown to like Sarah. And, maybe more importantly, he liked who Matt was with Sarah. He hoped they would be happy.
He had a picture of Mary in her flight attendant uniform, looking both beautiful and professional. But he had kept an older picture of her that he liked even more. She was about fifteen, shooting a basketball in a playoff game. He thought about that fifteen-year-old Mary. She had seemed so self-assured, so confident. He thought about what she had done to the school gym and, for the first time, wondered if his and Annie's public support of the lockout had been the wrong thing to do. Basketball was important to Mary. It was something she had truly loved. And it could have gotten her into a good college. At the time he thought that her grades were more important. But now, three years later, he wondered if the grades were important enough to take away something that she loved. After all, she hadn't been failing any of her classes, and she still met the minimum league standards. Had he been wrong to publicly question her and support the lockout? Thinking about Mary's life since her arrest, he knew the answer. She had barely graduated high school and, before JetBlue, couldn't even hold a menial job. She seemed to bounce from one serious relationship to another. He realized that, counting Robbie, she had actually been engaged twice and Ben had recently proposed. When did his self-assured daughter become so boy crazy? What was missing in Mary that she was looking for in a guy? Fortunately she had turned Ben down and seemed to be getting a sense of herself again.
Lucy. Eric smiled. He had always had a special bond with Lucy. She reminded him of himself some – at least the better parts of himself. She was a born helper, comfortable in the realm of emotions. He hoped she would finish college and seminary, but a shadow of doubt tugged at him. Like Mary, Lucy had been engaged already. And now she had another serious boyfriend. How many years had it been since she had worked on a Habitat house? Why did she give that up? When did she, like her sister, become so boy crazy?
He picked up a picture of Simon with Happy. He remembered a younger Simon, always friendly and upbeat. Now sixteen-year-old Simon was sullen and removed, almost hostile. He had told himself that this was just normal teenage stuff. Matt had kept to himself as a teenager, but not like Simon did. Simon was smart and had always been responsible. Maybe he and Annie had given him too much freedom. Maybe they were assuming that he could handle himself like he always had. But, Eric realized sadly, Simon seemed deeply unhappy. Why?
He looked at Ruthie's school picture from Eleanor Roosevelt. She looked cute in her uniform and he smiled. But what Eric saw in Ruthie's picture was not an eleven-year-old. He saw a woman, or a teenager at least, in a child's body. Ruthie was smart but she was more than that. She was streetwise. Why is that? What happened to Ruthie's childhood?
Sam and David playing in a sandbox at the park. "They should at least get individual pictures," he thought to himself. It was always "the twins" or "the boys". He knew they didn't get enough of the right kind of attention. The truth was, they were a family of teenagers, even Ruthie, and nobody was interested in preschool needs anymore. He and Annie were tired. Too tired to play trucks in the yard or teach the alphabet. What would become of Sam and David? Would they be okay?
He had recently added a picture of Robbie to his desk. Robbie was certainly family. When exactly did that happen? Had that been a good thing? He was very helpful around the house. He probably did more caretaking of the boys than anyone else .
Anyone else.
It had been hard to really think about his kids and all the things that seemed to be going wrong with them. He realized, for the first time, that his family had become unhappy. A few years ago, they had laughed so much. They were close. Now his family seemed more like an assortment of dark and troubled individuals. What was going on?
He didn't want to think about Annie. Why was that? He didn't even want to look at the picture of the two of them. God, I used to love her so much. Don't I still love her? Of course. But I used to want to be with her all the time. We used to be so happy.
Eric felt a familiar heaviness settle in on his chest. He knew that it wasn't his heart.
It was his misery.