"Well," he said up at me, "this can only mean trouble."
I laughed. "All my children are trouble," I said. "Go turn off the TV and get ready for church."
I pushed out the back door and walked down the hill toward her. What a beautiful morning it was, I remember. The mist kept the air cool, but there was a sweet scent of blossoms and the breeze off the lake smelled of trees thick and green with full summer foliage. I breathed in deeply as I crossed the grass.
Serena didn't see me. At least, she didn't look up as I approached. She just went on swinging gently back and forth, studying the tips of her pink sneakers as they pushed off the sand. She had a cheap blue windbreaker on, but it was unzipped. I could see the dull gray sweatshirt underneath it and the brand-new jeans. Her hair was a little longer than it had been the last time I saw her, pulled back and tied up in a ponytail. Even from a distance, her face seemed very pale, very thin. I don't think she was wearing any makeup.
Finally, when I was standing directly in front of her, she lifted her eyes to me. It hurt me to see how gaunt her face was. Her skin had gotten bad, too. Her cheeks were patched with acne. Her eyes seemed dull as if a film lay over them. Her mouth was set in a tense, grim line. She gave off a sickbed air. Prison had done this to her. Prison had worn her down.
I didn't say anything but I smiled at her. She got up out of the swing. We stood facing each other. I reached out and put my hand tenderly on her shoulder.
At that, Serena's chin bunched, her lips trembled, and she dissolved into tears. I pulled her to me and held her. Her crying grew more violent. She pressed her face into my shoulder and her whole body bucked and shivered as she sobbed. The sobs were very loud, raw, and hoarse. I kept my arms around her and rubbed her back and kissed her hair.
I looked out over her head to the sky and the water. Strangely, after my long, miserable night, I had a sense for the first time then-just an intimation really-that it was going to be all right. You know? That I was going to be all right, that I was not going to shoot myself with any damned gun, that I was going to damn well live-I was going to live a good long time and meet my grandchildren. I had a faint but sure and certain sense that this sadness was going to lift finally and that there was a kind of peace waiting for me beyond it, not as far off as all that, a bearable distance, a journey I had the strength to make.
My daughter sobbed against my shoulder and shivered in my arms and I held her. And I felt something that had been closed in my mind open again like a child's cupped hands. I felt something fly up out of me and I don't know why but I felt it was my spirit and I was almost visionary. For just a second-just a second or two-I could imagine myself moving above the Earth as it was, above everything, I mean, the mothers and the murderers, the idiots and empires, the spinning patterns and fractals of history developing endlessly out of the few simple equations of the human heart. I imagined myself sailing above and beyond the whole of it until I reached a blazing presence at the source of it all. I felt my spirit yearn toward that unfathomable blaze until it was thrown back at me like a fiery reflection, so that I thought I saw one approaching in the sky like a Son of Man, his arms outstretched over the tear-stained, bloodstained world beneath him as he declared,
Behold: the Kingdom of Heaven, which is Love;
Love-in all its majesty and madness.