Read Online Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam by Peter Goldsworthy - Free Book Online

waking in heaven, of future meetings — now sounded banal, or untrue, or even meaningless. Not for the first time, panic overwhelmed Rick, a wave of terror at the enormity, and absurdity, of the scheme. For the first time also — as his son watched him, suspiciously — he wondered also at the long-term effects it would surely have on the boy. Agitated, emptied of words, he left him with Linda, and swallowed a sleeping pill that Eve had prescribed for both of them some months before — knowing that he wouldn’t sleep, but that at least he might be calmed. Later, in the silence of the very smallest hours, as the rest of the household slept, he rose from his bed, and spent much of the night writing a series of letters to his son: letters to be opened yearly, posthumously, on each successive birthday. He began with simple declarations of love — messages to a little boy from his father in heaven — then for the later years a gradually more complex mix of explanations and exhortations, and, finally, requests for forgiveness. He tried to recall his own states of mind, his own level of development, at various ages — ten, thirteen, sixteen — and tailor his messages accordingly. This was not as difficult as it first seemed: the chronology of the letters, splashed here and there with tears, followed, simply, the evolving complexity of his own thoughts as the long night progressed. The earlier letters to a younger Ben were drafts for the more subtle and sophisticated versions that the boy would open as he grew older.
    You are 18, it’s been a year since we last talked, and this is the last time we will talk. I hope these letters have not been a burden to you — hauntings from an old ghost. You are nearly as old as I was when you were born, writing this, and it would seem presumptuous to offer any more guidance …
    Sometime before dawn he heard Linda rise and begin moving about in the kitchen. He finished the last letter, and joined her outside on the back terrace. She was sitting at the garden table with a pot of coffee and two cups, clearly expecting him.
    He seemed to have spent all his agitation of the night before; extruded it, poured it into that pile of letters. The outside world was starkly defined: sharp silhouettes and edges, a world of knife-edge clarity. An early bird glided between trees in a neighbour’s backyard; the cool air was so still that Rick imagined he could feel the trace of its passage: a faint stirring of wings, a spreading ripple.
    Perhaps the tranquillity of the morning seduced them, lulled them into the belief that their plan was not as difficult or as stupid as it had often seemed. Sitting there, holding hands, sipping coffee as light slowly flooded the eastern sky, they decided, almost matter-of-factly, as if scribbling a dental appointment in a diary, on the date.

13
    On the second-to-last evening the four grandparents were invited to dinner. They arrived bearing gifts: big soft toys, chocolates for the children. There were no gifts for Rick; he watched, wistfully, as his parents and parents-in-law spent the evening fussing over Ben and Emma, careful to share their attentions, and their gifts, equably. There was no way of telling them what was planned, or receiving his due share of that attention. There was no proper way of saying goodbye.
    Linda brought her father an ashtray as they sat in the family room, sipping pre-dinner drinks, but he declared that he had given up.
    ‘Weeks ago,’ his wife added, mildly. ‘It’s the one good thing to come out of all this.’
    The evening ended with offers from both grandmothers to stay in the house ‘until the end’ — offers that were politely, even gratefully, declined.
    ‘It might be weeks, Mum,’ Linda lied.
    On the doorstep Rick hugged his mother, and then — impulsively — his father. The older man, surprised to receive any sign of affection beyond the usual handshake — hugged him back.
    ‘Be strong,’ he said. ‘Our thoughts are