Threadbare

I pulled on my favorite jeans, heard and felt the fabric tear, and saw skin peek from a brand-new hole in the faded denim. I surveyed the unforeseen damage: the fabric had become threadbare in so many places that patching or mending wasn’t even a sensible option; there’d be as many patches as original jeans.
I’d been unaware of their gradual deterioration until the hole advertised the widespread decline. Ruefully, I folded my beloved jeans, softened by so much wear and so many washings, and laid them to rest in the lowest drawer of my bureau.
Lars was threadbare. We were each in varied stages of wear and tear. It started with a resounding rip when Rayann carelessly fingered Lars as a molester. We each tried in our own way to mend the relatively small tears we’d incurred, but more quickly than we could piece the edges together, more fabric was hacked, probed, stretched, and gouged until we had all changed.
As far as I knew, everyone’s self-preservation instincts were intact. Maybe that was encased in the layers of fabric that formed the seams. Maybe God placed our drive to live in a deeply embedded place, a place more protected than other parts of us. But was anyone invincible? I had strong doubts now.
For the first time in my life, I related to those who considered suicide. If people were accosted by unrighteousness in any of its forms, and the bludgeoning reached the deep seams where they instinctively fought for their lives, how did they reinforce their fabric? How did they repair themselves? What if they couldn’t and no master seamstress came along to mend the deepest injuries?
I wanted easy answers and solutions so nobody would ever self-destruct, but of course had neither. Our pastor preached once that anyone who committed suicide went to hell. I never accepted Pastor Waltersson’s teaching that suicide was somehow unforgiveable. In my mind, it worked only if God were ruthless.
I’d accidentally found an argument for my belief that God was, in fact, compassionate and just and judged based on our hearts. In Sunday school, we read the account of Jesus’s crucifixion.
One of the two criminals crucified next to Jesus rebuked the other for insulting Christ. “Don’t you fear God since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Jesus answered him from the cross he’d been nailed to. “Truly I tell you. Today you will be with me in paradise.”
An admitted criminal worthy of death by crucifixion joined Jesus in paradise immediately post mortem as simply as that. I found great solace in knowing God’s compassion was limitless and his understanding thorough of each person’s circumstances. Not that I pondered all this out of fear that someone in my family might end his or her life. I just no longer presumed our invulnerability.
I worried about my mother the least. She carried on most days as if nothing had changed. She cooked favorite foods for each of us, attended all my games, maintained our usual routine, and conceived activities to distract and entertain us. Because of Mom, we took a road trip to Minneapolis for bicentennial events over the Fourth of July weekend. At home, she constantly encouraged Lars and me to spend time with friends. Only rarely was it evident that stress was taking a toll. While Mom stayed strong when she was needed most, she occasionally unraveled over trivial inconveniences.
I witnessed her steamy anger one day after she burned dinner. She marched the smoking iron skillet outside and swung it by its handle like a baseball bat. The pork chops were airborne when I looked out the kitchen window. I gasped with amusement as the blackened discs smacked against the side of the house and rebounded onto the juniper bushes. Pearl, with a significant height advantage over the cats, trotted away with all of the charred treasures.
After her chop-flinging debacle, Mom marched back into the house. I was smart enough to take no notice when she pulled a pizza from the freezer, slapped it on the oven shelf, and slammed the door of the oven. When Dad came in for dinner and asked why a pizza was on the table when the kitchen smelled of smoke and pork, she glared at him.
Quickly reassessing the situation, Dad wisely said, “Pizza is exactly what I was hungry for, Meredith.”
Dad showed more frequent and obvious signs of stress than Mom did. He immersed himself in the farm, working even longer hours than usual, and collapsed exhausted in his recliner each evening after a late supper, nodding off within minutes and waking only to transition to his bed after the ten o’clock news.
Mentally, he was barely present since Lars’s trouble began. I announced to him one day that I was leaving to go swimming with Julia. He gave me eye contact while I doled out the information he normally required, about the pool being at her cousin Mara’s house and how we were going to get there.
“Good. Could you drive the mower down to the east farm when you’re done here? And the road bank across the house is getting long.”
It wasn’t like him to be furtive, so I was confused. I’d have to miss out on swimming with Julia and Mara with this unexpected job assignment that would take most of the day.
“What? You want me to mow today?”
“Sure, you aren’t doing anything else, are you?” Without waiting for an answer, he lowered his glassy eyes to rake through papers on his office desk.
“Leif,” Mom interjected from the doorway, “Kirsten just told you she’s going swimming today. I’m driving her over to Julia’s house now. The mowing can wait ’til tomorrow.”
Dad looked up from his ledger, surprised, “Oh, you’re going to Julia’s? That’s good, honey. Have fun.”
I studied his face sometimes. He wore strain on his forehead. Two permanent vertical creases between his brows no longer smoothed when he napped in his chair, and most regrettably, his eyes had lost their merriment.
We had only a few more days to endure the stress, because I had finalized a resolution for the crisis. The judge would expunge all charges, all accusations, and every rumor and slanderous word against Lars. He’d remove all that from the airwaves. That would happen the day of the trial when Lars would finally be provided the opportunity to tell the truth of what happened that day at church.
The judge would hear Lars’s testimony and then do what his title says—he would judge Lars and proclaim his innocence. He would emphatically declare that Rayann was caught in the scheme she devised. It was too bad there were no longer criers to pronounce news in town squares. If there were, he’d shout for all to hear, exposing the shameful deeds of Rayann and her accomplices. At least a judgment would come down from the bench in a court of law. “Lars Nyberg has been wrongfully accused!”
Everyone would be abuzz with talk about the verdict, exclaiming how Lars was innocent all along, marveling at his restraint and the superior character he displayed throughout the unjust ordeal. Lars would never look so good as on the day of his trial when the truth would become widely known.
That solution was most palatable to me. I’d spent many hours creating various versions of restitution for Lars, and I settled on that one.