The Weight of Heaven Read Online Free PDF

one hand unbuttoning his pajama top even as the other inspected the skin on his
    chest, his neck, his arms. And everywhere she touched there were
    bumps and welts. “Are you okay, sweetie?” she had asked. “Does
    it hurt?” And he had nodded no, but with a rising panic she took
    in the heavy-lidded eyes, the hot, flushed cheeks, the hair sticking
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    to his sweaty forehead. And when he formed his lips to say, “My
    throat feels funny,” she saw the effort it took him to speak, heard the
    hoarseness in his voice. Still, she managed to keep her voice steady,
    as if she were walking a plank on a particularly turbulent sea. “I’m
    going to call Dr. Roberts again, okay, sweetie?” she said. “I’ll be
    right back.”
    “Is this a rash?” Ramesh was holding his hand up for her to inspect.
    Ellie glanced toward the door, willing Frank to walk through it
    and distract Ramesh from this line of questioning. “No, not really,”
    she said. “ Achcha , let’s get back to the books, shall we?”
    “ Achcha ,” Ramesh said but the boy was in a strange mood tonight,
    because the next minute he stuck out his index finger and touched
    Ellie’s wrist. Just that—the light touch of a single finger that nevertheless felt to Ellie like a lit match against her flesh. Idly she noticed
    the black crescent under his fingernails. They both stared at the spot
    where Ramesh’s finger rested on Ellie’s wrist. Then Ramesh said, “I
    am feeling so sad for your son.”
    And Ellie thought back to the funeral—to Father O’Donnell’s
    rageful, heartfelt eulogy, to the whispering women clad in black,
    the silent, solid presence of the men, the brave, lip-trembling steadiness of her mother, the fierce, protective support of her sister, Anne,
    the terror on the faces of the mothers of Benny’s friends, the pity
    on the faces of their husbands. She thought of the weeks and months
    that followed—the lasagnas and pot roasts dropped off by neighbors; the spontaneous hugs in grocery stores from people whose
    names she couldn’t recall; the condolence cards from well-meaning
    friends who felt compelled to include pictures of Benny from their
    own photo albums; the cautious, careful looks she got from her own
    clients when she finally returned to the practice, as if they wanted
    to measure the temperature of her grief before they shared any of
    their own; the treasured, handwritten note from Robert, Benny’s
    best friend, that read, “I will always love him.” And then she looked
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    at the dark-skinned boy with the dirty fingernails who sat touching her with one finger, and she knew that nothing that had happened in the weeks after Benny’s death—not the notes or the cards
    or the whispered messages of courage and hope or the prayers or
    the homilies or the platitudes—had penetrated her as deeply as this
    boy’s awkward, ungrammatical words. Everyone else had said they
    were sorry, everyone else had said it was a tragedy, a shame, a pity,
    a travesty, some had shaken their fists at God, others had advised
    her to bow to His will. But no one had told her that they felt sad
    for Ben. No one had understood that sentiment—that much of her
    anger, her rage, her grief at what had happened, was not for herself or for Frank, though, of course, their grief was monumental,
    almost inhuman in its size and dimensions, so that she felt as if mere
    humans could not understand it, only the ocean and the mountains
    and the wind could. No, what she felt most of all was a screaming
    anger for what Benny had been cheated out of, at the destiny that
    had been wrestled out of his tiny, unformed fist. She and Frank had
    lost Benny, but Ben, Ben had lost not just his parents but his unborn
    children; not just his best friend from elementary school but the
    unknown friend from college and the women he would have dated
    and loved, the woman he would have married. Sometimes, when
    Ellie