A Place Closer to Mattie

Sandy and her three kids celebrated holidays and birthdays with the Stepaneks. They vacationed together at the beach in North Carolina each summer. Sandy's children remember Jeni as the fun parent, the one who coached girls' soccer and made the team sing "Ain't It Great to Be Crazy" on the field at halftime, a ploy to psych out their opponents.

When Mattie went into intensive care, Sandy made an elaborate scrapbook to show the nurses how deeply embedded into each other's lives they are -- to show that, in a hospital wing where only "family" may visit, Sandy and her children qualified. Jeni is estranged from her parents and won't speak of her ex-husband. Sandy provided the family Jeni couldn't have.

Which is why Sandy bought the neighboring condo when Jeni and Mattie moved to Rockville. Mattie had lived with his mom in small, sometimes dark and moldy basement apartments throughout Prince George's County for much of his life. The condo was their palace. He exulted to Oprah about his "11 windows" and angled the hospital bed in his room so he could always see outside. Jeni Stepanek never thought she would move again.

Sandy took on much of the daily cooking, cleaning and laundry. They wanted to add a door between their condos. The fire code wouldn't allow it.

But now Jeni's disabilities are worsening. She has a harder time breathing and swallowing, her speech is slowing, and every year, she notices, her arms move an inch or two less.

Then, at the dedication ceremony for Mattie's Park last January, Jeni remembers how she gave a speech and pointed to a house immediately across the street and jokingly said, "That's the one I want."

A few months later, around Easter, Sandy called Jeni. "Ohmygosh," Jeni remembers hearing Sandy say. "Our house is for sale."

When Sandy talks about moving in with Jeni, she makes light of what being roommates might mean, joking how Jeni's early-bird buoyancy makes nocturnal Sandy cringe and urge: "Shut up! Sit still! Don't talk to me!" She doesn't talk about what is really happening.

She is signing up to watch her closest friend die.

They put their condos on the market, and one afternoon in May, real estate agent Mike McGrath stops in for clutter inspection. Most of Jeni's knickknacks have been packed away, but she cannot bear to undo Mattie's room, even as she worries about voyeuristic buyers slipping his belongings into their pockets.

"I don't want any souvenirs going," she tells McGrath.

"There's a lot of pilferable stuff here," McGrath agrees. "But we won't let that happen."

At first, Jeni and Sandy don't get much traffic through their condos and Jeni starts getting anxious. During one morning meeting of the Mattie Stepanek Foundation, Jeni frets, "Now if only we'd sell our houses!"

"Have faith," foundation treasurer Tom Curtis tells her.

"I have faith," she answers sharply.

"Have. Faith," Curtis repeats, slower this time and leaning closer to her. He believes, he says later with sincere reverence and awe, that this whole Mattie thing "has a life of its own: The statue. The park. The work we do [spreading Mattie's message of peace] in the schools. And her buying the new house. We're not in control of this." The implication is that someone else -- Mattie? God? The Catholic saints to whom Jeni prays? -- is in control.

Sure enough, a few weeks later, Jeni sells her condo: She gets an offer on June 22, the second anniversary of Mattie's death; they settle on July 17, Mattie's birthday. "So I know ," she says now, "this is all part of the big plan."

And though Jeni may not feel her son's presence, she believes in her son's power. There is a movement, she says, to nominate her son for sainthood, and she is carefully storing everything he owned, in case this happens and the church requests his relics.

But for sainthood, it must be proved that Mattie performed miracles. She's got one, so far, that she can give to the committee that decides these things -- something about a stranger with a very sick son in the hospital, and the woman thought of Mattie, and she prayed, and she heard Mattie's voice assure her that everything would be all right. Her son inexplicably survived, Jeni says, and she has promised to give Jeni copies of the medical records.

Yet "saints are not magical beings. Saints are strength. They are a human face to strength," Jeni says. And the greatest strength that Mattie has provided, she continues, is helping people change how they see their lives: "My son inspires people to have hope when hope seems absent."

Sunset

At the new house, Jeni plans to unpack only a few of Mattie's belongings. She will subsume his library of books into hers. In a few years, she will give his Legos to Sandy's granddaughter. Tad the tiger and the puppets Mr. Bunny and Mr. Bear will get unpacked. There will be shelves, and Jeni might display other belongings, but it won't be Mattie's room, she insists. "I will not create a shrine to him."

This will be her last move.

The new house is a dark, elegant gray with red front door and shutters, white trim and a white picket fence. The grassy backyard looks like a place for children to play. The front porch is wide, perfect for Jeni's wheelchair, with a view of the park, where she can see "what resulted from his life."

From here she will sit in the dying light and watch the sunsets flame behind the silhouette of her son.