Can I Get An Amen? Read online

  “You think I haven’t prayed!?” I demanded. “You think I haven’t gotten down on my knees and begged God to give me a child?” I furiously swatted away the tears. “You think I didn’t pray that my husband wouldn’t leave me?” The sobs escaped from my chest and I could no longer speak. I collapsed weeping in the backseat, oblivious to everything but my grief.

  . . .

  The next morning, I woke up feeling that specific numbness that comes after all your pretenses are stolen. When you feel naked and beaten and lifeless. Shaking me wouldn’t have been enough to elicit a response. So in many ways, it was the perfect day for my first encounter with Parker.

  It was just before lunch that I heard her unmistakable voice coming from the reception area on the floor below, echoing up to the mezzanine, where the partners had their offices. She was calling after her children, whose wild footsteps clamored across the marble floor toward the floating staircase. “Careful, Austin!” she yelled, and I could picture one of the towheaded children from the pictures on Philip’s desk leaping up two steps at a time. “Remember what happened when you slipped!”

  A tall blond boy appeared first, dressed in a striped button-down and a pair of jeans. He looked to be about five years old and was followed by Parker. She held the hand of a little girl while balancing a toddler boy on her hip. From her seated position in church, I hadn’t noticed that she was pregnant.

  “Ellen Carlisle!” she crooned upon seeing me, flashing me a perfect, bright white smile. She was wearing tan riding-style pants, tall, expensive-looking boots, and an olive cable-knit cashmere sweater that was stretched over her rounded stomach. Her straight blond bangs grazed her eyebrows and her long hair was pulled back into a smart ponytail. The overall look was frustratingly chic.

  “Parker Collins,” I said. I intended it to come off as a cheery greeting, but instead it sounded like we were about to take twenty paces and draw our guns.

  “Kent now,” she said with a smile. “When Philip told me that you were working here, I just couldn’t believe it.” There was an angle to her head and a narrowness in her eyes that suggested she wasn’t marveling simply at the coincidence, but rather at the state of my life. I felt vindicated in the fact that this was, after all, the same old Parker. I could indulge in my decades-old grudge without remorse.

  Instead of taking the bait and explaining how I had found myself working for her husband, I focused on her children, getting up from my desk and squatting to talk to them.

  “Hi!” I said to the oldest boy. “What’s your name?”

  “Austin,” he said quietly as he tried to kick scuff marks onto the shiny wood floor with his shoe.

  “And this is Avery,” said Parker, gesturing to the pretty little girl with the curly blond hair and her father’s intelligent eyes. She looked at me carefully, as if trying to discern something un-knowable.

  “I’m three and a half,” reported Avery proudly, holding up three fingers on one hand. “I don’t have half a finger so I can only hold up three.”

  “That’s right.” I laughed. “That’s very smart.”

  The toddler made a series of noises that sounded like a demand to be put down, before wriggling out of Parker’s arms. “And that is Alden,” she said as he ran over to a potted ficus and began pulling the leaves off. “He’s my handful.”

  “And you have another one on the way!” I exclaimed like a good little Girl Scout, pointing toward her belly.

  Parker gave her smooth, taut belly a few strokes. “Yes, in three months we’ll either have Abbott or Aubrey.”

  “All As.”

  “And their middle names all begin with Cs, of course.” I looked at her blankly, prompting her to elaborate. “So their initials can be ACK.”

  “Why ACK?”

  There was a confused little twitch on her face. “They’re the call letters for Nantucket,” she said, as if she felt just a little sorry for me that I didn’t know this. “It’s where Philip and I met. His family has a house there, too.”

  “Oh, right…,” I said. Just when I thought her children’s names couldn’t have gotten more pretentious. I had forgotten about her summers on Nantucket. Parker always made a very big deal about who would be invited to spend a week with her there. She used it as leverage throughout the school year; it was her trump card when her usual manipulations weren’t working.

  “We can’t both have the same dress,” she said when we were together at the mall and I spotted a little summer shift that I liked. Parker decided that she liked it, too. “Because what if, like, we both want to wear it in Nantucket this summer? We can’t match. That would be stupid.”

  I never did end up going with Parker to Nantucket, but Jill did. She came home three days early after calling her mother and asking to switch her flight. “You don’t just decide you want to leave when someone has invited you on vacation,” scolded Mrs. Larkin. She had plans for Jill, and being part of Parker’s inner circle was one of them. “The Collinses were kind enough to invite you and you are going to insult them like this?” Though Mrs. Larkin put up a fight, wanting the Collinses to view her as nurturing and maternal, she finally agreed. “I don’t think she’s feeling too well,” Mrs. Larkin said sympathetically when arranging for Jill’s departure with Mrs. Collins.

  “So,” began Parker, “was that you I saw yesterday at Christ Church?”

  Of course it was me, I thought. “Yeah, my mom mentioned that she saw you. I wasn’t feeling well, so I kind of got out of there after the service.”

  “Oh, I don’t blame you,” said Parker, a little too knowingly. “With everything you’ve been through.”

  Brenda then rounded the corner from the ladies’ room and let out a long, trilling, “Hiiiiii!” when she saw the Kent clan. I couldn’t blame Brenda, as Parker played the role of the boss’s wife beautifully. Brenda simply went along with it. After briefly acknowledging Brenda, who began talking to Avery and Austin, Parker turned her excruciating focus back to me.

  “Well, I thought Reverend Cope’s prayer was absolutely beautiful,” she said, adopting a pensive air as she continued. “It’s just so strange that you had such trouble when Kat was able to—” She gave a small, shy little breath, as if she’d really prefer not to discuss such matters. “Well, you know… so easily.” Shaking her head with armchair sympathy, she looked like she was contemplating a sad story she had heard on the news about a tragic family who lived in some faraway, dusty place and spoke another language.

  I put my hand on my desk to steady myself. I was absolutely floored, unable to react or even to move. A ticker tape of protests scrolled through my mind, but I couldn’t verbalize one of them. I just stared at her and she back at me, with a smile that to the casual observer may have looked kind. For her to so blithely reference the event about which none of us ever spoke…

  After a moment or two of silence, she turned to Brenda, her task complete. “Is Philip in his office?”

  Brenda’s eyes darted from me back to Parker. “Uh, yup,” she replied, fiddling with her earring. “He should be in there—right, Ellen?”

  Parker did not wait for my answer, as she followed Austin’s charge into Philip’s office. “Daddy!” he cried as he swung open the door. As I sat back down at my desk, I heard their exchange.

  “Kiddo!” replied Philip, and I imagined Austin leaping into his lap. “I wasn’t expecting you guys!”

  “We thought we’d surprise you,” said Parker indulgently, and I heard her and Philip exchange a kiss. “Want to take us to lunch?”

  “I want a cheeseburger, Daddy,” came Avery’s sweet little voice. “Can I have a cheeseburger, please?”

  “Sure, Aves,” he said. “I’ll meet you guys down by the car, okay? I just have to finish up a few things.”

  “Okay, kids. We need to give Daddy a couple minutes!” Parker began to shoo her brood out of Philip’s office.

  “Yes!” shouted Austin, doing what looked like a kung fu move as he exited. “Cheeseburgers!”
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  “Ellen, it was so nice to see you. I’ll have to stop in when I have more time to catch up,” said Parker as she breezed past my desk, wiggling her fingers in a wave as I watched her walk away.

  I was still mute.

  Philip came out of his office a minute later. He stood there awkwardly for a moment before rapping lightly on my desk with his fingertips, not to get my attention, which he had, but to buy himself time as he worked something over in his head. “Ellen, I can’t have anyone coming into my office unannounced. Not even my family.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I stammered, taken aback by the reprimand.

  “I could have been on a sensitive call or in the middle of something… delicate. I just need to make sure that you can act as my gatekeeper.”

  “Of course. I’m so sorry.” I felt my face flush.

  “No harm done. Just good practice for next time, all right?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  He rapped on my desk again, once, as if to signify that our meeting was adjourned. “Good. So, I should be back in an hour or so, then.” And he disappeared down the hall.

  “I’m so sorry,” whispered Brenda. “I know he hates when people barge in, but I didn’t think Parker would just…” Her look indicated that she was apologizing for more than Philip’s scolding.

  “It’s all right,” I said quickly, not looking up from my desk.

  . . .

  When I walked in the house that evening, my mother was lying on the couch in the living room, looking worn.

  “Oh, hey, honey,” she said weakly.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Oh yeah, I’m just tired. I don’t feel like cooking tonight so your father’s picking up some subs from Martelli’s. I told him to get one with just turkey,” she said, knowing I didn’t eat the mortadella that my father usually got.

  She patted the couch next to her, gesturing for me to sit down, and asked me the obligatory questions about my day.

  “Parker came in,” I said ominously.

  “Oh, how nice!” exclaimed my mother, not picking up on my tone.

  Unable to hide my bitterness, I let out a humorless laugh. “Oh, was it nice, Mom?” I asked sarcastically. “Was it nice to hear Parker marvel at how ironic it is that I can’t get pregnant when Kat seems to so easily?” I widened my eyes with Parker’s mock innocence and rested my pointer finger on my cheek.

  My mother inhaled sharply and closed her eyes. It had been a long time since everything that had happened with Kat was the subject of gossip, and I’m sure she thought that it was all safely behind her now. But her still-unresolved issues with Kat, and now Parker’s comment, had seemed to thoroughly unstitch the wound and I watched the doubt and regret begin to seep out.

  But, hurt and angry and looking for a target, I continued. “Yeah, I was thinking that maybe we could invite her and Lynn over for a prayer meeting. Maybe we could bust out the BeDazzler and make some American flag T-shirts. I’m sure Sarah Palin would love one. Then we could all hold hands and ask God to heal my defective uterus. It would be nice, wouldn’t it?” I waited for a reaction, wanting this to escalate to a fight, wanting to say to her what I couldn’t say to Parker. My mother just kept her eyes shut.

  . . .

  The following Monday, when Philip asked me to arrange to have lunch brought in for a meeting later that week, I reminded him of my upcoming personal days, which he had already agreed to.

  “I can have the food delivered, but I’ll be out of the office that day. I could ask someone to help set things up, though.”

  “You’re going to be out?” asked Philip, seeming to have forgotten our conversation.

  “Yes, I have to attend to some personal matters. In Boston.” I hoped that my formal phrasing would communicate the gravity of the situation. “I mentioned it last week.” Though I’m sure it wouldn’t have come to it, I was not about to forgo attending the final hearing. I needed to see Gary again.

  “Oh, that’s right. Of course,” he said quickly, his memory jogged. “Yes, if you could ask Brenda to set everything up—you know, cups, silverware, that sort of thing—that would be very helpful.”

  I agreed and left his office, closing the door behind me. Brenda was seated at her desk. “I heard you with Philip. I can absolutely help out,” she said, practically raising her fist in solidarity. Brenda knew exactly why I was going to Boston. That day, for the first time since I’d been there, she asked me if I’d like to get lunch together.

  . . .

  As we sat in the little deli on the corner, Brenda dabbed the corners of her mouth in a very ladylike fashion. She had the look of someone who was on the verge of a confession, so I wasn’t surprised when it awkwardly began. “I just wanted to let you know that if you need anything over these next few weeks, please just ask.” I nodded, knowing where she was going but not sure how much she knew. “I went through a very difficult divorce a few years ago. And I know… how hard it is.”

  I picked a tiny piece of rye bread off my sandwich and put it into my mouth. “Thanks, Brenda. I appreciate that.”

  She leaned back in her chair and look at me squarely. “He left me for another woman.” It was her way of telling me that she knew why Gary was leaving me, too, her way of putting us back on an equal footing. Parker had surely whispered what had happened, feigning concern. “And you know about Ellen?” she would have asked while I was out to lunch or in the printer room, her arms crossed and forehead creased. Brenda would have said that she didn’t and Parker would have sighed. “Poor thing is getting divorced. Her husband wants children and they’ve been trying for years.”

  I soon learned that Brenda and her husband had lived quite comfortably in a nice middle-class neighborhood. They had raised two children who were grown and on their own, and they were beginning the years in which they had the financial and personal freedom to go out to nice dinners, to take weekend trips to the ocean, and to buy new furniture. “I didn’t see it coming,” she said. “You never do, do you? And, of course, she is much younger.”

  Now her children had a stepmother, whom they called Denise, and Brenda no longer had the luxury of two incomes. She was the antithesis of the stereotypical wealthy divorcée who lazed around in silk robes entertaining pool boys while big, fat alimony checks kept rolling in. Brenda sat alone in her house, which seemed too big and too full of memories, while her husband and Denise had set themselves up in an Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan. “I just want my kids to always have their house,” she said when I asked her if she ever thought of going somewhere new, starting fresh without history constantly imposing itself upon her. “Kids always need to be able to come home.” So Brenda’s ex-husband got to create an exciting new life, while Brenda was left to serve as the caretaker to the past.

  . . .

  “Kat, I really think I need to do this by myself,” I said unconvincingly. Kat was insisting that she come with me to Boston for the final hearing.

  She made no excuses as to why she thought she needed to be there, hid behind no pretext other than the fact that she thought I would need her. “You know you’re going to wish I was there. Why are you being such a masochist?”

  “Kat…”

  “Just let me come. I already took the time off.”

  However much I wanted to be on my own when I saw Gary, I knew this was an olive branch from Kat. “But that is such a busy week for you!” I said. The days leading up to a holiday were always busy for Kat, as the salon was packed with women who wanted to be dyed and smoothed and trimmed for the inevitable holiday photos.

  “Lisa is covering for the appointments I couldn’t rebook. Wednesday is just going to be back-to-back blow outs anyway. You’ll be sparing me.”

  I imagined how it would feel to be alone in my hotel after the hearing, sitting by myself on the paisley polyester bedspread, a bowl of room service minestrone getting cold as I replayed the end of my marriage. “Okay,” I said. “But I want to be alone at the courthouse.”

>   “Fine. I’ll go shopping or something,” said Kat dismissively.

  I paused for only a moment. “Kat?”

  “What?”

  “Thanks.”

  . . .

  The days leading up to Boston went much too fast. The hearing had been months in the making, and now it seemed that time had accelerated. I stayed up until almost midnight every night, trying to delay the ticking off of yet another day.

  It was late in the afternoon the Friday before I left, and Philip called me from his cell phone on his way into the city, where he was meeting Parker for dinner. He had been out of the office in meetings all day, and I had seen him for only a second in the morning. “Listen, I forgot that Parker asked me to have you get in touch with her.” In the background, I heard him pay the toll at the Lincoln Tunnel. I knew that their dinner reservations weren’t until eight p.m., and I briefly wondered why he was heading in so early. “She’s been planning this holiday party for some clients and key business associates, but she’s gotten too busy with all the bustle at this time of year and says that she really needs your help.”

  “Oh, of course,” I said, somewhat unsure of how to respond. It wasn’t lost on me that Parker had requested that I contact her, which I took as a reminder of my subservient position. “I’m out all of next week, though. I have my trip to Boston and then we’re closed for Thanksgiving.”

  He exhaled his displeasure. “That’s right.”

  “Would it be too late if I got in touch the following Monday?” I couldn’t imagine the party was very far off, which meant that either Parker hadn’t yet done a thing and needed someone to lay it on, or she had already attended to every detail and had some other motivation for seeking my help. I was sure it was the latter.