Can I Get An Amen? Read online

  “After you,” Gary said, gesturing me into the warmth of the courthouse.

  . . .

  I held my cell phone against my cheek, hoping that no cops were around as I sped up to the on-ramp of the Mass Pike, the heat in my car blasting on high. “It’s done.”

  Kat took a deep breath. “So… how are you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Kat paused. “You don’t sound fine.”

  “The only thing that isn’t fine is that I’m fine.”

  “Uhh… okay.”

  “I mean, I just got divorced. I shouldn’t feel fine, but I do. We went to the house; I saw Beverly and Daniel. And I’m fine.”

  All day, I had expected it to kick in—I was waiting for the agonizing sense of loss to rip through my core—but instead, it felt like I was just going through the motions to formalize something that already was. Ironically, it was how I’d felt on our wedding day. All those months of planning and anticipation for an event that didn’t seem to fundamentally change what we were to each other. It seemed as if we were married before we were married and divorced before we were divorced.

  “So it really wasn’t hard to see Daniel and Beverly?”

  “No. I mean it was all hard, I guess.” I pictured Daniel’s face as he gestured toward a large flat box wrapped with paper that looked like it had been hanging around the home since last Christmas. “Daniel made me a collage with magazine clippings of the Celtics,” I said with a fond, bittersweet chuckle. “And Beverly cried when she hugged me good-bye.”

  “What about Gary?”

  I thought of how Gary had walked me to my car. I hit my turn signal and changed lanes. “Gary said all the right things,” I said bitterly.

  “Ellen, I would love to still be part of your life,” he had said. “In any way that you’ll have me.”

  It felt like my chance to stomp and scream and tell him that I’d have him as my husband or nothing. It was my chance to tap into some of the anger to which I felt I was entitled. Would your girlfriend like that? Our being friends? But I could summon none of it. “I don’t know, Gary,” was all I could manage. “Let’s just see how things go.”

  He took my hand, and again, I knew that I should pull it back, scold him for daring to touch me. “Thank you, Ellen,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “For coming here for this. I am so glad you did.” He looked at me sheepishly. “I didn’t know how good it would be to see you.”

  . . .

  When I got back to the hotel, Kat was waiting in our room with an open bottle of wine. She gave me a long, silent hug, then handed me a glass. “I made reservations for dinner.” I knew what she was thinking, that I should celebrate being newly single, but she had the sense not to say it.

  “All right,” I said reluctantly, kicking off Kat’s shoes. I had no energy for an argument. “But I want to get to bed early. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  “Then let’s hurry. Wet your hair in the tub. I’ll blow it out.”

  I plopped down on the bed. “Can’t I just go like this?”

  I knew I was ruining the girls’-night-out vibe that Kat was trying to create for me, but I wasn’t in a cupcakes-and-cosmos sort of mood.

  . . .

  We arrived early for our reservation and took seats at the bar. A handsome young bartender immediately approached us. “What can I get for you ladies?” He had an English accent and an appealing little dent in his nose that kept him from being too pretty.

  Kat flipped open the drink menu. “I’ll have a glass of the Malbec,” she said with a flirtatious smile. Then she leaned back in her stool and recrossed her legs. She sure could turn it on when she wanted to.

  “And for you, miss?”

  I looked at the elegantly lit bottles behind him. The bar was small and dim and warm. “Just a Maker’s Mark, with a couple of ice cubes, please.”

  He smiled approvingly. “All right, then,” he said, giving me a wink as he went off to fetch us our drinks.

  “He’s cute,” whispered Kat conspiratorially.

  “Kat, don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  I looked down at my left hand. I hadn’t worn my ring since I left Boston, and I pictured how my hand used to look, with a simple but beautiful two-carat round diamond set in a classic platinum band. I remembered how proud of it Gary was, telling me that princess cuts were trendy, but this style would last. “It’s an heirloom, Ellen,” he had said.

  “I’m not up for the single-girl thing. Not tonight, Kat.”

  “Oh, really?” she asked with playful defiance.

  “Yeah, oh really.”

  “What if it was that guy Mark back there, pouring you a glass of bourbon?”

  At the mention of his name, I felt a stirring that I knew I wasn’t supposed to be feeling.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  My mother pulled a loaf of cubed French bread from the freezer and bit the bag open with her teeth. “I’m keeping things simple this year,” she said as she dumped its contents onto a baking sheet and poured on a full cup of melted butter. “Just a turkey, my oyster stuffing, mashed potatoes, and a salad.”

  “Sounds great, Mom,” I said reflexively, taking a sip of my peppermint tea, then scrunching my feet up onto the barstool. It was only eight o’clock in the evening, but I was already thinking about bed.

  “I mean it. No one ever eats the candied yams or green bean casserole, so I’m not making them.”

  “I think that’s smart.”

  She opened the door to the top oven and slid in the baking sheet. “Christmas, too. Things are going to be different this year. Your father and I aren’t doing big gifts for y’all. You don’t need all that anymore.”

  I nodded in agreement and she seemed disappointed that I didn’t put up any selfish protests.

  She turned to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. With her back to me, she asked, “So, I guess your sister isn’t coming tomorrow?”

  “No… I don’t think she is.”

  “I still can’t understand why she thinks that she’s the one who’s got the right to be mad.”

  I didn’t answer, having learned not to try to position myself as moderator between my parents and Kat. Instead, I tried to redirect her. “So, Luke will be here in the morning?”

  “Yes,” said Mom, drying her hands on a dishrag hanging on the oven door. “His train will be here around noon, and then he’s going to stay until Saturday.”

  Luke usually came out to New Jersey for only one night at a time, so his extended stay was something of an event. What my parents didn’t know was that Mitch was going to his father’s house in Boca Raton for Thanksgiving, so Luke would have been alone all weekend. “That’ll be nice,” I said. “To have Luke here.”

  My mother propped one hand on her hip and looked at me directly. “So, what’s Kat doing, then? Did you ask her?” The overhead lights above the island harshly lit her face, casting dramatic shadows over her bags and wrinkles. She looked older than I had ever seen her look.

  “She was invited to spend Thanksgiving with a friend, Mom.” I was shorter than I had intended to be.

  “I can’t imagine what friend would be more important than family.”

  “I don’t know, Mom. I didn’t really get a chance to ask her. I was too busy getting divorced.” I knew I was being something of a martyr, but I did not feel that I had received an adequate level of sympathy for my ordeal.

  “Well, excuse me, Ellen! Seeing as you spent the past two nights with her, I thought it may have come up.”

  “All right, Mom. I just am kind of tired and drained and don’t really feel like getting in the middle of it.”

  “Stop being so dramatic, Ellen. No one is putting you in the middle of anything. For your information, I just found out Aunt Kathy will be coming for Christmas, and I was hoping that maybe Kat would at least grace us with her presence then.”

  “Aunt Kathy’s coming?” We all loved Aunt Kathy. Even Kat.
/>   “Yes, she’s going to be here for Christmas and she’s staying until the second. She’ll be here for Eugene White.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, remembering the Arnolds had arranged for him to speak at our church. “So, when is that happening?”

  “The twenty-seventh. Lynn and Ed were really hoping to have him come before Christmas, but I think this’ll be nice. They postponed their holiday party so that they could have it that night, too.” Her pointer finger shot suddenly into the air, as if she had some urgent information to convey. “As a matter of fact, Lynn specifically asked me to invite you.” Anticipating my resistance, she quickly added, “It would be very rude if you didn’t go.”

  “Oh, come on,” I begged.

  “Ellen, this is a very big deal to your father and me. For Lynn to ask us after everything that happened during that terrible dinner…”

  “Fine,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll go.”

  She headed to the pantry and came out with a five-pound bag of russet potatoes.

  “And don’t forget about the Donaldsons on Friday.”

  “What?” I couldn’t so much as place the Donaldsons, much less recall an invitation to their house. “Who are the Donaldsons?”

  “Ellen! I told you about this weeks ago. They are a very nice couple from our church and they have a party the day after Thanksgiving every year. You met them three Sundays ago.”

  I vaguely recalled meeting a large woman who was built like Julia Child. She had a horsey face and ashy blond Princess Diana hair.

  “So it’s going to be all churchies there?” I imagined the typical spread laid out for “fellowship” after a church service. “What, are we going to sit around drinking burned coffee from foam cups and eating mini powdered-sugar donuts?” Even the snobbiest churches had much to learn when it came to catering.

  “Listen to yourself,” said my mother, as if astounded that I had come from her womb. “As a matter of fact, it’s going to be a very nice party. The Donaldsons live up in Chester; their property is just stunning.” She emptied the bag of potatoes into a colander. They landed with dull thuds. “They breed these beautiful horses called Friesians. Glenn hooks them up to a wagon and gives hayrides. And Ann makes her delicious homemade eggnog.”

  “Eggnog with rum in it?”

  My mother rolled her eyes and bent down to rummage in a cabinet under the island. “Yes, Ellen. With rum in it.”

  “Is Luke going?”

  My mother hesitated. “Luke wasn’t invited.”

  I gave her a look. She was always so on edge when Luke came to church with us, always staying right next to him, steering him through the crowd after the service and jumping in if she thought the conversation might head in the direction of the personal. So, do you have a girlfriend? It was her worst fear to hear those words come naively from a member of the congregation. I imagined that the Donaldsons’ party would be much the same.

  “But we’re not just going to leave Luke sitting at home alone, right? I mean, it sounds like this thing is pretty casual, so it’s not like one extra person would be a big deal.”

  My mother stuck the colander in the sink and flipped the water on high. “If Luke would like to join us, then of course he can,” she conceded.

  . . .

  On Thanksgiving Day, I knew that we all felt Kat’s absence. It was like those first early years after everything happened, when she was out west and never came home, not even for holidays. My mother stayed in the kitchen, listening to worship music and trying to coax herself into the Thanksgiving spirit. She denied all offers of help. “Y’all just stay out of the kitchen. I can certainly fix a dinner for four people by myself.” So, Luke and I sat in the family room while my father watched football. He tried to engage us in the sport, explaining the plays and inserting his commentary, but our remedial comprehension and inane questions seemed only to silence him, so Luke and I ended up flipping through catalogues and dressing ourselves for the lives we didn’t have.

  “Luke, if you lived in Maine, you could totally pull off these flannel-lined L.L.Bean jeans.”

  “Let me see,” he said, reaching for the catalogue. He glanced quickly at it before handing it back. “No,” he said dismissively, “the cut is funny.”

  “The cut is supposed to be funny. They’re supposed to be kind of uncool. It’s the whole so-uncool-it’s-cool thing.”

  My father exhaled loudly and pointed to the television screen without shifting his gaze from the action. “See that quarterback? Grew up in one of the most violent areas of Los Angeles. He was shot in the arm when he was five years old. Then he went on to be the star player at Virginia Tech.” Having begun his career working construction, my father was always impressed by a bootstrap success story. So Luke and I emitted the appropriate oohs and aahs and then went back to our stack of shiny catalogues. And my father went back to wishing Gary was seated next to him, sipping beer from a chilled glass and enjoying the bowl of smoked almonds on the coffee table.

  After we were called for dinner and had taken our places around the overwhelmingly large table, my father said grace. We all bowed our heads as he thanked the Lord for our blessings. “Thank you, Lord, on this day and every day, for all that you have given to this family. We are humbled by your continued blessings and continued mercy, and we give the glory to you forever, Lord. Amen.”

  My mother mumbled her own prayer to herself in tandem, unintelligible except for the periodic Jesus. Then platters were passed and plates were filled. Luke made several attempts to jump-start the conversation, with what would normally be hilarious stories about his department’s motley crew of temps, but even my laughter sounded forced.

  Luke and I, subconsciously adapting to our parents’ mood, began eating in subdued silence. My mother had an obligatory piece of turkey but sat quietly for most of the meal, staring at her plate. My father piled on the dark meat and doused it generously with gravy. “I don’t know why you kids prefer the breast. Any chef will tell you that the thigh has more flavor.”

  I wondered if this was what holidays would be like from now on, without a table full of little children to fuss over, without their turkey to cut and vegetables to coax down. Without anyone to teach about the wishbone. And since Kat and Luke had no plans to start families anytime soon, the void would be indefinite, quite possibly permanent. It was a loss that my parents never spoke of, especially in front of me, but I saw the look my father would get when casually announcing the pregnancy of a friend’s daughter or the arrival of a colleague’s grandson. I poured myself a big glass of wine from the bottle Luke had brought, hoping that it might lubricate the evening. When I poured a second one, my mother spoke up.

  “My goodness, Ellen. It’s not even five o’clock.” We were eating earlier than usual this year; I think we all wanted to get it over with.

  “It’s Thanksgiving,” I said as I took a sip. I think we were all aware of the irony.

  . . .

  The Donaldsons’ house was probably technically an estate, with a beautiful large white home set almost half a mile off the road. The property included a series of stables and pastures, sectioned off into paddocks for their massive, regal-looking black horses. “They were traditionally used in wars,” said Ann Donaldson, roughly patting the haunches of a towering male. “There used to be only a handful of breeding stallions left in the world.” The animal stomped his hoof and snorted. I took a step back.

  “Ellen, would you like to ride Ludolf?” asked Ann.

  “Oh, no, thank you,” I stammered. “He really is beautiful, though.”

  “Isn’t he?” gushed my mother. “Such a specimen.”

  Meandering over to get a glass of eggnog, I wished that Luke were here. When my parents had invited him, Luke had declined, saying that he wanted to do some reading. “All right, honey,” Mom said, putting her hand on his cheek. “You stay here and relax. We’ll bring you back something.”

  Sidestepping a wobbly-looking woman in riding boots, I made my way
into the heated atrium, where the bar had been set up. I hadn’t expected this to be a catered affair, but there were passed hors d’oeuvres as well as a table filled with various stews and sandwiches. The bartender, like the servers, wore a Black Watch plaid wool scarf draped around the neck of his standard tuxedo uniform.

  As he handed me my glass of eggnog, I heard a familiar voice next to me. “Do you have any nonalcoholic eggnog?”

  It was Parker, rubbing her tight little pregnant belly.

  “Hi, Parker.”

  “Oh, hiiiiiiii!” she exclaimed, pretending that she hadn’t seen me.

  I forced a smile. “So you know the Donaldsons?”

  “Oh, yes. Ann and my mother have been friends for years.” She cast her eyes about. “My parents are here somewhere. I know they would love to see you… Oh, there they are!” She pointed in the direction of the patio, where I immediately recognized Mr. and Mrs. Collins. Mrs. Collins was an impeccably dressed blonde who, like a paper doll, had the same dull, aloof expression on her face no matter how her surroundings changed. Mr. Collins was the type of consummate charmer who called waitresses by name, as in, “Sandy, I’ll tell you what I could really use: a Gray Goose martini with three olives. In a rocks glass, please.”

  “Oh, great. I’ll have to go say hi.”

  “So”—she stuck out her lower lip in a comical little pout and reached out to rub my upper arm—“how are you? How did everything go?”

  Of course, I knew that she was asking about the divorce hearing. “Oh, you know, fine,” I said quickly. “So, how was your Thanksgiving?”

  “It was great,” said Parker, a little too emphatically. “The kids are so cute with the whole Pilgrim thing. They just can’t believe that one of their relatives was on the Mayflower. Avery kept asking me, ‘How many greats ago was he? Was he my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather?’ ” As she went through the greats, she tilted her head from side to side for effect.

  “Oh, how cute,” I said with mock interest.

  “Yeah, you know, I really should try to organize a Thanksgiving celebration for the New Jersey chapter of the Mayflower Society—just something for the kids.” She looked like Sally Struthers in a Feed the Children ad. “It’s so important for them to know their history, but I am just so swamped at this time of year. I don’t know how I could fit in one more thing.” Her eyes lit up. “Speaking of, have you had a chance to get to any of the stuff for Philip’s party?”