Can I Get An Amen? Page 13

  “Oh, no. I haven’t been in the office all week.”

  She made a yikes noise. “Gosh, we are really getting down to the wire. I hope the florist can get those green hydrangeas I want.”

  Just then, my mother sidled up. “Oh, hey, Parker! How are you, sweetie?”

  “Patty!” she said, leaning in for a kiss. “So nice to see you.”

  “Where are those beautiful children of yours?”

  Parker gave us a conspiratorial look. “Their daddy took them into New York today. God knows how he is going to manage them in the city on Black Friday, but he insisted. I think they were going to do a little Christmas shopping.”

  “Oh, how nice!” said my mother, undoubtedly picturing, as I was, Philip leaning over the glass cases at Tiffany’s, three beautifully dressed children at his side. “Do you think Mommy would like it?” he’d ask Avery, holding up a diamond drop necklace.

  My mother hooked her arm into mine. “Ellen, honey, can you come here for a minute? There is someone I’d like you to meet.” She turned to Parker. “Parker, if you’ll excuse us for just a second.” And I found myself being whisked in the direction of a tall, skinny blond man with an unflattering gum-to-tooth ratio.

  “Christopher,” she said, presenting me proudly, “this is my daughter Ellen.” She smiled and inched me forward. “Ellen, this is Christopher Hapley.”

  The man named Christopher extended his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Ellen.”

  “Yeah, you, too.”

  “Ellen, you may recognize Christopher from church,” said my mother. “He plays the guitar with the worship team and has such a gift for music.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere, Patty,” joked Christopher, who apparently not only looked like a Sunday school teacher, but had the sense of humor of one, too.

  “Well,” said my mother smiling, “I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.”

  Get acquainted? My eyes followed her as she walked away, my jaw slack with disbelief.

  “So,” said Christopher, sticking his hands in his pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels. “Patty tells me that you just moved back from Boston.”

  “Yup. Several months ago now. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long, but here I am, back in Jersey.” I laughed awkwardly. “Have you always lived here?” I wanted to appear polite but not overly interested. Friendly but not flirtatious.

  “Oh, yeah, I even stayed here for college. I went to Rutgers.”

  “Oh, really?” I asked, making my way down the list of friendly small-talk topics. “What did you study?”

  “Chemistry. I work over at Merck. What about you?”

  “I’m just working at a law firm right now.”

  We stood in awkward silence for a moment as I tried to figure out a graceful way to exit the conversation. Christopher was a perfectly nice guy, but my mother’s introduction and clear intentions had made it unbearably awkward.

  “Hey, I was wondering,” said Christopher, clearly nervous, “maybe we could get together sometime?”

  “Sure,” I said, not overly enthusiastically and glancing toward an inconsequential point in the distance. “Most of my friends don’t live around here anymore, so…”

  He beamed. “Great. I have Patty’s number, so I’ll give you a call.” Whether deliberately or inadvertently, he had not picked up on my friendship cues.

  “Oh, right.” He must have had occasion to call my mother when organizing the church’s Christmas spectacular.

  After saying an uncomfortable good-bye to Christopher, I headed straight for the bar, intent on another glass of eggnog, and was intercepted again by Parker, who had been talking to another woman who was about our age. Parker gave her a quick double kiss, then made a beeline in my direction.

  “Ellen!”

  “Hi, Parker.” I was heading for that bar like it was an oasis in the desert and didn’t intend to stop walking, but Parker rested her hand on my upper arm, and I halted like a trained show pony.

  “So listen. I’m about to run, but I just wanted to let you know…” She leaned toward me and lowered her voice, as if to give the appearance of discretion. “Everyone at Lynn’s women’s group… well”—she bit her lower lip and furrowed her brow—“we’ve all been praying for your parents… and their situation.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I spent the rest of the party avoiding any and all conversation as Parker’s comment metastasized in my mind. Working out all its possible meanings, all the things Parker might know that I didn’t, I concentrated on the fact that my mother requested prayer for even the smallest matters.

  As we assembled to make our exit and thank our hosts, my father gave Mr. Donaldson a hearty handshake. “Thanks again, Glenn. We’ll see you Sunday.”

  Mr. Donaldson, a nebbishy man with bug eyes and a toothy grin, seemed to wince a bit at my father’s grip, which was always firm to the point of being painful. “You bet,” he said. He was the type of ostracized nerd who had gotten the last laugh when he finally cashed in on his intellect after joining the entrepreneurial world, where brains almost always beat out brawn.

  My mother clasped hands with Ann and echoed our thanks. “You’ll have to give me the name of the caterers, Ann.”

  We walked through a courtyard and out a large metal gate to the parking area, where the guests’ cars were lined along the perimeter of a long gravel driveway.

  “That was a nice party,” said my father. It just seemed like the thing to say, like remarking that a baby was cute or a sunny day beautiful.

  My mother looked at him as if he had just emitted a particularly offensive odor. “I thought the food was terrible. I think she used Class Act Catering, and I can tell you that everything they served was from Costco, right down to the clam chowder.” My mother never missed an opportunity to point out any area where her taste surpassed that of the blue bloods.

  I slid into the backseat of the car. My mother flipped down the sun visor and briefly checked her makeup in the mirror. Her lips were still lined to perfection and lacquered in shiny magenta lipstick. “How was your chat with Christopher?” She said his name like he was a well-known Casanova. “Isn’t he a dear man?”

  “Yeah, Mom. He was really nice. But in the future, I wish you wouldn’t play love doctor, okay?” It was a toothless reprimand, the sort given by an exhausted single mother after working a double shift.

  “Well,” she huffed, “I don’t see what is so wrong with introducing you to eligible young men. I happen to think Christopher would be perfect for you.” She spoke with matter-of-fact impertinence, and her blue eyes looked at me sternly in the rearview mirror, daring me to react.

  She was gunning for a confrontation, and I rose to the occasion. “What would make him perfect for me? Anything besides the fact that he’s single?” I couldn’t help but feel undervalued, like an old spinster daughter from a Jane Austen book, the one whose parents were desperate to marry her off.

  “Well, for your information, you two may have more in common than you think.” She settled back into her seat, nestling in as if trying to get comfortable. “His doctors told him he may have trouble conceiving. He only has one testicle.”

  I was astounded by the personal details that managed to make their way around our church on the wings of prayer requests. “Are you serious? So you thought we would be a match made in infertile heaven?” I crossed my arms, waiting for her defense, which didn’t come. “And now you’ve put me in a position to have to reject this guy.”

  My father now joined in. “Why would you reject him right out of the gate? You should at least give him a shot.”

  “Why should I go out with him if I know he’s not my type? I’ll just be leading him on.”

  My mother sat up straight, looking hard into the rearview mirror. “Because you can’t live with us forever, Ellen!” It came out with more force than she intended, and my father looked at her from the corner of his eye.

  “What your mother means is that you
can stay as long as you need to, of course, but…”

  My mother finished for him. “But you need to start getting your own life again.” We locked eyes for a moment before I looked away. I didn’t say another word for the rest of the car ride, my own hurt indignation trumping my concern over Parker’s comment about my parents’ situation, which withered in the shadow of the fact that I had worn out my welcome in their home. I’ll find my own place, I thought, hoping it would be a dank little basement apartment with barred windows and a rat problem.

  . . .

  After washing my face and changing into sweatpants, I slid between my cool white sheets and I cried, feeling rudderless and rejected and lost. I was just two months away from turning thirty-two, and everything that I thought I wanted was gone. And so I prayed. I prayed like I did on the first night Gary left. I prayed because it was what I’d always done when no one else was watching. When I didn’t need to be strong or smart or independent. When I didn’t have any answers. When my beliefs didn’t need a definition. I believed in God, but was I a Christian? What did that even mean? “It means you’ve accepted that Christ is your savior.” That was what my mother would say. “It means you know that there is only one path to heaven.” But I didn’t know that. All I knew was that that night, I needed help. I wasn’t even sure what I was asking for. I just held myself and prayed.

  It was a long night, but when I finally did fall asleep, it was deep and dreamless. “That’s the peace that passes all understanding,” my mother would have said, meaning that it’s a peace that can be bestowed only by God.

  I walked hesitantly downstairs the next morning, aware of both the late hour and the volume of my footsteps, like a houseguest who is unaccustomed to the rhythm and flow of the household. My mother was waiting in the kitchen. She got up from her stool and rushed over to me the moment she saw me. “Ellen, I’m so sorry about yesterday, honey.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Mom.”

  “I just have been so scared that you are going to get stalled out here.” She gripped my upper arms like she was going to shake me. “You have too much potential for that.”

  I took an uncertain breath and looked at the floor.

  “Oh, Ellen!” My mother reached her arms around my neck and pulled me into a hug. “Please forgive me for what I said.”

  “No, you were right, Mom. I need to find a place of my own.” I thought of Brenda, tied to her house and her past. “I need to figure some stuff out.”

  She craned her neck to kiss my forehead. “You take your time, honey. Just take your time.”

  “I mean, I can start paying rent, too, Mom.”

  My mother planted her hand firmly on her hip, looking more than a little offended. “What are you talking about?” she asked, her southern accent sounding especially melodic.

  “It’s only right. I’ve been living here for months now. I should pitch in.” It wasn’t too much of a leap to assume that Parker’s reference to my parents’ “situation” must refer to their finances and the burden of Channing Crossing.

  “Well, your father won’t hear of you paying rent, and please don’t mention it to him. It would kill him to think that you thought you needed to do that.”

  “But, Mom, if things are tight—”

  “What’s gotten into you?” she asked as she swept some errant crumbs off the countertop and into her open palm.

  “Parker just mentioned something at the Donaldsons’.” I hesitated, wanting to spare my mother any discomfort. “Something about how she and Lynn Arnold were praying for your situation. I just assumed it had something to do with Channing Crossing.”

  “Ellen,” she scolded, “for months I’ve been praying that this damn economy was going to turn around and that real estate would pick back up again. We all have.” She dumped the loose crumbs into the sink and flipped on the faucet. “Stop being so dramatic.”

  I felt somewhat relieved of my worry. If their situation were really grave, they certainly wouldn’t turn down my offer. I walked over to the coffeemaker and poured a cup. “So, what are you and Dad doing today?”

  “Your father has some errands he wants to run, but I am going over to volunteer at a family center that Prince of Peace is involved with.”

  “What are you going to do there?”

  “Well, the center helps single mothers. They do a kind of drop-off thing for the kids on Saturdays, so some of us will watch them and the rest will do some cleaning.” She sounded less than enthusiastic about both chores. “But I’m really hoping that I get a chance to pray with these mothers. I guess some of them are refugees.” This center was probably expecting a practical, roll-up-your-sleeves type of volunteer, and instead they were going to get my mother. She’d arrive loaded for bear with the 700 Club’s hotline on her speed dial and my father’s laptop in hand, at the ready for her e-mails with “Urgent Prayer Request!” in the subject line.

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s over in Irvington,” she said, her forehead creased like an accordion. Irvington was code for “black community.”

  “Do you even know how to get there?” I asked, slightly amused.

  “A bunch of us are meeting over at Prince of Peace and then carpooling.” Her face lit up with an idea that I instinctively knew involved me. “Hey, why don’t you come, Ellen?”

  My body language spoke for me. “I don’t think so, Mom…”

  “Oh, please! That wonderful minister may be there!”

  “I actually have some errands I need to run myself,” I said, borrowing my father’s excuse.

  She was prepared to continue her pitch when Luke padded softly into the room. He was fully dressed but his face was still puffy with sleep. “Can someone drive me to the train station?” he asked.

  . . .

  I pulled up to my favorite bookstore and found a spot right out front. It was a three-story building with low ceilings, creaky wood floors, and a little café in the back. You always paid a few dollars more for books here, but it was the upcharge for the ambiance. The place had the feel of someone’s personal library, with lumpy armchairs and lamps scattered about. After dropping Luke off at the train station, I headed there. It wasn’t a scheduled stop, but a whim. A book and a latte seemed like a good idea on a cold, damp Saturday.

  They served their coffee in big, mismatched mugs, and I curled my fingers around mine as I crept through the store. The eccentric old owner sat perched on the edge of his stool in front of the register, giving me a yellow-toothed smile as I walked by. Right about now, my mother was probably in the back of a conversion van with eight other well-meaning Christians, feeling every bump and jolt as it sped down the highway, on their way to save some souls. I felt a pang of guilt for not going with her, using my overblown excuse of errands. It wouldn’t have killed me to give them a few hours. I could have colored with some kids or scrubbed some floors. So in lieu of real charity I decided to buy a few books to donate to the center and I headed up to the third floor, where the children’s books were kept.

  A little out of breath by the time I reached the top of the second flight of steep stairs, I paused for a second and looked around the room. The walls were papered with bright, mismatched patterns, and the space had a large carpeted area underneath an enormous tree that sprawled protectively over and around the shelves of books. It looked like it had been fashioned from lumberyard scraps, with felt leaves filling out its magical canopy. Ornaments and lights hung from the branches, making it look like something right out of a storybook. But it was later that I would notice all those details, because in the middle of it all, sitting awkwardly on a too-small stool in the shape of a fairy-tale mushroom, was Mark. He had a copy of Goodnight Moon open in front of him, and he pushed his glasses up on his nose before turning the page. He paused, as if giving a memory its due, then closed the book and added it to a stack on his right. He reached his arms out in front of him and arched his back in a lazy Saturday kind of stretch. That was when our eyes met.

 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  My heart lurched from my chest, and my lips lifted into an utterly reflexive smile. I let out a breath that came out like a laugh. What I was feeling felt closest to relief, the kind of relief that you might feel upon hearing the jury deliver a not-guilty verdict for a crime of which you were innocent. He smiled softly and genuinely, and I knew, by the look in his eyes, that he recognized me. It was almost as if he was expecting me.

  With one hand in his back pocket, he stood and pointed around him. “A family I know just had a baby,” he said, by way of an explanation. “I was looking for a gift.”

  “So you weren’t just catching up on your literature?”

  He looked down and let out a quiet but heartfelt laugh. “So, how are you?” he asked, his head cocked just a bit to one side.

  “I’m good,” I said, remembering the state I was in that night. “Much better than the last time you saw me.” I then blushed, realizing that I had assumed too much, that he might be trying to place me, vaguely recognizing my face and flipping through his mental files to remember exactly who I was. “I don’t know if you remember, but I’m Ellen; I was at—”

  “I remember you, Ellen,” he interrupted.

  I felt that soaring feeling when he said my name. “Hey, you know, I never really did get to properly thank you for everything you did that night. So even though coffee doesn’t begin to cut it, could I buy you a cup?” I asked hopefully, pointing in the general direction of the café.

  He smiled and gestured toward the stairs. “After you.” He was wearing a thin, fitted plaid shirt that looked like it was vintage, a pair of jeans, and Converse sneakers. His hair was a bit longer than I remembered and I thought the extra length looked good on him. His walk was slow, confident, but still totally unaffected.