Can I Get An Amen? Page 16

“How long did you stay?”

  “Three years. Then I came back to the States.” He took a sip of his wine. “What do you do for that law firm?”

  “I’m the assistant to one of the partners. It’s just a temporary thing until the economy picks up,” I said dismissively. He didn’t lie and tell me it sounded interesting, didn’t patronize me by pretending to be impressed. He just nodded as if processing the information. “What do you want to do?”

  “Well, I used to work at an advertising agency in Boston.”

  “And you want to get back into that?”

  “Not really,” I said with an embarrassed laugh. “I think I’m figuring all of that out right now.” I thought of Luke reminding me of how much I used to like to write.

  “What about you?” I asked, realizing that I hadn’t yet asked him about his work. “What do you do?”

  “Oh…” He shifted in his chair, as if surprised I’d turned the focus back to him. “I work for a nonprofit.”

  “Really? What sort?”

  “Well, we are sort of a catchall. But our main focus is poverty, I would say.”

  “What is it called?”

  He paused to take a sip of wine. “The Need Alliance.”

  It wasn’t long before Armena brought our appetizers. We ate with our hands, and Mark watched me, chuckling as I struggled to tame my unruly empanada.

  Our entrees came and I drank more wine than I intended to. Soon I had that warm, content feeling in my stomach, and the inhibitions in which I had wrapped myself were starting to fray. But the conversation flowed easily and happily, and I often caught myself staring at the handsome, interesting man across from me, feeling—for the first time in a very long time—lucky.

  He cut one of the last bites from his roasted pork loin. We had been talking about college; he had gone to Columbia for graduate school. “Don’t you owe me a long story?” he said.

  I tilted my head and sighed, remembering everything that had brought me here, to this tiny little Cuban restaurant with the laminate table and neon OPEN sign, thinking that maybe there was something to all those clichéd condolences that are intended to give perspective and hope. Things happen for a reason. “It’s not really a happy story,” I said with a bittersweet smile.

  Mark rotated his tumbler of wine with his fingertips. With his sleeves pushed up, I saw that the prominent veins on his hands wove their way up to his arms and ran over his taut, long muscles like twine. “I didn’t think it would be.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked, intrigued by his intuition.

  “Long stories never are.” He sat back in his chair and looked at me intently. He was effortlessly seductive.

  I didn’t debate what to say or coyly put off the truth. The facts came out easily and painlessly. “I lived in Boston with my husband,” I said plainly. “Well, my ex-husband now,” I added quickly. “He left, and so I ended up moving back home to Jersey.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s okay.” And it was. I realized that it really wasn’t such a long story after all. “Now I have a question for you,” I said, feeling emboldened by the liberating honesty. “Why did you wait until today to call me?”

  He looked a little sad. “It’s a long story,” he said ironically, trying to smile.

  Just then, as if by divine intervention, he was let off the hook as an old man stood and took his wife by the hand. They began dancing with slow, small steps. He had one hand around her waist; the other they clasped, she fitting into his chest perfectly as they danced like they must have danced a thousand times before.

  Armena came to clear our plates and nodded her head toward the dancing couple, saying something in Spanish to Mark. “She said that every time they hear this song, they dance,” he explained. Conversations paused at tables all around the restaurant as patrons gazed at the old couple with admiration and fondness. The song ended and they sat, with as little ceremony as they had stood. There were a few claps. Mark looked at me and smiled.

  . . .

  Mark’s car idled in front of mine in the parking lot by my office. “Why don’t you let me drive you home?” he suggested.

  “No, I really am fine.” The wine buzz that I had had over dinner had faded, though I didn’t want to get out of his car just yet.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “I’m sure.”

  He pulled into a spot near mine and got out to open my door, extending his hand to help me out. I lowered my chin into the neck of my coat to ward off the cold.

  “I had a great time tonight,” I said, as I stood with one hand on my driver’s side door handle.

  Mark didn’t say a word. Instead he leaned slowly in and slid his hand onto my lower back, planting a whisper of a kiss on my lips. I never imagined such a gentle kiss could feel so explosive.

  “I’ll call you,” he said as our lips parted, his mouth still inches from mine.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I was lying on Kat’s bed, staring at the huge glass lantern that hung from the ceiling. It was romantic, I decided, to have something like that above your bed. When I got a place of my own, I’d get one just like it.

  “So you like him,” said Kat. It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact. She sat up in bed and regarded me carefully, waiting for my reaction. Though she hadn’t been thrilled when I’d let myself in early Saturday morning, I had plied her with bagels with cream cheese and smoked salmon, which I’d picked up on the way there.

  I rolled over and faced her. “Yeah. I like him.”

  “But he had no explanation for why he didn’t call until the morning of the night you guys were supposed to go out?”

  “He just said it was a long story.”

  This was not an excuse that would typically fly with Kat, but he had earned merit points for the unusual and unpretentious choice of locale for our date.

  “So when are you going to see him again?”

  “He just said that he’d call.”

  “He has three days. Tops. If it goes longer than three days, then he has some weird baggage… like a wife and kids.”

  I knew that Kat was just trying to reacquaint me with the rules of the road for dating, but I was too dangerously blissful to pay any attention. “I can’t wait for you to meet him,” I said.

  Kat gave me a look of warning. “Just… be careful, Elle. It’s been a while for you, and this is the first guy since Gary.” She paused, choosing her words carefully. “Just don’t fall too hard too fast.”

  I knew that this was going to become common advice, echoed by Luke and then Jill. But the truth was that it was already too late for cautions and warnings. Even before last night, it would have been too late. “Don’t worry, Kat,” was all I said.

  “Does this mean you are over the whole Gary thing?” Coming from anyone else, this comment would have sounded flip and insulting, but Kat wasn’t trying to minimize my divorce. We were just treading in uncomfortable waters for her; she hated self-help-y language. Does this mean that you’ve begun to heal from the breakup of your marriage? It was something Kat would simply never say.

  “I don’t know if you ‘get over’ things like that. I think you just kind of learn to live with it.” I thought for a moment about how easy it seemed to be for Gary to leave, about what, exactly, it was that I had mourned. “But I don’t think any of it would have happened if Gary and I had been meant for each other. I mean, by definition it couldn’t have.”

  Kat’s silence said everything. I knew that she was thinking about how convenient this epiphany was, what a cozy little coincidence that it came to me on the heels of meeting someone new. I would have thought the same thing.

  . . .

  Mark did call. He called that same day, when I was elbow deep in dirty clothes in my parents’ laundry room. I had been neglecting my laundry for a couple of weeks, and today suddenly felt like the perfect day to tackle it. Not only did I rigorously sort my clothing according to color and fabric type, but I pretrea
ted stains and meticulously folded a load that had been left in the dryer. That’s what a great date can do; it can be like a shot in the arm. I closed the door to the washer and pulled my cell phone from the pocket of my sweatpants.

  “Hey,” said Mark, his voice deep and slow. “You made it home okay last night?”

  It sounded like he was in the car. “Yeah,” I said, tucking my hair behind my ear. “Totally fine.”

  “What are you up to this week?”

  I grinned like a teenager. “Just work, really.”

  “I would love to see you.” I pictured him driving, gripping the wheel hard as he spoke. “Tonight I have some work that I need to do and tomorrow I have plans, but what about Monday after work?”

  “Monday sounds good.”

  “Do you want me to pick you up at work again? Or do you want to go home first?”

  “Why don’t we meet at work? It’s just easier.” I resolved to come clean about where I really lived, whom I really lived with.

  “I’ll pick you up at five thirty, so we can grab dinner before the show.”

  “Show?”

  I knew he was smiling. “You’ll see.”

  . . .

  The message at church the next day was on acceptance, and the soft-spoken, humble John Blanchard stood before the congregation, telling the story of the woman at the well, in which Jesus and his disciples passed through Samaria and stopped at a well to draw water. The disciples continued on to a small village to buy food, leaving Jesus alone. “It was noon, the hottest time of the day, when she came, to find Jesus resting there.” Reverend Blanchard held his Bible in both hands in front of him, with gentle reverence. “All the other women had gone in the morning, but this woman—this woman was an outcast among outcasts.” The Samaritans, he had explained, were despised by the Jews, but the woman at the well was the object of particular ostracism, having committed adultery. “But Jesus spoke to her. He spoke to her, he drank from her cup, and he offered her the living water, which is life everlasting.” His voice grew in power, reaching a crescendo as he spoke of eternal life. “He did these things because Christ doesn’t care about our reputation. He doesn’t care about our sins or our past. Pauper or prince, leper or king, he offers us all his magnificent grace.”

  When the service ended, I walked out with my parents. Stopping when they stopped, I greeted the Arnolds, said hello to Christopher Hapley, and waved at Parker, who was there alone this morning.

  “What did you think?” I heard my mother ask my father as we made our way to the car.

  “It was a good message,” he said solemnly.

  “I thought it was just okay. It didn’t really speak to me today.” My mother sounded let down. She liked to leave church feeling as if a divine hand had guided the sermon from the minister directly to her. “You know, I think John Blanchard sometimes gets stuck in a rut.”

  My father didn’t comment; he just marched onward toward the car, his well-coiffed white hair, black overcoat, and serious expression making him look like a somber head of state, the type that knows too much to sleep well at night.

  “Next weekend I think I’m just going over to Prince of Peace,” said my mother, lowering her voice and offering a friendly wave to a familiar-looking couple engaged in conversation by a potted spruce adorned with a burgundy velvet bow. “I’m telling you, that minister there is alive with the word. You know, when I was over at that family center again yesterday, he and I had a powerful conversation.” I was trailing behind them, feeling as I used to as a child, trying to pick up the nuances of their conversation, to read between the lines. “I had a chance to… talk to him,” she said, as if talk was a code word of some sort, “and he had such wisdom.” My father continued walking, the pace of his steps continuous and steady, like the beating of a heart.

  When we got home, my father retired to his office, closing the door behind him. My mother began addressing Christmas cards. “I could really use your help with this,” she said, as she pushed her reading glasses up her nose and squinted into her address book. Her penmanship was childlike and illegible, one of the remaining vestiges of being a poor preacher’s daughter in the rural South. Unlike the southern belle she often pretended to be, she didn’t spend hours a day writing in cursive on monogrammed stationery. “Your handwriting is so much nicer.”

  I pulled up a chair and picked up one of her fine-tip markers. “Where’s the list?” She handed me a sheet of loose-leaf paper with about one hundred names scrawled down it in columns. She had crossed off the cards she had completed so far.

  “I’ll stuff the envelopes,” she said, picking up a gold-trimmed card with a classic oil painting of a trumpeting angel. Inside was printed,

  For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. —Isaiah 9:6

  With love this Christmas,

  Roger and Patty Carlisle

  It was a card sent out of tradition, out of obligation, as a sign of life. It would be briefly read, the communication noted; then it would be quickly forgotten, serving only to keep my parents in an ever-extending and expanding circle of acquaintances. The cards they would receive in exchange would feature mannered grandchildren posed in front of trimmed trees with their hands folded neatly in their laps, doting parents and grandparents seated at their sides. Letters would be included with news on Ann and Stephen’s move to Paris, where the children would attend the American School. Or James’s promotion to vice president at the company that his grandfather had founded.

  My mother looked down as she licked an envelope. “Have you talked to your sister?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said cautiously. “Kat and I have talked.”

  “Is she planning on coming to see Aunt Kathy when she’s here?”

  “She said she is,” I reported, relieved that I wouldn’t have to be in the position to either condemn or defend Kat if she hadn’t planned on seeing our aunt.

  “Well,” said my mother, playing the gatekeeper, “I don’t know when she thinks she’s going to see her. Aunt Kathy has a whole bunch of things she wants to do when she’s here. We can’t just wait around for when Kat decides to show up.”

  “I don’t think Kat expects you to wait around. I’m sure she’ll work around your plans.”

  “Right,” scoffed my mother. “Your sister doesn’t care a thing about other people. That’s her problem right there.” She shook her head, as if reviewing the evidence against Kat. “She’s totally self-centered.”

  “Mom,” I groaned. I hadn’t wanted to go down the Kat route. “Let’s drop it, okay?”

  “Fine,” she replied indignantly. “I just think that you ought to tell Kat that if she wants to see her aunt, then she should at least call me to make some plans.”

  . . .

  The next day, I sat at my desk, willing the day to pass quickly so that I could see Mark, but the six hours that I still had to put in at the office seemed an impossible, interminable amount of time. So it should have been a given that Parker would call, to effectively halt time with a colonoscopy of a conversation.

  “So, everything with the party is all set?” she asked.

  I gave her a status update on her tedious, exaggerated little to-do list, the tasks of which I’d mostly accomplished.

  “Oh, that’s great, because I am so busy that I literally don’t think I could do one more thing.”

  I twisted the phone cord around my finger. I would have never been like you, I thought. If I had your life, I would have been so different. “Yup, everything is basically done,” I said.

  “You are such a gem, Ellen,” gushed Parker. Coming from anyone else, this remark may have sounded sincere, but Parker’s intent was to establish hierarchy, making sure I understood my subservience. As if to prove my theory, she added, “I just wish my housekeeper was as on top of things as you are.”

  “All ri
ght, well, I’m sure I’ll talk to you soon,” I said, trying to sound cheerful.

  Philip walked into the office as I was replacing the receiver. “Was that Parker?” he asked as he hung his coat on the rack near my desk.

  “Yup. She was just checking on the Christmas party details.”

  He forced a smile that almost instantly vanished. “It sounds like you two have managed to become close again.”

  I smiled and made a small noise that was intended to sound like pleasant agreement, while turning back to my computer. Philip took a few steps and hovered above my desk. Across the way, Brenda shifted in her seat. “I know this is awkward, but since you and Parker are… friends, I just want to reiterate the need for discretion. Privacy is very important to me and the firm, and of course I wouldn’t want to put Parker in the uncomfortable position of knowing something that she… shouldn’t.”

  Instinctively, I knew that this conversation had to do with that strange phone call from the woman with the regal voice. “I understand,” I said, feeling uncomfortably complicit. Any voyeuristic enjoyment around my speculations and conjecture was instantly gone, because if it was real—if Philip’s affair passed out of the realm of the hypothetical—then Parker would deserve my sympathy. I didn’t want that moment to come, when I was compelled to shake my head and avert my eyes, joining with others in their clichéd laments. What a shame. The poor children. I didn’t want to feel sorry for Parker. I wanted to hate her.

  When Philip went back into his office, I looked over at Brenda, who was on her way to the ladies’ room. She walked quickly, her ankles wobbling a bit since she was unaccustomed to the heels she was wearing.

  “What do you think?” she had asked that morning, turning proudly in front of me, angling her foot so that I could get a good look. “Beth talked me into them.” Beth was her daughter.

  “They’re great,” I said. “Very sexy.”

  I now heard the clack of those heels as they hit the hardwood floor. She brought her curved hand thoughtfully to her mouth as she rounded the corner and disappeared. I wondered if Philip had had the same conversation with her.