Can I Get An Amen? Page 17

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Later that day, Helen, the receptionist, rang my line. Helen had been with Kent & Wagner for decades, having been hired by Philip’s father when he started the firm. “Ellen, you have a visitor,” she growled. Though, from what I understood, she had never smoked a day in her life, her voice sounded like she had a pack-a-day habit.

  I immediately panicked. “Oh, okay. I’ll be right down.” I hadn’t expected Mark to come in, thinking he would just call when he arrived.

  I grabbed my bag and slid on my coat, logging off my computer before racing toward the stairs. Brenda had left at five p.m. sharp to go to her Pilates class. As I glanced into my bag to make sure that I had remembered my cell, I nearly bumped into Philip, who was leaving one of the associates’ offices.

  “You heading out, Ellen?” he asked casually.

  “Yup,” I answered, glancing down the mezzanine to see Mark sitting on one of the long leather couches. His legs were wide and crossed, and he was leaning back, his arm draped over the seat back. Philip followed my gaze.

  “Oh,” he said, registering Mark’s presence, “have fun.”

  Mark smiled and stood when he saw me at the top of the steps, which I made my way quickly down. As he gently kissed my cheek, I felt the slight prickle of his stubble. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You, too.”

  He looked around the office, appearing neither impressed nor unimpressed. “You all set?”

  He put his arm protectively around my back and led me outside.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, once we were in the car.

  “Well, we are going to grab a bite to eat,” he began, his eyes on the road. “Then there is a group of Tibetan monks who do this amazing chanting. They are going to be performing at Lane College, so if you’re interested, I thought we could go check that out.”

  “I’d love to,” I said earnestly.

  “But next time,” he said, briefly resting his hand on my knee, “it’s your turn to pick what we do.”

  I smiled, my heart soaring at the promise of a third date.

  We pulled up to an Indian restaurant near the college. “It’s like a Himalayan theme night,” he joked.

  Once we were inside, the service was brusque; the waitress seemed to have been abused by one too many college students. She rushed us to a table and dropped two menus in front of us. “I’ll be back for your order,” she said, before hurrying away. I began to peruse the plastic-covered menu, which, from the dull, matte streaks, looked like it had just been wiped with sanitizer.

  “Mutton?” I asked, more to myself than to Mark.

  “It’s usually sheep, but here they use goat.” Seeing the look on my face, he let out a genuine and indulgent laugh. “It can actually be really good.” But we kept our order a little more conventional, requesting chicken curry, dal, and a generous basket of naan from our unimpressed waitress.

  “Is that all?” she asked, without looking up from her order pad.

  “Yes, thank you,” answered Mark.

  I watched her hurry to the kitchen, then turned to Mark. “So, I have a confession,” I said. And for a moment, Mark looked like he was enjoying a private joke.

  “Remember that condo where you dropped me off… that night?” I could tell that we both avoided any unnecessary reference to the very first night we met.

  He nodded, though he looked unsure of where I was going.

  Though I had rehearsed what I was going to say a hundred times, had convinced myself that my explanation was reasonable and rational, I was suddenly nervous.

  “It was actually my sister’s place.” I forced myself to maintain eye contact. “I have been living with my parents since my divorce, but her place was so much closer and you had already been so nice, and I just didn’t want…”

  “Shhh…,” said Mark, both amused and concerned by my anxiety. “I get it. Don’t worry.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What are you sorry for?” he asked kindly.

  I didn’t answer.

  We finished up our meal and the waitress brought our check, which Mark refused to let me near. Though I appreciated the gesture, I knew that he probably didn’t make much at his nonprofit.

  “All right, but next time,” I said as he handed his credit card to our waitress, “everything is my treat.”

  . . .

  We took our seats just before the show started, whispering our excuse me’s as we shimmied past the more timely audience members. The lights dimmed slightly as the monks took the stage, dressed in turmeric-colored robes, some carrying long horns. The audience of largely students and professors leaned forward, not from excitement so much as from preparation, the way you might settle in before an important lecture. The monks started their performance with little fanfare; they simply began emitting their deep, vibrating songs while standing below crisscrossing prayer flags that hung in the space above the stage.

  “They’re saying prayers in their religion,” whispered Mark, referring to the chants. He turned to look at my face. I was absorbed. I wouldn’t call the sounds beautiful, exactly, but they were unique, exotic. “It’s interesting, isn’t it?” he asked.

  It was.

  When the show was over, I thanked Mark. “Where did you hear about them?” I asked, gesturing to the now empty stage.

  “I saw a similar group a while back,” he said. “I was a religion minor in college, so it was part of one of my courses.”

  The doors opened and we made our way back outside. It was one of those beautiful clear winter nights when everything seems crisper, sharper, from the crystalline air. “Want to go for a walk?” Mark asked.

  It was a nice enough campus, though the buildings were modern, not those quintessential old ivy-covered buildings that came to mind when I thought of universities.

  “How has it been, living with your parents?” asked Mark.

  “It’s been all right. Better than you might expect, actually.” As I said it, I realized that it was true. Despite exasperations large and small—maybe in part due to exasperations large and small—being in my parents’ home had provided the comfort of the familiar. “I’m starting to look for my own place, though.”

  “Where are you looking?” I knew that Mark lived in his grandparents’ house, which had been left to him when his grandmother died a few years ago. His mother was originally from New Jersey and had lived most of her life here before moving to Africa.

  “In the general area,” I said. “Maybe near Kat’s.” From Mark’s description of his neighborhood, I figured he wasn’t more than a fifteen-minute ride from my sister’s place.

  “So,” started Mark, “are you still in contact with your ex-husband?” He had made the uncomfortable segue to my divorce.

  “We aren’t on terrible terms or anything, but I haven’t really spoken with him much.” I thought for a moment, my hands dug deep into my pockets. “I wouldn’t call us friends yet.”

  Mark hesitated. “If you don’t mind my asking, what happened?”

  It was the question I had been dreading, but coming from him it somehow seemed neutered. It was as though my fear had magnified it so much that when it was actually asked, I was prepared. Confronting the beast in the flesh was sometimes easier than confronting it in your mind.

  I watched my feet as I spoke, avoiding the cracks in the concrete. “Gary really wanted children,” I started. It was the first time I had spoken his name to Mark. “But we had a lot of trouble conceiving. We just couldn’t.” I kept my focus on the ground. “I couldn’t.”

  “And so he left you?” asked Mark, with a deep furrow in his brow.

  “I mean, I guess that’s the story. But it’s probably not that simple.” I watched my breath cloud in front of me before continuing. “I think Gary and I seemed right for each other on paper, but something was… missing.”

  It was hard to describe what that something was. Gary and I had loved each other; at least we did when we got married. But I had
begun to realize that I loved the idea of Gary more than I loved Gary. And maybe it was the same for him. We each had all the résumé points the other was looking for, but somehow they never exactly added up.

  Mark took my hand and pulled us gently to a stop. I expected the standard follow-up questions, on why we didn’t adopt, what else we had tried, but he just brought his hand to my chin and studied my face for a moment before he kissed me.

  We stood there, our faces flushed with the cold, our noses and cheeks red, our warm breath mixing with the winter air, and just kissed.

  Later on, I would remember that night as the night I fell in love with him. It was what everyone and everything had told me not to do, the classic mistake after a divorce or breakup, falling in love with the first guy you meet. Don’t look for your self-worth in another man! You need to reconnect with you! shouted all the books, shouted reason and logic and good judgment.

  But maybe it’s fate, I whispered back. Now, of course, I’m certain it was, though for quite different reasons.

  . . .

  “You’re home late,” said my mother. I hadn’t expected her to be awake, but she was sitting in the living room in her bathrobe, her feet propped up on an ottoman. The only illumination in the room came from the blue glow of the TV, which frenetically cast and then withdrew light from the dark room. The volume was so low that it was almost inaudible. She wasn’t watching TV; it was just keeping her company.

  “Yeah, I had plans after work.” I hadn’t thought to let her know; I never did when it was Luke or Kat or Jill that I was with.

  “With who?” she asked. She looked tired, too tired to fight.

  “A guy I met.”

  I waited for her reaction. It was her reflex to disapprove, to assume that no man I found would be good enough, smart enough, Christian enough. That was the one chink in Gary’s armor with my parents—he wasn’t a devout Christian. He was brought up Catholic and attended Mass on major holidays, but that was it. And though she would never say it, I’m sure she believed that was why he was capable of leaving, because he was somehow corrupted. And he was corrupted because he was corruptible.

  “What did y’all do?” asked my mother.

  Though I could have and should have lied, though I knew what I was about to start, I told her the truth. “We went to dinner.” I dropped my bag by the couch. “And then we went to watch a group of Buddhist monks perform these chants.”

  She brought her hands to her face and covered her eyes. “Ellen!” she gasped. “Why would you drink from another well when you have the everlasting spring of the Holy Spirit living in you!”

  I felt a surge of what closely resembled satisfaction. That was why I told her, because I knew that she was going to say something like that: a dogmatic, overblown line that made Christianity sound small and petty and insecure.

  “Mom, please,” I scoffed, “there is nothing wrong with listening to Buddhists chanting. Didn’t you hear the sermon yesterday in church? Wasn’t it about acceptance and tolerance?”

  She was on her feet. “Ellen, that’s not what Reverend Blanchard meant and you know it! I just don’t know why you would open yourself up to that!”

  “Listen, Mom. It’s a part of their culture. It was a performance. They weren’t signing up new monks or anything.”

  She propped her hand on her hip. “So, what is this guy you’re dating, a Buddhist?”

  “No, Mom,” I said. “He’s not a Buddhist. He was a religion minor in college.”

  She acted like I had just punched her in the stomach and she gripped the side of the chair for support. “Jesus,” she muttered, not as an expletive but as the beginning of a prayer.

  “Good night, Mom,” I said, rolling my eyes. My mother could always be counted on to do what we expected. She was a familiar, exasperating constant.

  . . .

  “Ellen,” called my mother as I rushed out the door for work, “remember you need to come with me to the airport on Friday.” Aunt Kathy was flying in from California later that week, and my mother, who hated to park at Newark airport, insisted that I circle the terminal while she went in. “So don’t make any plans with that Buddhist.” That was what Mark was now known as, “the Buddhist.” After a few attempts to set her straight, I had thrown in the towel.

  “I know, Mom. I got it,” I said.

  “I mean it, Ellen. I don’t want to leave my car there for even a minute. The Ledger ran a story just the other day about how Newark leads the nation in car thefts.”

  “You told me.” Aunt Kathy would be staying for three weeks, spending Christmas and New Year’s with us while her husband, a retired naval captain, went on a sailing trip down the coast of Central America with his brother. Aunt Kathy’s only child, my cousin Libby, was married to a Swede and living in Stockholm.

  . . .

  Mark and I were having a quick lunch on Wednesday; then we would see each other again Saturday night. I was planning on taking him into New York, where we would meet Luke and Mitch for a drink after, as Luke had suggested, going to the Pierre-Alain Rigauraut exhibition at the MoMA.

  “Are you sure that’s a good date idea, Luke? I mean, I don’t exactly frequent museums.”

  “So?”

  “So it just feels a little fake. A little not me.”

  “You don’t have to pretend to be Peggy Guggenheim. And who cares if the only reason you are going is because Mark will be with you?” His voice took on a dreamy quality. “Relationships should get us outside of our own little worlds.”

  I smiled. I knew how much Luke loved Mitch. He had been reading more, recommending books to me that Mitch had suggested to him. Mitch was bringing out the best in Luke.

  “You’re right,” I agreed.

  At lunch I told Mark about our plans. “I thought we could go into the city,” I said, as I tried to eat my Reuben, thinking that it was a poor choice. No man should see you eat a Reuben until after you’ve slept together. “There is supposed to be a great exhibition at the MoMA; then we could meet my brother and his boyfriend for drinks.”

  “Oh, the Rigauraut thing.”

  “Yeah,” I said, impressed that he had known about it.

  He popped a potato chip in his mouth. “I’m meeting the family, huh?” he teased.

  “Is that weird?” I asked self-consciously. I knew that we hadn’t been together long, if we were even officially together. “It’s just that Luke is great, and Mitch is great, and I think you’d really like them.”

  “Relax,” he said, rubbing my knee. “I’d love to meet your brother. Hey, invite your parents!”

  Though he was joking, I gave my usual disclaimer regarding my parents. “All right. I just hope you like talking about Jesus.”

  “Oh, are they Christians?” he asked. In my experience, people only ever asked this question in one of two ways: with Moonie-like enthusiasm that they’d found some like-minded soul, or with a combination of disbelief and disdain, similar to the way you might ask someone if they’d just farted. But Mark seemed entirely neutral.

  “Yeah, you could say that,” I said sarcastically.

  “Are you?” he asked. Shockingly, no one had ever really asked me that before, not in any meaningful way. An assumption was always made one way or the other, depending on the audience. My friends and peers marveled at how I managed to escape indoctrination, while my parents’ set—the Arnolds, Donaldsons, and the like—assumed I shared my parents’ views. I had never been called upon to communicate the complex and personal matter of my faith and consequently had no idea how to answer. So I answered honestly, taking a deep breath first.

  “I don’t know what I am.” Mark looked at me as if he understood entirely. “But my mother calls you the Buddhist,” I added, seeking to bring some levity back to the conversation, to move away from the more weighty side of faith and religion.

  “The Buddhist?” He laughed. “Why, because of the monks?”

  I nodded. Mark looked at me, shaking his head and quietly laughin
g, as if it was funnier than I even knew.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Aunt Kathy was already waiting by the curbside pickup of Terminal C when we pulled up. The moment she and my mother made eye contact, they screamed like teenagers. My mother swung open the door before I had even come to a complete stop and hopped out of the car to embrace her sister. They stood there, not even speaking, just gripping each other like they couldn’t let go.

  I rolled down the passenger’s side window. “Come on, you two,” I called. A police car idled behind us, monitoring the area.

  “Ellen, honey,” said Aunt Kathy, bustling over to my side of the car and giving me a kiss through the window. “I am so sorry about everything with Gary.” I hadn’t seen Aunt Kathy since before the divorce.

  “Thanks, Aunt Kathy.” A gray minivan flew by us and came within inches of Aunt Kathy, whose rear end was nearly in the next lane. “Oh my God!” I said, as air currents from the traffic whipped my hair around my face. “Just get in the car.”

  Aunt Kathy and my mother sat together in the backseat while I played chauffeur. They had a routine every time Kathy came to visit, which involved stopping first at White Castle for mini-cheeseburgers, then going to a liquor store to buy a bottle of Absolut Peppar. My mother wasn’t much of a drinker, but she and Aunt Kathy always had Bloody Marys whenever they got together. They had been doing it for almost forty years, ever since my father—who had been down in Georgia working on the Holster Dam—got a call from a friend who had a job for him, something to do with real estate development, up in New Jersey.

  Aunt Kathy was a little plumper than my mother, with big, country-western blond hair and a new set of breast implants. “Feel ’em,” she urged me in a southern accent that had stayed even more pronounced than my mother’s, plunging her chest forward. “They feel just like real tits.” This was Aunt Kathy’s shtick; she played at being the bawdy broad, but underneath she was just as much a prude as my mother. Though she had always been the less inhibited of the two, she was just as devout a Christian.

  I looked at Aunt Kathy’s protruding bosom in the rearview mirror. “Maybe when I’m not doing eighty down Route 78.”