Can I Get An Amen? (11 page)

. . .

When I walked into the house, I expected to find my mother fluttering around the kitchen, getting dinner ready. “I made your favorite, honey, Aunt Kathy’s shrimp étouffée,” she’d say. “To celebrate your new job.” But the kitchen was empty, clean, and silent when I arrived.

“Mom?” I called as I made my way into the living room. Though her car was in the garage, there was no sign of her. “Mom!” I shouted louder and more frantically, suddenly picturing those
television commercials with elderly women lying immobilized for hours from an injury or a stroke. My mother was only in her early sixties, but she was so fragile-looking, so thin.

I barged into my parents’ bedroom, which was at the far end of the first floor.

“Ellen!” said my mother, startled. She was sitting in the wingback chair looking out the window.

“I was calling you!” I scolded. “Didn’t you hear me?”

“Sorry, honey,” she said distractedly, offering no explanation. “How was work?”

I pictured Brenda alone at her desk, eating a salad, and shook my head. “This is just all really, really hard.” There was a catch in my voice.

This was my mother’s cue to leap up and hug me, to tell me how brave I was and how proud I made her. But she just sat there and looked back toward the window. “The enemy is really attacking this family,” she said, her blue eyes looking sad and empty.

I gave a humorless, mocking laugh. It was archaic, blaming the devil. She was like a starving, ignorant medieval peasant, believing the failing crops were the work of a witch.

“We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in high places,” she said, paraphrasing a passage from Ephesians. My mother truly believed that the events of the world, large and small, personal and shared, could all be directly or indirectly attributed to the epic, ongoing struggle between good and evil.

“Mom, the devil didn’t make Gary leave me. Gary made Gary leave me,” I said bitterly, always trying to inject logic and reason.

“Your poor father,” she mumbled, shaking her head, almost as if talking to herself.

“Dad?” I asked, alerted to a new concern. “What’s happened to Dad?”

She snapped her head up and met my eyes, like a skilled actress who can jump instantly back into character. “Oh,” she said with a sigh, “he just has a lot on his plate with Channing Crossing.”

W
hen my first couple of weeks passed without any sign of Parker, I began to think I had overreacted. That I had, for even a millisecond, viewed the fact that Philip Kent was her husband as grounds to give up a paycheck seemed absurd. When I saw him, Philip was professional and amicable, though more often than not he was out of the office at meetings or lunches. Since Brenda was seated just a dozen or so feet away from me, happy to answer questions and fill in any blanks left by Philip, I expected that he was very pleased with my performance so far.

On the Wednesday of my second week, Philip announced that he would like to “formalize my employment” a few days before my trial period officially ended. “I have no doubts about your ability. I’ll contact Dana at McPharrell,” he said with a smirk. “She’ll be so pleased to be rid of me.”

That Saturday night, Jill and I made plans to meet Luke in the city to celebrate. Kat, who had eventually returned my calls, made a weak excuse as to why she wouldn’t be able to join us, a
more modern version of “I’m washing my hair.” She had made no mention of what had happened with the Arnolds and offered no explanation for the cold shoulder, but I knew better than to push my luck and question her. While I might have to endure a period of distance, I would eventually get back into her good graces. My parents were another matter entirely. Their lines of communication could remain closed indefinitely. Again.

The situation with Kat was weighing heavily on my mother. “I have so much to pray about,” she said as she pulled a silk scarf around her neck on her way to her Thursday evening prayer meeting. “Do you want me to pray for anything for you?” she asked, pausing at the open door. She could have been asking if I needed anything from the store.

“The usual,” I replied.

. . .

Luke called me Saturday morning. “I’m bringing Mitch tonight,” he said. “I want you to meet him.” Luke had only ever introduced us to a boyfriend once before and was always a little evasive about his relationships, so I knew that Mitch was important.

Jill picked me up and we drove into Manhattan, pulling into a lot near the restaurant and paying a small fortune to have her car squeezed into a spot so tight that a piece of paper could barely have fit between the cars. We were meeting at a sushi place that Luke swore was the best in New York. “It’s just starting to get hot,” he said ruefully. New Yorkers are always so territorial about their restaurants.

“I thought San-Mi was supposed to have the best sushi.”

“No, San-Mi is kind of over,” said Luke sympathetically. It was the way you’d tell a ninety-year-old with dementia that Carter was no longer president. “Once tourists from Cleveland
hear that they might see Howard Stern there, you may as well be eating at Epcot.”

Luke and Mitch were seated at the bar of the narrow, dim restaurant when we arrived, Luke drinking white wine and Mitch sipping sake. Mitch smiled warmly and followed Luke over to greet us. We went through the round of hugs and handshakes, then took our seats. Mitch seemed shy in a sweet, goofy way, and had the sort of subterranean appearance of someone who spent a lot of time in front of a computer. Together, he and Luke looked like a perfect, unlikely fit—Luke with his penchant for kitschy, touristy souvenir T-shirts that stretched over his unbuff abs, and Mitch with his milky skin that had never seen a Hamptons summer. Serving as the master of ceremonies, Luke led the conversation in directions that would foster interpersonal connections.

“Mitch, I told you that Ellen used to do a lot of writing.” He turned to me to explain the relevance. “Elle, Mitch is an editor.” Mitch worked for an iconic metro monthly that enjoyed readership beyond its city limits.

“Well,” I started awkwardly, “I wouldn’t say that’s true exactly. I mean, I was an English major and did some writing in college.”

“And she was the editor of the student newspaper at Northeastern,” added Luke proudly. I shot him a look, as his hard sell of my meager experience made it seem that much more amateurish and childlike. Mitch was gracious, though, telling me he’d love to read anything I’d written.

When it came time to order, Mitch’s and Luke’s selections were adventurous and bold, as they skipped the rolls and headed straight for sashimi. Jill and I had more pedestrian tastes, Jill unabashedly so. While I pretended to be comfortable with the esoteric menu, Jill asked the waiter if they had anything cooked.
“Like shrimp? Or scallops?” But it wasn’t the sort of place that had volcano rolls, so we made do with tuna maki and miso soup.

“If I get a parasite,” whispered Jill after the waiter had departed, “I’m going to be seriously pissed.”

“But what if you get one of those worms that makes you lose, like, thirty pounds?” teased Luke, fully aware of Jill’s obsession with her weight.

“Shut up,” she retorted, rolling her eyes as if Luke were her brother. But as she looked consideringly at the sushi bar, I knew she was weighing the relative pros and cons of having a tapeworm set up camp in her intestine.

When the miso soup arrived with shrimp heads floating it, Jill and I squealed like schoolgirls, thoroughly embarrassing Mitch and Luke in their temple of authenticity. This restaurant was exactly the type of place where the initiated came to avoid the likes of Jill and me, with our McSushi palates.

“Stop it, you two,” scolded Luke with restrained amusement, “or I’m sending you back to Jersey without your supper.”

But Luke was right about the food. We ate around the shrimp heads, and when our rolls came, even we confessed how superb they were.

“So,” said Luke tentatively, in a tone that signified a turn toward the serious, “any trips to Boston planned?” He dipped an almost translucent rectangle of pale pink fish into his tiny pool of soy.

“Yeah,” I said, “in a couple of weeks.” Jill and Luke exchanged glances and the mood of the table sobered appreciably. I hadn’t told them that Gary had called with a date for the final hearing. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I imagined all the paperwork, so carefully complete, with the lines needing my signature so considerately pointed out with neon flags.

“Really?” asked Jill quietly.

“That’s good, Ellen,” said Luke confidently. “You’re ready.”

“Am I?” I asked, unconvinced.

“Yes, you are. I was worried for a while,” he confessed, “but you’re ready now.”

I simply refilled my soy moat and avoided their empathetic expressions.

. . .

On the way home, I slumped back in Jill’s leather passenger seat as the city began to disappear behind us. Jill was a shockingly fast driver, whipping from lane to lane and weaving between cars like she was in a video game. She had already been to traffic school once, despite the fact that she had something of a sixth sense for the police and usually spotted them in plenty of time to slow down.

Why she ever drove in the right-hand lane I didn’t know, though I suspected she enjoyed bearing down on the cars in front of her, then zooming by them with the kind of exaggerated velocity that was supposed to shame them for obeying the speed limit. I watched her go through the routine again and again, as she sped past luxury cars, nondescript sedans, and finally a somehow familiar dark blue Subaru wagon.

I gasped when I saw it and whipped around and stared at the rear window to get another look.

“What?” asked Jill. “What’s wrong?”

From the bright glow of the tall sentinel lights of the highway, I could just make out the lines of his face before his turn signal went on and he veered off to the exit behind us.

“That was Mark,” I said with certainty. “That was him.” I was at once elated that I had found him, bereft that he was gone
again, and confused as to why I should feel this heart-pounding longing. My initial attraction could be explained by the whole white-knight phenomenon, but I shouldn’t still be thinking about him. The only man I should still be thinking about was Gary, and finding the strength to stand in the same room with him in front of a judge.

Jill furrowed her brow, taking her eyes off the road to look at me. “Who’s Mark?”

I
glanced over at the alarm clock, which read 8:22. Clearly we weren’t going to the eight-thirty service today. Pushing the covers off, I got up to get dressed for church. It was all becoming so routine, just as it always had been. Every Sunday we used to pile into my mother’s minivan and drive to Grace Bible Church. This was before my parents made the switch to Christ Church, when we thought everyone’s mother spoke in tongues.

Later, when we were old enough to ask the questions that we had been afraid to consider as children, my mother would remind us of our roots. “I remember when you came off the bus after the preteen retreat and told me that you’d been saved,” she said. “Jesus lives in you, Ellen.” Like the prodigal son, we may wander, she thought, but we’d always return to Christ.

My father looked up from his paper when I walked into the kitchen. “Morning, Ellie,” he said. There was a weariness in his voice, and I wondered how long it had been there. “How is work
going?” I hadn’t seen much of Dad since I started at Kent & Wagner.

“Oh, it’s okay,” I said, grabbing a mug out of the cabinet. “It’s a paycheck, ya know?”

My mother approached the kitchen and, as usual, I could hear her before I could see her. “Roger, where is the…,” she called, stopping when she saw me. “Oh, hey, honey.”

“Hi, Mom.”

My mother turned her attention back to my father. “Where is the checkbook?” she asked, lacking her usual Sunday morning enthusiasm.

“Why?” he asked, almost defiantly. Since they had written a fairly large check to the church every week for as long as I could remember, even I knew the answer.

My mother said nothing and simply planted her hand firmly on her hip and tilted her head, her face becoming stern.

“It’s in my top left desk drawer,” he answered.

She turned on her heels to go fetch it. When she returned, she poured a cup of coffee and sat down at the counter, while my father stayed at the table.

“So I guess we’re going to the ten-thirty service today?” I asked, thinking of Lynn and Edward Arnold, who would no doubt be seated front and center.

“Yes,” my mother replied firmly. “Then I’m going over to Prince of Peace again. Ellen, why don’t you come with me?” She said it as if the thought had suddenly occurred to her, when I was sure she had been planning this pitch all morning.

I groaned. “One church, Mom. I said I’d go with you guys to one church a week.”

“Well, maybe next week we can go to Prince of Peace instead.
Now,
that
is a cool church. I would just love for you to hear that minister.”

“Mom, please stop trying to sell me on that kook.”

“Ellen Louise Carlisle,” she said, slapping the table. “How dare you assume that he is a kook? I’m telling you, you kids pretend to be so
open-minded
, and here you are judging a man you’ve never even met.”

I instantly regretted what I had started. The blatant hypocrisy that, as she put it, “politically correct liberals” had toward Christianity was one of her favorite soapbox rants. “They want to accept everyone and everything except Christian values,” she would say. “I’m telling you, it’s like the time of Herod all over again.”

“All right, all right. I get it. Don’t judge the minister,” I said, employing the same inflection used for
don’t shoot the messenger
. Without looking up from his paper, my father gave a quiet chuckle, but my mother didn’t get it.

She furrowed her brow. “I don’t catch on. What’s so funny?”

. . .

I could tell my parents were ill at ease when we walked into church, and my mother’s pale blue eyes darted around the building. She was looking for the Arnolds. We took our seats in a pew that was just a bit farther back than usual. My mother flipped through the program to see that the head pastor, her least favorite, would be speaking today. “Shit,” she whispered. “It’s Thomas Cope.” I chuckled silently at my mother, the preacher’s daughter, resorting to profanity over who would be leading the service.