Tender Grace (14 page)

On the road today, I couldn’t help but think about Andrew’s message. It had never occurred to me that I hadn’t forgiven him. Some things eventually cease to matter, and forgiveness becomes a given. But thinking back on every encounter with Andrew since he walked out that door, I find nothing that suggests forgiveness.

He called me in September after I moved to Springfield to attend college and asked why I had done such a thing.

“Are you still dating Melissa?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, there you go,” I said. “And, Andrew, I’m sure sorry if my leaving has made you feel bad.”

He didn’t say anything then, and neither did I. After a minute passed, both of us with nothing to say, I pushed the button to disconnect.

Over two years later, Andrew called me at my parents’ house during Christmas break. He had broken up with Melissa that summer and had just returned from a fall internship in Washington and run into someone who told him I had come home wearing an engagement ring.

“Do you love him?” he asked.

“You know what, Andrew, the answer to that should be obvious, but even if it isn’t, it’s none of your business.”

“I’m sorry you’re still mad.”

“I’m not mad; that was just a stupid question.”

“Will you go get a Coke with me?”

“I’m engaged, Andrew. No, I won’t go get a Coke with you. I have to go.”

“Merry Christmas, Audrey.”

Before I could decide whether to return the holiday sentiment, he hung up.

Seven months later, he called me in Springfield when I got home from my wedding rehearsal. It upset me that my heart rate increased noticeably when I recognized his voice. He said he was in Springfield and would come by and get me if I wanted to change my mind about marrying someone besides him.

“That’s not funny.”

“I’m sorry. I know it isn’t. And I know the timing is bad, Audrey, but I have one night left before you make the biggest mistake of your life, one night to tell you that I was a fool when I broke up with you. I wanted to tell you that when you were home for Christmas, but you wouldn’t give me the chance. I’ve called your apartment I don’t know how many times since then, but you’re never home. I finally gave up and sent you a letter almost two weeks ago. It came back yesterday. I sent the darn thing to Springfield, Illinois, instead of Springfield, Missouri.”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference.”

“I can’t believe that. I love you, Audrey. I always have. I need you to know that.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Besides the fact that Andrew had apparently taken up residence in an alternate universe, I could not believe he would do something as crazy as calling me the night before my wedding. I couldn’t believe he would make himself so vulnerable, that he could feel that desperate.

“Don’t do this,” he said, and the words took me back to my plea on the worst night of my life. I doubt he was aware of the irony.

“I’m as sure about this wedding as I’ve been about anything in my life. I can’t wait until tomorrow. If you’re really in Springfield, go home. I can tell you from experience, you’ll get over this.”

I didn’t see him again until our tenth high school reunion. Early in the evening, he came up to me and Tom, eager it seemed to meet Tom and to introduce me to his wife, Susan, a lawyer in the Oklahoma City firm where he worked. Tom and I sat across the room from them at a table with Willa and Ed, and Jackie Harris, another OSU roommate, and her husband. I was irritated with myself for stealing more than one glance at Andrew, and inappropriately gratified that each time I did he was looking at me. Later that evening Tom asked Willa to dance, knowing she loved to dance and that Ed refused even to sway to the music. When they left the table together, I was startled to see Andrew walking toward our table and more than uneasy when he stood beside my chair and looked down at me, asking me to dance.

But I stood up and went with him to the dance floor.

“You are more beautiful than the girl I remember,” he said with no other preamble.

For the first time in eight years, I looked into his eyes, my only response.

When I finally spoke, I had the perfect question: “Where’s Susan?”

“She’s tired,” he said. “She went back to the hotel.”

“You’re not staying with your parents?”

“She prefers a hotel.”

He pulled me closer, and I let him, choosing closeness over the discomfort of looking at him. We danced in silence for a minute or two, and I remembered “us.”

I was relieved when he pulled back to look at me again. “Let’s talk about you,” he said.

“Oh, Andrew,” I said with a sigh, “let’s not. In fact, I’m going to go find my husband.”

I walked off the dance floor before the music ended but turned to say one last thing, quite presumptuous of me as I think of it now. “Perhaps you should go find your wife.”

Why was I so needlessly curt after so many years?

Intuitively, I must have thought Andrew posed a threat to me. For several years after Tom and I were married, Andrew crossed my mind from time to time, and each time it happened, I felt enormous guilt. Eventually, when his name surfaced in my consciousness for whatever reason (I quit trying to analyze it), I taught my heart to say, “There is no Andrew,” until finally there wasn’t. I suppose I was curt because I wanted to keep it that way. I considered my motives noble.

After the reunion, it was a nonissue. He had his life, and I had mine. Tom and I were in the second half of decade one. Things were good and getting better, and Andrew seldom entered my thoughts.

The only other time Andrew and I were together, I didn’t know it. The occasion was my father’s funeral, eight years ago. Andrew sent beautiful flowers and a card, and I asked Mom to write him a nice thank-you note, which Henry and I signed. Maybe as much as a year later, Willa asked me in the course of some conversation if I had seen Andrew at my father’s funeral.

“Are you sure he was there?” I said. “His name wasn’t in the guest register.”

She was sure. She had seen him in the back row at the service, and at the cemetery she had seen him standing by his car while everyone else gathered around the casket for a final prayer. Later, while friends and family greeted Mom, Henry, and me, she had looked in his direction a second time, thinking she would go speak to him, but he was gone.

I wrote Willa earlier this evening and told her I had just arrived at the Grand Canyon and that I’d probably be at her house Friday evening, but not to plan dinner for me, because I couldn’t tell her what time I would arrive.

I wrote the kids an update, and I wrote Rita, checking in before she leaves on her trip and wanting to tell her the story of my trip to Yaki Point.

Then I wrote Andrew: “I’m fine. And I forgave you long ago.”

September 5

There wasn’t a cloud in sight this morning!

I arrived at the observation point while it was still dark and found a spot in front of the iron railing. I wasn’t the first to arrive, and I was glad I could still find an unhindered view. Standing there, I found it fascinating that I was one of only a few English-speaking tourists. I identified at least four other languages, the most prevalent, Japanese and German. When the light that precedes the sun made an appearance, talking in any language ceased, everyone’s eyes intent upon the horizon and what it had to say, rather than on those around them. Most people had brought cameras and video recorders, some setting them meticulously on tripods, but a few of us came with nothing except expectancy. We looked first at the ridge from where the sun would emerge any moment to the canyon walls on the opposite side, which the sun would soon illuminate. A heavy gilded curtain parting for the most venerated performance on the most impressive stage in the world could not have produced more anticipation. We longed for the sun to make its entrance, and when it did, we gasped, almost in unison.

I leaned against the rail, taking in nature’s opulence, and whispered, “Magnificent Lord, thank you for this gift.” Only a sense of social decorum kept me from lifting my arms to heaven and singing the chorus of “How Great Thou Art”!

As it was, a Chinese lady looked at me tentatively, as though she was sizing up my mental state. She seemed somewhat relieved, I think, when I said nothing else but merely smiled at her. That smile must have been something because it served to catapult me into a photography session. She asked me with amazingly effective hand motions and body language to take a picture of her and her husband and son, the canyon glorious behind them. It was my pleasure. And before I left the lookout point, I had snapped at least ten pictures of happy couples and families, and one of a lady from Germany, alone like I, who wanted a record of her being here. She seemed to sense I would understand that.

I watched her walk away and hoped sleepyhead friends were waiting for her back at a lodge. But even if they weren’t, she’d seen a brilliant sunrise over the Grand Canyon.

When the sun was well into the sky, I went back to my room and made myself presentable before getting the car and driving out of the park to pick up a personal pan pizza. (I may enter myself in the
Guinness World Records
for most pizzas eaten on a road trip.) Ravenous, I ate in my room, wishing I’d picked up two pizzas since the one sitting in the box on my lap was the size of a bagel. But that was the only glitch in my morning, and I bowed my head over the tiny pizza and thanked God for my daily bread and for his handiwork and my opportunity to see it in such a way. Then I clicked on the television and watched a
Law and Order
rerun, which can be found almost anytime of the day or night. My firsthand experience with the “law” part had not stifled my interest in the show. I did, however, find myself dozing through a second episode and decided to pull back the comforter and take a serious nap. Five fifteen in the morning, I am not used to.

It seems like I had a passel of dreams, but when I opened my eyes, I could recall only the last one. I was floating in the lazy river when up ahead I saw a man lounging in his inner tube, moving it along, using his hands for paddles. He looked a lot like Tom from the back, his sandy hair shiny and charmingly disheveled. I rushed through the water, dragging my inner tube behind me until I got close enough to see his face, and I almost cried when I realized it really was Tom. I could see my reflection in his hazel eyes.

He smiled. “Look who’s in the lazy river,” he said.

“I thought you were golfing,” I said, still amazed to find him there.

“This is great,” he said, “especially the scenery.”

I looked beyond him and saw the expanse of the Grand Canyon, but before I could take in its grandeur and wonder who thought to put a lazy river on the rim, I heard laughter behind me and turned to see the Chinese lady floating on her back without an inner tube, kicking her feet and propelling herself past Tom and me with a wave and a nod.

“Let me take a picture of you, Tom,” I said after waving back at my sunrise friend, “with the canyon in the background.”

He pulled himself out of the water and then helped me out while our inner tubes floated around the bend without us.

“No,” he said, taking the camera from around my neck. “I’ll take one of you.”

He posed me in front of the barricade at Yaki Point.

“That’s a good one,” he said, looking into my eyes, smiling my favorite smile.

I was rushing over to see what he saw on the screen of my digital camera when I awoke.

Closing my eyes, I willed myself back to sleep, wanting to find Tom again. But he had vanished with the dream, and tears slid down my temples and dampened the edges of my hair.

For a moment, I wondered whether the dream was a blessing or a curse, but I wiped the tears away and got up and washed my face before reading another group of verses in John, the best remedy I could think of for the longing I suddenly felt and didn’t know what to do with.

Jesus shows his understanding of human nature: “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” I have experienced that freedom many times in my life, but never any more poignantly than I have in these last weeks. I am being set free from “death in life”—today’s dream has not changed that. I’m overwhelmed with wonder at the work God is doing in my life. To think I might have been among those who had “no room” for his Word.

I’m going to take a shuttle to watch the sunset from one of the points later, and then before I close my eyes on this day, I’ll write the kids and tell them about this morning. Molly said in her last note that she thought this trip was good for me.

“But please tell me,” she wrote, “that you
will
be home by Thanksgiving.”

I imagine I’ll be home long before that, Molly.

Lord willing, of course.

The creek rising, I’m not worried about.

fifteen

September 6

Dressed in khaki walking shorts, a white T-shirt, and hiking boots I bought yesterday, I set my canvas bag by a chair in the lobby and plopped down to study my Grand Canyon guide.