Tender Grace (4 page)

How freaked Tom would be to learn I went only from Tulsa to Oklahoma City before stopping. He saw nothing in Oklahoma City on any trip we made in that direction, except possibly a convenience store. In his opinion we would have just gotten on the road.

So I had not seen the Oklahoma City Memorial until today. It ended up being my only destination. I slept late, watched a movie, and e-mailed the kids, so I didn’t arrive until late afternoon. As it turned out, that was good, because when I had been there awhile, I knew I had to stay until dark.

I really had no idea what to expect. When Rita’s son got married last year, one wedding and reception I
had
to attend, Rita put me at a table with two couples I knew from church and with some old friends of hers from Oklahoma City. I tried to be friendly to the couple none of us knew and pulled up all my reserves to ask one of my open-ended questions.

“So,” I had asked the man whose name I’ve forgotten, “is the memorial nice?”

“I guess,” he said.

Then he looked at me as if I had no education, formal or otherwise, and added, “It’s a
memorial
!”

Well, okay then.

I flashed him a quick little smile instead of thanking him for the patronizingly obvious and returned to my chicken and steamed vegetables. The other two couples could make Rita’s friends feel comfortable. It was beyond me. At least he was.

I’ll admit it wasn’t the most astute question, but had he been anything but a Neanderthal, he could have said something like, “It’s
much
more than nice. You really must see it.”

I’m glad I did. The three-acre site is a stunning symbolic tribute to everyone involved in the horrific 1995 bombing. I now know why a committee could unanimously agree on one design out of 624 entries.

I wanted to stay at the memorial until the lights came on to illuminate the Survivor Tree and the glass pedestals the granite chairs rest on, revealing the names of those who died. While I waited, a lady around my age arrived and sat down nearby. I looked over at her just as she looked at me. I almost turned away; instead I spoke, shocking myself and maybe her.

“They’ve built something beautiful in this horrid place,” I said.

She nodded and smiled. I thought she’d look away and sit in peace as I had intended to do, but she pointed at one of the memorial chairs. “My daughter,” she said.

Amazingly enough, I kept eye contact, but I didn’t say anything. I had no adequate response. She seemed to see that in my eyes.

August 13

I slept so late I almost missed church. Fortunately I had located one on my way to the memorial yesterday, so I knew my way, knew the service started at eleven. I sat in the back row and was out of there with the
amen
of the benediction; nevertheless, I had met with others to worship. That seemed like a good and very responsible way to spend part of my morning.

For lunch I picked up a hamburger and malt and took this fine meal back to the hotel. After I finished eating, I chewed two antacid tablets (small price to pay for grease and chocolate) and thought about taking myself to the botanical garden. But Sunday is the designated day of rest, so I decided to take a nap instead. A long one. Evidently yesterday wore me out.

My encounter with the lady sitting near me by the Survivor Tree may have contributed to my weariness, which was more a heaviness of the heart. She said she comes to the memorial once a month or so. The year it opened she came every week. She was overwhelmed the first time she saw her daughter’s name glowing in the glass base of her granite chair.

“I’ve wondered if I should quit coming so often,” she said. “But once a month isn’t too much, is it?”

It has been over a decade since her daughter died. Perhaps her question was rhetorical, but I answered her anyway.

“No,” I said, “it doesn’t seem too much, not to me.”

We sat and looked toward the chairs for a while before I asked, “Has being here given you the gifts mentioned in the inscription over the gates?”

“Comfort?” she asked. “And strength and peace and hope and serenity?”

She knew the inscription well. I smiled a yes.

“Yes and no,” she said. “I think such gifts come from above, but this is a wonderful place for God to do his work in me. And being here helps remind me that in this world we all suffer, sometimes horribly, and yet he will help us survive. Even thrive.”

She asked me if I had lost someone.

“Not in the bombing,” I said.

We parted then. We hugged each other, of all things, and walked away without another word.

August 14

I have spent one more day in Oklahoma City. I made it to the botanical garden. For someone who has been eschewing annuals, I found myself halfway enjoying the flowers, plants, bushes, and ponds. At one point, I actually wished I had brought a camera, thinking the scope of a stunning flower or landscaped pond, unlike a Niagara Falls or Grand Canyon, possible to capture.

I wish I’d had a camera for my Indian brave and for the Survivor Tree too.

But it comes to me that these entries are my record, as surely as photographs. And this choice of record has accomplished something besides recollection: Inside my head at least, I find I can speak.

This morning Tom’s Bible sat on the table next to my shoe bag, staring at me. “Oh, okay,” I said, picking it up. The anniversary card still marked chapter one of John, and I read his highlighted verses near the end of the chapter. Jesus invites interested disciples to come and see what he’s about, and they take him up on it.

I used to be among those eager to “see.” Or at least willing. Listlessness, however, has robbed me of inquiry and openness. But I sat there this morning, holding the Word of God, and wondered if a willingness to see might once again define me.

five

August 15

When I looked in the rearview mirror and saw flashing lights, what I wanted more than anything in this world was for me and my Solara to materialize in my garage. I pulled the car over, and while people with somewhere to go zoomed by me, I closed my eyes and whispered, “I want to go home.”

Apparently I had forgotten to reset the cruise. If I don’t set the thing, I can drive ninety miles an hour without even knowing it. The first time Tom and I bought a car with cruise control, he showed me how to use it before we left the dealership. “This little feature is going to save us some money, Audrey.” I had smiled at the plural pronoun.
We
did not accumulate tickets—I did, the one I received on my fortieth birthday the most notable. Yet with each ticket, Tom, forever supportive, always pointed out I never had enough in any two-year period to lose my license.

The officer, younger than Mark, took all my information and informed me I was going twelve miles over the speed limit. Only twelve?

“Where are you going in such a hurry, Mrs. Eaton?”

Funny he should ask.

I told him Dallas was my likely destination and I was sorry I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the speedometer.

He looked like a no-nonsense, black-and-white kind of guy, so I was astounded when he said he’d let me go with a warning this time. After he handed me my driver’s license and insurance card, he said, “Slow it down now, ma’am, and enjoy your visit to Texas.”

“Thanks,” I said, unable to look up and make eye contact with him to underscore my appreciation.

I could have been home in eight hours, but his advice, nothing more than a pleasantry really, was sign enough to keep me from turning the car around.

Texas. Enjoy.

So, here I am in Dallas, in a very nice hotel. I actually used valet parking. This I cannot easily do. Tom’s frugality has rubbed off on me. I tell myself I’m using our Alaska cruise refund for this little journey. Myself replies, “And then some.”

I rode the trolley today just to get a feel for at least part of the city. Tom and I took some kind of city tour almost everywhere we went and learned things we would never have known otherwise. We especially loved the boat tour around New York City and the bus tour through Rome. As I bought my ticket and found my seat on the trolley, I wondered if it would depress me to do this without Tom. But though I seemed to be the only person alone during the long ride, I was okay. No one made me scrounge up an open-ended question, no one implored me to teach VBS, no one suggested I join a water aerobics class or take up Pilates. I enjoyed passively sitting there watching people enjoying each other, or in a few cases, not enjoying each other. People, for the most part, have an agenda when riding a trolley. No one paid the slightest attention to me, except for a little boy, maybe three or four, who kept looking around his mom to smile at me. I had to smile back. He reminded me of my little boys waiting for me in Missouri.

I got off the trolley at a couple of places, but I didn’t really linger anywhere. Instead I came back to my room, ordered room service, and watched a movie. I felt I deserved it after a four-hour drive, a run-in with an officer of the law, and the stretch of taking a trolley tour without Tom next to me, our tickets tucked safely in one of his pockets.

I have to get online and see what I can do here in the next day or two, should I decide to leave my room. Tom would never have come to Dallas if the Cowboys weren’t playing. The Saturday I told the kids about this trip, the boys watched Cowboy quarterback Troy Aikman as he was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame. That was another one of those times I walked through the living room and thought,
Where’s Tom?

Don’t go there, Audrey.

God has been good to me today. He’s always good to me. What did John 1:16 say? We have received one blessing after another?

Tom and I had so much. Why can’t I get over wishing we had more?

No one has to tell me how greedy that is.

August 16

My hotel room is near Dealey Plaza, where John Kennedy was assassinated, a short walk to the Sixth Floor Museum. While I found the museum interesting enough, I was more moved simply walking along the street where the motorcade passed, where President Kennedy was hit, where Jackie cradled her husband’s shockingly wounded head in her arms. I’ve always thought it ironic that I was sitting in a dreary classroom taking an American History test when tragedy struck the Kennedy family November 22, 1963, but it was on this sun-drenched afternoon almost a half century later that I closed my eyes against the terror and sorrow they must have felt.

I needed a television fix and turned toward the hotel.

On my way back to the safety of my room, however, I changed my mind, deciding I could manage a walk in a nice shopping district nearby. I haven’t window-shopped in a long time, not even when Rita asked. Actually, I have never been all that interested in window-shopping. Tom was one husband who never had occasion to say that his wife “shopped till she dropped.” I know what I need and enter a mall focused on my mission. But once my focus shifted from the past to the present, I practically strolled along the street, sipping a Diet Coke, stopping here and there to look at window displays.

One display actually did its job. It drew me into the store to replace my abominable canvas tote purse with the camel leather bag in the window. Since this bag sat in the window on a pedestal by itself, always a sign to keep walking, I figured the canvas tote and I would spend a little more time together. Still, I threw away my empty cup, walked inside, and quickly found the purse on a shelf, a twenty-percent-off sign on an easel beside it. I can’t say the price was reasonable, but it was manageable.

I almost changed my mind about buying it when I realized the shortest line to a cash register had four people in it. I still can’t believe I joined the line. But that choice led to more strangeness.

I began to notice that the ladies in line in front of me were agitated. The clerk behind the cash register, curt to the point of rude, proved to be the reason. On rare occasions, I’ve walked into a store where a clerk has been ridiculously snooty. I’ve always been tempted to say, “Is it my imagination or do you have to work for a living?” But until today I’ve never encountered an
angry
clerk, not noticeably angry anyway.

She snatched the items from the first customer, handled the transaction, and sent her off without a
Thank you
, a
Have a nice day
, or a
Please come back
. The next lady had a return, and without a word the clerk rolled her eyes and pointed to the customer service desk in the back. The poor customer didn’t even know what she meant; the lady behind her explained what she needed to do. The third lady, who had been so helpful to Customer Number Two, left the line to find another line, which left only the lady in front of me. She told the clerk the sweater set she handed her was on sale, and the clerk informed her that no, it was not. When she scanned it and confirmed that it was indeed full price, Customer Number Four threw the two pieces at her and told her to keep them.

This wasn’t Dante’s fifth circle of hell, but it was close.

And it was my turn. After the clerk picked the sweaters off the floor and tossed them into a bin, she looked at me as if to say,
What do
you
want?

Excuse me? Does anyone here need this?

I felt like jumping over the counter and choking her. A sense of decorum and fear of arrest kept me from following through with that tempting idea.

“Never mind,” I said, making it clear how weary she had made me. I turned from the accessories counter and took the purse back to the shelf where I had found it, leaving Satan’s little helper to torment Customer Six.

I feel bad about the lady now. I would guess her bad day began long before she arrived at work. I should have given her a break instead of being so very superior. I think it’s safe to say she didn’t mistake me for one of God’s blessings today. Right back at you, I could say, but that doesn’t help. Not in the least.

August 17

I’ve crashed. I’m staying right here today.

If I’m going to relax in a room, this is a good one to do it in. There’s a nice desk with an Internet hookup, a comfortable oversized chair and ottoman, and a great television that can be viewed from the bed or the chair. I won’t think about the fact that my room at home is just as nice and costs nothing. Tom made our last mortgage payment the May before he died. We took our trip to New York to celebrate that feat almost as much as our thirtieth anniversary. Our payments had been relatively low because of the down payment from the equity on our previous homes and because of money Tom’s dad left him, but it was nice to have the house free and clear. And here I sit, paying “rent” today.