Amazing Grace (17 page)

“My sister would go nuts,” he said, smiling at her. “She'll be home in June too.”

“Why don't you bring her,” Melanie said, and then her voice dropped down to a whisper. “I hope you call me when you get back.”

“Will you take my call?” he asked, looking worried. Once out of the Presidio and back to her real life, she was a major star. What could she possibly want with him? He was just a fledgling engineer and no one on her radar screen. But she seemed to like being with him, as much as he enjoyed being with her.

“Of course I will,” she reassured him. “I hope you call me.” She jotted down her cell phone number for him. Cell phones were not operating in the San Francisco area yet, and wouldn't be for a while. Computer and telephone service hadn't been restored either. There was some talk that they would be up and running in another week.

They walked back to the hospital again then, and he teased her as they wandered in. “I guess you won't be going to nursing school for a while, if you're going on tour.”

“Yeah, right. Not in this lifetime.” She had introduced Tom to her mother the day before, and Janet hadn't been impressed. As far as she was concerned, he was just a kid, and his engineering degree meant nothing to her. She wanted Melanie to go out with producers, directors, lead singers, and well-known actors, anyone who would catch the eye of the press or in some way help her career. Whatever his other failings, Jake had been in those leagues, as a lure for the press. Tom never would be. And his boring, wholesome, well-educated Pasadena family was of no interest to Janet whatsoever. She wasn't worried about it, she figured Melanie would forget him as soon as they left San Francisco, and she wouldn't see him again. She had no idea about their plans to meet up again in L.A.

Melanie worked with Maggie all day and well into the evening. They had a pizza together that Tom brought them that night from the mess hall. The food had actually remained surprisingly good, thanks to a continual supply of fresh meats, fruits, and vegetables that were flown in by helicopter, and the creative skills of the chefs. Everett joined them after his final AA meeting, and said he had turned it over to a new secretary, a woman whose house in the Marina had been destroyed, and she was planning to stay at the shelter in the Presidio for several months. The meeting had grown remarkably just in the past few days, and had been a source of immense support to him. He thanked Maggie again for encouraging him to do it. She assured him gracefully that he would have done it anyway. And they continued to sit and talk, after the young people left for a last stroll on their final night together. This was a time they would all long remember, some of them in poignant ways.

“I hate to go back to L.A. tomorrow,” Everett confessed, after Tom and Melanie had left. They had promised to come back and say goodnight. The L.A. contingent were leaving early the next morning, and Melanie wouldn't be back to work again. “Are you going to be okay here?” He looked worried about her. She was full of fire and brimming with energy, but there was also something vulnerable about her that he had come to love.

“Of course I will. Don't be silly. I've been in much worse places than this. My own neighborhood, for instance.” She laughed, and he smiled at her.

“So have I. But it was nice being here with you, Maggie.”

“Sister Maggie to you,” she reminded him, and then chuckled. There was something between them that worried her at times. He had started treating her like a woman, not just a nun. He was protective of her, and she reminded him that nuns weren't ordinary women, they were under God's protection. “My Maker is my husband,” she said, quoting the Bible. “He takes good care of me. I'll be fine here. You make sure you'll be fine in L.A. too.” She was still hoping he would go to Montana to find his son one of these days, although she knew he wasn't ready to do it. But they had spoken of it a couple of times, and she encouraged him to think about it.

“I'm going to be busy editing all the shots I took here. My editor is going to go crazy.” He smiled at her, anxious to see the shots he had taken of her the night of the earthquake and since. “I'll send you copies of the ones I took of you.”

“I'd like that.” She smiled. It had been a remarkable time for all of them, tragic for some, and life-altering in good ways for others. She had said as much to Melanie that afternoon. She was hoping that at some point Melanie would get involved in volunteer work. She was so good at that kind of thing and had comforted so many people with so much gentleness and grace. “She'd make a great nun,” Maggie commented to Everett, and he guffawed.

“Stop recruiting. Now that's one girl who's never going to enlist. Her mother would kill her.” Everett had met Janet once, with Melanie, and hated her on sight. He thought she was loud, overbearing, pushy, pretentious, and rude. She treated Melanie like a five-yearold, while exploiting her daughter's success to the hilt.

“I suggested that she look up some kind of Catholic mission in L.A. She could do some wonderful work with the homeless. She told me she'd love to stop everything she's doing one day, and go away for six months, to work with poor people in a foreign country. Stranger things have happened. It might do her a lot of good. That's a crazy world she works in. She might need a break from it someday.”

“She might, but I don't think that's going to happen, with a mother like hers. Not while she's selling platinum records and winning Grammys. It may be a while before she can do something like that. If she ever does.”

“You never know,” Maggie said. She had given Melanie the name of a priest in L.A. who did wonderful work with people on the streets, and went to Mexico for several months every year, to help there.

“And what about you?” Everett asked her. “What are you going to do now? Go back to the Tenderloin as soon as you can?” He hated her neighborhood. It was so dangerous for her, whether she acknowledged it or not.

“I think I'll stay here for a while. The other nuns are going to stay too, and a few of the priests. A lot of people living here now have nowhere else to go. They're going to keep the shelters running at the Presidio for at least six months. I'll work at the field hospital, but I'll go home to check on things from time to time. There's probably more for me to do here. I can use my nursing skills.” And she had used them well.

“When am I going to see you again, Maggie?” He looked worried about it. He had loved seeing her every day, and he could already feel her slipping out of his life, possibly for good.

“I don't know,” she admitted, looking sad for a minute herself, and then she smiled, remembering something she had meant to tell him for days. “You know, Everett, you remind me of a movie I saw when I was a kid. It was already an old movie then, with Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr. A nun and a marine get stranded on a desert island. They almost fall in love, but not quite. Or at least they're sensible enough not to let it happen, and they become friends. He behaves very badly at first and shocks her. He drinks a lot, and I think she hides his booze. She reforms him somewhat, and he takes very good care of her, and she of him. They were hiding from the Japanese while they were on the island. It was during World War II. And in the end, they get rescued. He goes back to the Marines and she to the convent. It was called
Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison
, and it was a very sweet film. I loved it. Deborah Kerr made a great nun.”

“So do you,” he said sadly. “I'm going to miss you, Maggie. It's been so wonderful talking to you every day.”

“You can call me when we get cell phone service back, though I don't think that will happen for a while. I'll be praying for you, Everett,” she said, looking him in the eye.

“Maybe I'll pray for you too,” Everett said. “What about that movie, the part where they almost fall in love but become friends. Did that happen to us?”

She was silent for a long moment, thinking about it, before she answered. “I think we're both more sensible than that, and more realistic. Nuns don't fall in love.”

“What if they do?” he persisted, wanting a better answer than that.

“They don't. They can't. They're already married to God.”

“Don't give me that. Some nuns leave the convent. They even get married. Your brother left the priesthood. Maggie …”

She stopped him in his tracks before he could say more, or something they'd both regret. She couldn't be his friend if he didn't respect her very firm boundaries and crossed the line. “Everett, don't. I'm your friend. I think you're mine. Let's be grateful for that.”

“And if I want more?”

“You don't.” She smiled at him with her electric blue eyes. “You just want what you can't have. Or you think you do. There's a whole world of people out there for you.”

“But no one like you. I've never known anyone like you.”

She laughed at him then. “That may be a very good thing. You'll be grateful for that one day.”

“I'm grateful to have met you,” he said seriously.

“So am I. You're a wonderful man, and I'm proud to know you. I'll bet you win another Pulitzer for the photographs you took.” He had finally admitted it to her, somewhat sheepishly, in one of their long talks about his life and work. “Or some kind of prize! I can't wait to see what gets published.” She was gently steering him onto safer ground, and he knew it. She was not going to open any other door to him, or even let him try.

It was ten o'clock when Melanie and Tom came back to say goodbye. They looked happy and young and a little giddy with the newness of their budding romance. Everett envied them. Life was just starting for them both. He felt as though his was nearly over, the best part anyway, although AA and his recovery had changed his forever, and improved it immeasurably. He was just bored with his job, and missed his old war zones. San Francisco and the earthquake had put a little spark in his life again, and he was hoping the pictures would be great. But he also knew that he was going back to a job that offered little challenge and used few of his skills and too little of his expertise. His drinking, before he conquered it, had put him in that position.

Melanie kissed Maggie goodnight, and she and Tom left. Everett would be leaving with Melanie and her entourage the next day. They were going to be among the first people to leave San Francisco, and a bus was coming for them at eight. The Red Cross had arranged it. There were others leaving later for assorted destinations. They had already been warned that they might have to get to the airport by side streets and back roads as there were a lot of detours on the freeway, and it could take them as long as two hours to get there, if not more.

Everett said goodnight to Maggie regretfully then. He gave her a hug before he did, and slipped something into her hand. She didn't look at it until he'd walked away, and then she opened her hand and saw his one-year AA chip in her palm. He called it his lucky coin. She smiled as she looked at it, with tears brimming in her eyes, and slipped it in her pocket.

Tom walked Melanie back to her hangar. She was sleeping there for her last night. It was the first time she was going back there since the incident with Jake and Ashley. She had seen them in the quad, but avoided them otherwise. Ashley had come to the hospital to talk to her several times, and Melanie had pretended to be busy, or slipped out the back door and asked Maggie to deal with her. She didn't want to hear the lies, excuses, or stories. As far as Melanie was concerned, they deserved each other. She was much happier spending time with Tom now. He was a very special person, with a depth and kindness that matched her own.

“I'll call you as soon as we have phone service, Melanie,” Tom promised. He was thrilled to know that she would be delighted to take his calls. He felt like he had won the lottery, and still couldn't believe his good fortune. He didn't care who she was professionally, he thought she was the nicest girl he had ever known. And she was equally impressed with him, for the same reasons.

“I'll miss you,” she said softly.

“So will I. Good luck with the recording session.”

She shrugged. “They're easy, and fun sometimes. If they go well. We'll have to do a lot of rehearsing after we get back. I already feel rusty.”

“That's hard to imagine. I wouldn't worry about it.”

“I'll be thinking about you,” she assured him, and then laughed. “I never thought I'd be homesick for a refugee camp in San Francisco.” He laughed with her, and then without warning, he reached down gently, took her in his arms, and kissed her. She was breathless when she smiled up at him. She hadn't expected it, but she had loved it. He had never kissed her before, during their walks, or quiet time together. They had been friends until that moment, and hopefully still would be, even if they added more.

“Take good care of yourself, Melanie,” he said softly. “Sleep tight. I'll see you in the morning.” In the mess hall, they were packing lunches for all those who would be traveling the next morning. There was no way of knowing how long they'd have to wait at the airport, or if there would be food there. It didn't seem likely, so the mess hall was providing enough food to take with them and tide them over.

Melanie floated into the hangar with a wistful smile on her face, and found her group in the same place they'd been camped out before. She noticed that Ashley was sleeping on a separate cot from Jake that night, and she no longer cared. Her mother was sound asleep, fully dressed, and snoring. It was going to be their last night in the shelter. The next day it would all feel like a dream, when they got back to the comforts of their life in L.A. But Melanie knew she would remember this week forever.

Melanie saw that Ashley was awake, and ignored her. Jake had his back to her and didn't move when she came in, which was a relief. She wasn't anxious to see him, or to travel with him the next day. But they had no other choice. They were all flying on the same plane with about fifty other people from the camp.

Melanie slipped under the blanket on her cot, and then heard Ashley whisper to her. “Mel …Mel… I'm sorry.”

“It's okay, Ash … don't worry about it,” Melanie said, thinking of Tom. She turned her back to her childhood friend who had betrayed her, and five minutes later, she was asleep, with a clear conscience. Ashley lay awake and tossed and turned all night, knowing she had lost her best friend forever. And she already knew Jake wasn't worth it.