Embrace Me (33 page)

“Valentine.”

“Of the pink scarf?”

No. Of the blue scarf. I mean, how many other Valentines are running around Mount Oak? I mind my manners. “Yes. How was Thailand?”

“Sad and good. Lots of tsunami stuff left to be done even after all this time. It was pretty hard.”

“Sure.”

“Okay, I hear Gus coming. I'm heading to bed. We've got a family of refugees coming into Mount Oak tomorrow for resettlement. They're from Northern Uganda. I've got to get up early to make sure the apartment is ready.”

“Refugees. Got it. Good night, then. Nice to meet you.”

“Same to you.”

Augustine hurries in. “Valentine? What are you doing here?”

“You want me to open up to you, you got it.”

“Why?”

“Because at this time of night I've got no place else to go.”

He smiles. “Well, that's as good a place as any to be.”

“I don't get you.”

“No, most people don't.”

Jessica sets down a cup of tea. “Here you go. I'll head off to bed. Good night all.”

“Thanks for praying tonight, Jess. I don't know what came over me.”

“Maybe that phone call?”

“Yeah, could be.”

“What phone call?” I ask.

He blows a puff of disgust. “My father. Needless to say, we never really got along.”

“Part of your secret past?”

“No kidding.”

“What did he want?”

“He's ill. Just thought I should know.”

I lean forward and pick up the tea. “What are you going to do?”

“Don't know. Call my mother, I guess. So what brought you out at one thirty in the morning?”

“I feel like crying for the first time in years and I don't know what to do about it.”

Augustine sits in silence as I pour out my feelings about Lella. Still, I do not cry—although still, I want to. Finally I am spent. “So what should I do?”

“What can you do? Lella has to make this decision on her own, Val. You know that.”

“But where will that leave me?”

“I guess that's the bigger question, isn't it?”

“Is she better off without me?”

He shrugs. “I don't know.”

“You don't give good advice, do you know that?”

“Sorry, Val. I'm a loser. I'm better at listening these days. Can I pray with you?”

“Is that part of your act?”

“I guess so.” He sighs. “I don't know. It always seems like a good thing to do.”

“Go ahead, then, if it makes you feel better.”

“I didn't say it made me feel better. Sometimes prayer makes me feel worse.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm talking to God, and I don't deserve to, probably.”

“I used to go to church, a long time ago. The preacher there told us to come boldly before the throne and claim the promises of God.”

“Yeah. I've heard that.”

“Well, is that true or not?”

“Maybe for some. For me it's different.”

“Aren't those promises real?”

He runs a hand across his forehead. “Yeah, they are. But these days I prefer resting in them instead of demanding them. I used to be quite demanding.”

“I can't imagine it.”

“Well, then glory be to the Father.”

“‘And to the Son and to the Holy Ghost,'” I sing, the words forcing themselves out before I can stop them. “Might as well finish it. ‘As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen. Amen.'” I draw out the last note.

Augustine slams against the back of the sofa as if pushed. His face pales.

“Are you all right?” I rush to his side, grab his hand. “What's the matter? You coming down with something again?”

He shakes his head as if coming back to life. “I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me.”

“You'd better get back to bed.”

“Yes, I think I should. Do you want me to walk you home?”

“No, I'm fine.”

“About that prayer?”

“Skip it. You look like you need it more than I do.”

PART TWO

FIFTEEN

DREW: 2009

I
am Augustine. I suppose you've figured that out by now. The estranged father, the tattoos. The bigger secret is that I was once Drew Parrish. But no longer.

You see, my mother prayed.

Every morning of my life my mother prayed for me. She continues to do so there on her slice of cliff in Slade, Kentucky, and I visit her when I can, which isn't as often as I'd like with all the people in the neighborhood who rely on me in one way or another. But our connection runs deep. I truly forgave her. She's only human. She's weak. Her weakness just manifested itself differently from mine.

Many centuries ago there lived another Augustine who eventually became a saint. Saint Augustine lived raucously before he realized, as all of us do or will someday, that Christ loved him. He wanted to spend his life following Him.

Augustine's mother was named Monica. She prayed for him too. Her prayers are credited for his conversion.

What I should change my name to, when I truly decided that this story of God in which we all play one role or another was for real, was a no-brainer. By that time, a year after I'd found my mother, I'd become a regular at the parlor. It was Monica herself who covered my scars with her artwork.

“I didn't know you were an artist,” I said that first day in the shop.

“I didn't either. I think it was a gift God gave me to keep me sane.”

“Well, I guess it's the gift that doesn't go away. These people will wear your work for the rest of their lives.”

“But they'll go down to dust, Drew. We all do. A lot of people come through this shop. I do what I can for them. People with a lot of tattoos, well, it's about belonging, not the tattoos themselves. They're only symbols of a deeper need, one we all share.”

We started with my arms, the flowers, the fish, then my legs which nobody ever sees, because at this time, Monica began to feed me. I became not someone else really, but the person I might have been all along. I returned to something essential by masking the misery of my own mutilation.

My mother and I would walk for hours in the woods, hike the trails. There's something about the dome of heaven, congregations of trees, and the singing of the earth and her inhabitants, coupled with love, both Divine and human, that does something to a soul.

My hair grew longer.

My waistline grew wider.

My heart grew stronger.

I stopped writing. I called Father Brian and asked him if that would be all right if I stopped confessing to him. He said, “Have you other means?”

“I do.” To Monica.

“Good.”

I sent the notebook to Father Brian, still a good friend, who still listens to my sins over the phone when I need him to. I prayed Daisy and I would cross paths someday, but I waited for God to figure out when that would be. If it would be.

The dorky smile faded and God took away the one thing that enabled me to build that church and the TV show. He took away my voice. Coming home from the tattoo parlor several months after finding my mother, I skidded in a downpour and ran off the road and into a ditch. My airway was blocked, the EMTs did an emergency tracheotomy and damaged my voice box for good. No big sermons anymore. No big plans to announce. Just a guy with a scratchy voice.

We had no further contact with my father.

True to form, Charles Parrish popped up on television from time to time . . . until one day, Monica rose from the couch, opened the screen door, and picked up one end of the TV. “Grab the other side, Drew.”

I did as told. We lifted the set, carried it onto the deck, and threw it into the gorge. That night we had a steak dinner at the Natural Bridge Lodge. Neither of us owns a television set these five years later.

That evening, we hiked up to the top of Natural Bridge, which was, true to Hermy's word, like looking out over the whole world.

The sun slid in low, red, and sorry to leave the day behind it, clinging with tenacity to the horizon just for my mother and me, it seemed. I thought of Joshua fighting beneath a paralyzed sun.

“Did you ever feel desolate?” I asked her there on the top of the world.

“I had a rough couple of years when I first settled here. It's lonely. The wind wails at times, the rain pelts the roof, and I've felt as if I was the only soul for miles.”

“Did you ever want to kill yourself?”

She shook her head. “Not as long as I knew you were alive. Some things you just live for. Your children are one of them. You've wanted to, though, haven't you?”

“Yes. A little. Never really seriously.”

We remained there on the middle of the bridge until the sun set completely and the moon shone, close enough to the edge to rest our ankles and free our feet in the wind, our flip-flops beside us. I put my arm around her and she rested her head on my shoulder. I didn't think about how beautiful she looked sitting there; instead I thought she had the most beautiful heart I'd ever known. I told her I loved her and she said she knew that; she said it was never in doubt. She said she loved me too.

Hermy stayed with us for a month or two, wooed the long-legged librarian, and they married. They have two kids now, aged two and four. He works in the library too. Some of God's plans seem small. But none are ever insignificant.

I haven't burned myself since that first day in Kentucky. I've wanted to at times. When the yearning gets strong, I'd like to say I pray, but more than likely I head out on my Harley, ride around Lake Coventry, and on out into the country. I've befriended Mildred LaRue, who gave me those ruinous compliments years ago. She always has good food in the cupboard and we watch old movies together.

I became Augustine on August 26, 2003. My mother's pastor rebaptized me, because this time the old man the Apostle Paul wrote about was dying for real. The tears of my repentance mingled with the waters of the Red River. Finally, in the words of Father Brian, my personal Pentecost had ascended.

Was I “saved” before that? I honestly don't know. I don't think it matters. I like to think of myself in the manner the Scriptures say, as one of “those who were being saved.” It causes me to remember I serve a Holy God.