House of Gold (5 page)

She was repulsed.

When he opened his mouth, and started–spouting–she wrote him off.

Now take Bill White. He was trim, medium-height (and therefore closer to Mel in stature), handsome in a classically dark-haired Irish way, and the owner of a successful advertising company–and so Catholic! At
least according to Marie Penny. Now
he
was what Mel needed–and had dreamed of since rediscovering her faith almost fifteen years earlier at the Newman Club of Texas A&M.

Not that she was any catch herself. The devout Catholic black sheep from a fallen-away Wasp family, she had given up on finding a decent Catholic husband. Then she met Marie and Kathy praying the Rosary in front of the abortion
mill downtown. She had been twenty-nine at the time, but her freckles, mop of red hair, and tiny frame still gave the impression of a girl in her teens.

So it was to her and Buzz's great surprise when they fell in love that summer–slowly but surely. It was the Penny Party Dynamic that snared them. On the porch, during the often hilarious repartee among the men, she found herself laughing hardest
at Buzz's outrageous jokes. He just plain broke her up.

She would always remember an observation he made on that very first night: "Women are so vain," he had said bluntly. "When a woman walks into a room, the first thing she does is measure how she looks compared to other women. Guys are fundamentally violent. When a man walks into a room, the first thing he does is figure out which of the other
guys can kick his ass."

Not eloquent. But true–and subtle. And she also noted that Buzz could probably kick everybody's ass, except for Mark, who was taken. Though Brian and Tim would give him a run for his money.

His insights into human nature did not draw her to him, however (though she didn't mind his ass-kicking qualities). It was just that Buzz made her laugh.

Opus Dei Bill, on the other
hand, sat to the side, rarely speaking. She began to wonder if there was anything inside Bill, who never looked at her in that way a woman wants to be looked at, even at social occasions. (She was wrong, of course. Inside, he was an intense cauldron of devotion.)

Besides, she thought, Opus Dei Bill was almost forty, and there had to be a reason.

Buzz and Mel's remarks to each other rarely went
beyond Hello and Good Night. It took about six Penny Parties, but Melanie O'Meara found herself looking forward to them for a reason she could never quite articulate, or perhaps, could not admit to herself–she wanted an excuse to listen to the big slob.

Starting at opposite ends of the porch chair arrangement, she found herself sitting closer and closer to him as the summer drew on and the nights
grew chillier. Until one party in August, she found herself with him on the same piece of furniture, an ancient aluminum rocker the Pennys had salvaged from some forgotten garage sale. Usually, the loveseat-sized rocker, which anchored the south side of the party-deck, was reserved for married couples.

Like many child-sized grown-ups, her perceptions and sheer adultness had gradually resized her
mentally into the same proportions as others. Still, she was taken aback when she now saw how tiny her leg was compared to Buzz's massive thigh. His forearm, chastely resting several inches above her on the back cushion, was as thick as her shoulders.

She was stirred by the proximity, and for the first time, by the physical power of the man. It was a bit shocking–and also comforting. His presence
distracted her from the conversation. For the first time, she wasn't really listening to the others, or even to him.

The topic tonight was whether Buchanan could ever be elected. Buzz, who loved Patty-B (as he was known in Penny Party Parlance) as much as the rest of them, gave him absolutely zero chance of success. The others gave him a longshot's chance.

"If he can just win New Hampshire again..."
Tim Penny would begin...

Amidst the discussion (which always grew louder in direct proportion to the number of beers Tim downed–and rightly so), Buzz grew silent and lowered his arm onto her shoulder, then lowered his head to her left ear, and whispered, "Later on, I want to tell you about the time I tried to commit suicide."

He returned his arm to its proper place (by her reckoning), and immediately
began addressing the group about how the mainstream Republicans would just circle the wagons again on Patty-B if he even
did
win New Hampshire...

She looked at him with a disconcerted stare, noting the pleased look in the corner of his eye as he spoke to the-others. Such confidence! Such nerve!

Had he really just whispered something to her?

Muttering to herself that she was chilly, she rose and
left the porch. She spent the rest of the evening in the living room, watching the little ones, chatting with the older Johnson daughters. She spied Buzz looking at her through the window and averted her eyes, and then changed her seat to be out of his view.

In her gut, she flashed back to the same silly, repulsive nervousness that marked those stupid eighth grade Spin-the-Bottle parties her sisters
had dragged her to–boys, yucky boys, trying to kiss her on the lips in badly-lit basements.

Yet, when he approached her at the end of the party, and asked her, with all the articulateness of a mule, "Well?"–she put up only token resistance.

The perpetual bachelors were gone, and only Mark and Maggie were holding out on the porch with Tim and Marie.

"Well, what?" she asked back, pretending not
to have the slightest idea.

"I would be honored to buy you a cup of coffee. The night is young."

Honored?

She couldn't recall him ever sounding so...gentlemanly.

"The night is hardly young. It's two in the morning," she replied crisply as she fumbled with her jacket. "I have to go to Mass tomorrow morning."

"We can always go to the four at Saint Phil's," he offered, reaching quickly to help put
her jacket on.

"We?"

He just smiled, sleepy-eyed.

I suppose this is what he thinks passes for charm,
her red-haired side smirked.

But the part of her that wanted to get married someday, which figured that nothing ventured is nothing gained, replied, "Okay, I'll follow you in my car."

Which she did, to the Quick Mart on the corner at Franklin, where he picked up two coffees (somehow he knew that
she took her coffee with plenty of cream), then onto the parking lot at the Poor Clares convent on Rocky River Drive.

Oh, that first date at the Poor Clares.

+  +  +

After he got out of the car, he said, "Follow me," then he led her to the all-night chapel, where they prayed before the Blessed Sacrament for several minutes, kneeling next to each other.

They weren't alone. Two sisters were in the
mirror chapel opposite them, though Mel and Buzz could not see them.

As he left the chapel, he offered her his meat-hook arm, which she took, again surprised by his tender courtliness, looking forward to his next surprise. They strolled in silence back to his car, where the coffees steamed on the dash.

He did a Buzz Thing next: he started the car, and with a few deft turns of the wheel, had them
facing in an odd direction in the lot, no longer aligned with the white parking spaces on the pavement.

"Why did you do that?" Mel asked, curious, feeling as if she had never really talked to this strange man before.

"I like to face Jesus. An old habit from my UPS days. He's right over there in the chapel. He knows we're here together. He's listening to us. A girl I could have married lives there
with Him. She married Him instead."

Odd words, but like all the ones she heard from his lips, compelling. Compelling to her, and uniquely so. She could not imagine any other woman besides herself caring about what he cared about.

Facing Jesus.
Yes, she cared about that. She liked facing Jesus, too.

"Oh." She looked forward, nervous, feeling awkward, but not afraid.

"He's our chaperone," he added.

He carefully opened the prefab lid on her coffee and blew on it for her before handing the cup to her. She had a tremendous intuition that he was about to declare his love for her, like some idiot.

She took a stab. "You're not going to say something dumb like how you love me or anything like that, are you?"

He laughed to himself, and turned his shoulders, and took a gentle knuckle to the tip of
her chin, and turned her face toward his. A vapor light from the lot cast yellow shadows on them.

"Mel, there's one thing we're going to have to get out in the open from the start–I rarely have any idea what's going to come out before it comes out. And I'm nervous as heck right now. I could say anything. Even that I loved you. Or that I wished I worked in the salt mines on Whiskey Island just
so when I went to work in the morning I could say, 'Well, back to the salt mines,' and really mean it."

This made her smile. She nodded.

Okay. Whiskey Island Ground Rules,
she thought.

His round, almost Russian features, somehow had become–handsome. She stifled an urge to kiss him–a small kiss on the cheek, the innocent kind of kiss a daughter stopped giving her father when she became a teenager.

She did not kiss him.

His was a stark face. No visible scars, but she knew they were there; he had the kind of eyes she had seen in war-photos in
Life
magazine as a child.

Everyone knew that Buzz had been an alcoholic, and that he had tried to kill himself once–long before he came into the group. It was known that he never dated. Though Mel had never seen her, she also knew he had a teenage daughter
named Jennifer who lived in Florida, and that she came to stay with him on rare occasions.

The suicide attempt was a topic she had never heard him discuss. It was the thing of whispers and snippets on the one or two occasions Marie or Kathy brought it up. The message had been clear:
Don't talk about it up in front of Buzz. He doesn't like to talk about it. Mark Johnson was there on the beach,
and saved him. Sam became a Catholic.

The events of that night in New Jersey had taken on almost mythical dimensions.

"So, what happened?" she asked now.

"Oh yeah,
that,"
he replied.

They both knew what she was asking about.

The Attempt.

"I'll get to that," Buzz promised her. "It's really not a big deal. That's why I want to tell you about it. That was another man, another Buzz–a man I don't even
know anymore. A long time ago.

"But I do want you to know who I am, and that's part of it. But can I ask you something first? How come we never hear about your parents or your sisters at the Pennys? I know you have sisters. Tell me about your family."

Boy, that cut to it. The one thing she hated to talk about. Her family. That was what Buzz did–he cut through things, and into things–into lives.

"I hate my family," she told him honestly.

"Hate? Isn't that a strong word?"

She shook her head.

"Yes. It is. I love them, too, I guess. What choice does anybody have? But I can't stand to be around them. They're totally plastic. I think they're dysfunctional."

"What do you mean by plastic..?"

And so, for the rest of that odd first date, until the sun came up in the Poor Clares' parking lot, instead
of talking about himself, he proceeded to ask her about herself, like no boy or man had ever asked her. He began with her family, then her likes and dislikes, what she read, and why she was such a devout Catholic, adding his own comments here and there, revealing himself to her in his questions, until she was aching for him to take one of her small hands and hold it tight.

He never did get around
to telling her about his suicide attempt–not that first night.

They went to the 6:45 Mass at the convent. At the sign of peace, he did take her hand, and in a way, never let go. They began driving to the Penny Parties together, and he asked her to marry him on Easter Sunday. They were married at the Poor Clare Chapel, amidst their friends and family, the follow-ing summer.

+  +  +

Luck. Destiny.
Fortune. Chance. Serendipity.

It was Chesterton who observed that the funniest things are those which are the most serious–like a man making love to a woman. A man chasing after a white hat on the beach is not nearly as funny as a man chasing after a woman.

Since charcoal first scratched across cave walls, the-poets, playwrights, painters, and pocket philosophers have tried to describe the force
behind that nameless faculty within that allows a man and a woman to recognize that they are right for each other.

On the night at the Poor Clares, Buzz Woodward and Melanie O'Meara realized that the cosmic wheel had spun to a stop and his ball landed on her number.

Of all the kinds of things that happen to people, the mystery of the moment when a woman first sees and accepts the man as the one
who will be the father,
the one
who will enter into her,
is the most singular and unrepeatable. For most souls, if the night of knowing happens at all, it happens only once, and will never happen again.

For the knowing leads to sacramental union, and the union leads to babies–those genetically-blended omelettes of body and soul–new endless beings, bursting with as much fresh pluck as the soul-fusion
of man and wife. Every child is a one-hit wonder who can be torn apart by neither man nor God. (Just try to rip the father-part out from the mother-part of a DNA strand.)

In other words, Mel and Buzz had started a long walk down their own private road that would disintegrate behind them, never to be traveled again. Soon they would be accompanied by snot-nosed whelps who themselves were designed
to start their own roads with a chosen
one.

Then, the roads of multiple immortals intertwine, and the mind explodes, and the ponderer is forced to wait until heaven to comprehend how something as sublime as Buzz-Mel-Love could ever be stuffed into something as tiny as the relic of a saint, or expanded into something as overwhelming as the shining white eucharistic belt holding up the trousers
of the Alpha/Omega.