My Way Home (St.Gabriel Series Book 1) (St. Gabriel Series) (2 page)

A student. Oh, no, not a student. Not someone Janie’s age. Oh, dear God, please no.

I was a student when I met Race, a junior at UCLA, spring semester. Race was a teaching assistant who was doing all the teaching as it frequently goes at big universities. Introduction to American Literature, the first day of class, I walk in, sit down and wait for the professor who doesn’t show up, not even on the first day. I think I spotted him in the hall a few times during the semester, but I couldn’t be sure.

The twenty-six-year-old teaching assistant arrives, killer smile, wavy dusty-blonde hair, blue eyes that you could see from the cheap seats, and an athletic build that was apparent under a plaid button-down and khakis. He came into the room with an aura. I’m not just saying that. He glowed and immediately grabbed the attention of every student, even before he spoke. That’s the way I remember it anyway.

“Welcome scholars, wordsmiths, lovers of prose. And for those of you who are here to sit, soak, and skip on to your next easy credit, buckle up. Walt, Emily, Henry David, Edgar, John, Edith and a cast of others are all waiting in the wings to see if you can hear the voice of your own soul, calling you to feel deeply, think clearly, and live fully.” Those were the first words I ever heard Race speak. I know, because I was taking notes.

Race made literature, authors, writing all important to our understanding of history, our environment, ourselves, and each other. He was teaching us how to slow down enough to feel the acceptance and comfort in Gatsby’s smile and to see the simple making of a pie, so plainly there in front of us, as we read John Steinbeck’s description of Liza Hamilton doing just that.

Race was teaching because he loved the words and he loved to make his students love the words too. And he did it. He made us love them and he made us feel in awe of their power.

Race ran a study group every Thursday night. I got up at five o’clock those days to work before classes. Papa Geno and I had an agreement. I prep-cooked on Thursday mornings and he got someone to fill my Thursday night waitress position.

“You wanta no worka Thursday night, you worka in the kitchen in the morning,” Papa told me as he scooped pasta and ladled sauce onto plates that he was snatching from the shelf behind him. “You wanta worka here?”

“Yes, I do.”

Leo, the seventy-two year old waiter that had worked in Papa Geno’s father’s restaurant in Italy, was singing Moon River with a thick Italian accent. He leaned down to peek through the pass-through and winked at me. Then Papa slid three plates across the counter that stopped just short of the edge of the server station. Leo scooped them up and was out the door to the dining room.

“I need people to worka. You wanta job, you worka the hours.” At the top of his lungs, he yelled at his oldest son, “Toni, you get me those mushrooms today or you looking for the piazza?” He stabbed some linguini and held the pasta-draped fork in front of my face and I could feel the steam on my cheeks. “Me no hire lotsa peoples that worka little. Too many nota good.” He slapped the noodles on a plate, ladled on some sauce and slid the plate across the counter, just tapping the other two.

With dishes loaded up and down their arms and arguing, Papa’s wife, who everyone called Mama, and his sixteen year old son, Joey, pushed through the swinging door.

“But, Mama, Johnny and Marco are going.”

“You nota going to some party with wild kids.”

“They’re not wild, Mama. They’re my friends.”

“Wild friends.”

“You’re gonna make me a freak, Mama. Tell her, Cammy, boys should go out and be with their friends.”

“You wanta go to nica places with people, then you go. But no naked girl parties.”

“Naked girls, good one, Mama,” said Toni as he brushed past with a box of mushrooms he was taking to the sink to wash.

Mama slapped Toni in the back of the head as he passed.

“There won’t be any naked girls,” insisted Joey.

“No.” Mama put the dishes in the sink, set her hands on her hips, and locked eyes with Joey.

“But, Mama—” Joey pleaded as he stacked the dirty dishes.

Geno reached back and hooked Toni’s neck in the crook of his arm and kissed his cheek. “Listen to your, Mama, Anthony.” Then I heard Papa whisper to his son, “I’ll talk to her, calpo caldo.” He released Toni and patted my cheek with the back of his hand. “You be Thursday, here at six of the morning, Bella, yes?”

“Yes.”

I’m not exactly a morning person, and I had a Wednesday night class that semester, but I needed the job, and I loved working in that crazy Italian kitchen for that crazy Italian man. And nothing would have kept me from that study group.

It was in those study sessions that I got to know Race Coleman. His favorite foods—turkey with stuffing and cranberries, pancakes, fried biscuits with gravy, peaches, asparagus, grilled cheese sandwiches, ice cream, and pie, any kind of pie. He grew up in Texas in a big family, and he wanted to write a novel. We both wanted to live in a big city or a small town but not the suburbs. We both loved to camp and our favorite part was sitting around the fire telling and listening to stories. We were both early risers in the summer, late in the winter and liked all the seasons. We both liked crowds sometimes, small gatherings sometimes, and being alone sometimes. We both wanted to travel to all seven continents. We both wanted children, two or three.

Race talked about literature and life with passion, and he listened with passion. But what devoured me was the way he looked at me.

Amidst the loud and sometimes heated debates over who was the first writer to develop a unique American style and what was the great American novel, Race Coleman stole my heart, and I discovered what it meant to be deeply and uncontrollably in love.

Fall semester my senior year, I was no longer a student in Race’s class. But he and I faithfully took the same paths across campus, which precipitated regular,
chance
meetings where we would exchange a few quick words.

“How are you?”

“Good.”

“How are you?”

“Good.”

“How are your professors?”

“None as interesting as you. How are your students?”

“None as brilliant as you.”

Silly stuff like that. Not much in the beginning but enough to give me hope that I was more than just another student to Race Coleman. As time went on, he would pass me a book or a poem he thought I’d enjoy. And I’d stay up nights, scouring those writings to find something
brilliant
to comment on.

If I was in the Union or out on the lawn with a group of students, Race sometimes joined in and oftentimes we were the last to leave, although Race was always careful. We were never alone for very long.

Things are different now, but at that time relationships between students and faculty, including teaching assistants, were forbidden, and Race was a by-the-book guy. He stuck to the speed limit and drove up and down the lanes of an empty parking lot instead of crossing the spaces to get to the other side. He was always on time and would lose money before he would think of taking a tax deduction that was allowable but gray. He didn’t break the rules.

I would have broken the rules. I fantasized about meeting him in dark corners on campus, intimate talks on the phone, and sneaking off for the weekend.

But Race held fast to the line until the night I was preparing to leave campus for Christmas vacation. I was trying to cram my overflowing laundry basket into the backseat of my Ford Pinto, and Race happened by and offered to help.

The space was already jammed with the beanbag chair I had made for my little brother Frank for Christmas, my friend Sandi’s stuff because I was dropping her in San Bernardino, and my roommate Loretta’s collection of African Violets that I was taking care of during the break while she was off to Europe. I held the seat forward while Race smooshed the basket in.

“Mission accomplished,” he said.

I looked up at him. “Thanks.”

“Well, I think you’re going to need what’s in that hamper. It looks like every piece of clothing you own might be in there. I hate to think of you running around Big Bear without a thing to wear. It’s cold there this time of year, isn’t it?”

“Usually.” I smiled and wondered if I might be able to find just a little more room to fit in a five-foot-eleven-inch literature instructor.

And then Race did it. He broke the rules. He slid his hand across the side of my neck to the back of my head. His fingers laced in my hair, and he kissed me, and I kissed him back.

Then Race stepped back. “Cammy, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

And before I could say any of the volume of things that were running through my head,
No, you definitely should have done that. Do it again. Please, do it again
, he was halfway across the Commons.

“Merry Christmas!” I called after him.

Spring semester there were no
chance
meetings. I’d see Race at a distance but since he was clearly avoiding me, and my mother had taught me to never chase a boy, I did not speak to Race Coleman all semester.

After I graduated I was planning on driving to Yellowstone to work for the summer, waiting tables at the Yellowstone Lake Hotel. In the fall I would embark on the big job hunt. My degree in liberal arts was a shoo-in for a low-paying, entry-level job in a myriad of fields with no future. I was open and excited about the possibilities, and I was determined to get over my
crush
.

On graduation day Race walked through the celebrating crowd and handed me a white rose and a letter. I did not go to Yellowstone but to Texas with Race. He had taken a teaching job at the college in his home town. In the fall we were married under a big oak tree on his grandparent’s farm. It was one of my best days.

I looked across the room
at our wedding portrait on the dresser, squeezed my eyes shut tight, and gripped the blanket. A bad dream, it all had to be a bad dream. “Wake up, Cammy, wake up.”

That First Week

Janie left to go back to school on Sunday morning and Race left on Sunday afternoon. Before he left, we talked. I sat at the kitchen table with Einstein, my day planner, on my lap in case I drew a blank and needed help.

“I haven’t had an affair, Cammy, but I think I may be in love with someone.”

He hadn’t had an affair, but he thought he may be in love with someone, someone else he meant, not me. I can’t describe the pain I felt at that moment—it was so intense, it made my body ache and my brain throb. But to this day, I still feel traces of it when I think about hearing those words from the man I had loved at my very first sight of him.

I believe in love at first sight, the way someone stands, talks, smiles, looks at you and you feel euphoric. Then it feels as though a part of you leaves your body, and meets a part of them in the air and dances. I definitely believe in that.

“Who?” I felt hot, dizzy.

“Cammy.”

“Who, Race?”

“Cam, let’s not talk about this right now.”

“No, no, Race, let’s do talk about this, right now. I want to know who and how it is you think you might be in love with this someone you haven’t had an affair with.”

He sat there, looking past me. I hoped I didn’t have to resort to it, but I was prepared to beat it out of him. I really was.

Finally, he said, “Sarah Burns.”

Sarah Burns, Sarah Burns. Ah, yes, Sarah Burns.

I knew her. She was on the College Board, a banker. We’d met. Race hadn’t introduced us but he might as well have. It was at the Alumni Fundraising Dinner the previous spring. She was with a few board members and some of Race’s fellow faculty when he and I approached the group, together.

“Sarah Burns, you know Professor Coleman but have you met Cammy, his wife?” asked Ken Logan, prominent businessman, alumnus, and fellow board member.

“No, I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” replied Sarah Burns.

She was young, early thirties. She had long blonde hair. Race loves long hair. Her eyes were blue-blue, sweet smile, golden skin, beautiful hands, perfect nails and not the gaudy, too long kind, they were tastefully polished. I remember looking down at my hand as she offered me hers and noticing the contrast with my sun-damaged, garden-worn, forty-six-year-old paw.

The group then proceeded to extol the virtues of Sarah Burns. Her intelligence, how would the college have survived the budget crisis of the last two years without her? Her wit, she made the long board meetings bearable.

Ken Logan was so blatantly taken with her, I felt sorry for his wife who stood quietly looking at her husband, then looking at Sarah Burns, then looking at her husband looking at Sarah Burns. Surely they were having an affair. How awful for Karen Logan.

Would it have been easier if she had been old, stupid and ugly? Yes, at least then I would have been able to question Race’s judgment. He’s not right in the head, look what he’s giving up. Knowing I couldn’t compete was a hopeless kick in the gut.

So then our talk was all about Sarah Burns, and I wanted to know when, how, why? Race insisted he wasn’t “going there” and I could hardly blame him. I had gone from reasonably calm to ballistic in three seconds flat.