Providence (29 page)

Lisa Corothers, the nurse practitioner in Dr. Holland’s office back at the college, remembered me and told me how I could find Jenny. She’d gone to work with her parents after graduation at a place called Heart of the Savior Mission. I ignored my massive hospital bills, took the last two grand from my college account, and bought a ticket to London, England.

My plane landed at Heathrow late in the afternoon. By the time I’d picked up my luggage, I was becoming acutely aware of how late in the day it was. If the Heart of the Savior Mission stayed open until six, I was all right. But if it closed by five, I might miss Jenny. I thought about calling to let her know I was coming, but I thought a surprise visit would speak more eloquently of my change of heart, of my desire to be with her after all.

I boarded the shuttle for London. Two double-decker buses later, I was traveling on foot, blocks from the Heart of the Savior Mission.

“Fantastic! I hoped you’d still be open,” I told a young woman greeting the men entering the shelter.

“Yes, you’re in luck. The mission takes men until six.”

“Oh, I’m not looking for shelter. I’m looking for an old friend of mine, Jenny Cameron. Is she here?”

“I think she is.” The woman lifted up a telephone from a small wooden desk and held it against her ear. “Is she expecting you?”

“No. I just flew in from the United States. It’s kind of a surprise.”

The woman squinted, tilting her head sideways as if that might shed more light on my trustworthiness. After a full day of international travel, I looked rather scruffy.

“I see. Who can I tell her is calling?”

“If you could ask her to come to the reception area. I think it would be best.”

“I don’t know if I should do that,” she said. “Why don’t you just tell me your name first?”

“Please, it really is a surprise. We went to college together.”

She squinted again, then dialed Jenny’s extension.

“Hi, Jen. There’s a man out here in the lobby who says he’s a friend of yours from the United States. Can you pop out for a moment?”

There was a long pause while she listened to Jenny’s response. “Right. I’ll tell him.” She returned the phone to its mount. “Please have a seat. She’ll be out momentarily.”

I took a seat in one of the plain wooden chairs along the wall in the lobby. Less than a minute later, Jenny entered the room. The look on her face was one of utter shock.

“Jack! What are you doing here?”

“I was just in the neighborhood …” I said, hoping to earn one of her smiles.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I could have picked you up at the airport.”

For a moment she seemed truly happy to see me. Excited that I had walked back into her life. It was the reaction I’d longed for. I stepped closer, overwhelmed by the sight of her. She had cut her hair. I was surprised by a sudden feeling of sadness, a realization that I’d missed so much of Jenny’s life to my own selfishness.

“I had to see you. I have a lot to tell you, but…” I gestured toward the receptionist, signaling a desire for privacy.

“Let’s go to my office,” she said. “Staci, could you hold calls?”

I dropped my luggage, and we walked a narrow hallway back to her office. We passed two men laughing in a small conference room and a woman talking on the phone in the office across from Jenny’s.

Jenny sat at her desk, and I took the seat across from her.

“Jack, I can’t believe you’re here. So … why
are
you here?” she asked.

“I don’t know how or where to begin. There’s so much to tell you. I’ve been on a plane for fourteen hours, so I’m a little wired, or maybe I mean tired, but either way, I’m finally here, and you look great. Amazing, actually.”

“Slow down,” Jenny said. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

“I just wanted to … Look, Jenny, it’s taken a year for me to realize this, but … I want to do whatever it takes to win back your trust. I get it now. I want to be with you.”

Jenny continued to smile but shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She looked at her watch.

“Jack, I have a feeling this conversation could take awhile. I don’t want to hurry through this. I can sense something significant is happening in you. But”—she looked at her watch again—“unfortunately there isn’t time for us to talk right now. I just remembered I have to meet someone for dinner, and there isn’t time for us to talk. Do you have time tomorrow?”

This was the first time since I’d known Jenny that she wasn’t willing to drop everything for me at a moment’s notice.

“Tomorrow? Couldn’t you cancel your dinner date? This is important to me … and I don’t—”

Jenny shook her head. “What were you expecting, Jack? To walk in here and sweep me off my feet, and everything would be the way it was?” She smiled as she spoke, but it was an uncertain smile.

I didn’t respond.

“Oh, Jack, you
were
expecting that. I don’t know what … I mean …”

Jenny stood, took a step toward me, then stepped back, collected her jacket, and started walking back into the hall. I followed.

“How late is your thing tonight?” I asked.

“My thing, Jack, is going to go pretty late.”

“Maybe I can see you afterward? I’ve been traveling all day, and I’d like to talk.”

“Jack, I have some things to tell you, too.” She stopped and turned around suddenly. I nearly ran into her.

“I’m engaged.”

“What? No … that’s not … But I thought you said …”

I reached out to touch her face. She turned her head and walked determinedly to the front door.

“His name is Murphy Bryant, and we’ve been seeing each other for nearly a year. The wedding is in two weeks, Jack.”

She held the front door open. My cue to leave. I walked to the door in a daze.

“When can we talk, then? Is there anything …?”

“Jack, not now. Let’s not get into this now. I can cancel a lunch appointment tomorrow. We can talk then. Meet me here at one. I’m sorry to dump all this on you so suddenly. But you didn’t give me any choice.”

I stepped outside into the darkening night. Back at street level, I turned to see Jenny standing in the doorway.

“You could have called, Jack.” Jenny’s expression was new to me. There was sadness there, but something else, too. Pity, perhaps.

She shut the metal door and locked the deadbolt.

I spent the night in a youth hostel a few blocks from the mission, sharing a dark, unventilated room with five strangers. I fell asleep fully clothed, with the strap of my backpack laced through my arms for fear of it being stolen.

I was jarred out of a restless sleep when the hostel rang its wake-up alarm the next morning at seven.

At one o’clock, Jenny and I left the Heart of the Savior Mission together and went to a sandwich shop. We sat at a tall pub table inside. A raised awning running the full length of the restaurant wall made the space open and airy.

“You look better rested this morning.”

“I’m rested … Not sure if I’m better.”

“Your visit took me completely by surprise,” Jenny said. “I’m sorry if I came off as brash or uncaring.”

“Always apologizing. That’s what you did when we first met.”

She smiled, but it was a pained smile, one that wore heartache in its corners and old hurts in its creases.

“I should be the one to apologize,” I began.

As if on cue, the waitress arrived with lunch plates and dropped them off without speaking.

“I want to tell you what’s happened with me, Jenny. I’ve changed. I’ve thought a lot about you. About us. I think what I have to say is important.”

“Not to me,” she said. “Not anymore.”

“Jenny, I’m sorry.” I took hold of her hand and felt its unresponsiveness. Her face was cordial but reactionless. “Please, let me just say it. A year ago you were in love with me, but I was running. I ran to Chicago and lost Mitchell. I ran to New Mexico and nearly lost my life. Now I’m in England. I don’t have a penny to my name, but I finally know what I want, and it’s worth the cost of getting here. It’s you, Jenny. I want you.”

She withdrew her hand from mine.

“What words can I say to fix things, Jenny?”

“There aren’t any, Jack.” Her eyes filled with sympathy. “I’m sorry, but there aren’t.”

It was all calm and polite. We were angels sitting on a cloud. She would remain in heaven, but I would return to Earth.

“I did love you, and I would have done
anything
to make you love and want to stay with me. But you didn’t want me, and that’s the part you need to remember, Jack. You had the choice then, but you didn’t want me.

“Let me tell you about the year I’ve had,” she continued. “I cried for you, prayed for you, asked the Lord to help me forgive you—and allow me to forget you. He has been so gracious to do that. I finished my senior year without you. At Mitchell’s funeral, I pleaded, begged you to come back with me to Providence. But you weren’t finished breaking the hearts of those who loved you. The only thing you were sure of back then was that you didn’t want me.”

Tears came to Jenny’s eyes, only these were the tears of a good angel who had been scarred. She wiped them off quickly.

“You went away to self-destruct, and I went on with my life. I didn’t come here looking for your replacement. I didn’t think there’d ever be one, but Murphy loves me. He wants to be
with
me.”

“Jenny, what we had was special. Rare. It wasn’t a fling …”

“No, we weren’t a fling, Jack. Trust me, I wouldn’t have been dragged through this for a fling. But you’re a little late in realizing this. You left, remember? I had to get on with my life, and I did. I wish I could change this for you, I really do, but I can’t.”

Jenny got up from the table and left for the bathroom. I sat alone for a moment, feeling the weight of the world crashing down on me. Then I got up from my chair, grabbed my bag, and started to leave. My heart ached, and I felt destroyed. Jenny came out of the bathroom as I headed toward the door.

“Jack,” she said, “what are you doing?”

“I’m making it easier for you to forget me,” I said in a daze.

She caught up with me on the street. “What’s gotten into you? Why are you acting this way?”

Jenny stood in front of me, grabbed my arms, and stopped me in my tracks. I shook free of her hands and kept walking. “Jack, please stop a minute.” She pulled me from the pedestrian walkway and sat me on a bench.

“Jack, you’re scaring me. I want you to calm down. I want you to be okay.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay. I can’t cope with this.” I was bleeding inside.

“I’m sorry, Jack. If there was any other way but to cause you pain.”

“I have to go.” I stood.

“Where?” Jenny asked.

I tried to summon a response, but there was none. I walked away and didn’t look back. I left Jenny sitting on a bench in London without an answer. I didn’t know where I was going, but she knew exactly where she was heading. In some strange, heartbreaking way I knew this was the way it had to be.

I kept walking along the bank of the Thames. All the running I’d done in my life had slowed to a broken crawl. A steel door had closed that I couldn’t open. I wished I could change it all back, but I couldn’t. That hopeless hope coursed over and over inside my mind.

I had let her go; I had lost her forever.

I collapsed in despair beside a moorings buoy, broke, broken, and friendless. I had reached the end. Life’s clock had ticked down to zeros. I closed my eyes and turned to the only One left to call on, the God who had been calling on me all this time.

“Jesus, Jesus … are you there?” I said aloud. “Don’t you see me? Don’t you care? I’m an utter failure. My life is in ashes, worth nothing. Will you take my nothing and make it something? Do with me whatever you want. Will you come into my life? Please come into my life … and save me.”

I cried tears of surrender. There was nothing left for the conqueror to seize.

“Lord Jesus, I’m a sinner and a stupid man. I’ll give you the rest of my life, if you’ll have me.”

I hadn’t cried all the tears I would for Jenny, maybe I still haven’t. But a narrow band of hope appeared beyond the pale sky and gave me a sudden urge, a nudging in my heart to shed everything I had known, everything I had been. To start fresh, be cleansed. I got up and lifted my pack up over my head and tossed it into the river to the confused stares of bystanders.

I was, and still am, a man twice broken. Once by the loss, and again by the gain. I watched the bag float downstream, quickly taking on water, then disappearing, sinking underneath the strong current.

I walked to the bus stop, leaving behind everything but my passport, a one-way ticket to the United States, and forty-eight dollars in cash. When the jet took to the air out of Heathrow, I was alone, but not alone. Completely broken and poor, but finally able to mend—and richer than I could possibly imagine.

~
T
HIRTY-FOUR
~

I can see your face in the mirrors of my mind.

—Julian Lennon

“Valotte”

In the late afternoon I returned to Providence feeling I was close to wrapping up the book, surprisingly ahead of schedule. All the stories I wanted to tell had been told, either written down or recorded onto cassette tapes. I’d made peace with my mom. I’d stood next to Mitchell’s grave on Christmas afternoon in a gently falling snow, told him about the last twenty years and how I missed him, how I missed all of us laughing and enjoying life together before the world fell apart.

How tragic that the four of us should be swallowed up by my sins, broken apart and scattered to the four winds. Standing graveside until my feet were numb from the cold, I had apologized again, still wishing it would’ve been me who died that night instead of Mitch.

I dropped a collection of minicassettes, the latest chapters of my story, into an overnight UPS delivery box addressed to Bud. Arthur would have his book soon, all the wild-running nits tucked snugly in their beds.

After a long, hot shower and a shave, I heated up a bowl of tomato soup for dinner. Around ten o’clock, I went into my office to write. I didn’t type a word. Instead, I loaded two paper grocery sacks of clothing and small appliances and took them to the Norwood donation center. I was asleep by eleven and didn’t awake until daylight the next morning.