Providence (33 page)

“Jack, do you think you could stay for dinner?” Erin asked. “I’d love for you to meet Donald.”

“Yes, I’d love to stay, if it’s not too much trouble. I know I sort of invited myself.”

“I don’t think so, Jack.” Both girls laughed. “This one was a little over your head.”

“So, where are the boys?”

“They went into DC this morning with Donald. He works with the Park Service and is giving the boys a tour.”

After lunch Erin went upstairs to check on Baby Claire, and Jenny and I sat on the leather sofa in the front room, where sunlight was streaming in through the windows. We sat quietly in the airy room, content with the day’s events.

“So. What’s new?” Jenny jested. It had only been a lifetime since our last day together in London.

“Not a thing,” I said, the two of us smiling like idiots.

“You know, if we keep grinning like this, Erin’s going to think we’re lunatics.”

“Quite possibly,” I said. “I may actually
be
a lunatic, though, so I’m bound to be found out sooner or later.”

More quiet. The rustle of electricity humming around us made me feel alive. At last, words spilled out like water flooding over the rim of a cup.

“Jenny, however this day was laced together, I want to say for the record, I can die now. This has been an amazing day.”

“It’s been a very good day.”

“Jenny, you know I didn’t know you were going to be here, don’t you?”

“I know,” she said.

“When are you leaving for Indiana?”

“The day after tomorrow.

“Nate and Andrew, right?

“Uh-huh.”

“I saw their pictures at lunch with your folks. Nice-looking boys.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m … sorry about Murphy.”

“Yeah. Me, too. He was a great man and a wonderful father to the boys. They miss him.”

“You must miss him too,” I said, hoping she would be comfortable saying she loved him.

“Yeah, I miss him,” she sighed. “Murphy was the man I always hoped I’d marry. I loved him very much. He was a great provider, and we had an amazing marriage. We were partners in every sense of the word, and when he died, the boys lost their father, and I lost my best friend.”

Her lips closed tight. There was more, but it wasn’t for me to hear. It was only for her and Murphy.

She turned the conversation to me. “How is it you escaped the bonds of matrimony all these years? I thought women would beat themselves senseless trying to snag a hot author like you.”

“Funny you should ask. I actually have piles of senseless women stacked up outside my door in Providence. I’ll have to clear the walkway if you ever come for a visit.”

“You may have to do that,” she said.

“I heard you read my book.”

“Yes, I did. Jack, I liked hearing about what you’d been doing in Providence. I knew you could grow into that person.”

“What person?”

“The person who would care more about other people than you cared about yourself. As I listened to your words—I had the book on tape—part of me was cheering on the ministry, but another part of me was really just happy about the person you’ve become.”

“It took a long time,” I confessed. “A long time and a lot of hardship … But God changed me.”

“I see that now.” Jenny gave me the warm acceptance of her smile. “So how does it feel to be a best-selling author?” she asked, both teasing and flattering me.

“Honestly, I’d rather talk about you. The book, all the attention surrounding it, it’s all about God—His doing. It has meant a lot to the people in Norwood. Did you recognize the project as an extension of the work you and Dr. Holland were doing?”

“I think it’s much different than what we were trying to do. The fact that you’re doing it to serve the Lord makes it better.”

The phone rang. Erin answered it upstairs.

“You can put Band-Aids on people’s lives, but they’re only temporary fixes. If they can find the Spirit of the Lord, they’re changed for good.”

Erin walked into the room. “Donald just called. He said they should be back home by four. I told him you’re here, Jack, and he says he’s looking forward to meeting you.”

For the next two hours the three of us talked about Mitchell, Providence College, and how the Lord had been working in three different lives over the past twenty years.

When Donald, Andrew, and Nate returned home at four, I recognized the boys from their photos. I saw a little bit of Mitchell in Donald—his astuteness and athletic pose were reminiscent of my best buddy.

I prepared to leave for the hotel room around eight. The kids needed to get to bed, the baby needed a bath, and Erin and Donald needed their home back.

Jenny walked me to my car.

“I’m glad we got to see each other today, Jack. I truly am.”

“Me, too. Although it was the shock of a lifetime.”

Much had changed. The thick iron door that stood between us in London had melted away into nothing.

“So, you’re heading back the day after tomorrow?” I asked.

“Yes, I think that’s the plan. How about you?”

“I don’t have any plans. My life these days is a testament to planlessness.”

“Hmm. And you drove down?”

“Yeah, in a rental.”

“Why don’t I give you a call in the morning. Maybe you’ll want to join us for breakfast.” Jenny smiled.

We said our good-nights, not our good-byes, and I drove back to the hotel. When I lay down to sleep, I giggled like a kid whose father has just given him Christmas.

~
T
HIRTY-SEVEN
~

I’ll be back in the high life again
All the doors I closed one time will open up again
I’ll be back in the high life again
All the eyes that watched me once will smile and take me in.

—S
TEVE
W
INWOOD

“Back in the High Life Again”

The next morning I telephoned Bud to tell him I wouldn’t be coming back to Chicago. My writing days were over. I told him about the previous twenty-four hours, though I wasn’t sure he’d believe me.

“You’re right, man. I don’t believe it.”

I told him everything while he took notes. He wanted to include all the new developments in the book, and I told him he should.

“Let me ask you something, Bud. Do you think it’s possible God orchestrated the events that happened yesterday, or was it all just a coincidence?”

“How would I know?”

“I’m trying to make sense of what’s happened in my life over the past month. I guess I’m wondering what you see. How you would explain all this.”

I wanted Bud to see God’s faithfulness. He’d been reading page after page of my life. He’d come in during the middle of my movie and then got to watch the ending unfold right before his eyes. I prayed that seeing how God was working out what I couldn’t do myself might set Bud’s own heart beating for God’s wondrous grace.

The surprises kept coming.

Jenny called and asked if I would consider driving back to Indianapolis with them. “The boys have never been stateside before, and it’s been a long time since I’ve driven on this side of the road. We
are
both going the same way.”

I rested on my hotel bed with the shades open, the sun filling the room with more incredibly brilliant light.

Thank you, God, for all You’ve done …

At six o’clock on a chilly morning, we loaded her car with a surprisingly small amount of luggage and two sleepy boys still in their pajamas. Jenny and I said good-bye to Donald and Erin, returned my rental car at the airport, and took to the open road in Jenny’s rental.

“How are we going to explain to your parents why I drove you and the boys home?” I asked.

“We’ll just say it made sense for us to be together.”

We made it back to Providence in a single stretch of driving, with plenty of snack breaks along the way. The four of us took in the sights and sounds of our cross-country trek as if the United States were a strange new world being explored for the first time. Indeed, for Nate and Andrew it was. The boys were amazed at the size of the country, the number of minivans on the highway, swiping a card to pay for gas at the pump, and the dizzying array of stuff for sale in our stores. We played road-trip games and license-plate bingo, counted cows, and made one another laugh with jokes and silliness.

It took some getting used to, hearing English accents from Nate and Andrew, but it must have taken a lot more for the boys to get used to me. In quieter moments I would catch Andrew’s stare from the backseat in the rearview mirror. At times I felt a connection, like during the footrace I lost to the boys at a rest stop, and the hysterical laughter we all shared upon finding a nine-foot-tall plastic chicken guarding the front of a Southern-style restaurant. Other times I sensed walls going up, distancing meant to protect, I suppose. Like when Nate saw the now-old issue of
Time
magazine on the counter at Cracker Barrel and asked, “Are you famous?”

“I used to be,” I said, wishing that part of my life was behind me.

I saw Jenny studying me too sometimes, watching me interact with her boys. Wondering, perhaps, how I might have been Murphy had circumstances been different. Or how nice it was seeing the boys play and laugh in the country that was now their home. Or how much she wanted the boys to have a father.

“I didn’t know you were such a natural with kids,” she said, threading her arm through mine as we entered yet another Speedy Mart in search of snacks.

“You’ve raised a couple of awesome boys, Jen,” I told her. “So what’s it like to be a parent?”

I asked because the woman who’d played the starring role in all my memories was a twenty-something single college student. The real Jenny is a forty-something widow with two young children.

She gave the question due thought. “It’s like having every important thing in the world wrapped up in two vulnerable and innocent little guys you would give your life for. You focus every day on everything you can do to make their lives happy and complete, while at the same time marveling at just how spectacular they already are as individuals.”

“So you like them,” I said, smiling.

“You could say that. So what’s it like staying single all these years?”

“It’s like living in a big mansion, and you know that behind a certain closed door, there’s a room, a part of you that you can’t access because the door is locked and you can’t open it on your own. Still, you know the room’s there, and every once in a while, you pass the door, and you wonder what’s inside, and whether or not the door will ever be opened.”

“That sounds terribly lonely.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s been lonely. I just kept pushing on, doing the things I knew to do, trusting that God would do what He wanted, and not really thinking about the outcome.”

“Jack, do you believe God cares about the outcome? That He cares about you and what happens in your life?”

“Yeah, I do. I mean … I’m seeing it. You’re here, Jenny. I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again, but now you’re here, standing next to me. We’re talking again, and it feels so comfortable. Sort of like we shared all those years ago, and every time I …”

I stopped talking and lowered my gaze. I needed to stop saying so much. This wasn’t a conversation to have in line at the Speedy Mart while waiting for the boys to come back from the bathroom.

“Every time you what?”

I lowered my voice and moved a step closer. “And every time I look at you, I praise God for allowing me to know you. I know in my heart there’s no one else on earth like you. I am in awe of you.”

Jenny was looking at me,
into
me, like she had so many years before. I recognized that smile, but there was something new in it as well. A sense of peace. The cashier rang up the Cokes and chips as the boys ran up behind Jenny to tell her all about the automatic air freshener that surprised them by misting in the bathroom.

Jenny and the boys dropped me off in Providence and drove on to Indy. Two days later I called and asked her if she wanted to spend a day with me in Providence. The following Saturday we met for lunch at Oscar’s. I was there early to greet her at a quiet booth in the college sandwich shop, half empty on the weekend.