Rhythms of Grace (21 page)

“I hope so. I don’t want to keep you out late. It’s a school night.”

She made me lose enough sleep as it was. “I’ll get you back.”

When we were getting close, I offered to phone in our order. As she agreed, the sun dipped low. Evening sifted through her hair.

I put both my hands on the wheel.

When we stopped at the next light, a man with a bow tie and a stack of newspapers tapped on Grace’s window.

She jumped, surprised.

“It’s nothing. Just roll the window down and take one. He’ll move on. Just brothers trying to be positive. If he pulls out a bean pie, I might have to run the light.” I was kidding, but she looked scared enough. “I wouldn’t really. You know that.”

She didn’t know that and probably wished I’d stop saying it. Despite my feeling like we’d always known each other, she didn’t know me at all. Not really.

Grace was trying to say something, but I’d already let down her window from my side.

“Good afternoon, sister,” the man said. He reached across Grace to slap my hand. “Brother. Take a paper today?”

She wasted no time answering. “No thank you.”

I shook my head. My dinner was going to be cold. Why’d she have to go and make things hard?

The man gave me a funny look and adjusted his bow tie. His words, however, were all directed at Grace. “Surely a beautiful sister like you wants to support her people.”

I fumbled with my wallet, certain the light would change any minute.

“I do try to support our people in any way I can. Thank you for all the ways that you do the same. I’m a Christian though. I can’t take that paper.” Her voice rose a little. Someone blew their horn behind us. The light had changed and I hadn’t even noticed.

When I tried to pull forward, the guy hung on to the window. “Let go, bruh. I’m going to pull over right there.” The restaurant was within sight, but I had to kill this first.

He let go of the window, but started in on Grace as soon as I pulled over. “What kind of church do you go to, sister? Some of our greatest supporters are Christians. Will you tell her, brother?” He pushed the paper inside.

I’d planned to buy one anyway, but without all this fuss. “Look, man. We’re headed to dinner. I’ll take a paper, but please, leave the lady alone. Respect her wishes, okay?”

The guy looked disgusted with me, but he went ahead and took my money.

As he let go of the car a final time, he shook his head at both of us. “The black man is god anyway. Everybody knows that.”

Why did he have to go
there
? I thought Grace was going to fly out of that car and snatch him up the way she stuck her head out the window.

“Jesus Christ is my God. I pray that he blesses you with some understanding,” she yelled behind him.

He walked away, still shaking his head. I tossed the newspaper in the backseat and gripped the wheel, this time to restrain my anger instead of my passion. I was ticked with both of them. We eased into our parking space in silence. I cut the engine.

“Was that really necessary?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “It was for me. Don’t forget your notes. We’re working, remember?”

How could I forget?

28

Zeely

The bubbles tickled my shoulders but brought no humor to them. I’d thought that a good, hot bath might numb the pain, but some things couldn’t be soaked or scrubbed away. Some things stained deep into the soul. I’d watched Grace and Brian pull away without sticking my head out the window with a last-minute warning. I’d teased Grace about Brian, about letting him just pull up like that, but it wasn’t any of my business. That didn’t stop it from hurting though. Didn’t stop jealousy from inching up my sleeves and into my heart.

“Be flexible,” my mother had always said. “That’s what a man needs in a wife, compromise and endurance. Endure, baby. Endure to the end.” And so here I was, still stretching, pulling, holding other people’s place in line. Places they didn’t even want.

I slipped on a robe and padded downstairs, wondering how long it would be before I’d be helping Grace pack up again to marry Brian. I’d thought it would be different this time, just her and me, with no men between us. I should have known better. Even when it was just our fathers, there were always men between us.

I’d played this game with widows and women whose husbands had beat them, left them. Those women hung all over me: praying, talking, coming by. And then they’d disappear. After the first time, I learned not to go looking. I still saw those women from time to time: running toward the altar on Sundays or sneaking away from some nasty-looking motel. I’d taken them in, babysat for them, helped them any way I could, but in the end, if the devil himself came by and blew the horn, they all went running. Worse yet, they’d come back and try to tell me how I too could have a man of my very own.

“If you ’d loosen up a little, you could get a man too,” they whispered. “You know. Give a little.”

When they came out of their mess a year or two later, I’d be right in the choirstand where they left me. No putting out and shacking up for Zeely. It was too late to lift my skirt for the meat cutter because I got a little lonely. Well, a lot lonely and not just for a man.

What I really wanted, even craved, was a baby. Only God knew how much. If things had gone the way they were supposed to, I’d have had five or six children by now. At least three or four.

But things hadn’t gone like they were supposed to. Jeremiah didn’t give me a ring like Mama said he would. He gave me a wedding invitation instead. And my name wasn’t on it.

Sometimes I allowed myself to think about Ron and all that had happened between us, all we could have been. Sometimes, but not often. It made me too sad. Too angry. I had too much to do to sit around crying and mad. Now Ron was marrying somebody else too. Somebody who looked like him.

I fluffed the napkins in the rings on my dining room table, remembered Ron’s last visit. He’d let me win the game a few times, but not all. Some of the answers I only knew because he’d recited them during other games, chapter and verse. This time, he guessed the answers more often than not. Just like I was doing now. I restacked my bowls and plates out of habit, laughing at myself for doing it. My table was always set, but Prince Charming never came.

And he never would.

I was finally ready and able to accept that. Jerry was still trying to figure out how to iron his clothes again after the divorce. He only went out with me to dull the pain of Carmel and her boyfriend. Somehow I got that and allowed him that dignity, to believe that he could still be wanted. Be needed. He was using me in hopes of keeping Carmel’s love, to let her know that he was still a man. If I was honest, I used Jeremiah too. I’d always hated those women who didn’t want a man but didn’t want anyone else to have him either, but sometimes that’s just how things end up. It’s okay.

What wasn’t okay was that Grace had been back in town a few weeks and already she was riding off into the sunset. Joyce had handed her the dance program that had meant so much to me but would always suffer in the shadow of the memory of its best dancer—the missing, tragic Diana.

No matter how much time passed between the two of us, one thing would never change—I was the one called to serve, but Grace was the one chosen to be loved. In a year or two, she’d be back here on Brian’s arm, holding a chubby-cheeked baby. And I’d still be here stacking plates.

Don’t you think you’re taking this too far?

I wasn’t. Not yet. I lifted one of my couch cushions and pulled out a brochure with a smiling pregnant woman on the cover.

Tired of waiting for Mr. Right? Save a baby abandoned in our
freezer and fulfill your dreams of motherhood. Call today. 1-88-NEW-THING.

I pressed the glossy paper against my stomach. The emptiness caved in beneath my hand. I reached for the phone.

29

Ron

Dinner at the country club was not my idea of romance, but to Mindy it meant something, something I hadn’t been giving her, not for a while. Some of my time.

So I’d suffer through, knowing she deserved better, knowing that this couldn’t go on, that my heart and my head had to line up somehow. Until then, there were the chandeliers, four forks, three spoons, and wine-colored cloth napkins. Until then, there was Mindy.

“I’m so glad to see you.” She seemed both thrilled and surprised that I’d shown up.

“Me too,” I said, not even sure what I meant. I smoothed a napkin over my knees and blinked at the silver. They must have used an electric buffer or something.

“You haven’t touched your gazpacho.” Mindy pressed her hand on mine. The bands of her rings scratched against my knuckles. She lowered her voice. “You haven’t touched me either.” She tried to give me an enticing look, but the edges of her green contact lenses were streaked with red. The beginnings of another eye infection.

Things had been different when we first started dating. We’d done Bible study together, went on dates, even made friends with a few other couples. Things became comfortable, which for Mindy meant serious. People told me to be careful of her, said things I never told her about. She knew about Zeely, but not everything. Sometimes I thought she didn’t want to know. Sometimes I wondered if she didn’t have a secret of her own. I hoped not. My closet was full of my own secrets.

She slid her foot out of one of her heels. Her toes slid up my pants leg. “I know we’ve been pretty casual about this wedding, but what if we just forget all that and just get married?”

What if we did. That would end everything, wouldn’t it? No, not at all. “Maybe. I don’t know. We haven’t spent much time together lately. I’d started to think we’d be engaged indefinitely, that maybe we should call things off and see where we stand.”

Mindy put her foot back into her shoe. “Look, don’t talk like that. It’s been crazy at work for me with all the rezoning of the city and everything. And I know Daddy has had you busy. And your friends. It’s just the celibacy thing. The wedding is starting to seem a long way off.”

The celibacy thing. When we’d met, Mindy had been adamant about the celibacy thing. Adamant about Jesus. Lately, we didn’t go to church together much anymore, and when we did, it was like a date with lunch or a movie after. She had the same far-off look during service that I saw on her face now.

She took a bite of the appetizer, freshly delivered to our table. She told me not to look at her like that, like I was so righteous, like I didn’t struggle. “I’m not like you, content to play board games and cook collard greens. I’m not a virgin and I have a good memory.”

Appetite gone, I stared down at my plate, then reached for her hand. I struggled all right, just for all the wrong reasons. I bowed my head and prayed . . . for both of us.

The next course came, but none of it looked appetizing.

Mindy and I sat like that, holding hands and staring at each other. I saw something in her eyes that I’d been avoiding. I wondered if she saw the same thing in mine.

“Let’s get out of here. Go somewhere and talk.”

She perked up a little. “Come home with me. I’ll call Dad and cover for you in the morning . . .”

That made me smile, but I knew that it could be more dangerous than anything with Zeely—we would never go beyond dinner. With Mindy, it would be easy to let myself go, to let things take their course. She was better than that though, deserved more. I liked to think I was too. “That wasn’t quite what I meant. It’s late and things might get out of hand.”

“That was the idea.” She gave me a weary smile and waved for the check. “Forget it. That was my hormones talking. I have an appointment anyway.”

“More premarital counseling? I’m sorry about missing the last session. Should I come—”

“No. It’s something else. Don’t worry.” She folded her napkin and laid it on the table.

I pulled out her chair. “Sorry about tonight. About everything. I know this can’t be easy for you, waiting until we finish our counseling to set a date. We’re almost there though.”

She wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean all that. I don’t know what comes over me sometimes. It’s like—”

“Putting a smorgasbord in front of a starving man and telling him not to eat.”

“That’s it. Totally.”

We walked out together and kissed quickly in the parking lot. I was all the way to the car before I realized I had gotten away without eating a thing. Not that it surprised me.

What I hungered for wasn’t on the menu.

My appetite came back—with a vengeance. One of our biggest clients had died and left her daughter a ridiculous amount of money, more than the budget for the whole city. The desk in front of me, the one in my den, was piled with plans on what to do with the cash—plans from the daughter and a newly formed foundation, whose board was made up mostly of names I recognized from local politics. There’d been meetings about it all day.

When they’d first mentioned their plans to consolidate the mirror-imaged facilities and business—black and white—on either side of town, I’d been all ears. Finally this backward place was going to catch up and get over its strangeness. Or at least that’s what I had thought.