Where Do I Go? (25 page)

Well, so be it. I'd drive if I had to. Maybe I'd take our car on Saturday and practice the route.

By the time Estelle banged on a pot, signaling lunch, the plan was falling into place. Josh Baxter would deliver the van and the keys to the shelter by Sunday morning. The first twelve residents who signed up would get a seat on the van. (I was still hoping for another staff person or volunteer to go along.) We'd leave at eleven, park as close to Douglas Park as we could, take in the parade along Cermak Road, then hang out for the festivities. I even printed out a map that gave me the best route from the shelter.

So far everyone I'd talked to had loved the idea. Even Mabel had given her somewhat dubious blessing to my seat-of-the-pants idea—“As long as you're back in time for Sunday evening ser-vice,” she'd said. “It's Pastor Stevens's church”—and let me announce the outing at lunch. Aida Menéndez was especially excited, jumping up from her chair and throwing her arms around my neck. “Oh,
gracias,
Señora Fairbanks!”

Tina told me later that Aida's first foster mother had taken her to the parade when she was five, but the girl hadn't been to a festival since. “This is
muy bueno
. She needs to connect with her culture.”

I spent the rest of the afternoon working on my proposal for the first set of activities and a list of resources needed. I was just getting ready to hit the Print button when my “William Tell” ringtone went off. Grabbing the cell out of my purse, I flipped it open. “Hello? Hello?” Only crackling on the other end.
Rats!
No signal down here. I looked at the caller ID . . . It was Philip.

I called him back on my desk phone. “Philip? Hi, honey. Sorry about that. Couldn't get a signal on my cell. What's up?”

“Don't plan anything for Sunday, Mop Top. We've been invited by a new client to go sailing on his new sailboat—a thirty footer! The weather is supposed to be great.” His excitement oozed from the phone—an insidious gunk clogging up every-thing I'd been doing that day. Not Sunday . . . not Sunday!

I felt as if I might need electric paddles to jump-start my heart. “We who?” I squeaked.

“The Fenchels and us, of course. They said we'd need some good windbreakers and boat shoes—”

“But . . . but . . .”

“—and I offered to bring some good wine and cheese, that kind of thing . . . Gabby? You still there?”

“Uh, sorry, Philip. I've gotta go. Talk about it later, okay?” I hung up the phone. My head sank into my hands. Why didn't I just say,
“I'm sorry, Philip. I can't go. I have to work Sunday. Part of
my job. I've already made a commitment to take—”
Oh, sure. After Philip's rant this morning about Camila taking the day off, he'd just love to hear that I couldn't go sailing—with his client, no less, which made it “business”—because I'd be taking a vanload of homeless women to the Cinco de Mayo parade. Not to mention the icy silence I'd had to swim through all last weekend when I didn't move heaven and earth to be at the contract signing. Did I want to go through that again?

“Argh!” I grabbed fistfuls of my hair with a sudden urge to pull curls out of my head, roots and all.

“Gabby?
¿Qué pasa, amiga?
” Edesa slipped into the room behind me and shut the door.

I rolled my eyes. I didn't even want to repeat the phone call, cementing my dilemma into reality. But I finally told her, hot tears sliding down my face. I grabbed a tissue and blew my nose. “What am I going to do, Edesa?! Go back out there and chirp, ‘Sorry ladies, the outing's off, I'm going sailing?' Or tell my husband, ‘Sorry, I'm going to a parade, see you later'?” I didn't bother to explain the edgy dance Philip and I had been doing around work issues.

Edesa was quiet for a long moment. “Gabby, did you look up the scripture I gave you in the welcome e-mail on Monday?”

I shook my head. “Sorry.”

“Do you have a Bible here?”

I started to shake my head again—then remembered the Bible I'd stuck in my bag a few days ago. “Uh, yes, right here.” I pulled it out.

She paged through it and stopped someplace in the middle. “Here it is. Third chapter of Proverbs, verses five and six. Here. You read it.” She shoved the Bible at me.

“You read it.” I shoved it back. I knew I sounded petulant, but I didn't feel like reading “Obey your husband” or “Thou shalt not lie” right now.

“Okay.” She picked up my Bible and read with her Spanish accent. “ ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean on your own understanding'—”

The words were familiar. Probably one of the verses I'd memorized in Sunday school as a kid.

“—‘In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.'” Edesa closed the Bible.

I sat silently, picking apart my soggy tissue, digesting what I'd just heard.
Trust in the Lord . . . don't lean on my own understanding
. . . He will direct my paths . . .

Finally I glanced sideways at Edesa and gave a snort. “You think?”

She smiled, the beautiful grin that seemed to stretch ear to ear. “
Sí
, I think. God is going to show you what to do,
mi amiga.
I will pray.” She gave me a hug and slipped out of my broom closet.

Huh
. Easy for her to say.

chapter 24

To my relief, no one was in the dining room or kitchen when I left at four o'clock, and I scooted through the multipurpose room without waving to the two women who sat sprawled in a corner, playing cards. I took a deep breath and stopped by Mabel's office . . .
Drat! Not in!
I wasn't sure if I was relieved or vexed. Just delayed the inevitable confession and flagellation.

I signed out and scowled my way home, going over my options. Not that I had any. I'd practically promised Philip—okay, I
had
promised—that I wouldn't let my job interfere with things connected to his work. But I hadn't anticipated having to break a promise to
my
“clients,” after getting them all excited about our first outing.

Should I tell him my dilemma? If I told him I canceled an outing at the shelter to go sailing on his client's boat, maybe he'd quit harping at me about whether I was “on his side” or not. Or would he get ticked off that I'd even planned something on the weekend? Maybe “don't ask, don't tell” was a better policy. Just go, try to have fun . . .

I groaned inwardly as the buildings and shops along Sheridan Avenue slipped past the train windows. What was this going to look like to Mabel and the board? The new program director makes plans for an outing, gets everyone all excited, then turns around and
cancels
because she and her husband got an invitation to go sailing . . .

Argh!
I felt like banging my head against the window of the El. Not the greatest way to kick off my program plans. Maybe I should write a book:
The Idiot's Guide to Starting a New Job—How
to Get Fired the First Week
by Gabrielle Shepherd Fairbanks.

But instead of head banging, I leaned my cheek against the cool window. When was God going to show me
the
path I should go? Felt like I was in the soup either way—

“Thorndale! Next stop Thorndale!”

What? I scrambled for the door of the train car. I'd overshot my stop by two stations this time.

Sunday. Eleven o'clock. Sunny. Breezy and mild. Perfect day for a parade.

But instead of loading up the borrowed van with Manna House residents, I was walking behind Philip along a dock in Waukegan Harbor north of Chicago, carrying a picnic basket with two bottles of Shiraz, three kinds of cheese, and a couple of boxes of good crackers. We were wearing his-and-hers white deck pants, new navy windbreakers, “boat shoes” with good rubber soles, sunglasses, and white baseball caps—except my bushy chestnut curls stuck out from under the cap, making me look like Bozo the Clown.

I'd finally sucked up the courage to call Mabel on Saturday morning and told her I had an unavoidable family conflict—something my husband had arranged—that put the kibosh on the Cinco de Mayo outing on Sunday, and would she please tell those who had signed up that I was so, so sorry. She'd been quiet on the other end for several beats, a yawning gap that made me want to crawl in a hole and pull dirt down over my head. But all she said was,
“Of course, Gabby. These things happen. I'll pass the word.”

I'd been hoping she'd say, “Oh, no problem, someone else can drive the van, we'll still go, don't worry about it.” But she hadn't.

“What's wrong with you?” Philip had asked when he got home Friday night. “You practically hung up on me! Don't you want to go sailing? You can be such a wet blanket, Gabby.” Keeping my voice even, I told him the sailboat invitation was very nice, but I'd been planning an outing for the homeless women at Manna House for Sunday, and now had to cancel, which put me in a very awkward position, thank you very much.

He'd just shrugged. “Just reschedule for another day. It's not like those women have corporate jobs they have to go to next week.”

I'd decided to drop it. It wasn't going to help anything to point out that the Cinco de Mayo parade
only
happened on Sunday. He'd just ask, then why did Camila take Friday off ?

I had a few dark words with God about the whole mess. Was this the right thing to do? Edesa had been so sure God would show me the “right path.”

However, once I'd made the decision, a certain smugness settled into a corner of my spirit. The sacrifice I was making might come in handy when I brought up my idea for Mother's Day weekend . . .

As Philip hunted for the slip number he'd been given, I tried to take in the harbor in panoramic snatches: clubhouse with a nautical-themed restaurant, gift shop, and large restrooms with showers and dressing rooms. Rows and rows of docks with all kinds of power boats and sailboats lined up side by side, from glitzy yachts to weather-worn, chunky fishing boats, tied up in their individual slips. And beyond the harbor, Lake Michigan stretched blue-green and vast, broken only by small whitecaps like so much dotted-Swiss material.

A voice hailed us from the deck of a sleek sailboat bearing the name
Rolling Stone
. The man was a very tan fifty-something, dressed casually in shorts, windbreaker, captain's cap, rubber-soled shoes, no socks. No Fenchels to be seen, but a thirtyish brunette peeked out from the cabin and smiled a welcome. Introductions were made: Lester Stone, Sandy Archer.
Hmm. The
boat and the owner have the same name, but not Sandy.
I didn't see any wedding rings.

Lester helped me cross from the dock to the fiberglass deck, and Sandy took me below to the cabin. Everything fit like a miniature puzzle—two-burner gas stove, fridge, sink, drop-leaf table wedged between two padded benches that supposedly made into a single bed on one side and a double on the other. Toward the bow, Sandy pointed out the “head”—a flush toilet and a vertical, coffinlike shower—and more bunks. Everything was trimmed in wood, the curtains royal blue. Taking my picnic basket, she lashed it to the counter with a bungee cord and handed me a sleeveless jacket-style life vest.

For the first time, it occurred to me sailing might be a bit different from putzing along on my uncle's outboard fishing boat on Devil's Lake in North Dakota.

“Ha-ha-ha. How are ya, Lester?” I heard Henry Fenchel's voice booming above deck. “Mona, this is Lester Stone, our new client . . . ha-ha-ha,
Rolling Stone,
I like that. Hey, Philip, where's Little Orphan Annie?”

Thanks a lot, Henry.
Did he think I hadn't heard that old joke before?

I
think all those curls are pretty,” Sandy whispered to me “before going back up the three-step ladder. I followed, deciding Sandy was a friend for life. For the next fifteen minutes, I scrunched in a corner of the blue padded seat of the open cock-pit, trying to stay out of the way while Lester gave instructions to Philip and Henry about casting off from the dock and how to unfurl the sails once we reached open water. Sandy seemed at home scooting around the boat, unsnapping the blue cover from the main sail and stowing it below, checking ropes and wires. Mona lounged opposite me, looking perfectly cool in a light blue jumpsuit and gold-strap sandals. I noticed she did not put on the life vest Sandy handed to her.

Well, so what if I looked like Winnie the Pooh with a bullet-proof vest. Sandy was pulling the straps tight on hers, and I was going to take my clues from a sailor.

Sail untied but not raised, Lester stood at the wheel and effortlessly piloted us out of the harbor using an inboard motor. I relaxed, smiled at Philip, who was casually sitting on the slightly rounded deck above the cabin, feeling the warm sunshine kiss my face. Might as well just enjoy the day.

Once out on the lake, Lester shouted instructions, Philip pulled quickly on the line to raise the sail, the boom swung out, and as Sandy secured the line—
snap!
—wind filled the large sheet and the boat picked up speed. My stomach did a couple of flip-flops, but I tried to keep my eyes focused on the flat horizon.
Okay, okay, I can do this.
After a while, Lester yelled, “Coming about!” Laughing, the guys ducked, the boom swung to the other side, the sail snapped—and immediately Mona's side of the boat tipped up.
Wa-a-ay up!
My stomach leaped into my throat, and I tasted bile. I grabbed at the rail behind me, though the waves seemed dangerously close.