Anyone but Him

by Theresa Linden

  After giving me the once-over, Roland tucked Jarret’s cell phone into his chest pocket and dug out Jarret’s keys from his jeans. “You look nice.”

  “Thanks.” Mustering my strength, I led the way to the door. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 34

  “ARE WE GOING in?” Roland sat behind the steering wheel of Jarret’s Dodge Ram, tapping a beat on his thigh.

  I breathed, pushing back a mess of clashing emotions—fear, disgust, anger, and a desperate plea for hope—as I gazed at the two-story school building, Sacred Heart High.

  We’d arrived at Jarret’s work site just as he was pulling out in my Honda. Roland had cranked the steering wheel and turned down a side street just in time. Jarret had made no sign of seeing us. Then we’d stealthily followed him here and waited for him to go inside before we parked right next to the Honda.

  “Why would he meet her at a high school?” I stared at the front doors of the building. “How old was Kelly?”

  Roland shrugged and grabbed the door handle. “Guess we might as well find out.” He looked at me, maybe because I hadn’t made a move for my door.

  My clashing emotions glued me to my seat. Discovering that my father had died had wounded my heart and soul. And while it had been hard to accept that I was married to Jarret, I didn’t want to discover the death of my marriage too.

  Roland took my hand. “There’s got to be another explanation. Let’s go find out what it is.”

  Not sharing his confidence, I gave him a weak smile and opened my door. “Yeah, let’s get it over with.” Nerves giving me chills, I followed Roland up the wide walkway to the front door of the school.

  A thirty-something receptionist behind a high counter greeted us, sliding a clipboard toward us. “Here for the assembly? You’ll have to sign in and wear a visitor’s pass.” She turned back to a computer monitor and picked up the phone.

  Roland and I exchanged glances. Then Roland shrugged and scribbled our names on the sign-up sheet. I grabbed two passes. At least we didn’t have to make up an excuse as to why we were here.

  The receptionist put a hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. “It’s in the gym. Just down that hall and to the left.” She pointed.

  Roland and I walked side by side down a long, empty hallway with tan and blue lockers on each side and few closed classroom doors. Light from big windows at the end of the hallway created a bright spot on the shiny floor.

  “Now what?” My hope sank with every step. “Where could he be?” He and Kelly could’ve agreed to meet anywhere in the building, knowing that everyone else would be in the assembly today.

  “I don’t know. Let’s just peek in the gym,” Roland said. “Maybe he was invited to the assembly.”

  As we neared the end of the hallway, shouts, applause, and cheers traveled to us. We reached an intersecting hall, a sunny breezeway to the right and gym doors off to the left, the view through the doors dark.

  “Apparently...” A woman’s Southern drawl boomed over the sound system. “...you’re a favorite of some of our students here.” The applause grew louder.

  Roland motioned for me to go in first.

  Feeling out of place and worried someone would notice, I stepped through the doors. Students filled bleachers that stretched across the wall on the opposite side of the gym. More bleachers rose up on either side of me. Students also sat in rows of metal chairs in the middle of the gym, near the stage. Overwhelmed by the booming applause, I shuffled to an open spot next to the bleachers, where a few adults, probably teachers, stood. It provided a good view of the stage.

  As Roland came up beside me, I focused on the figures on the stage, a middle-aged woman at a microphone and a young man strutting toward her.

  “Is that…?” Roland didn’t finish his question.

  I saw what he saw, and my world turned upside down and spun out of control.

  The young man strutting across the stage was Jarret. He walked with a little bounce in his step, the way he had in high school, then he pumped his fist and the kids went wild.

  “What is he doing here?” I said aloud, not expecting an answer. We’d know soon enough.

  “Oh, hey there, Caitlyn.” A forty… maybe even fifty-something woman with a cute blond bob and a Southern drawl touched my arm. “I didn’t realize you were standing right next to me.”

  “What?” Not recognizing the woman, I stepped back and accidentally bumped Roland. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

  “Oh, my dear, Jarret told us about your memory loss.” A look of intense compassion colored her face and she touched my arm again. “I met you two up at Shining Light Pregnancy Center, when you first came to volunteer. My name’s Kelly.” She stuck out her hand.

  “Kelly?” My hand flew to my mouth while my mind tried wrapping around this. “Pregnancy center?”

  “Why, yes, we provide counseling and support to girls and women who think they might be pregnant.”

  “We…we volunteer?” My heart tingled, filling with helium. “I guess that explains why we have so many pictures of girls with babies around the house,” I said, thinking aloud. “And the phone calls.”

  I glanced at Roland, whose eyes held a confident “I told you so” look.

  Kelly laughed. “Oh, my dear, yes. That could be troubling if you didn’t realize—Now, you didn’t think that man of yours was two-timin’ you?”

  “Well...” A wave of guilt washed over me.

  “Oh, that man is so in love with you. Can’t you see that?” Kelly gestured toward the stage, where Jarret and the woman at the microphone still exchanged a few words. “He does anything you tell him. I’m sure that’s why he volunteers.” She leaned close and lowered her voice. “Men don’t typically volunteer for what he does, taking phone calls and such. But he’s so good with all the girls. They can relate to him. He hasn’t lost a single baby. He talks the girls right through their troubles.”

  Emotion formed a lump in my throat and I barely got out the word “Oh.”

  “You’ll enjoy this.” Kelly turned back to the stage just as Jarret took the microphone and the woman left the stage.

  A strange rush of adrenaline made me alert to every detail, though I focused on Jarret.

  Jarret squinted out at the dark bleachers. Lights shone only on him, probably blinding him, but he looked comfortable on stage, even in front of all these students. “Hey!” he shouted. “You ready for some straight talk?” Wild cheers and a few hoots came in response. He grinned. “Good.”

  My heart pounded and my hands had gone clammy. “What in the world is he giving a talk about?” I shouted into Roland’s ear. He replied with a shrug.

  The moment stretched out, but when the kids quieted down, Jarret began. “Some of you may’ve heard my talk at a teen event, so don’t go to sleep.” They laughed. “I’ve got the same message. But it’s a good one, and you need to hear it.”

  He scanned the bleachers. “I gotta find my guys out there first. So, let me ask you a few questions.” He grinned, looking like he was up to something. “You got a lot of hot girls here at Sacred Heart High?” Howls and hoots came from here and there but mostly from a top section on the far bleachers. Jarret nodded. “You showing them respect?” The howlers responded with a jumble of shouted comments and more howls.

  “Okay, found my guys.” Jarret pointed, his hand like a gun on its side, to the top section of the bleachers. “I was like you. I’m talking to you now. Better listen good.” A boy shouted something unclear and the group of guys laughed.

  Jarret stared at the microphone for a second as if gathering his thoughts. “When I was in high school, would you believe I was popular with the girls?” He narrowed one eye as if he really wondered what they thought. Kids clapped. Some whistled. “Yeah, I had a few girlfriends. And I won’t say I respected them, but I was a virgin in high school. Until I turned sixteen. Then I got the idea lodged in my head that I didn’t want to be a virgin anymore. I wanted to try sex.” One of “Jarret’s guys”
in the upper section of the bleachers hooted, a few others responded with unclear replies and shouts, but Jarret’s expression remained grim.

  “You see it all the time in movies and on TV. Everybody talks about it. Everybody does it, don’t they?” He paused. “I didn’t think it’d be that hard to find a willing girl, but I was particular. She had to be hot. So I found the one. She liked me. I liked her. We weren’t in love or anything, but that didn’t matter. And I’m not gonna lie and tell you it wasn’t fun.

  “But I wasn’t seeing the big picture. I didn’t know there was a big picture. Why do people have sex?” He paused and scanned the bleachers as if someone might offer an answer. “What’s it all about? You know why you eat. To grow, to stay healthy. You know why you exercise or lift weights. To stay healthy, to look good.” He got a few “yeows” from the girls in the folding chairs in the middle of the gym floor. He gave them an appreciative nod.

  “So, what’s the purpose of sex? Entertainment? Is it just something fun to do? Is it what you do when you’re in love?” He shook his head. “If you eat too much, you gain weight. If you exercise a lot, you get fit, maybe bulk up. What’s the natural consequence of a sexual relationship?” A few people shouted out answers, none of them clear. “Is there anybody here who doesn’t know? We all know. We all know the natural consequence wears diapers, spits up, and sucks on a pacifier.”

  Giggles rolled around the gym.

  “It’s a baby. Surprise. My girlfriend got pregnant. Didn’t see that one coming.” The giggles turned into laughter. “Of course, I didn’t want a baby. And she didn’t want a baby. I told you we weren’t in love. And even if we were, I was sixteen. She was younger. Neither of us had a job or a place to live, besides our family’s homes. We were kids. What were we gonna do with a baby? A baby needs a mother and a father to take care of it. I was not going to be a father.

  “Of course, I, uh, I didn’t see that I already was a father. She was carrying my baby. But I didn’t see it like that. She was pregnant and I didn’t want her to be pregnant. So I gave her some money and told her to take care of it.” He paused for a moment, probably to let the weight of it soak in. His jaw twitched as he let the moment stretch out.

  “If you don’t want to be pregnant, you don’t have to be, right? You can take a pill or something and things return to the way they were. Right?”

  No answer. Silence. He had them spellbound. He had me spellbound.

  “Well, she didn’t do it, because... I guess she was smarter than me. She knew that something living and growing was inside her, and it wasn’t just a blob of tissue. It was a human being, a baby.”

  Lightheaded and tingling all over, I rubbed my belly. Was this really Jarret West? Was Jarret really saying these things?

  “When I found out she hadn’t done it, hadn’t taken care of it... mm.” He narrowed his eyes, probably giving a look like the one he’d given Zoë all those years ago. “I was mad. I knew, at the end of nine months, she’d have something that was mine, something that I would have to be responsible for. I didn’t want that responsibility. So I told her again to take care of it. Take care of it or we’re through.”

  My hair stood on end. He had spoken the last line in a mean tone, the way he’d probably said it to Zoë. I couldn’t imagine Zoë’s grief.

  “She got her appointment, and I stopped thinking about it. Until that day. The day she was scheduled to terminate her pregnancy.” Jarret paused. The gym fell entirely silent. He frowned and turned his gaze upward to the darkness above him and then to the overhead stage lights.

  “Now, I don’t know if God worked it like this to wake me up, but that day, I was surrounded by babies. Little ones with round eyes and tiny hands and chubby faces. I had to drop my brother off at a church function, and they were everywhere. They were crawling out of the woodwork.”

  A few giggles came from the girls up front.

  “And as I stood listening to a youth band, one of them babies stared me down. I didn’t even hear the music. It was like that little guy knew what I did, what was happening to my baby that day.” Jarret’s voice cracked. He glanced at his feet. “So I had to get away from that punky little accuser, but I couldn’t shake the feelings... of guilt. Guilt overwhelmed me, guilt, anger, sadness. Utter grief. And before long, I jumped into my car and raced down to the abortion mill.

  “And I call it a ‘mill’ because of what they do there. They want you girls in there.” His eyes turned to the girls in the front. “Their profits depend upon you. It’s a multi-million-dollar industry. They bring in over eight-hundred and thirty million dollars a year, killing over a million babies. That’s thirty-seven hundred babies a day in our country. Don’t be fooled. They aren’t providing you a service. They don’t care about you at all. They’re using you. They want you to be sexually active, want you to use birth control, and they know that birth control is going to fail.

  “So anyway, I raced down there to stop her. But when I got there, I found her sitting on the clinic steps leaning on a woman, crying her eyes out. I was too late. It was done. My baby was dead.” He paused. “Her heart started beating eighteen days after conception, and I just had it stopped. I killed my baby.”

  Visibly trembling, he swallowed hard and stared at various points in the gym before steadying himself and continuing. “At seven weeks a baby can suck its thumb. At nine weeks, she can wrap her fingers around an object. As early as sixteen weeks she can hear her mother’s heartbeat and noises like my music.”

  He lowered the microphone and took another moment to compose himself. Then he lifted it and spoke again. “What happened next, I see it as a miracle. Any of you ever pray outside an abortion clinic?”

  A few people clapped, then more and more until applause came from every side of the gym.

  He nodded, looking pleased. “Sometimes people drive by and shout obscenities at you, right? Some people think you’re crazy. But you keep on praying and holding those signs,” he shouted. “You’re making a difference.”

  More applause erupted, making him wait. He nodded again, signaling his approval, then waited patiently for everyone to quiet.

  “That day, a bunch of people were out there praying for my girlfriend, maybe for me. And, thank God, my girlfriend changed her mind. She didn’t go through with the abortion. When I saw her sitting on the steps, she was crying in the arms of one of those crazy people, a crazy woman trying to save a life.” He paused. “They saved three lives that day. My baby’s. My girlfriend’s. And mine.

  “Everything changed for me that day. I stood by my pregnant girlfriend until she had the baby. We were too young to raise her, so we placed our little girl for adoption. I think about her all the time. Her adoptive parents send pictures sometimes. She’s cute.”

  Girls throughout the gym said, “Awww.”

  “Ever since that experience, I’ve stopped looking at sex the same way. I wasn’t about to go through that again. I began to realize sex isn’t some form of entertainment. And if you think it is, you’re being selfish. You’re thinking of what you want and not what you’re doing to your partner, and not how you could be creating a whole other person.

  “It’s kind of awesome, really. God creates. But he lets us create too. A man and a woman get together and, bam, there’s a third person. Kinda cool.” A few kids clapped.

  “Doesn’t it make sense that sex belongs in marriage? Only in marriage does it become a true expression of love between a guy and a girl, two people ready to bring a new life into the world and take care of it, love it. So I changed my view and I became a virgin again.”

  He got some laughter and comments from his guys in the top section of the bleachers.

  “Really?” I whispered to Roland. “He stopped having sex?” I never imagined he had used self-control from that day on. Roland shrugged, his eyes as wide as mine.

  “Yeah, go ahead and laugh,” Jarret said, gazing toward the upper bleachers. “I know you can’t go back, can’t erase the past, but yo
u can start over. I started over. Everybody makes mistakes. I was man enough to admit it and then do what I had to do from then on.” He got some cheers and applause.

  He brought the microphone closer to his mouth. “People can change. So, to those of you who have given up your virginity, if you see what I’m saying, if you understand the value of life, the value of sexuality, the value of love... you can change. You don’t have to keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t let anyone tell you, you can’t change. To those of you who are still virgins, good for you. There’s no greater gift a guy can give his future wife, or a girl can give her future husband on their wedding night than your virginity. Wait for your husband. Wait for your wife.”

  He paused, lowered the microphone, and stepped back. The applause started on one side of the gym and soon spread. A group in the bleachers stood, the applause growing in intensity. Soon over half the students in the gym were standing and clapping.

  My heart swelled with affection for this man. I shook my head in joyful disbelief. Was this the same Jarret West I’d known in high school? Was this really my husband?

  When the applause quieted, Jarret brought the microphone back up. “Even after I changed my ways, I had a hard time living with the guilt over what I’d told my girlfriend to do, even though it didn’t happen. Having an abortion, deciding to take the life of your baby, it’s not something you do and forget about. I don’t know how I ever would’ve forgiven myself if—” He pressed his lips together, dropped his gaze, and shook his head. The hand with the microphone swung to his side.

  My breath caught in my throat. My face warmed, embarrassed for him. Would he be able to finish the message?

  He turned away, wiped his eyes, then his pant leg, and turned back to the audience. Microphone to his mouth, he said in a voice that filled the gym, “But we have a God of mercy.”