When he walked in, he told me I looked beautiful. He had been saying that for almost three years, but this night he spun me around to get the full effect of my dress and shoes, and he pulled my hair back in his hands, forming a long ponytail, and buried his face in my neck. He seemed to be memorizing me. I suppose that might have been a sign; I interpreted it as delight. I took him into the kitchen, which was so tidy one would think I’d had the meal catered, and he ate like it was his first meal of the day and complimented everything from the main dish to the dessert. He seemed to understand this evening was a gift of love.
“I have something for you,” I said as I put the dessert plates in the sink.
When I came out of my bedroom with the little square package, he had left the kitchen table and was standing in the living room.
“I need to talk to you, Audrey,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, oblivious to his mood change, “but I want to give this to you first.”
He took the small box from my hand and put it on the coffee table. “No, sit down with me for a minute.”
Those words and the seriousness with which he spoke them, and his eyes, mysteriously apprehensive, finally penetrated my bliss. He was suddenly as removed as he was serious, and sitting beside him on the couch, I began to understand, however inconceivable the thought, that this talk was going to be about us, the couple, and it would not be a good one.
How he said what he said, I cannot remember. He stammered something about our being too young to become engaged. I think he said we should see other people before making such a big decision.
“What in the world are you talking about?”
He seemed frustrated with the inadequacy of his words and blurted out, “I just think we should break up for a while.”
I thought of a bumper sticker we had seen and laughed at. Something about setting people free, and if they’re really yours, they’ll come back to you.
“Andrew,” I said as calmly as I could, “don’t do this to us. Don’t throw away what we have, what we are. Don’t. Please don’t.”
I put my hands on each side of his face and looked into the blue eyes I had loved for so long and said the useless words again: “Don’t do this.”
He took my hands away from his face, put them in my lap, and studied the door behind me. I comprehended in that moment, though I was barely twenty years old, that when someone makes the decision to disconnect, even if that someone is Andrew, words are powerless to prevent it.
I began to cry, to sob really, and perhaps from pure instinct, he held me. He kissed my hair. He rocked me in his arms. But when I could stop crying, he untangled himself from me.
“I should go,” he said.
“Go? Look at me, Andrew.”
He did me the courtesy, and his pain too was palpable. I wiped any tears left on my face with my hands, hating how I must look now.
“I don’t know who she is,” I said, “but I hope she’s worth what this will cost us.”
He got up and walked to the door.
I stood too, trying to breathe, and noticed the present I had wanted so badly to give him sitting foolishly on the table where Andrew had placed it. He was on the porch, the door open between us, when I called out to him one last time.
“Andrew! Take this,” I said, walking across the threshold and shoving the box into his hand. “It’s a going-away present.”
Then I turned and walked into the house, shut the door, leaned against it, and tried to fathom his unfathomable last words: “I should go.”
During the last six weeks of school, I ran into Andrew on campus on two separate occasions, walking hand in hand with the governor’s daughter, and decided I had an answer for the Bee Gees’ question, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?” I told Willa no more running into Andrew; I was going to live with my aunt in Missouri and would finish my teaching degree there. She understood. She had been with me the second time I saw Andrew and his new girlfriend across the lawn, had stood beside me after they had turned a corner and disappeared from view, had heard the groan emerge involuntarily from somewhere deep inside of me, from a place in the human heart we didn’t even know existed. Instead of reaching out to me, she had stood back, awed by the manifestation of such raw grief.
But none of that has mattered for a very long time now.
After church today I rode the world’s longest tram and toured another Old Town, collecting them, it seems.
It was a nice Sunday until I opened Andrew’s message.
Willa wrote too: “Where are you?!!!”
Bless her.
fourteen
September 4
I arrived at the Grand Canyon earlier this evening and got a room at a lodge inside the park. It’s rustic, as it should be, I suppose, but comfortable and close to the shuttle buses that will take me everywhere I want to go. There was enough time after I arrived for me to take the blue shuttle to Yaki Point. I think it was at this very spot I argued with Tom and the kids about flying low by one of the natural wonders of the world.
“We’ve been here all morning!” Mark said.
“We’ve been at this observation point for five minutes!” I said.
They weren’t Philistines. This was day thirteen of a two-week vacation, and they were ready to get home. Tom had made the side trip so we could at least take a look at the canyon we had heard so much about, but now, “time was a wastin’.”
As the three of them rushed to the car, I turned and looked at the magnificent view one more time and made it a promise: “I’ll be back.”
“Here I am,” I said this evening.
I’m sure the canyon was pleased.
I grabbed a sandwich on the way up to my room and ate it with Tom’s Bible open on my lap to one of Jesus’ “I am” statements: “I am the light of the world.”
That made up my mind for me. Tomorrow at sunrise I am going to have a good spot at one of the observation points. I’ve heard sunrises over the Grand Canyon are spectacular, and I hoped it wouldn’t be cloudy so that I could witness the full effect of its beauty and symbolism. I’m ready for it, and for the first time since Tom died, I set the alarm. And I set it for five fifteen!
On the road today, I couldn’t help but think about Andrew’s message. It had never occurred to me that I hadn’t forgiven him. Some things eventually cease to matter, and forgiveness becomes a given. But thinking back on every encounter with Andrew since he walked out that door, I find nothing that suggests forgiveness.
He called me in September after I moved to Springfield to attend college and asked why I had done such a thing.
“Are you still dating Melissa?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, there you go,” I said. “And, Andrew, I’m sure sorry if my leaving has made you feel bad.”
He didn’t say anything then, and neither did I. After a minute passed, both of us with nothing to say, I pushed the button to disconnect.
Over two years later, Andrew called me at my parents’ house during Christmas break. He had broken up with Melissa that summer and had just returned from a fall internship in Washington and run into someone who told him I had come home wearing an engagement ring.
“Do you love him?” he asked.
“You know what, Andrew, the answer to that should be obvious, but even if it isn’t, it’s none of your business.”
“I’m sorry you’re still mad.”
“I’m not mad; that was just a stupid question.”
“Will you go get a Coke with me?”
“I’m engaged, Andrew. No, I won’t go get a Coke with you. I have to go.”
“Merry Christmas, Audrey.”
Before I could decide whether to return the holiday sentiment, he hung up.
Seven months later, he called me in Springfield when I got home from my wedding rehearsal. It upset me that my heart rate increased noticeably when I recognized his voice. He said he was in Springfield and would come by and get me if I wanted to change my mind
about marrying someone besides him.
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m sorry. I know it isn’t. And I know the timing is bad, Audrey, but I have one night left before you make the biggest mistake of your life, one night to tell you that I was a fool when I broke up with you. I wanted to tell you that when you were home for Christmas, but you wouldn’t give me the chance. I’ve called your apartment I don’t know how many times since then, but you’re never home. I finally gave up and sent you a letter almost two weeks ago. It came back yesterday. I sent the darn thing to Springfield, Illinois, instead of Springfield, Missouri.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference.”
“I can’t believe that. I love you, Audrey. I always have. I need you to know that.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Besides the fact that Andrew had apparently taken up residence in an alternate universe, I could not believe he would do something as crazy as calling me the night before my wedding. I couldn’t believe he would make himself so vulnerable, that he could feel that desperate.
“Don’t do this,” he said, and the words took me back to my plea on the worst night of my life. I doubt he was aware of the irony.
“I’m as sure about this wedding as I’ve been about anything in my life. I can’t wait until tomorrow. If you’re really in Springfield, go home. I can tell you from experience, you’ll get over this.”
I didn’t see him again until our tenth high school reunion. Early in the evening, he came up to me and Tom, eager it seemed to meet Tom and to introduce me to his wife, Susan, a lawyer in the Oklahoma City firm where he worked. Tom and I sat across the room from them at a table with Willa and Ed, and Jackie Harris, another OSU roommate, and her husband. I was irritated with myself for stealing more than one glance at Andrew, and inappropriately gratified that each time I did he was looking at me. Later that evening Tom asked Willa to dance, knowing she loved to dance and that Ed refused even to sway to the music. When they left the table together, I was startled to see Andrew walking toward our table and more than uneasy when he stood beside my chair and looked down at me, asking me to dance.
But I stood up and went with him to the dance floor.
“You are more beautiful than the girl I remember,” he said with no other preamble.
For the first time in eight years, I looked into his eyes, my only response.
When I finally spoke, I had the perfect question: “Where’s Susan?”
“She’s tired,” he said. “She went back to the hotel.”
“You’re not staying with your parents?”
“She prefers a hotel.”
He pulled me closer, and I let him, choosing closeness over the discomfort of looking at him. We danced in silence for a minute or two, and I remembered “us.”
I was relieved when he pulled back to look at me again. “Let’s talk about you,” he said.
“Oh, Andrew,” I said with a sigh, “let’s not. In fact, I’m going to go find my husband.”
I walked off the dance floor before the music ended but turned to say one last thing, quite presumptuous of me as I think of it now. “Perhaps you should go find your wife.”
Why was I so needlessly curt after so many years?
Intuitively, I must have thought Andrew posed a threat to me. For several years after Tom and I were married, Andrew crossed my mind from time to time, and each time it happened, I felt enormous guilt. Eventually, when his name surfaced in my consciousness for whatever reason (I quit trying to analyze it), I taught my heart to say, “There is no Andrew,” until finally there wasn’t. I suppose I was curt because I wanted to keep it that way. I considered my motives noble.
After the reunion, it was a nonissue. He had his life, and I had mine. Tom and I were in the second half of decade one. Things were good and getting better, and Andrew seldom entered my thoughts.
The only other time Andrew and I were together, I didn’t know it. The occasion was my father’s funeral, eight years ago. Andrew sent beautiful flowers and a card, and I asked Mom to write him a nice thank-you note, which Henry and I signed. Maybe as much as a year later, Willa asked me in the course of some conversation if I had seen Andrew at my father’s funeral.
“Are you sure he was there?” I said. “His name wasn’t in the guest register.”
She was sure. She had seen him in the back row at the service, and at the cemetery she had seen him standing by his car while everyone else gathered around the casket for a final prayer. Later, while friends and family greeted Mom, Henry, and me, she had looked in his direction a second time, thinking she would go speak to him, but he was gone.
I wrote Willa earlier this evening and told her I had just arrived at the Grand Canyon and that I’d probably be at her house Friday evening, but not to plan dinner for me, because I couldn’t tell her what time I would arrive.
I wrote the kids an update, and I wrote Rita, checking in before she leaves on her trip and wanting to tell her the story of my trip to Yaki Point.
Then I wrote Andrew: “I’m fine. And I forgave you long ago.”
September 5
There wasn’t a cloud in sight this morning!
I arrived at the observation point while it was still dark and found a spot in front of the iron railing. I wasn’t the first to arrive, and I was glad I could still find an unhindered view. Standing there, I found it fascinating that I was one of only a few English-speaking tourists. I identified at least four other languages, the most prevalent, Japanese and German. When the light that precedes the sun made an appearance, talking in any language ceased, everyone’s eyes intent upon the horizon and what it had to say, rather than on those around them. Most people had brought cameras and video recorders, some setting them meticulously on tripods, but a few of us came with nothing except expectancy. We looked first at the ridge from where the sun would emerge any moment to the canyon walls on the opposite side, which the sun would soon illuminate. A heavy gilded curtain parting for the most venerated performance on the most impressive stage in the world could not have produced more anticipation. We longed for the sun to make its entrance, and when it did, we gasped, almost in unison.
I leaned against the rail, taking in nature’s opulence, and whispered, “Magnificent Lord, thank you for this gift.” Only a sense of social decorum kept me from lifting my arms to heaven and singing the chorus of “How Great Thou Art”!
As it was, a Chinese lady looked at me tentatively, as though she was sizing up my mental state. She seemed somewhat relieved, I think, when I said nothing else but merely smiled at her. That smile must have been something because it served to catapult me into a photography session. She asked me with amazingly effective hand motions and body language to take a picture of her and her husband and son, the canyon glorious behind them. It was my pleasure. And before I left the lookout point, I had snapped at least ten pictures of happy couples and families, and one of a lady from Germany, alone like I, who wanted a record of her being here. She seemed to sense I would understand that.
I watched her walk away and hoped sleepyhead friends were waiting for her back at a lodge. But even if they weren’t, she’d seen a brilliant sunrise over the Grand Canyon.
When the sun was well into the sky, I went back to my room and made myself presentable before getting the car and driving out of the park to pick up a personal pan pizza. (I may enter myself in the Guinness World Records for most pizzas eaten on a road trip.) Ravenous, I ate in my room, wishing I’d picked up two pizzas since the one sitting in the box on my lap was the size of a bagel. But that was the only glitch in my morning, and I bowed my head over the tiny pizza and thanked God for my daily bread and for his handiwork and my opportunity to see it in such a way. Then I clicked on the television and watched a Law and Order rerun, which can be found almost anytime of the day or night. My firsthand experience with the “law” part had not stifled my interest in the show. I did, however, find myself dozing through a second episode and decided to pull back
the comforter and take a serious nap. Five fifteen in the morning, I am not used to.
It seems like I had a passel of dreams, but when I opened my eyes, I could recall only the last one. I was floating in the lazy river when up ahead I saw a man lounging in his inner tube, moving it along, using his hands for paddles. He looked a lot like Tom from the back, his sandy hair shiny and charmingly disheveled. I rushed through the water, dragging my inner tube behind me until I got close enough to see his face, and I almost cried when I realized it really was Tom. I could see my reflection in his hazel eyes.
He smiled. “Look who’s in the lazy river,” he said.
“I thought you were golfing,” I said, still amazed to find him there.
“This is great,” he said, “especially the scenery.”
I looked beyond him and saw the expanse of the Grand Canyon, but before I could take in its grandeur and wonder who thought to put a lazy river on the rim, I heard laughter behind me and turned to see the Chinese lady floating on her back without an inner tube, kicking her feet and propelling herself past Tom and me with a wave and a nod.
“Let me take a picture of you, Tom,” I said after waving back at my sunrise friend, “with the canyon in the background.”
He pulled himself out of the water and then helped me out while our inner tubes floated around the bend without us.
“No,” he said, taking the camera from around my neck. “I’ll take one of you.”
He posed me in front of the barricade at Yaki Point.
“That’s a good one,” he said, looking into my eyes, smiling my favorite smile.
I was rushing over to see what he saw on the screen of my digital camera when I awoke.
Closing my eyes, I willed myself back to sleep, wanting to find Tom again. But he had vanished with the dream, and tears slid down my temples and dampened the edges of my hair.
For a moment, I wondered whether the dream was a blessing or a curse, but I wiped the tears away and got up and washed my face before reading another group of verses in John, the best remedy I could think of for the longing I suddenly felt and didn’t know what to do with.
Tender Grace Page 10
