Tender Grace

by Jackina Stark

  “Yes, we do. So thanks for this too,” he said, holding up the check before folding it and tucking it into his shirt pocket.

  The afternoon was spent before I drove over the bridge to Coronado Island, but after I was checked in and settled, I walked the beach at dusk. I breathed in the ocean air, an air freshener I wish I could have left in the shelter bathroom. Fresh ocean air helped. When I came in, I e-mailed the kids and told them I’d arrived at Tom’s island. I did not mention my ineptness at the homeless shelter. I’d save that for another day.

  I stood at my window later looking at the stretch of beach I had just walked. “I’m here, Tom,” I said. “It’s as lovely as you said it was.”

  When I could leave the view, I walked over to put ice in my glass and pour a much-needed Diet Coke. I sat in my very nice chair and put my feet up on the edge of the bed. I was still feeling pretty stupid. My attempt to help couldn’t have been more bumbling. Or humbling.

  “I wasted my first day on the island, Lord,” my spirit grumbled. “I didn’t help. Not one bit.”

  I heard a response, inaudible but real nonetheless, and quite sweet: “You did it unto me.”

  I smiled then, a smile that would not go away.

  twenty-one

  September 18

  I felt fine when I awoke this morning, despite yesterday’s fiasco. In fact, I felt sociable enough and brave enough to experiment with eating by myself in public. I stepped inside a casual dining room at the hotel to see if a table for one was available. I gave the packed room a cursory look and started back out the door when a lady at a table for two near the entrance jumped up.

  “Ma’am,” she said, “you can have this table. My husband had to run up to our room before we take our walk, but we’re through.” She waved someone over to clean the table. “I’ll just wait for him in the lobby,” she said, looking on the floor around her chair for her bag.

  “Please,” I said, “stay and wait for your husband.”

  She put her bag in her lap, told me her name was Liz Emerson, and recommended the buttermilk pancakes.

  “I’m glad to hear that. I’m hungry for pancakes, despite the fact that the nutrition gurus say I’ll be hungry for something else in an hour. Oatmeal would keep me until noon, but it isn’t worth it.”

  I told her my name then, and she said that she and her husband live in Phoenix, Arizona, and spend a week on Coronado Island every fall.

  “This is my first visit, but my husband has been here before,” I said.

  She started to say something in response but saw her husband in the doorway. “Ah,” she said, “here’s Vernon now.”

  “Feel better?” she asked when he came over and stood beside our table.

  “Who’d you give my seat to?” he asked gruffly, his smile indicating he was no curmudgeon.

  “I gave it to Audrey Eaton,” Liz said, clearly familiar with this persona, “and you haven’t answered my question.”

  “I feel fine,” he said, offering me his hand. “Good morning, Audrey.”

  I told them to enjoy their walk, and they left as the waiter brought my breakfast, which was delicious, though my suspicion proved correct: Room service is much more comfortable for me than sitting alone in a dining room. Of course, I had to admit I wouldn’t have met Liz and Vernon Emerson if I hadn’t left the comfort and security of my room.

  I passed them on the beach a little later.

  “You weren’t gone long,” I said as the three of us stood soaking up the morning sun.

  “I’m a party pooper,” Vernon said. “I’ve got a little indigestion this morning.”

  “He should have had the pancakes, instead of sausage and fried eggs,” Liz said, taking his arm. “Or oatmeal.”

  I grimaced. “Heartburn sounds better,” I said. “Well, I’d better get on with my walk and see if the Travel Channel exaggerated when it named this beach one of the best in the world.”

  An hour later, walking into the back entrance of the lobby, I saw an ambulance in the front drive with its lights flashing, a crowd standing back from a gurney being pushed through the front doors. Liz stood by one of the emergency personnel. Before I could compute what this meant and get over to her, she had walked out behind the gurney and was climbing into the back of the ambulance with her husband.

  Ordinarily I would simply have gone to my room or back out on the beach to say a prayer for this sweet couple, but today I felt very strongly that I should go to the hospital, and for once, I didn’t consider sloughing off what might be the urging of the Spirit. After the ambulance pulled away, I told the manager on duty I was a friend of the Emersons and asked if he knew where they were taking Vernon. I was relieved when he picked up the phone, made a call, and told me the name of the hospital and how to get there.

  I didn’t find the hospital as easily as I would have liked. Of course, considering there were only right turns on the map the clerk drew me, I probably shouldn’t have made a left-hand turn when I was halfway there. By the time I found Liz in the waiting room of the cardiac intensive-care unit, she must have been there alone for an hour. When she looked up and saw me, she burst out crying.

  I rushed over to the couch where she sat, put an arm around her, and patted her shoulder. “I saw the ambulance pulling away when I came in from my walk, and I was afraid you were here alone. Do you want company? Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “I wish you could go in there and find out what’s going on. I haven’t seen anyone yet, and honestly, I’m going crazy.”

  “Well, Vernon must be hanging in there if no one has come out yet.”

  Liz squeezed my hand. “Thank you for coming, Audrey. I can’t believe you did. My daughter is driving in from Phoenix, but she can’t possibly get here before late this afternoon. My son says he’s coming, but he lives in Seattle, and I told him he should wait until we know more before he flies down. It’s nice to have you here.”

  A doctor came into the room then, looking at the groups of people clustered together in different areas.

  “Mrs. Emerson?” he asked.

  “Here,” Liz said, standing. I stood beside her, and we listened to him explain that Vernon had had a relatively minor heart attack but that he needed quadruple bypass surgery immediately. Liz began to shake, and the doctor and I each took an arm and guided her back to her chair. I sat beside her, and he knelt in front of her, sandwiching her hands between his.

  “He made it here, Mrs. Emerson. That’s a good thing, and he’s stabilized—that’s good too. We believe he will make a complete recovery. We can’t promise that, of course, but that is what we anticipate. You and your daughter should try not to worry.”

  “This is my friend,” she said. “My children will be here soon.”

  He told her she could see Vernon for a minute before they moved him to the operating room.

  She turned to me before she followed the doctor to see Vernon. “Can you wait?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I wasn’t going anywhere. I had decided this was a divine appointment.

  When Liz came back from seeing Vernon, she seemed less upset, and we stepped into a courtyard so she could call her daughter and son with an update. Both of them were already en route, which seemed to relieve her. Before she hung up with each of them, she said, “Pray for your dad.”

  After taking care of her two children, she made a call to her sister, who began a chain of calls. “Tell everyone to pray for Vernon,” she said before disconnecting.

  We sat on the stone bench after she slid her cell phone into a pocket of her jacket.

  “I’ve been praying for Vernon,” I said, “and you too.”

  “I appreciate that so much,” she said, patting my hand.

  For the most part, we alternated between sitting in the waiting room and walking the corridors. After a couple of hours, we broke up the routine by making a trip to the cafeteria for some caffeine, coffee for Liz and a Diet Coke for me, and we drank it on a patio, swapping st
ories about Vernon and Tom. I did not plan on mentioning Tom’s heart attack—what could be less appropriate? But conversation took us there, and she probed until I told her about finding him that dreadful morning.

  “Audrey!” Liz said. “I’m so sorry!”

  “I am too. But Vernon’s getting help in time, and that makes me happy.”

  “I guess you know,” she said, standing up and throwing her cup in the trash. “I don’t know how I would have made it through this day if you hadn’t been here. How can I ever thank you?”

  “Being here has been my privilege and pleasure, and thanking me couldn’t be less necessary.”

  “But I thank you anyway.”

  I stayed with Liz until her daughter arrived and Vernon was out of surgery. Few things have cheered my heart more than seeing Vernon’s surgeon come striding through the door with a smile on his face. How happy I was that it was not time for Liz to stand by her husband’s graveside.

  Arriving back at the hotel, I still had time to take a walk. I grabbed Tom’s Bible and found a place to watch the sunset, wondering if Tom had stopped near there to watch the sun in the same setting. The anniversary card marked the section of John called “Palm Sunday.” When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a young donkey, the people who had heard about his raising Lazarus from the dead greeted him with palm branches, symbols of victory, and called out, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

  As I thought about the relief that flooded Liz’s face when the doctor told her the surgery had gone well that afternoon, I looked up to see the orange sun, huge and iridescent, hanging over the horizon.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. I got up and scurried about collecting palm branches I had seen strewn along the beach, making a mound of them.

  “There,” I said when I had finished.

  I sat beside my altar of palm branches and watched the sun drop from sight, streaking the sky with glorious pinks and the deep purple of royalty.

  September 19

  San Juan Capistrano isn’t far from San Diego, so I spent my afternoon visiting the mission there. The swallows and the song about them are the sole reason for this day trip. How can I possibly remember the song “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano”? Was it on Your Hit Parade when I was a little girl and Mom rolled my hair in front of the television set? Pat Boone had a version. I suppose that’s the one I remember.

  People call it the jewel of the California missions. I was sick to hear that it was once a huge church with seven domes and that an earthquake had destroyed most of it only a few years after it was completed in the 1700s. And as it turns out, the birds haven’t come in huge numbers to build their mud nests in the ruins of this wonderful stone church for a long time, since the early 1900s, according to a lady at the mission.

  But though it isn’t what it was, I found this place peaceful and enchanting. I loved the remaining walls with bougainvillea draping them, the wall of bells, the fountain, the chapel. I was sitting on a low wall enjoying the fountain when I observed a little bird flitting about and wondered if he was one of the swallows that had flown over from Argentina last spring. They still come to this area of Southern California, created to do so it seems, and a few nests appear now and then among these ruins. Whether I saw a swallow or not, I’m glad the romantic notion of the returning swallows brought me to this place.

  I have come to understand that tender graces remain for those who can see. The Mission San Juan Capistrano is one. And I’m happy to say I saw it.

  On the way back to the island, I pulled into a large shopping area to pick up something to eat. Rather than driving to the restaurant, I turned, with no premeditation whatsoever, into a parking space at one of my favorite bookstores. It seems like years since I’ve spent time in a bookstore, and I found myself walking down row after row of books, pulling out one here and there, and spending even more time perusing books on display tables. I picked up several, drawn by their quirky titles, and read the backs, thinking I might buy one. But in the end, I wasn’t in the mood for cute, witty, or satirical.

  I did, however, leave with a book. Why it got my attention, I can’t say. It certainly didn’t have an interesting cover, though plain and brown is as inviting to me as anything else these days. If I’m going to attempt reading again, books other than my Bible, that is, I thought this Pulitzer Prize–winning book might be a good one to start with. I was drawn to the simple title: Acts of Faith. I almost put it down when I read on the back cover that it was set in the Sudan—one recent and horrific example of a fallen world. And besides that, by today’s standards, it was a tome (any book that has to list major and minor characters, along with a brief description of each, is a little intimidating). But something kept it in my hand. If it’s too much once I open it beyond the first pages and actually start reading seriously, I know Molly will be glad to have it, and my purchase won’t have been in vain. I might even start it tomorrow, which could cut my television viewing to practically nothing.

  What have I done?

  twenty-two

  September 20

  I made a quick stop by the hospital on my way out of town, to check on Vernon and to give Liz my e-mail address for updates, and have arrived safely in Santa Barbara. After getting situated, I opened my laptop and found a message from Willa. She wrote to tell me about a series of Oprah programs dedicated to a cross-country trip Oprah took with her best friend, Gayle. Willa said they were “seeing the USA in a Chevrolet,” beginning in L.A. and ending in New York. She ended her message by saying that Oprah had the good sense to take her best friend with her when she took a road trip. As a closure, she wrote, “Repent!” She didn’t even sign her name.

  I wrote back and said I would wager there were times on Oprah’s trip across the country when either she or Gayle had been the ones repenting.

  Solitude has its merits.

  As does fellowship, of course, and once again, I promised Willa a trip to a destination of her choice in the next year or two.

  Mainly I wrote to thank her for her sweet gift. I found it yesterday, tucked in the front zipper of my shoe bag. She had taped a note on the plastic cover that said as soon as I was ready to listen to music, she wanted me to hear song ten on this Selah CD. She said she had been drawn to the CD because of its title: Bless the Broken Road.

  “How perfect is that?” she wrote. She said she brought it home and listened to it and decided to give it to me because of song ten. “If anything sounds like you, this song is it.”

  After I packed the car this morning, I put the disk into my CD player. Just before I pulled onto Highway 1, I found track ten and played and replayed “The Faithful One” for at least thirty minutes, pulling over once to reach into the glove compartment for tissues. How well Willa knows me! I love the song. Tom and I had our song. I believe that this will be my song without him and that this was the perfect day for it to come to me: “With feet unsure I still keep pressing on, for I am guided by the faithful one.”

  I reread her note when I got to the hotel today and had to laugh at a PS I had overlooked earlier: “Please note that someone named Eaton co-wrote the song. Is that not a sign you will love it?!”

  I’m going to watch Dancing With the Stars and then turn off the television and read another chapter of my novel. I read the eight-page introduction and reviewed the cast of characters after dinner this evening. I’ll say this: It is not light reading.

  September 21

  I saw him first at the top of Santa Cruz Island.

  I had read about the Channel Islands in my hotel room, but that doesn’t adequately explain why I actually took the boat to Santa Cruz. I could have stayed in Santa Barbara and perused quaint shops, or visited galleries, or enjoyed another botanical garden. I haven’t done any of those things for a while now, but instead I chose to do something I have never done. I almost regretted my decision on the hour boat ride to the island. While everyone else was buying coffee and hot chocolate and doughnuts, I was discreetly inquiri
ng about a barf bag. That, by the way, is exactly what I called it. A more proper name for it eludes me even now. The girl behind the counter found me a Ziploc bag, and I headed for the deck at the back of the boat, where the fresh air, despite the chill and the wind, relieved my nausea enough that I could stuff the unused bag in my pocket for the return trip.

  I couldn’t have been happier to see shore.

  As soon as I got off the boat and the other passengers scattered, leaving me alone on the pebbled beach, I looked up at the “mountain” I intended to climb and congratulated myself on a good decision. Before I boarded the boat this morning, and after weeks of needing one, I broke down and bought a backpack for this particular adventure; my trusty canvas bag could not cut exploring a deserted island. And the island really did seem deserted. I couldn’t imagine how everyone could have completely disappeared five minutes after disembarking. I slipped my arms into the straps of my backpack and began walking to a path that I assumed would lead to a trail.

  My assumption was correct, and I did pretty well on the trail, though several times I thought how much easier the climb would’ve been if Tom had been there to take my hand and pull me up when the trail was steep and footholds too sparse. Instead I used my hands to pull myself up, like a kid climbing a rock wall, only I was a tad more horizontal. I was thankful I didn’t have my canvas bag slung over my shoulder. It wasn’t a horrible trail, but it wasn’t all that easy either, especially for a wimpy woman climbing alone. I broke a nail, which I ignored though I had a file in my backpack, and I was forced to sit and rest a few times, but I was determined to get to the summit. This was my Mount Everest. When I finally reached the top, I considered doing a victory dance with my fists in the air like Rocky. I squelched the impulse when I saw a rather handsome man striding toward me, apparently heading back down the trail from which I had come.

  “You made it,” he said.

  I slid the backpack off my shoulders. “To the top, anyway.”