On A Prayer

by Mary May

  Alec narrowed his eyes at her. “Actually I don’t. Has your financial situation changed? Have you gotten employed elsewhere?”

  Klara frowned at him. “No, nothing has changed and, no, I haven’t gotten a job anywhere else, but my decision is made.”

  “Why? You would rarely see me anyway, and I don’t understand leaving a good job just because you’re embarrassed.”

  Klara stood to her feet. “Mr. Adams, again I do appreciate all your help, but this isn’t your decision.”

  Alec slowly got up, shaking his head. “I think we can move past the Mr. Adams, don’t you? Call me Alec. Look, you don’t have to rush back. Take all the time you need; just don’t make a hasty decision right while you’re…” he trailed off.

  Klara arched a brow at him. “While I’m what, Mr. Adams, confused? Highly medicated? Emotionally unstable?”

  Alec nodded. “Yes, actually. Right now you’re all three. I said to call me Alec.”

  Klara walked to the door and opened it. “Thank you for bringing my cat home and for taking such good care of him, Mr. Adams, but I think I can make my own decisions, whether they are right or wrong.”

  Alec walked to the door and stared down at her; at least she had some fire in her eyes again. “I’ll keep your position open for you…take care.” Then he walked out closing the door behind him.

  “Oooh! That man! Has no one ever told him no?” Klara stomped back to the couch and went back to folding towels, snapping them out harder and harder as her temper boiled.

  He smiled as he heard her growl at him from behind the door. He didn’t know why he felt the need to provoke her. Ok, that wasn’t true, he liked to see her stiffen her spine, and he liked to see something besides hopelessness in her eyes, even if it was anger toward him. His cell phone buzzed just as he reached his car. He answered it without looking.

  “Just how many women are you messing around with, Alec? Could you at least keep it to a minimum until the divorce is final or do you just enjoy smearing my face in your obvious lack of respect for me?”

  He groaned. “What do you want, Clarissa?” He knew better than to just answer his phone; those carefree days were long over.

  “Why are you dodging my question, Alec? She looks young. Is she even legal?”

  Getting in the car so he could at least have some privacy, Alec growled into the phone. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Clarissa. I said I wouldn’t be with anyone until the divorce was final, and I have kept my word.” He started the car and pulled out on to the street.

  “Oh, really? Well, let me describe her to you then. She is blonde, of course, and young and, to help you out even further, you just left her apartment!”

  Alec frowned and checked his rearview mirror. Sure enough, a dark sedan was pulling out behind him. “You’re having someone tail me? Why should I be surprised? I hope you’re paying him well with my money.” He cringed when she squealed in his ear.

  “Who is she?”

  He sighed and then accelerated; he was fixing to lose the clown behind him. “I don’t answer to you anymore, Rissa, and I don’t owe you any explanations, but whatever your boy told you wasn’t the truth. Not by a long shot.” He turned sharply onto Brooklyn Ave then shot down and made another left turn onto I-95. He gunned the v-8 engine and merged into the flow of the evening traffic. He grinned as he left the dark sedan behind.

  “You owe me, Alec! You owe me whatever I say you owe me!” She screamed in his left ear.

  He was so sick of this conversation. He had admitted his wrongdoing. He had sincerely apologized and he vowed to never be unfaithful again. He had meant it. He tried so hard to make it up to her. He lavished her with gifts and expensive trips. He bowed down to her every whim. He let her lash out and call him every name in the book. He had stood and let her slap his face repeatedly until her arm got tired and he sported a black eye for a week. What he did was wrong, straight up wrong. He never tried to call it anything other than what it was. He didn’t have an answer for her when she asked why he did it. He honestly didn’t know. It wasn’t Clarissa’s fault. He had made sure she knew that. But his cheating had broken something in her, made her hard and bitter. He had done that to her, and after two years of fighting he had finally decided this couldn’t be repaired. He filed for divorce six months ago and he told her she could have whatever he wanted, that he wouldn’t fight her. She had taken him at his word. She wanted everything, the house, his investments, everything. Now he was done bowing down to her. He had enough; he was done.

  “Clarissa, I have given you everything you have asked for. I have tried so hard to be decent about this, but you have to meet me in the middle somewhere.”

  He barely had the words out of his mouth before she was screaming again. “Decent! You haven’t been decent in over two years, you lying cheating dog! I won’t stop until you’re ruined! Do you hear me? Ruined!”

  Alec hung up on her; then he powered off his phone. “God help me,” he muttered. He would get his number changed if he thought it would do any good. She would have the new one within twenty-four hours.

  Clarissa had always been high strung; that was part of her appeal for him. She was his opposite in nearly every way. But maybe that was the problem. It could be they were too different. At first he enjoyed her flash and sparkle; he was amused at her high-maintenance ways. She was the fluff to his otherwise hard world. Not long into their marriage, he found the lack of something meaningful to talk about starting to nag at him. He knew he married her for all the wrong reasons. His grandfather had been after him for the past two years to settle down and provide an heir. He thought he would be doing the right thing. Clarissa seemed happy enough with him. She was very excited when he proposed. Looking back now, he understood she was excited about the taking of his last name more so than the man that came with it. He didn’t blame Clarissa; she was who she was, and he knew that when he said his vows. But then he had changed or grown up or something.

  After they had been married a year, he mentioned children. Clarissa had looked at him like he had gone mad. “Children, as in more than one?” she asked in disbelief.

  Alec chuckled. “Well, I thought one was a good starting number; then we could go from there. Don’t you want children?”

  She frowned at him. “Not particularly, but if you insist, I’ll agree to one. So you better hope that you get what you want the first time.” He had never brought it up again. He knew then that the marriage was a mistake. He was trying to figure out what to do when he had met Rebecca. It started off simply as a business arrangement. She was a brilliant law student and she worked for his grandfather’s law firm as an intern. They had ended up on a business trip together and one thing actually did lead to another. He couldn’t say that he didn’t want it to happen, but he could say that he never intended for it to happen. It was never supposed to go beyond a friendly flirtation. After the act was done, he asked her to leave. He was overwhelmed with guilt and remorse.

  He tried to keep it from Clarissa, but his heavy heart wouldn’t let him. The only thing he wouldn’t tell her was who he had been with. He knew his wife well enough to know that she wouldn’t be happy with just destroying him. She would take Rebecca down, too.

  Even the act of trying to protect Rebecca had come back to bite him. As it turned out, he wasn’t the first or the last man in the law firm that she had an encounter with. He was just the only married one. Of course, in the end everything had come out in the open. Once he knew the marriage couldn’t be saved and filed for divorce, Clarissa had launched a vicious attack on his reputation and his career. He had to shut the door to his own practice and go to work for his grandfather, who was the only one who was happy with the situation.

  Granddad never could stand Clarissa and had been after him for years to take his place at his law firm.

  “Boy, what you did was wrong, and you shamed the Adam’s name, but I can’t say I’m sorry to see that little woman go. Never did understand what you saw
in her past the obvious. She was a pretty thing, but she didn’t have no heart, no substance to her. You need a woman like your grandmother, rest her soul.” His grandfather had given him this speech twenty times.

  “Find a woman that won’t bow down to you, that makes you earn her heart. Those are the marrying kind.” For some reason that made him wonder how hard David had to work for Klara’s heart.

  Chapter 7

  Klara hugged her dad one last time then turned to her mother. “Oh, baby, are you sure you’re ready to be on your own?” Her mother looked at her with concern.

  Klara shrugged. “Honestly how will I know until I try it and see? Mama, you have my word I will never again try to take my own life. I know that is not the answer. I don’t exactly know what the right answer is just yet, but that isn’t it.”

  Sarah smiled at her daughter. “Honey, you do know the answer. He can’t heal you if you don’t let Him.” Klara embraced her again without responding. She wasn’t ready to open that door to her life yet.

  “Ok, Sarah, we are going to hit all the evening traffic unless we leave right now,” Dale urged. “Little girl, you call us day or night and we will come get you or we will come back here. Day or night, you understand?” Dale wrapped his arms around Klara once more, squeezing tightly.

  “Ok, Daddy, I promise! Thank you both so much. I love you.” After a few more hugs and kisses, her parents left and Klara gently closed the door.

  “Well, Scooter, it’s just you and me again.” She noticed her voice echoing in the empty apartment. It was going to be hard to get used to the silence again. Her parents chattered constantly to one another about something all the time. Well, her mama chattered; her daddy would grunt or comment here and there. But the point was they made noise! Now she could feel the silence pressing in on her. She clicked on the TV and saw it was still on the football channel. She left it there; she didn’t really care for football, but her daddy loved it and it made her feel less lonely. She could pretend they were still here.

  She wandered into the kitchen and started a large pot of soup. She crumbled in the hamburger meat and diced the onions. As the meat and onions cooked, she chopped carrots and potatoes then opened a couple of cans of mixed veggies and tomato sauce. She realized after a few minutes that she was humming to herself, like her mama did as she cooked. She finally added the rest of the ingredients then turned down the heat to simmer. She dug around until she found a lid big enough to cover the pot. It was then that it dawned on her what a massive pot of soup she had made. “Good grief! I’m going be eating soup for two weeks. Well, I’ll just have to find someone to give it to, I suppose.” She decided to make a big pan of cornbread to go with it as well. “Can’t eat soup without cornbread,” she reasoned.

  After she had eaten a bowl then put some in the freezer for later, she still had nearly a full pot. She poured it into several plastic containers with lids then wrapped up the cornbread in plastic wrap and started knocking on her neighbors’ doors.

  She knocked on the door right next to hers and waited for an answer. Finally an old man came to the door and opened it a crack. “Yeah, what do you want?” he yelled at her.

  Blinking in surprise, she stammered, “Hi, I live next door and I made way too much soup and I wondered if perhaps you might like some.” He opened the door a little wider.

  “Soup, you say? What kind of soup? It’s not cabbage soup, is it? Cabbage soup gives me gas.”

  Klara smiled then shook her head. “No sir, it’s homemade beef and veggie soup, and I made some cornbread, too.” That got the door all the way open.

  “Well, if you are just going to toss it, then I might take little of it.” She handed him one of the bowls and a wrapped section of cornbread. He took it without so much as a thank you then he shut the door in her face.

  Klara stepped back in time to keep her nose from being hit by the slamming door. “You’re welcome,” she said, smiling and shaking her head.

  At the next door a middle-aged woman answered and so Klara repeated her story. This time it was taken graciously with an offer to return the bowls. The next two doors remained closed. The third was opened by a little boy with blonde hair and a dirty face wearing rumpled Spiderman pajamas.

  “Hi there, is your mama or daddy home?” He shook his head and she noticed a foul odor coming from the apartment. “Is someone else here with you? Your grandma or a brother or sister?” Again he just shook his head. Growing concerned, she questioned him further. “Sweetheart, is anyone with you? Are you by yourself?”

  He finally spoke. “Daddy is workin, and Mama left.”

  Klara knelt down and set the bowls of soup to the side. She noticed his eyes following the food. “Baby, are you hungry?” He nodded and that was all Klara needed to hear. She got one the bowls of soup and took off the lid.

  “Do you like cornbread with your soup?” His eyes grew large and again he just nodded. She crumbled the still warm cornbread into the soup. “Can you go get me a spoon?” He ran back into the apartment and Klara got her first look inside. What she saw broke her heart.

  The living room consisted of two twin-sized mattresses thrown on the floor with bedding that looked to have seen better days, surrounded by a sea of trash. Empty soda bottles and old pizza boxes along with countless empty beer bottles were everywhere. Dirty clothes and dirty dishes were piled on every available surface. The smell was bad enough to make her eyes water. The little boy rummaged around until he found a spoon that was caked with who knows what and brought it back to her. Klara looked at it with dismay.

  “Oh, no, sweetie, this is dirty. Tell you what -- I’m going to go back to my apartment and wash this for you, ok? I’ll be right back.”

  He nodded then asked, “Will you leave the food here?” Her heart broke even more when she realized he was scared she was going to take his soup away!

  “I’m going to leave this right here; this is your soup, ok? I just need to wash the spoon for you. I’ll hurry and be right back!” He nodded and watched her as she ran back down the hall to her apartment. She tossed the crusty coated spoon in her trashcan then grabbed a clean one from her drawer. She paused long enough to fill a plastic glass with milk then hurried back. He was down on his knees staring at the soup and she could tell he had taken a few bites from the bowl with his fingers.

  “Here you go, a clean spoon and a glass of milk! How does that sound?” He nodded and reached for the spoon, digging in with undisguised hunger. He swallowed without even chewing for a few bites then he reached for the glass of milk. He drank nearly half the glass then wiped his arm across his mouth with his dirty sleeve. In a matter of minutes the bowl was empty, along with the glass of milk. Klara reached her hand out to brush his bangs away from his eyes, causing him to flinch violently!

  “Oh, I’m sorry, sweetheart! I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just getting the hair out of your eyes.” He inched backed into the apartment, watching her warily. He still looked longingly at the two other bowls of soup and the cornbread. “Are you still hungry? You can have some more if you want.” She opened the second bowl of soup then crumbled in the cornbread. She slid it to him on the floor and he pulled it inside the apartment. “Would you like some more milk?” He nodded without looking up at her as he continued to eat. “Ok, I’ll be right back.”

  She ran to her place and filled the glass once more with milk then hurried back. She didn’t know what to do. This was a case of child neglect at best and child abuse at worst. She decided to see what kind of information she could get from him about his parents.

  “My name is Klara. What’s your name?” she questioned.

  “Matthew.” He mumbled around his mouthful of soup.

  She nodded. “That’s a real nice name. What’s your mommy and daddy’s name?”

  He finished with the second bowl of soup and finally looked at her. “My daddy is Marcus and my mommy is Haylie.” She scooted down to sit in the hallway. He stayed in the doorway. “Those are real nice names, t
oo. You said that your mommy left? Do you know where she went?” She tried to judge his age; her best guess would be somewhere between four and six. He could be small for his age if he wasn’t getting the proper diet.

  “She left me because I was bad and because daddy made her sick.”

  Klara closed her eyes at that emotionless statement. “I’m sorry to hear that, Matthew. How long ago did she leave; do you remember?”

  He shrugged then shook his head. Ok, that meant she left before today, which meant no one was watching this child.

  “When will your daddy be home from work?”

  He looked behind him and pointed to the TV. “When Spongebob comes on and it gets dark he will come home.”

  Klara smiled at him in encouragement. “Very good, Matthew! You’re a big boy to be able to remember that!”

  He finally smiled at her a little.

  “Now I have one more question then we can play a game, ok?” He nodded, looking more alert now that his tummy was full. “Can you remember how many days you have had to stay by yourself while your daddy works? Was it more than one day?”

  He nodded quickly.

  “Ok, was it more than two days?”

  Again he answered with a nod.

  “Very good! Was it more than three days?”

  This time he was slower in answering but he still answered yes.

  “Alright now think real hard. Has it been more than four days that you have been left by yourself?”

  He wrinkled his nose and closed his eyes. “I think so,” he answered. She didn’t push him any further; she had the answer she needed. He was basically left alone all the time while the father worked, it looked like.

  She had no intention of leaving him alone until his father came home, but she couldn’t take him to her apartment nor was she willing to go inside his. So she sat cross-legged in the hall while he sat on his knees in the doorway and they played games such as I Spy and Guess the Number until she heard the theme song for Spongebob come on. It was but a few minutes later that she heard the elevator ding and heavy footsteps coming down the hallway. She stood up and faced Matthew’s dad as he frowned at her from the end of the hallway.