The Corn Husk Experiment

by Andrea Cale

  Henry looked down at his feet and realized that in all the excitement, he had forgotten to change out of his favorite shoes before hitting the snow.

  CHAPTER 29

  CAROLINE

  The Troubled One

  It was a crisp Sunday morning of stillness, reflection, and hope for Caroline as she quietly stepped from bed. Her roommate was only a few hours into slumber following her Saturday night out at Judy Lou’s, a cash-only dive bar in Boston’s Brighton neighborhood that attracted college students for its $1.75 Busch Light drafts and hookup opportunities. Caroline glanced at her roommate’s bed and winced at the sight of an unknown second figure under the comforter. She politely tiptoed about the room even though a dorm fire alarm probably wouldn’t have roused the sleeping pair.

  The sticky situation was yet another reminder of Caroline’s struggle to get accustomed to single life on campus. She had woken several consecutive mornings wondering whether the odd turn of events on her final night at the Gentlemen’s Club had been part of a dream. Only a week had passed following her final steps on stage with her unsuspecting boyfriend in the front row, yet she knew her relationship with Devin was over. Questions replaced the anger she had felt over Devin’s own lies that night. What would he do now with her employment information? Would he tell his teammates? Would she become the joke of campus? Would her cheerleading coach, a mentor who had given Caroline the only scholarship she had, find out? She asked herself how she could have risked everything.

  Despite her frustration, Caroline decided to look forward. She would start with an overdue trip to church. She searched her closet for her best Sunday shoes and her soul, just as she had done every Sunday morning growing up in Cranston, Rhode Island, where she had walked to Mass four seasons out of the year holding hands awkwardly, yet lovingly, with her father. She moved the stiletto heels and knee-high boots to the back of the closet and pulled her most conservative ones toward the front. The cleanup marked a small, symbolic step toward reorganizing her life.

  Caroline silently slipped out of the dorm room as she had on the morning of her Gentlemen’s Club audition and dialed her father during the brisk walk across the University of Boston campus to Chestnut Hill’s beautiful parish of St. Ignatius of Loyola. She stared at her shoes as she anticipated her father’s answer. The black flats looked larger than, but similar to, the ones she wore to meet him on the night of her mother’s fatal car crash more than a decade ago.

  “Hello?”

  Caroline smiled at the sound of the kind, deep voice on the other end. In another part of New England, Kenny was walking to St. Matthew’s Church in Cranston. The father and daughter’s love for each other was strong, even though a trio of deep struggles—the loss of Kenny’s wife and Caroline’s mother, the father and daughter’s separation as Kenny worked long hours at Harper, and Caroline’s secret abuse—often made the pair feel a world apart.

  “Dad?”

  “Caroline! How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Dad. How are things with you?”

  “Fine, thanks.”

  Their sporadic conversations always opened similarly—short and generic—even though the pair had endless deep topics they could discuss.

  On this hopeful winter morning, Caroline dared to change up their phone routine.

  “I was just thinking about you on my way to church. I miss going to church with you, Dad. I miss you.”

  “Well, anytime you want to come on home for a visit, come down.”

  “I know. I miss home too. It’s just been so busy with the games and practice and everything.”

  There was an awkward pause as the pair separately walked to places they both hoped would bring them peace. The daughter continued.

  “Speaking of games, Dad, we cheerleaders have been given a whopping one complimentary ticket each to the Orange Bowl for a friend or family member. You wanna go?”

  Caroline knew money would be scarce for her father’s airfare and lodging, but she had a feeling that the trip might serve as the highlight of his year. Aside from Kenny’s occasional card games at coworkers’ homes, he didn’t visit many places other than St. Matthew’s and Harper Manufacturing. Caroline realized in that moment that she’d rather be in her painful shoes than in her father’s punishing pair. Hers offered more opportunity.

  “You sure you don’t have a boyfriend or someone who you’d rather have go?” Kenny asked.

  The man was unaware of Caroline’s dates with the very quarterback he read about in The Providence Journal. Their conversations never took that turn.

  “No, no boyfriend, Dad. I should tell you, though. The game is in Florida.”

  “Oh, I know. Everyone in this town has been following the team. We’re all so proud of you.”

  The comment, as everyday as it might seem for a father to a daughter, was the most spontaneous and loving gesture Caroline had felt from the man since the bone-chilling, rainy night of her mother’s death when Kenny had clung so tightly to his little girl, his new lifeline. Caroline tugged at her locket now, feeling surprised and content at once.

  “Then you’ll come, Dad?”

  “I think I will.”

  Sensing a new beginning on a couple of fronts, Caroline warmly said goodbye to her father and, more permanently, her Gentlemen’s Club life as she stepped inside St. Ignatius Parish. She dipped a pair of fingers in the holy water and made the sign of the cross.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been almost a year since my last confession.”

  Caroline felt at peace following the moving Sunday Mass at St. Ignatius. The grand archways made her feel as though she were ready to start yet another important journey away from a troubled past. The brightness of the church made her feel more upbeat. The strong columns made her feel as though she could continue being strong and brave.

  The parishioners were filing out of the service, but Caroline made her way to the confessional booth to talk with someone for the first time about her problems. If she had the courage to stay that course, the conversation would take a while, she thought. She hung around the back pews until she was sure to be the last person to step inside the booth.

  On the other side of the screen sat as good of a man as Caroline could’ve hoped for in a diocese that was still reeling from its own journey of trouble. Hearing confessions was Father Santori, a man in his seventies who had spent nearly all of his free time at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital visiting ailing parishioners or the local Star Market to buy grocery items for anyone in his path who had hit a rough spot in life.

  “Go on, my child.”

  Caroline could immediately tell by the sound of his calm voice that the priest was old and gentle. She felt grateful for his ability to overlook the long time she had reported passing since her last confession. She was skeptical of all men these days and always. But she loved her faith, and she hoped she was stepping into a safe place.

  “Father, you’ll have to excuse me as this could take a while. Do you have time?”

  “I have as much as you need.”

  “Well, I’ve been carrying a burden since my mother’s death, and I need a new start. I’m a good person, I know that, but I’ve recently made some bad choices.”

  Caroline felt annoyed with herself for sugarcoating the situation.

  “Make that horrible choices,” she continued. “Sinful choices. I take full accountability. I knew they were wrong. I did ’em anyway.”

  “Is there anything specific you’d like to talk with me about?”

  “Where do I start? As a young girl, after my mother died, a distant cousin watched over me and did awful things as I pretended to sleep.”

  The quiet booth encouraged Caroline to continue.

  “I’ve lived with this trouble all my life without telling anyone. I recently took up…” Caroline paused to search for the right words. Different options ran through her head.

  “Well…a certain type of dancing. I’m not using my past as an excuse for making this mista
ke—it was actually more about greed for the money—but I did justify my job by turning to my past. I convinced myself that taking my clothes off on my own was much less wrong than having others do it for me, against my will.”

  Father Santori waited quietly for Caroline to continue even as her tears fell and her words stopped. She waited for the priest to scold her or assign her five, ten, fifteen, or fifty Hail Marys and Our Fathers in an attempt to magically erase her sins. He did not. He gave her instead what she needed most.

  “OK, my child. Life includes mistakes. It’s what you do after a mistake that reveals goodness. There is a passage in Romans 5 which states that ‘We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts.’”

  The aging priest’s voice broke. Caroline wondered if the strain came from a morning filled with service and confessions or his compassion for her own story. She heard him take a sip of water before continuing.

  “Perseverance. Character. Hope,” he said. “You have persevered. While no one can erase your tragic past, still no one can take away the perseverance you achieved. You demonstrated great character this morning. There is no question that you made a sinful choice recently, but you have shown to me great honesty, remorse, and a will to make things right. I know the seat you are in is not a comfortable one. So many lose the courage to confess as soon as they step inside the booth. You have not been dealt an easy hand at life, but with your perseverance and character, you should take away tremendous hope for your future. Perseverance. Character. Hope. Bless you, my child.”

  Caroline knew she needed to let her past be her past. It would no longer shape her future, other than having made her stronger. She was left with one major question. But how am I going to start?

  She attempted a summary of her self-image problems to the priest.

  “The troubles of my childhood were out of my control. I still feel like I carry a scarlet letter of sorts that people can see. The decision to try this type of work, though, was one I made on my own. I feel like I will always carry a letter for that too, but it’s a different kind of burden. It’s filled with more guilt. When I walk down the street, I feel like everyone looks at me and sees. With every man in a convenience store, bar, or even here at church, I wonder, Does he recognize me? Was he a regular of performances? When I hear a woman complain on the T about her fiancé’s bachelor party at the club, I wonder if she somehow knows who I am and hates me. How do I keep the past troubles in my past?”

  “I have one thing to say about that,” Father Santori said. “Growing up as a boy, I vacationed at my aunt’s house every summer in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. We would buy corn fresh from the on-your-honor farm stands that lined the country roads, and to this day, they were the sweetest I ever had. We also husked there some of the worst I’ve ever seen—bruised or worm-ridden. Whenever my aunt pulled out her coin purse to pick out a dozen ears, there was no telling how many good ones we’d end up with. By looking at the husks alone, there was no way to know whether she was buying a sweet one or a bruised one. When we got to her cottage and took the time to work with them in the humid summer air—shucking them piece by piece, layer by layer—we would get to really see. Most were good. A fraction were bruised. An even smaller fraction were rotten at the core, even though they looked perfectly alluring from the outside. As human beings, we are all made with the capacity to be good. We rarely get to see what causes another person’s bruises. Everyone has a story. We are all changing. We can all do better.”

  Caroline hadn’t fully absorbed what corn had to do with her story, but it made her recall the day as a young girl when she had helped her mother drop a few ears in a boiling pot before they sang and danced in circles on the old linoleum kitchen floor of the humble apartment in which her widowed father still lived. Back then, he was just finding out about his job offer at Harper Manufacturing. Life felt grand. Times were undoubtedly different.

  The priest took another loud sip of his water and continued.

  “Whether it’s in regard to an appearance or an occupation or whatever outer quality people may use to judge others, hold dearly the knowledge that things are rarely as straightforward as they appear on the outside. The shyest boy in a room is rarely the one who has the least to say, as the loudest person in that same room isn’t necessarily the one with the most knowledge to share. The most gifted young man isn’t necessarily the hardest working, while the hardest working makes his own destiny in spite of people viewing him only as lucky. A single woman who appears alone isn’t necessarily lonely, just as one with an abusive partner may feel very much so.”

  The booth was still as Caroline began to understand Father Santori’s message.

  “And with you,” the priest said. “The one with the troubled and checkered past doesn’t necessarily have a shameful soul, just as the one with the more respectful job doesn’t necessarily have an innocent past.”

  He took a final sip.

  “Some of your…” began the priest before a long pause. It was his turn now to choose his words carefully.

  “Some of your…former coworkers…probably showed you greater character than some of the more celebrated people you know in your other social circles.”

  Caroline thought of a dancer named Allenny, the woman who had kindly given her the wig the night Caroline spotted her professor in the club. Allenny was a mother of four girls, dancing because the father of her children had left unannounced without setting up child support. After weeks of searching for work and only a few fruitless interviews, Allenny had struggled with her qualifications to find a legal job that could feed her girls, not to mention clothe them, house them, and give them little treats that meant the world, including new back-to-school backpacks, pads, and pencils in the fall. Allenny had regretfully settled on dancing as her girls slept—a job that carried big burdens in society.

  Caroline shifted her thoughts to her semi-famous ex-boyfriend. The golden boy quarterback was undoubtedly talented and far more celebrated by the masses, but he carried with him far less character and decidedly fewer values than a woman like Allenny did, she thought. Caroline lifted her chin, letting tears trickle quickly down her cheeks. For the first time, she felt proud to have more in common with someone like Allenny.

  The kind priest continued.

  “To this day, whenever corn is in season, I buy it in bulk as a special treat for the local soup kitchen’s service to the homeless. It’s such an inexpensive luxury for them. Anyway, as I husk the corn with the volunteers, I think of my youth. The corn from the market here—while less sweet and starchier than the kind I remember from the Chesapeake Bay farm stands—is much more reliable, yet we still get a bruised ear from time to time. All these years later, I still can’t predict what I’m going to get just by looking at the outside. It all takes time. The next time you have the chance to buy some corn, try the corn husk experiment. I think it will make you feel better. There is no magical way to tell a person’s goodness just by looking at them from the outside. You are certainly not alone in having past troubles, and you are a good person, indeed.”

  Caroline smiled and tugged at her mother’s locket. She repeated Father Santori’s wisdom within her head. Things are rarely as straightforward as they appear on the outside. Try the corn husk experiment. You are certainly not alone. You are a good person.

  “Anything else, my child?”

  “No, that’s enough from me,” Caroline said with an awkward chuckle.

  It had been more than enough. For the first time since her tragedies, she felt proud to be herself. She was proud to succeed at simply getting herself out of bed every morning, not to mention attending a prestigious school and working hard at her studies and her natural talent at her sport.

  “Go in peace, my child.”

  Caroline still expected the priest to assign her at least a dozen Hail Marys and
Our Fathers before leaving the church. While she received no such instruction as she stepped from the booth, she knelt down anyway inside the church to finish the prayer she had started on the day of her audition in the club. Her subconscious was always working overtime. She remembered just where she had left off when Phil had first surprised her by coming out of his office.

  “‘…be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.’”

  CHAPTER 30

  MAXINE

  The Lonely One

  Only three days separated Maxine from her game-day coverage of the Orange Bowl in Miami Gardens, but the seventy-two-degree weather in January combined with the calming waterfront views helped keep her jitters under control in the lobby of Fort Lauderdale’s Marriott Harbor Beach Hotel, the designated lodging for a steady in-and-out flow of Orange Bowl media.

  “Maxine? Maxine, I’m Joy Jones, the lead sports writer from the wire’s headquarters in New York. I hear we’ll be working together quite closely over the next few days. It’s a pleasure to meet you. You’re early for our first introduction.”

  “We’re both early,” Maxine said with a smile and a strong handshake.

  She felt refreshed to be paired with a woman in a profession that was dominated by men. She predicted that, like herself, Joy probably had to work harder to get trusted. Surely they had the same passion for sports. They clearly shared a respect for the value of other people’s time too. It’s more than a good start, Maxine thought.

  “Our veteran sports photographer back at headquarters spoke highly of you,” Joy said. “That says a lot coming from that guy, you know. He has the highest expectations.”

  “How’s he doing?”