One Last Thing

by Rebecca St. James

  Except for telling him where to turn, we didn’t speak on the five-block drive in his Jeep Liberty until we pulled up in front of the house. The rain was coming down in slanted sheets.

  “I’m Tara, by the way,” I said. “Tara Faulkner.”

  He nodded. “Good to meet you, Tara. I have an umbrella. I’ll walk you up.”

  I didn’t protest. I was so weary I didn’t want steps like drying myself again to come between me and bed.

  We hurried up the steep slate steps and I fumbled for my keys in the pocket of my own jacket, which was hanging like wet laundry over my arm. Both of us jerked back when the front door opened and Daddy appeared in the vestibule. It had to be one a.m., but he was dressed in his tan trench coat and he had his own keys in his hand.

  This had to look awesome: me straggling up the steps in the dead of night with a strange guy who appeared to have pulled me out of a ditch because, well, he kind of had. I couldn’t even start explaining because, as Daddy reached for me, I saw something hurry from his face, something that didn’t belong there in the first place. It was fear, and Daddy was never afraid.

  “You okay, sugar?” he said into my soaked hair.

  “Yeah,” I lied.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  I didn’t realize until I pulled away and turned around that he was thanking Ned and that Ned was already down the steps. Daddy pushed the door closed and looked me up and down like he was still certain I’d lost an arm or an eye out there. It was now time for an explanation.

  “I was out for a walk and I slipped and fell and that guy—Ned—let me go into his church and dry off. I’m fine, really.”

  “You were out for a walk?” Daddy said, and then he simultaneously closed his eyes and shook his head. “We don’t have to talk about this now. You need a hot shower. You want a hot—something to drink?”

  I shook my head and started for the stairs.

  “Tara,” he said.

  I didn’t turn around.

  “Sugar, is there anything I can do to help you?”

  Please, God, don’t let me look at him or I’ll tell him and I can’t.

  “Not right now, Daddy,” I said.

  And maybe not ever.

  FOURTEEN

  I slept an exhausted sleep but woke up to my alarm at six and took the shower I was too tired for the night before and hurried through a crisp but clear morning to St. John’s Church with the windbreaker over my arm. If the service started at seven there would surely be someone there fifteen minutes early I could hand this to.

  I hadn’t looked at the jacket until I was putting my own on, and then I’d leaned over the bed to examine the logo. Sewanee University of the South School of Theology it said in clean white letters. Next to it was a white Celtic cross on a small field of autumnal gold. Yeah, it definitely had to belong to somebody there, if not Ned himself.

  The red doors were open when I arrived, but nobody seemed to be around. I peeked through the narthex I’d huddled in the night before and into the sanctuary where two long rows of polished pews faced steps and a choir section, all under open arches and lined by bright stained-glass windows.

  Even though the altar seemed miles away, I could see a flame wavering from each of the two candles in their brass holders. Somebody had been there and would surely return so I slipped into the back pew and waited. I could have just hung the jacket on one of the hooks, but it had occurred to me on the walk over that I hadn’t even said thank you to Ned. I might be losing my mind, but I wasn’t losing my manners.

  Movement brought my eyes to the front again. A tall figure in a black frock reminiscent of the cover of The Vicar of Wakefield padded silently in through a side door near the altar and went straight to a kneeler/shallow table combination and knelt at it. The loose-curled head went down and Ned Kregg moved his lips without sound.

  Okay. He was—a deacon? A pastor? I sure didn’t have him for a minister, although now I couldn’t see why not. He looked completely natural up there in the attitude of prayer. Some small part of me wanted to know what he was saying to God.

  Several other people came in, most of them women of Ms. Helen’s age, and took their places in pews up front. They, too, knelt and bowed their heads, and when I looked at my feet I realized there were kneeling things that pulled down on hinges. I could kneel too. If I wanted to.

  Then everyone stood and Ned said, “From the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles . . .”

  Unless my Veritas Academy education had been a complete waste, he was reading from the King James Version of the Bible. I didn’t know anybody used that anymore.

  “. . . for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts.”

  The heathen. That could be me. Time to make my exit.

  I crept from the pew and tiptoed back to the vestibule where I hung the brown windbreaker on a hook. I hesitated for a moment, thinking maybe I should leave a note. But the church was so quiet, except for Ned’s low, calm, Yankee-tight voice saying, “Dearly beloved brethren . . .,” any rustling around I did to find pencil and paper would disturb this sacred place more than I already had. I left the jacket and opened the heavy door only wide enough to let myself out.

  Yet something about that place stayed with me. And the words Ned read to the tiny knot of people: “My name shall be great among the heathen.” It made me want to say God’s name, just to see if it would still come out of my estranged mouth. I even opened my lips a few times but one question always froze them in place: How could I turn to a holy God with something so disgusting?

  I may have actually been mulling that over for about the fiftieth time that afternoon when I looked up from the register to greet the next customer and saw that it was Lexi.

  “Lex!” I said. “Hi!”

  I was genuinely glad to see her, which you would have thought would make her glad too. Instead, her eyes spilled over. She pulled at them with the heels of her hands.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Just give me a minute.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Can I get you something? You want a vanilla latte. I know you do.”

  “That’s okay. I really just came to see you. I miss you.”

  I glanced nervously down the counter at Wendy, who was momentarily preoccupied with the timer on the toaster oven.

  “Go sit and I’ll bring your latte to you,” I said. “It’s on me.”

  Steaming the milk gave me time to tuck my own tears away. I didn’t realize how lonely I was until I saw her, my tiny, intelligent, creative friend who cried over everything and yet didn’t let anything stand between her and what she knew was right for her.

  I tried to form a leaf in the foam and made an even worse botch of it than usual. I was never the artist she was. Every time we came home on breaks from our respective colleges, I’d listen to her with my skin nearly turning green as she talked about Vanderbilt, and then I would assure myself Daddy was right to steer me into academia. I would never make it in the tough filmmaking world Lexi and I had romanticized after we watched The Making of the Lord of the Rings for the fourth time.

  Something grabbed at me internally and I nearly dumped the mug. Seth wasn’t the only dream I’d gotten wrong.

  “I’m going on break, Wendy,” I said.

  “It’s about time. Here, take this with you and drink it yourself. Do not give it to your friend.”

  She put a cup of broccoli cheese soup into my other hand and brushed me off with her eyes as if I were an extreme annoyance. I would never understand her.

  Lexi murmured thanks for the latte but she didn’t take a sip even after I sat down across from her in a lumpy chair at a less-than-sturdy coffee table. Where was Ms. Helen with her shims when I needed her?

  “I don’t want to make you cry again,” I said. “But I miss you too. I’m sorry I haven’t called or anything.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve been busy. Classes started again.”

  �
�Ya think? Except for right this minute, we’ve been slammed in here since y’all came back.” That wasn’t surprising; the SCAD students added ten thousand people to the town’s population, scattered in their countless buildings around the city.

  Lexi pushed an index card across the table. “I brought you my schedule so in case you want to get together you’ll know when I’m free. And don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you anything.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to talk about—”

  “It’s okay. Only, I wouldn’t contact Alyssa or Jacqueline if I were you. They can’t wait to find out what’s going on. They just want an invitation.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up.” I nodded at the cup. “You should taste the latte. I made it myself. I need to know if I’m any good at it.”

  Lexi took a sip and nodded more enthusiastically than she had to, bouncing the beaded earrings I knew she’d designed herself. I was also sure she’d put together the matching string she’d somehow woven into her hair.

  “Remember what romantics we used to be, Lex?” I said.

  “Used to be?” she said, laughing softly. “I think we still are, aren’t we?”

  I felt my expression darken. “That’s all gone. I look back at how naïve I used to be and it’s almost embarrassing.”

  “I’m not embarrassed.”

  Lexi looked past me and bit her lip. She was once again the seventh-grader who had been informed by some little nouveau riche snot that only babies still wore ruffles. I was the one who had defended her then, the one who told that mascara-wearing twelve-year-old that she didn’t know what she was talking about. And now, I was the bully.

  “I’m sorry, Lex,” I said. “I didn’t mean to sound so bitter.”

  “You probably have a right to. That’s what I’m going to go with.”

  She stared into the latte. I stood up.

  “I’m glad you came by. I really am,” I said. “I’m just bad company right now. I love you, okay?”

  “Love you too,” she said.

  When she didn’t say anything else, I headed back to the counter. On the way I dumped the soup into the trash can.

  Saturday was Wendy’s day off, so it was mostly Ike and me working together. The afternoon was a steady stream of students, sometimes more a typhoon than a stream, and we didn’t get a break until after six. Ike turned the counter over to one of the less spacy SCAD guys and invited me to have coffee with him in his office.

  I offered to make it but he insisted I go on in and sit down and he’d bring me something. I sagged wearily into a leather chair that had obviously sat several generations of buns and played with a slit in the fabric as I looked around.

  The office was a lot like Ike himself: relatively neat but with the occasional surprising touch. A bust of Edgar Allan Poe. A pipe like the one I’d seen in photographs of J. R. R. Tolkien. A huge conch shell with the smell of sand still stuck to it. The only photo was of Ike and a black Labrador retriever that smiled bigger than he did. Although—Ike didn’t actually do a lot of smiling.

  He came in then, closed the door, and handed me a mug with Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home printed on the side. “I’m not going to tell you what this is until after you taste it.”

  “Should I be afraid?” I said.

  “Watch it now, it’s hot. But don’t let it cool off too much. It has to be just before scalding to be appreciated.”

  “You’re the only person I know who practically requires a master’s degree to drink a cup of coffee.”

  I blew into the brew with its lovely coffee shop crème look on the surface and watched Ike ease himself into a faded tweed club chair of about the same vintage as the one I was sitting in. Out in the shop he didn’t look as big as he did now, shoulders passing the sides by several inches. He pushed the fedora to the back of his head.

  “That should be just about right now.”

  I took a cautious sip. My eyes closed of their own volition.

  “You like.”

  “I love. What is it?”

  “A blend I’m working on. Keep sipping. Now, about that master’s degree.”

  It was another one of those shifts. I was getting used to them.

  “What master’s degree?” I said.

  “Yours.”

  “How did you know I had a master’s degree?”

  “Wild guess. What’s it in?”

  I felt my cheeks warm and not from the coffee. “Literary criticism—a completely worthless degree at this point in my life.”

  “I don’t know.” Ike folded his hands comfortably on his chest. “You obviously learned something useful. You’re doing great here.”

  I had to laugh. “If I am, that’s because of Wendy and you. I didn’t pick up any of these skills at Duke, trust me.”

  “I gotta admit, I had my doubts at first but you caught right on. I’ve even seen you make some improvements out there. That’s good.”

  “I can sure straighten those napkins.” I took a gulp. If I didn’t I’d start babbling.

  “I’m not going to ask what a class act like you is doing working here. That’s your business. And you’re welcome to stay on as long as you want to.” Ike leaned forward. “But it is my business to ask how long you think that’s going to be.”

  “Honestly?” I said.

  “No, I want you to lie.”

  “Right. I don’t know. At least six weeks. At the very minimum.”

  “Not what I wanted to hear.” Ike sank back again. “Here’s what I’m thinking: I want to consider you for managerial work in the future, starting with an easy shift and taking it from there. I’m a little tired of being here from open until close seven days a week, but I haven’t found anybody I can trust to turn it over to for even one day at a time.”

  I took another swallow so I wouldn’t say what was screaming in my head: No! Wendy wants that! Give it to her! If she hadn’t told me not to, I would have.

  And maybe I would’ve broken that promise if he hadn’t gone on. “I’d like to get a life, you know. This place was my dream, still is, and there’s a lot more I want to do with it. But I’m thirty-five. Someday I want to get married, have a family.”

  My throat thickened. Was that going to happen now every single time somebody talked about the happy life they had planned for themselves? Was I always going to want to say, Don’t count on it?

  “But it’s hard to find that right woman when I’m here all the time.” Ike gave a short laugh. “Unless she just walks in through those doors.”

  “Maybe she will.” My voice sounded middle-school shrill. “You’re surrounded by some good-looking women out there.” I almost added, What about Wendy?

  Ike shook his head. “I’ve dated a couple of SCAD students. Didn’t work out. They all want to be unique. There’s unique, and then there’s just flat-out weird.”

  He sounded so much like GrandMary I laughed.

  “Now there’s a sound we don’t hear around here a lot.”

  “What?” I said.

  “You laughing. You should do it more. So—what’s the grade on that coffee?”

  Another shift, back to Piebald World. I was grateful.

  “A-plus,” I said.

  “Schmoozer,” he said.

  I realized as I followed Ike back out to the front that I’d just had a conversation about something besides my broken heart. It made me miss Seth more than ever.

  One thing did pull my thoughts away from my own quagmire. Sunday afternoon, my day off, Mama came to my room with tea and blueberry muffins and bad news. The bad news trumped the tea and muffins.

  “GrandMary finally told me what’s going on with her,” she said after she’d poured and sugared and otherwise skirted the issue for ten minutes.

  “You mean, why she had to go home and see her doctors?” I felt a deep stab of guilt. I’d barely thought about it since she left, when there was a time that would have been all I could think about. Who was I turning into?

  “Yes,”
Mama said. I watched her swallow.

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “It could be. She found a knot on her hip and they’ve done a lot of tests—including a biopsy, which I didn’t even know about or I would have been up there.”

  “And?”

  “They know she has some kind of lesion on the muscle—which is a strange place for a tumor and that’s why they ran so many tests.”

  “But it is a tumor.”

  “That’s what the biopsy shows. She’s having surgery on Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday! She couldn’t have given us a little more notice?”

  “I know, honey, but that’s your grandmother. She plays everything right close to the vest.” Mama’s eyes leveled at me in a way I wasn’t sure they’d ever done before. “I think it must be genetic.”

  “So are we going?” I said. “I can tell Ike I need the time off and I’m sure he’ll—”

  “I’m going. GrandMary says she doesn’t want an entourage.”

  “You and I are hardly an entourage.”

  “I was hard-pressed enough to get her to let me come. As if I wouldn’t anyway, but it’s so much easier when you have her blessing.” Mama squeezed my foot. “I need you to stay here and look after Daddy.”

  “I totally will,” I said.

  “And maybe.” I saw her swallow hard again. “Maybe you two can have some good talks while I’m gone.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  The guilt knife went in even deeper.

  So Mama left the next morning. I drove her to the airport and sobbed all the way back. It was impossible not to believe that GrandMary specifically didn’t want me there because I’d be bringing my baggage with me. Who needed that when you had your own trunk full of cancer?

  That one more layer of pain and darkness and self-recrimination kept me awake Monday night, until I finally got up and put on my shoes and jacket and headed for the back door. Daddy met me there as if he’d foreseen my escape attempt and had been waiting for me. He actually stood against the door, hands on his hips, face grim as a security guard. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been halfway to fury.

  “You planning to go someplace, sugar?”