One Last Thing

by Rebecca St. James

  “Body and soul,” I said to Ned later on the salmon sofa. “Why did that stick with me?”

  “Maybe because it feels like both of those have been betrayed?” he said.

  “Is that a question?”

  “It is.”

  “I’d rather have an answer.”

  “You’re finding it,” he said.

  I traced a pinkish paisley with my fingernail. “Am I?” I said.

  “I think so.”

  “How do you know?” My hand flew to my throat. “I’m sorry—that was rude.”

  Ned’s eyes smiled. “It’s a valid question.”

  “I’m not challenging your instincts or anything. It’s just that I’m not sure I’m getting any closer to a decision. You know, about Seth.”

  “Is that the goal?”

  “What else would it be?” Again, I fumbled at my neck. When did I turn into a blurter? Out of sheer desperation, maybe, but still . . .

  Ned didn’t look insulted, though. He was, in fact, rubbing his hands together between his knees, sending the signal: Now we’re getting somewhere.

  “I can only speak into you from two places,” he said. “The gospel and my own experience on my journey with God.”

  “Speak into me,” I said. “What does that mean?”

  “It means you’re open to take it in. Otherwise I’d just be speaking at you.”

  I didn’t ask how he knew that about me. I did have an empty space inside. It was between the two pieces of my broken heart.

  “Speak,” I said. “Please.”

  Ned gave me a long, soft look and I caught my breath. He wasn’t just speaking into me. He was seeing into me. It was panic-worthy. I even dug my nails into the brocade. But did I have a better choice? What else was I going to do with that painful void but let him tell me what he saw there?

  “Really,” I said. “I want to know.”

  He turned his head in that one-degree way he had, as if he were listening to a voice I couldn’t hear. “This is more about you than it is about Seth,” he said finally. “You can’t decide about him until you know you.” The smile almost reached his lips. “You’re finding the right thing to do by finding the self God made you to be.”

  I had no clue what to do with that. From the way Ned eased back into the sofa, I knew I wasn’t supposed to, not right then.

  “Are you saying I have to sort of live into it?” I said.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  I released the brocade and made sure I hadn’t worn through the antique threads. “So which of the two sources did that come from?” I said. “Gospel or experience?”

  “Both.”

  The catch in his voice made me look up quickly, in time to see something flee from his eyes. Something he wasn’t telling me.

  I didn’t ask what it was.

  “Did the groundhog see his shadow today?” Ms. Helen said at the table that evening.

  “How could he miss it?” Gray said. “I was out mulching azaleas and sweating like a pig.”

  “I thought you lived in an apartment?” Betsy said.

  “I do. But I’m a landscaper.” Gray half-smiled. “I never mentioned that before?”

  “No,” I said, “because we’re always talking about me.” I turned to Lexi who was sitting shyly beside me. “Just so you know, they will get inside you and it’ll happen before you realize it.”

  Gray nudged me. “Are you complaining?”

  “Absolutely not,” I said.

  Gray’s even gaze shifted to Lexi. “So you’re an artist. What medium?”

  “All of them, but I’m focusing on photography and film.”

  Before ten minutes had passed, the Watch knew as much about Lexi’s art as I did, and then some, including the project that was keeping her out at night.

  “I’m doing a series of sketches of women in the darker occupations, trying to get at who they are under the—well, I guess you could call it a façade.”

  “Forevermore,” Ms. Helen said. “Where do you find them?”

  Lexi gave them her soft laugh. “I live down on Montgomery Street, so I’m pretty much surrounded.”

  “Bless your heart,” Betsy said.

  “That answers my question.” Gray repositioned herself in the chair. Her brown eyes were alive. “I’m thinking, what does she do, stop hookers on the street and say, stand here while I draw your picture?”

  “I try to be discreet,” Lexi said.

  “You girls amaze me,” Ms. Helen said. “You face the underbelly of life head-on, don’t you?”

  “I’m just trying to understand it.” Lexi looked at me. “I guess we both are.”

  “Let’s drink to understanding,” Gray said, lifting her tea mug. “Everybody have a beverage?”

  “If you don’t it’s too late now,” Betsy said. “It looks like Ike is getting ready to close.”

  True. Wendy was currently headed for the front door, a stuffed canvas bag big enough for Lexi to fit into hanging from her shoulder. She looked so separate, compared to those of us who crowded around our table. That had to be why I called out to her, “Wendy? You want to join us?”

  She stopped with her hand on the doorknob and turned only her head to us. The violet eyes seemed to have to catch up, as if her mind was already halfway to wherever she was going with that bag. She looked tired and surprised. And beautiful in that moment of an expression she didn’t manufacture.

  It didn’t last long. Her brows came down in a V, the international signal for You’re not serious.

  “Can’t,” she said. “But thanks.”

  Pain shot through the moment. I couldn’t tell if it was Wendy’s or mine.

  “Doesn’t she have the prettiest eyes?” Ms. Helen said when she was gone.

  “Does she wear contacts to get them that color, do you think?” Gray said.

  Lexi tugged gently at my sleeve. “I do need some more tea. Go up with me?”

  “Ike doesn’t bite,” I said, but I scraped back my chair and followed her up the ramp. She stopped me halfway to the counter.

  “Is that girl a friend of yours?” she said, voice low.

  “I have no idea. I thought we were getting there and then she just shut me out. I get the feeling she thinks I’m a rich girl who got what she deserved. Something like that.”

  “Huh.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you care about her?”

  “Of course I care about her.”

  Lexi still just stood there, rubbing her hand up and down on the wrought-iron rail.

  “What?” I said.

  “She’s a stripper.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I guess I should say exotic dancer. She works at a club in my neighborhood. She’s one of the girls I’ve been sketching.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’ve taken a bunch of pictures of her and then I go back and sketch them for a storyboard. I want to do a film at some point.”

  Even though my mouth was going numb I managed to say, “This is the project you were talking about.”

  “The project’s almost done but now it’s, like, personal. That’s why I wanted to know if you care about her.”

  “Because you do.”

  “You ladies want something?” Ike called from the counter.

  I looked at Lexi and she shook her head.

  “I’m going to go ahead and shut everything down then. Last call, Tara.”

  “I’m good too,” I said.

  But I was far from it.

  When Betsy, Gray, and Ms. Helen left, Lexi and I wandered toward my house. We didn’t talk at first, and I knew Lexi was waiting for me to start. I didn’t know where to so I just grabbed onto the next thought.

  “Wendy doesn’t want that life, Lex,” I said. “Back when she was still talking to me, she told me about twenty times that she had almost enough money to quit her second job and get on with what she really wanted to do.”

  “What does she want to do?”<
br />
  “Be a manager for Ike. It’s not like she wants to be a surgeon or something, but now it makes sense. She just wants a clean life.” I stopped on the walkway leading into Madison Square and pressed my fingers to my temples.

  “What?” Lexi said.

  “I accused her of thinking I was an idiot for being involved with a porn addict. Why didn’t I just slap her in the face?”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “I have to apologize to her.”

  Lexi grabbed my wrist. “You can’t tell her how you know.”

  Her face was all concern, eyes wide, mouth vulnerable. She was all things compassionate without even having to think about it.

  “I won’t,” I said.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t even tell her that you do know. I mean, she’s trying to get out. Why make her feel ashamed in front of you?”

  We started to walk again, once more in silence. Above us the moon fuzzed through a circle of high fog and cast the dark, wet branches of the live oaks in silhouette.

  “You know what’s really strange?” I said.

  “Everything?” Lexi said.

  “I know, right? But if you’d told me this before I knew about Seth, I would have judged her. I probably did judge her if I ever saw her down on Montgomery—”

  “She’s not a prostitute,” Lexi said. “I’m pretty sure of that.”

  “Still . . . now I feel bad for her, like there has to be a reason she got into that. You know, like if there’s a reason Seth turned to porn, there’s a reason she’s doing what she’s doing. Don’t you think?”

  “I do.” Lexi walked a few steps, short legs trying to keep up with my long ones, before she looked up at me. “But you’re not mad at her the way you were at Seth when you first found out.”

  “Well, no.”

  “Why? I mean, she’s not close to you like he was, but what’s the difference?”

  I stopped and looked at Lexi in the light from the corner streetlamp. Her face was so earnest, as if these questions and their answers would teach her something she couldn’t live without. Like there could be real meaning in what we determined here.

  “You’re such a better person than I am, Lexi,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “I am not.”

  “Just don’t think I’m a selfish wench when I say this.”

  “I’m not even going there. Just say it, will ya?”

  I tilted my face toward the foggy moon. “The reason I’m not angry with Wendy is because she isn’t doing this to me. I told you it was selfish.”

  “It doesn’t sound selfish,” Lexi said. “It just sounds real.”

  I didn’t talk to Wendy after all, except for a brief exchange when we were cleaning the steamers and I said, “I’m sorry I went off on you the other day. I was projecting my stuff onto you.” Her answer: “I don’t even know what that means.” It was all I could do not to hug her neck and say, I want to rescue you!

  I told Ned that the next morning. We didn’t have much time because he had his Wednesday breakfast meeting to go to, but I wanted his take on it.

  “My dad gave Lexi a loan to go to SCAD,” I told him. “Which she insists on paying back even though my father probably won’t accept a dime from her. We could do the same for Wendy, help get her out of that life.”

  We were still standing in the church vestibule. Ned removed the stole from his neck and looped it around his hand. It was the first time he ever seemed to want to avoid my eyes. The silence got thick.

  “Did I say something wrong?” I said.

  “Not wrong,” he said. “But maybe untimely.” He set the rolled stole on the arm of the carved bench I’d sat on in my wretched wetness that night about a hundred years ago. “I did that—tried to reach out before my arms were strong enough.”

  Experience. That came to me in a sliver of realization I didn’t have time to examine.

  “It didn’t work out. I got my hand bitten, actually. But it did teach me what I was talking about yesterday: that I had to find out what was true about me before I could help anybody else find out what was true about them.” His head turned a notch. “It’s what I was trying to say to you—I think you’re finding that out, about yourself, I mean. I think communion is helping. I think your—what do you call them?—your Watch is helping. I think being able to talk to your family is helping.”

  “And you. You’re helping more than you even know.”

  His eyes smiled almost shyly. “I just wouldn’t want to see you go off track. Having compassion, praying, that’s one thing.”

  “Then I shouldn’t try to adopt Wendy,” I said. My own laugh surprised me.

  “Just ask yourself what’s true about you. When’s Seth coming back?”

  “Next week sometime, I think.”

  “That’s something you’ll want to at least begin to know before you see him again.”

  He said it with more confidence than almost anything else he’d ever said to me. I was hit with a longing to sit with him all day and ask how and why and did I get this right? But he had a meeting. And I was pretty sure he wouldn’t answer those questions anyway.

  Where were the answers, then? Where was I going to find out what was true about me? I couldn’t just sit around thinking about that, so I did what I did best. I walked.

  In other places they called this time of year the last six weeks of winter. In Savannah we knew it as the early days of spring. The azaleas bloomed with the glorious antebellum profusion of the opening scene of Gone with the Wind in pink and white and coral puffs of blossom that lined the yards and gardens of the historic district. The magnolia leaves grew shiny again and began the gestation of what would be their giant summer blooms. The camellias and flowering quince heralded the embarrassment of floral riches that was to come.

  The very elderly tourists poured in, confident in the winter warmth and wary of the blistering months of summer that would be on us all too soon. I loved their slow creep around the city, their stops to read every plaque and monument. I loved it, so I did it too.

  I also paused in front of the churches that seemed on my midnight haunts to have given up hope. Now . . . I knew prayer still happened inside them, whether out of books or out of hearts. People brought their doubts there as well as their faith. Inside those walls people got on their knees and drank from the cup and yearned and longed and praised. So maybe . . . maybe God was still in Savannah.

  He was definitely at St. John’s every weekday morning when I knelt—yes, knelt—in the pew behind the almost-fossilized lady whose hands shook when she held the prayer book, and watched what page she was on so I could find the response to Ned’s “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.” I could say with her, “As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.” I learned to stand for the gospel and bow in respect for the sacrament and savor Ned’s blessing: “The peace of God which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God and of his Son, Jesus Christ . . .” And I could join my amen with her crackled one.

  On Friday I waited until she wobbled from her pew and held out my hand. “I’m Tara Faulkner,” I said.

  “The peace of the Lord, Tara,” she said. “I’m Mary Louise Anderson Bales.”

  Of course you are, I wanted to say. You are Savannah personified and I love you.

  Whether I was finding what was true about me, I didn’t know. But I was finding my city again. At least I knew I could still fall in love with something.

  TWENTY-THREE

  When I got to work Monday afternoon, the ninth of February, I didn’t have a chance to get my apron from the hook before Ike was beside me, jerking his head toward the aisle by the loose teas. Evidently that was the place for all clandestine conversations. My mouth was dry before we even got there.

  “Did I do something wrong?” I whispered.

  “You are killin’ me, girl,” he whispered back and then raised his voice to a low hum. “No, you
didn’t do something wrong. I just want to check this out with you because I’m a little uneasy about it.”

  He found out about Wendy. That had to be it. Or he was offering me a management position. Even worse.

  “A guy came in here looking for you. I didn’t like the looks of him, so I didn’t commit one way or the other to whether you worked here. He’s out there waiting for you.”

  “Where?” I said.

  Ike took me by the shoulders and turned me around so I could peek through the display of tea cozies and loose tea balls, but there was no need. I knew before I saw the figure in the window that it was going to be Seth. It was sometime next week, and he was home.

  “You know him?” Ike said.

  “I used to,” I said.

  “That your ex-fiancé?”

  “Yes.

  “You want me to get rid of him?”

  “No. But I might be five minutes late for my shift? Is that okay?”

  “Take all the time you need.” Ike looked down at me, mouth firm. “You just shout if you need me.”

  I wanted to whimper for help right there and let Ike usher Seth out onto Bull Street and then—do what? Keep finding ways to avoid facing the inevitable?

  Besides, as I went down the ramp and wove my way among the mismatched furniture to the window, something soft wound its way through me, some inkling of the way I used to feel when Seth came home from college, or we met at the beach when I was in grad school—something at first timid, something tender and expectant. Because his profile cut into the light from the window and it was still classic and handsome. It was still familiar.

  But when he turned to me, I saw little that I knew.

  He stood up from the table—our table, the Watch—and watched me come closer. With every step I was more aware of the drastic change that had come over him in six weeks.

  His dark hair was longer and, though it was combed, various parts of it didn’t seem to know which way they were supposed to go. His clothes were obviously clean but rumpled and mismatched and they hung on him as if they belonged to someone who pumped twice the iron he did. The muscles were still there yet they seemed long and stretched. He even appeared to be shorter, although when I got to him and he placed a tentative kiss on my forehead, he was still the same eight inches taller than me.