by Randle, Ned;
Although Theo enjoyed Naomi’s company, he got panicky when rumors of their inevitable joining reached him. He inventoried his emotions and found a woefully short supply of deep feelings for her. He was a practical man and he knew they were very different people and he was concerned a contrived marriage might be miserable for both of them. So, for a while, he stopped asking her out on dates, hoping to shut down the rumor mill. Still, as the two of them were thrown together more and more in their respective jobs, the inevitability of the match was apparent. There were forces at work beyond his ken.
He had never imagined being married to anyone, much less a woman like Naomi. He held the quaint notion that if he ever married, he would marry for love. His had been a bleak childhood. It was not bleak in the sense that he was abused or suffered in any way—his parents were exceedingly civil and respectful to him and to each other—but he couldn’t recall any overt displays of love or affection between the two of them or between them and him. How he had ever developed such a romantic notion as marrying for love puzzled him until worldly experience taught him men often fantasize about romantic notions until the world disabuses them of their fantasies. Nevertheless, when he was young, he concealed in his heart the silly notion that a man and woman should marry for love, and children should be the natural result of that love.
As momentum grew for a match between Naomi and Theo, he considered his future and the impact the marriage might have on his career. Bachelor Protestant ministers were viewed with suspicious eyes, he knew, and their motives or their proclivities sometimes questioned. Moreover, every pastor he’d ever known had a wife who served as a workmate. His intellectualization of the prospective marriage showed it to be a prudent one. Yet, he was still troubled by his secret heart’s desire. In the end he surrendered to expectations and to the practical aspects of a marriage well made. He adopted as his guiding principle the philosophic construct that there are many types of love. He and Naomi were married, and he assumed, for her part, she felt little more for him than he felt for her, but he’d hoped that together perhaps they would find their type of love.
Naomi proved to be an estimable wife. She grew lovelier over time. Her muscular form rounded out; she wore her hair stylishly and dressed tastefully and as well as could be expected on a pastor’s pay. But more than her looks, he appreciated the quality of her character. She was consistently cheerful and good humored. She worked at her assignments diligently. She also showed herself to be much brighter than she’d earlier let on, and Theo soon adopted a great respect for her mind. At each church he served she was by his side, hardworking and thorough, and she made him proud.
Yet, as time went by and they were unable to conceive a child, Theo began to regret his decision to marry her and loathed the practical effect of the marriage on his wife’s life. His regret and loathing were complicated, moreover, by another, unexpected feeling: it dawned on him one morning as he watched her shuffle around the kitchen in her bathrobe and slippers fetching his coffee and eggs and buttering his toast that he loved her more than he loved life itself. Regrettably, as their marriage receded into formality, he found it too awkward tell her what he held in his heart.
So it was that their marriage settled into a comfortable routine. Naomi attended to mundane wifely tasks with competency and without complaint. She was a tidy housekeeper and good cook. She made sure his clothes, including his vestments, were cleaned and pressed. As far as her intimate wifely duties were concerned, she never balked at, and even welcomed, his attentions, even though he knew he was barely competent in that regard. But incompetency in technique was not his greatest deficiency, and as time went by, the prospects for Naomi being a mother grew less and less. Their inability to have a child tortured him, not for his sake, but for hers. Yet, she never complained and accepted her fate with quiet resignation.
Theo, on the other hand, refused to resign her to such a fate. She was still young enough to bear a child, if she didn’t wait much longer. He mined the profound depths of his love for her, and it yielded a nugget so repugnant, yet so practical, he needed to discuss it with someone. That was when he called Father Tom to meet him for coffee. He wanted to run past the priest the idea of divorcing Naomi, so she had time to find a man who could make her a mother.
Chapter Fourteen
Had Father Tom’s eyes been able to peer into the place where his imagination dwelled during his conversation with Theo at the coffee shop, he would have seen Naomi sitting at her kitchen table, sipping tea, with an array of newspaper clippings and photographs and assorted papers spread out on the table. She’d been a prolific chronicler of events of her life beginning in fifth grade until she abruptly quit during her second year of college. The collection in front of her was from one of the scrapbooks dedicated to her days in high school. Over the last couple of years, she’d developed a ritual of paging through scrapbooks when Theo was out and she was feeling melancholy and alone, and the scraps in front of her had been loosed from the binder by frequent handling.
Since there had been no Lutheran high school near the small town in rural Nebraska where her father pastored St. John’s Lutheran Church, Naomi had attended the public high school. Those days were her first exposure to the unvarnished, secular world and its inhabitants, and she loved every minute she spent there. She picked up a newspaper clipping that featured a picture of her, her head nearly to the net, elbows flared, pulling down a rebound in a regional playoff basketball game. She lingered over the picture for several minutes and recalled the game and sweet sensation of play. Her recent bout of illness caused her to covet the days when her body was an asset. The photo reminded her of when she was strong and tough and a star forward with a ferocious rebounding technique. But now, looking at the picture of her threatening posture and the grimacing smile on her face, she felt self-conscious and mean as she recalled the untampered glee she took in throwing an elbow under the basket or putting a knee into an opposing player’s thigh. Nevertheless, as she held the clipping between thumb and forefinger, she still felt there was something good in unbridled aggression when one was a girl. But she was no longer a girl.
She flipped the scrapbook to the last page and unfolded the program from her high school graduation ceremony. There was her name. She, as a preacher’s kid, had been selected to give the invocation, and now, as she sat quietly at the kitchen table, she recalled how awkward and ungainly she felt standing in front of the crowd, reading the words she had worked through with her father’s help. As she gently rubbed the smooth, dry cover of the program with the palm of her hand, she tried to recall what she had said that evening, but could remember none of it and uncharacteristically, she had not saved a copy of the prayer with the program.
On the inside pages of the program was an alphabetical listing of her classmates. She slowly went through the list A to W and then Y, running her finger under each name, noticing for the first time she had no classmate with a surname beginning with an X or a Z. She tried to conjure up a face for each name. For some she could, particularly her basketball teammates, but for many others she could not. Oddly, not one name aroused a sense of curiosity in her. She’d taken little interest in their lives when she was in school and had even less of an interest after graduation. Even the modicum of curiosity about their lives she had felt at the time dissipated into stubborn indifference. Sitting snugly at the table in a comfortable parsonage and sipping warm tea, she felt perhaps she was cold and deficient because reading the names did not arouse in her any curiosity as to how their lives evolved: where they went to college, who they married, where they were living, what they were doing for work. When she earnestly questioned herself, she conceded her disinterest may have been engendered by a malignant form of jealousy.
No doubt none of them, even if they had been interested, would have to wonder how her life unfolded. Everyone knew the pastor’s daughter was destined for a quiescent life. Even as a little girl, Naomi knew she would someday marry a pas
tor and nurture him and their children in the insular cocoon of the church. It was preordained for her as the daughter and granddaughter of Lutheran pastors. Yet, as a young woman, she was not bereft of other, more worldly, dreams. After high school, she enrolled in Concordia College, a small Lutheran college located in Seward, Nebraska, a town of about 7,000 located three hours away from her home. Her plan was to major in Christian Education Leadership, training she felt would be valuable in her role as a pastor’s wife.
Somewhere in a box in the basement of the parsonage was a scrapbook containing mementos from her first year of college. She’d not looked at it since she made the last entry, and even in her recent doldrums, she had no interest in doing so. Yet, she never had been able to bring herself to throw it away and moved the scrapbook along with her other belongings each time she changed residences. Now, as she sat at the table sipping her tea, the pain in her belly provoked her, and she thought perhaps it might be salutary to revisit her college days as a form of expiation. She had no need to retrieve the scrapbook from the basement to revisit those days; the most important events were indelibly etched on her soul.
The Concordia College campus was small, having around 2,000 students when she arrived on campus. The school was a close-knit, religious community. From the first day, she found the other students to be warm in their acceptance of her. They were helpful and supportive. She had planned to give up sports and concentrate on her classwork, but she carried with her a reputation as a top-notch basketball player, and it wasn’t long before the women’s basketball coach sought her out. He offered her a starting position on the team as a freshman. As the semester progressed, she excelled in the classroom, finding her Introduction to Director of Christian Ministries class promising. She particularly enjoyed her Old Testament as Literature class. She found the Intro to Psychology a bit amorphous and unsatisfying, a chopped salad of common-sense concepts dressed with jargon, but she needed the class for her major and stuck with it. The only disappointment she suffered during her first semester of college was the scarcity of young men. There was a goodly number of young men in the college preparing for the seminary; however, there were none in her classes that piqued her interest.
Second semester was more hectic than the first. She enrolled in another required psychology class but counterbalanced the boredom with a New Testament as Literature class. Basketball consumed much of her time, with the season in full swing after the semester break. After sitting through classes, she looked forward to the sweet freedom of basketball practice, where she could channel her pent-up aggression into useful movement. The team was mediocre, but the physical exertion and allure of competition kept her interested. In her secreted scrapbook were pages filled with articles from the Seward County Independent and the campus newspaper, highlighting her exploits on the court. As she sat thinking about her days playing basketball at Concordia, she decided to go to the basement to find the scrapbook after all. However, when she tried to lift herself from her chair, she felt a sharp, stabbing pain under her rib, and plopped back down in her chair to indulge in unverified reverie.
During her second semester, she sat next to a young man in her New Testament class whom she thought to be the prettiest boy she’d ever seen. She learned from chatting with him before class that he was a theology major with grand plans to attend a Lutheran seminary after he earned his bachelor’s degree. He didn’t want to tie himself to a church after he was ordained, he told her, but envisioned himself organizing youth ministries in inner cities or going overseas as a missionary. His plans seemed grand and exotic to her at the time. But thinking about him now, in the security of her warm kitchen, and remembering how he’d slouch across the aisle toward her desk, leaning his face precipitously close to hers to earnestly relay his grandiose plans for do-gooding, Naomi shuddered because the features of the face she’d thought so beautiful then were too late recognized by her as formed from candle wax and easily manipulated by her in her need.
This boy, and she could not bring herself to even think his name, was like her, tall and athletic. He played both tight end and linebacker on the college football team. And while Naomi was fair and pale, he was swarthy and dark, and when they began dating, she liked to walk with him across the campus and glance at their reflections in the large pane-glass windows of the academic buildings to assure herself he really was there with her and to get the full effect of their physical dichotomy. When they walked together, she felt she both absorbed and reflected some of his dark beauty, making her feel beautiful for the first time in her life.
Naomi went home after her freshman year of college and took a paid position as the Summer Bible School Coordinator at her father’s church. Most churches had vacation bible school for a week or two during the summer, usually in the evening, but her father’s vision was to have a faith-based summer school for grammar school kids in lieu of daycare. The church counsel allotted a stipend for the coordinator, and with her one year of related classes, the counsel deemed Naomi perfect for the summer job. She took to the job like a natural, at least in the beginning. As the weeks went by, however, she became disinterested and a tad lazy. She realized now, as a grown woman and married to a pastor herself, that her poor performance must have been difficult and embarrassing for her father to witness and tolerate.
As the summer passed, she became petulant and uncommunicative when her communication with the boy from college broke down. He had stayed in Seward and worked for a caterer and spent his free time in the gym working out with the football team. At first, when the academic year ended and Naomi moved home, he would call her a couple times a week. It wasn’t uncommon for her to get a cute greeting card or brief note written in his stilted hand every week. But after the first month, all communication ended. She considered driving up to Seward to confront him but lost her nerve. She was dispirited, and her mood affected her job with the church.
Mercifully, the summer drew to a close, and she moved back to Seward to begin her second year at Concordia College. When she finally confronted the boy at the gym, he was sheepish, even contrite. He rattled off what she later learned to be stock excuses for this type of behavior in a man—he was confused; he was scared because he cared too much; he needed time—the disingenuous litany every bastard recites to the scorned woman. But as he told her of his shortcomings and pled for forgiveness, she saw him only as more beautiful, and they picked up their relationship where they’d left off.
Naomi was smitten. She wanted to spend all her waking hours with the boy. She considered quitting basketball. Her grades suffered. She had a ravenous appetite through which she stoked her self-esteem, and she began to gain weight. For his part, the boy became coy and circumspect. He would toy with her feelings—when they were together he would vacillate between being cold and distant and warm and affectionate. He was aggressive, physically, but she had drawn a clear line in that regard and rebuffed his every advance. Finally, he implored her to understand his needs and, for the first time confessed he was in love with her. Her head was spinning and, at his insistence, she reciprocated with an admission of her love. At that point, she knew what the inevitable outcome would be. He, as his type always does, insinuated there was a way she could prove she really loved him. And she recognized that because of the circles she turned in, and the expectations others had for her life, she would never again meet a boy as beautiful as he. Finally, alone in her dorm room, she gave herself to him, and he was crude and rough and everything a man should be.
Afterwards, she was so stricken with shame and guilt she told the boy she never wanted to see him again. She avoided the places on campus where she might run into him. She, of course didn’t tell anyone what she had done. She had no one to tell in any event. For a month, she couldn’t look at herself in the mirror without cursing the image for being a dissolute whore. There were days she actually thought she no longer wanted to live, but she finally recognized that no matter how badly she had sinned, killing herself
would be a greater sin.
She plodded through the subsequent years of college, focusing on her studies and basketball. She stayed in Seward between semesters and got a job stocking shelves at the Hy-Vee grocery store. She worked out rigorously at the gym, lost weight, and toned her body. She was strong and ruthless on the court, finding the game an outlet for her festering remorse. At the end of four years, she took her degree and moved back home. She was working as the temporary Christian Education Director at her father’s church when Theo Swindberg was installed as assistant to her father.
Sitting alone in her kitchen thinking about her days in college, Naomi steeled herself and admitted that one of her most profane and abominable acts came after she moved home and met Theo, and as she silently confessed, she was sick with shame and regret over it. She had recognized right away that Theo Swindberg, the assistant pastor, was naïve and vulnerable. He was a kind man, bright but awkward, almost backward in his manner. He was not beautiful; he wasn’t even handsome. But he was unmarried. And he knew nothing of her past. No one but she and that boy knew about her past. Once she decided she should marry Theo, it took little effort to guide him to the same conclusion.
Her father and mother were elated. They planned a beautiful wedding at St. John’s with her father presiding, her sisters as bridesmaids, and a gala reception in the church hall with the entire congregation invited. As her mother helped her dress the day of the ceremony, she looked at herself in her wedding gown in the mirror and scampered to the bathroom to vomit. Nevertheless, the wedding went off without a hitch and was a great social event for the St. John’s congregation. Theo and Naomi remained in town a couple more years until Theo was called to pastor a church of his own.
