The Lesson

by Welch, Virginia

  “What is it you want?” he groused. “You call me to spend an evening with me!” He stood up and threw both hands in the air. “What do you want?”

  “I want to go home!”

  She bolted upright from the couch. She didn’t hesitate long enough to even look him in the eye. She raced toward the kitchen counter where she had stashed her purse. If he followed her or said anything more, she was braced to start swinging it, so frantic was she to escape the apartment to the safety of the outside.

  In a moment her hand was on the doorknob and she was out the door, racing down the long staircase to the street. The sun had set long ago and the streetlight was too far away to help her see inside her purse or find the lock on her car door, and even if there had been plenty of light, she was too traumatized to perform any of this routine calmly.

  Finally, using her sense of touch she found her keys and opened the lock. She jumped into the driver’s seat and immediately turned to lock the door. The seat was cold but she hardly noticed. In the blackness of the car’s interior, once again she fumbled with her keys, hurriedly trying to put the right one into the ignition. When she sensed the key was in place she turned it while madly and repeatedly pumping the gas pedal.

  She heard a click and then a whiny RR-rr-RR-rr-RR. She turned the key again. A few seconds more of RR-rr-RR-rr-R, but slower and quieter, as the engine strained to turn over. One more time she turned the key.

  A click. Then no sound at all.

  Chapter Six

  The Apartment, Lincoln Street

  I will never wear four-inch heels again! Gina rubbed her feet to dull the pain. Nothing is longer than a short walk on high heels over unforgiving cement.

  She had awakened Sunday morning tired, disoriented, and rumpled, still in Levis and her shell pink sweater. Her first conscious thought was that her feet ached mercilessly, which led to her second, equally painful thought: her Austin was sitting, immovable, on Scott Boulevard. Surely it had breathed its last. She would spend the remainder of her time at Santa Clara University on foot. She hoped the tow to the junk yard wouldn’t take up more than half her paycheck.

  She must get to church, but she had no way to get there other than to ride with Bonnie and the kids, or perhaps she could catch a ride with Dory and Jenny Pieters, unmarried, middle-aged sisters who lived with a few other single women at the House of Joy, the large historic house on Bellomy Street owned by the church. But the Pieters sisters left very early for service because they were involved in so many preservice activities, and Gina didn’t feel like hurrying this morning. That left Bonnie and the kids, who were always late for service and couldn’t get out the door without a messy mishap that involved something unspeakable deposited into a burp cloth or diaper. Gina procrastinated. She’d call Bonnie a little bit later.

  By eight o’clock Gina was dressed, had drank a cup of coffee, and had, somberly, finished off the last bit of food she had in the apartment, one precious bowl of Cream of Wheat. Dolefully she held the empty cardboard cereal box over the garbage can, considering what this meant. She was ashamed at the fear that crept up inside her. She’d been low on groceries many times, but she’d never before completely run out of food and cash on the same day. It was humbling. Scary too.

  “Lord, You’ve always provided at least something to eat. I won’t be able to get a meal at the restaurant today. Please provide an evening meal so that I don’t have to call anyone and ask for help. In the name of Jesus. Thank you.”

  Half an hour later she had resolved to call Bonnie for a ride. After last night’s debacle in Rolando’s apartment, she felt an urgent need to be in church. She was about to dial Bonnie’s number when she heard brrrring coming from the living room. That was odd. No one ever called this early on Sunday morning, not even her parents. She picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Good morning.”

  Kevin sounded unusually chirpy for a guy who’d been unceremoniously dumped at the curb the night before. Gina flushed with embarrassment when she remembered how they had parted.

  “I thought you might like a ride to church,” he said.

  How did he know that she didn’t have a ride this morning? Had he been following her again? “Kevin, is there any particular reason you’re calling me this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  Aha! He had been following her. He had seen her car break down. She was mortified to think he may have also seen her race out of Rolando’s apartment in a panic. “Well?”

  “I was hoping if I drove you to church that after service I could talk you into lunch too, at El Zarape. It’s right near the church. After all, I have to get a bite to eat before I drive back to the ship, and you have to eat lunch somewhere. Why not eat out with me?”

  Oh Kevin, you don’t know how easy it would be to talk me into a restaurant lunch today. Three lousy choices: 1) She could ride to church with Kevin for all the wrong reasons and get lunch; or 2) ride with Bonnie, a crying preschooler, and a drooling baby, and come home to an empty refrigerator and an afternoon of homework in a lonely apartment. Then there was the consolation prize: 3) she could drop by her parents’ house for Sunday afternoon dinner. But that was risky. Gina was barely talking to her parents, and when they did they ended up shouting.

  She was mortified even to be debating such things. Would she actually go out with Kevin for a free meal? What kind of a person was she? Yet the timing of her prayer and his phone call did not escape her notice. If she turned down his invitation for a ride and lunch, would she be rejecting the answer to her prayer? Would there be another answer?

  It wasn’t right to accept an invitation to lunch from a guy she wasn’t the least bit attracted to. What’s more, she had cowardly allowed this charade to go on for some time. But she mollified her troubled conscience by telling herself that spending time with Kevin was not a real date any more than meeting Michael’s old roommate for dinner had been a real date. They couldn’t be dates. Real dates involved a lot of heart fluttering or obsessing about the right thing to say or obsessing even more about the right thing to wear, followed by pleasant little electrical charges that showed up in parts of one’s body one never knew existed until about age thirteen.

  Lunch with a friend was fine anytime no matter who paid, but Kevin would think of it as a date. That much she was sure of. But the imbalance in the relationship was something she’d deal with later. Right now she needed a ride to church, and it was a fact that heretofore she had enjoyed his company when they went out. It wasn’t as though she didn’t like him. If she truly disliked him, she reasoned, it would be very wrong to accept a ride to church and an invitation to lunch, no matter what one called it. And it wasn’t as though he had asked her to marry him. She couldn’t be accused of leading him on because, as all of Heaven would attest, there was nothing of any substance to this weird relationship. He hadn’t even (really) tried to kiss her. Yet eventually, likely soon, she would have to explain to Kevin how it was with her. Until then she would leave things as they were while she figured out what to do. Good grief: it was church and lunch and that’s all. There was no harm in it, was there? And she had prayed for a meal.

  An hour later Kevin knocked on her apartment door. When she opened it her eyes went to his face and then traveled, as was her new habit, to his clothes. He wore a tweed suit that fit him well, or at least, it accentuated his exceedingly slender frame. But the pattern was a strange mix of olive green accented by flecks of mustard, which together created a sickly mélange. It reminded Gina of the varied hue of a particular type of mold that frequently grows along the surface of a very damp, very forgotten food item at the back of the refrigerator, say boiled beans or soup. His earthy, molding suit was complemented by other nature-inspired attire: a bright blue tie with quite real-looking cumulus clouds floating across it. He carried a large black leather Bible, larger than all the others carried to church by people she knew.

  He stood there proudly. It was evident he had taken pains to look
nice. Politeness demanded she say something complimentary. She paused, too long she thought, trying to think of something positive. Finally,

  “That’s some suit.”

  “You like it? My dad helped me pick it out.”

  “I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The green in it gives it a sort of a … living aspect. Like something that grows … You look nice in a suit,” she added quickly. Now that was true. Surely he would look nice in a suit. Just not that suit.

  “Where’s your car?” he asked, while he helped her squeeze herself into the Volkswagen.

  “On Scott Boulevard. It broke down.” Without realizing it she pressed her lips together tightly. She didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Around midnight.”

  “Did your date drive you home?”

  So he hadn’t followed her. She was relieved to realize that he knew nothing, but she didn’t like the direction this conversation was going.

  “No, he didn’t drive me home,” she said, avoiding his eyes.

  “Well, you didn’t take a taxi. You don’t have any money for a taxi.”

  He was awfully quick this morning. She turned to him with her mouth partly open and then shut it without saying anything. He was right. She never had money for luxuries like taxis. What could she say?

  “Don’t tell me that guy let you walk home?” He stared at her, waiting for answer. “Did that guy let you walk home alone after dark?”

  “I chose to walk,” she said in a tone that clearly implied, and don’t ask anything more.

  Kevin must have gotten the hint because he let it drop.

  They chatted all the way to Mountain View while they listened to rock and roll worship music on cassette. Kevin put “Easter Song” by the Second Chapter of Acts into the dash cassette player and they stopped chatting a while to sing along to the rousing lyrics.

  Singing made Gina feel better, if only a little. For one thing, Kevin couldn’t sing and ask questions about yesterday’s events at the same time. For another, she was glad for the distraction. She didn’t want to think about last night, but dark thoughts of Rolando kept jumping out like spooks from the dark crypt of her mind. She felt like a fraud. Then there was the matter of her car. Just thinking about her little yellow Austin America—all alone, stiff, dead, and cold, awaiting burial on Scott Boulevard—distressed her. Her biggest fear was that Kevin, who was so knowledgeable about cars and their maintenance, would question her more about the Austin and its performance before it died, which would, somehow, dangerously lead to questions about her date, and she didn’t want the conversation to go anywhere near there. When thoughts of her car intruded, she comforted herself with the knowledge that her father, at best, could fix any kind of engine; at worst, he knew the owner of every used parts yard in town. Maybe he could get her a deal on one final tow. Also, Mr. Jacobs wasn’t as nosy as Kevin. She would call her father that afternoon.

  They drove down El Camino Real through Santa Clara, then Sunnyvale, and finally into Mountain View. It was Kevin’s first visit to Church of the Crossroads. Normally he attended Los Gatos Christian in San Jose. Gina thought it might be a good idea to prepare him. She’d seen the puzzled looks of other visitors.

  “Kevin, there’s something you should know about my church.”

  “I don’t do snakes.”

  Gina burst out laughing. “Would you stop it!”

  “No snakes? You swing from the chandeliers and dance in the aisles then?”

  “No,” she said, laughing. “But if you want to swing, you can do it from basketball hoops, not chandeliers. We meet in a gym.”

  “Gym, like gymnasium?”

  “Yes, like gymnasium. With markings on the court, bleachers stacked up against the walls, and cages over the ceiling lights. A real gym.”

  “Oh, I get it. You’re one of those boutique churches, like the motorcycle club ministries, Harleys and leather and chains and all that. Please don’t tell me they hawk peanuts and beer between the songs and the sermon.”

  “Only during March play-offs,” she said.

  He gave her a strange look.

  “Seriously,” she said, “It’s a very unorthodox sanctuary. It used to be a Catholic high school, Holy Cross. But Evangel Christian Fellowship—my old church in San Jose—bought it, and most of the original congregation drives from San Jose to worship at the new facility. We hold church services in the gym because it’s the only building on campus that will hold everyone. We use the classrooms for a Christian school. It’s a little odd to worship in the gym, but you get used to it. After a while you don’t even notice. And the people are really nice. Pastor Cannistraci is Italian like my family. Expect a lot of spaghetti jokes.”

  By the time they reached their left turn onto Miramonte Avenue, Gina finally felt like she could stop holding her breath. Kevin hadn’t asked anything more about her car or yesterday’s run-in on Scott Boulevard. She was safe.

  Pastor Cannistraci’s message was more stimulating than usual this morning. His passionate rhetoric bounced off the hard surfaces of the gymnasium, booming into every corner―except Gina’s heart. Why did God have to take so ever-loving long to do his restoration thing in her life? Take Noah. His faith was tested just forty days, but she'd been waiting six months. God was loving but He was late, He was trustworthy but He was tardy. Michael had walked out of her life abruptly and had broken her heart; Noah hadn’t lost anyone close to him, just his house and his stuff, which probably wasn’t worth much anyway. His entire extended family was on that stinking boat—they were all saved. But she had lost Michael. What’s more, except for a bizarre and exceedingly brief and rainy evening at Marriott’s Great America with a character who claimed to have received messages from the Virgin Mary, she’d had no real dates in six months. She used to date all the time. Her Ugly Girl Clothes couldn’t be blamed. She’d quit dressing like a hayseed and still she wasn’t attracting serious men.

  What had happened to her lately that caused the guys all around her to go blind? She appeared to be the same person in the mirror every day as she had been in the past. Had she changed so much her sophomore year that she had lost her sex appeal? True, she’d thrown out her more revealing clothes since that tumultuous time, but those were mostly evening dresses, exotic items she didn’t wear often anyway. One slinky black thing in particular was a relief to toss: it’s dangerously plunging neckline had caused her an entire evening of insufferable anguish, so worried had she been that something provocative might fall out of the front only to plop, like a delightful, unexpected garnish, into her bowl of vichyssoise.

  No, for the most part she dressed and looked as she did before. And it wasn’t like she wanted guys to fall all over her. Not at all. She was just tired of waiting for an answer to her prayer. She wanted someone wonderful to come into her life to help her forget the pain of losing Michael, and she was tired of being dateless. The church was full of eligible guys who didn’t notice her … but they noticed the other girls. Indeed, it seemed she was invited to a wedding every month. She could name three couples in the church that had married recently, and still she had no dates. What was she, anyway—invisible? Or was she the Greatly Dreaded One? The dumpy, homely kind of girl with opaque stockings and bad skin that evangelical guys worry that God has set aside just for them. Was she fat? No. Did she have crooked or missing teeth? She had plenty of teeth, all of which had been straightened by braces. She didn’t smell bad and she didn’t have zits. So why did the guys ignore her? She’d been praying for six months! Where was Mr. Perfect? Exercising patience was no fun at all. She’d rather go dancing. Gina felt guilty thinking such rebellious thoughts but not guilty enough to stop.

  But then she saw Kevin looking down at her. He smiled. She gave him her most angelic smile in return, consciously masking the treason in her soul. She wondered if he would like her as much if he knew how she really was inside. She was glad for t
he privacy of her rebellious thoughts. But she decided, at least for the moment, to put them to bed and pay attention to the rest of the service.

  It finally ended. As they were walking out of the auditorium into the noisy church foyer, Gina saw Dory Pieters across the room. Dory looked in Gina’s general direction and smiled. Gina looked left and right. Was Dory smiling at her or someone else? She must think me and Kevin are a couple. Gina was horrified. She hoped others didn’t assume the same, especially a few nice looking single guys who regularly attended. She determined right then to never sit next to Kevin in church again.

  “There’s my friend Bonnie,” said Gina, pointing across the foyer. She heard the ruckus surrounding Bonnie and her two little ones before she saw them. “I want to go help her.”

  “Then let’s,” said Kevin.

  “Bonnie!” Gina called out. Bonnie’s eyes flashed toward Gina and then Kevin. It was obvious that Bonnie was delighted to see Gina accompanied by a young man—she knew all about Gina’s dating troubles.

  “Bonnie, this is a friend of mine, Kevin Wyatt. Kevin, this is Bonnie Brefeld, Benjamin, and Sarah.” Baby Sarah shyly buried her head in her mother’s shoulder, but Benjamin was oblivious. He howled and flailed, immersed in an award-winning tantrum befitting the two-year-old he was. He pulled at his mother’s arm, trying to escape her grip, endangering the modest neckline of her dress with his yanking. Ordinarily Bonnie would have disciplined him for such behavior, but because she was loaded down like a pack mule, discipline was impossible.

  Kevin and Gina stood quietly a few seconds while Bonnie did her best to calm Benjamin. Gina thought of taking Sarah off of Bonnie’s hands, at least momentarily, but an image of slick drool running down the front of her dress caused her to hesitate. Suddenly Kevin looked at Bonnie and motioning toward Benjamin with his hand.

  “May I?”

  “Go ahead,” said Bonnie.

  Kevin bent over and grabbed Benjamin under the arms, swooped him up into his own solidly built ones, and lifted him high. Benjamin was so startled that he stopped his screeching and stared at Kevin, who was just inches from his face. Kevin stared back, fixing his eyes in a straightforward, determined gaze.