by Nancy Rue
“Not hard enough, obviously.” Her consonants were hard. “Look—if you think treating Audrey like a victim is what she needs, then I wish you’d go ahead and stay away from her.”
I stared at her. “You were the one who wanted me to be there for her in the first place!”
“I didn’t know she was doing it with some guy she barely knew.” Mickey stopped and looked as if she’d been poked. “Did you know about it? Did you know she was sleeping with him?”
I swallowed. “Whatever Audrey and I talked about was between us.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She took a step back. “Like I said, we’ve got this handled. Thanks.”
“Mickey, come on—you’re upset.”
“No, but you’re about to see me upset.”
“Mick!” Oscar stalked toward us with his palm up—as if that were going to quiet his wife, who was just warming up as far as I could tell.
Mickey’s eyes were still on me. “I appreciate what you’ve done, but I think I know Audrey better than anybody. Just let us handle it.” She planted both hands on her negligible hips. “Do you get me now?”
I got this woman, who bore no resemblance to the one who had put me back together. This woman was now in the business of taking her daughter apart, and then telling me to stand by and watch her do it.
And I couldn’t.
“Where is Audrey now?” I said.
“Which part of this didn’t you understand?”
“Is she here—or is she alone somewhere?”
“What is the matter with you?”
Mickey took a step toward me, but Oscar’s big hand closed over her shoulder.
“Mick!” he said. “Back off.”
She lowered her arm and closed her eyes. “I’m losing it,” she said.
I had to agree.
“You’re fine. Let’s everybody go back to their corners and cool off.” Oscar looked at me. “Why don’t you take today off? You look pretty rough.”
“She doesn’t work on Saturdays.” Mickey was already in a turn toward the house. “Maybe she doesn’t work at all.”
“What did I say about cooling off—before anybody says something they don’t mean?”
She didn’t answer him. He and I both stood examining the soil until she was gone.
“Did she just fire me?” I said.
“No. She just thinks she did.” Oscar smeared his entire puffy face with his hand and let it rest on the sausage rolls at the back of his neck.
“I wasn’t expecting that.”
“It only happens when she’s really stressed. She’ll come back around.” He grimaced. “I hope you don’t take off on us in the meantime. Come to work Monday, and the air’ll be cleared.”
Did I not have enough yelling in my life right now? And enough lack of understanding? And enough unforgiving?
“Listen.” Oscar’s eyes were as soft as the folds around them. “I appreciate all you’ve done for Audrey. Who knows what she would’ve pulled when she found this out if you hadn’t been there for her? Mick knows that too.”
“Right.”
“It wouldn’t bother me any if you kept seeing her—and Mickey might even let you do that once she calms down. But for now, to keep the peace . . .” Oscar bobbed his head again. “Maybe you should give Audrey a wide margin. She’s not here anyway. She went back to the dorm last night.”
I felt my eyes widen. “You let her go be by herself after what she went through yesterday?”
“Mick felt like—”
“No, I can’t let that poor girl go through this by herself. I just can’t.”
“She won’t. Mickey will be there—she just needs time.”
“Audrey doesn’t have time.” I stomped past him. “She’s at the dorm, you said?”
“Dem, I’m really begging you here—”
“And I’m really telling you no.”
I stopped behind him. He looked over his shoulder at me.
“You two can fire me, you can evict me, you can do whatever you want. But I refuse to abandon Audrey. Just so you know.”
Mickey was standing midway up the steps when I passed under them to get back to my apartment. She was still the different Mickey. And that was fine. Because now, I was the different Demi.
CHAPTER TWENTY - EIGHT
Jayne was still asleep when I got back to the apartment, hair splayed across the pillow like filigreed gold, eyelashes kissing the tops of her cheeks. I crawled in beside her and listened to the soft, even breathing of a child safe and content. When she opened her eyes, she looked at me unsurprised, as if of course I would be lying there watching her sleep.
“Do you have a plan?” she said.
I propped up on one elbow. “A plan?”
“You look like you have a plan.”
I pushed a curly tendril off her forehead with my finger. “I do. I’m just wondering if you want to do it with me.”
“Is it about Easter clothes?” she said.
“It is—and it’s about Audrey.”
“Is she going shopping with us?”
“Do you want her to?”
“I like her,” Jayne said.
“All right.”
“What’s the rest of the plan?”
“I wondered . . .”
I paused. This could be a mistake.
“Say it, Mom.”
I sucked in air. “I wondered how you would feel about Audrey moving in with us.”
“Are you going to treat her like another daughter?” Jayne said.
I studied her face. It was pensive, nothing more.
“I mean, I think you should.” She came up on an elbow to face me, as if we were two girlfriends waking up from a sleepover. “She
needs a better mom than the one she’s got—the way Mrs. Gwynne was yelling at her last night.”
“You heard that?”
She rolled her eyes. “Who didn’t? I think she needs you.”
My throat thickened. “You think that, Jay?”
“I know that. Mom, you understand. You don’t expect a kid to be perfect.”
I sat up and kissed her on the forehead. “What do you say we go find Audrey?”
We moved her in that night, complete with an Easter outfit and a basket full of that obnoxious plastic grass that you find under the rug and in the corners of drawers until Halloween. She’d opted for a high-waisted, large-print dress, leggings, and Jolly Rancher jelly beans.
“I hope people don’t think this is dorky,” she said as she held the dress up to herself in my kitchen. “I don’t feel like being in a clingy sweater or something, you know?”
“Who cares what anybody else thinks?” I said. “They have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
“I’m gonna model mine,” Jayne said.
She disappeared into the bedroom, and I enthroned Audrey on my window seat with cushions, afghan, and warm milk with nutmeg.
“It’s been a big day,” I said. “Time for you to let down a little.”
“I feel like crying,” she said. “I’m sorry. You’re doing so much for me.”
“Never be sorry for tears.” It caught in my throat—where I’d learned that from. Her own mother should be saying this to her.
“I don’t feel as stupid today.” Audrey bunched the afghan up under her chin and let the tears trickle down into its holes. “You make me feel like the whole entire world isn’t coming to an end.”
“You’re not, and it’s not.”
She looked deep into the afghan. “Is it okay that I miss C.J.? Even though he’s treating me like crap?”
I closed my eyes. Zach Archer strutted past and didn’t look back at me. “You can’t help it,” I said. “It’s one of the things you’ll deal with.”
“If I can.”
“When you can.”
“Ta-da!”
Jayne made an entrance through the kitchen, spinning deftly around the chairs, the coffee table, and Audrey’s duffle bag. Her three-tiered skirt
swayed like a gypsy’s.
“Okay, how fabulous is that?” Audrey said.
Jayne smiled pertly and looked at me. “You wanted me to pick the Jackie O. number.”
“I know, I know.”
The girls grinned at each other.
Tomorrow would probably bring an eviction notice, once Mickey found out what I was doing. But for now I sighed against the cushions and let them be girls, just girls, cooing over Jayne’s beaded flip-flops.
I heard Mickey come downstairs early the next morning. I imagined her stopping to do a double take when she saw Audrey’s car and steeled myself for a blowup.
There was, however, no knock at the door, nor any indication that I was being thrown out when I poked my head out. That was my first surprise of the day.
The second came when Jayne sat herself at the snack bar with her basket full of M&Ms and said, “I think we should go to the CCC chapel for Easter.”
I stopped beating a bowl of eggs. Audrey stirred on the window seat.
“I love that,” she said. “Dr. Kaye is preaching.”
“Can we, Mom?” Jayne said.
“Let me think about it.”
“The service starts at ten,” Audrey said.
“It’s eight-thirty now.” Jayne hopped down from the stool. “I’ll go take a shower first—that okay, Aud?”
“Wait,” I said, eyes still on the spinning eggs. “Ladies, I don’t know what other people are going to think of me going back there. I didn’t leave under the best of circumstances.”
“Hello!”
I turned to catch the end of a Jayne eye roll.
“Who cares what anybody else thinks?” she said, in a voice clearly reminiscent of my own. “They have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
I set the whisk on the counter.
“All right,” I said. “Everybody get dressed.”
Sully fidgeted with the tie all the way to the chapel. Neckwear had never been his thing, but he felt like he owed it to Ethan to get dressed up. He had to borrow the necktie from him, of course, and take a refresher tutorial in how to tie the thing. Right now it squeezed his Adam’s apple.
He’d only been in the chapel once, to hear Ethan preach at a weekday service which, to his chagrin, only a handful of students attended. Today the place was packed, and the chapel itself was ready for all the people who went to church on Christmas and Easter and counted themselves good to go.
The sanctuary was a riot of uncultivated looking lilies and primroses, which separated only to form a path of oyster shells up to an empty rough-hewn cross.
“All right, Ethan,” Sully whispered.
He squeezed into a back pew full of college guys in faded cotton polos and immediately took off his tie.
“Yeah, dude, lose that thing,” said a long-armed, redheaded kid. “You were lookin’ a little overdressed.”
“Thanks,” Sully said.
As a parade of swishing skirts and just-purchased pumps moved past, he saw familiar movement. A tall woman with a straight Washingtonian walk took the aisle, flanked by two young women, and Sully sat up straight in the seat. It was Demi.
She apparently hadn’t seen him, and, ushering the two girls into a pew in front, she wouldn’t unless she turned around to gawk, which wasn’t her style.
Sully decided he could slip out at the end of the service. It was going to be embarrassing enough for her when they did talk next— she didn’t need to have that conversation here. Already, a row of coeds three pews up swiveled their heads toward each other as if on cue, eyes bulging like Ping Pong balls, mouths already shaping, “Are you serious?”
Sully looked at her as she sat in the pew between the two girls, looking down at the bulletin he was sure she wasn’t reading. This was the last place he would have expected her, and another glance around told him he wasn’t the only one. Less discreet than the coeds was the woman in top-to-toe pink who openly nudged the man next to her and nodded in Demi’s direction.
Sully groaned. He’d have known Kevin St. Clair’s baggy eyes anywhere.
A violin’s sweet strain lifted above the din, sounding like sunrise itself and pulling Sully to his feet with the rest of the congregation. Ethan’s voice joined the strings with the announcement, “He is risen! The Lord is risen indeed.” The congregation responded with “Alleluia! Alleluia!”
Sully didn’t know what had possessed Demi to come, but this was why he was here. His own Alleluia was belated, and the redheaded kid gave him a friendly smirk. It was Easter, and he was part of it.
“You ever heard him preach?” the redhead whispered when they settled in for the sermon.
“Oh, yeah,” Sully said. “He’s great.”
The kid looked at Sully as if he’d grossly understated the issue. “He’s amazing. I just hope this isn’t the last time.”
Ethan’s voice hushed the sanctuary.
“Wouldn’t it be great if someone came to you and said, ‘I’ll pay off all your debts. No matter whether they’re foolish debts, notes you took out for less-than-savory reasons, accounts that have been in arrears for years—I’ll pay them off. You’ll be debt free.’”
The congregation nodded as one, with the exception of Kevin St. Clair, who, Sully noticed, sat self-righteously like a man who’d never used a credit card.
“And what if,” Ethan continued, “this person said to you, ‘I want you to be so grateful that you don’t go out and incur more debt.’” Ethan smiled his I’m-right-in-there-with-you smile. “We’d all agree to that, wouldn’t we?”
More head nodding. Sully grinned contentedly. He knew where Ethan was headed.
“Now imagine that same person saying, ‘However, if you do get into more debt—and you will, simply because you’re human and won’t be able to resist the lure of ninety days with no interest—I will take care of that debt too.’”
Sully’s gaze drifted to Demi, whose face tilted toward Ethan as if she were absorbing light. She slipped her arm around the dark-haired girl next to her and pulled her in, rocking the young woman’s head until it fell onto her shoulder. She looked too old to be Demi’s thirteen-year-old. Sully had the pixie-child on the other side pegged for that.
“You’d expect for there to be strings attached, wouldn’t you?” Ethan said.
Demi rested her cheek on the dark head, which trembled beneath her. She had to be the pregnant girl.
Ethan said, “There are no strings.”
Get this, Demi, Sully thought. Get it for yourself, too.
“‘But I do have expectations,’ your generous benefactor would say.”
I knew every person there with a pulse felt like Ethan was talking directly to him or her. Ethan had a gift for sweeping each individual up with his eyes. Mine he held for longer than a fraction, and I couldn’t tell if he wanted me to hang onto the words, or if he was merely as surprised to see me as everyone else obviously was. Kevin St. Clair had already delivered several looks, ranging from indignant to incensed, with flabbergasted in between.
“‘I expect you to do things for others with the extra money you will now have,’” Ethan said. “‘I want you to be generous.’”
By then Audrey was in my arms, crying silently as silk. On the other side, Jayne looped her arm around my elbow.
“You’re doing that for Audrey,” she whispered.
As I twisted to kiss her on the forehead, I felt as if a long-forgotten pocket inside me were being unbuttoned, containing a feeling I’d thought was no longer mine to feel. Warm and real and soft as a sigh, it whispered, You are good.
Ethan moved from his stance at the top of the shallow steps and down the aisle, so that he was even with our row. Unfortunately, if I were going to watch him, I was forced to have the St. Clairs in my line of sight.
I straightened myself up and focused on Ethan.
“Now imagine this fabulous person,” he said, “instructing you to tell people who it was who got you out of debt and saved your life.” Ethan’s face seemed to de
epen. “‘Tell everyone you meet,’ this person would say, ‘and that I will do it for them, too.’”
Until then I could embrace every word Ethan said. But this part . . . these words . . .
Tell everyone you meet that I did this for you. That I forgave you. That I gave you a chance to make a difference in someone else’s life in spite of what you’ve done.
As hard as I fixed my eyes on Ethan, Kevin St. Clair was still a palpable presence behind him, daring me to expose myself to the community that waited like a slavering wolf. How could I tell everyone Christ had forgiven me, when the very thing I’d been forgiven would humiliate what was left of my family and strip Ethan Kaye of his already shredded credibility?
How, in fact, could I ever share Christ’s love publicly again?
Inside me, that pocket closed over itself and buttoned back up.
Ethan beamed at us. “Now, your debt-payer will warn you that this doesn’t mean people won’t try to take advantage of this new-found wealth, or even succeed sometimes. But he wouldn’t want you to get all hung up on that and think you have to go into debt again in order to ‘set things right.’”
Ethan’s eyes settled on Sully.
You’re talking about yourself, aren’t you? Sully thought.
“He’d promise to help you through it, help you learn about yourself in the process.”
Sully untangled his legs and refolded them.
“‘Don’t become bitter if thieves and swindlers get away with it.’” Ethan put an earnest fist to his chest. “‘I’ll take care of them. I will.’”
Sully felt as if his shoulders suddenly wouldn’t hang on their own.
“There probably isn’t a person here who wouldn’t agree to all of that, if our debts could be wiped clean—and not only the ones we already have, but the ones we’ll incur in the future, even though we swear we never will.”
Ethan’s voice softened. Whenever that happened in his sermons, we were at the place that I always clung to and carried out with me.
But today, this was the part where I closed my eyes and felt the pain in my chest and the thickness in my throat, the part where I grieved—for what I now could never do.
“Wouldn’t it be fabulous? Isn’t it fabulous?” Ethan held up both palms.“Substitute the words separation from God—what some might call sin—for the word debt. Replace the benefactor’s voice with that of our Lord, Jesus Christ. See what happens.”
