The Renewal

by Terri Kraus

  He wrote:

  Earl,

  It’s worth it. It has to be. If you want me to try and find them, I will. But I won’t mention it again, unless you ask. I will visit you tomorrow, right after my meeting.

  Jack

  He slipped out of the room and down the busy hall, through the lobby filled with groups and families, almost all with GET WELL SOON helium balloons in tow. He walked onto the street, into the autumn chill, and headed back to The Palm. He still wanted a burger for lunch.

  Two weeks after mailing her résumé to the Maridon Museum, the one that Leslie had no idea was only blocks from her home, the curator had called. Mrs. Jewell Pindler spoke with a clipped, almost British accent, which Leslie thought might be an affectation. And if it was, it was done very well, she’d thought.

  “She wants me to interview,” Leslie said into the phone. “She said I sounded perfect for the position. What do you think I should do?”

  “Just be yourself,” Pastor Blake urged, “and relax. If you get the job, fine. If not, you will move on to other opportunities. It’s all in God’s hands, and He knows what’s best. Pray for peace. That’s critical.”

  Of course, she agreed with him. But she’d never fully felt that way. She liked to please people, she knew, and that could sometimes be part of her undoing.

  She did pray, though, which was unusual for her, never wanting to bother God with her small problems. But it was feeling more natural. And every time she prayed, God felt closer.

  And I should brush up on my Asian art history before the interview, she thought, smiling to herself. As Gramma Mellie said, “Put wings on your prayers.”

  The interview went better than Leslie could have hoped. Mrs. Pindler was warm, funny, and actually British.

  “How I landed in Butler, of all places, is such a tale. Almost amusing, in a sordid way.”

  Mrs. Pindler was impressed that Leslie had done an international studies semester in England while in college. And Mrs. Pindler knew Alice.

  “I love that woman,” Mrs. Pindler nearly shrieked when Leslie told her about their plans for a new café/bistro. “She is the most wickedly stylish, most creative person in all of Butler County. And you have her for a tenant! How deliciously lovely. And her husband, Frank—what a nice chap. They are regular contributors to the museum’s endowment fund.”

  Leslie determined early into the interview that she could do the job, that it sounded like fun, with a variety of responsibilities, including organizing special exhibits, classes, and docent tours. It didn’t pay as well as she’d hoped, but the hours would be flexible and the work interesting.

  Mrs. Pindler walked her through the four galleries of the main building, all subtly lit to effectively showcase the exquisite details of each work of art. In the first two, ornate jade and ivory sculptures, some as large as four feet tall, sat among delicate Chinese paintings—one of which was a landscape on silk made in the midseventeenth century. Exquisitely decorated Mandarin scrolls filled a third gallery. The fourth gallery displayed the famous collection of Meissen porcelain figures. Leslie was surprised by the whimsy of some of the pieces.

  “Well, my dear, I am delighted to have met you,” Mrs. Pindler said as they completed their tour. “Our museum board meets in a month.” She leaned close and whispered, “A bunch of stuffed shirts, but they do need to be in on this decision. As soon as I can, I will call you.”

  Leslie left the museum in perhaps the best spirits she’d been in since arriving in Butler.

  She and Mrs. Pindler had really hit it off.

  Amelia Westland

  Lyndora

  Butler County, Pennsylvania

  August 9, 1884

  My Julian is indeed a daring young man. A sealed note was delivered to me in the noon posting.

  Stay awake. At moonrise, wait for a sign.

  All so enigmatic. At moonrise, some few moments past ten, when all was still and dark, I heard small pebbles raining on my window. I cracked open the door and peered into the moonlight. A figure in dark clothing stole to my door and silently entered my rooms, without being bid to enter.

  It was Julian, of course, and when I closed the door, making sure no one had observed his coming, he turned me about, facing him, and embraced me, only stopping the embrace to kiss me in short duration. Then he stepped back, as if waiting for me to object.

  I did not.

  Behind drawn curtains, we sat in my two chairs, in the dark, side by side, and spoke in near whispers into the wee hours. He told of his dream to leave the livery and travel the west—as an itinerant preacher. His pastor, the same Lutheran pastor who assigned him as my escort—stated that Julian was ready to do just that. He has been fervently studying the Scriptures and has prepared a number of sermons on various passages of Scripture.

  When I heard this, I was exceedingly chagrined, but then my Julian again kissed my pouting lips and posed: “Come with me, Amelia. We can travel the west together.”

  How I will manage to teach on the morrow is beyond my power to imagine.

  Create in me a clean heart, O God;

  and renew a right spirit within me.

  —Psalm 51:10

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  JACK PUT HIS EAR TO the door. He heard rustling from inside the vacant apartment. He was certain Leslie hadn’t yet rented it out, so it couldn’t be new tenants. He carefully inserted his key and, as silently as he could, turned the lock and opened the door just an inch. If there were burglars—though there was nothing in the empty apartment to steal—Jack wanted to make sure Leslie and Ava were safe.

  He could see one side of a ladder.

  Burglars don’t bring ladders into a building, do they?

  He leaned in farther.

  Leslie was on the ladder, holding a paint roller, attached to an extension, and she was rolling paint on the section of the wall Jack had replaced. She had not heard him.

  Silent, he watched her work. She was wearing shorts—cutoff jeans—and an old black T-shirt. He could see the muscles in her arms and legs flex as she moved the roller up and down the wall, applying a coat of primer over the wallboard. Her hair was held back with a bandana, exposing her long neck. A few flecks of white paint were spattered on her cheeks and arms, but a drop cloth carefully lay on the newly sanded floor. He could see the concentration on her face and the tip of her tongue between her closed lips, just a hint, as she worked.

  Even with paint on her face, she’s so beautiful, Jack thought.

  He coughed a little, not wanting to scare her.

  She turned toward the noise, and when she saw him, she grinned sheepishly, as if she were caught intruding on his domain, his workspace.

  “You do good work, Leslie. You’re a good painter.”

  She laughed. “It’s out of necessity. Painters are expensive. I want to save where I can.”

  She descended the ladder slowly; Jack tried not to stare. She leaned her roller against the middle step, careful not to let any paint drip.

  He swallowed hard. “I don’t want to interrupt you. I just came back to get a measurement for the lights in the bathroom. I want to make sure the bases will cover the holes I cut.”

  Leslie took a rag and wiped her hands and tried to get some of the paint spots off her arm. They had already dried.

  “I’m a mess.”

  “No. Real painters always look that way,” Jack said. “I mean, not as nice as you, but they do get paint all over themselves.”

  Leslie smiled. “We’re almost done here, aren’t we? I could put an ad in the newspaper for this place, couldn’t I?”

  “You could. You should. A few small things to finish. Having a renter will make things easier, won’t it?”

  She nodded. “Still no job. So rent money would help a lot.”

  They l
ooked at each other. The room was still, but it was obvious neither of them were made nervous by that silence.

  “I would offer you something to drink, but I know there’s nothing in this refrigerator. And there is no place to sit, even if I had something to offer you.”

  Jack waved her off, even though he wanted an excuse to stay there, to talk with her, to be with her. “That’s okay. We could get some coffee or something if you wanted to take a break.”

  Leslie looked back at the wet wall. “Well, I’m almost done. You could—”

  “What?”

  “You could get us something to drink and bring it back. I need five or ten minutes more to finish this wall. Then I could take a break without feeling guilty.”

  With how he was feeling, looking at her in her cutoffs, Jack might have come up with a hundred reasons why this wasn’t a good idea, but he didn’t want to think about any of those reasons.

  “Sure. I can do that. I’ll be back in five or ten minutes … with something. Okay? You wait here.”

  And he slipped out, closed the door, leaving Leslie alone with the paint roller and ladder.

  She waited only a heartbeat or two, dipped the roller in the paint tray, and finished the last few feet of the unpainted wall, hoping she didn’t look so horrible without makeup and wearing the worst clothing she had found in her closet that morning. With rising excitement, she hoped she could finish and get cleaned up, at least a little, before Jack returned with … whatever.

  He had two coffees and two pink cold drinks in a cardboard carrier, with a small bag of cookies, most likely purchased at Cunningham’s on Main Street. The silky bag was hard to mistake.

  “I didn’t know if you wanted hot or cold. I should have asked. So I had to get both. And some cookies. You can’t take a break without cookies. If you don’t want cold, we can put these in the refrigerator for later.”

  He handed the carrier to her, then said, “Wait. I’ll get chairs.”

  He returned with two battered lawn chairs that had been floating around the building and had found their way to the first-floor space. Jack set them up—not close together, but not far apart either. He offered her a choice, then took the empty chair.

  “This is nice,” Leslie said. “Very nice.”

  Jack nodded, almost happy for the first time in a long time. He was not sure what it was about Leslie, but he found himself pleased to be in her presence, content to just talk with her, about anything. Jack believed in chemistry. Maybe believing in chemistry was part of his undoing. It had been in the past.

  He was out of practice, knowing what a woman might be thinking, but he was pretty sure that she enjoyed this small connection—this brief sharing of lives—too.

  Jack asked her about Ava and her school and how she was faring, being new in town. Leslie chattered away about Mrs. DiGiulio, and what a fantastic teacher she was and how much her daughter was enjoying the experience.

  After a few moments, they both stopped talking. Jack watched her hands, the way they moved, the way she held her cup—not delicately, but with purpose and style. He looked at her soft throat, not wanting to stare, not wanting to be obvious. He watched her eyes, her beautiful mouth.

  Later, as he remembered this little slice of an afternoon, he would recall being at peace with her and almost being at peace with himself. At the same time, he could feel his heart … dance is the word, I guess. She makes my heart dance.

  He knew then, for certain, that this was the woman who was meant to be in his life. He didn’t allow himself to believe, totally, that she was thinking the same thing he was thinking, but he hoped she was. Is that what I read in her eyes? That she feels the same way?

  He had almost convinced himself that she no longer saw him as the drunk who called her in desperation in the dark of the night.

  Jack had completed the vacant apartment and had done a very good job. The tub held up the completion for more than a week, but now it was installed, and Leslie had repainted the whole apartment by herself, working for a few hours a day while Ava was in school. She had done a thorough job on painting—not exceptional, but far from amateurish. Jack had complimented her on the final inspection, and even Alice and Frank added their approval.

  She knew he had another job to do before he started on the downstairs restaurant, and that was why she never saw him. She would have called, she would have sought him out, but with everything else going on in her life, she knew that one thing she didn’t need was additional drama.

  Not that she thought Jack was bad drama, but he had demons in his life, she knew, and, at the moment, Leslie was reluctant to take on any additional worries.

  But I still think about him—a lot of the time. I still think he needs someone. And he is … so handsome. Maybe that’s why I’m thinking about him. Not that Mike isn’t handsome, in his own way. But when I was painting, and we sat and talked, there was something amazing there. Demons or not, there was definitely something there. Something very, very special.

  Now, turning the corner with an armful of groceries, Leslie almost ran into Jack as he ducked out of the first-floor space.

  “I haven’t seen you in a while,” Leslie said as she regained her grip on the two paper bags. She always answered the question “Paper or plastic?” with “Paper,” since that could be recycled, even though she had recently read an article that said paper bags used more energy to produce.

  She could see that Jack was doing his best to hide the fact that he was uncomfortable. At least, that is what she saw—his eyes averted, his shoulders slumped a bit, maybe carrying a bit of guilt.

  “I guess I’ve just been busy, Leslie. Busier than I thought. I started that other job—a kitchen and bath. You met the couple, remember? The Pettigrews?”

  “I do,” Leslie said, shifting the bags in her arms. “They seemed nice. Very excited with their new house.”

  “Let me help you with those,” Jack said, taking both bags from her. “I’ll take them upstairs.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Least I can do. No bother at all.”

  He followed her upstairs and set the bags carefully on the kitchen counter. He leaned his back against it and crossed his arms, the muscles in them flexing. Leslie tried not to think about his muscular forearms or how it would feel to touch them.…

  “Do you have the vacant apartment rented?” Jack asked. “Mrs. Stickle said that she had a nephew or niece or someone who was looking.”

  “A niece—and I guess that makes her husband a nephew-in-law to Mrs. Stickle. They looked at the place, and loved it. They would have rented it, but they have three months to go on their current lease. I told them if it’s still not rented by then, I‘ll let them know. A few other lookers, but no one’s signed anything yet.”

  “Someone will soon enough. It’s such a nice unit.” Jack stepped backward toward the front door.

  Leslie saw the move and reacted with her emotions this time, not thinking it through, not debating, just acting. She hardly ever followed her emotions. Her father always said that emotions couldn’t be trusted. “Be safe. Think things through” was his motto.

  “Do you have to take off right away?” Leslie said as friendly as she could. “I was about to make coffee. Or maybe lemonade. Stay for one of those. I owe you, since you bought the last time, remember? Tell me all about the plans for downstairs. I see Alice and Frank coming and going all the time, always in a whirl. You do have time, don’t you? For just a cup of coffee?”

  She could tell that Jack was debating whether to stay with her or go back to work.

  Contractors set their own hours, she thought. Fifteen minutes here can be added on at the end of his day.… Guess it’s not just lost time he’s considering.

  “Well … I guess a coffee sounds good. I still haven’t progressed from instant. I keep think
ing that one of these days I’ll break down and buy a coffeemaker.”

  Leslie measured coffee and water, wondering if he could sense what she was feeling.

  She brought the coffees to the table and sat facing him. She studied his face for a moment, then spoke. “Jack, how have you been? Really. I’ve been worried about you since … that night out on Route 8 …”

  Jack looked down at his feet, a small scowl passing over his mouth. “I haven’t touched anything since that night. I’m going to meetings.” His words were soft, almost whispered.

  “That’s good. I am really glad for you.” Leslie’s words were cautious, but she wanted so badly to affirm him, support him as best she could.

  Jack looked up, his eyes still pained. “Did I ever tell you about Earl … Earl from The Palm?”

  Leslie shook her head no.

  “He’s dying. And I don’t know what I should do for him.”

  “Dying? Is he an old friend?”

  “No. Not really. I met him at the bar. He works there. Or worked there. He’s a recovered alcoholic.”

  “At a bar?”

  Jack opened his hands. “I know. I asked him about that too. He said he wasn’t tempted anymore. And he had to work somewhere.”

  “And he’s dying?”

  “Said a couple of months. Doctors say anything sometimes. I don’t think he sees much hope. And I don’t know what to say to him.”

  Leslie wanted to say something to draw out the pain but didn’t know the words to use. She wanted to do something to make it better for Jack, remembering all the times people in her life had done nothing, leaving her alone and adrift with her pain.

  “You could talk to Pastor Blake. Of all the people I know, he would have good advice. He is really good at knowing what people need. He could help.”

  “Pastor Blake? From Grace @ Calvary Church. With the symbol instead of the ‘at’?”

  “That’s the one. Do you know him?”

  “No. But …” Jack looked hard at Leslie, as if confirming something in his thoughts. “That’s where I go for meetings. I know the church. A beautiful old stone building. Such a perfect example of Romanesque architecture. I looked it up in one of my books. What’s the pastor like?”