The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck

by Bethany Turner

  He grabbed a loose strand of my hair and played with it as he said, “You are very wise.”

  I chuckled as I stood and pulled him up with me. “Well, you may be the theology expert, but I literally wrote the book on sex. Between the two of us, I think we’ve got this covered.”

  11.

  Wasabi-Stained Restraint

  Since our Sunday lunch had been so rudely interrupted by, you know . . . reality, Ben and I decided our first date called for a do-over. So the next evening we went back to the sushi restaurant. As we ate, we laid down some ground rules, written on a napkin that I still have—wasabi stains and all.

  1. We wouldn’t allow ourselves to be completely alone together. Our dates would either be in public or with a chaperone; i.e., a double date, Piper, or Maddie.

  2. We would only see each other outside of church and church functions three times a week: lunch on Sundays after church, one date night, and one Maddie date.

  3. We would talk on the phone and/or email as often as we wanted in an attempt to get to know each other without the distraction of attraction.

  4. Our relationship needed to be above reproach. We knew we would face a lot of scrutiny, especially once the members of Mercy Point figured out who I was, so we had to make sure we didn’t give them any additional fuel for the fire.

  5. Sex would not be happening, obviously. Hand-holding was fine. Hugs were fine. No kissing for a while, and then only within reason. More specifically, if we were okay with doing it in front of our chaperone, then it was okay.

  6. We would trust God as to the timing of taking the next steps in our relationship.

  7. No more surprises. No matter how small or insignificant details from our past seemed, we had to lay it all on the table.

  In what I believe was an attempt to display our commitment to Rule #7, we talked about our marriages that day. I went first and made pretty quick business of it. There was nothing to keep from him, and he was welcome to all of the small and insignificant details, any time he wanted them. Ultimately I just couldn’t think of any small and insignificant details of my marriage that weren’t summed up beautifully by the large and extremely significant details of my divorce, so in my telling of the tale, I focused much more on the end than anything else. Specifically, I told Ben about Patrick’s two most notable mistresses—Bree and his career. But while my marriage had been dark and depressing and mostly devoid of joy, Ben had gotten to experience the real thing.

  Ben and Christa’s marriage had certainly ended tragically, with the new mother being diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer on the day Maddie turned three months old, and losing her battle eight months later. But as Ben told the story of how they had been each other’s first crush as children in Chicago, reconnected as college students passing through St. Louis, and went on to build a life together, ending up back in their hometown, I laughed much more than I cried. As did he. He’d had a good thing, and he knew it.

  And yet I knew that he wasn’t closed off to the idea that another good thing might come along.

  I sat for a moment in grateful confidence that Ben was open to love again. Then a statement silently entered the discussion, and I knew it was something I needed to make sure I understood. I saw the statement written in my mind, as if written in a journal by an invisible hand.

  He isn’t open to love. He’s open to you.

  And suddenly my eyes were opened, and I saw his pain—still weighty though it had been four years. It wasn’t about not being ready. He was ready for me. I had already understood that Ben was more mature than me—spiritually, emotionally—and that he would teach me and guide me. He would make me a better person. But that conversation was the first time I realized that Ben was broken too.

  “You haven’t dated since Christa died, have you?”

  He looked up at me, I think mildly startled by words being spoken again, because he was so lost in his own thoughts.

  He smiled and leaned back in his chair. “If by ‘dated’ you mean anything other than sitting at home playing games and watching movies with Maddie on Friday nights, then I suppose the answer would be no. Every time an opportunity came along, I always felt like I wasn’t quite there yet. But I knew I would be the next time. Until the next time rolled around, that is.” He sighed. “I don’t know . . . I guess maybe it’s extra difficult to get back out there when you never spent much time ‘out there’ to begin with.”

  Like mine, Ben’s romantic history, prior to marriage, had been pretty limited. If Christa had been the bookends, there had only been one book in between. “The Bellamy girl,” as Ben said his parents used to call her—his father because he couldn’t ever remember her first name; his mother because the Bellamy family’s wealth and prominence in Chicago at the time made her quite the catch. Ben dated her all through college and had been pretty close to proposing, until she cheated on him by kissing some guy in her study group. But he had been far from heartbroken. It was around that same time that Christa came back into his life.

  He continued speaking, and it was as if he were asking a question he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to. “Have you dated? Since your divorce?”

  I guess you could call it that. “Yeah. Quite a bit, actually. I mean, not a ton. But some. Yeah.”

  He sighed. “For so long, I thought nothing would be as good as what I had with Christa. Everything would make me think of her. That didn’t seem fair to any woman I could date, and honestly it didn’t seem fair to me.”

  I didn’t say anything, but he mistook my silence for hurt feelings.

  “Oh, Sarah, I don’t mean . . . I’m not saying that still applies. I hope you understand how different this is.”

  I did. Somehow I understood. “I know.”

  We were silent once more, but only because I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to say something productive or beneficial for him, but we were outside my realm of expertise. If Christa had cheated on him, I could have proficiently comforted him all day long. But our marriages had nothing in common. He’d had an amazing wife and marriage. And he had an amazing daughter as proof of that love.

  Ben handed me a tissue. I hadn’t even realized the tears had begun. “What is it?”

  “Nothing, really.” I smiled sadly. I didn’t mean to feel sad, but I couldn’t help it. “I was just realizing why it was so easy—I mean, relatively—for me to leave Patrick. It wasn’t even catching him cheating, though I have completely blamed the failure of the marriage on that.”

  Ben scoffed with a smidgen of barely restrained anger toward Patrick that, I must admit, I found very sexy. “Of course you’ve blamed it on that. You deserved so much better than what that man did to you.”

  “You’re right!” I laughed. “But being who I was then, knowing nothing else apart from the importance and magnitude of being Mrs. Patrick McDermott . . . I would have stayed with him forever. I was convinced I loved him, and I was convinced I could never do better. As terrible as it sounds—as terrible as it is—I really think I would have put up with the coldness and the other women and work coming first, and I’d have kept being a good little Catholic wife, if only he’d let me have a baby.”

  Ben, who had been leaning in holding my hand on the table, sat back in his chair as the weight of the statement hit him. “If he’d let you?”

  I laughed again, this time more bitterly. “Well, I couldn’t do it without him, could I?”

  He was trying to understand, bless his heart, but for a man who had loved his wife and had wanted nothing more than to start a family with her, it was clearly a struggle. He leaned in again so he could be more discreet. “Are you saying he wouldn’t make love to you?”

  “I don’t think Patrick had made love to me since we were newlyweds. But, yeah . . . we didn’t have sex for the last . . .” I tried to think of the last time. Could that be right? “I guess for the last two years of our marriage.” I looked up at Ben and grimaced, suddenly uncomfortable with the topic. “Sorry. Is this too much detai
l?”

  “Rule #7. Go on.”

  “Okay,” I resumed sheepishly after taking a moment to assess his reaction and make sure he was really okay with the conversation. “I begged him to try for a baby. Literally begged him. And he used it. ‘After I finish this deal, maybe. I just need to make sure it all goes perfectly.’ ‘Of course, Patrick! What can I do? Play the perfect hostess? Organize a gala? Pack your bags so that you and your secretary can go to Cancun? You bet.’ But there was always some reason that it wasn’t the right time. Someday. Soon. After this, after that. After the divorce my mother tried to convince me that I could have held on to him if I’d gotten pregnant.”

  He sat up straight in his chair and made the “time out” gesture with his hands. “I’m sorry. What? Your mother said that?”

  I smiled at his reaction. Sometimes I forgot what a piece of work my mother was, until I told other people stories about her. “That’s my mother for you. Can’t wait for you to meet her,” I said sarcastically. “This is the same woman who told me my father had to leave the country because I asked him for too much.”

  “Why would that cause him to leave the country?”

  “Well, technically he left the country to avoid being arrested on embezzlement charges. And I guess she was saying he only embezzled because I asked for too much.” I smiled, having long ago become accustomed to my family’s dysfunction.

  “That’s . . . I mean . . . I’m not quite sure what to say to that one,” he said, completely dumbfounded.

  “It’s fine,” I said dismissively and then added with a laugh, “But also not fine at all, of course. I think that my dad was the one guy she loved, even though she never really thought he was good enough. Go figure. So she dealt with it all in the best way she knew how.”

  Ben shook his head skeptically. “I’m not sure you should justify—”

  “Oh no. I’m not justifying anything, I assure you. There’s no excuse for how terribly she’s treated me.” Again I laughed. It was just my life. “But I think her feelings about my dad were why she was so incredibly awful about everything when I got divorced. I think she thought I was repeating her mistakes—letting go of this fantastic guy just because I asked for too much. But, of course, Patrick is not a fantastic guy.”

  “And I don’t think that wanting to start a family was asking too much, Sarah.”

  “No,” I agreed. “But for a little while I thought I had myself convinced that I hadn’t really wanted a child all that much after all. That it was just my last ditch effort to try to make Patrick love me. But that wasn’t true at all. I didn’t want a baby to try to hold on to Patrick—I tried to hold on to Patrick because I wanted a baby.”

  We sat in comfortable silence as we waited for the bill, and the silence continued as we paid and stood to go. I think we were both reflecting on what a heavy conversation it was for a first date, but I don’t think either one of us believed it should have gone any other way. We walked outside and Ben escorted me to my car and opened the door for me. I don’t think either one of us wanted it to end and we easily could have kept it going for hours longer. But we were both determined to follow the ground rules. And, though I wasn’t sure if Ben had thought of it this way, I couldn’t help but realize that on top of the already intense attraction we felt for each other, we had each just revealed that we hadn’t had sex in years.

  Those ground rules were going to be very important.

  “Well, tell Maddie hi for me. I really do look forward to spending time with her.”

  His face lit up, as it seemed to each time he thought of his daughter. “I look forward to that too, Applesauce.”

  “Hey! You’re not allowed to call me that!” I slapped him playfully on the arm.

  “Oh, sorry.” He laughed. “I’m going to go pick her up from Laura’s now, and then—if you don’t mind—I may call you this evening. Is that okay?”

  I smiled. “I believe the rules state that you are supposed to call me as often as possible.”

  “You may regret those words, Ms. Hollenbeck.”

  I winked. “Try me.”

  I wanted to kiss him. It felt like I should kiss him. And he looked very much like he wanted to kiss me. That, strangely enough, is what gave me the strength to lean in and give him a hug. He held me tightly, but gently, and I immediately realized that we’d have to be careful with hugs as well. I pulled away and cleared my throat and felt how warm my cheeks had gotten.

  “Bye,” I whispered with a self-conscious laugh.

  He sighed. “Bye.” He crossed the street to his vehicle, and just before he got in, his cell phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket, glanced down at it, and then looked back at me with a conspiratorial grin. “Why, if it isn’t ‘the Bellamy girl.’” And then, with a wave, he got into the driver’s seat as he said, “Hey, Laura. Yeah, I’m on my way now.”

  He drove away, but I stood frozen in place. Laura? Miss Laura? No . . . surely not. Could the Scarlett Johansson lookalike, whom I’d thought looked like she was in her midtwenties, actually be Ben’s midthirties college girlfriend who had very nearly been his fiancée? Had the one his mother thought was such a good catch become the one his daughter loved?

  Oh . . . not good. Not good at all.

  12.

  Feeling All the Feels

  My mother used to tell me a story of a girl who was sickly and poor throughout her entire childhood. She had no one and nothing, except for the ability to sing beautiful songs. Night after night, day after day, she lay in her bed, shivering from the cold and nearly starving to death, singing with all her might. The song was her only friend and her only warmth. The song was the only thing in her life of value.

  One day a local trader passed by and heard the song. “Who is that, singing with the voice of an angel?” he asked.

  “Why, it’s no one, sir,” the townspeople said. “It is but only a sickly girl with a song in her heart.”

  “Lead me to her,” he pleaded, but the townspeople refused, insisting she was not worth seeing.

  Another day, a jester from the court of the king passed by and heard the song. “Who is that, singing with the voice of a majestic harp?” he asked.

  “Why, it’s no one, sir,” the townspeople said. “It is but only a sickly girl with a song in her heart.”

  “Lead me to her,” he begged, “and I will take her before the king.” But the townspeople refused, insisting she was not worthy to set foot in the palace.

  Still another day, the prince himself passed by and heard the song. “Who is that singing with the voice of my own heart’s desire?” he asked.

  “Why, it’s no one, your majesty,” the townspeople said. “It is but only a sickly girl with a song in her heart.”

  “Lead me to her,” the prince commanded, “and I will take her as my wife.”

  The townspeople, of course, could not refuse the prince, but as they entered the girl’s hut, the singing stopped.

  “She’s dead,” the townspeople cried, somewhat thankfully. For they knew she was not fit to marry a prince.

  The end.

  I was always strangely, unexplainably touched by that story. My mother had told it to me at various pivotal moments throughout my childhood, and though I was never sure that I completely understood what she was trying to tell me, I knew there was a deep, hidden message that I would someday fully appreciate. I always found it somewhat maddening, actually. As a little girl, I believed that when I figured it out, I would finally be a woman. I know that sounds stupid, but if you had been there when my mom told me the story for the first time, you’d understand.

  There weren’t many wonderful, powerful moments between us, but the telling of that tale was something I treasured. I would ask her to tell me the secret. What did it really mean? And her reply, each and every time, was, “If I told you, it couldn’t work its magic.”

  At coffee on Tuesday morning, I told it to Piper.

  “That’s really sad,” she said. “Now, tell me about your
date with Ben.”

  I was very ready and willing to tell her all about my date, and I had no doubt that her eagerness to hear all of the details was the only reason she’d insisted on early morning, pre-work coffee rather than lunch at a more humane hour, but I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I was supposed to be learning something from the story, and I’d hoped she could help me. It was time for something to click.

  “What do you think the moral of that story is, Piper? Seriously. I want to know.”

  She sighed, clearly disgruntled by my postponement of relaying the juicy details. “Oh, sheesh. I don’t know! That your mother tells really depressing stories?”

  I crossed my arms and continued to stare at her.

  “Okay, let me think. I guess it’s probably that sometimes we should sing through our problems?” She laughed, and I couldn’t help but laugh with her. “Or no, I’ve got it. Other people decide what we are capable of when they . . . shouldn’t? I don’t know, Sarah!”

  “That makes some sense, actually, but don’t you think that’s too easy? I mean, I had that much figured out by the time I was seven.”

  Just then my phone rang. I grabbed it from its position on the table and silenced it, with an apology to Piper before setting it back on the table, facedown.

  “Aren’t you going to answer that?” she asked eagerly.

  “No, it’s okay.” I shrugged. “I thought I had it on vibrate—”

  “But what if it’s Ben?”

  She really was very anxious to hear the latest on Ben, like an old lady at the hair salon sitting under the dryer for too long so she didn’t miss any of the local gossip. Apparently the only thing that could make the information worth waiting for was the potential for more information.

  “It’s probably not Ben.” I laughed, looking at my watch to remind myself of how ridiculously early it was.