August 27, 2012
Copyright © 2012 Josephine Garner
All rights reserved.
ISBN 10: 1479296562
EAN 13: 9781479296569
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62346-293-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012916937
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
North Charleston, South Carolina
Dedication
Many thanks to all the friends and family who support and encourage my writing, and most especially to: Tracey Hardy, Charlotte Kent, Barry Davies, Katrin Kohl, and David Johnson.
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
A FINAL COMMENT :
“And Peter answered him and said, ‘Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.’ And he said, ‘Come.’ And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, ‘Lord, save me.’ And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, ‘O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?’”
Matthew 14:28-31
ONE
It was about time to forgive myself for being cheap—frugal, I mean. I was just good with money. Practical. Thrifty. What was wrong with that? Armed with a buy-3-get-2-free coupon, I had come to the mall on a mission to stock-up on my favorite fragrance, Juniper Breeze. Bath & Body Works was having a sale. I was thinking I might buy a year’s supply of body lotion and body wash.
Juniper Breeze was my signature scent. It wasn’t a bold fragrance, but rather it made a calm, clean statement, blending in, barely noticeable. Passionate perfume commercials deceived people. How could taking somebody’s breath away be good? Maybe it was fine for television and fantasies, but on elevators—not so much.
A sales associate, wearing a bright red apron and a brighter smile, greeted me, offering to help.
“Oh!” she exclaimed when I told her what I was looking for. “It’s one of our all-time favorites. It’s over here.”
Back here was more apt. Time was when the Juniper Breeze collection had been at the front of the store. I supposed even all-time-favorites eventually became passé.
“Have you tried it for the house?” the sales associate wanted to know. “It’s great in a wall-flower.”
Juniper Breeze was for me. For my house, a two bedroom condo in an older development suitable for a social worker’s salary, I preferred vanilla-scented candles, which men were also purported to prefer if you believed the women’s magazines; which I sort of did, judging by how many of them I was willing buy at the supermarket check-out. I wasn’t a total loser when it came to romance and/or sex, but a little counsel couldn’t hurt.
Robert, my ex-husband, had said I was boring, not in the divorce papers, and not even during the bitter arguments between us, when we had both said hurtful things. He had pronounced it when we were both relatively composed, resigned to the fact that our marriage was over, and maybe should have never been. He had said it objectively, and I didn’t blame him, because after all he had bored me too.
Although not in the beginning. In the beginning I had been grateful, having read too many articles that prophesized spinsterhood for women like me. The older a woman got, the writers warned, the more educated, the more career-minded, the more likely she was dooming herself to being alone, vanilla fragrance notwithstanding.
Mommy had agreed. “A man has to feel needed,” she had cautioned me, when I was just a twenty-something, as if the self-sufficiency she had taught me was a sin similar to sleeping-around, and possibly less forgivable. So when Robert had come along, undaunted by my independence, and perhaps actually impressed by it, he had seemed like a godsend to the both of us. Good-looking, smart, ambitious, even religious, he had been my escort to the American dream, the Prince Charming for my Cinderella Complex. I just didn’t—couldn’t—love him.
But also according to Mommy, I didn’t have to. Respecting him, being thankful for and to him was supposed to have been enough. “One day you’ll wake up and it’ll just be there—you love him.” And I had been comfortable with Robert at first and for awhile. We had even tried to start a family. Maybe we’d still be married if we had succeeded. Mommy-Daddy bookends with happy children in between, holding us together. I supposed I had just been lucky again, perhaps naturally contraceptive, or sterile. In the end there had been no children; and not enough respect and gratitude to keep us together without them either.
Yet Mommy insisted that we could get back together. Robert had not remarried, and I barely dated. “Sometimes people are just made for each other,” Mommy argued all the time. Or made to be alone, I would think. But she was right, some divorced people did reconcile. They grew up, or got over things, or just acquiesced and settled down, seemingly wiser for the experience. As a family counselor, I often tried to help that happen. It was better for the children. But of course Robert and I didn’t have any. He still called me, just to talk he would say whenever I would answer, however there were lots of times when reading the caller-id, I didn’t.
I set my Bath & Body Works basket down on the floor and squirted a dab of the pale green cream into my palm. It blended quickly, soaking into my skin and releasing the fresh scent. The perfume industry was a billion dollar enterprise, and as popular as the sales associate claimed Juniper Breeze to be, it wasn’t driving the market, not from the back shelf of the store, yet I liked it and I didn’t care what anybody else thought. I often followed my own mind that way.
“Rachel?” a woman’s voice called my name interrupting my private revelry. “Rachel Cunningham?”
I looked up.
Luke’s mother.
At first all I could do was stare at her. What was she doing here? In the not-so-fashionable, kind-of-struggling Northside Mall? How many years had it been? Fifteen? Twenty? Forever?
“I can’t believe it!” cried Mrs. Sterling as she wrapped me up in a happy embrace.
Her heavy perfume filled the air, overpowering the Juniper Breeze.
“Mrs-Mrs. Sterling,” I stumbled. “He-Hello.”
Her thin arms held me tightly. Because she never had before, I was stunned on lots of accounts, but I managed to hug her too. This was the closest I had ever been to her, in spite of her son having tried mightily to make us friends.
“Hello!” I lifted my voice. “How are you?”
“Look at you!” she said stepping back as if to admire me, squeezing my arms in her hands. “Just as pretty as ever. You haven’t changed a bit!”
The as ever made it not a total lie.
“Neither have you,” I replied.
“Oh,” Mrs. Sterling demurred faintly, touching her hair which was now a lustrous silver. “I’m just an old lady.”
That was true, but she remained an elegant one. Luke had always been proud of his mother. In her youth she had modeled in New York before
marrying Thomas Sterling and settling into Dallas society as the wife of a successful business man and local politician. Her face was wrinkled now but her cheekbones were still perfect, her makeup flawless. She could still do a photo-shoot for one of those boomer-friendly glamour magazines that celebrated aging gracefully. A paisley silk scarf concealed what twenty years might have done to her aristocratic neck.
The last time I had seen her was at Luke’s wedding; which I had made myself go to as if on a dare, needing to prove something to myself and to everybody else too. That I was happy for Luke. That he was marrying the right girl; a woman of fashion-model quality just like his mother, who would make him and their children her career. Not that there was anything wrong with that. Like Mommy said, people could be made for each other; and not.
Their wedding had been storybook. Christina had been a dreamy angel in billows of white, Luke serene and serious, the Episcopal cathedral filled with family and friends. “You’re like a little sister to Luke,” Christina had assured me. Little sister—more like Little Orphan Annie except I didn’t have a dog. In those days Mommy had been too fussy about her house for pets.
I hadn’t even been in the right sorority or in a sorority at all. I wasn’t much of a joiner. I had never belonged to anything, or anyone, except Mommy. I used to wonder if that was what Luke had liked about me, my being a free spirit as he had called me. Although he had been free too, and in a lot of ways freer than me, despite being in a fraternity himself. In any case, he had made me his friend, and ultimately that had made me Christina’s friend; so on their wedding day there I had been, the odd one, lined-up with Christina’s five sorority sisters, executing my bridesmaid’s duties as I grinned goofily like I was supposed to, a real team player, all decked out in pink satin right down to the three-inch-heel sling-back pumps. Afterwards Christina had mailed me a set of wedding pictures, a keepsake for my loss, except that it had never been mine.
From day one in English Literature 315, Luke and I had forged an unlikely bond, building it through essays and book reports, and mathematical formulas, over cappuccinos and burgers and beers, and during shared car trips back home to Dallas for the holidays. Our friendship had been as improbable as Luke taking a romance writers’ course in the first place. After all he had been an engineering major, more suited to numbers and equations, enchanted by angles and circumferences, and the way the physical world fit together regardless of whether or not we had the words to explain the relationships.
Taking an English literature elective was something he had done to satisfy his mother. Liberal arts, the Humanities, these were the things she loved and he enjoyed making her happy. Fortunately for him, Luke had said, I had been there to escort him through an alien world of the subjective. On his graduation day, with his parents for witnesses, he had credited me for his Summa Cum Laude.
And I might have died in Chemistry 301 had it not been for Luke. The memory of my statistics exams could still cause me to catch my breath, but he had coached me through all of it, patiently explaining Chi Squares and P Values as if he had been taking me on a trip to Disney Land. It had practically been a cliché, like we were Don Henley and Stevie Nicks singing about leather and lace, except it had been numbers and words.
And Christina had gotten the lace. The bridesmaid dress had been frill-free and so tight that I could barely breathe. Confined in it I had gone through the reception line with Mommy right behind me, congratulating them all: Mr. and Mrs. Sterling, Christina, Luke, wishing them every happiness, and meaning it too.
“I’m so glad you shared this with us, Rachel,” Christina had said. “It means a lot to Luke that you’re here.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” I had replied meeting her radiant smile with my own.
I hadn’t had a choice.
“You’re his best friend,” Christina had told me.
“No,” I had corrected her. “You are.”
“Then we both are.”
But we both couldn’t be. Polygamy was for the primitive tribes in anthropology books.
Luke’s wedding day was the last day I had seen him, or any of them—in the flesh. When my own wedding day had finally come none of the Sterlings had attended, even though Mommy had forced me to send an invitation to Luke’s parents and include a hand-written note saying that their whole family was invited. It was Mrs. Sterling who had sent their regrets along with a $500 Neiman Marcus gift certificate, which had never been redeemed.
For a few years Mrs. Sterling and Mommy had continued to exchange Christmas cards, and with them the popular Christmas letters. Mommy would save the Sterling cards for me so I could read about Luke and Christina having another baby, how he was a talented engineer, the kinds of splendid vacations they took, how they were absolutely happy-ever-after. Dreading those exquisite cards I had never touched them.
Of course that had not stopped Mommy’s oral Sterling Reports. Although she remained convinced that Mrs. Sterling was a conceited snob, Mommy had always considered herself to be very fond of Luke, so she had taken pleasure in knowing that she had been right about him. “Everything he touches turns to gold,” Mommy had concluded about Luke, not knowing that he had touched me, since to this day I had never told her the truth about us.
“I can’t wait to tell Luke that I ran into you,” Mrs. Sterling was saying to me now. “He would absolutely love to see you. He moved back to Dallas, you know.”
No, I didn’t know. How could I? The Christmas card exchange had finally fizzled. I didn’t know why or when. I supposed if real friendships could not stand the test of time then why should fake ones do any better? Mommy had just stopped talking about them, and relieved I had never asked.
Luke’s little sister in the eyes of his bride, had been Luke’s little charity in the eyes of his mother, which made her embrace in the store just now really pretty shocking. The Betty Sterling that I knew was the type to write big checks to feed, to clothe, to help, but that was as close as she came to the needy, even if they had overcome their original circumstances and made something of themselves. “Luke has always helped those less fortunate,” she had informed me on the day I had met her, obviously meaning me. Meeting his parents had been Luke’s idea, and at least Mr. Sterling had been nice to me.
Luke hadn’t minded proximity to the poor, otherwise I would have always been on the Greyhound bus for home on holidays and summer breaks. As a laboratory technician for Parkland Hospital, Mommy had done decently enough, but there had never been much money in our house, and certainly not enough to buy me a car. An academic scholarship and the college work-study program had made my attending the University of Texas possible, and it was there that I had met the munificent Lucas James Sterling, almost as if education was indeed a great equalizer.
“After the divorce,” Mrs. Sterling continued, “I suppose he needed a fresh start.”
I swallowed, hoping that by doing so I had neutralized my face. Divorce. Luke had divorced Christina?
“Oh yes,” sighed Mrs. Sterling as if she were reading my thoughts. “It is the trend, I suppose. Luke wasn’t spared. Although I’ll tell you I always did have my doubts about Christina,” she added. “The engagement surprised me. I wouldn’t have thought she was his type.”
Surprised. Really? Why should she be? Christina was definitely Betty Sterling’s type, in ways I had had no hope of being. “I expect a young man to play the field for a while,” Mrs. Sterling had once informed me. “But when it’s time to settle down, a man like Luke needs the right kind of woman. Someone who can be an asset to him.”
“Oh well,” said Mrs. Sterling. “We have four wonderful grandchildren. Thank goodness for that. Of course we don’t get to see them very much since they’re still in Virginia. Far be it for Christina to make a sacrifice for Luke’s sake.”
Or hers, I was guessing. But then Betty Sterling was probably not the easiest mother-in-law. She probably thought no woman was worthy of her son. Even a right one. I wouldn’t think she was an
especially warm and cuddly grandmother. I imagined her dragging Luke’s children to abstract art exhibits and hours of symphonies, having the maid bake them cookies that they were required to eat in the kitchen because grandmother’s house was carpeted in whites and beiges.
Maybe Luke hadn’t loved Christina either. I wondered if he had also told her one day I can’t be with you. More than twenty years later those words, in his baritone voice, still played in my head. But at least I hadn’t bored him. It had been good between us. Sometimes always was just a long time—not forever. I’ll always be your friend, Rachel. Maybe he still was. Lives just diverged that was all. Lots of people didn’t stay together forever. Even if they had assets. Or children. The research showed. The magazines said.
“Children grow up so fast,” said Mrs. Sterling. “Luke Jr. will be graduating from college next spring, and the younger three,” she shook her head. “All they care about is sports and boys and makeup. Christina never was much of a disciplinarian. But what about you, Rachel? Do you have any children?”
“No,” I said.
“What?” she exclaimed. “What are you waiting for?” then her face changed, becoming awkward. “I mean… don’t you want children?”
Don’t you want children, Rachel? It wouldn’t be the worst thing that ever happened.
But Luke hadn’t been the one facing the prospect of making the same disastrous mistake Mommy had made, when she had wrecked her life before it had even started. Yes, Mommy loved me, and she was a wonderful mother, but the what-if question never quite went away. There was always the faint hint of regret. Maybe if Peter had married her… or at least wanted me.
“I would be ruined!” I had angrily shouted at Luke that day.
“Why? Because we’d have a baby?” he had calmly asked.
“I would have the baby! Not you!”
“It wouldn’t be like that, Rachel. I’m not that kind of—”
“Oh please. You can keep your speeches, Lucas Sterling. Men are all the same. Your mistake. My problem.”
Peter was little more than a figment of my imagination and Mommy’s memory, eternally a boy with a big smile captured in Mommy’s high school yearbook with no caption to tell me more. He knew nothing of the times when I caught the measles, or got baptized, or made the honor roll, when I graduated from college, or fell in love, or got divorced. Based on what Mommy had been willing to tell me, maybe I couldn’t even qualify as a figment to him.
Walk on Water Page 1
