Remember Me

by Deborah Bedford

  Perhaps the closest he had ever come to asking another woman to marry him had been Elaine Ferguson, a young divorcee who had come to him for counseling. Elaine had twin sons, age eight, who she protected from knowing that she was going out to dinner and for walks in the park with the pastor. The more Sam watched Elaine’s heart open before the Father, the more he realized that she could be the partner he’d been waiting for. But the more she accepted God’s healing in her life, the more she began to realize that she still loved the father of her sons. That had been another beautiful wedding ceremony Sam had performed, the remarriage of Elaine Ferguson to her ex-husband.

  Long ago, Sam had decided that perhaps the Father meant for him to serve the church without a woman beside him.

  Well-meaning churchgoers were always phoning to tell him about the perfect lady, someone they had met on a plane or in line at the checkout counter at the market or at Edie’s Cut ’n’ Curl having a perm. Once he’d taken Mary Grace Pokorny out for a quiet seafood supper and, before they’d even been served their snow crab legs and shrimp scampi, two separate Covenant Heights members had called his cell to inquire about the seriousness of their relationship.

  “I’m sorry,” he’d mouthed across the table at Mary Grace each time before he’d cupped his hand over the cell phone and said kindly, “I’m tied up at the moment. Can I phone you back?”

  Each time Sam shoved his Nokia into his suit jacket, he’d contemplated Mary Grace across the table and wavered between gratefulness and irony. Since the board had hired her as his secretary three years ago, Mary Grace had been the one person at Covenant Heights whom he’d been able to bounce ideas off of and know she’d respond with discretion, acuity, and logic.

  Lately, she had agreed to take an issue to her prayer closet that Sam felt was of the utmost importance: a weekly meal for the homeless people who slept in camps or under bridges or in the bus kiosks on Walnut Street. Starting a new project at Covenant Heights might make it necessary to discontinue an old, beloved one. So many in the church wanted to serve the Father, but were fearful of upsetting the status quo. How Sam appreciated Mary Grace seeking wisdom and the Father’s will beside him.

  The irony of Mary Grace Pokorny was this: Sam not only found her full of zest and dependable; he also found her pretty. She reminded him of some colorful, crested tropicbird flitting in and out of his office. But Mary Grace was not someone he could get to know with subtlety. One supper with her and his parishioners were already buzzing. Being uncertain, as he was, of the Father’s will for his life in this area, Sam decided it would be safer to keep Mary Grace as an employee who offered friendly support, and not pursue anything further. At Covenant Heights, too many people were watching.

  The meatballs at the Ransom wedding reception had only whetted Sam’s appetite. He planned to select something from his massive assortment of casseroles when he arrived home. He had a freezer full of casseroles. They showed up at the oddest times in the oddest places and, whether they were being delivered out of pity or out of feminine guile, he could never be sure.

  Something with macaroni, pepperonis, and Parmesan cheese in Tupperware was found dangling in a plastic bag from his front doorknob. Another, filled with Tater Tots, mushroom soup, and ground beef, complete with warming instructions written on a Post-It note, appeared one morning on his deck railing. An enchilada and black-bean surprise had been positioned strategically beside Sam’s computer in the pastor’s study. A cheesecake with cherry topping materialized in the third-grade Sunday school room with his name on it. Once, when he’d been in a hurry to take a seat for a staff meeting, he’d almost sat on a spinach quiche.

  Truth be told, when Sam rounded the corner and saw the car parked at his curb tonight, he thought it might be someone else sneaking casseroles into place. When his headlights splashed across the license plate, though, he recognized his sister.

  “Brenda?” The dome light had come on and she was just climbing out. “What’s wrong? Is everything okay? How long have you been here?”

  “I’m sorry, Sam. Oh, Sam, I’m so, so sorry.”

  He could tell that she had been crying. Instinctively, he began to direct her the same way he directed anyone else who might come to him distraught. “Come inside the house, sis. Tell me what’s going on.”

  She was speaking in hiccups. “I, I know you’ve had a long day. I know you had that, that wedding tonight.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you for an hour.”

  He always left a lamp on for the dog, but he hit the main switch and the lights came on in the front room. On the entry hall table lay a stack of mail he had dropped without getting a chance to read it. Sections of the latest issue of USA Today were strewn beside his favorite leather chair. His golden retriever, Ginny, peered up at him from where she overflowed the seat without lifting her head. Her eyes were elongated pools of guilt and her beating tail asked him a question. “Busted, Ginny. Out of the chair, girl. That’s not your place.”

  Reluctantly, Ginny untangled herself and climbed down. Sam dropped his jacket on the table that held coffee mugs from three separate mornings, his reading glasses, and The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis tented open to the page he’d been reading.

  “Another rough one tonight?” He offered Brenda a hug but she didn’t step into it. So he offered her a box of tissues instead.

  “It isn’t Joe. You aren’t going to want . . . to want to hug me when you hear what’s happened.”

  “What is it, then? Here. Blow.”

  She took a Kleenex and blew, made the sound of a small horn. When she raised her eyes to his again, they looked as regretful and guilt-ridden as Ginny had looked in his chair.

  “Come on, Brenda. What?”

  Brenda fished something from her pocket. She dangled them in the air for a moment before she dropped them on the table beside C. S. Lewis. He stared. It had been so long since he’d actually looked at these that it took him several beats to recognize them.

  The pewter key chain in the shape of a gray whale, the pressed letters that read COME AWAY TO PIDDOCK BEACH.

  “Where did those come from?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means, they came from Hunter. I got them from Hunter.”

  For the first time, Sam realized that Brenda’s trouble might include him. “How can that be?”

  “Some crazy thing, you know.” She began to get weepy again. Sam knew he was wrong but he couldn’t deny a flicker of impatience. She was taking so long. “Joe, Joe must have said once, said that you would let Hunter drive your car. Do you ever, ever remember Joe saying that? Hunter was trying to take his father up on some, some promise maybe—at least that’s what he said. But no one understands the rest of it.”

  Sam clasped her shoulders with both hands. She felt as bony and small and fragile beneath his grasp as a bird. He thought, how could someone so small carry all the things that she is carrying now?

  She was still speaking in sharp sobs. “Hunter wrecked, Hunter wrecked your Mustang.”

  For a moment Sam didn’t know what to say. The only escape, to first mumble something unintelligible about the wedding. Then, “Brenda,” he managed. “Is he hurt?”

  “No. He’s not in the hospital like Ryan. He walked away without a scratch.”

  “Someone else was hurt?”

  “Yes, yes. A boy riding with him.” Then, “Someone who thought Hunter was his friend.”

  “Hunter wasn’t hurt?”

  “There was this c-cow that never made it to the meat market.”

  And so Sam finally understood the extent of it. “My Mustang?”

  “Totaled.”

  Sam made himself ask about the other boy, dimly heard that he was injured but would only need a night in the hospital. But his mind was on the car. Ridiculous that he would feel devastated about the Mustang. How could he, when there had been human lives at stake? But Sam felt the wo
rst kind of violation!

  He’d treasured that Mustang since he’d been eighteen and had plunked down every penny he’d made after five years as a paper boy and mowing yards and sacking groceries at Hy-Vee. He’d treasured it since the first night it sat in his own garage, vacuumed and polished, when he’d fallen asleep cradled in the leather seat. He’d awakened to it the next morning the way a child awakes the day after a birthday, having to remind himself that something wonderful had happened, not quite believing the feel of the steering wheel beneath his fingers.

  Sam reminded himself that his main concern should be his nephew, Hunter. Hunter, who had always made Sam smile at the bustle and noise that one small boy could create during the day.

  He’d watched Brenda hold Hunter’s face between her hands with a love so gentle that it made Sam’s heart ache. When Hunter’s eyes stopped darting and Sam’s sister knew her son was listening, she would tell him something necessary for him to hear. “You need to kiss your grandma thank you for the Christmas gift” or “You need to flush” or “You have to wait for me and hold my hand before we cross the street.”

  “Having a child is like seeing yourself before you made all your mistakes,” Joe had told him once when he and Sam had been standing together, watching Hunter sleep. “It makes you feel like you have the chance to be the same person and a different person all over again.”

  Sam made himself release his sister’s shoulders, knowing full well that he’d been clutching her tight enough to hurt her. She was so small, so frail after everything she’d gone through. He had so many questions and no idea where to begin.

  “Seatbelts?”

  She nodded.

  “So that’s why they weren’t hurt worse, isn’t it?”

  “Hunter was playing some ridiculous game . . . game of chicken.” Brenda swiped at her tears with the tissue, which had been reduced to a small shredded knot in her fist. “Driving through stop lights without the headlights on. Maybe he thought it was the safest way to steal your car so no one would see him. Maybe he was tempting fate. I don’t know. How do I know what he’s thinking?”

  “He’s in jail, isn’t he?”

  “Overnight, that’s all. Only because he couldn’t pay the fines. There might be charges of reckless endangerment if Ryan chooses. There are stolen vehicle charges—”

  “Brenda.”

  “—which you may have to press if you want your insurance to do anything. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Stop saying you’re sorry, Brenda. You don’t have to apologize for him.”

  Impossible, Sam kept thinking the whole time she was talking, that something like this could have happened, seconds ticking by, details unfolding, while he’d been standing someplace else not thinking of anything except the bride and groom in front of him. He hadn’t felt a sense, not even a nudge, that anything might be wrong.

  At that moment Sam looked at his sister, really looked at her, and felt overcome by his own selfishness. He’d been dealing with his own emotions when he could see that she was falling apart. The crumpled look of her face nearly did him in. “Doesn’t it ever, ever stop, Sam?” she asked him. “This awful hurting we’re going through?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I try to find the good things about losing Joe, Sam. I really do. The length of time we had to tell him good-bye. The life insurance, how he left us taken care of so well.”

  She stood with one hand on her heart, as if she were doing penance for the things she could not release. With a palm braced against her spine, he guided her toward the nearest chair.

  Brenda lifted her face to him as she sat. “You, you want to know what else is good? I cleaned out his toolbox and took all the screwdrivers to the resale shop. I always told him he had too many screwdrivers.”

  Sam removed the frayed Kleenex from her grasp. She let him have it without resisting.

  “I sleep on one side of the bed until it’s dirty, then I sleep on the other side, did you know that? Who would have thought about that? Who would have thought that without Joe I wouldn’t be washing the sheets so much?”

  Sam would let her keep talking, he knew that much. At times like this, there wasn’t anything he could say.

  “Did you know I get to drink the milk I want now, too? None of that two percent that I always bought for Joe. Now it’s only the good stuff, whole milk. It’s like drinking cream. Isn’t doing what I want supposed to be a good thing?”

  He took her hand again.

  “Oh Sam,” and she began to sob uncontrollably again. “A boy needs . . . a man when he’s this age, and I need a husband. Why would God take him, Sam? Didn’t God know? Why would he take Joe away from us right when we needed him like this?”

  “I don’t know, Brenda. I really don’t.”

  “I have no idea what to do with Hunter. He doesn’t know how to survive this any more than I do.”

  Ginny the dog had pressed herself in against Brenda’s hip, sensing distress in her humans. She put her head in Brenda’s lap and whined.

  “I never intended doing this by myself, Sam.”

  Sam plucked handfuls of tissues out of the box for her, handing her tufts of them halfway as a joke, trying to cheer her up. He felt physical pain watching his sister grieve.

  “I keep thinking that Hunter could have . . . have died, too.”

  “Yes. Yes, he could have.” And beneath it all, the thought of Hunter pushing the limit made Sam furious. He would have done it to himself, he wanted to remind his sister. You would have been hurt again and it would have been your son’s own fault.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sam kept a fake philodendron in his office because he thought he needed a bit of green. Silk, not fake, as Mary Grace was always reminding him. That never failed to make him laugh.

  “Okay, okay,” he would tell her. “Silk, it is. Silk is better than dead. Anything trying to grow in here wouldn’t survive.”

  Once or twice a year someone would present Sam with a begonia or an ivy, something potted in actual soil. The gift plant would motivate him to use Miracle Gro, to water and pinch off yellowing leaves the way he’d seen that woman—what was her name—in Oregon. Mrs. Branton. Caring for her hanging baskets.

  But time would pass and Sam would always be sidetracked by the people he needed to tend to, and would forget to water any plants. A day would come when he’d realize there weren’t more yellow leaves to pick. Nothing was left but a stick. He’d carry the pot to the Dumpster, shaking his head, thinking how something had gotten out of order.

  He was much better at caring for people and conducting meetings. Even though the meeting that had adjourned five minutes earlier had not been an easy one. Next year’s budget wasn’t at all what Sam had requested. The finance committee hadn’t cut any from the outreach fund but hadn’t voted to add anything, either. Instead, the members had allotted something new to the building-and-grounds fund for lighting the parking lot, when Sam had spoken to them about setting up the sit-down supper for the homeless who roamed the area near Walnut Street.

  The homeless people were fed every night at the shelter downtown, the deacons had reminded him. But Sam had something different in mind; this was why he had asked Mary Grace to pray over it and give him her opinion. Sam suspected his flock was being called not only to offer food but also to offer friendship. Sam knew how the Father worked; he had seen what his congregation was capable of. He ached for them to discover this about themselves: that they could become a family to those who were most lonely, that they could listen and sympathize and pray, that they could return another week to listen and sympathize and pray more, that they could be privy to miracles, that they could reap blessings and benefits because they, themselves, had stepped forward to be a blessing.

  It filled Sam with purpose to see his congregation searching out a new journey.

  Beside his desk in the windowsill, Sam kept his Strong’s dictionary and his Bible concordance, his well-thumbed copy of Taking on the Gods: The Task of
Pastoral Counsel, and a miniature Eiffel Tower that David and Sue Hawthorne had brought him from their vacation in France. Next to the tower, he’d placed a small plaque that read A FRIEND IS A RARE BOOK OF BUT ONE COPY IS MADE.

  Sam’s Epiphone guitar stood in the corner. The Mustang he’d kept hidden in his garage and his guitar were his most precious possessions. Whenever the business of running a church overwhelmed him, he’d play a chord on the Epiphone, strum a few bars, hum a few words about the love of the Lord making him whole, and some of the weight would fall away.

  Which was exactly what he had been doing that day. That terrible day when their lives took such a terrible turn. He remembered it perfectly; he had pushed aside the jumbled pages of the budget and reached for the guitar when Mary Grace had knocked on his door.

  He went ahead and strummed a C-chord anyway. “You need me for something?”

  She hadn’t flitted into his office or draped her wrist across the knob the way she usually did. She hadn’t smiled at him or tilted her head or told him she thought he’d done an inspired job on the sermon he’d preached yesterday. Instead, Mary Grace had waited with her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes boring into his.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m afraid I have bad news.”

  “My mother?” Sam didn’t hesitate; his adrenaline was already flowing. He and Brenda had gotten so much bad news about their mother lately. She had fallen at the Living Center. She had survived a bout of the flu.

  Mary Grace took a step forward, looked as if she wanted to touch his arm. But she didn’t. “No, it isn’t your mother. It’s your brother-in-law.”

  “Joe? What’s wrong with Joe?”

  “He’s checked himself into the medical clinic. I would have put him right through to you, but you were counseling Dottie Graham and I knew you wouldn’t want to be interrupted.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He needs you. He wants you to talk to his doctor first so you can talk to Brenda. He wants you to come over as soon as you can.”