Addison Blakely: Confessions of A PK

by Betsy St. Amant

“I want Wes.” I mushed the drippy blob of chocolate with my spoon, watching it ooze. “Or I did. I do. I think. So why couldn’t I just say that to him?”

  “Because it is obviously not the right choice.”

  Easy for her to say. Marta was still riding the high from the talent show I’d already forgotten in lieu of my conversation with Wes. I’d come home an hour ago, thankfully without my father noticing the absence of Luke, and asked Dad if he minded if Marta came over for a celebration slumber party. He’d eagerly agreed and scooped up generous servings of ice cream before leaving us alone to take Ms. Hawthorne home. Little did he know that “celebration” was actually code for “SOS.”

  “I am just glad that every time you have a crisis, there is sugar involved.” Marta’s eyes twinkled as she licked her spoon.

  “Very funny.” I shoved my bowl away from me across the kitchen table. “You want mine?”

  Marta’s lips twisted to one side as she debated then shook her head at the unappealing mass of dairy. “I don’t mean to joke. But Addison, you’re on a journey.”

  “To the mental institution?” I folded my arms on the table and laid my head on top of them, unable to erase the image of the disappointment in Wes’s eyes when I told him I needed to think about what he asked of me. The scariest part was, I still had no clue what I was supposed to be thinking about.

  Maybe I’d thought too much already. Maybe I should just dive back into a relationship with him—whatever that would look like—and assume things couldn’t possibly go worse than last time. Maybe if I avoided my dad, and Sonya, and the hardware store, and Got Beans, and all things school related, everything would work out this time. No double dates. No unchaperoned picnics. No drama.

  But even as I thought it, I knew it wouldn’t work. We couldn’t avoid reality to be together. Either a relationship worked with all those factors involved, or it didn’t.

  And right now, it just didn’t.

  I groaned. “I’m on a journey all right. I’m turning into one of those girls I always made fun of and never understood.”

  “You understand now?”

  “Unfortunately.” I sat up straight, dodging the sympathy in Marta’s expression. “I know you never liked Wes. You’re probably ecstatic.”

  She frowned. “Ecstatic?”

  “Thrilled. Happy. Over the moon.” I shot my arm through the air like a rocket.

  “I’m not happy you are hurting. But I am happy you are realizing things.”

  “What things?” I scoffed. “Tell me, because everything is as clear as mud over here.”

  Marta twirled her spoon in a pattern across her empty bowl, the light tinkling sound almost music-like in quality, the ticking clock above us a drumbeat. I nodded my head to the rhythm then stopped. Either I was more exhausted from the talent show and my emotional meltdown with Wes, or I truly needed a straightjacket.

  “How do you feel when you are with Wes?” Marta finally asked. She peered at me with an intense stare that rivaled that of our school counselor.

  Wasn’t that the sixty-four-million-dollar question? I shrugged. “It’s never the same anymore.” To put it mildly.

  “What did it used to be?”

  I thought a moment. “Anticipation. Mystery. Danger. Allure.” And chemistry. Oh, the chemistry. But I wasn’t going there right now. Besides, Marta already knew that part.

  “And what was it tonight?”

  I rolled in my lower lip. “Anger. Hurt. Depression. Confusion.”

  “How did you feel at church as a child?”

  “Huh?” I blinked at the sudden one-eighty in conversation.

  She waved her spoon. “Work with me.”

  “Church as a kid.” I nibbled my lip, thinking way back to my days in Sunday school and children’s camp. “I felt excitement at learning. Felt encouraged. Uplifted. Happy.”

  “What about at church last Sunday?”

  The truth struck me like a slap across the face. I actually reached up and touched my cheek. “Hurt. Anger. Boredom. Confusion.”

  Marta leaned back, crossing her arms, her inquisitive gaze now radiating compassion. “It’s a pattern, Addison. It’s all connected.”

  “How?” I shook my head, so close to seeing it, knowing I was on the verge of something big but unable to grasp it. “What does church have to do with Wes?”

  “Nein—not church. Your relationship with God.”

  She’d lost me. “I don’t get it.”

  “Right now you said you feel upset and confused. This has been going on for some time, right?” She shrugged. “Maybe your bad feelings are not so much about Wes as they are about your faith. Maybe you’re upset over the wrong thing.”

  I shook my head rapidly. “We’ve talked about this, Marta. I’m a PK. I’ve grown up in church. I know all the—”

  “Answers?” She interrupted. “I am not talking about answers. You can quote Bible verses to me all day if you’d like. But that does not have anything to do with your heart and how you feel about God.”

  “I believe in God.” Just saying the words out loud felt ridiculous, like how could I possibly believe anything differently? “I believe He created the earth and believe His son was Jesus and all that.”

  “I didn’t ask what you believed in your head. I asked what you felt with your heart.” Marta’s voice lowered, despite the fact we were the only ones in the house. “How do you feel about God?”

  I let out a heavy sigh. “I love God.”

  “Did that sound as hollow to you as it did to me?”

  Indignation rose in my chest. How dare Marta sit there across from me and challenge my faith, the faith I’d possessed literally my entire life? I was on our pew every time the doors were open, except Wednesday nights during homework season. I volunteered every summer for the kids Vacation Bible School program, attended the quarterly Bible studies, and even sung in the youth choir one miserable month whenattendance dropped. I’d spooned soup for the homeless, read to the homebound, and wiped more snotty kid noses in the name of Jesus than anyone else in this town—more than Marta had surely ever done. And she wanted to call me out on my faith while she spouted easy answers and polished off all the ice cream?

  “What do you mean ‘hollow’?” I scooted my chair back and stood, ready to leave the table, leave the room, leave this ridiculous conversation. “I meant it.” And I did, even if my so-called relationship with Him still felt totally one sided. But hey, I was doing my part.

  “Then where is the passion? Where is the emotion? You get very emotional talking about Wes, but when we talk about God, who we are supposed to love the most, you sound like a robot.” Marta moved her arms in a mechanical fashion.

  If we’d been having any other conversation, I’d have whipped out my cell phone to record the moment for posterity. Instead, all of my frustration from the night—no, the entire month—spilled out. “You don’t get it, Marta. Everything I am is church. Faith. God. My whole stinkin’ life. Every moment growing up was spent listening to Dad preach on the goodness of God our Heavenly Father then pretending not to care when he came home and practically ignored me—”

  I slapped my hand over my mouth, and Marta’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. The truth cut a hole into my heart, and I slowly sank back into my chair. No wonder God had been so quiet.

  Had I ever really known Him?

  Heart racing, I propped my chin in my hands, feeling weaker and more exhausted than I’d felt in months. I opened my mouth, but the plethora of words dancing in my head refused to form a coherent sentence.

  “You’ve gotten your relationship with your dad mixed up with your relationship with your Father.” Marta pointed a finger to the sky.

  “But how do I fix it?” My voice cracked, and I licked my lips, tasting tears I didn’t know had fallen as childhood memory after memory rushed at me. Somewhere during the years, the excitement of church and learning about God faded as I began to compare my dad with what I knew about God. Never tangibly, never in a
sense that I’d have ever recognized, but the proof was there, straight before me like a road map to the past. I always felt ignored. Loved, yes. But only in the barest of ways. I felt distant. Invisible.

  And when Wes saw me, it had been like a door flung open to a dark place aching for light.

  “You simply must correct your view of God.” Marta gestured with both hands. “Start listening in church instead of waiting for the sermon to be over. Start reading your Bible because you want to, not because you think you have to. Start living out your faith—not the faith of your family.”

  “You make it sound easy.” Changing a habit and mind-set I’d possessed the majority of my life wouldn’t happen overnight. But a strange urging in my spirit, a sense of excitement that there could be so much more began to seep through my stomach, giving me hope. Making me want to try. Is that You, God? I wanted it to be. And that already felt like progress.

  I drew a shuddering breath, squeezing my eyes shut. Okay, God. Let’s try this again. For real this time. PK status not withstanding—I’m Yours.

  Marta waited until I opened my eyes to continue. “It will be a process, obviously, and take effort. But it’s worth it.”

  “I feel dumb for missing something so obvious in my own life. How did you see it?” I reached across the table to Marta, sorry that I had ever been angry at her. She’d shone a flashlight into a corner of my soul I hadn’t known existed.

  And there were more than a few skeletons lurking in the shadows.

  “Because I made the same journey years ago.” Marta squeezed my hands, lips twisting in a humorless smile. “I’m a PK, too.”

  The kitchen table seemed to tilt beneath us, and I tightened my grip on her. “What?” But it made sense, even as shock flooded my system. No wonder she understood how I felt, no wonder she had all the right answers and could finish my sentences. She’d lived in the same fishbowl.

  Except her water didn’t seem nearly as cloudy.

  “I had to come to the same conclusion, Addison. I had to embrace faith for myself—not because it’d been thrust upon me since birth.” She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug.

  My head spun. “This has been quite a night.” I let go of her hands and rubbed my temples with my fingers. “I think we’re going to need more ice cream.”

  Marta twisted in her seat to face me as I carried our bowls into the kitchen and rinsed the ice-cream scoop under warm running water. “My dad pastors a large church in Stuttgart. He has for the last decade.” She shrugged. “That’s part of why I’m here in the States. I needed a change of pace, as you say.”

  I scooped more ice cream into our bowls then reached into the very back of the fridge where I’d stashed a can of whipped cream Dad would never find—behind a bag of mixed veggies. “But you seem to have it all figured out. What could you possibly need an escape from?”

  “Just because I finally chose to embrace my relationship with God rather than push Him away doesn’t make the lifestyle easy. I still need the occasional break and space in routine.” Marta’s voice faded, and she stared absently into the livingroom, her eyes vacant. Obviously I’d lost her somewhere back in her home country.

  I set the full bowl of dessert in front of her, and she snapped out of it. “But that doesn’t matter. I’m here to help you because I understand. And I believe God put us together for that very reason.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything before?” I licked my spoon, my appetite slowly returning as I digested the abrupt revelations of the past ten minutes.

  Marta dipped her spoon into the cloud of whipped cream and smiled at me. “I didn’t want my situation to influence you. You needed to figure things out on your own. And congratulations—you just did.”

  “Sort of.” I stared at my bowl, wishing I had a cherry to put on top. “I don’t know where to go from here, though. Especially with my dad. I can’t just go up to him and say, ‘Hey, I just figured out our crappy relationship is the reason I’ve never actually realized what it is to be a real Christian.’ Can I?”

  “Nein.” Marta snorted, amusement flickering across her features. “You cannot.”

  “So?”

  She tilted her head, thinking. “I think you need to have an honest talk with your father. Let him know you are interested in changing your relationship, just as you are interested in changing the one you have with God.”

  Marta was so eloquent, it almost made me jealous. But I was too grateful for her advice to care. “This is going to sound really mushy, but I honestly am so glad you’re here.” I still felt down about what happened earlier tonight, and I knew nothing was going to be easy about the next few days, but I couldn’t help but feel as if a gigantic burden had suddenly evaporated off my shoulders.

  “It is a mushy kind of night, ja?” Marta grinned at me, chocolate ice cream smearing the corners of her mouth. She held up her spoon. “A toast. To new chapters.”

  “To new chapters.”

  We clinked spoons, and as I scooped up a bite of my dessert, I couldn’t help but wonder if my new chapter meant the end for Wes and me.

  Dad came home a few minutes later while Marta was taking a shower. I met him at the door, hesitant with my approach. As much as I knew we needed to talk, I wondered how much more I could emotionally stand in one night.

  Whistling, Dad hung his coat on the rack by the door and dropped his keys on the foyer table, his standard coming-home routine. “You girls sure are up late.”

  “You sure were out late.” I couldn’t help the automatic retort, and I bit my lip, not wanting to start this conversation on the wrong foot.

  “Touché.” Dad smiled, albeit awkwardly. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “How was the ice cream?”

  My stomach gurgled on cue, and I pressed my hands against it, grateful I’d changed into sweats before we ate. I doubted my snug black dress could have stood up to that second helping. “Too good.”

  “I really am proud of your success tonight. I know the Let Them Read Foundation will be very impressed.” Dad patted my shoulder and started to move around me. “It’s definitely a night of celebration.”

  “Wait.” I swallowed hard. “There’s, uh—something you need to know.”

  He raised one eyebrow at me, and if I hadn’t been about to confess a secret, I’d have giggled at his imitation of my signature move. But if I was going to be serious about this for-real Christian thing, I needed to start on the right foot—no more lies or stretching the truth. “I, uh—Luke didn’t walk me home tonight.”

  “You walked alone?” Dad frowned, crossing his arms over his button-down. “That’s not a good idea, Addison.”

  “I wasn’t alone. I was with Wes.”

  A shadow flickered across Dad’s face, giving the impression he thought that was worse than walking alone. If he knew what had happened at our so-called picnic last week, he’d have probably come out and said it—along with some other things. But I wasn’t going to confess everything. That incident lived in the past, and I wouldn’t make that mistake again. Besides, I didn’t think Dad could handle that level of honesty in one night.

  I watched him carefully, steeling myself for a lecture, a punishment, a disappointed sigh. All the “usuals” that had kept me so well behaved all those years.

  “Oh well.” Dad waved one hand in the air, brushing off my indiscretion. “You’re home safe, and you were honest.”

  What? No droning talk about danger? No reminder of his list of dating rules? My mouth opened and closed like a fish.

  “I don’t want to argue. I have some news to share.” Dad rubbed his chin, a smile peeking from behind his fingers.

  “Okay. I had hoped we could talk, too.” I twisted my fingers together, still unsure how to start the conversation that’d been a decade in the making.

  “Me first.” Dad actually bounced on the balls of his feet a little as a solid grin overtook his features. “I can’t hold it in anymore.”

  “What? Did you get nominated for preacher o
f the year?” I joked—badly. So much for playing it cool. My stomach twisted in anticipation. Hopefully he’d hurry with his news so I could somehow blurt out this revelation I’d had about church. And God. And Wes. And myself. And him. Okay, so the convo might take longer than I’d thought.

  “Don’t be silly.” He grabbed my shoulders and gave me a happy little shake—the most excitement I’d seen out of him in months. No, years. Wait—ever?

  “I asked Kathy to marry me tonight.”

  All the air rushed out of the room as a bowling ball plopped into my already-full stomach. I reeled backward and would have fallen if Dad hadn’t pulled me forward into an impromptu hug.

  A million different thoughts and questions—mostly negative—flooded my mind and jammed in my mouth. All I could squeak out was a pathetic, “What?”

  Marta appeared at the end of the hallway, a towel wrapped turban-style around her hair. She echoed my sentiment, mumbling in German. Shock radiated in her wide eyes, and she clutched her robe like a life preserver.

  I shakily looked back at Dad, who had finally released me and beamed as if he truly had no idea the bomb he’d dropped. “We haven’t set a date yet, but she said yes!” His gaze bounced back and forth between me and Marta. “Isn’t God good?”

  Well, He had a good sense of humor at least.

  I steadied myself with one hand against the wall and inhaled deeply, as Dad headed off—still whistling—to the kitchen without waiting for an answer.

  “Are you all right?” Marta approached me cautiously, as one might a wild animal stuck in a trap.

  I nodded, focusing on my breathing. This is okay. This is okay. I repeated the mantra, desperate for a sense of control, a sense of peace. I can do this. Dad is happy. That’s whatmattered, right? And Ms. Hawthorne was nice. Maybe she wore the same size shoe as me, and we could share some of those awesome boots.

  Then I saw the framed photo of Mom on the end table by the lamp and burst into tears.

  Chapter Thirty

  Despite the early morning sunshine streaming through my bedroom window, Saturday looked bleak. I’d tossed and turned for hours the night before while Marta snored on the blow-up mattress beside my bed. But the lack of sleep wasn’t my nasally friend’s fault—I couldn’t stop replaying the past twenty-four hours in my head. Dad’s decision to get married. My spiritual revelation I had no clue what to do with. The pending talk with Dad I didn’t want to have.