by J.M. Downey
“What are you up to, pretty thing?” He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her close. A smile crossed his face, highlighting his wide blue eyes.
“I want something.” She stuck out her bottom lip.
“What’s that?” He chuckled, pushing down on her bottom lip with one finger.
“I want you to meet my parents.”
“Kind of need to if I’m going to marry you.”
Katie placed her hands on his chest. “You think you can come home for a couple days over break, maybe before Christmas?”
“I don’t know. Let me ask my father since I usually work for him during break.”
“Oh.” She looked down. “You think he’ll let you?”
“I don’t know, probably. Let me go ask him.” Keith motioned for Katie to get up, and she slipped off his lap. Katie knit her brows as he grabbed his cell phone and headed to the bedroom, closing the door behind him. Why didn’t he like calling his family in front of her? He always ran off to his room.
A couple minutes later, the door opened and he reappeared. “Everything’s cool,” he said.
Katie ran to him, flinging herself into his arms. She looked at his blue eyes, and lost herself in the brightness of them. On the way to North Carolina, she’d tell him that her parents knew nothing about him, but not right now; he seemed too happy. She squeezed him close, letting the musk of his cologne enter her nose. Tomorrow, she would call her parents, and let them know she’d be bringing a friend home for a couple days. It would all work out. It just would.
Katie looked out the window of the plane, watching the ground disappear beneath the clouds. Would North Carolina feel too hot? She had grown so used to such a frigid winter in Connecticut, but her mother had said that at home the temperature hadn’t fallen below 60 yet. She glanced at Keith, sitting next to her in a pair of blue jeans and a Yankee sweatshirt. He chewed on a stick of peppermint gum; the scent filled the small space in-between them.
She rubbed her palms together, feeling the perspiration. Please don’t get mad. “I need to tell you something.”
Keith placed the newspaper he was reading on his knees and leaned his head against the seat, focusing on her.
“I’d be careful about touching me,” she said.
He smiled. “Yeah, I already figured on keeping my hands to myself.”
Her nerves calmed a little. That was silly. Of course, he would. “They don’t know you’re the president’s godson. I figured you don’t want them to know.”
“I’d rather they get to know me first.”
She paused and took a deep breath. “They don’t know you’re rich.”
Keith knitted his brows. “What do they know about me?”
Katie looked away. A baby gnawed on his mother’s shoulder a couple seats up. His dark hair shot up in different directions.
“They don’t know I exist.”
“No.” Every part of her tensed. She squeezed her hands together, but the tension wouldn’t release.
“Katie, why haven’t you told them about me?” His voice sounded tight.
Tears swelled in her eyes. “I don’t know. It’s not that I’m ashamed of you. It’s just, I didn’t want to be asked a million questions.”
His eyes softened and he pinched her chin. “It’s fine. Don’t be upset. But you better take off that ring, or you’ll get a lot of questions.”
“All right.”
Katie slipped the ring onto a chain she had brought just for that purpose and put it around her neck, tucking it under her shirt. It would all work out.
Keith stepped out of the car and shut the door. So this was Katie’s childhood home. Nothing but a two-story white house with a wraparound porch. A few brown and bare bushes ran around it. Dead leaves covered the front yard – halfway hiding a few elves and squirrels painted in green mold. He took his coat off and slung it over his shoulder. This was not his world. How could four people have lived in that home?
Katie walked up to him, slipping her hand in his. “This is where I grew up.”
“I see.”
“Katie,” an unfamiliar female voice said.
He looked up and saw her sister Shelly running towards Katie with her mother and father behind her. Her blue jeans and white shirt accented the same curves Katie had. She had just as much innocence in her smile. Would they make love the same way? Hmm. He pushed the image from his mind.
The girls embraced and jumped around in a small circle, talking about how much they’d missed each other.
“Baby,” Katie’s father said as he wrapped his arms around his little girl. Katie’s mother joined in the group hug. They were quite an affectionate family. Keith looked off to the side at the rows of houses that looked cramped together. How did one live so close to other people?
The group broke up and at once turned to look at him with confused looks. He chuckled. Maybe they thought she was bringing home a girl.
Shelly grabbed her sister’s arm, and said, “man, did you bring home a friend.”
Katie giggled, raising her hands for an explanation. “Everybody, this is Keith, my friend.”
Friend. Huh. Keith took a step towards her father and held out his hand to shake it. “William Wilkerson, Sir, but everybody calls me Keith.”
“Nice to meet you, son,” her father said, his eyes looking in the direction of the rental BMW. He must be trying to figure who he was and what he was doing with his daughter.
Shelly stepped in front of her father, her black curly pony-tail swaying behind her - her green eyes wide and bright. “Katie finally brought home a boy,” she said.
“Shelly.” Katie took her arm.
“So this is your friend?” her mother said, walking up to her girls. She must have given the girls their curves although her hips were slightly wider probably from bearing two children. She had long brown curly hair that flowed down her back just like Katie’s.
“Yeah.” Katie clasped her hands in front of herself. “Keith and I have gotten to know each other real well during the last semester.”
Mr. Morris’s jaw dropped low as he shook his head. “So you live in North Carolina, also Keith?”
“What?” Keith squinted his brows down as he looked over her father’s head to Katie. She just shrugged her shoulders and gave him an innocent smile. “No, sir, I’m from New York City.”
“Really, I could have sworn Katie said you were from North Carolina. But I guess it doesn’t matter. Let’s grab your bags.”
“Yeah.” Keith shook his head. This was going to be an interesting weekend. Just wait until they found out about the engagement. He used a remote button and popped open the trunk of the car. The two men walked towards the vehicle and grabbed the bags. Keith heard the sound of more approaching feet. What, another family member?
“Katie, you’re home.”
Keith turned just in time to see a skinny boy with short light-brown hair walk up to them.
“Hey, Jeff,” Katie said waving at the boy. Her eyes looked unsettled. There must be something about this boy. Maybe an old crush.
The boy’s smile stretched fully across his baby face and his wide eyes accented the pinkness in his cheeks. Keith narrowed his eyes. Hmm. He seemed too taken with her.
“Give me a hug, Jeff,” Katie said before wrapping her arms around the boy.
Heat rose in him. He took two quick steps towards them, but stopped. He would talk to her about that later but not in front of her parents.
“Oh, Jeff,” Katie said as she turned to Keith. “This is a friend from Yale.”
Keith walked up to them and he held out his hand, hoping that would release Jeff’s arms from Katie. But Jeff kept one hand on her back as he moved his other hand closer to Keith so he could shake his hand. “Nice to meet ya.”
His blood boiled under his skin. Keith bowed his head in acknowledgment, keeping his gaze fixed on Jeff. He must be an idiot to not even guess that they were a couple.
“Katie, so are you coming to
night?”
“To what?”
“Youth meeting. Everybody who went off to college is going to be there.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Katie said.
She hadn’t forgotten. Her eyes wavered and she looked to the ground. “We can go, Katie, if you want to see your friends.”
She smiled and turned back to Jeff. “We’ll be there.”
“Cool, let’s all ride together like old times,” Jeff said.
Katie nodded. “We’ll come over around 6:30.”
“I can’t wait to catch up,” Jeff said as he raised his hand to Katie’s family and turned back to his home.
Keith shook his head. That boy was no competition, but still, he didn’t even want someone else thinking of Katie.
Katie’s family helped them grab the two cases, and they went inside, being greeted by the scent of fried chicken. Katie showed him around, pointing out family photos that lined the mantel and her family’s bookcase that spread across a whole side of a wall. He scanned the books which mostly centered on politics, natural childbirth and medicine with a few of the classics thrown in. So they liked to be educated. Keith glanced over his shoulder. Every eye in the house focused on him.
“He must be rich. Look at those clothes,” her mother whispered to her father. The corners of his lips twitched. This was not the impression he wanted to make, but maybe it would play to his advantage.
“Come let’s go find a seat,” Katie said, showing him to a faded plaid couch. Her parents sat in matching green plush chairs.
Shelly sat on the other side of Katie, beaming at him as she leaned over her sister. He was surrounded. Keith bent to Katie’s ear and whispered, “I must have something on my face.”
Katie giggled and whispered back, “I’ve never had a boyfriend.”
Keith nodded as he leaned over and looked at Shelly. They stared at each other for a second until Keith crossed his eyes, which broke Shelly’s gaze, and all three started laughing.
“So, son, you go to Yale?”
Keith turned to her father. “Yes, sir, I’m in my last year of law school.”
“You’re a lot older than Katie.” He leaned forward like he was going to jump out of the seat as he clenched the armrests.
Keith smiled. Now he was nervous. “Yes, sir.”
Mr. Morris shook his head and leaned back into the couch. “What does your father do?” The tension was strong.
“Daddy, don’t interrogate him,” Katie said.
Her father raised a hand. “Just trying to get to know him.”
As in trying to figure out if he was worthy of his little girl. Well, he’d make sure Mr. Morris gained a favorable impression of him. He could play the good Christian boy. “My father is a lawyer, also.”
“And your mother?” Katie’s mother asked.
“Well.” Keith paused, he studied Katie’s mother for a second. She was a midwife and believed in the benefits of women working. “She was a model before she had me, but now she just does charitable work.”
“That’s noble,” Mrs. Morris said.
“So Katie how did you two meet?” her father asked.
“Through a mutual friend.”
Shelly tugged her arm. Katie bent to her sister and heard her whisper, “How long have you been dating?”
Katie smiled, but looked at her father when he asked Keith his father’s name.
“Matthew Wilkerson. I hope to bring Katie up to New York soon to meet my parents.”
Her father paused for a second and his eyes became distant as if he searched his mind. He must recognize that name. But how?
She looked at Keith. He looked so strong and confident at this moment — his deep blue eyes never wavering. What was he feeling or thinking? She needed to get her father distracted and off his family.
“Daddy, Keith voted for President Arther.”
“Ah good,” he said. Her father’s face brightened and he leaned back into the seat. Politics was always a good distraction for him. “He’s been a good president so far.”
“Yeah, Katie told me you did volunteer work for the GOP in Clayton.”
“Ah, nothing much, just calling people and door-to-door campaigning, but I’m sure it helps. That’s what I heard the President say while he was campaigning: ‘Every Little Bit Counts.’”
Keith smiled. Katie knew he had suggested that phrase.
“I’d love to get more involved next election,” Mr. Morris said.
Keith nodded. “What avenues have you looked into?”
For dinner, her mother served fried chicken, and butter layered collard greens and homemade wheat biscuits, her favorite meal. Katie’s father and Keith talked the whole dinner about politics while her mother told her of the three new babies she helped bring into this world over the last semester. Katie looked around the small dining room, with the china cabinet behind them, full of her mother’s wedding day china from Belks. Her wedding china wouldn’t come from Belks but some upscale store she had never heard of or ordered from France.
This seemed odd, surreal for Keith to be here dining at the table that her grandparents had eaten off of until they died. But in some ways it didn’t. Maybe because there was never a moment of breath between Keith and her father. The two were almost like two lost kindred souls.
After supper, Katie and Shelly helped their mother clear the table and wash the dishes. The men’s conversation turned to Iran, and from the kitchen her father’s laugh floated into the room when Keith said President Arther should get it over with and just drop a bomb on the county.
“I guess Daddy likes Keith,” Katie said.
Her mother smiled. “He seems like a nice boy.”
“He is,” Katie said as her cheeks warmed.
“Are you two dating?” Shelly asked, dumping some bones into a trashcan.
“Shelly, don’t pry into your sister’s business,” her mother said.
Katie put a plate she had just rinsed off in the dishwasher. The ring around her neck lay like a weight against her chest. “We’re definitely close.”
“What does that mean?” Shelly walked up to her and handed her the plate. “You know we talk every night, and you’ve never told us about him.”
Katie shrugged her shoulders, and put the plate in the dishwasher. If she had told them about him, they would have drilled her every night and she just wasn’t ready to introduce her family to him. She had to wait until he’d committed to her before risking her family’s ire. “I didn’t know what to tell you.”
“We tell each other everything.”
She mouthed ‘tonight.’
Shelly bit down on her bottom lip, but the smile escaped from under her teeth as she nodded.
They finished the dishes and then the girls grabbed their coats and Keith’s, heading to the dining room. Katie stopped behind Keith, who rested his chin on the top of two fingers, as her father talked about an educational policy he wanted the federal government to implement. When the conversation didn’t subside, Katie put her hand on Keith’s shoulder, but he remained focused on her father.
“I think the girls are ready,” her father said, leaning back and placing his hands behind his head.
“Yeah,” Keith said. He stood, shook her father’s hand and promised that they would finish talking later.
Katie took Keith’s arm and led him outside, before one more word could be said between the two.
Outside, Katie spotted Jeff walking towards them in a light brown coat and holding a Bible.
“Man.” She had forgotten hers at her dorm room. A small pain shot through her. She hadn’t touched it since the night she’d first slept with Keith. Katie pushed the thought from her mind. What was done was done and she could always start reading again once she returned to Connecticut.
They took Jeff’s mother’s car, a white Honda that had some years on it. Keith looked silly crammed in the back, his knees touching the back of the front seat. She held on tight to his hand. Keith was agnostic at best, i
f not a straight out atheist, but he didn’t have any aversion to God. She figured he must not have ever taken the time to contemplate religion, since whenever she said anything about her faith he just listened and never responded. Maybe tonight the Word would open his heart. Please Lord. She swallowed hard. Why did it feel like the words pushed back against her as if God was no longer listening to her? But that couldn’t be it. God couldn’t hold what she gave him against her since Keith was obviously the one for her.
Jeff drove the car into the parking lot of the two-story light brown brick building that housed Katie’s church. Several cars, illuminated by street lamps, filled the parking lot. Behind the church stood the school, which Katie had attended her whole childhood.
They walked into the blue-carpeted fellowship hall that would house the youth meeting. A few fake palm trees stood against the wall next to several rows of folded up metal chairs. Katie glanced around the room. Several of the faces looked familiar. But everyone looked so much younger, like they were still children. She wrapped her arms around her waist. She shouldn’t be here. The place that was once a second home, no longer felt comfortable. She had changed. Katie stole a quick glance at Keith. He had the same confident look in his eyes. What could he be thinking? He would find tonight silly, and a complete waste of his time.
“Katie, how is Saint Mary’s?” her youth minister asked. His brown hair had a few more gray strands and he had gained some more weight, making him plump.
“Hey Joe, I love it there.”
“Well. Good I’m glad you are here tonight.” He left them and headed towards a small stage, where waited two acoustic guitars and a small drum set. “Let’s get ready to worship,” he shouted out, picking up one of the guitars.
Keith watched as everybody walked to the chairs and started clapping their hands in unison to the beat of the music.
“Come on.” Katie took his arm and led him to a seat.
Everyone but him started singing, although no one had a hymnal. The group not only sang the words, but several people would sing the repeats in perfect unison, creating different harmonies. They must have been singing together for years. Katie had said she had gone to school with everyone since she was in Kindergarten. Katie took his hands and made them start clapping. Was he that out of place? Must be, he was the only one not singing with raised hands.
