Phoebe and the Rock of Ages

by Becky Doughty

  “Are you all right?” Juliette asked, laying her spoon down and stretching a hand across the table toward him. She didn’t quite touch him, but the gesture was meant to be comforting.

  “I’m not sure.” He decided to be as forthright as he could, knowing he could trust the two people across from him implicitly. He wouldn’t divulge the pregnancy, just in case Phoebe had managed to keep it secret, but he thought maybe Juliette might have some insight into how he could approach her sister.

  “I just spent the last two hours praying. For Phoebe. God put her on my heart tonight in a way I couldn’t ignore.” He snorted at the grin on Vic’s face and shook his head. “It wasn’t like that.” He paused, held up a finger, and then amended, “Okay. It wasn’t all like that. I was thinking about her, and about how to ask her out, and then felt this overwhelming impression that I needed to pray for her instead, okay?”

  “Wow. Really?” Juliette studied him, her forehead furrowed in consternation. “You want to go out with Phoebe?”

  “Yes, I do.” He said, his voice quiet, but sure. Trevor understood her befuddlement. She knew personally about his feelings on dating. He’d openly divulged his standards to her the night he took her out. And he was pretty confident that if Vic didn’t think Phoebe was a good match for Trevor, then neither would Juliette. And Juliette knew Phoebe far better than Vic did.

  She cocked her head a little and reiterated her question. “As in date her, take her out? I mean, you just met her, right?”

  “Yes, as in date her. Ask her to go out on a date with me.” He hedged around the second part of the question; he still was trying to explain the whole situation to his friends. “I had originally just planned to possibly hire her do my album art for me, but now I know it’s more than that. I want to get to know her, to spend time with her.” He swallowed, closed his eyes tightly against his shameful memories, then added. “I want her to get to know me.” The new me.

  “Wow,” Juliette said again, picking up her spoon to stir the softening ice cream in her bowl. Her movements were slow and distracted, like she wasn’t even aware she was doing it. “I guess when you know, you know, huh?”

  Trevor took a deep breath in, feeling the air fill his lungs inside his chest, expanding his rib cage. He straightened his shoulders and released the breath slowly. “Well, there’s more to it than just magically knowing.”

  Vic’s dark eyebrows rose at the serious tone in Trevor’s voice, but he didn’t say anything. Juliette took a bite of her dessert, her eyes wide with curiosity.

  “This evening, while I was praying for Phoebe, I remembered something. I remembered Phoebe.”

  “Wait. What? You two have met before? Well, that’s cool.” Juliette set her spoon down again and leaned forward, a smile lighting up her features, but just for a moment. “Isn’t it?” Doubt flickered in her eyes as she studied Trevor’s face. “How do you know her?”

  Victor reached over and placed a hand over one of Juliette’s. He didn’t say a word, but Juliette turned to him and then back to Trevor. “Sorry. You talk. We listen.”

  “Almost fourteen years ago, I was working as an Intern in the Youth Department of a little church here in Midtown. I was actually fairly new to the church—I was there because of the internship—so I really didn’t know many of the congregation, but I’d been working with the youth for almost the whole school year and pretty much knew all the faces, if not all the names, in our group. One day—it was a Monday—I was heading through the empty sanctuary toward the youth building and there was a girl sitting in the dark near the back. I was with one of the pastors, talking about some new program I was all gung-ho to launch to the kids. We stopped to ask if she was all right, if she needed anything.”

  “Phoebe? Was it Phoebe?” Juliette’s voice was tiny, hushed.

  Trevor nodded, not caring that she was rushing him. This wasn’t story hour. He wasn’t on stage performing, and definitely not out to impress anyone. “At first she said no, but then when I offered to get one of the ladies to come out and pray with her, she agreed to the idea.”

  “It was Phoebe? Are you sure?”

  “Jules.” Vic’s voice was more caress than reprimand.

  “Sorry. Go on.”

  “I went to get one of the female staff members, but she was hung up for a few minutes, so I headed back in to wait with—with your sister until she got there. I was worried she might bolt; she had this desperate glint in her eye, and I sensed her decision to even be there at all was hard won. She said she wouldn’t mind my company, so I sat and we talked. She told me her name was Jo.”

  Juliette frowned for a moment, then her eyes widened in understanding. “Josephine. That’s her middle name. Phoebe Josephine Gustafson. Daddy always called her Phoebe Jo, but she didn’t let anyone else. Especially not after…after my parents’ accident.” Anyone who didn’t know Juliette wouldn’t have caught the slight catch and pause in her statement, but Trevor recognized it for what it was. It didn’t matter that more than fifteen years had passed since that fateful night. The Gustafson girls still grieved the loss of their parents.

  “It was only a year or two after your parents’ accident, if I remember right. I’d heard about it in the news, but because I hadn’t taken the position there at the time of the tragedy, I didn’t know that your grandparents went to that little church. From what Phoebe indicated that day, you and your sisters still went to youth group at your parents’ old church?”

  Juliette nodded. “Renata did. We all went to Sunday service with Granny G and Grandpa, but not the youth group. And Gia was too young. Phoebe didn’t go at all.” She frowned, concentrating, remembering. “In fact, I think she stopped going to church altogether a year or two after the accident.”

  Trevor sighed, trying to push back the guilt that made him feel like crawling in a hole. “Well, I didn’t make the connection back then, even when she told me you guys were living with your grandparents. I was pretty caught up in my own self-importance and purpose, I suppose. I had these really elevated ideas of who I was and what my role was as a youth leader. So when she started opening up, I listened—I really did—but I was so focused on my own ideals and truths, that I didn’t hear what she wasn’t saying.” He emphasized the word with a fist over his heart. “She needed help. A mother figure, she said. And I gave her religious vitriol—her words, by the way—about right and wrong and taking responsibility for our actions.”

  “Oh, Phoebe,” Juliette whispered, her voice catching again, but this time for her sister’s pain, not her own.

  “It was the day after Mother’s Day and one of the things the pastor had touched on was how God had designed the church as a family, and that the older generation needed to be father and mother figures to the younger generations. That’s why she was there. Not to hear me go all holier-than-thou on her.”

  He sighed and ran his hands over his messy hair, lacing his fingers at the back of his head, wishing he could share more. But if Juliette had known about the baby, surely she would have said something; he’d left a wide open door for her to bring that information through.

  “She left. She called me on the carpet for being, essentially, a Pharisee. Her words were much more descriptive and flavorful, mind you.” He felt one side of his mouth lift in what might be called a wry grin, but he was too disheartened to make light of the situation. “And I felt every one of her words like nails in my coffin. I was everything she’d accused me of. I may have been right,” He lifted his fingers to make quotes. “But I certainly didn’t speak the truth in love. I wasn’t Jesus to Phoebe that day and she knocked me right off my puffed up soapbox.” He shook his head, remembering how brutally her words had deflated him. “Then to make matters worse, I was too ashamed, too humiliated to go after her. I let her leave…and then I lied to the woman who came looking for her, told her Jo—Phoebe—had gotten help from someone else and had already gone home.” He unlaced his fingers and his head fell back. He pressed the
heels of his palms against his eyes and groaned. “I helped her, all right. Helped her right out the church door.”

  When he straightened up, he groaned again. Silent tears tracked down Juliette’s cheeks. She sat still as a stone, staring into her bowl, clutching tightly to Victor’s hand as though afraid to let go.

  “Juliette. I’m so sorry.” He reached forward across the table, but Vic gave him a quick shake of the head, so Trevor didn’t touch her. “I’m so sorry for what I did, for who I was, for how I treated your sister.” When she only nodded, he continued. “I looked for her every Sunday after that. I knew her grandparents attended—she’d said as much—but she hadn’t told me their names. I asked around about a girl named Jo, but hit dead ends there, too.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Juliette whispered, dabbing at her cheeks with a paper napkin. “It’s all right, Trevor.”

  But he shook his head. “It’s not all right. In the Book of James, it says, Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. It was like God had James write those two verses to me. I had the whole ‘keeping oneself from being polluted by the world’ part down, but I’d somehow missed that little word ‘and’ between that part of the statement and the ‘look after orphans and widows in their distress’ part: And. Not or. And.” He thumped the table with a fist. Not hard, but with obvious frustration. “And the tight rein on the tongue?”

  “Sounds like you used yours more like a whip than reins,” Victor stated. His words hurt, but his tone was gentle. “I’ve been in your shoes, my friend. Juliette can attest to that.”

  Juliette nodded again, a sad smile tugging up the corners of her mouth. “Yes. The words that come to mind are pompous, self-righteous, judg—”

  “I think he gets the gist, Jules.” Victor ducked his head, but he was smiling now, too.

  “Well, at least you saw the error of your ways, Vic. And look what came of it.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “You won my heart.”

  The air in the room seemed to lighten, and Trevor found it a little easier to breathe. “You know, those are some of the same words Phoebe used to describe me. I seem to recall windbag and arrogant, along with a few other choice words that would likely make a sailor blush.”

  “Oh, Trevor. Were you really that bad? It seems so out of character for you.” Juliette’s eyes were still bright with tears. “I can see Phoebe behaving the way she did—that girl was born with a chip on her shoulder—but you have never come across to me as judgmental and arrogant.”

  “Ah.” Trevor shook his head and looked down at his hands. His head hurt a little over all that had gone through it this night…over the knowledge that this was only the beginning of things. “My arrogance—my pride—continues to be a problem. I actually convinced myself that God wanted me to take you out last year so I could introduce you to Christ. Makes me out to look pretty snazzy, right? I mean, if I’d not acted in obedience, you’d still be a sinner bound for hell. Thanks to me,” he reached for his glass of water and lifted it in a mock toast. “Thanks to me, you are now saved and redeemed and going to Heaven. Please.” He glanced around the room as though he had an audience. “No, please. Hold your applause. It was nothing. Nothing.”

  “Trevor.” Juliette’s voice was kind, soothing. He wanted none of it.

  “But tonight, I’ve discovered that this wasn’t about me saving you, but about me being in the right place for my comeuppance. Taking you out was just the fork in the road that led me to this place. This hall of shame, where I’m now faced with the girl I all but tossed out of heaven because of my arrogance.”

  “Trevor, please.”

  “Tell me something. Is Phoebe a believer? Does she go to church with your grandparents these days? Or on her own somewhere?”

  Juliette didn’t respond, her silence answer enough.

  “When did she stop going to church? Think back. Could it have been after that Mother’s Day about fourteen years ago?” Trevor leaned forward, lacing his fingers tightly together on the table in front of him as he watched Juliette.

  She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “It was Mother’s Day. I remember now. I remember because I cried for two days after that same sermon. Because I didn’t want another mother. I didn’t want someone to be a mother figure to me; I wanted my own mother. Phoebe just shut down altogether.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper and Trevor leaned forward farther to hear her words. “I thought—I thought it was because of Mother’s Day. I thought she stopped going because she didn’t want another mother, either. I didn’t know. I was too wrapped up in my own bitterness and grief to notice her needs.”

  Juliette laid her head on Victor’s shoulder and released a long sigh. “You two aren’t the only ones with selfish arrogance in your pasts.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Phoebe ate the whole gyro wrap, along with the large bag of fries she’d added to the order last minute, and drank two more bottles of water. Her headache was waning and the food in her stomach helped relieve the shakiness in her limbs, but she headed back upstairs to lie down again anyway. She wanted to forget about the last two days, forget about the memories that had emerged out of the inebriated fog she’d been in for days.

  Most of all, she wanted to hide away a little longer, put off answering phone calls and text messages and doorbells as long as she could. Baby Charise may want to see her, but Phoebe wasn’t ready to see Baby Charise yet.

  The tiny cries that made everyone in the room coo pleasurably. The flailing, angry limbs as the little girl was thrust into the great big world—”Not ready! Not ready!”—Renata’s whimpers of joy and accomplishment over a job well done, the prize placed victoriously in her arms. Toolbelt Tim hovering, stroking, kissing, holding, whispering words of adoration and pride over both his girls.

  “I can’t bear it,” Phoebe moaned, lowering herself gingerly to the side of the bed. “I can’t bear it.”

  But the memories would not be held at bay.

  ~ ~ ~

  Fourteen years earlier…

  Exactly one month later, on the morning of July 10th, Phoebe’s water broke in the middle of the kitchen while she made pancakes with Theresa Rogers.

  After a few hours of hard and fast labor, she was wheeled into Delivery. The room thrummed with activity in chaotic contrast to the hollowness of Phoebe’s soul. She breathed rhythmically—long and slow, in through the nose, out through the mouth—as her muscles worked to rid her body of the tiny bundle of life inside her. She focused on filling her lungs, on expanding her chest until she couldn’t take in any more oxygen, and then letting the air flow out between her lips, steady and constant, but not forceful. She thought of the candle game she and her sisters played, where they had to blow hard enough to keep the flame dancing, but not enough to actually extinguish it. Phoebe imagined a dancing flame hovering in the air in front of her face. Don’t blow it out or you lose!

  Each inhale and exhale tore loose another thread from the cord that bound her to her baby. With every contraction, another strap of the bond broke loose. With every soft moan, Phoebe felt the dull, serrated edge of separation ripping and tearing her baby from her. She would not look at the man and woman who stood close—kind, loving, precious strangers—who watched and waited, tears of joy coursing down their faces as they witnessed her child—no, their child—braving the rite of passage that is called birth. Phoebe’s eyes remained dry. Her tears would come later; she kept her anguish wedged inside the chambers of her heart, her ribcage a tightly latched prison. She embraced the pain that twisted and tore at her, bore down into it like a guilty woman taking her just punishment.

  The doctor, a soft-spoken woman—Phoebe only remembered her first name, Melissa—touched her
with gentle, but intentional hands. She exuded confidence, not just in her own medical knowledge and experience, but also in Phoebe’s intuition and instincts as a birthing mother. Not once did she look on her sixteen-year-old patient with condescension or judgment. In fact, at one point—it was one of Phoebe’s sharpest memories of the ordeal—Melissa came around to the side of the bed and took Phoebe’s hand in hers. She leaned close so she was eye-to-eye with her and said, “You are brave. You are strong. You are amazing. I believe in you.” No one had said those words to her since her mother had died.

  Phoebe still didn’t cry. She didn’t look at Jeff and Theresa. She didn’t think about the baby she wouldn’t nurse, the infant she wouldn’t bathe, the child who would grow to look like her—would she have the gray Gustafson eyes? The inky black curls? Would she paint pretty pictures?—the girl who would never know her real mother. Instead, she kept her gaze trained on Melissa’s face, the doctor’s smiling eyes her focal point.

  When Melissa told her to slide down on the table, lifted her feet into the stirrups, and then instructed her to push when she felt the urge, Phoebe did as she was told, barely aware of the nurse who stood beside her, coaching her as she breathed, held, pushed, breathed, held, pushed….

  Lily Grace Rogers slid into the waiting arms of a glistening-eyed doctor—”A beautiful baby girl!”—and was laid on the trembling abdomen of the dry-eyed teenager while her umbilical cord was cut by her teary-eyed new father. Lily’s new mother—the one who would adopt and raise her as her own—placed one hand of blessing on the back of the head of the squalling, squeezed-shut-eyed infant, and one hand on top of Phoebe’s head, and thanked God for bringing them all together.

  Overwhelmed by an immediate and crushing love for the baby resting slippery and naked against her own flesh, Phoebe cooed, “Hello, baby girl. It’s all right. It’s all right.” Lily quieted just for a moment, her flailing movements stilled. Against her own better judgment, Phoebe lifted a hand and laid one fingertip to the tiny lips, gasping at the immediate rooting response from Lily as the baby turned toward the feathery touch, her head bobbing, mouth wide.