Saint and Scholar

by Holley Trent

  She scoffed, thinking the house must have been built for a family with herd of children. She imagined the kitchen was oversize–perfect for lining the little rug rats up and dispensing their daily gruel.

  She felt like shit for even thinking it. I don’t really hate big families…do I? Or is it just mine?

  With a sigh, she turned her focus back to the message to read his usual sign-off: I love you. Like every time before, it destroyed a little piece of her. She could have told him to stop, and she wanted to. For that matter, she could have deleted his messages unread, but some part of her refused to ignore him. It was like all those years when she’d kept her father’s contact information in her phones. She felt like she was prescribed to flog herself just for being so damned naive. More so after learning what Ashley and Tony knew about their father. Which she’d never known until she returned from Ireland.

  They’d colluded to keep all the bad things from her. Tony and Ashley had known their father had an echocardiogram the year before he died. They all knew he had a weak heart. They’d kept her in the dark so she wouldn’t worry, because little Carla worried about everything.

  So, she forced herself to open the messages, read them with tears burning unshed behind her eyes, and stared at his closing for minutes, meditating on the pixels forming those three little words. She wondered how long it would take for him to grow bored as he had with Francesca, and find some other woman to fixate on. She hoped it would be soon–that he’d find some woman willing to be submissive to him and leave her alone. Her heart would break if he kept on loving her. She couldn’t be the woman he wanted. She was scared to be.

  Chapter 14

  Carla sat in the administration office at one of the private schools where she taught classes, hearing, but not listening, to the principal as she rambled on and on about the employee benefits package. She’d offered Carla a full-time teaching job upon hearing word that the other school Carla taught at was considering doing the same. With the public schools in the system in a constant state of flux, more and more parents were opting to enroll their children in private schools. As the enrollments swelled, so did the schools’ needs for qualified enrichment teachers.

  When the principal’s lips stopped moving, Carla waited a few respectable moments and said, as was surely expected, “I hope you don’t mind if I take a few days to think about it. I’ve become very used to freelancing, but having a regular schedule has a certain appeal.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” the principal said. “We’re very lucky to have you. The parents love that you put so much emphasis on technique with the older kids. Many say the students wouldn’t have gotten nearly as good instruction with private lessons. And between you and me, my daughter doesn’t have a creative bone in her body but you seemed to spark something in her this spring.”

  “Uh…your daughter?”

  “Yes, Lindsay Smith? Cranky little blonde with a cowlick?”

  It took a minute for realization to dawn on Carla. Lindsay’s tree project the last day of the art clinic certainly hadn’t been the most artistic of the bunch, but the drawing did say a lot about who Lindsay was. It was black and white, had few soft edges and a few mysteriously placed branches bore square-shaped fruits. “Oh! Well, they’re good kids.” She picked up her purse and hoped the action would be enough of a signal for the principal to get the hint the discussion was over for the time being.

  “So, when can I expect your call? Friday?”

  Carla nodded. “Yes, certainly by Friday. I won’t leave you on the lurch for long.”

  She drove home to her lonely apartment and sat at her kitchen table to work on the same graphite drawing she’d been obsessing over for the past two weeks. While at Allen’s house, she’d spotted through all the clutter a photograph of his young wife holding an infant Grant against her shoulder out in the garden. The photograph had reminded her of a Sassoferrato painting of The Madonna she’d studied during her very first art history class. She’d never quite forgotten it. When she got home from Ireland, she’d dug her old textbook out of the plastic storage tote in her walk-in closet. She found the dog-eared page and examined the photograph of the painting she’d meditated on for so many hours as a young student.

  She’d started drawing that day, not intending for the woman in the drawing to be The Madonna or Grant’s mother, or anyone for that matter. She just needed to get the subconscious thoughts of maternity out of her system. She couldn’t get away from it. It seemed like everyone was pregnant. Even Sharon. Sharon had been keeping lots of secrets, yet hadn’t been able to clam up about Carla’s trip to Ireland. Two out of the three, pregnant at once. One more and they’d have suite-mate Bingo.

  When there was nothing else to do on the paper, no more lines to smudge, no more mistakes to erase, she put down her pencil, stared at the woman in the picture with the heart-shaped face and hair that reached midback and had a good sob. When the tears refused to abate, she didn’t know what else to do but call her mother.

  “Hey, we’ve missed ya. You coming over for dinner?” Mom asked in lieu of saying hello. Did she ever say hello?

  “Um. Maybe.” Carla opened the lid of her laptop and woke up her operating system. She hadn’t heard from Grant in a couple of days.

  “You should! Ashley and Tony are here with the girls, you know? Nobody planned it. They just showed up at the same time. It’s turned into a bit of a party. We’re playing Monopoly.”

  Shit.

  “Hey, did you know Ashley’s been doing research on your dad’s tree? You working together?”

  “Um, sort of. Listen, Mom, I need to talk you about something in private.”

  “What’s up? Hey–have you been crying? Your voice is a bit thick. What’s going on?”

  “This is really…Mom, I don’t know what to do. I’m pregnant.”

  Mom was silent for a few tense moments. Carla could hear the sound of her heels clacking against the hardwood at the house and doors slamming as she moved away from the party in her kitchen. “You get over here right now and I’ll tell you what to do, you hear me? What the hell is wrong with you? I knew you were a shitty Catholic but I never thought–”

  “Mom! No. No. It’s not that. That was never an option. I knew the risks when I did it, but figured I had statistics in my favor. All that time with Otto and there wasn’t so much as a scare. I know what to do, but…I just don’t know what to do.”

  Mom let out a breath. “It’s no big deal, baby. Come on over. We’ll send the boys away and we’ll talk it out.”

  * * * *

  Grant’s mother had always had a special fondness for roses. When she was alive, his dad added a new bush to the fence every year. He’d let her pick out which hybrid she liked best from the catalogs and they’d plant it together. When Mum died, he’d let the roses take over and grow wild for a couple of years. Eventually, he reached a point where he couldn’t stand looking at them anymore, so he’d cut them all back to the ground and salted it from spite. After visiting the ruined garden, Grant knew his dad would never completely move on. He really believed some people only had one shot in life at falling in love, and Dad’s time had come and gone. Grant knew he was the same way. If Carla wouldn’t have him, he wouldn’t have anyone else. As a result, he was nearing the point of compromise. “Shut up and wait” wasn’t working.

  For lack of a better plan, his task of the moment was fixing the roof of the house he’d leased with the option to buy. It was practically a dump, so the homeowner was willing to shave off some of the cost in exchange for sweat equity. Grant and Dad were up on ladders nailing new shingles into place. They’d been at it every evening for a week and were nearly finished. The project had been a good distraction for his lonely father. He needed to get away from his own home for a while. Further, Grant understood his father wanted to do something for him. He’d missed him, though Grant knew Dad would never admit it.

  On day two, Dad brought a clipping from a rose bush he tended at the golf course and pl
anted it at Grant’s mailbox. “It’s a floribunda called Emma,” he said as he wiped the dirt from his hands onto his overalls. “It’s the only one I kept.”

  “I’m glad you kept one. It was a perfect tribute to Mum.”

  Dad sighed. “Yep. So what are we going to work on after we finish the roof?”

  Grant dropped his hammer to the ground and climbed down his ladder for a drink of water. “Don’t know. The kitchen, maybe. Appliances are gross. Not that I cook much, anyway, but God only knows what’s living under ’em. I’d like to be able to fix my tea without worrying something will scurry across my bare foot. Not pressing, though. You know I’ll be in London all next week with that conference. Seth and Curt are flying in Friday night for the long weekend, so I won’t come back immediately.”

  “Maybe I’ll paint while you’re gone, then.” Dad worked his way down to the ground, too. “Start in the bedrooms?”

  “Yeah, just priming, though. I don’t know about colors yet. I’ll probably just leave it all white.”

  Dad gave his son a knowing look but kept his mouth shut. Grant didn’t really care what colors were on the walls. He didn’t have the finesse for choosing those things, much like his father. Dad hadn’t done anything as far as decorating in his house ever. He’d inherited it from his grandfather shortly after he and Mum got married. She was the one to make the house a home. In her absence, it had gone back to just being a house. It was now just a storage facility for people and things.

  “So, how’s work going?” Dad asked as they folded their ladders and carted them to the back of the house. “Every time I see ya, I hardly recognize you. If you keep changing, we won’t even be kin.”

  “Damn it, I look exactly the same, just with less hair.”

  “Right, and the shave so smooth I can see your bones beneath? And all the new clothes and shoes?”

  Grant opened his unreliable refrigerator and swore. He removed two hot beers from the rack inside, closed the door and kicked it. “Fuckin’ thing has to come out.” He uncapped the beers and handed one to his father.

  “What difference does it make?” Dad pushed. “Like you said, you don’t do much cooking. You could probably survive with a cooler and bag of ice every few days.”

  Grant narrowed his eyes at his sire and stabbed a finger in his direction. “Are you trying to piss me off?”

  “Nope.” He took a seat in one of the spindly chairs left by the former homeowners. “You’re already pissed off. I just want you to understand why.”

  “Stay out of it.” Grant walked out into the garden and slammed the front door hard behind him. Dad followed him out in a casual stroll.

  “I will not. It’s enough for me to be miserable for the rest of me life. No need for you to be like it, too.”

  “It’s my choice!” Grant shouted. Using his hand to emphasize his words caused his beer to foam and explode from the top of the bottle, over his hand. “Shit!” He flung off the foam and sighed. “I’m doing the best I can. It’s not enough.”

  Dad shrugged. “I’m on the outside lookin’ in. All I know is there’s this American woman who left. Don’t know why she left, but it seems to me you’re waiting around for her to come back. That doesn’t sound like my son.”

  Grant stared at his father and gritted his teeth. Dad wasn’t exactly wrong, but… “Says Mr. Shut up and wait?”

  Dad gave him a dismissive hand flick. “Ah, you’re too goddamned literal. Yes, shut up and wait, but doesn’t mean you have to be inactive. It also doesn’t mean you’ve got to wait until the world ends. It means everything in its own time. You’re choosing to be miserable, you stubborn bastard. No clue who you inherited that shit from, but the way I see it, you’ve got three choices. Find some nice girl and try to move on…”

  “No.” Grant shook his head furiously. He wouldn’t cheat. As long as there was a chance, in his mind it’d be cheating.

  “Okay, two: go get her.”

  “It’s her choice. I can’t really fly to America every weekend to try to convince her to see things my way.”

  “Okay, then that leads to number three: scrap your plan. Use hers.”

  “That’s the problem. She doesn’t have one! She’s flying by seat of her pants. She has been since she was eighteen. She has no idea what she wants out of life, other than to be alive.”

  Dad shrugged as if he still couldn’t see what the problem was. “If she wants to reserve the right to have some spontaneity in her life, why not let her?” He added in a mumble, “Damned academics. Should have played football. Would have been better for his brain.”

  A response would be admitting to his father that he was right. Grant hated when his father was right.

  * * * *

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you? It’s not that hard for me to clear my schedule, and I’m okay to fly now. Finally stopped barfing.”

  “No, honey, I appreciate you asking, but I need to do this alone.”

  “You know, your mom still thinks maybe you shouldn’t tell him at all. She thinks the custody situation will be tricky.”

  Carla squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed them. “Yeah, well, I was there. I remember the argument. Thank you for backing me up. It must be hard to be on the wrong side of your mother-in-law so soon after the wedding.”

  Sharon shrugged and popped the trunk when the airport security guy at the curb in front of the Delta terminal started pointing angrily for her to pull away. She flipped him the bird when he turned his back. “Well, her anger was tempered by Ashley agreeing with me. What’s she going to do, disown us? She’ll lose two grandkids at once.”

  “Even she’s not that stubborn,” Carla said with a giggle.

  “Exactly. I know she’ll get over it eventually. Oh, you didn’t hear it from me, but I overheard her saying something to Chet about consulting a lawyer about Irish custody laws, but I don’t think she’ll go that far.”

  “Sharon, just between you and me, there aren’t going to be any custody issues.”

  Sharon’s already round eyes went even wider. “You’re going to stay? Oh, God, please don’t leave me.” She pulled her friend into a tight embrace, then held her at arm’s length. “Oh, damn it, you have to, don’t you? True love and shit.”

  Carla raised one brow while she made sense of her tightly wound friend and nodded. “He’s right for me, and now I understand just how patient he is. He would have to be in order to deal with my moods, right?”

  Sharon scoffed. “You forgetting about the Gill drama king I’m married to?”

  They both giggled.

  “Grant said I reminded him of old saint paintings, but I think you two should get the halos. This has all crashed down on me so fast and I can hardly believe I’m pulling up stakes like this.”

  “You’re doing it for the right reasons, aren’t you?”

  Carla fiddled the corner of her boarding pass. “I guess so. With all the angst I’m still working through over Daddy, I’d never deprive this kid of knowing his or her dad. Problem is, I still haven’t heard from Grant. I think it’s been a week since he last emailed.”

  Sharon cringed, but patted Carla’s hand. “A week’s nothing.”

  “Maybe not. Still, I turned down a permanent job offer. Hope this works out.”

  The security guard thumped on the hood with his fist. “Okay, fuck you very much!” Sharon said to him through the windshield.

  He mumbled something into his walkie-talkie, so Carla leaned across the center console and gave her sister-in-law a kiss.

  “You call me immediately as soon as you know anything,” Sharon warned.

  Carla nodded and scrambled out.

  The security guard glowered at her as she pulled her suitcase from Sharon’s trunk. Carla was in a mood violent enough to spawn the creation of a universe, but she had a flight to catch and didn’t want to get herself arrested. She didn’t know any of the cops who worked for the police department that serviced RDU and it would be just her luck her
last-minute ticket wouldn’t be refundable. She’d spent a lot of money on that ticket–money she had been holding for her next month’s rent, but if she stayed in Ireland, it would be money well spent. She missed Grant. That had never been in question. From the moment he suggested they “have a go,” their partnering seemed natural, although she had been wary.

  What she’d learned during seven weeks away from him while ignoring all those calls and emails was that she loved him. She understood on a much smaller scale what it must have been like for him all those years, to love a near stranger but be too afraid to act on it because everyone said people don’t fall in love that way, or that fast. She even understood a bit of what it must have been like to keep track of someone without them being aware. The night before her flight, she’d gone to his department webpage and found it updated with a photograph of him, and a fairly impressive bio. He hadn’t told her his dissertation was being published into course material. Then again, she hadn’t asked. She felt a stabbing pain of jealously looking at him spit-shined and damned near perfection on the other side of the Atlantic. She wanted to tie a sign around his neck: Mine–do not touch.

  But he’d stopped calling.

  The day after sharing her news with the family, Sharon had taken her to the mall for a bellyband to hold her pants up, and had a tough-love lecture. “You’re not afraid of having your professional ambitions squashed,” Sharon had said. “You don’t have any, Carla. You know it and I know it.”

  Carla had gotten angry and stormed out of the store.

  When Sharon found her on the bench in front of the frozen yogurt stand holding half a chocolate cone, she handed Carla her bag and continued her lecture. “You know what I think your problem is? I think you’re afraid of ending up alone like Allen and your mom. That you’ll lose him somehow and you’ll mess up something with the kids. Honey, you can’t live if you don’t try. Call me a dreamer, but you’re being offered things I’ve wished for since I was a child. I found my guy. You’re lucky to have found yours.”