The Lesson

by Welch, Virginia

  Mr. Jacobs looked at Gina but said nothing. She wished he would help her.

  “Does he have a college education?” asked Mrs. Jacobs.

  “He’s taken a few classes, when he was stationed on Midway Island,” said Gina, calming herself just a little. “The University of Hawaii has a satellite school there. But he’s not in school right now. He’s going to join the FBI when he gets out of the Navy … after he gets a college degree,” she remembered to add.

  “FBI! Hah!” said Mrs. Jacobs. “No education, no career. No money. Do you know what second class petty officers make? Nothing! That’s what they make. And they drag their wives from pillar to post. One dreary military base to another.”

  “Maria,” said Mr. Jacobs finally, trying to calm things, “She said he’s just a friend.”

  “That’s how these things get started,” Mrs. Jacobs continued. “First you’re friends, then you’re engaged. Then you’re married, and you’re raising my grandbabies to speak Japanese and eat linguine with chopsticks on some no-name little island in the Pacific.”

  By now Gina had lost all desire to be controlled. “YOU married a military man,” she shouted.

  “Yes, but I married an ARMY man. Sailors go off to sea for months at a time. You’ll end up raising those babies all by yourself while he visits exotic ports AND exotic women in all those ports. You know what they say about sailors!”

  “Kevin’s not that type of sailor. He’s gentlemanly and decent. And he’s not my boyfriend either. I told you he’s just a friend!” Gina could hear herself screaming. Well too bad! She would repent of her anger later.

  Mr. Jacobs was clearing his mouth of a bite of food, preparing to jump into the ring to prevent the two bulls from goring each other with rhetoric, when the phone rang, loudly, mercifully, on the wall next to the kitchen table. Gina was closest so she stood up to answer it. When she realized it was Kevin on the line, she tried to sound as cool as possible.

  “You don’t sound so good. What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure. I’m sick," said Kevin. "I woke up this morning feeling terrible. My head. I think I have a fever. I feel sick all over. I couldn’t make it to church. I wanted to hear your voice.”

  “Is your dad there?” Gina thought of Kevin in bed, sick, alone in that miserable, dark garage with no one there to help him. It was a disturbing picture.

  “No. He’s not coming home till tomorrow morning,” said Kevin.

  “Is there anybody there with you?” Gina was facing toward the phone, away from her family, but she could feel them hanging onto every word.

  “No, but I’ll be alright. I just wanted to talk to you, that’s all. Whatcha doing?”

  “Enjoying a lovely Sunday dinner with my family,” said Gina. Therefore, she explained, she couldn’t take long on the phone. She said she hoped he felt better soon and hung up.

  “Who was that?” Mrs. Jacobs had calmed down a little bit.

  “Kevin.”

  “He’s sick?” Mrs. Jacobs didn’t wait for Gina to answer. “Is anybody with him?”

  “He lives with his dad, but that’s only weekends. During the week he lives on a ship tied up at Mare Island. His dad’s away right now, so yes, he’s alone.”

  “So who’s cooking for him?

  “No one.”

  “Well then, you have to bring him some brodo di pollo” said Mrs. Jacobs. “Chicken soup can be thrown together in no time. You’ll bring it to him this afternoon.”

  “I can’t,” said Gina.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I just can’t, that’s all.”

  “Whaddya mean you can’t? You Mr. President Ford of the United States? You too busy to look in on a sick friend? I don’t walk around acting like some righteous saint like you and those airy-fairy friends of yours, but even I know that a Christian doesn’t leave a sick person, not even a sailor, alone at home to starve, no one to look after him. Of course you’ll go this afternoon. No Catholic daughter of mine is going to neglect the sick. You said he’s your friend. What kind of friend are you? We’ll make a pot of chicken with acini di pepe. It’ll be ready in less than an hour. It’ll make him feel better pronto.”

  Gina didn’t have an answer to that. She just stared at her plate.

  Mr. Jacobs deftly took over the conversation from there, telling Gina about various neighbors who had moved away or whose grown children had recently married. Gina was grateful for the change in conversation, though she only half listened because she was preoccupied with the thought that she would have to deliver chicken soup to Kevin this afternoon in that awful garage. Worse, she was stung at her mother’s remark about neglecting the sick. But she couldn’t explain things to her parents. Her relationship with Kevin was not explainable, especially to her parents. Truthfully she didn’t understand it herself. Besides, Gina knew her mother well. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. There’d just be another argument.

  The remainder of the meal was sober. After the girls had removed the dishes to the counter to be washed by hand, Mrs. Jacobs set about making a quick soup of chicken, acini di pepe―tiny pearls of pasta―chopped onion, minced garlic, plenty of salt pepper, and some of her favorite seasonings. Just like she said, it was ready in less than an hour. She poured a generous amount of the steaming soup into a Thermos and handed it to Gina. She had enjoyed her mother’s chicken soup with acini di pepe many times. There was no doubt in Gina’s mind that Kevin would like it too, and her mother was right: it would be good for him. She knew all this but still she didn’t want to deliver it to him, which made her wonder if Mrs. Jacobs was right about something else. Maybe she was a lousy Christian who didn’t live out her faith. Maybe she was too concerned about her own discomfort at visiting Kevin and too little concerned about the welfare of another human being.

  As she stood in the foyer cradling the heavy Thermos and saying good-bye to her parents, her father stepped back into the kitchen, opened an upper cabinet, and pulled out a white paper sack. She recognized the familiar lumpiness and telltale fragrance as he put it in her hand: the sack was filled with six big and fat, soft and chewy brown molasses cookies sprinkled with sugar and dotted with raisins, a specialty from Wilson’s Bakery on Homestead Road.

  “Here. For the road,” he said. “I saved them for you. Don’t eat them all before you get to San Jose.”

  Mr. Jacobs worked at the Santa Clara main post office at the outdoor Franklin Mall, where Wilson’s Jewel Bakery was located. Often after work he stopped in to buy treats for his four daughters. Molasses cookies were Gina’s favorite when she was a little girl. He had remembered.

  She reached up and hugged her father, turned and hugged her mother, and thanked them for the lunch. She really did love her parents, and she knew they really did love her.

  But she also knew that she really, really didn’t want to deliver that chicken soup to Kevin.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Garage, Boston Avenue, San Jose

  From her parents’ house on Cornell Drive Gina drove down the elbow to Homestead Road, the chicken soup cure sloshing in the Thermos on the seat each time she braked. As she neared San Tomas Expressway, it occurred to her that she could skip making a right turn there and just continue down Homestead to her apartment. Her mother would never know. But then, with a pang of guilt, she thought how Kevin would go without a meal, not even downing some liquid, which she knew he needed more than anything as he lay lethargic and feverish in that hideous garage.

  The light turned red at Homestead and San Tomas. She hit the gas. Slosh, slosh went the soup in the Thermos. She opened the white sack on the seat beside her, pulled out a cookie and took a big bite, savoring the familiar sharp molasses flavor that contrasted so deliciously with the crunchy sweet sugar crystals on top.

  “Why does it have to be me?” she complained aloud between mouthfuls. She turned on the radio to KLIV to distract herself. From the dash Tony Orlando and Dawn wailed their big hit, "He Don’t Love You Like
I Love You." “Oh sure. That’s what they all say,” she growled. She switched the knob again, this time to KFRC. "Love Will Keep Us Together," was next, the bouncy sing-along number by The Captain and Tennille. “Get a degree! Get a degree already! A diamond’s no insurance! And they can’t take back the degree!” she yelled at the hapless duo. Disgusted, she slapped viciously at the dial to bring in any station at all. Freddy Fender came on singing, "Before the Next Teardrop Falls." “Oh shut up! All these stupid, loved-crazed idiots. Somebody should put them out of their misery. Where’s a good sharp-shooter when you need one?”

  She turned off the radio in a righteous huff as her car veered onto San Tomas Expressway. Slosh, slosh. Maybe she could find one of Kevin’s friends from the ship to check on him and bring him something to eat. But no, that wouldn’t work because she couldn’t get the name or phone number of any of his friends without first contacting him. She knew his dad’s name was Grover, but she had no idea where his girlfriend lived or her name. Slosh. Kevin had said he had a younger sister who lived somewhere in San Francisco, but Gina didn’t know the address. The rest of his family was far flung. She didn’t know how to contact them either.

  Finally she made the broad arc, a left turn onto Stevens Creek Boulevard after waiting through an irritatingly long red light. Slosh, slosh, slosh. She grabbed another cookie. Almost immediately the boulevard changed its name to West San Carlos, which always seemed fitting, because it was right about there that drivers sensed a subtle shift in the landscape: a gentle descent into the past shaded by the omnipresent influence of Spanish-Indian missions, adobe and red tile roofs, and southwestern flora and fauna, not to mention the small, family run restaurants, bars, and groceries that called to passersby in signs loudly lettered in Spanish. Gina always felt that she had crossed an invisible national border as she drove out of Santa Clara into San Jose along West San Carlos. She was a Santa Clara girl. Stevens Creek Boulevard was Santa Clara. West San Carlos, accented by the Spanish nomenclature, was San Jose. When the bustling boulevard changed names, she was no longer in her territory.

  In the daylight Boston Avenue was charming. It was a quiet street of sturdy little clapboard houses where sturdy people lived, the kind who drove soda delivery trucks or who worked as Safeway cashiers for thirty-five years and then retired, or who owned a corner drycleaner business, the kind whose kids went to state college and then moved away to become lawyers or engineers. Ancient deciduous trees, broad and leafy varieties unknown by name to Gina but not unappreciated, lined the shady street, planted by design in the days before central air conditioning. In the daylight she noticed for the first time a pink adobe duplex to the right of the garage, its two units connected by a quaint arch that occupants drove under to reach their front doors. Sort of like a 1950s motel, but with a Spanish flavor.

  Her thoughts didn’t stay long on the neighborhood. The uncomfortable business at hand called her back to the moment when she saw Kevin’s deep green beetle parked in front of the garage. She did not want to go into that garage. Even as sick as he was, Kevin would be thrilled to see her. He would misinterpret her motive for coming. He would make a big deal out of the soup and go on and on and about how nice it was of her to come and minister to him. She would say no, no, it was nothing, all her mother’s idea, and squirm with discomfort at her own true feelings about being there. She would say that she couldn’t stay long and he would ask her to stay just a little longer.

  Why was it that her life was one sticky wicket after another—problems with Michael, problems with her parents, problems with Kevin—nearly always caused by her own stupid, voluntary acts? Then, on top of all the problems she had created for herself lately, there was the matter of fate: more and more her life appeared to be devoid of any grand design. If Someone was guiding her, why did she always seem to be in trouble? Especially trouble with guys. She had thought at one time that faith made things simpler, but the truth was that simple is what her life was before she had faith. Now it seemed that she questioned everything and pleased no one. Her parents were disappointed with her, Michael was disgusted with her, and she wasn’t sure who she was or what she wanted with the youthful certainty she had had just six months ago. She used to accept problems just as they were; every life had its share. You did your best to deal with them. Now she still had problems, but in addition, she was vexed with the disturbing thought that God could, if He wanted, take away her problems, but evidently He didn’t want to because He hadn’t. That God was involved in her life, in the good and the bad, or that He could help her with the problems of daily life but didn’t always seem to, were conundrums that had never troubled her before. Now they nagged at the back of her mind every day. Or maybe she just never had any real problems in life before Michael left? It did seem most days that her life was in two parts: happy and bright before Michael left and dark and dreary now.

  Then there was the Kevin problem. Now that she couldn’t blame on fate. After all, it was she who had let Kevin into her apartment late at night after meeting him in a private home only an hour earlier. She could have refused to open the door. She could have pretended not to hear the knocking. She could have yelled through the locked door and threatened to call the police. But she had not responded in these predictable ways. Predictable because, had anyone asked her before he had actually shown up at her apartment late that night, she certainly would have said that she would never open a door to a young man who was practically a stranger, someone she had met and only spoken to briefly that same evening. So why had she felt so comfortable opening the door to him?

  There was something about Kevin that was irrepressibly sweet—an innocence, really—that she wasn’t used to seeing in a young man, which mixed incongruously with an unusually large dose of self-assurance that bordered on cocky. Cockiness she had seen before, but it was never undergirded by goodness and decency. Rolando had been like that, she realized now with stinging clarity. Aside from the obvious fact that Rolando was physically gorgeous, it was his confident ways that had enhanced his attractiveness to Gina. But underneath the preppy clothes and knowing smile was something ravenous with flesh-tearing teeth, or so it had seemed in a few seconds of terror that had not dimmed in her memory in the least in the few weeks since she had shared spaghetti and a sinking couch with him in his apartment.

  She reached for another cookie. When she had finished eating it, she suddenly realized there was only one left. Remembering her father’s warning, she rolled down the top of the sack and set it on the passenger seat. She didn’t want to eat her last excuse for lingering in the car, though it was tempting. She’d still have to go into the garage if she ate the last cookie.

  Thermos in hand, Gina knocked on the garage side door. A muffled voice summoned her inside, and as she stepped into the room, she saw with alarm what the soft edges of the night had concealed. In the shaft of harsh afternoon sunlight thrown from the single door, the garage and its humble contents looked worse than she remembered: dustier, shabbier, grungier. The air was staler in the daytime too because, though winter was around the corner, a late fall sun baked the wooden roof and walls.

  “Kevin, it’s me, Gina.”

  It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, and as they did she saw Kevin, lying on his stomach, his left arm flung over the side of the bed haphazardly. The top half of his sleeping bag was pulled down so that his bare back was exposed to his waist. His hair was mussed and damp and clung to his head in sections. In his feverish state he did not realize at first that it was Gina standing at the foot of his bed, but when she said his name he immediately turned himself so that he was propped on his right side, his bare chest toward Gina. His face was wan and his eyes were glassy, telltale signs of fever. An old black desk phone, practically an antique, was parked on the concrete floor next to the bed, its cord meandering off somewhere into the darkness of the kitchenette. It pained Gina to realize that his only connection to help and sustenance was that old phone. She didn’t see so much as a
pitcher of water anywhere. He looked bad and he needed nursing. She was glad she had come, but not glad enough to stay long. Though the side door to the garage had been fully shut when she arrived, she intentionally left it open all the way, not just for the light it shed, but for respectability. Sick or not, she wasn’t going to encourage him.

  When Kevin turned over and saw her standing there, looking at him half-naked, he quickly reached for his T-shirt that hung on a nail on the wall and just as quickly pulled it over his head. “Gina! I didn’t realize it was you.”

  “My mom sent you some of her homemade chicken soup,” she said, turning to her reason for coming. She took one step toward the foot of the bed and lifted the Thermos for him to see.

  “She’s an unusual woman to take such interest in a sailor she’s never met.”

  “My mom is hospitable to everyone,” Gina said. But likely more hospitable to an up-and-coming lawyer than a poor sailor.

  “I already like her.” Kevin sat upright and positioned a pillow behind him for support. “She has good taste in men.” He motioned with his hand toward the edge of the bed. “Why don’t you sit down?”

  “I can only stay a minute.” She ignored his suggestion to sit on the edge of his bed. It seemed too intimate. After last night she didn’t want to do anything that smacked of familiarity. So instead she stepped over to the other bed on the opposite side of the cramped room, not three feet away. She glanced at the lumpy sleeping bag to check for spiders. Seeing none, she gingerly sat down. As she did she consciously set aside an immediate inclination to bend down and peer under the bed. Doing so would make her appear as neurotic as she felt, or worse, insult her host. Nevertheless she made a point of adjusting her feet on the floor in such a way that they didn’t rest too close to the bed, just in case something furry had taken up residence in the vast darkness under the mattress. There was no box spring.

  “How are you feeling?” She should at least make small talk.