by Terri Kraus
“Observant Jew?” Cameron asked.
“Yes. I mean, I believe in God and observe all the holidays, but it doesn’t really affect my daily life. It’s more of a cultural thing. And I respect other people like you and Oliver, whose religion is more important. Everyone has their own path. Live and let live, I always say.”
“But, Sam, you have to realize that for people like Oliver and for me, our faith is the most important thing. And believing the truth of the Bible does affect the way we live each day—including our moral decisions.”
“I’m an okay person. I follow the Golden Rule,” Samantha answered.
“It’s not about rules, Sam, but about a relationship—with Jesus—that changes everything,” Cameron answered. “God is not an irrelevant, distant being, but inside us and all around us.”
“You really feel God’s presence?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. All the time. Can’t imagine life without the love and peace He brings. And what is so attractive to you about Oliver could well be that very thing—Christ in him, and the hope he has. You have to understand that there may be nothing you can say or do to Oliver to change his mind on what he believes or how he behaves—including in the romance arena.”
“I’ve never known anyone like him before—a guy who really believes. I know guys who believe in the Steelers, maybe, or the Pirates, but not in God, and not like this.”
“I get it, Sam. I’ve been there. When I met Ethan …well, let’s just say his stand on such things was at first frustrating, yet impressive. I didn’t have the Jesus factor to process through, since I had always been a Christian who sort of dabbled at being a true believer, but there were plenty of ways that my faith needed attention—before I came to a clearer understanding of Jesus that changed my life.”
“We talked about this before, I know, but I still don’t know what you mean by ‘understanding of Jesus,’” Samantha said. “Wasn’t He just a rabbi, a good man who wanted to help His people when they were under Roman oppression?”
“Jesus was a Jewish rabbi, but so much more. It goes back to the beginning … to creation, really. You know the story: Adam and Eve in the garden and how they were banished from God’s presence because of their sin. The Old Testament, the Tanach, is the story of God working to restore His presence to His people through the burning bush, the pillar of fire, building the temple for the ark of the covenant, where His presence resided, which they feared. Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah, fulfilled all the incredibly detailed Old Testament prophecies. He was the culmination of God’s plan to bring sinful people—all of us, Sam—back into right relationship with God, without fear. Not through following a set of laws—the Torah, or any other religious rules—to perfection. No one can do that. The Bible says that leads to death, because God is holy and can’t tolerate even the smallest sin. So we are separated. But if we believe Jesus is the Messiah, who by grace took on our sin and paid the penalty for it, and we trust that through His sacrifice on the cross we can be saved from eternal death, then we can live in His presence and have an eternal future in heaven. That restored relationship leads to life.”
“So by believing all this, that’s how you changed your life?” Sam asked.
“I didn’t change my life, Sam. God did. I was a mess—believe me. I had so much baggage from my past, was in denial over it all, and looking for love in all the wrong places. Ethan, too, was struggling through pain from the tragedy in his life. Ultimately, we both found peace in God, through Jesus. Only He can fill the void in our lives.”
It was Samantha’s turn to be silent.
Then Cameron spoke softly. “Sam, if you really think Oliver is special, maybe the best thing you can do is look into why he’s so different, in a good way, than all the other men you’ve known. Investigate how his life is unique because of his faith in Christ. Talk to him.”
“But I know so little about Christianity … I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“Hey—you own a church. There must be a Bible around there somewhere!” Cameron said with a laugh.
Cameron put the phone down and began to ask God to allow her words to penetrate into Samantha’s heart, praying that she had said enough, but not too much.
And then she remembered Sarah.
Cameron looked at the clock on the kitchen wall.
Too late to call tonight. I’ll phone her first thing in the morning.
Paula peeked into her daughter’s bedroom. Bridget, sleeping soundly, was nestled up to the pillow, the blanket drawn to her neck, her angelic face illuminated by the moon. Paula stood by the bed for a long time, watching the rise and fall of her daughter’s chest. She crept out of the room, closed the door, and walked to the guest room on the other side of the hall. She could hear the subdued garble of a late-night talk show on the TV. She tapped twice, with a soft hand, and cracked the door.
“Mom? You’re not asleep?”
“Oh, honey, I never sleep well on this bed. It’s a little too soft. But I’ll make do. Really. You get to bed.”
Paula sidled into the room, halfway. “Mom, thanks for coming. The babysitter has the flu, and I didn’t want to get Bridget up an hour early in the morning to get her to your place. You sure you don’t mind staying overnight?”
“Honey, it’s okay. A few days of some missed sleep is no big thing. You get older and you don’t need as much sleep. That’s what everyone says.”
Paula had heard the same thing from Rose Barnett, but Rose was much older than her mother.
“Listen, Mom, would it be okay if I ran out for a few minutes? Lisa, a friend from church, wanted to get together. Her daughter is with her ex, so she’s free. Is it okay? We’re going to meet at the Eat ’n’ Park in Greensburg.” Paula hoped it sounded like the truth.
“Honey, that’s so far. And it’s so late.”
“I know. But I never get to have adult conversations anymore.”
It was a tactic Paula knew would work.
“Well, okay. But don’t stay out too late.”
Paula hurried to her car and started driving. She punched at her cell phone. “Hi. Can you meet me at the Eat ’n’ Park? I know it’s late, but I need to talk to you. Okay?”
In fifteen minutes, Paula had taken a booth facing the highway, in the back of the restaurant. She had combed her hair using the rearview mirror in her car and hurriedly put on a thin sheen of lipstick.
This is all the makeup I have in my purse, so it will have to do.
Taller walked in slowly, his shoulders moving in time with his hips, the movement both languorous and tempting. Paula eyed him as he came closer. He offered a short but knowing smile.
“Hi.”
“Hi yourself. You’re lucky that I don’t go to bed early,” he said.
“Sometimes you do,” she said coyly.
“Yeah. Well, sometimes. But not when I’m alone. Why did you call? Aren’t you afraid that someone will see us together and tell Ollie about it? How would you explain that?”
“You’re his brother. And what would they tell? We know each other. I stopped on the way home from a Bible study. You were here. We decided to have a cup of coffee together. Pretty harmless, right?”
Taller leaned back in the booth, his head nearly hidden from the other customers. “You’ve thought about this. Prepared. I like that.”
“Among other things,” Paula replied.
Why am I doing this? Why am I risking a good man like Oliver?
“You want to go back to your place?” Taller asked as he stirred a third sugar packet into his coffee.
“We can’t. My mother is staying with me. The babysitter is sick, so she’s helping out.”
Paula looked at Taller, her eyes searching his. “We could go back to your place.”
Taller’s smile wavered just a bit, as if he were briefly
considering the offer, then immediately discarded it.
Paula decided the wait was answer enough. “I know. It’s late. And I do need to get back in a few minutes. My mother is already worried.”
Taller, eyes fixed on her, sipped his coffee. She squirmed under his gaze, like she was some sort of butterfly, or caterpillar, about to be pinned to a display board.
Paula knew she had to ask the question. It was why she’d invited him here. It was why she’d called. There were doubts and tensions, worries and suspicions, and Paula thought she could live with that ambiguity, that uncertainty. But now she realized, in a stab of awareness, that maybe she couldn’t; she had to know more than Taller had ever told her.
“Do we have a future, Taller, you and I? I need to know. Well, maybe need is the wrong word. But I … I really like being with you, and you seem to have a good time with me. So I guess I want to know if you’re doing this because you really want to be with me … and find me attractive and sexy and all that … or are you just …”
Taller sat up straight and pushed his coffee cup to the side. His smile had disappeared. His hands were folded now, in front of him, and his knuckles appeared taut.
“Just what? What am I just doing?” His words were not tender, not comforting nor inviting, but angry, hostile.
“Are you doing all this to get back at your brother?” Paula asked.
His eyes narrowed and his hands jerked, just an inch. They moved involuntarily, Paula thought, as if some current had struck them, a charge that caused a recoil of muscle and tendon.
“Oliver has nothing to do with this,” he said evenly, calmly … almost.
“And you’re not getting back at your mother, either—really?”
It was a question Paula had not anticipated asking again, but once she had spoken the words, she knew it was the question that would answer all her other questions.
Taller’s right hand pulled back in a snap, with his fist suddenly clenched. Paula flinched—as if he would swing at her out in public like this, in a restaurant, in front of the trio of customers at the counter and the brace of waitresses, milling about the coffee pots, whispering and laughing amongst themselves.
Then his body relaxed, and he settled back into the booth, his shoulders almost slumping, as if overcorrecting and relaxing too much, just to show they were at peace. He smiled. Paula didn’t believe the change in his expression, though she smiled back at him, encouraging him, wanting the truth.
“Nothing to do with my mother, Paula. Nothing at all.”
She waited a moment. “Okay. If you say that’s the truth.”
Taller didn’t take her hands, but he leaned close. His words weren’t angry, but there was a scent of malice in them.
“And why are you doing this, Paula? You and me, I mean. It’s not like I’ve ever said I love you. But I do love what we do. So why? To get back at your lousy ex-husband? That would be enough reason for me. Leaving you like that. Unless you did something to push him away. Did you, Paula? Or are you getting back at your mother? Don’t daughters do that sometimes? Pick the wrong man just to make their mother crazy? Or are you just angry at having a baby? What? What drives you, Paula? What makes you and me work? We do work together, don’t we? Have you been to a therapist to find out why? Have you? Do you understand why?”
Paula said nothing. His words became a deluge, submerging her, drowning her ability to speak, to respond.
“I thought as much. Hey, do me a favor. Stop thinking about it. Stop. You and me work—on some level. Let’s just leave that as it is. Okay?”
She nodded, still unable to reply.
“Then that’s settled.” Taller stood up, reached into his pocket, extracted a twenty-dollar bill, and tossed it on the table. “You can keep the change,” he said softly. He turned, took a step, then turned back. “I’ll call you tomorrow evening. We’ll see what happens, won’t we, Paula? We’ll see what happens between you and me.”
And then he walked away, toward the exit, slowly, with the same sort of walk that he had when he came in.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
OLIVER GOT UP EARLY, took Robert for a walk, then wrote a long note listing a score of different tasks he wanted Taller and the Pratt brothers to work on that day.
At the end he wrote,
I have a lot of errands to run. If I’m not back by five, lock up. I have my key with me.
Oliver B.
He didn’t want to talk to Taller today. He didn’t want to talk to the Pratt brothers. He didn’t want to see Samantha. He would have liked it if he could have packed up his truck and driven into the Allegheny Mountains and hiked up in the woods for a few days without talking to anyone, leaving his cell phone off and even Robert the Dog at home.
But Oliver couldn’t do any of that. A day missing from work would be bad; two or three or four would be a disaster. The Blue Church project was now a couple of weeks behind schedule as it was, so his emotional turmoil couldn’t push it further back. He would be leaving money on the table, and he was in no position to do that.
It’s always been this way. I always have to do what other people think I should do. I’ve never been able to be myself, to decide on things by myself, to determine what’s good for me. I want to believe my mother wants the best for me, but I don’t know what I want anymore. Not at all.
He parked the truck off of Walnut Street. He might be stressed, but he still wanted his morning coffee.
What I want. That’s a laugh, isn’t it? Like I know. Or ever knew. I wish I could make a decision for me … just once.
Jitters Coffee Shop opened early, and Oliver truly preferred their brand of coffee, creamy with only a hint of chocolate. The Pratt boys liked Coffee Tree Roasters’ coffee, so that’s where he usually went.
Even buying coffee I’m pleasing others. Not today. I can get whatever I want, he told himself, at the same time realizing that choosing between coffee shops didn’t exactly constitute an emotional breakthrough.
Oliver knew perhaps three people in all of Pittsburgh, and he kept running into them, over and over. He and Barth nearly collided in the doorway of Jitters.
“You’re up early,” Barth said with great cheer. “You don’t start until eight. And it’s only—what?—a little after five.”
“Couldn’t sleep, Barth,” he said, as the two of them took a table for two by the window.
“And Robert was fine with being left back?”
“No, but sometimes if I’m running errands, he gets confused. He wants to get out at each stop and not every business wants a dog inside—even if they are good-natured.”
Barth poured a heaping spoonful of sugar into his coffee, stirred, tasted, then added another. “You don’t mind if I stop at the church later this morning, do you, Oliver? I promised the Pratt brothers a basic book about the Bible. They could use some instruction.”
“Sure. Feel free to stick around as long as you want. You seem to have a calming influence on them. And I’m glad they got the whole guilt and forgiveness issue settled.”
Barth sipped, as noisy as a garbage disposal. “Not settled, entirely, but on their way.”
“Speaking of instruction,” Oliver said, “I’ve got a question for you as well.”
Barth brightened, as if he were a grade-school child being praised for a good spelling paper, his expression revealing he both deserved the praise and was taken aback. “Shoot. This is good for me. Keeps me active. They say that thinking prevents Alzheimer’s.”
“It has to do with sex,” Oliver said, lowering his voice, so the steam from the coffee machine would drown out his question from other nearby ears in the store.
“Sex … hmmm,” Barth said. “If it gets real complicated, I’ll let you know. Didn’t get a lot of calls up in Kane County for sex advice. Discussing sex and money was pretty mu
ch off limits to most people. And if it involved … women’s issues … I usually let my wife talk to the other woman about it.”
“Not that sort of complicated, Barth. I don’t think so, anyhow.”
“Well, go ahead. I’ll give it a try.” Barth resettled himself in the chair and shook his arms to limber them up, like a prizefighter waiting for his opponent to throw a punch.
Oliver took a deep breath, then let it out. “I’m seeing this woman. I really like her. It’s not serious, at least not yet. We’re really, really different. But … oh, well, here goes … she more or less asked if we could go to bed together.”
Barth coughed into his coffee cup, held his hand over his mouth and coughed again, waving his other hand, indicating, Oliver hoped, that he was okay and just coughing and not having a seizure of some kind.
Oliver waited an anxious moment while Barth’s coughs subsided.
“I’m okay. Took me by surprise there. Go ahead,” the older man sputtered.
“Well, she would have and I said I wouldn’t, because of my faith and what I believe in. I don’t think she understood. I think she took it as an insult. I told her firmly that I’m waiting until I get married. Like the Bible says to do.”
Barth puckered his lips. “And … what’s your question?”
“I guess I just want you to say that it’s okay.”
“Okay to do it?” Barth asked, sounding a little shocked.
“No—saying no. As a believer, I don’t think I have any choice, do I?”
Barth sighed, a world-weary sort of sigh. “I don’t preach anymore, Oliver, but I read a lot. There are some churches out there that seem to think it’s okay now. Like everything’s changed. But it hasn’t—not God’s morals, at least. So I wouldn’t. I never would. You know, if she can’t understand that about you, then maybe that’s God telling you she isn’t ‘the one.’ I had one love in my life: my wife. Once she died, it was like I lost my reason for living. And if Rascal dies, then I won’t have anything left of hers. It will all be gone.”