by Neta Jackson
“Gabby? Do you need to get that call?”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at the caller ID.
Lee Boyer.
chapter 41
I felt torn. Lee was going to think I was avoiding him! But . . . no, this was important. “It’s all right,” I told Philip. “I can call them back. You were saying?”
“Okay. Anyway, the pastor’s sermon was really good. Something about how we are created in God’s image, but that image has been broken by sin and evil in the world, and it’s our job to let God heal the brokenness and rediscover God’s image in our lives—His qualities, His character, stuff like that.”
I had stopped rolling up the chicken wraps, astonished to hear Philip talking like this. “It does sound like a good sermon.”
“Yeah. Kind of hit me between the eyes. A lot of things in my life feel broken right now—our marriage primarily, but a lot of other stuff too. But the pastor said God wants to restore the stamp of His image on our lives. Gave me some hope that maybe it’s not too late for me. To get things right, I mean.”
A long silence hung in the air. Coming from Philip, what he was saying sounded like a foreign language. At the same time, it reminded me of the strong sense I’d had not long ago, that it was God holding my broken heart together.
“Gabby? You still there?”
I found my voice. “Yes . . . yes, still here. Just thinking about what you said. I don’t think it’s ever too late, Philip. Not from God’s point of view, anyway. But that brokenness you mentioned? That’s not something we can fix on our own. Gotta let God do it. It’s the only way.”
I called Lee back later that evening. Had to apologize several times for not getting back to him. Told him I’d spent Friday evening hunting for Lucy . . . Saturday overseeing a reunion between the streetwise old lady and her long-lost family . . . not to mention another tenant moving out and Shawanda already breaking the house rules. “It’s just been a hectic weekend, Lee.” And that was without saying anything about the major moves in Philip’s life that affected me and the boys.
“Okay. I understand, I guess. Just feels as if there’s a lot going on in your life I only find out about after the fact. I would’ve been glad to help you look for Lucy when she went missing. Just call me, Gabby! I’m here for you, you know.”
“I know, Lee. I appreciate it.”
He wanted to set a date to see each other next weekend, but I hesitated. There was so much up in the air! Not knowing when—or if—Philip would return from Virginia. What it would mean if Lucy accepted the invitation to go live with her sister. Estelle maybe moving into an apartment with her son. Work on the newly empty apartment. Next weekend already felt like a zoo.
Not to mention the real question. Should I even be seeing Lee right now?
Wimp that I was, I put him off, telling him I’d know better what my weekend would look like later in the week, but I could tell he wasn’t a happy camper.
Monday turned out to be another dreary, rainy, chilly November day—but at least the weather upped the odds that Lucy would still be at Manna House when I showed up for work. Will had said he would try to bring his grandmother again after his Monday classes. I met with Mabel first thing, bringing her up to date on the whole amazing story of Maggie Tucker Simple finding her long-lost sister by a series of almost miraculous clues pointing to our own Lucy.
Mabel’s smile grew with the story. “That’s God, Gabby. Has to be God.”
“Yeah, but I’m sure God knows that was the easy part. Convincing Lucy to accept her sister’s invitation to come live with her—that’s going to be the hard part.” We both laughed in agreement. “Okay, change of subject?”
I told her about Shawanda and her nighttime visitor. Good ol’ Mabel. She said I ought to talk to Celia Jones and get her advice about whether this infraction was a deal-breaker, or whether the situation called for grace and a second chance. After all, she said, Celia was closer to Shawanda’s situation than any of us, even though she’d been away that night. I was impressed that the director of the shelter was willing to defer to the advice of one of our “clients.” But that was Mabel. Treated our residents as individuals who just happened to be homeless, not a class of down-and-out women who had nothing to offer.
Paul stuck his head into my office after school to say the rain had stopped and he was taking Dandy for a walk around the block—and by the way, Will and his grandmother were upstairs in Shepherd’s Fold talking to Lucy. Curious, I followed Paul and Dandy up to the main level as they headed for the front door. But Maggie and Lucy actually seemed to be talking to each other on the far side of the big room—or at least Lucy seemed to be listening as Maggie and Will talked to her, grunting and nodding from time to time. So I turned around and went back to my office—and when I got there, I closed the door and actually got down on my knees by my desk chair.
“Jesus,” I murmured aloud, “like they say at SouledOut, You’ve brought us too far to leave us now! Soften Lucy’s heart, Lord. Help her to see You are the one who brought Maggie and Will to Chicago, to find her after all these years so she wouldn’t be alone and out on the street in her final years.” Remembering how Jodi often prayed, I added, “Thank You, Lord, for everything You’ve done so far, and for everything You’re going to do!”
I managed to catch Celia that evening as she came in the front door with groceries and asked if I could talk to her privately. After listening to the tale of Shawanda’s nighttime visitor, the middle-aged grandmother pursed her lips and was quiet for a few minutes, as if digesting the information and trying to decide which options were healthy choices or empty calories.
Finally she spoke. “Shawanda’s kind of at a crossroads. If we send her packing, not sure what would happen to her. She might not have the motivation to clean up her life and learn how to be a responsible mom. If she stays, well, we still have some influence on her, bringing some order into her mothering and personal life.” She smiled. “Was just reading the gospel of Luke where Jesus and His disciples were going through a Samaritan town, and the townspeople weren’t very hospitable to the travelers. The disciples asked Jesus if they could call down fire from heaven and wipe them out!”
“Really?” My eyes widened. “I don’t remember that.”
“Chapter nine. You can look it up. Anyway, Jesus told the disciples to let it go, because He came to bring life, not death, to people.” She shrugged. “Maybe that’s how we should respond to Shawanda this first time. Don’t bring down the consequences on her head. Give her another chance at life. But you can always say if it happens again, she’ll have to move out.”
I was amazed by the woman’s wisdom. I ran the whole thing by Edesa and Josh, as the other House of Hope staff members, and they both affirmed Celia’s suggestion. “But why don’t we tell her privately instead of bringing it up at the household meeting tomorrow,” Edesa suggested. “No sense embarrassing her unnecessarily.”
Which we did. Edesa and I sat down with Shawanda and Celia that evening and laid it out for her, so by the time we all got together for the weekly household meeting on Wednesday, Shawanda was falling all over herself being cooperative with everything.
However, the incident helped us realize we needed a specific plan to deal with violations of the rules that everyone understood. What we’d just done had seemed wise—so we presented a plan that when a rule was broken, the consequences for a first-time offense would be decided by at least two House of Hope staff plus one of the residents. A second offense would mean a meeting with the director of Manna House. “Participation in the House of Hope is a privilege, not a right,” I said. “Cooperation with one another and with the rules we’ve all agreed to are essential to our success.”
No one mentioned Shawanda’s violation as the impetus for the new plan, but by the look Tanya gave Precious, I think they had a pretty good idea.
“Hey, Thanksgivin’ is next week,” Precious reminded the group. “If y’all don’t have other plans for fe
astin’, I got me an idea.” We all looked at her curiously. “Why don’t we have a House of Hope Thanksgivin’, with ever’body inviting any family members they got ’round here—well, within reason. Two or three extra folks per, know what I’m sayin’?”
“But we don’t have any space in this building big enough for a sit-down Thanksgiving meal,” I protested.
“Jus’ hold on, I ain’t done yet. We could do it like one o’ them progressive dinners I’ve heard about. Y’know, serve salad in one apartment, turkey in another, dessert in another. See what I’m sayin’?”
The idea caught on—and soon everybody was talking at once about whom to invite and how if everybody brought something, the food wouldn’t be a big strain on anybody. “And if I’m far enough along getting 3B painted,” Josh added, pointing across the hall from 3A where we were meeting, “maybe we could do some games with the kids or something in there. No furniture!” He grinned.
As we were leaving, Edesa said, “Don’t forget, we’re going to have our first House of Hope Yada Yada Prayer Group this Sunday evening. Is five o’clock okay?”
By the time I got back to my own apartment, I was feeling buoyant. We’d dealt with our first major problem in a positive way, we’d come up with a reasonable plan to deal with future problems, we were starting a prayer group for the ladies, and everyone was excited about celebrating a holiday together.
“God is good . . . all the time . . . all the time . . . God is good,” I hummed as I peeked in on the boys, who were still doing homework in their respective rooms, earbuds to their iPods plugged into their ears. A few telltale dishes sitting on their desks with puddles of ice cream in the bottom gave away the latest raid on the kitchen.
I resisted gathering up the dirty dishes—snack dishes were supposed to be returned to the kitchen by the snackee—and headed for my bedroom, hoping to crawl into bed early and read till I got sleepy. But I was interrupted by my cell phone. I looked at the caller ID. What? Philip? He’d been calling on the home phone so he could talk to the boys each evening. Why my cell? I flipped it open. “Hey.”
“Hi, Gabby. Hope you don’t mind me calling your cell, but I need to talk to you, not the boys.”
“O-kaay.” This was it. The Big Plan. I plumped up my pillows and leaned against them on the bed.
“My dad and uncle made me an offer today. Very decent of them, given how badly I messed up in Chicago. They’re willing to take me back into the firm as a manager of one of their divisions— sort of a mid-level position, decent salary. If I behave myself for five years”—he gave a half laugh—“they’ll consider making me a partner.”
For some reason, my chest went tight. Had I been afraid of this all along? That Philip’s trip to Virginia would result in him moving back there? What had I been hoping for? Something, but not this. Even though we were separated, at least the boys got to be with their dad every weekend. They were moving into their teen years! The time when boys needed their—
“Gabby? Are you still there?”
I tried to find my voice. “Yes. Still here. Just trying to digest this news. Thinking about the boys especially. This is going to be hard on them.”
“I know. I’ve been thinking about the boys too. And you. Which is why I’m going way out on a limb here and ask you something . . .” I heard him clear his throat several times. “Gabby, uh, would you consider moving back here to Petersburg with the boys—not now, of course, but maybe at the end of the boys’ semester? Between Christmas and New Year’s or something like that? Or if not then, at the end of the school year? Maybe we could start over, give our family another chance.”
Now I could hardly breathe. How dare he ask that of me! He’d pulled me away from our home in Virginia to come here, which meant giving up a job I loved there, then dumped me. Now I’d started over, made a home for our sons, found another job I loved, even developed the House of Hope, which was giving hope to homeless moms, maybe for the first time in their lives.
As for “us”—Philip and me—we hadn’t even talked about our future! Why would I move a thousand miles to be “together” again when I had no guarantees—none!—that we could put our family back together again? Admittedly, things had been better between us, downright decent in fact, for the past several weeks. And I was proud of the tough decisions he’d made recently to own up to his gambling addiction, sell out his partnership, pay off the debts he’d accrued, be willing to start over . . . but that didn’t answer any of the questions about us.
I took a deep breath and blew it out. And said simply, “No, Philip. I’m not moving back to Petersburg.”
I heard him chuckle. “Didn’t think so. That’s why I told my dad and uncle I couldn’t accept their offer. So tell the boys I’ll see them in a day or two. Just got to wind up a few things here, then I’ll catch a flight back to Chicago.”
“What?” I thought I was over being shocked. “Wait . . . Philip. But what about that job offer? It’s really generous, would help you get back on your feet, and put you back into the commercial development business. That’s what you love doing, right? I mean, why would you turn it down?”
He didn’t answer for a moment or two. And then . . . “Why? Because it took some hard knocks to make me realize what’s most important in my life—and it’s not the business. It’s my family. You and P.J. and Paul. I need to give myself every opportunity to do right by my family. Put it back together if I can, but at least be there for you all—and I can’t do that from Petersburg.”
chapter 42
It took me a long time to fall asleep after the phone call with Philip. I could hardly believe it! His father had offered him a decent way to get back into the commercial development business—not a bailout, like his mother had been ready to do, but a chance to prove himself over a period of time, a chance to rectify his mistakes and start over. And he’d turned it down?
Guilt nagged at my spirit. Maybe I should’ve been willing to at least consider moving back to Petersburg so he could’ve taken them up on the offer.
Funny thing, though. The guilt trip didn’t come from Philip. Even though he asked if I’d consider moving back to Petersburg, he wasn’t surprised by my no. In fact, he said he’d already turned down the offer, realizing it wasn’t realistic to expect the boys and me to drop everything and move back there.
No, he was making a choice. Putting his family first.
It was so . . . so incredibly amazing, I hardly knew what to do with myself. I finally threw off the covers, got up, and put a load of laundry into the machine in the basement, then scrubbed the stovetop, which had needed it for at least a week. I checked on the boys—both of them asleep, Paul with an arm flung over Dandy, who was curled up on his bed, P.J. splayed out on the bed still in his clothes, desk light on. “Your father really does love you,” I whispered to each one as I kissed their cheeks and turned out the lights.
But I still didn’t know the answer to the next question.
Did I still love Philip?
Did Philip love me?
The boys were ecstatic when I told them the next morning that their dad would be back in a few days. But I was still in shock when I arrived at work. And worried. Did Philip have a Plan B? What was he going to do for a place to live? Even more critical, what was he going to do for a job?
Estelle came in late that morning, bustling around the shelter kitchen like a banshee on the loose, trying to put lunch together on time. I came out of my office and leaned on the counter. “You okay? Need some help?” To be honest, I was so distracted that morning I figured I’d be more productive chopping vegetables than pushing my computer mouse around anyway.
She snapped up my offer in a nanosecond, handing me a potato peeler and a ten-pound bag of Idaho potatoes, while she peeled onions for a vegetable soup, fussing the whole time. “Was s’posed to look at a couple apartments this morning. First one, the so-called bedrooms were ’bout as big as your broom-closet there”—she pointed a knife at my office off the dining room—
“and the next one, landlord never showed. Lord, have mercy! If I don’t find an apartment soon, don’t know what I’m gonna do. Leroy s’posed to get released from the nursing center this weekend.” Her knife flew so fast chopping the peeled onions, I was afraid a couple of her fingers might end up in the soup.
“Can’t you ask them for an extension? I mean, they can’t release him if he doesn’t have a place to go, right?”
“That’s what I’m gonna do, ask ’em for another week at least! Got a meeting with the staff there tomorrow mornin’ at ten. Maybe you all can pray for me during Edesa’s Bible study.”
“Mrs. Fairbanks?” The male voice made me jump. Will Nissan appeared out of the stairwell and headed toward the kitchen. “My Thursday classes got cancelled, so Nana and I came a little earlier today—oh, hi, Miss Williams. I’m Will, Lucy Tucker’s great-nephew.” He held a hand across the counter toward Estelle.
“Mm-mm. Whoever you are, son, I like your manners.” Estelle shook his hand. “Whatchu need . . . coffee? Got some leftover sweet rolls from this mornin’.”
“I’m fine, thanks. Just wanted to tell Mrs. Fairbanks here that I think we’re making some progress. Lucy says she’s willing to go visit the condo where my grandmother lives—you know, give her an idea of what it’d be like to live there with her sister. Would tomorrow afternoon about three be okay?”
“That’s fantastic, Will! I’ll make sure Lucy’s ready to go.” I looked at him quizzically. “If Lucy does move in with your grandmother, what about you? Is the apartment big enough for all three of you?”
He ran a hand through his sandy hair. “Not really. It’s only a two-bedroom. I’ll have to move out to make room for Aunt Cindy—Lucy, I mean. I put my name in for student housing at UIC, but they don’t have anything available ’til semester break. So, yeah, it’s a little tricky. I need to find something temporary for six weeks, maybe eight. But”—he shrugged—“it’ll work out. In fact, I’m looking forward to living near campus. I’d like to get involved in more stuff than just going to classes. Oh, been meaning to ask. Have you heard anything from Mr. Philip? I was wondering if he’s going to stay in Virginia or come back to Chicago.”