Pray for Us Sinners

by Marilyn L. R. Hall

  Walter sighed with relief when she didn’t say anything else. “You’re absolutely right, Rose Sharon. We both need to give thanks to God!” She nodded, then quickly turned her face away from him. But he hadn’t ended the conversation.

  “We ought to just forget it ever happened, don’t you think? Just pretend it never happened?” Actually, he sounded close to tears, and Rose didn’t dare look at him for fear of that event occurring. But pretty soon he sighed again and his voice got back to normal while he explained, “I love you and Cynthia and I care deeply for Jack, too. I wouldn’t want us to be afraid … or ashamed … or embarrassed to be with each other because of a few lunatic moments.” Walter took a deep breath, exhaled, and then was quiet for a while until the grocery store loomed before them. Then while he was pulling up to the curb, he added quickly, “Rose, I want to be able to drive you places like we did today and not worry about what might be between us. God knows I could never screw Jack Nash’s wife.” After that he couldn’t talk at all for a while but he was muttering curses at himself and holding onto the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles turned white. “I’m sorry, Rose. I’m just flustered. I hope you know I never use that kind of language, especially not with you!” He looked full on her for a few seconds and she took that time to look back at him and relieve him of his embarrassment.

  “And I couldn’t do that with Sister Claire’s husband,” her smile was comforting and sincere, because she was feeling fonder of him than she ever had before and Walter had already picked up on that.

  “You’re a very special lady, Rose Sharon,” he nodded at her and then thought to himself that she really was a very special lady, and then he went ahead and told her what he was thinking. “You’re extra special to me, too. I want you to know that I love you and that I might even love you in some illicit ways, but I’ll never again allow myself to show it. With the grace of God, I’ll never give in to that temptation again. I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry I put us through this.”

  Rose put her hand on his arm, and he looked at her with a sheepish grin. “I’d rather you stayed on your side of the car, if you don’t mind. I’m not a real strong man, Rose.”

  She drew back and clasped her hands together in her lap. “All right, Walter. We’ll be real careful from now on and I’ll try not to be so casual around you. But truth be told, I feel so safe with you. And I feel so close to you that you might have to remind me every now and then.”

  Walter’s grin widened. “You sure know how to make a man feel exceptional, Rose. I don’t know how that foolish husband of yours can stay away.”

  Rose’s smile faded and pain shot through her heart. “He sure don’t seem to have any trouble with that, though. He stays away right well.”

  At about the same time Walter dropped Rose at her apartment, a door opened behind a curtain at the back of Fletcher’s Pharmacy and Jack Nash, looking handsome and stylish in a slate-gray pinstripe suit stepped onto the same piece of worn linoleum that Rose Sharon had trod with such hopeful excitement a couple of hours earlier. He wore his dark gray fedora tilted rakishly forward across his forehead and his shoes were polished to a glassy shine. With a cocky grin, he tipped his hat to two young girls seated in one of the booths at the back and at the pharmacist in his white jacket and at the pretty blond clerk behind the counter as he made his way through the store and out onto the sidewalk. Then he entered from the curbside the same automobile Rose had sat in less than 30 minutes before.

  Settled finally under the wheel he rolled down the window beside him and turned the key in the ignition. The car responded immediately and the engine hummed. Removing his hat he tossed it into the back seat and ran his fingers through his hair while he studied his reflection in the rearview mirror. He grinned and winked at his image, pleased with himself. It was then that he noticed the piece of folded paper, one end of which was closed into the glove box. His curiosity piqued, he opened the box and removed it. As he started to unfold it, an odd sinking feeling hit his stomach for no reason at all, and an inexplicable sadness came out of nowhere to lay heavy on his heart. With that awful sense of apprehension, he turned off the engine and took a long slow breath as he unfolded the page and glanced over the familiar handwriting that covered the paper. His worst fears were confirmed when he read the signature in her neat and painstakingly drawn little-schoolgirl’s script.

  “Oh, shit!” and Jack crushed the paper against the steering wheel while he stared out through the windshield, not seeing a street full of traffic or the lights just beginning to flash on as twilight faded. He was seeing Rose’s face and not her happy face. He was seeing her the way she had looked at him when he turned away to walk out her door for the last time. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” He straightened the creases he had made and holding the paper between his hands against the steering wheel, he began to read.

  “Dearest Jack Nash…” By the time he reached the signature and the P.S., he was wanting her again.

  “Damn you, Rosy! How the hell did you find me?”

  Suddenly fearful that she might be watching him from somewhere nearby, he began frantically looking around, his eyes straining at the other cars, the shop windows, the people on the sidewalk. But she wasn’t there. How had she ever got to that particular suburb in the first place? Or was it some kind of black magic that put that letter in his hand?

  He breathed another deep breath. There was no denying the fact that she could stir up the hot blood in him. Right at that moment, from just looking at her handwriting on that piece of creased notebook paper, his body had already started aching for her and his hands were shaking remembering the soft curves of her body, the fragrance of her silky skin. Jack’s eyes closed and his mouth opened instinctively to close over hers.

  But she wasn’t there. He held the paper and absently bent the part that bore her name, pressed it to his lips and kissed it. “Rose, Rose,” he sighed, “you do have the power to move me.” His lips parted and he sucked her signature into his mouth, closing his teeth on it. For a long time he let his tongue move back and forth over that little piece of paper. That little piece of paper that she had touched and held and that now became her in his imagination. The day was passing into night. The stores along Main Street were all lit up now and the lane of traffic moving away from him was a string of ruby beads as tail lights slid past. And he just sat there holding that damn letter and kissing her signature while warm memories made his body ache, and desire and need merged in his loins. The urge to answer her prayer and push open her bedroom door was about to overwhelm him when a sudden thought saved him.

  She hadn’t mentioned the damn kid and so he’d almost forgot about it. Almost forgot the reason he’d closed the door on her in the first place.

  With that thought, he took the piece of paper that was Rose’s last desperate hope, out of his mouth and slowly and deliberately crumpled it in his fist. Then with one quick motion of his arm, he had tossed it out the window and into the street where the tires of a passing car immediately smashed it into the pavement.

  “You just didn’t love me enough, Rosy.” He muttered with angry frustration. “This is all your own damn fault!” And then Jack Nash restarted the engine and eased the shiny black automobile away from the curb and into the line of traffic.

  For the first few days after she left the note in what she was certain was Jack’s car, Rose looked up expectantly every time the door to Leo’s Grocery opened and all night long she watched the bedroom door, sure he was going to throw it open and walk back into her arms. Happiness welled up in her and she spent hours talking to Cynthia about her Daddy, making sure she’d know him when he made his return to their family. She took the wedding picture in the oval frame off the wall and brought it to her bedside table where she showed it to Cynthia Jackleen a hundred times a day.

  “This is your handsome daddy, Jack Nash,” she’d tell the child. “You got a lot to be proud of and look forward to. And you’re gonna have lots of time to get to know him now.”

>   For a long time there was not a doubt in her mind that he’d come home. And soon! Her faith was as strong as it had been when she was a child herself and daydreaming him into her life every waking moment.

  But when days turned into weeks and weeks became months, her faith wavered and eventually she knew it just wasn’t going to happen. The car must have belonged to somebody else after all. So after a while she got another nail and hung their wedding photo on the wall beside her bed—low enough so Cynthia could take it down herself for their evening prayers.

  But the disappointments were getting harder and harder to bear each time and she found herself weeping out of control sometimes.

  Leo and Viola did all they could to comfort her. Once they even suggested she go away for a while. Maybe she would like to visit her family in Mississippi. But Rose knew she didn’t have a family in Mississippi anymore. Truth be told, there wasn’t any place to go. And then she started having those strange feelings that she’d had the night Jack left. Feelings that the house was not big enough to contain her, so that she wanted to run screaming like a crazy woman into the street she knew wasn’t big enough either and then wanting to soar up into the sky because there was nothing anywhere on earth left for her to cling to, only Jack Nash and he was nowhere to be found.

  “I think Jack’s not in Chicago, anymore, Leo,” she mused one day. “I think he’s gone away. New York, maybe. Or California.”

  Leo’s brow furrowed, “You think he might have gone back to Mississippi?”

  But Rose smiled at that notion. “No,” she said with certainty. “He had nothin’ down there anymore and anyway, he hated it there.” She was stacking cans of soup and she paused sadly. “Maybe he’s dead. Maybe he got killed in a car wreck or somethin’.”

  Leo slipped his arm around her. “Now, there’s no reason to believe that, Honey. He’s around somewhere. Sometime you’re bound to see him again.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t know anymore. I always felt so sure he’d be back. I just always knew it. But I’m not sure anymore. Truth be told, Leo, I’m scared he’s got somebody else.”

  Her eyes looked desperate and she grabbed Leo’s shirt sleeve with her hand. “Jack couldn’t do without a woman this long, Leo!”

  Leo patted her hand tenderly. “Rose, honey, it doesn’t do a bit o’ good to think things like that.”

  But she was frantic. “Leo, if he’s taken up with some woman he might never need me again. He might never come back to me.” Her eyes held so much fear and anguish that Leo’s own gentle eyes welled up with tears and he bent down to pick up the nearly empty soup box so she wouldn’t notice. After he rubbed away the tears, he straightened up again. “If he takes up with some other woman Rosy, it will only show him how special you are. He’ll never find anybody near as good as you.”

  Rose’s smile was grateful, but she took no comfort from his words.

  And Rose’s foreboding that she’d seen the last of Jack was not her only anxiety. There was the terrifying possibility she’d seen the last of Walter as well because she had neither seen nor heard from him since she left that letter in the car she thought was Jack’s. Viola had even wondered out loud about his prolonged absence, though neither she nor Leo ever asked Rose about it. And Rose was too scared she’d muddled her friendship with him to even bring the subject up to anyone. But the truth was that as soon as she stopped expecting Jack to come back into her life, she started missing Walter. She even went so far in her desperation as to wonder what it would be like to become his “back-street woman.” That was something that had come up more than once in those true-love-story magazines of Mary Jean’s. Rose couldn’t be sure exactly what was expected of a back-street woman, but she was fed up enough with being lonesome to try it. If Walter ever came back, that is—which was beginning to seem as fantastic a notion as Jack’s return. But Claire Louise didn’t come to see her either so maybe they’d just decided to wash their hands of her. It wasn’t as if Claire Louise hadn’t done that a couple of times already.

  At any rate, Rose had more or less given up on him when three whole months passed without even a word. And it almost broke her heart that neither he nor Claire even acknowledged Cynthia’s first birthday!

  But then one morning toward the end of September, there he was! And to her uncomprehending surprise, he had a boy-child on the car seat beside him. Rose just happened to be gazing out the front window of the grocery store resting her elbows on the counter during a few quiet moments between customers, when he drove up and before she had time to consider that she might be better appreciated if she showed less enthusiasm at his return, she had rushed out to meet him, jerked open the passenger door and found the child. Her mouth fell open in amazement.

  “Where did this beautiful child come from, Walter? Where’d you find him?”

  Walter’s face was so lit up with joy he looked like a different man and he answered her instantly.

  “Claire and I are adopting him, Rose. Can you beat that?”

  “Adopting him? Are you tellin’ me the truth, Walter? I cain’t believe it. Why that’s wonderful! That’s the best thing could ever happen to you and Claire Louise.” She lifted the boy into her arms and looked into his face. When she did her scalp began to tingle in a most unnerving way and the more she studied the boy’s face the more she tingled. Finally she turned to look accusingly at Walter who had slid from under the wheel and was now right there on the seat in front of her.

  “Where’d he come from, Walter?” she was asking in a cold and hostile voice that didn’t sound anything like her.

  Walter seemed not to notice. He just nodded and his grin got bigger and he started to answer her but she interrupted him in that same unnatural bone-chilling voice. “Cain’t you tell who he looks like, Walter? Cain’t you see who he’s the spittin’ image of?”

  Walter’s grin faded and he shrugged but he took some time to study the boy’s face.

  And Rose kept glaring at him.

  Walter shrugged again. “What are you getting at, Rose? What are you saying?”

  He studied the boy’s face along with Rose, shaking his head. She watched him with disbelief. Finally she blurted out her suspicions through clenched teeth.

  “Is there any way this child could belong to Jack Nash?” Her voice made Walter shudder because of the malice in it. It wasn’t Rose talking.

  Walter was shaking his head while his forehead furrowed into a disconcerted frown. “Jack Nash?” he said, and then he shrugged again. “I guess he might kind of favor Jack!”

  But then he turned to look at her again and the grin reappeared. “But Rose, that’s not possible! If he favors Jack, or if you see that in him, it’s simply a freaky coincidence; there’s no way on earth he could be Jack’s boy. His mama and daddy are both known to Claire Louise. We got him through her preacher. Brother Browning from her church? She’s known him since we came to Chicago, Rose. This couple, the boy’s parents, are both very young and,” he shrugged and shook his head, “they gave him to the preacher. They were having some problems they couldn’t handle … they’re both alcoholics I understand, and then the husband was taken off to jail for hitting the wife. Just a whole lot of problems and they were about to lose the boy to the state, so the preacher took him and he knows Claire and I can’t have children so … Rose, there were lawyers and everything—it was all done according to the law!”

  Rose’s expression hadn’t changed, so Walter made a move to gently take the child from her. “Well, anyway, that’s where he came from and that’s how we got him. It’s a real miracle I guess, just like Claire says. Makes you take all that sort of stuff more seriously when you run into a real honest-to-goodness miracle of your own.” He was fearful he’d have to forcefully remove the child out of her arms, and he knew that wouldn’t be pleasant. So he stepped out of the car but kept his hands on the boy and waited for Rose to release him

  In the meantime, he explained some more, “Browning knows we’re pretty wel
l off, so he came to us and we agreed to consider it. So he brought this little guy right over and we were just like you, Rose. We lost our hearts! Right then and there. He is a beauty, isn’t he?”

  Walter had eased the child away from Rose and now he moved toward the front of the car and stood him on the fender. “I never thought I could get this excited about anything again.” He shook his head in wonder and then he reached for Rose’s hand and tugged her closer so he could hug her and the boy together. “But I am damned excited now! I feel like my life has just begun. Like I was just born. Is that how you felt when you first got a look at Cynthia?” Rose nodded at him but her eyes were cold so Walter chose to ignore it. He threw his head back and howled. “I’ve got me a boy, Rose. My own son to raise up according to my traditions and my ideals and there is going to be somebody now to carry on the Bradley name. I never gave that a thought before.” Walter’s eyes were digging deep into hers and he sighed and clicked his tongue “Ah my little Rose-Sharon. A whole new life has opened up for me.” He paused again, and then he was laughing. “And I’m happy, Rose. I think it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever been truly happy.”

  Rose saw his eyes mist over and she deeply regretted her lack of enthusiasm for his “miracle,” so she snuggled against him and took the hands of the little boy in hers. “If anybody ever earned his happiness, it’s you, Walter. I’m so glad for you I could cry.” And she did. But some of her tears were for Jack Nash. She couldn’t help thinking what he was missing out on and she wished with all her heart that he could feel some of that pride and love for his little girl that Walter was feeling for this boy who wasn’t even his own flesh and blood..