I didn’t know what language he was speaking, but I understood him perfectly. With tears streaming down my face and blocking my vision, I said, “Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, “thank you, Ariana. Thank you.”
We were quiet for a comfortable moment. I felt as if I had known this man all my life, and I didn’t even know his name.
“Can we pray?” he asked.
I nodded mutely. We knelt down on the rough carpet and he began to pray. He called down the blessings of heaven upon me and pleaded with the Lord in my behalf. I had never felt so much love before. The feeling permeated my whole being until I couldn’t hold another drop.
When he was finished, I hugged him; I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to thank him again, but my voice would not obey. Yet I knew he understood because we had been communicating with our spirits.
As I left the room, he held up my papers. “I’ll take care of these, Ariana. You’ll get your calling soon. You’re going to be a wonderful missionary!”
I left him, my heart full of love and singing with joy. But as I walked down the street to the subway, it started to rain softly, making me recall my conversation of the previous week with Elder Perrault and how he had made me feel that it was time for me to see my parents. With this new love inside me, I suddenly knew I couldn’t leave on a mission without clearing things up with them. I had to at least tell them I loved them, regardless of the distance and bad feelings between us.
Darkness was already beginning to fall when I arrived near the expensive apartment building where my parents lived. As I hesitated outside, several people emerged from the outer door and held it open for me so that I wouldn’t have to use my nonexistent key to open it. I thanked them and smiled, but as soon as they were out of sight, I left the building and let the door shut behind me. Then I went to stand before the row of buttons that rang in the individual apartments above. It wasn’t fair for me to simply appear outside my parents’ door; I would at least give them the few minutes it would take for me to reach their fourth-floor apartment to prepare themselves for my visit, as I had tried to prepare myself on the way over. I pushed the black buzzer and waited for an answer.
Suddenly I was afraid.
Chapter Twelve
“Who is it?” came my mother’s voice through the speaker.
“It’s Ariana. May I come up?”
I heard a swift intake of breath and a shocked pause. Then the buzzer at the door sounded as the outside door unlocked. I made my way up to their apartment slowly, using the stairs instead of the elevator to give them more time. I imagined my mother rushing into the sitting room to tell my father I was coming. Would they be planning what to say? Or would they simply look at each other without speaking, their hearts racing as wildly as mine? Or maybe they didn’t care. I didn’t quite believe that last thought, though it made no difference; whether they accepted me or not, I had to make my peace with them before I could serve the Lord on a mission. It was something I had to do.
The fact that it was raining outside didn’t escape me, and a sense of impending doom was constant. But I pressed on. Suddenly I was at the door, and it opened before I rang.
“Come in, Ariana,” my mother said softly. Her expression was hopeful, and for the first time I had an inkling that maybe I had judged her wrongly in the last few years.
We went to the sitting room and sat down. Clean and elegant, the room looked nearly the same as when Antoine and I had lived there. Memories of happy times when I was a child chased each other through my mind. I also saw my parents as they had once been—young, hopeful, and loving.
I sat on a comfortable chair opposite the sofa where my parents were settling themselves. In the quiet of the room, I studied them. They seemed older than before and somehow softer. I couldn’t help hoping that the year and a half since Nette’s death had changed them as it had changed me.
“I came because I wanted to say that I am sorry for the past few years,” I began, looking at the floor, feeling like a small child again. I was certainly grateful that I had rehearsed my speech on the way over. Maybe I would finally be able to tell them everything. “For years I’ve hated you for blocking me out after Antoine died. Instead of his death bringing us together, it tore us apart. I blamed you both for everything that happened afterwards—my drinking, doing drugs, even getting pregnant. I was just so lonely, and you weren’t there.” I began to cry silently. The tears fell from my eyes, but I paid them no heed. “Then you came to me after Nette was born, and I hoped deep inside that you wanted to be a family again. But instead you asked for Nette—the one thing I had left in my life. You wanted her, not me.” I looked up at them now. “Don’t you see that I needed you, that I just wanted your love?”
“We do love you, Ariana!” they said together.
My mother came to kneel next to my chair. The bright light from the lamp nearby lit up her face, and I could see the love in her eyes quite clearly. “We did want you in our lives. We were just afraid that we were too late. We feared that how we acted when your brother died pushed you so far away that you’d never be able to forgive us!”
My father also came to kneel by my mother. The telling light showed that he was no longer stiff and withdrawn but reaching out to me with hope. “We asked to take care of Nette, but we meant for you both to come back here to live with us.” He gazed at me earnestly with tears in his eyes. “We wanted to help you, but we didn’t know what to do!”
I nodded, looking at each of them in turn. “I think I knew inside that you loved me—or wanted to believe it. But I guess even when Antoine was alive, I knew I was always second-best.”
“What?” my parents said again in chorus, seeming genuinely surprised.
“But we’ve always loved you, Ariana,” my mother said. “As much as we ever loved Antoine.”
I shook my head. “No. No one was ever like Antoine. He was special. I didn’t mind being second to him.”
“But you’re special, too!” my mother said. “The way you always knew how to bring a smile to our faces. The way you always stuck up for what you believed in. We loved you every bit as much as we loved Antoine. You have your own special talents, some similar to your brother’s and some very different.”
I felt the truth of her words spread through me, but I wasn’t ready to let it go that easily. “But you always treated him differently. You let him do what he wanted, and yet I couldn’t go to the corner flea market without company!”
“That’s true,” my father said. “We did want to protect you from people like . . . like Jacques and Paulette, and Antoine always was a good judge of character. But our wanting you to be with him was for him as well as for you. You were always a steadying influence on him. We hoped that your common sense would rub off on him, even just a little. He could be so impulsive at times, but when he thought he was taking care of you, he was always more responsible.”
“I never saw that in him,” I said, but as the words came, I remembered that my brother had been impulsive, doing daredevil things that he would never let me do. I remembered how once I had cried out in fear that he would fall off a steep wall to his death and how he had promised me never to do such a thing again. My brother had been wonderful, full of infectious laughter, caring, and trustworthy. But he had also been heedless of many hidden consequences, things that had been so clear to me. Maybe I had been as important to him as he had been to me.
If only I had been with him on the morning he died.
“Can you ever forgive us?” my father asked. “For what happened to you after Antoine died, as well as for Nette’s death?”
I started at his words. “But that’s really what I came to tell you. I don’t blame you anymore for any of it. I’ve learned that we all make our own decisions and have to live with them, and some things, like death, aren’t even in our control. What happened wasn’t your fault or mine; it was just because we didn’t know any better.”
“Will
you . . . come back home?” my mother asked hesitantly.
I didn’t know until she asked that I even wanted to come home, that I longed for my parents to want me with them.
“Do you really want me to?” I asked.
“Yes, we do,” my father replied. “We always have. We need you.”
I smiled through my tears. “Then I want to come. But I’ll only be able to stay a month or so, because I’m going on a mission.”
“A mission?”
As I talked, I prayed they would understand. “Well, after Nette’s death, I was in a bad way, but I had a good friend who helped me a lot. And through her I found that the Church of God has been restored to the earth! My whole life has changed now—that’s part of the reason I came tonight—and I want to tell other people about it.”
My mother looked steadily at my father in the lamplight and then at me. “Any religion that brought you back to us must be good.”
My father was more practical. “How long will you be gone?”
“A year and a half.” I saw their sadness at that, so I hurried to add, “But I’ll write to you every week, and I probably won’t even go for six weeks or more. I haven’t gotten my call—my assignment—yet. But it’s something I have to do.”
“You’re an adult,” my father said, “and you make your own decisions. But we had simply hoped for more time. We have so much to make up for.”
“But that’s just it, Father,” I said earnestly. “We’ll have plenty of time. With each other and with Antoine and Nette. That’s what is so wonderful about the gospel—knowing there’s so much more than what we see. We can be a family forever, even after death!”
My parents appeared skeptical, but they didn’t reply or verbally reject what I had said. That alone showed how much they had changed.
* * *
The next day, Monday, I moved back home after my morning classes, even though I would lose the last two weeks’ rent from my old apartment. I didn’t mind. The important thing was that I had my family back. And Marguerite and Jules weren’t upset in the least, only very happy that I had patched things up with my parents.
“I always knew they loved you,” Marguerite said. She hugged me and then sent Jules to help move my things.
“So now what?” my mother asked as we settled my few belongings in my old, familiar bedroom. It had been kept virtually the way I had left it years ago. Since it was fully furnished, my other possessions, such as Nette’s toys and clothing and my couch and bed—the only furniture really worth keeping—went into my parents’ storage room in the basement of their building.
“Well, I’m going to finish out my school course and work until I get my mission call.”
“But you don’t need to work anymore,” my mother protested, trying to hide her grimace as she unpacked my worn clothing. “We want to take care of you while you’re in school.”
I stood up and took her hands in mine, looking earnestly into her eyes. “I know, Mother, and I’m so grateful. But I’m trying to earn as much as I can to pay for my mission, so my church doesn’t have to do it.”
“You have to pay money to go?”
“Only my expenses—food, clothing, a place to stay.”
“Oh.” My mother’s voice was thoughtful.
I forgot about our conversation until later that night, when my father knocked softly on the door. I had just settled into bed and called for him to come in.
“Your mother tells me that you have to pay for this mission of yours,” he said bluntly. “I’d like to help you out.” He held up his hand before I could speak. “We’ve got more than enough money to do so, and it would make us feel better, knowing that we are helping our little girl.”
His words reminded me of how much I’d wanted to give to Nette and how time had taken away that chance. “Thank you, Father,” I said, understanding what it meant to him for me to accept. It meant a great deal to me, too. I could almost feel the weight of my monetary worries vanishing as if they had never existed. “I would appreciate it greatly.”
“I also want you to come to work for me at the bank,” he said, reaching out to hold my hand. I was almost overwhelmed at the love I felt in his grasp. “You’d earn a lot more money, and when you come back you’d have a good job waiting. You’d be good, too, from what you tell us of your grades, and you’d learn a lot.”
A job at the bank! “Oh, Father, I would love to!” I blurted out without thinking. Then I remembered the café. “But I’d have to talk to Marguerite first.”
“Of course.” He kissed my cheeks and left.
I lay in bed thinking of the new life opening up before me. My parents back, a good job. If only . . . Thoughts of Nette overcame me, and I held her bear to my chest tightly. But I didn’t cry. Suddenly I was thinking of Elder Perrault and how my heart fluttered every time I saw him. Quitting work at the café would mean that I wouldn’t see him every day, only on Sundays. But maybe that would be for the best, in view of how I felt about him and the fact that he was a missionary.
I fell asleep thinking about Elder Perrault, dreaming of the day when he would just be plain old Jean-Marc.
* * *
“You don’t have to give me notice,” Marguerite said cheerfully when I told her of my father’s job offer. “I’ve been waiting for a chance to introduce my niece, Colette, to the gospel, and now I can call her and say that I’m desperate for her. She’s not expecting her baby until the end of next month, so we’ll have plenty of time to find a replacement for you.” She hugged me suddenly. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to miss you terribly. You’re like a daughter to me.” She stopped to wipe a tear from her eye with the back of her rough hand.
“And don’t worry about your apartment. The people the missionaries were living with had a new baby and want to use the missionaries’ room for a nursery. They came by last night and told me, so I said they could rent your old apartment. Someone in the ward has already donated twin beds and a couch. With the furniture you left, they’ll have things pretty good—for missionaries.” She laughed. “So I’ll give you back two weeks’ rent for this month to go for your mission. They’ll be moving in this afternoon, if it’s all right with you.”
Things were working out wonderfully. “That’s great! But I still have a few things I forgot—pictures and stuff.”
“Well, you can run up and get those things after the lunch rush.”
The afternoon sped by as we helped and laughed with the customers. During a brief lull, Marguerite called Colette, who promised to be there the very next day. I had a bittersweet feeling, knowing everything I did that day at the café was for the last time. I had many good memories there.
Finally, things slowed down during the late afternoon. “Why don’t you go now?” Marguerite asked.
I glanced around the nearly deserted café. “Okay. I’ll be back in a few minutes. It shouldn’t take me long.”
Marguerite shrugged. “Take as long as you want.”
The hall was strangely quiet as I made my way to my old apartment. Memories of Nette and days gone by fluttered through my mind like the ghosts they were. But I felt no regret at leaving. I had to go on with my life.
The door was slightly ajar when I arrived. It seemed the missionaries were already moving in. “Hello?” I called.
“Come on in,” someone said. So I pushed the door open and walked in.
“Surprise!” yelled many voices as I stood there blinking in surprise. “Happy birthday!”
I laughed. I had completely forgotten it was my birthday. Everyone close to me in the ward was there, as were my parents. There were so many people in the room that I practically had to squeeze my way into the apartment. The small kitchen table had been dragged to the center of the room and, along with the coffee table, was loaded with treats.
Marguerite arrived shortly after me with additional food and drinks from the café. “Don’t worry about going back to the café tonight,” she said. “I got Dauphine to cover for y
ou. I’m going to stay with you myself until the dinner rush begins.”
It was a birthday party like those I had known when Antoine was alive, and I found myself laughing and talking as I hadn’t for years. I received many presents, mostly books and Church-related items. Towards the end, when people started leaving, the elders finally showed up, carrying their suitcases.
“You’re a little late,” I teased.
“Yes, we know,” Elder Perrault rejoined. “But it’s your fault.”
“What?”
“Some lawyer called us this morning and asked to see us this afternoon. He said he was the one who prosecuted Jacques’ case a year and a half ago. We’ve just spent hours in a first discussion with him and his family.” He shook his head in amazement. “You never cease to surprise me, Ari.”
At his use of my nickname, my mother looked up quickly. But during the week I had grown used to his calling me that. In fact, I loved hearing it said in his caressing voice.
“These are the elders, Mother, Father. They’re the missionaries in this area. I’m going to be doing what they’re doing,” I said.
“What is it exactly that you do?” my father asked. Elder Jones immediately began explaining.
Seeing that his companion had things well under control, Elder Perrault picked up the luggage. “Which way to the bedroom?” I pointed it out and even walked over with him to open the door. He smiled his thanks and went inside as I returned to the living room to listen to Elder Jones, my parents, and the few remaining party guests discuss missionary life.
Through the open bedroom door I could see Elder Perrault unpacking his suitcase, putting most of his clothing on hangers in the closet. I saw him take something else out of his suitcase and slide it under one of the twin beds. But not before I had seen what it was—a poster of me from the Coalition’s campaign. Why does he have that? I asked myself hopefully. A warm feeling spread through my chest.
The Ariana Trilogy Page 13