Kevin, who stood on Mara’s right, pulled out his phone. She nudged him, and he pocketed it. He had at least feigned attention during most of the service and had seemed genuinely interested when the children went forward to hear the story about Mary Magdalene mistaking the risen Jesus for the gardener. For all my boys, Lord. Please. Awaken them. Help them recognize you. She wondered how Brian and Tom were spending Easter morning. Not at church, that was for sure. Sleeping in, probably. Maybe meeting Tiffany and her kids for a big brunch buffet. Brian loved brunch buffets. She hoped Tom took him somewhere that had Belgian waffles. Brian loved piling toppings on Belgian waffles. So did Kevin. Kevin would get to enjoy an Easter waffle and omelet and anything else he wanted because Abby’s parents were treating all of them to a fancy brunch at their hotel, the sort of brunch Mara wished she could afford on special occasions. Maybe someday.
“Crown Him the Lord of life! Who triumphed o’er the grave, who rose victorious in the strife for those He came to save. His glories now we sing, who died, and rose on high, who died eternal life to bring and lives that death may die.” Ooh. That was a good line. Amen to that. She glanced over her shoulder to the section where she’d seen Hannah sitting with Nathan and Jake. She wondered if Hannah was thinking about Meg when they sang that line. Probably. John was sitting over in that section too. Mara wondered if he’d seen her sitting with her family. Probably. They were pretty conspicuous visitors in the second row, the most racially diverse row in the whole place. Maybe her church was one of the few in Kingsbury that had so many races and ethnicities worshiping together. After worshiping there for so many years, Mara had stopped noticing. She wouldn’t take it for granted anymore.
After the music finished, they remained standing as the pastor, wearing dry clothes again, ascended the steps in the front of the sanctuary and raised his arms in a blessing. “Christ is risen!” he exclaimed.
And the congregation shouted in reply, “He is risen indeed!”
When Mara and John happened to make eye contact after the benediction, Mara knew she couldn’t leave the sanctuary without wishing him a happy Easter. And once she hugged him and wished him a happy Easter, she couldn’t leave the conversation without asking about his wife. She switched Madeleine’s empty carrier to her other hand and said, “How’s she doing?”
He shrugged. “Okay. Or as okay as she can be, I guess. You know Charissa. Staying down like this is about as hard as . . . well, it’s hard for her.”
From the expression on his face it was clear it was going to be hard for him too. She was going to say, Tell her hi from me, tell her I’m praying for her, but since she wasn’t sure what kind of reaction such a message would provoke, she fiddled with the smiley sun mirror dangling from the carrier handle.
“I’m really sorry, Mara, about what happened the other night. She was tired, upset, stressed. This isn’t anything like what we were expecting, what we were hoping for.”
“No, I know.”
He laid his hand on her shoulder. “She knows she overreacted, and she’s sorry about it. I think she tried to call you.”
“Yeah. She didn’t leave a message.”
“Right. I don’t know if she’ll try to call you again. I think she feels pretty embarrassed about the whole thing, so maybe if you could call, check in with her sometime . . .”
“Yeah, I’ll call her.” That was good news, that Charissa wasn’t still mad at her. “Tell her happy Easter from me, and I’ll check in with her later. I’m going out with my family”—she gestured toward the front of the sanctuary where Ellen was taking photos of Jeremy, Abby, and Madeleine—“so maybe tomorrow or something?”
“Yeah. Sounds good. Thank you.” John gave her another hug and said, “Christ is risen!”
Mara replied, “He is risen indeed.”
“Where’s Kevin?” Mara asked when she joined the others near the Easter lilies.
Jeremy motioned over his shoulder toward the baptismal pool, where Kevin stood, his hand in the water. “Just wanted to see if it’s warm,” he said when he saw his mother looking at him. He quickly dried off his hand on his jeans.
“Well, come on over here for a picture. Let’s get a few with everyone together, okay?”
“Here, let me help,” Hannah said from behind her.
“Oh, thanks, Hannah!”
“No problem.” While Hannah set down her bag, Mara took her place on the steps between Jeremy and Kevin. “Everybody scooch in together,” Hannah said, “Kevin, closer there by your mom, that’s it. Look here, everyone.” With Kevin’s shoulder pressed against her and her hand resting on Madeleine’s little arm, Mara looked at the camera and smiled.
Charissa
“Mara’s not mad at you,” John said when he entered the house with a bag of Subway sandwiches. It wasn’t the Easter brunch Charissa had envisioned a week ago, but she was choosing not to complain. Gratitude was the spiritual discipline she could not afford to neglect.
“She’s way more forgiving than I am.” Charissa slowly shifted to an upright position on the couch and unwrapped her ham and cheese sub. She was going bland. Nothing to agitate Bethany. “So should I call her again?”
“She’s out for lunch with her family. Abby’s parents are in town for the baptism.”
Charissa had completely forgotten about that momentous occasion. What an awful friend she was. To Mara and to Abby. “How was it?”
“Beautiful. I can’t even remember the last time I saw adults get baptized. So powerful.” He probably didn’t mean it as a slight against First Church, but even so, she bristled.
“Infant baptism is beautiful too,” she said.
“Yeah, I know. But when you get to witness a new believer going down into the water and coming up again, there’s nothing like it.”
She wasn’t going to argue with him. Charissa had been baptized as an infant; John had been baptized as a teenager. They’d had that conversation during their premarital counseling with the Reverend Hildenberg and had agreed that their children would be baptized. John might not remember. But she wasn’t going to argue. Not now. She was going to stay calm and practice letting go. Over and over and over. She had to. “You want to say grace?”
“Yeah, sure.” He reached for her hand and prayed.
There was a tree outside their bedroom window, visible whenever Charissa lay down to rest, that was in need of some serious exfoliating. Her online research identified it as a river birch, prized by some for the beauty of its peeling bark. But every time she looked at it, she felt agitated, overwhelmed by a desire to march out there and rub it smooth. That was precisely what she could not do, not just because of the mandatory bed rest but because, according to the experts, stripping the bark would harm the tree. “I swear that tree is taunting me,” she said when John entered the room to deliver a cup of lemon tea after lunch.
“Want me to close the blinds?”
“No. I’ll still be thinking about it.”
“It’s just doing what it’s supposed to do.”
“Well, it’s driving me nuts.” She was surprised she hadn’t noticed it when they first moved in. Maybe it hadn’t been shedding then. She took a sip of tea. “Okay, maybe close the blinds.” He reached for the string. “Not all of them, though. I want some sunlight.” He maneuvered one side closed. But then they weren’t even. “Maybe just angle the slats up a bit—yes, like that. Thanks.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Anything else you need?”
She had a stack of books, her computer, her tea. “No, I’m good. Thanks.”
“Okay.” He kissed her forehead. “I’m heading over to Tim’s for a little while. They put in their new deck and—”
“Yes, I know. It’s awesome.”
“It is. But ours will be more awesome.”
She shooed him away. “Go on. Go covet your deck.”
“Our deck.” He motioned toward the window. “If you want, we could just take that tree out, make the deck bigger.”
; “I’m not going to kill a perfectly good tree.” Even if it drove her crazy.
“Well, then. What is it you always say about being provoked?”
“Linger with what provokes—”
“Yeah,” he said, “that. Do that.”
It was, Charissa realized as she finished her tea, the exact same impulse she’d identified several months ago with her urge to kick at car tires to dislodge muddy snow. She wanted smooth and pristine, not ragged and shedding. Not slow. Not passive. Would the tree eventually shed its bark? She didn’t know. And even if it did, wouldn’t the bark grow right back and resume its same ugly process of shedding? It was that whack-a-mole image all over again. Even if she shed some of her deeply ingrained patterns of pride, she was never going to be completely free of it. So why couldn’t she be at rest in that? Why couldn’t she rest in grace and yield to the slow process of becoming more like Christ?
Because she was a perfectionist, that’s why, and she didn’t have much hope for ever being otherwise.
If only she could be as tranquil and yielded as that shedding tree, at rest in the process of gradually letting go. If only.
She opened her computer. She had papers to write and lecture notes to prepare for her substitute. Still no final word on who that would be, but she would make sure that whoever it was had excellent content to offer the students. If she was going to be physically immobile, at least she didn’t have to be intellectually so. She would make it across the semester’s finish line, even if she had to do so lying down.
Mara
The hotel brunch was as lavish a spread as Mara had ever seen, with elaborate ice sculptures of rabbits and eggs and flowers adorning some of the buffet tables. “Look at the design on that egg,” she said to Abby as they made their way through the line. It looked as if it had been etched on glass. Mara held out her plate for some seasoned skillet potatoes to go along with her vegetable omelet.
“All that work for such a short amount of time,” Abby said. “Wonder how long it takes them to do that.” She pointed out the sculpture to her mother and said something in Chinese. Ellen nodded.
“Please tell your mom how much we appreciate them treating us to all of this. It’s a feast.”
Again, Abby spoke quietly in rapid syllables. Ellen turned toward Mara and said, “Celebration. Thank you, Jesus.”
“Amen!” Mara replied. “Thank you, Jesus.” She wished she could privately communicate her desire for Ellen to pray fervently for Jeremy. She didn’t want to ask Abby to translate. No need to cast a shadow of anxious thoughts over her daughter-in-law’s special day. “Kevin, look at that dessert table.” Beneath an ice sculpture of a woven Easter basket was a variety of layer cakes, cheesecakes, brownies, assorted cookies, and fresh fruit. “I wish I could do something like that for Crossroads.”
“You could bake like that,” he said.
“Yeah, but it would cost a lot of money to buy all the ingredients. I’ll be stretching it just to make all the cookies I want to make.”
Ellen and Abby exchanged something in Chinese, a back and forth conversation that ended with Abby saying to Mara, “My mom asked what Crossroads is, so I told her how you work there, that you cook meals for them. She says she wants to help you cook a special meal for the people there. A feast.”
“No ice,” Ellen said with a grin. “Food. Much food.”
“Oh,” Mara said, “that’s very kind of you, but we don’t have much of a budget for a feast. Just at Thanksgiving and Christmas.” That’s when the donations from the community poured in. The rest of the year was lean.
Abby said, “Sorry! I mean, my mom doesn’t want to help you cook. She wants to pay for the food. Give a donation for a feast.”
Mara stared at Ellen, unable to speak.
“My parents support a shelter in Ohio,” Abby said. “She says she’s happy to support one here too.”
Mara used her free hand to tap her heart. “Thank you, Jesus!”
And Ellen added, “Amen!”
Mara had just cleared off her plate and was contemplating a trip to the dessert table when Kevin ducked his head behind her and said, “Dad’s here.”
“What?”
“Dad’s here.” He gestured toward the end of the line. Mara followed his pointing finger. Tom, strutting like someone who used to be attractive and still considered himself to be so, had just entered the dining room with Brian, a frizzy-haired pregnant woman she assumed was Tiffany, and several small, bickering children. He took a plate off the top of the stack, his back still turned toward their table.
Mara spun around in her seat, trying to figure out if there was somewhere she could hide. But Jeremy had already gone back for seconds, and it would only be a matter of time before Tom or Brian caught sight of him. Of all the rotten—
“They see us,” Kevin said. “Brian just looked over here.”
Without thinking, Mara turned around. Right at that same moment, Tom also turned. Their eyes met, and his face reddened. She felt the color drain from her cheeks. Of all the places to end up for Easter brunch! And now what should they do? Brian wouldn’t acknowledge her; he had already turned his back. Tiffany, her attention focused upon a little boy who was grabbing for a plate, was oblivious to any drama. And by the look on Tom’s face, he wasn’t eager to divulge anything. Brian nudged him forward in line, and Tom held out his plate to the woman serving scrambled eggs.
They could ignore and avoid each other. That was the appealing option. Or . . .
Maybe . . .
Mara rolled her shoulders and stood. “Want me to bring you a piece of cake or something, Kev?”
He leaned forward on his knees and pretended he was enthralled with the sleeping baby in her carrier on the floor. “No, thanks.”
Breathing a prayer for help and courage, Mara timed her arrival at the dessert table to match Tom’s. “The chocolate cake looks good,” she said. Tom did not reply. “Hi, Brian.” Brian reached for a piece of raspberry cheesecake. “No Easter hug for your mom, huh?” Tiffany, her heavily made-up eyes wide with curiosity and perhaps a bit of fear, looked first at Brian, then at Mara. No way she was even half Tom’s age. “You must be Tiffany. I’m Mara. And who are these cute little guys?”
Tiffany, full plates in each hand, rested her elbow on the blond head of the oldest, took a moment, and then said with a squeak, “This is Caleb, that’s Drew, and the little one’s Mikey.”
Three spirited little boys plus one pouty thirteen-year-old, a fifteen-year-old who wanted nothing to do with her, and a baby on the way? Mara looked at Tom’s soon-to-be-wife and was overwhelmed not by anger and resentment but by pity. “You’ve got your hands full there,” Mara said, noting the enormous diamond ring on her finger. “Can I help you carry something to the table?”
Tom looked like he wanted to strangle her with a single bare hand. Tiffany passed Mara a plate and said, “Okay. Thanks.”
“Brian, help your”—Mara struck her forehead—“oh! I was going to say ‘brothers,’ but not yet, right? Never mind, you can still help these little guys. It looks like maybe they’d like to have some dessert too.” She bent toward the littlest one, a hand on her hip. “You tell Brian what you want, okay? He’ll get it for you.” Brian, scowling, ignored her and turned away from the kids—two of whom were now hitting each other—to get a second plate for himself.
As Mara accompanied the waddling girlfriend and three whining children to a table at the opposite end of the restaurant, she could feel two sets of hate-filled eyes boring into the back of her head.
“Everything okay, Mom?” Jeremy said, hastening to her side. He must have only just figured out what was happening. And oh, the look of confusion on Tiffany’s face! Priceless.
“Yes, hon, everything’s great. Just meeting Tom’s new family. This is Tiffany”—Jeremy’s eyes widened as he glanced at Tiffany’s enormous belly—“and these are her sons, Caleb, Drew, and Mikey. Tiffany, this is my oldest son, Jeremy. And of course, you know Kevin.” She
motioned over her shoulder, but Kevin was still concealing himself by attending to Maddie.
Mara glanced toward the dessert table where Tom and Brian were still deliberating. Or avoiding. This was her open door, and she was going to plow through it head down like a running back into an end zone, just like she’d seen Kevin do countless times on the football field. Evade the tackles and go, go, go! “Kevin was telling me about Hawaii, Tiffany. That sounds wonderful! And Disney World, wow! You guys excited about that?”
The little boys stared at her, and the middle one, his finger shoved up his nose, nodded.
Mara leaned toward Tiffany and said with a confidential tone, “Not sure Kevin’s too keen on that, though. A little old, maybe. And it would be a shame for him to spoil the fun for your little guys. You know how moody teenagers can be.”
Tiffany looked like she was taking this information to heart. Even if she didn’t have prior experience with adolescent boys, she had probably spent enough time around Brian and Kevin to know how difficult they could be.
“Just a thought,” Mara said. “You and Tom should talk it over, make sure you’re on the same page.” She held her hand up in front of Caleb and said, “Hey, bud, gimme five!” He slapped her palm hard. She pretended to be hurt, and he laughed. Then the other two clamored for the same. When she finished getting her hand slapped and feigning injury, Mara said, “Well, I’ll let you all enjoy your meal together. Great to meet you, Tiffany.”
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