Suburban Renewal

by Pamela Morsi

  Corrie

  2000

  I was sitting in a row of dignitaries behind the podium. In front of me, hundreds of Minnesota educators were seated in stackable hotel chairs. They were wearing their convention buttons, funny hats and award ribbons. They sat waiting, their notebooks open to blank pages, their pens held at the ready, as they listened to the speaker at the microphone.

  “Nationally recognized as an education innovator, her learning-friendly classroom designs utilizing age, culture and behavioral norms are nationally recognized for flow, function and the ultimate yardstick, student success. And she has done this as a public service for teachers and schools, public and private, struggling against ever more restrictive budgets. Now she’s written a book and developed an interactive software program that shares with users some of what she’s learned along the way.”

  The speaker took a breath and turned slightly to glance in my direction.

  “Ladies and gentleman, today’s undisputed authority on classroom design for the new millennium, author of A Place for Learning and the creator of Education-Environments.com, Ms. Corrie Braydon.”

  The applause was more welcoming than I expected for an education techie. People knew of my work and admired me for my accomplishments. It was a strange concept, but it felt really good.

  During the long months of rebuilding after the tornado, Nate and I had spent our evenings escaping from the workday drudge and anxiety by upgrading the Web site. We managed to get our design software interactive. Teachers could come onto the site, enter in their own specifics and be shown designs that had been developed for classrooms similar to their own. They could then, with the new options available, customize that plan to more closely fit their needs. From the day it went up, it was an immediate success. Teachers took to it with the enthusiasm of middle schoolers to video games.

  That was great, except it put a tremendous strain on our server and I was going to have to spend more money to keep the site operating. I thought about going back to Jim, the gentleman who managed the venture capital and who had been previously interested in me. But the dot.com bust was widening. His clients had lost their savings and he was out of business. Alternatively, I approached a publishing company. They were as excited as the teachers. They wanted to produce a CD version of the program on the Web to be included with the book.

  I wasn’t a rich-and-famous author now—even the top sellers at education presses are only moderately successful commercially. But it had done well enough to make it worthwhile to the publisher, and to provide me with a little development money.

  As I stood before those teachers, I knew that I had achieved my goal. At eighteen, I had wanted to do something important. I had wanted to meet important people and make a difference in the world. I had done that now and not in a way that I would ever have imagined.

  The new century had brought a number of highlights for the Braydon family, including the reopening of Okie Tamales on the new Main Street Mall.

  On Gilkison’s advice, Sam had taken on interested investors in the company and revamped the plant, utilizing the latest commercial equipment. It was housed in a more efficient, worker-friendly building and the new setup increased production.

  Sam’s work on Lumkee’s rebuilding project had broadened his ambition as well as his knowledge. Plans were now in the discussion stage for a second production unit to be built near Conway, Arkansas. He hoped that by 2003 Arkie Tamales would be on sale in grocery stores from Fort Smith to the Mississippi River.

  My father’s rehabilitation was going well. Especially for my mother. Although I had done what I could to help her care for Dad after his stroke, most of his care fell upon her shoulders, more than anyone would have thought she would have been able to bear. Mom was always so self-involved. We all knew that she loved Dad, but as in most of her relationships, she was always more interested in being the love-ee than the lover.

  This second stroke had left Dad almost totally helpless for weeks. Even as he improved, it was very slow progress. Because of the ongoing crisis all over town, a few hours a day was all that anyone managed to spare. Jin and her family needed more help than they could give. And poor Harlan Larson, Cherry Dale’s son, trying to keep her business going so that he could pay for the care she required, began to count on us as the nearest thing he had to family. Mom was forced to fend for herself, with a very sick man totally dependent upon her. And like the rest of us in that dark, sad period, she rose to the challenge.

  I worried that she would ruin her own health, trying to do for him. But the result was quite the opposite. Mom had a purpose. Perhaps more feeling of purpose than she’d experienced since Mike’s death. The sagging seventy-something socialite was suddenly energized. Twenty-four-hour nursing care didn’t even faze her. And as Dad improved, she began branching out, offering advice and assistance to other caregivers.

  I guess this was the first time I realized that Lauren’s affinity for social activism might not be some strange aberration in our family, but a strength of character she’d inherited from my mother, who had secretly carried it all her life.

  In June, Lauren graduated from Baylor. The whole family went down to Waco, including Dad, who was still unsteady on his feet and using a wheelchair most of the time.

  We were so proud of her, and we had a wonderful time wandering the well-manicured campus. The college atmosphere was fun and exciting, but I sensed a wistfulness in Jin. She never said a word, nor did she seem angry or jealous of Lauren. But I would catch her in private moments, her expression sad. And she held Makayla close more often than the little girl liked.

  After commencement, Gilkison took us all out to dinner. His two younger children, thirteen-year-old Jared and ten-year-old Regan, were also in the party. They seemed like good kids, polite and quiet, though Regan did show a little bit of underlying nastiness to Lauren.

  Their father’s unexpected announcement probably didn’t make things better.

  “With all the exuberance of this very special day,” he said, “I wanted to tell all of you, whom we love so much, that Miss Lauren Braydon, a magna cum laude bachelor of arts graduate, has consented to make me the happiest man in the world. As of last week, we’re engaged!”

  Lauren was all flushed, I think with both excitement and a smidgeon of embarrassment, as well. Gilkison was obviously so happy, much more so than the people at the table with whom he wanted to share his joy.

  Sam and Nate had developed a grudging respect for the man, but it was still grudging. Although she never spoke of it, I was fairly sure that Jin didn’t care for the man. I, personally, thought my baby girl could do a lot better. And the two Oberfeld children appeared angry enough about the announcement to spit nails.

  But we all wished them well and pretended delight, though I felt a definite pall had settled upon the celebration.

  Lauren moved home and we both jumped into the plans for the wedding, which she hoped to have in late fall. Fortunately, she didn’t want a grand affair, and Gilkison, after suggesting that the wedding be moved to Tulsa where the churches were larger and the reception venues more lavish, seemed to be willing to allow Lauren the sweet little small-town wedding that she wanted.

  The plan was to have the ceremony in “Gram’s church”—we’d continued to attend Ninety and Nine Baptist all these years. The sanctuary there would only hold a hundred and fifty, which was a great way to limit the growth of a grandiose occasion.

  For the reception we chose the Elk’s Lodge, which would easily and safely seat that many and still have separate space for dancing.

  Lauren played a little trick on us. She planned a nice menu and went around getting bids from local caterers. She came back with an estimate for dinner, including the champagne toast, at thirty dollars a plate.

  Having heard the whines of my friends, I knew this was not out of line. Although, I could tell by Sam’s expression that it was more than he’d thought to be spending.

  “Do you think we can afford this,
Daddy?” Lauren asked him.

  “If this is what you want, honey,” he told her, “then I think I can swing it.”

  She hugged him.

  “I love you so much,” she told him. “And what I’d really like to do is have an old-fashioned reception with just cake and punch, and donate the rest of the money to the International Campaign Against Hunger. That would be a very blessed wedding feast.”

  So we planned a modest celebration and Sam wrote a big check to her charity.

  Not that Lauren’s generous nature was universally applauded. My mother was horrified.

  “What will people think?” she asked me rhetorically, and then answered her own question. “They’ll either believe that Sam’s business is on the skids, that you don’t care very much about Lauren or that you’re just cheap!”

  The groom-to-be also had reservations.

  “If we’re not going to feed people, then the least we owe them is an explanation,” he said. “Otherwise, how will people understand that they’re participating in a good deed?”

  Lauren laughed at that as if he were making a joke. “Oh, yeah, right,” she said facetiously. “We’ll get the M.C. to make an announcement. ‘Your rubber chicken dinner is being donated to a grateful and deserving nutritionally deprived Third World citizen. He needs the calories and you could stand to lose a few pounds.’”

  In the end a small, carefully worded acknowledgment was added to the back of the program.

  Lauren chose Gilk’s daughters to be her bridesmaids. His son was to be best man. By midsummer the hall was rented, the invitations sent, the decorations selected, the cake ordered and the dress altered. Everything was going great, except Lauren seemed to have lost her luster. She didn’t seem happy or excited.

  I thought maybe it had something to do with Jin. Jin and the baby didn’t spend nearly as much time at home anymore. Her relationship with Nate had always been very private. If they were having trouble or estranged somehow, I couldn’t tell. But after Lauren returned from school, Jin spent more and more of her nights and almost all of her days elsewhere. She was helping her parents a lot, assisting with her father’s care and working full-time in her sister’s business. I was glad to see that the hard feelings between her and her family had lessened considerably since the tragedy of the storm. Her father’s disability was permanent. They never reopened the grocery, but I would see him in his wheelchair at the new Kim Pharmacy on the Main Street Mall with little Makayla in his lap, talking to her in Korean. We acknowledged each other politely.

  Cho Kyon was more forthcoming. But if she knew what was going on with Jin and Nate, she never said anything.

  I finally asked Lauren.

  “Have you and Jin had some kind of disagreement?”

  “What?” Lauren shook her head with certainty. “We get along fine,” she assured me. “All we ever talk about is Makayla. And we’re both agreed that she is the sweetest, cutest baby girl on earth!”

  Lauren’s grin was infectious, like the Lauren I knew so well, but it disappeared too quickly and she was back to this strange gray discontent.

  “What’s wrong, Lauren?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you getting nervous about the wedding?” I asked. “Are you having second thoughts?”

  She shook her head, but she didn’t smile.

  “I’m sure it’s the right thing,” she said. “I’m convinced that God has chosen me to be a helpmate to Gilkison. That’s his plan for my life. It’s a very special gift.” She sighed heavily. “But sometimes, to make room for something new in your life, God has to cut away something that you’ve cherished.”

  “What has God cut away from you?”

  “My dreams,” she answered. “My ambition.”

  “Are you saying that Gilk won’t let you pursue a career?”

  “Oh, a career, probably so,” she said. “But marrying him means staying in Waco my whole life. Raising children. Volunteering at church. Doing community work. Those are all good things, worthwhile things. I just had my eyes set on something else.”

  She looked so sad, it was breaking my heart.

  “Lauren, if you don’t want to marry this guy, you don’t have to. Trust me, God will understand.”

  She reached over and squeezed my hand. “Thanks, Mom,” she said. “I do want to marry him. I know he’s stuffy and narrow and sometimes he can be downright arrogant about his opinion even when he’s completely wrong. But he’s also kind and good and caring. He loves me. And he needs someone to love him. I do.”

  That should have settled things, but it didn’t.

  She was still unhappy and I felt powerless to do anything about it.

  My perspective, of course, was not everyone’s, as I found out one hot, humid afternoon in August. That morning, like the last several, UPS had delivered a couple of boxes of wedding gifts. Somehow Lauren had yet to get around to opening them. By late afternoon, the girls had settled into the new backyard swimming pool. Makayla, in her little water wings, was splashing around happily with the full attention of her mom and Aunt Lauren.

  When Makayla began tiring and they got out of the pool, I carried the boxes to the deck.

  “Maybe you’re not curious about what’s in these,” I told her, “but I sure am!”

  Lauren smiled, but she didn’t seem too enthusiastic.

  “It’s more china,” she said. “I can tell now by the size of the boxes.” She held up the larger one. “This is a place setting. The long, flat one is probably a platter. I don’t even have to open them to know that.”

  “Do you want me to open them?” I asked.

  Lauren shrugged. “Sure, if you want to.”

  Jin snorted. “That is so major princess! You can’t even be bothered to open your own gifts. Gotta get Mama to do it.”

  The comment, complete with a feigned whiney voice, was so snide and so unexpected, Lauren and I both just stared at Jin in shock. Then Lauren inexplicably teared up. She rose to her feet, picking up her gifts.

  “You are absolutely right,” she said. “I am being ungrateful. These people have been so kind to send gifts, I’m going to take them inside and write the thank-you notes immediately.”

  Jin and I watched her hurry into the house. I was fairly certain that she was crying.

  “Well, shit,” Jin said.

  “Don’t talk that way in front of the baby.”

  Makayla’s ears were all perked up, and you could cut the tension in the air with a knife.

  “I’m sorry,” Jin said. “I’m sorry about the foul mouth. I’m sorry about hurting Lauren’s feelings. I’m sorry. I’m just sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  “Jin,” I said, “you’ll have to tell me what’s going on. There’s no way that I can guess. Is there trouble between you and Nate?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “No, I do know. I know exactly. I’m jealous of Lauren.”

  “Jealous?”

  Jin nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I be? Lauren’s got her degree. She’s got a man who wants to marry her. She’s having a beautiful wedding, moving into a home of her own. She’s got everything. Everything that I wanted. And I’ve got…I’ve got Makayla.”

  Impulsively she pulled the child into her arms. The toddler tolerated it for a moment and then wrenched herself away. It was too hot.

  “Not that I would trade,” she assured me hurriedly. “I love my baby. I love being her mother. But…”

  She let the word hang there. There was nothing more to say.

  As the wedding drew closer, Lauren’s melancholy lingered. Finally one evening, I just picked up the phone.

  “Gilk,” I told her future husband, “I don’t know how you can fix this or what you can do, but you’re going to have to try.”

  “I know she’s been kind of blue lately,” he admitted. “I just thought it was wedding jitters.”

  “I talked to her about it,” I
said. “She’s certain about wanting to marry you, but it’s as if she’s grieving for the life she might have had.”

  I heard Gilk sigh on the other end of the line. “I’m so much older than her, of course she must feel like she’s leaving her youth behind her forever.”

  “I don’t think that’s it,” I said. “I don’t think she’s noticed yet that you’re closer to her father’s age than her own. This is something different. I don’t know, Gilk. You’re going to have to work something out with her. I’m just not all that keen on seeing my daughter walk down the aisle without a smile on her face.”

  “I’ll be there this weekend,” he assured me.

  He arrived late on Saturday, just as the whole family was sitting down to dinner. His Land Rover was covered with road film. He wasn’t his usual impeccably groomed, completely-in-control self, either. He looked tired, mussed, old.

  Lauren greeted him with a kiss.

  “I didn’t know you were coming up this weekend,” she said.

  He gave me a quick glance over her head. “I couldn’t stay away,” he told her. “I have a surprise for you.”

  Lauren smiled, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  “I hope you didn’t buy me anything else,” she said. “You’ve already bought me too much.”

  “I had to buy this,” he insisted. “What’s a wedding without a honeymoon?”

  I was afraid Lauren was going to profess not to want one.

  “Gilk, come sit and eat,” I insisted. “Lauren, everybody, back to the table.”

  I quickly set another place and we all sat down with Nate and Jin and Makayla.

  The dinner conversation was pleasant, casual. Gilk seemed changed from the man we’d first met. He was not so stuffy, not so sure of himself. In fact, he seemed downright uncertain. He glanced over at Lauren repeatedly, gauging her reaction to everything that was said.

  When Makayla got bored with her high chair, Gilk volunteered to hold her on his lap.

  “You’re still eating,” he told Jin. “I like kids. Remember, I’ve got four.” He glanced again at Lauren. “But it’s been a while and I might need to get back into practice.”