by Paul Cwalina
“Whoa. Time out. Is that the only dress you own?” I asked, growing a bit irritated at what I saw as her hypocrisy.
“Of course not. Why?”
“So, of all the clothes you own, you chose to put on a tiny little dress that put all of your...assets on display and went to a bar where you knew men and alcohol would be, and you are chastising me for falling into your vanity trap?”
She glared at me. She didn’t say a word and just stared at me, most likely imagining herself using a meat cleaver on my head. Finally, she exhaled and relaxed and said, “Fair enough.”
Ha! Gotcha!
She took a sip of water and then continued, “But you have control over your actions.”
“Duly noted,” I said. “I apologize for making you feel like what you were saying was unimportant.”
“Thank you.”
Let’s move on...again. “So, do you enjoy what you do?”
A shrill alarm went off in the kitchen and she excused herself. “Dinner is ready,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” She took my small plate and appetizer fork.
She returned with a large platter and set it down on the table. She removed two bowls from the platter and placed them on the table, one with rice and another of Italian spinach. I then offered to remove the large plate of lamb chops.
“I hope you like lamb.”
“You made lamb chops? Wow. Thank you. I haven’t had them in years,” I said as I made my way around the table again to help her with her chair.
“Yes, I hope they came out okay. I made the mint jelly, too, in case you like that,” she said.
“You made mint jelly? Who are you, Martha Stewart?” I asked jokingly and impressed.
She chuckled. “Hardly, but we had some very lean years when I was growing up, especially after my father left us. My mom taught me a lot about cooking and stretching a dollar.”
“Well, it looks like it paid off. I am impressed.”
“Thank you,” she said and we went to work filling our plates. I picked up my knife and fork and got ready to begin eating when she said, “Wait, please.” Then she put her hands across the table and said, “Give me your hands.” I put down my utensils and said, “Oh, sorry.”
She prayed, “Father, we are before you as two unworthy sinners. Thank you for your mercies every day and for the food before us. Thank you for your provisions every day. Please bless our time together. I pray in the name of your son, Jesus Christ. Amen.”
I let out a weak ‘amen’ and waited for her cue to begin eating.
“So, where were we?” she asked.
“I had asked you if you enjoyed your work.”
“I enjoy it. Not sure if I’m going to be there long term,” she said.
“Is your degree in banking?”
“I have a masters in finance,” she said rather casually.
“Impressive. What school?” I asked.
“Princeton,” she said, again rather casually, trying hard not to sound like she was full of herself.
“Whoa. Very nice. How did you end up here?” I took my first slice of lamb and spoke again before she could respond. “Wow. This is delicious!”
“Thank you,” she said and then continued with the conversation. “Well, I was headed to Wall Street, but Jeff’s father had a business here that was doing well and Jeff was being groomed to take over eventually, so...” she said with her voice trailing off.
“Oh, I see, and you’ve been with Omega since graduation?”
“Just about. It has its good days and bad, just like every place else, I suppose. I used to really enjoy Fridays, but they aren’t the same anymore,” she said. “There was this woman, around our age, who used to come in every Friday to cash her paycheck. Every week I would come down out of my office just to see her. We always told her she could have it direct-deposited into her account, but she said she liked seeing us and talking to us. She was just the sweetest person you’d ever want to know.”
Chelsea. She’s talking about Chelsea. Of all the banks downtown, of all the people Chelsea could have met, why her bank, why her? I instantly felt a tidal wave of guilt and sadness.
“We were all just stunned that she committed suicide. She was the last person you would think would do that. We’re still devastated,” Jennifer continued.
It must have shown on my face or in my body language. Jennifer picked up on it right away.
“Something wrong?” she asked. I couldn’t respond. I could barely look at Jennifer. “Her name was Chelsea. Did you know her?” she said.
With all the strength I could muster I nodded my head. She seemed a bit surprised, but then Jennifer’s face suddenly lit up. “Wait a second. Don’t tell me. You? You were the one she was so in love with? You were the one she couldn’t stop talking about?”
I put my head down and, again, nodded yes. Hearing those words just intensified what I was feeling.
Jennifer took a moment to let that sink in, but then nearly exploded. “Wait a second, were you seeing her the night you and I were together?”
Without looking up, I sighed and said, “Yes.”
“Gahhh! You disgust me,” she said, dropping her fork and knife onto her plate and pushing the plate away from her. I just looked down at the table. “Is that why she did what she did? Because she found out about that?” she asked, concerned that she may have unwittingly played a role in Chelsea’s death.
I looked up and into her eyes. “No, no, no,” I assured her. “She never knew about that.”
She stared intensely into my eyes to confirm I was telling her the truth. She found comfort in hearing that and her body relaxed, but only a little bit and only momentarily. She looked down at the table and sternly said, “Leave. Just get out of here.” She paused for a moment before adding, “I can’t stand to look at your face. Just leave.”
Strike three.
I wasn’t in a position to argue or to state a case in my defense. I set down my knife and fork, wiped my mouth and got out of my chair. As I made my way around the table toward the door, I stopped behind her and said, “I can’t change my past. I can only assure you that it is my past.”
She just sat there with her fists resting on the edge of the table and her head slightly bowed. Before I left the room, she said without looking my way, “I’m going to pray for the strength to call you tomorrow and try this again. Please answer your phone.”
I responded with a very weak ‘okay’ which I wasn’t even sure she heard and just left. I got into my car and sat there for a moment. Then I leaned forward, rested my forehead on the steering wheel and closed my eyes. How many lives can one man poison?
Chapter Four
Thursday came and went without a call from Greg and there was no dinner with Jennifer. She sent me a text about some function at the bank or for the bank that night. She said she would call to arrange a time for Friday. After our last dinner, though, I had my doubts. It felt like she was blowing me off and, deep down, I couldn’t blame her. My situation and baggage was probably too much for her, or anyone for that matter, to handle. She and the kid were probably better off without me anyway, I thought.
I was far more concerned with the lack of communication from Greg. The chance to be part of a presidential campaign was like lightning striking. This would most likely be my only shot at one of these. I had the skill, the opportunity, and the connection. This needed to work for me. I resisted the urge to text and call Greg to force the issue. Restraint didn’t come easy, however. I had nine of the ten digits dialed a few times before exiting the dial-pad, calling upon all the strength I could muster.
Come on, Greg, call. Call me already.
I lost count of the times I checked the ringer on my phone to make sure the volume was up and there was no chance I could miss a call. I was clearly in need of a distraction, but I didn’t know what that distraction could be. I tried reading, but I had no concentration. I tried writing a speech just in case I got the call, but I had no focus.
I
got the feeling something else was bothering me, something beyond Greg and beyond Jennifer. I darkened the room the best I could and sat in my recliner. I wanted to just be still without any distractions so I could let everything going on inside come to the surface. I was still mentally processing so much other stuff—the loss of Chelsea, the loss of the mayor’s position, and even the loss of Sarah. And that was just all the level one stuff. I still had all those repairs to do with the people I had hurt. I thought about my time in St. Croix and the conversations with Pastor Zee. I still had so many stones to drop. I knew it needed to start with Sarah, but I just didn’t know how to even initiate that conversation or make contact.
I sent a text to Diane and asked if she had time for lunch the following day. I wasn’t sure how she would respond, or if she would respond. I was surprised when she sent a reply almost instantly. ‘Sure. When and where?’ the text read. We exchanged a few more texts and finalized arrangements for the next day.
Reaching out to Diane helped, and it opened the door for me to begin contacting everyone from whom I needed forgiveness and those I needed to forgive. I needed to clear my head of these before I could truly move on. I turned on a light, grabbed a pen and memo pad, and wrote down the list.
The rest of the night dragged. I did little more than pace through the house, waiting to hear from Greg. I pushed some things and moved other things, pretending that I was straightening up the house. It was around 10pm when I finally realized that I hadn’t eaten dinner. I managed to assemble a sandwich, which I left half-eaten before finally just going to bed. I grabbed my phone and one last time was tempted to text Greg. I thought better of it and just put the phone on the night stand. I did my best to fall asleep but I couldn’t relax. When I saw the clock flip to 3:00am, I decided to get out of bed and head downstairs for two shots of whiskey. It did the trick, again, clearing the path for the sandman.
I woke up mid-morning. I slept through a text from Greg. He asked me to give him a call him at 11:00am. That left me an hour to get myself cleaned up and together and two hours before I was to meet Diane. I had anxiously and sleeplessly waited for this text and now I was a nervous wreck wondering how the call would go. I was also nervous about seeing Diane for the first time since Chelsea died. I was encouraged by Diane’s quick response, but I also knew that could also mean she had been just waiting for the opportunity to rip into me.
It was the longest hour of my life. I think time moved faster on election day when we were waiting for the first returns to come in. At exactly eleven o’clock, I hit the send button to call Greg.
“Well, aren’t we punctual?” Greg said, answering the phone without a traditional greeting.
I chuckled. “I’m nothing if not punctual.”
“Rick delivered the speech this morning. We’re going to post it to the website. It will probably be up by one. You are a freaking genius. Listen to the reaction he gets when he delivers your ‘ad-libbed’ lines. I can’t wait to see the new polls out of South Carolina next week.”
“Excellent. That’s good to hear,” I said through a wide smile.
“Okay, let’s get right down to business. They want to bring you on board, but get this, they want you on the marketing committee as well as a being a speechwriter.”
“What? Get outta here.”
“Seriously. You showed some real initiative and insight on this. I told them about you analyzing the polling data. They were impressed that a speechwriter put in that kind of time. They know your background and experience, too.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll be here on Monday, man.”
“You’ll be here on Monday, man,” I joked.
“Still the comedian, huh?”
“Old habits die hard.”
“Yeah, I suppose. There are a few vacancies in the apartment building where Heather and I live. Reasonable rates and fairly clean. I’ll send you the address.”
“Perfect.”
“All right, one catch, though,” he said a bit more serious.
Uh-oh.
He continued, “Because of the incident with Sarah, we can’t officially have you on staff. If that thing ever surfaces, well, you know...Rick can’t be associated with that.”
“I understand,” I said.
“We’re setting up a shell public relations company called Beast Communications. You will technically be an employee of that firm, not the campaign itself.”
I let out a small laugh. “Beast Communications?”
“Yeah, well, that’s what you get when you brainstorm with a couple of twenty-five year-old muscle-heads during happy hour.”
“Ah, makes sense now.”
“Okay, now listen, bud. If the incident with Sarah surfaces, or something else happens, we have to cut you loose and deny any association with you. You were never part of this campaign. Understand?”
“I understand,” I said, somewhat deflated. Twenty seconds of anger and stupidity and I will be paying for it for the rest of my life.
“I will email you everything you need to know and the forms you need to fill out.”
“Thank you, Greg. You are a life-saver. I can’t thank you enough.”
“I just passed your name along. You did the work.”
“You know this game is all about connections.”
“See you Monday.”
I was alive, again. I was back. I. Was. Back.
I planned to meet Diane at a soup and sandwich place near city hall. I was far more nervous about seeing her than I was about being so near city hall and the possibility of being overwhelmed by the sense of loss of my career. I arrived first and sat at a table not too far from the door. While I waited, I sipped a lemonade and scrolled through Roman’s campaign Facebook page. Then I checked the pages for all of his opponents. Not much insight, other than Rick’s seemed a little more polished and he had the most followers and ‘likes’.
I received a text from Jennifer. ‘Can you be at my place for dinner at 5?’
‘Sure’
‘Is chicken cordon bleu all right?’
‘Yes. Sounds great.’
‘See you then.’
As soon as I finished texting Jennifer, I saw Diane walking through the door of the restaurant. My arms were tingling, my palms began sweating, and my stomach was twitching not knowing how this was going to go. This could be two old friends repairing our relationship, or it could be an opportunity for Diane to tear me apart. Knowing her so well for so long, it could go either way.
Our eyes locked as she approached. Her eyes began to tear and when she got to me she threw her arms around me. I responded in kind and we hugged each other with everything we had.
“I miss her so much,” she said through tears.
“So do I, Diane,” I responded. “So do I.”
She strengthened her grip on me and we just stood there in the middle of the restaurant in the embrace, neither of us wanting to let go.
“I’m so sorry, Diane,” I said, nearly breaking down. “There’s no excuse. I’m so sorry for everything I did and said to you and Chelsea.”