Dropping Stones / Kingmaker SET

by Paul Cwalina

  “I parked the car and was walking up the sidewalk and up the driveway, and there were these people there. Two of them were holding signs and there was a man who was reading very loud from the Bible...”

  I was shaking my head and she noticed. Sternly she said, “Why are you shaking your head?”

  “I just wish those people would get a life and mind their own business,” I said. In a swift singular motion, Jennifer grabbed a roll and threw it across the table at me. I had just enough time to raise my hand. It ricocheted off my wrist and then the side of my head before landing on the floor behind me. I felt the wonderful day we had spent together slipping away. Here we go again...

  “How dare you?” she said. “How dare you say something like that?! You weren’t there and you have no idea what happened that day!”

  I put my hands up a little above the table and opened them in a ‘surrender’ gesture. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She stared me down and searched my eyes for a genuineness. “This is too important. Please just let me finish,” she said calmly. “I’m sorry I got upset.” After a pause, she continued, “Anyway, the two women were pleading with me to ‘have mercy on my baby’ and not to ‘commit murder’. I did my best to just ignore them but I heard every word. Then the man was reading this section from the Bible and I couldn’t help to listen to it. I even stopped when I got to the door of the clinic. I had my hand in the door handle and just waited for him to finish what he was reading before going inside. Hang on.”

  She left the table to get her Bible. She came back to the table and turned to that place in the Bible from which the man had been reading to her. “Here. Psalm ten: He sits in the lurking places. In the secret places he murders the innocent. His eyes are secretly fixed on the helpless. He lies in wait secretly like a lion in his den. He lies in wait to catch the poor. He catches the poor when he draws them into his net. So he crouches, he lies low that the helpless may fall by his strength. He said in his heart, ‘God has forgotten. He hides His face. He will never see. Then the man saw that I had waited so he shouted to me, ‘Miss, please don’t go in there. They are murdering babies in there.’ I hesitated, but I went in anyway. I gave the receptionist my name and she handed me forms to fill out. I sat down and looked around. They had a few signs in the waiting room that read something like ‘God forgives no matter what you do’ and ‘we don’t judge. They do.’ I now see that as nonsense. There was another woman there, waiting. She had to be six months pregnant if not more. She was talking on the phone to someone. They were arguing. The woman who was with her said something like ‘Hey, if you don’t want the baby then you gotta do what you gotta do. Don’t let nobody push you around.’

  “So, anyway, I’m sitting there and this guy walks in and he has a girl with him. He’s probably in his early to mid forties and she couldn’t have been more than thirteen years old, fourteen tops. They sat across the waiting room from me. I was reading a magazine and glanced over and noticed he had his hand on her knee and was caressing it with his thumb! Then the girl said, ‘Why couldn’t we tell my mom and dad where we were going?’ Then I just looked at him and he saw me and looked right into my eyes. He turned to the girl and put his finger to his lips to tell her to be quiet. He raped that little girl!” Jennifer said with her eyes beginning to tear. She pounded her fist on the table and shouted, “He raped that little girl and he brought her there to destroy the evidence! He was there to cover up his crime and that poor little girl had no idea what was going on! I wanted to strangle him. I was so upset and sickened that I almost threw up. I almost walked out, but the receptionist called my name and told me to come with her. We got to the examining room and I started talking to the worker who was helping prep me about the people outside. She just rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, those whackos. Every freakin’ Saturday they’re here. Just a bunch of religious nuts. Don’t pay attention to them. They stand there and read from a book that was written thirty-five hundred years ago and expect it to mean something. Like, grow up already. Even if their Jesus is real, he forgives everything anyway. What’s the point, ya know? Idiots. They’re just words that don’t mean anything.’ Then I asked her about the guy in the waiting room and if she realized that he raped that girl. She said, ‘Oh, really? And you can prove that?’ I was just stunned at what I was hearing. She couldn’t care less! I thought I had walked into the twilight zone. I said, ‘You’re not going to do anything about it?’ She said that they weren’t the police and that they are just there to help women and then went on about privacy. I just couldn’t believe it. Again, I almost threw up. Then she just casually said, ‘Dr. Dragon will be in. Just give him a few minutes.’

  “As soon as she left the room, I got myself together and just walked out. I never felt so creeped out in my entire life. It was pure evil no matter how much they were trying to put a nice face on it. Everything about that place was pure evil. So I walked out of the room and down the hall. When I got to the waiting room, I couldn’t help myself. I walked right over to that guy and without hesitation I just slapped his face as hard as a human being could slap another. I put my finger in his face and said to him, ‘I know what you did and you will pay for it someday. Mark my words.’ Then I stormed out of there as he was getting up. By this time I was nearly in tears. I walked out the door and right up to the two women who were holding the signs on the sidewalk. I said to one of them, ‘Why are you here?’ The older one, Pam, said, ‘We are here to save babies from being slaughtered.’ I said, ‘No. Why are you here today? Right now. Why now?’ Then I turned to the man and said, ‘Why were you reading those words today? Why those words when I was walking into that place?’ I turned back to Pam and she just looked at me. I can’t describe the look on her face or the warmth that just washed over me. Then with a knowing smile she softly said, ‘We’re here to save your baby, today.’ And I just lost it. I broke down and cried. Pam just put her arms around me and pulled me into her and just hugged me so tight. The other woman, her name is Maddie, rubbed my back and comforted me by telling me everything would be all right and that they would be there to help me. Maddie said, ‘my sheep hear my voice.’ I didn’t know what that meant, but then she looked at me and said, ‘You’re a Christian, aren’t you, miss? You’ve been away like a stray sheep, haven’t you?’ Then I lost it again and just kept saying, ‘Yes, yes.’ Everything I had learned in the church when I was a child came rushing back to me. I just collapsed in their arms and cried and said, ‘God, please forgive me for all I’ve done. I’m so lost. I don’t know how I got here.’ Then they offered to take me to lunch and we just talked and talked. Sometimes it was about the Bible and other times it was about my situation and how I couldn’t find you. They are two of the most wonderful women I’ve ever known. They are so loving and giving. Anyway, I just surrendered my life to Christ and I haven’t been the same since.

  Then she looked at me and said, “I am so sorry for almost doing that. Please forgive me.”

  “Jennifer, you don’t need to ask my forgiveness. That’s a woman’s choice to make.”

  She lunged across the table and grabbed me by the shirt with both hands. “Don’t you get it?” she yelled. “Remember how you felt when you saw your children and heard their heartbeats this morning? Do you? I almost took that away from you. I almost denied you that. I almost murdered your children! I went to that place to murder my own children!” She broke down crying.

  She let go of my shirt and collapsed back into her chair. I got up and walked around the table. I put my arms around her and didn’t say a word. I just held her and tried to recover from the verbal punches she threw at me. Again, I had blinders on and again she knocked them off.

  Chapter Fourteen

  As promised, Walter had a pot of coffee waiting for me when I arrived at the office on Monday morning. Not only was it ready, but it was good and strong. I like this guy.

  I set my laptop on the kitchen counter and ran back out
to the car to get my desk and chair. I assembled them both. My first call was to the cable company to arrange installation of high speed internet service. The general manger was a friend and campaign supporter of mine, so I skipped over the normal customer service and installation process and asked to be connected directly to her. She told me they’d have me hooked up by noon.

  At eight o’clock sharp, the Monday morning conference call began. Ed started it on a sour note, as was his way it seemed, by rattling off the latest Gallup numbers as well as our internals for Florida. Roman was slipping. We no longer had the lead. Supporters from the Baron and Coleman camps were going elsewhere. We also underestimated the importance of the senior vote in Florida. Even though his numbers improved in the senior women segment, there were simply too many of them and they were the most likely to vote. We were now completely reliant on Greg’s ground game. Winning South Carolina was big, especially with margin by which we won, but it paled in comparison to winning Florida and its large number of delegates. We all knew what was in store for us the rest of the day and evening, as well as on election day. We’d be on the phones non-stop. The groans were audible.

  Ed concluded the call with a reminder that after Florida would come Michigan, Arizona, Maine and Missouri. A week after those would be Super Tuesday. The media and marketing people were buying everything they could, while the casinos and their network of friends helped to bankroll much of it. I didn’t wait for any instructions from Ed. I knew the Michigan speeches would focus on unions, while the Arizona stops would highlight immigration. I wasted no time and got to work on those.

  The office and dead-end street neighborhood were perfectly suited for writing. There were no aggressive young women at the water cooler, no boss with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, and no office chatter. I finished two speeches before the end of the morning. I mentally patted myself on the back and got up to stretch.

  A little after noon, I heard the muffled voices of Walter and Jennifer as they made their way up the stairs to the office. Jennifer walked in holding a white grocery-style bag as Walter followed right behind. “I brought you some lunch to celebrate your first day in your office,” Jennifer cheerfully said. “Chef’s salad. You like that, right?”

  “Perfect. Thank you,” I said with a smile. Then I turned to Walter. “Hey, Walter. You are a master coffee brewer. It was perfect this morning. Nice and strong.”

  He seemed very pleased to hear that. “Glad you liked it,” he said with a satisfied smile. “I just came up to make sure everything was okay for you.”

  I assured him it was while Jennifer began emptying the bag and setting up lunch on the table. “Walter, we have plenty of food here. Would you like to join us or lunch?” You’re killing me, woman.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?” he asked with the gratitude of a man who had just been given new life.

  “We’d love for you to join us,” she answered.

  “Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind...I haven’t shared a meal with anyone since my Emily passed.”

  Jennifer took about a third of my chef’s salad and half of her turkey sandwich and used the lid from my salad as a plate for Walter. She grabbed my bottle of water and poured half of it into a paper cup for him. I simply watched as my lunch was stolen right in front of my eyes as if I weren’t even there.

  As we ate and talked, Walter kept looking around at the walls. Sometimes a smile crept onto his face, seemingly without his knowledge, while other times he had a look so somber that his eyes began to moisten. “Sure looks different in here,” he said. “These walls used to be covered with paintings. It used to smell of paint, too.”

  There was a brief silence. Jennifer kicked me under the table. I muffled my ‘ouch’ and looked at her. She gave me a serious look and then motioned with her head toward Walter. I looked at her confused and shrugged my shoulders.

  She sighed and shook her head. “Where are all of Emily’s paintings?” she asked him.

  “Oh, they’re all in the house, in the front room on the floor. I’ve been meaning to put them in the attic or in storage somewhere, but I just haven’t been able to bring myself to do it yet.”

  “Why don’t we just put them back up on these walls?” she asked. “We’d love to have them here.” Excuse me???

  Walter’s eyes and face lit up. “You would? Are you sure?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Why let them sit where they can’t be seen and enjoyed?”

  Walter turned to me and asked, “Are you sure you’re okay with that?”

  I looked at Jennifer and she stared right through me. “Apparently, I am,” I said.

  Walter perked up and picked up his eating pace. He was like a kid on Christmas morning, suddenly wearing a wide smile. After we finished our lunch, Jennifer volunteered me to bring the paintings up to the office while she said her goodbyes and headed back to the bank.

  It took three trips to get all the paintings into the office. Walter directed me as to where each painting should be placed without a single second of hesitation. He had memorized where each of the eleven paintings hung.

  With each of the paintings I hung, I could see and hear Chelsea. I could hear her describing each of the paintings to me and telling me about the brushstroke and the use of color. It became more and more unbearable with each one I placed on the wall. It was as if she were standing right there urging me to see the beauty in each work. Jennifer couldn’t have known that her act of kindness toward Walter would sentence me to being haunted by memories of Chelsea for countless hours to come. I was relieved when I finally placed the last one.

  “There’s one more. Let me bring that one up tomorrow morning,” Walter said.

  I looked at a large bare spot on one of the walls. “Are you sure? I can get it now.”

  “No, no. Tomorrow,” Walter said as he stood in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets and a wide smile on his face. He looked around the room and pushed a tear away and said, “Thank you. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  I was fortunate that I completed the two speeches in the morning because I spent the rest of the day with the feeling that I was sitting in a haunted museum, listening to Chelsea’s voice repeating every loving word she ever said to me. I wrote not a single word the rest of the day.

  Jennifer and I had dinner at her house that evening and then went out for coffee and dessert. We continued to grow more and more comfortable with each other and the conversations came easy. While our feelings toward each other were growing, especially since the day of the ultrasound, neither of us could honestly say we were in love or loved each other, though. Perhaps we were working on it, but we were still hacking away with machetes through a jungle of unfamiliarity and a decreasing but still present sense of resentment of our circumstances.

  I wanted to tell her about the paintings and Chelsea, but I didn’t think it would do any good. I knew I’d get past it eventually, anyway. We talked mostly about my time in St. Croix and the conversations with Pastor Zee. She was particularly interested in the latter. Much of that discussion was uncomfortable for me, though, since the conversations with the pastor centered around Chelsea and had stripped my conscience to its bones. Even though I had warned Jennifer early in the conversation that the time with Pastor Zee was spent talking mostly about Chelsea, she didn’t seem to mind in the least. She was genuinely interested in everything I had to say and everything I had gone through during that time. The mention of Chelsea’s name didn’t seem to affect her in the least. Jennifer now had such a confidence and self-assuredness about her. It was refreshing. It was comforting. It was alluring. It allowed me to not only feel free to cherish my memories of Chelsea, but gave me the ability to begin to set them aside.

  I dropped Jennifer off and went home. I spent an hour or so scouring the news sites for anything on the Florida election. I found nothing new and nothing particularly positive. I was getting an uneasy feeling about it. We didn’t have enough time with the new messaging an
d it was frustrating. If we lost this one, the South Carolina and Nevada wins would be rendered meaningless and we would be right back to square one.

  I tried to take the edge off my restlessness with a beer and the pace and violence of a hockey game. I finally fell asleep in my recliner and slept until morning.

  I arrived at the office to the wonderful aroma of freshly brewed coffee and a large flat rectangular package on the table. Must be that painting Walter mentioned. I pulled the laptop from its case and hooked it up. While it warmed up, I poured myself a cup of coffee and read the note Walter had attached to the wrapping. It was brief and read simply, ‘Emily saw great things. She called this one New Day’. Okay, I’m intrigued. I put down my cup and tore the wrapper off the painting. With just a cursory glance, I was overwhelmed and had to sit down. She had painted a morning scene with breakfast table next to a window as its focus. Through the window the sun was just rising over the mountains in the distance. On the table was a plate filled with pancakes, a cup of steaming coffee and a glass of orange juice. Propped up next to those was a newspaper, but it wasn’t just any newspaper. It was the city newspaper from the day after my election with the headline screaming my name and my victory. I stared at for a minute or so and got up, walked over to the blank space on the wall, and carefully hung the painting in its proper place. I stood there with my hands on my hips and just hung my head.