by Hannah Luce
He didn’t like the man the soldier had become, partying all the time and using girls for sex. His answer was to find someplace where he could surround himself with good, honest Christian people, and that’s how he’d landed on campus. He came straight from debriefing after his last tour, with great expectations. “But I hate it here, Hannah,” he said. “The people aren’t what I thought they’d be. I thought they’d help me to get my faith back, but everyone seems so fake.”
Austin was getting fidgety and jumpy, and his anger simmered just below the surface. I realized he was going through some serious culture shock, and he was suffering from post-traumatic stress. He was on a rant. “So how does a girl like you tolerate ORU?” he asked. “You’re not the typical girl you find here.” He said, “All I see here are girls driving the Mustangs their daddies bought them. That’s not the kind of person I thought I’d find here. People here don’t have to work for anything. They’re all spoiled. I’ve been working since I was fourteen. I worked my butt off at war. I have three cars, and I worked for all of them. I have my own apartment. I left a small town and took a risk coming here. But I’m really disappointed in what I see so far. The people here are spoiled. They don’t really care about their faith. All they care about is the material things they have and finding a husband. This isn’t what I thought it would be.”
Before we parted ways that night, Austin asked me about God. I knew he was questioning, but his faith was still strong, and I admired him for that. I told him I’d been bitter about religion at the university when I first got there, mostly because of the way I’d grown up, but I didn’t feel that way anymore. I’d learned a lot at ORU, and I’d found some of the best teachers of my life. Because of them, I’d discovered my calling as a religious history buff and I’d settled into a comfortable life there.
I turned the subject to his impression of the people there. I was encouraging, but blunt. “Austin,” I said. “I understand where you’re coming from. Please believe me. I really do. I don’t spend time with many people from ORU either, because I’ve secluded myself with my studies. It’s totally fine to have opinions of people. But one thing I’ve learned is that you have to learn to let people surprise you.” Austin nodded but said nothing. I figured, in one ear, out the other. Typical country boy.
“I have a challenge for you, Austin,” I said. “Why not let people at ORU surprise you for a week, and next time we talk, we’ll see what you observed?” He nodded. “Okay, Hannah,” he said. But I didn’t have high hopes that he’d take me up on it.
When I dropped Austin off at his apartment, I surprised myself by thinking about how much I liked spending time with him. We didn’t have a romantic chemistry, but I really liked him, and his presence was comforting, even when he was angry. I knew he felt the same about me. I could tell he valued my thinking. Every time I said something he hung on my words. Watching him walk into his house, I realized that I was looking forward to the next time we talked.
Austin called the next week. “Want to hang out?”
“Sure,” I said.
“The park?”
“The park!” I replied.
We met there after class. The sun was shining, and I spread a blanket out on the grass, just beneath the Forty-first Street Bridge. He pulled two cigars from his pocket and lit them. One for him. One for me. He puffed on his cigar and looked at me with this bemused expression. I couldn’t figure out whether he was getting ready to ask me a question or to laugh.
“What?” I asked. “What’s so funny?”
“I did it,” he said, breaking into a huge grin. “I did, Hannah. I did what you told me to do?”
“What did you do?” I asked.
He grinned even wider. “All week I tried to let people surprise me.”
I couldn’t believe it. He had really been listening. He really heard what I said. I whooped. “What?” I asked. “You really did?”
He nodded. “Ye-ah, I did.”
“Wow.” I said. “I’m so impressed! So? Did people surprise you?” I asked.
“You know what?” he asked, laughing now. “You know what, Hannah? I’ll be damned. Some of them really did.”
13
Meeting Garrett
The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.
—VICTOR HUGO, LES MISÉRABLES
Austin said he owed me lunch. He wanted to do something nice for me because I had driven him to some event when his pickup was in the shop. “You pick the place,” he said.
He was talking on his cell phone when he arrived at my dorm. After a couple of minutes, he finished his conversation, said good-bye to the person he was talking to, and snapped his phone shut. “We’re going to the Rib Crib,” he said. Whatever happened to me picking the place? I wondered. “And there’s a friend of mine I want you to meet,” he said. “He’s meeting us there.”
“Huh? What friend?” I asked.
Austin grinned. “He’s a professor at ORU, he loves your dad, and he’s been dying to meet you.”
“Oooh nooo,” I said, shaking my head from side to side, vigorously.
I’d had more than my share of Teen Mania hangers-on who befriended me with the sole purpose of getting closer to Papa. I didn’t need another someone with a Ron Luce obsession. I’d spent my life dealing with those people, and, at ORU, where there were lots of Teen Mania alumni, I was always shutting them down.
It’s a strange feeling, having people want to cozy up to you because of who your father is. And a lot of the fundamentalist Christian kids were a little bit bizarre. I actually had more than one boy introduce himself to me out of the blue and tell me he believed God had called me to be his wife. My sister and I were always getting boys asking to “court us.” That was right out of a book that all good young Christians read called I Kissed Dating Goodbye. It’s written by a Christian guy who sells the fundamentalist concept of courting (God’s way) as in Victorian times, where girls are never alone with boys, especially at night, and you save your first kiss for marriage. Dating is for everyone else (the world’s way). The book’s sold like crazy over the years.
I was raised on the Christian courting model. You didn’t date a bunch of boys to figure out what you liked and what you didn’t. You courted one boy whom you thought you’d like to marry. I played along all through high school. But I finally put my foot down when I got my first boyfriend in college and Papa not only expected him to ask permission to spend time with me, but he also had his minions at Teen Mania vet him for marriage by asking him about his sexual past.
I’m always for people supporting Papa’s ministry, but I was trying to form my own identity, and here Austin was forcing it on me by inviting this guy—another Ron Luce “Maniac”—to have lunch with us. “Austin, seriously, I don’t want to meet another Teen Mania person!” I said.
Austin continued to drive in the direction of the Rib Crib. He obviously thought he knew what was best for me better than I did. I sat and stared straight ahead, watching the Rib Crib sign get closer and closer. What was I going to do? Jump out of the pickup?
“You owe me for this,” I said through clenched teeth as we walked into the restaurant.
A nice-looking guy was standing in the vestibule, waiting for us. He wasn’t what I was expecting. Not even close. My first impression was “Oh, wow. He’s a clone of Austin, only smaller.” He was dressed in a golf shirt and khakis, hair cropped short, and he obviously worked out more than the average guy. I called the look Christian clean-cut. Not at all my type—I liked the brooding poet with dirty hair and skinny arms—but not bad.
“Hannah, this is Garrett. Garrett, this is Hannah,” Austin said.
We walked to a table, and I whispered to Austin, “I don’t want this guy to pester me with questions about Teen Mania or my dad. I’m over t
hat.” Austin seemed amused.
The first thing Garrett did was order us all beers. I worried that someone from the university would walk in and see him having a beer with a couple of students and get him fired. He certainly wasn’t a typical professor.
He told me how he was teaching there part-time while studying for his doctorate in business administration. He’d spent two semesters abroad, one at the University of Lima in Peru and the other in Mexico at the University of Colima. He loved teaching business courses but thought that one day he’d like to have his own company to satisfy an entrepreneurial itch. Like me, Garrett had a passion for traveling, and he’d been all over the world, mostly on mission trips, places like Russia and Panama and Chili and Belize and Guatemala. His pet project was an orphanage in Peru that he’d helped to finance.
Garrett was easy to be around. He was very cheerful and fidgety, as if he had so much to say but not enough time to say it. And rather than pepper me with questions about Papa, he shared his own experiences with the ministry.
I was surprised to hear that he had spent quite a bit of time at Teen Mania, first as a young boy, then on numerous mission trips, usually as a team leader, and most recently on a project that Papa had commissioned from ORU for a new business model for Teen Mania. I was amazed that I’d not come across him or even heard his name.
He told me a story about how, just a year earlier, he had volunteered as a team leader on a mission trip to somewhere. One of the other team leaders heard him talking with some of the kids about the Mormon religion, which he was fascinated with. She had met him on other mission trips and wasn’t very friendly toward him. When she’d heard him discussing Mormonism, she reported to the person in charge that he was trying to convert the kids into Mormons. We had a good laugh over that.
After that, he said, the person in charge confronted him, someone on Papa’s team I was familiar with. She wasn’t my favorite person (which he was happy to hear). First she berated him about trying to convert the kids, which he denied. She asked if he was an ORU student, because he was wearing a sweater with an ORU insignia. He said, “No, I’m actually a professor there.” Then she said, “I understand you own a red Hummer.” Garrett answered “Yes,” wondering where the conversation was headed. “You’re bragging,” she told him. “First about being a professor and also about owning a red Hummer. You need to be more humble.”
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“You won’t believe this,” he said, “but she assigned me to write a paper on humility.”
“You didn’t do it?” I sputtered, a little too loudly, because people at the nearby tables turned to look at us.
“I did,” he said sheepishly. “She kicked me out of the program anyway.”
We howled.
I didn’t tell Austin this—I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction—but on the way back from lunch I thought, “I really enjoy this guy. I hope we can be friends.” And I thought I saw a glimmer in his eye, the kind that meant he might want to hang out with me, too.
14
Friendship Grows
And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA
After our meeting at the Rib Crib, Garrett came with Austin a few times to my cultural nights under the Forty-first Street Bridge. He was always adding something stimulating to the conversation, usually something related to business or politics, his interests, different things from what we usually discussed. My church history friends, who were very discerning, as well as protective of our little intellectual club, welcomed him in. He was whip smart and really funny, and he added something special to the mix. I loved it when he showed up.
I was surprised when one day Garrett messaged me that he was having friends over for movie night and wanted to include me. Austin was the only person we had in common, and I figured his other friends were probably older professor types. “Why don’t you come?” he asked. “Okay, cool,” I said. He told me that Austin was coming and bringing his date, a girl Austin had recently told me about, but I’d yet to meet. That calmed me down a bit, to know Austin would be there and I’d know someone. Later, when I mentioned it to Austin, he perked right up and said that, yup, he’d be there with his new girl in tow. Garrett’s movie nights were fun, he said.
I drove across town to Garrett’s place, arriving fashionably late. I was a little bit nervous about not knowing who would be there, but I was excited to meet Austin’s date. Her name was Elizabeth, and he’d told me he met her at school, although I didn’t know her. She was a few years younger than he was, and what he really liked was that she didn’t take any of his guff. I figured she had to be really special to get any kind of a commitment from Austin, and I knew that since he’d met her he’d given up all of his fans to be with her and wasn’t even going out to bars anymore. If Austin liked her I was sure I would like her, too.
I arrived at Garrett’s address and was surprised not to see Austin’s pickup parked in the driveway, because Austin was always early. But the only car in the driveway besides mine was Garrett’s red Hummer. Strange, I thought. I was late. Could I be the first one here? I rang the doorbell and waited. It sounded really quiet inside. I wondered if I had the time wrong. What if it wasn’t the right night? How embarrassing that would be. The door swung open, and Garrett stood there with a big grin. He invited me in, and I saw I was the only one there. I looked around and noticed the lights were dim and there were candles and wine on the table, but no TV on. “Where’s everyone?” I asked.
“They all canceled,” Garrett said.
I thought that was odd, but I couldn’t turn around and leave. I felt really uncomfortable. Why would everyone cancel? Austin said he’d be there with his girlfriend. It would be just like him to set me up. I’m going to kill him when I see him, I thought. What was I going to talk about with Garrett? He was a professor and I was a student. I felt like I was out of my league. He was as happy as a clam. He poured us each a glass of wine, and we sat on his couch and watched a movie about Mormonism. He was fascinated by their traditions. When the movie was over, we started talking. Garrett told me more about his Teen Mania experiences, and said his entire family followed the ministry and my dad whenever one of his events was nearby. I said I was surprised I’d never seen him on any of the mission trips, because he’d been on quite a few. When I finally looked at the clock to leave, it was after midnight. I’d been there for hours.
My jitters had been for naught. It had been a great night—even though I realized I’d been “had” by Austin and Garrett—and I felt our friendship took a giant leap forward. I was kind of glad it happened the way it did and it was just the two of us. When he walked me to my car I thought, “Maybe he isn’t my type, but he’s easy to be around.” He said goodnight and promised to be in touch.
We became really close friends after that night, even closer than Austin and me, but in a different way. We took lots of walks in the park and had endless discussions about art and business and religion and government, and our beloved friend, Austin. Austin was spending most of his free time with Elizabeth. He told us he’d fallen head over heels in love with her.
Meanwhile, Garrett and I were spending more time together, too. Often it was just the two of us. I realized our relationship was peculiar in some ways. I called it unorthodox. We weren’t strictly platonic friends because at times we cuddled and kissed, but we never discussed our relationship, and both of us dated other people. I saw the way he looked at me, with a glint in his eyes and a hint of a cheeky grin, a look that said he was enthralled by me, maybe even adored me, but he never said anything, and rather than complicate things by asking questions, I was happy to enjoy the friendship and see where it went.
Apparently, he revealed his feelings for me to Austin, because, every time I talked to Austin, he stirred the pot, telling me that Garrett was cr
azy about me and that if I gave him any sign at all that I wanted more from our relationship, he’d be all over it. “Oh, Austin!” I’d say. “Will you just stop your matchmaking? You’re not very good at it anyway.” And he’d respond, “I’m telling you, Hannah. That guy worships the ground you walk on.” I’d answer, hoping to douse the flame he was fanning, “No, Austin, he worships my father.” And Austin would conclude, “I’m telling you, Hannah. That guy’s falling in love with you.”
I liked hearing it.
As much as Garrett and I enjoyed each other’s company, as time went on I realized how different we were in some ways. He was staunch Republican and, even though I wasn’t political, I was liberal in my thinking. His style fit in the classroom and on the golf course. Mine was a little bit Goth and a lot gypsy hippie. He didn’t smoke, and I did. He drank an occasional beer. I liked good wine. He was secure in his conservative Christian faith, which I envied.
But our differences seemed to draw us even closer than our commonalities.
We couldn’t seem to get enough of each other, and we were always challenging each other on subjects like American politics, the importance of the arts (overrated, he said), psychology (I went to therapy, he called it a waste of time), and philosophy (he once said Nietzsche was naïve), but we always ended up wanting more of each other’s time.
I grew up in a household, and in a religion, in which arguments were frowned upon. In the Bible, 2 Timothy 2:22–23 says, “Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.” Garrett and I called our arguments debates. I was curious about what drove him in life. He was so ambitious. He was sometimes critical of what he saw as my lack of drive. He’d say I’d rather think than do. But he had a warm heart and a compassionate spirit, and I felt safe with him. What we had in common—and it was an ironclad bond—was our thirst for something more than where we came from. Our eyes were bigger than the possibilities of our futures. We wanted the world.