Can I Get An Amen? (19 page)

I hung up the phone and looked over at Brenda. “The Christmas party?” she asked sympathetically.

“What else,” I confirmed wearily.

“At least Parker is helping. She is such a doll.” Brenda was careful never to say anything about Parker that might be construed as less than worshipful.

I felt an almost irresistible compulsion to bang my head re-peatedly on my desk. What else did my job entail besides attending to the needs of Philip and, by extension, Parker Kent? Besides ordering green hydrangeas and buying expensive gifts for business associates? My lack of purpose had never bothered me in the agency environment, but that was when I had other plans for my life. Now I felt as if I’d missed the boat on a meaningful career. As if the smart, hungry girls had put in the long hours and paid their dues while I was preparing for something that was never to be. And now I was doomed to scheduling meetings and making phone calls and eating my lunch alone.

And that was what I did that morning. Exactly that. As Brenda and I sat at our desks and picked at our lunches—each of us had brought salads with leftover turkey packed at home in
Tupperware containers—we made the typical small talk about Thanksgiving. “The kids both came,” said Brenda, glowing. “It was just wonderful to have them home.” Her daughter-in-law was expecting what was to be her first grandchild. “I just wish they lived closer,” she said, explaining that they had moved to Chicago from New York three years ago for her son’s, Jake’s, career. “He has a great job in marketing for Pepsi.” She stared wistfully into her salad as she poked around for a bite that was to her liking. Since Brenda was tethered to her house, she’d have to make do with their twice-yearly visits. “I’ll go on the weekends whenever I can, though,” she said, as she stabbed a grape tomato with her fork, probably knowing that that wouldn’t end up being very often. “Jake has tons of frequent-flier miles from all his travel, so he says that he’ll fly me out.” It was as if she was selling a product that she didn’t quite believe in.

It was a very quiet day at Kent & Wagner, though Philip was in the office. He had spent the majority of his morning on his line with the door closed. I was in the midst of tackling Parker’s to-do list when a call came through to me. “Hello, I am trying to reach Philip,” came an elegant, breathy woman’s voice. “Is he available?”

“I’m afraid he’s on another call right now. Would you like to leave a voice mail, or is there something I can help you with?”

“Look, could you let him know that Audrina called and I won’t be able to meet him later? Something’s come up.”

I reached for a pen. “May I have your phone number, Audrina?” As I said her name, I felt Brenda take notice. She did nothing overt. She didn’t slow her typing or look over, but she was aware.

Audrina sounded somewhat put out. “He has my number,” she said, effectively declining to offer it. “And can you let him
know that I tried to leave a message on his cell, but something is wrong with his phone and his voice mail never came on. It just rang
endlessly
.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised because Philip’s phone was his lifeline. “Absolutely.”

She said a quick, perfunctory good-bye before hanging up.

I immediately checked Philip’s schedule to clear the appointment, but he had no meeting scheduled with an Audrina. It was the rare day when essentially all his meetings were internal, though there was a nebulous chunk of time blocked off beginning at 3:30, which read simply “@WHOB.”

When I saw that Philip was off the phone, I gently knocked on his door.

“Philip?” I said, before tentatively walking in. He had several files open in front of him, to which he was returning papers and documents. “An Audrina called just a few minutes ago. She indicated that she wouldn’t be able to meet later.”

He remained utterly composed and continued straightening his desk. “Oh, right,” he said casually. “Thanks, Ellen.”

“I tried to clear the meeting from your schedule, but was unclear as to which appointment it was…”

“That won’t be necessary, Ellen. Thank you, though.”

It was a dismissal and so I left. As I sat down at my desk, I again noticed Brenda staring deliberately into her computer screen, her lips pursed just a bit more than usual, a crease in her brow suggesting that she was either concentrating on the task at hand or thinking about something that she’d rather not.

As I closed out of Philip’s schedule, I replayed my conversation with Audrina, the familiarity in her voice, the vague details.

It wasn’t difficult to imagine that he was having an affair.

Philip was handsome, was charming when he wanted to be,
and had the sort of schedule and lifestyle that made it easy to hide such things. And though I knew that chances were there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the call, a legitimate meeting or round of drinks with an old friend, something in my gut told me that it was more than that. I couldn’t deny that my curiosity was piqued, and not out of sympathy for Parker. It was the sort of schadenfreude that you feel when you hear the first rumblings about a celebrity’s drug abuse or troubled relationship, a kind of theoretical conjecture that they might, after all, be human. I wasn’t proud that I took some degree of pleasure in the fact that Parker’s life may not be perfect, but I also wasn’t as ashamed as I should have been. It was all suspicions and assumptions, after all. But the reason for Brenda’s affinity for all things Parker had become much more clear. Brenda knew what it was like to be on the other side of an affair. A few days later, when Kat mentioned that she was meeting a girlfriend for a drink at the W Hoboken, Philip’s mysterious schedule entry,
@WHOB
, flashed in my mind.

. . .

It was seven o’clock that evening when my phone finally did ring. I was sitting on the couch with my parents, eating turkey vegetable soup in front of the TV. “Come on, y’all,” my mother had said. “Let’s eat in the family room tonight. My show’s on.” Almost every show on TV was my mother’s show, but tonight she happened to be referring to a reality series about a family of little people. “I don’t know why we can’t call them midgets anymore,” she murmured, shaking her head in that melancholy way I’d seen seniors do when recalling the good old days. “Everything has to be so
politically correct
, I swear.”

I had turned my phone to vibrate, in the likely event that the
volume on the TV would render a normal ring inaudible. When I felt the telltale buzzing in my back pocket, my heart leapt, and I pulled out the phone to see a local number that I didn’t recognize. I felt like a girl whose boyfriend suddenly pulled out a small velvet box and dropped to one knee.
This must be it!

“Hello?” I said. Hurrying out of the room, I saw my mother nudge my father to give him a look that was both satisfied and curious.

“Hi, Ellen?” said a man’s voice that was too unsure, too nervous to be Mark’s. “This is Christopher Hapley. We met the other day at the Donaldsons’?”

“Oh, right,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment. “Hi, Christopher.”

“I hope you don’t mind that your mother gave me your number.”

I heard the volume on the TV go down just a couple of levels.

“Of course not.”

“So, how are you?”

“Fine,” I answered, knowing exactly why he was calling.

“Did you have a nice weekend?”

“I did; how about you?”

“Yeah, it was good,” he said, his voice reaching an unnaturally high pitch. He coughed once, quickly, before he went on. “So, I, uh, know we had talked about getting together sometime, so I was wondering if you’d like to maybe see a movie on Friday?”

I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall, wincing as I spoke. “Actually, I’m afraid I have plans this Friday.”

“Oh, okay,” he said, clearly discouraged but not defeated. “Well, what works for you, then?”

I didn’t know what was best, to rip the Band-Aid off now or slowly, in tiny increments, as he called again and again and I just
happened to always have plans. “Actually, Christopher, I’m not sure if my mom told you, but I just went through a divorce.”

“Uh, yeah,” he said uncomfortably. “Yeah, she did, uh… mention that.”

“And so I just think I should be honest and let you know that I’d love to go out as friends, but I’m really not ready to date yet.” It was a lie, but in my mind a harmless one.

“Oh, sure,” he said weakly. “I understand. Yeah, maybe we could catch a movie together another time.” Now he just wanted to get off the phone.

“Sounds good.”

“So I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

“Definitely. See you around.”

“Bye, then.”

I felt terrible.

“So who was that?” asked my mother as I walked back into the family room, anticipating just such a question.

“You know exactly who that was,” I said coldly, my tone indicative of the outcome of our conversation. “Why would you presume that you could give him my cell phone number?”

She shifted her body on the couch so that she could face me with squared shoulders. “Well,” she said, her eyes wide with defiance, “after our conversation in the car, I didn’t think you’d have any issue with it.”

“You mean the conversation in which you told me he had one nut and that I had to move out? That conversation?”

My father’s head was lowered. He was listening but avoiding heading for the trenches just yet. My mother charged onward, working herself into a lather that rivaled my own. “I swear, I think the only reason you won’t go out with him is because he is a Christian.”

“Bingo!”

“Ellen Louise Carlisle!” gasped my mother.

“Listen, one person forwarding me those ‘One Hundred Blessings’ e-mails is plenty.” Only that day I’d received one, a chain e-mail that you were supposed to forward to ten people within ten minutes, at which point God would be compelled to bless you one hundred times over the next forty-eight hours.

“Don’t you mock the Lord!” she shouted.

“That’s not who I’m mocking.”

“That’s enough,” commanded my father, always intolerant of us kids crossing the line with my mother from good-natured ribbing to something less kind.

I turned on my heels and walked upstairs.

. . .

When Wednesday came and I still hadn’t heard from Mark, I called Kat. But before I launched into a description of our encounter, we had a few other matters to catch up on.

“Have you talked to Jill?” I asked casually. Jill wasn’t supposed to be telling anyone about her pregnancy yet, but I knew her too well to think that she’d managed to keep it much of a secret.

“I know! Can you believe it?” I loved hearing that kind of joy in Kat’s voice. “I can’t wait to find out what she’s having.”

I realized that I had neglected to ask Jill if she was going to find out the gender. “So she’s finding out?”

“Are you kidding? It’s Jill. Of course she is,” answered Kat. “I hate it when people don’t find out.”

“I always said that I wouldn’t find out.”

“Oh my God, are you serious? If I ever have a baby, I’m going to find out
immediately
.”

It was the first time I had ever heard Kat talk about having children. As I debated about what to say next, how to follow up on what was a difficult topic for Kat, I lost my opportunity.

“So, Luke said that Thanksgiving was just a
gas
,” she said sarcastically.

“It wasn’t great. I think everyone missed you.”

Kat made a scoffing noise.

“You know Aunt Kathy’s coming for Christmas.”

“Luke mentioned that, too.”

“You’ve got to see Aunt Kathy while she’s here. I mean, I know you’re pissed at Mom and Dad, but what did they
really
do, Kat?” We all hated calling Kat on the carpet—we all feared her anger—so I took a deep breath before adding, “You were the one who was out of line that night.”

“Ellen,” she said bitterly, “you just need to stay out of this. There is
a lot
that you don’t know.”

I took this to be a proverbial statement about not having experienced what she’d experienced, about never having walked in her shoes. We stayed on the phone in silence for a moment.

“Kat, just tell me that you’ll come see Aunt Kathy. It would be so sad if you missed her.”

“Fine. Whatever,” she said. “Let’s just change the subject.”

As luck would have it, I had another subject at the ready. I told Kat about Mark.

“So call him,” said Kat.

“I didn’t get his number,” I said meekly. I could see Kat rolling her eyes. She was always the one to take the number, always the one to call, always the one to have the power.

“Well, then you’re fucked.”

“Why do you think he hasn’t called?”

“Maybe he dropped his phone in the toilet. Maybe he has been busy. Maybe he’s playing hard to get.”

“No,” I said. “He’s not the game type.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Elle.”

. . .

When Thursday night passed without a call, I knew that I wouldn’t hear from him. It felt like a sucker punch, another disappointment, another hand-wringing period of waiting followed by the inevitable letdown. It was trying to have a child. It was waiting for Gary to come back.

“What’s gotten into you, Ellen?” my mother had asked over dinner. It was just the two of us, as my father was working late. Our fight, like all of our fights, hadn’t lasted long. My mother hated to be at odds with her children, and since the Kat situation hadn’t rectified itself, I was granted leniency.

“I guess I’m just down.”

She looked into the distance and muttered something to herself, thinking the solution to my problems was no farther than church. When I went up to my room that night, there was a book lying on my bed with the title
Joy of the Spirit
. I tossed it under the bedside table.

. . .

I was in my car on my way to work on Friday morning, talking to Luke, who was walking to the subway, when a call waiting came in. Since the only people who called me this early—who called me period—were my family and Jill, I answered without checking the caller ID.

“Hello,” I said plainly.

“Ellen.” I recognized his voice immediately. “It’s Mark.”