Faithful Unto Death (23 page)

See, I get that all the time. Why do people assume that preachers have the mental outlook of a twelve-year-old? A sheltered twelve-year-old? People tell us things they wouldn’t share with their dog. Grandmothers have shared secrets that gave me nightmares. I know of obsessions that I can’t find a name for in Wikipedia. I have seen, and shared, suffering.

I said, “You think I believe the world is righteous and free of pain? That good people don’t suffer? Do you know the book of Job? Heard of Father Damien or read Dietrich Bonhoeffer?”

Mai thrust her chin out. “Yeah, preacher, I have.” That surprised me. Assuming she was telling the truth—preachers hear more than their share of lies, too.

I said, “Me, too.”

The chin stayed out there a second longer, then Mai relaxed.

“I got nothing against Honey Garcia. Graham married her when he was, what? Twenty-five, I think. Right after law school. What do you know at twenty-five?” Mai recrossed her lean legs, shook her head, rueful, and the sway of her hair, and the waft of that light, bright scent, those lean, lithe legs, made me do a spiritual girding. “Here’s the thing, preacher . . .”

I said, “Could you call me Walker? Or Bear?”

She looked up at me, her mouth pursed in amusement.

“You want me to call you ‘Bear’?”

“It’s . . . Walker would be fine.”

Mai snatched her glasses off. “Honey didn’t love Graham. She couldn’t love Graham because she didn’t
know
Graham, you understand? Honey loved her
vision
of Graham, the Graham she thought he should be. You get that? She didn’t love the man. She loved a figment of her own imagination. What she had created in her mind. That’s what she loved. Me? I loved the man. I loved Graham.”

I said, “How do you know?”

“That I loved him?” Mai wiped a ruby-stained mouth with the back of her hand.

“That Honey didn’t love the real Graham? That she loved an illusion?” I asked.

“Because he told me so, Walker, that’s how I know. Graham told me so.”

“Maybe Graham didn’t know Honey. Maybe Honey knew exactly who Graham was, and she loved him, as best a human woman can love a human man.”

She stopped on that, her hand against her mouth, her eyes on mine. I could see her mind whirling behind those large, dark eyes, sooty with mascara and grief. Just as clearly, I saw the moment of rejection.

“No. A man knows when he is loved. And anyway, it doesn’t matter. Graham loved
me
.”

That’s what it comes down to so often. Dante’s second circle. When “love” is your god, you can justify whatever it is you want. You did it for “love.”

“Do you think Graham loved Honey when he married her?”

At that, Mai gave me the stink eye and took a long swallow of her wine. Mai Dinh hadn’t come to me for counseling, or moral direction, or even advice. I’d forced my company on her because I wanted information. “I apologize,” I said.

“You should.”

“Well, I just did.”

“You’re married, right?”

“I am.”

“How long?”

“More than twenty years.”

“And you love her?” One delicate eyebrow rose, volumes spoken.

“Oh, yes. I do. Absolutely and completely. Annie Laurie is, I mean, she’s my soul mate. If there is such a thing. I’m tied to her, body and soul. We fight sometimes, of course”—like within the past hour, and I didn’t have a clue what about unless it was a hormonal thing; Annie’s, not mine—“but yes. I love Annie.”

Deliberately, Mai put her elbows on the table, one hand steadying her goblet, and leaned forward.

“And what would you do, Walker, if you met your Annie today?”

“What?”

“Twenty years ago, you meet and marry a nice woman, everything pretty much okay, or maybe not-so-okay, then all these years later, you meet Annie Laurie, your ‘soul mate.’ What happens then?”

I took a piece of bread and tore it into bite-sized pieces.

It could have happened like that. Before I met Annie, there was a girl—well, there were lots of girls. When you play football for the University of Texas, girls are part of the perks package, or seemed like it anyway. There was this one girl, though, Serena, and man, she had me skinned and gutted. Turned me inside out, Serena did. I even took her home to meet my folks and I had never, ever done that before. My mother was taken with Serena. My brothers thought she was way too hot for me.

My dad asked me to walk our dog Ladybird with him before Serena and I drove back to Austin through the cool, dark, fall evening.

Ladybird had done her selective spot choosing and had finished her business before Dad had gotten around to what he wanted to say.

He said, “Serena is a beautiful woman, Bear, and you aren’t going to be able to hear me, son, but try to keep this in the back of your mind. How many times did that girl put you down in front of your mom and me?”

“What?”

“You know, the digs about your car, no awards during the football banquet—that bit about Tucker getting all the family good looks.”

“Well, he did. Even Mom says Tucker is the best looking.”

“I don’t think I’d want the woman I love telling me my brother was better looking.”

“Mom tells you all the time that Uncle Richard got all the looks and you got the brains.”

There was a pause.

“Yes, she does.”

Which left me nothing to say at all.

Serena and I said our good-byes, and when I pulled out of the driveway, I was every bit as much in love with Serena as I had been when I pulled in.

But my ears were primed. All the ride home, and the days to come, I began to be aware of the teaspoons of diminishment Serena dosed out, all flavored with her sugar to take the bitterness away.

We broke up before Christmas.

Mai leaned closer in, allowing me a glimpse of cleavage.

“Graham was my soul mate. I was his.”

Getting a tad too close over this table. I leaned back in my chair and pushed away from the table, making a show of stretching out my legs.

Mai watched my show and settled back in her chair. She smirked.

“Don’t worry, preacher, you’re safe with me. I’m not going to eat you.” Another smirk.

There wasn’t any point in denials. I was already feeling nibbled on by those small white teeth.

“You were going to tell me how you met Graham.”

“Yeah. I was. Now, I don’t think so.” She drank down half her glass at one go.

I wanted some ice water. And some peanuts or Chex Mix or something. I broke off a piece of the cheese that looked like cheddar and popped it in my mouth. It wasn’t cheddar—the texture was different and the flavor only got as far as cheddarish.

“You were saying it wasn’t what I thought,” I reminded her.

“That’s right! It wasn’t. Not some bar thing, Internet chat room. Not like that.”

The waiter breezed by but missed my signal.

“So how was it?”

So she told me.

Twenty-nine

I
was training for a marathon—this was late January last year. I had already run, oh, maybe fifteen miles. I was tired. I had another three, four miles to home. I was running on the shoulder of Highway 6, okay, not smart, but my route had me on 6 only, what, a half mile? It was getting dark, and this, this truck, not a pickup, you know, a big van, like they use for a business, he’s driving too fast and he, swoosh! Right past me, so close, and it startled me, you know; I stumbled and fomp! I’m slipping and right over the edge I go into the ditch. Oh, my God. I’m all scraped up, my elbows and my knees, all down my leg here.” She ran a hand down a perfectly toned, caramel-colored leg. Mai was short, but a lot of her height was in those nicely shaped legs.

“And, oh my God, you know, that nasty water in the bottom of a ditch? That’s all over me, and mud. The stink! The truck didn’t stop. He probably never saw me. So I crawl out of that stinking ditch and I’m bleeding, no broken bones, thank God, and all wet . . . what a mess.”

Mai ran her finger around the rim of her glass and then took a sip. That’s all that was left.

She hadn’t touched the bread or cheese.

I said, “And then?”

Mai picked up the menu and did some perusing, pulled a pair of jeweled reading glasses out of her purse and perched them on the end of her tiny nose, and perused some more.

Without looking up, she said, “A minister? Huh. You look more like a bouncer.”

“So then what happened?” I wasn’t insulted by the “bouncer” comment. I thought it was sort of cool.

She slapped the menu closed and whacked it down on the table. She did the neck-craning thing people do when they want a waiter. There was a total dearth of waiters. Mai sighed.

“So my legs are trembling—it shook me up, you know? That truck passing so closely. My running shoes are soaked . . . and I pull my phone out to call my dad, but it’s soaking, too, so . . . I’m on Highway 6, I’m hurting all over, and now I’m cold, because I’m wet, and I’m not running anymore . . . Graham pulls up behind me. I mean, I don’t know it’s Graham. This black Mercedes pulls up behind me and Graham gets out. He’s standing one foot out of the car, one foot in, and he yells, ‘Are you all right? Do you need any help?’ and I say, ‘No, I’m fine.’ So stupid because, you know, I am not fine. I am shaking all over now. You should eat some cheese. That’s an Emmenthaler. You’ll like it.”

It looked like Swiss cheese. I cut a slice, put it on a piece of French bread, and laid it on the napkin next to her glass. I took a slice for myself, too. Tasted like Swiss cheese to me.

Mai took a bite of the bread and cheese and chewed. Our waiter made an appearance and she waved him down like she was warning an oncoming train of rail damage. She pointed to her empty glass and tapped an entry on the menu. He nodded and smiled and swanned off. Not a word spoken and I’d forgotten to ask for that ice water.

“So anyway. I’m telling you this because it’s not what you’re thinking.”

I nodded. She put her sunglasses back on, took them off, and dropped them in her purse. Her dark eyes were red-rimmed and smudged with makeup, but the tears were gone.

“So. Graham hears me, ‘Oh, no thank you, sir, I’m fine.’” She mimicked a high, little girl voice.

“But Graham is looking at me. He is really looking at me; he sees
me
, you know? Graham was someone who could really see what he was looking at.”

She shook her head. “That sounds stupid, ‘He could really see.’” Mai folded her tissue and put the corner under her eyes, catching new tears without wrecking the mascara that still clung to her lashes. Then she gave a great, unladylike blow of her nose, wadded the tissue up, and put it in her purse and withdrew a clean one. Glasses, cell phones, and purses have taken care of the current “what to do with your hands” problem. A generation ago, it was cigarettes. Before that, I have no idea. Maybe knitting.

“I don’t know how to say it better. It’s like . . . he wasn’t, ‘Here I am, Good Samaritan, poor lady. Oh? You fine? You don’t need my help? Okay, that’s good, I got places to go, but yeah, I did a good thing.’ No. Graham stands there, half in, half out of his car, looking at me, and I’m thinking, ‘Go, then,’ because I’m about to cry, and, you know, crying, that’s charming on a young woman, not so good on an old one.” She gave that wry smile again.

I said, “You’re not old.”

She did that up and down thing with her eyebrows that women do to say, “Well, you’re a liar, but thanks for making the effort.”

“Graham gets out of his car and comes over and looks me over, taking everything in; I’m shaking hard now. Jesus, I was so cold, and maybe in shock some, too. I’m wearing running shorts and a singlet, that’s all. He says, ‘I think I’d better take you to the hospital.’ I say, ‘Could you drive me home instead? It’s not far. My dad will take care of me.’ And he says sure and opens the passenger door for me and then I stop, because, his nice leather seats, and I’m not only muddy, but I ran at least fifteen miles, so, you know, I’ve been sweating.”

She laughed a full, throaty, unself-conscious laugh. It was very attractive.

“I do not smell like a lady! He sees what I’m thinking and he gives my shoulder a push. ‘Don’t worry about the seats. They’ll come clean.’”

Her second glass of wine arrived. She held her hand up to detain the waiter; did a sniff, sip, and swirl; nodded her approval; and handed him the empty glass, adding, “Go ahead and bring me another one of these. I like this better than that.” A finger pointing at the empty the waiter held. So I’m guessing she really liked that second wine because she’d polished off the first without a quibble.

“On the way home, Graham reaches across me, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, he’s going to grope me,’ but no, he pushes the seater-heater button on my door and then he turns the heat up high, and oh, God, in a minute I’m starting to warm up. It feels so good, that heat pouring over my legs, and the hot seat warming my back and my butt. And the new car smell. I like that, you know? He doesn’t ask any questions, only, ‘Turn here? How far down?’ and then we’re at my house, my dad’s house. I’m all ‘thank you’ and ‘send me the bill when you get your car cleaned,’ getting out of the car. Graham turns the car off and he gets out, too. I say, ‘No need, my dad, blah, blah blah.’ But he comes to the door and I reach inside my waistband, very ladylike, right? And I unpin my key and open the door and I’m calling, ‘Dad! Dad?’ and there’s no answer because he’s not there. My dad.”

I ask, “You live with your mom and dad?” She had to be over forty.

“For now. My mom died a few years ago, and I got divorced. My dad needed me. So. Anyway Graham follows me into the house and he turns the lights on, it’s full dark now, and he leads me over to sit on the stairs and he kneels down and holds my ankle and turns my leg this way and that, looking at the scrapes and saying, ‘Does this hurt?’ and rotates my ankle, ‘Does this hurt?’ I asked if he was a doctor and he smiles and shakes his head no, he’s not a doctor, he’s a lawyer.

“He says, ‘Why don’t you call your dad and let him know what’s happened. Then you take a hot shower. I don’t like that ditch water over all these open wounds.’ Then he wants to know where the kitchen is, he’s going to make me some hot tea.”

She hunched her shoulders and spread her hands, palms up.

“Sounds crazy, I know. It’s like, I’m waiting for my ‘uh-oh’ alarm to go off. There’s this strange guy making himself at home, and I’m all alone. He’s nice looking, sure, but Ted Bundy wasn’t bad looking, either.

“I never got it. That ‘uh-oh, bad idea’ feeling—it never came. I call my dad and leave a message on his phone. I take a hot shower. Okay, sure, I locked the bathroom door. I take a long time, I wash my hair, I wash all the scraped places, get the gravel and the dirt out. I dress in shorts and a T-shirt because so many places are all bloody. My wet hair twisted in a towel. When I go downstairs, it’s very quiet. I wonder if he left—I took such a long time in the shower.

“You want another glass?” Mai pointed to my glass. I’d barely touched it. “No? I’m having one more.” She waved at the waiter to remind him and he nodded. He was being more than attentive. Mai was over forty, but she was a striking woman.

“Graham is in the kitchen, sitting at the table, reading the paper. I walked in and he jumped up and pulled a chair out for me. On the table is a teapot, a carton of milk, the sugar bowl, a mug. And bandages, cotton swabs, antiseptic, and tape.”

She laughed. “You know, I should have been scared. He had to do a lot of looking around to find all this stuff. Well, the kitchen stuff, that was easy, but, you know, he had to go in my dad’s bedroom and bathroom to find the first aid creams and bandages. I would never do that. Maybe in one of my brothers’ houses, but a stranger’s? No way.

“He pours me a mug of tea. ‘Milk?’ he says, ‘Sugar?’ I don’t want to hurt his feelings, tell him, it’s green tea, you don’t put milk or sugar in green tea. And then he gets down on his knees, right? This handsome blond man in his expensive car, in his expensive suit, he gets down on his knees . . .”

Mai stopped. This was a mythopoeic moment in her life. She had to regain control of her voice.

“And he starts to dress all the scraped places. He was soooo careful, so gentle. And when I am all bandaged up, looking like a brown and white patchwork quilt, then he takes the towel off my head.” She pantomimed this. “And this is the really weird, this part, but it didn’t feel weird. Not when it was happening. Graham, he brushed my hair out, slowly, gently, he works out the tangles and he brushes my hair until it is all smooth and silky around me. He takes my hairbrush, and he brushes my hair, softly, softly, in the warm kitchen until my hair is all glossy, shiny, dry.”

In a dreamy kind of way, Mai reached up and pulled the scarf and band off her hair. She shook her hair out, and ran her fingers through the silken weight of it. It fell below the seat of her chair, quite a sight, that mass of rippling black satin. The waiter stood stock-still, watching, before he reverently placed the third brimful glass in front of Mai.

I’m not attracted to small women. I feel big and clumsy around them, and I look silly when they stand next to me. But I didn’t have any trouble understanding why Graham found this exotic woman, with her big eyes and her athletic body, and that lovely, self-deprecating smile, very appealing. She leaned her forehead on her hand and stared into her glass, her third glass. That’s a lot to drink for a tiny woman.

“Why am I telling you?” she said. “So you won’t think bad of Graham? Of us? You’re a preacher; you think bad about everybody.”

She drew out the “everybody.”

That surprised me.

“Why would I think bad about everybody?”

“You said Alex saw us. Where did he see us?”

“Were you and Graham going to marry?”

“Oh, my God. Were we going to get married? I don’t know. We wanted to, but my God, Graham has two children! Graham says, ‘My marriage is over, we were never suited for each other, I can’t make her happy, the kids—they’re nearly grown up.’ I say, ‘Okay, she’s so unhappy? She will divorce you. Then we’re okay. Then we didn’t break . . . then
I
didn’t break up this family.’ Months pass, and his wife . . . Graham says, ‘I will tell her about us; she has a right to know, it will help her make the decision.’ But I am not having it. It’s all on me then, you know? ‘Oh, this evil dragon woman, she comes and steals our daddy away.’ Yeah, then his kids hate me forever. I tell Graham, ‘No. If you tell your wife about us, you are forcing her to divorce you. If you tell her, then I am gone. I am not going to be the reason why your marriage fails.’ I meant it, too. My husband? He left me for someone else. I didn’t love him the way I should have, so it shouldn’t have hurt, but it did. I was humiliated. I . . . that took something away from me, that he chose someone else. And my daddy. God, I thought he would kill Jonathon when he found out, he was so angry. I was glad we lived two thousand miles away.”

Mai gave a laugh when she saw my face.

“No, Mr. Wells, I didn’t mean my daddy would really kill my husband just because I was sad at being left. My dad is a good man. A real hero.” She leaned over and tapped her third wineglass against my still-full glass. A tiny tribute to her dad.

“I told Graham I was not going to do that to another woman. What Jonathon did to me.” Mai shook her head with the deliberation of the slightly intoxicated.

My Friday meeting with Graham came clear. He had to have a divorce from Honey so he could live with Mai, but if
he
initiated the divorce with Honey, Graham would assuredly have lost Mai. Graham was well and truly trapped; only Honey could release him—and Mai had forbidden Graham to give Honey the one piece of the puzzle that would have enabled Honey to let Graham go.

Mai put her pink tongue to the tip of a finger and drew it around the rim of her glass. It rang with a sweet, low note.

“Graham said, ‘Maybe you don’t love me the way I love you. Maybe you want me to leave.’”

The waiter passed our table with a laden tray. Mai flapped her hand at him and seesawed her wineglass, showering drops down through the open metalwork of the cast-iron table. He hesitated and caught my eye. I shook my head. No more wine. I mouthed, “Ice water.” He nodded.

Mai’s hand suddenly flew to her mouth; her eyes were squeezed shut on the tears that were welling. Her left hand held the stem of her wineglass so tightly that I thought she might snap it. She was breathing raggedly, trying to control sobs. She drank off the rest of her wine as if it were water. It took her three attempts before she could speak without choking.

“I was so screwed! I couldn’t keep Graham, but I could not lose Graham. Not one more. I could not lose one more.”

The strong, competent, striding woman who had met me at the Vineyard melted away. She wasn’t looking at me anymore, or talking to me. Her gaze and her speech were directed inward. Her voice was a whisper and her accent had thickened. Her forehead was creased and she looked older.

“If I had said, ‘Yes, tell her, leave her, come to me,
viens à moi, viens à moi
. Graham would be
alive. He would be here,
avec moi
.” She brought her fist to her heart and thumped her chest twice. “Instead of with the others.
Tous les autres. Mon père, ma mère, ma soeur, mes frères. Mon grand-père, mes tantes, et mes oncles- tous, tous.
”