Authors: Sally John
Except for the one they stood with now.
Annie said, “I am watching every vice known to man being committed before my very eyes, in public, in the middle of the afternoon. This is when I say, ma’am, we don’t want to be here.”
“We’ll be fine. Just don’t make eye contact.”
Annie chuckled under her breath. “How do you know this place?”
“It’s Mexico. It’s Venezuela. It’s Chicago, L.A., New York. I have a nose for finding the neighborhoods. Let’s go this way.”
“What are we looking for?”
They rounded a corner and Sheridan nodded toward a church. “That.”
“Mrs. Montgomery, what are we doing here?”
“The name is Sheridan, and I guess you’re here to protect me. I’m here to find myself.”
Without comment, Annie walked beside her down the street, to a back door of the church, and into a community room full of the poor and needy.
* * *
Later that evening the women ate dinner at the resort, outdoors on a patio overlooking the ocean. It was a beautiful setting, complete with twinkle lights and a classical guitarist in a far corner.
Sheridan wished Eliot sat across the table from her, but she was grateful for Annie’s company. Technically the woman was off duty for the night, but she had accepted Sheridan’s invitation while her nighttime replacement took up his spot in the room adjacent to Sheridan’s.
Annie gestured at the elaborate surroundings. “How do you make the leap from that room at the church to this?”
“I just leap. There is only a chasm in between, no connecting bridge.” She forked a bite of salad. “The world is an unfair, unequal place. As I said, the utter despair undoes me. To combat that, I jump in and do what I can, reminding myself I can’t begin to do it all.”
“Would you have gone there without me?” Annie’s voice was incredulous, a departure from the even-keeled tone she had used all day.
Sheridan smiled. “Two years ago, yes. Today, no way.” They had already covered the Caracas incident. “Thank you for giving me today. It was a huge gift.”
“My pleasure. By talking with those needy women, you were jumping in. Is it what you meant when you said you wanted to find yourself?”
“Yes. That was my life, working with impoverished women in centers like that one. I needed to reconnect with that woman I used to be, the one that has been buried for so long.”
“What do you think? Is she still alive and well?”
“Would you like to hear the idea I came up with today to teach computer skills? I’d incorporate it into the program they’ve already got going. Yeah, she’s alive and well.”
Masquerading as an invalid’s nurse, but still breathing.
“I’m sorry for your life being turned upside down.” Annie seemed to read her thoughts.
“Thanks, I appreciate that. But as my sister would say, yippee.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Must be a family joke.”
Sheridan smiled.
“Yippee-ki-yay! More trials! Am I glad or what? Ain’t no way I’d ever learn to live by faith without them big challenges, so bring ’em on; I say, bring ’em on, Lord.”
Calissa’s paraphrase of the Bible verses both delighted and disconcerted Sheridan. Welcome more trials? No. But trust that somehow they served a purpose? that they would teach her how to more completely live by God’s grace? Little by little she was getting the hang of that.
* * *
Three days after arriving in Mazatlán, they headed home. As Sheridan drove them toward the city outskirts, she reached for Eliot’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze.
He squeezed back. “We did it, Sher. We reentered civilization with aplomb, and we survived, aplomb intact.”
“You did it.”
“Only because you were with me.”
“Only because when we got to the city, you did not barf. I told you I would pretend I didn’t know you if you barfed in the parking lot or the lobby.”
“You’ve acquired some interesting vocabulary. Annie’s influence?”
Sheridan chuckled.
When they first arrived, Eliot had been obviously nervous. She encouraged him with exaggerated tales of herself being sick at the airport before leaving for Chicago. She made him laugh with her intricate plan to elude Luke, rent a car, and escape back to Topala. In hindsight, she laughed at herself.
By the time they reached the resort, where the agents met them and she kissed him good-bye, Eliot was calm. He walked steadily with his two canes, his back less hunched than it had been.
“Sher,” he said now, “are you horribly disappointed not to stay at the resort another day?”
She considered how to reply without hurting his feelings.
“Parsing your words, are you?” He adjusted his seat to its fully reclined position. His body resembled one long, slender, limp rag. “I am sorry to disappoint you.”
“The ocean breezes might have refreshed you, but the noise and the people might have canceled it all out.”
“What would you have done while I sat on the balcony soaking up the ocean breezes?”
“Well, let me tell you.” She had imagined the scenario.
The agents had driven Eliot back to the resort, exchanged pleasant farewells, and left. He seemed tired but content. The interview must have gone well. And so she took the plunge and said that her room was available for a longer stay. He wasn’t interested.
Life with Eliot.
Not that she really expected a different response. Still, though, she had allowed herself a tiny sliver of hope. The place was incredibly romantic. It reminded her of the old days, the B.C.E. days. Dates had been precious and few for them, but their favorite was twenty-four hours away, in unfamiliar surroundings. Dinner under the stars, fresh seafood, classical guitar music, and invisible security were the icing on the cake. The Mazatlán resort had the icing on the cake complete with rosebuds and sprinkles.
She imagined how, away from the daily routine in Topala, they could rekindle that romantic side of their relationship. Wasn’t it time to try?
But now, just a few miles from the highway, she saw no reason to share that part of the scenario with him. So she told him the other part.
“I would have soaked up the ocean breezes, too, and worked on a new project.” She described her and Annie’s visit to the poor church and how she had talked with people there, learning about their needs. “I actually had an idea for a program to teach computer skills. I thought while we sat on the balcony, I could write the plan.”
He chuckled. “That’s wonderful.”
“Oh.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “It’s totally frivolous.”
“Why do you say frivolous? Think of the possibilities. You can still write the plan. Mazatlán is only an hour and a half from home. You could visit, perhaps twice a month or so. Anything you offered, even informally, would be helpful. You know how the simple sharing of ideas makes a difference.”
She concentrated on traffic and making a turn.
“What are you thinking?”
She sighed. “First off, I couldn’t step foot in that neighborhood alone. I know I always complained in Caracas and elsewhere about not being able to go anywhere without security, but now I’m too scared to try it.”
“We could hire a bodyguard, Sher.”
She shook her head. “The other thing is I can’t get involved again. I can’t meddle again. Who knows what some of those women might be up to? I might step on somebody’s toes. Annie pointed out obvious clues. Drug trafficking was happening right outside the church door.”
Eliot didn’t reply. They rode in silence through several more turns. Finally they reached the highway, and the city fell away behind them.
The visit had rejuvenated her. Annie was a likable companion. Besides giving her a sense of safety in the dangerous neighborhood, she helped her shop for linens, an engagement gift for Mercedes and Javier. The whole business of finding her old self encouraged her more than she realized. Even the pipe dream of imagining a new work reminded her of what she was capable of, not of what she could no longer do.
“Sher.”
“You’re awake?” She glanced at Eliot. “I don’t mind if you nap. You must be exhausted.”
“Dearest, I truly want to hear about your ideas.”
“I’m okay, Eliot. Really. They were just for the moment. A mental exercise that proved to me I am not brain-dead after all.”
“Where would you get the computers?”
She smiled, and then she smiled some more. A bubbly sensation tickled her from the inside out.
“Well, Eliot, for your information I would let someone else get the computers.”
“Now how in the world would you do that?”
She proceeded to answer that question and many more, all the while fizzing inside like a dozen uncorked champagne bottles.
The point didn’t seem to be about her pie-in-the-sky plan. It seemed to be about the fact that Eliot asked.
Evidently the dreaded interruption to their plateau had catapulted them onto yet another one.
And to think she still doubted God knew what He was doing.
Topala
In the days since Sheridan and Eliot had returned from Mazatlán, the heavy rains had begun. With each drop, Sheridan’s discontent grew. Why hadn’t she insisted they stay on the coast? Why had she given in yet again to his need to hide away? At the resort they could have at least enjoyed ocean views, restaurants, movies, bookstores. His recovery time from the debriefing might have been lessened. They might even have gotten around to that romantic dinner.
Not in Topala. In Topala he slept and slept. In Topala he didn’t ask her about how she planned to save the world. In Topala he ate breakfast and balked at going to Mesa Aguamiel.
Sheridan looked at him across the kitchen table. “Why don’t you want to go?”
“The rain, of course. Properties are in danger.”
“I told you, Javier helped Mercedes and me. We finished the sandbagging around the house and retaining wall. They’ll be done with his shop soon. I don’t know of anything else to do here.” She listened to the steady patter on the roof. “It’s not that bad.”
“Driving in it, though, is not wise.”
“It’s not snow.”
He sighed. “Sher, I’m not comfortable with the thought. Remember last year’s mudslide on the road into town?”
She stood and grabbed her dish half-filled with scrambled eggs. “Would it be so bad to get stuck in a city?” She stomped over to the counter and slammed the plate so hard against the tile it broke. She swirled around to face him. “I love you, Eliot. I choose to hang in there with you. But this—this I cannot take. I can’t.” She shook her head vehemently.
“What can’t you take? The rain?”
“No, not the rain. Life is just so hard.”
“I know.”
“How do you know? You are incapacitated with chronic pain and you’re disabled, and none of that is your fault, but you are. It’s just the way it is. You’re absent three-fourths of the time. What am I supposed to do? I came home from Mazatlán absolutely ecstatic because we
talked
. We talked about possibilities. About new things, for the first time in over a year.” She spread her arms wide. “But now what? It’s all forgotten. You don’t even want to go to Mesa Aguamiel.”
“I’m sorry, Sher. We can talk about whatever you like. Let’s not work today. We’ll explore possibilities.”
“That’s too little, too late.” She pulled her slicker from a hook. “We can talk. Yeah, right.”
Without a backward glance, she bolted outside and slammed the door shut behind her.
* * *
Sheridan’s anger burned as if fueled by rain. Water sloshed up her legs and pelted her face. It drenched the hooded raincoat and began to seep through to her shoulders and back.
She walked and walked, down to the square, around the church, around the square, past the inn and shops, down to Davy’s, back up, following side streets with inclines steeper than hers, down and up again.
She argued aloud. “I’m talking to You, God. I am not talking to myself anymore, and I am certainly not waiting around anymore for You to talk. You’re going to have to shout over my voice. What is it You want? For me to love Eliot? I got it. I got that part.
Love
is a verb. I’m not going anywhere. I’m there for him. Whether he’s present or checked out and only a shell of the man I married.”
Like an oyster shell.
It wasn’t a shout, but a new thought.
“Okay. He’s still a pearl inside his shell, but most days he is so tightly shut I cannot see it, and yes, I forget it’s even in there. I forget he hurts as much as I do. But it’s different, Lord. You know it is. He has me to feed and clothe him. On some days literally. Figuratively I carry him, day in and day out. Emotionally, I fill him up.”
She stopped in the middle of the deserted cobblestone street, spread her arms wide, and turned her face upward until the rain beat full on it. “Who carries me? Who fills me up? And don’t say You do, because I do not
feel
that. I was not cut out to be a cloistered nun!”
She lowered her face, hugged herself, and whispered, “And I still want to call Luke.” It was still, weeks after the fact, Luke’s visit that weighed on her. His virile presence revealed Eliot’s stark absence.
Look for Me. I am a pearl, a treasure often hidden from sight, but I will never leave you nor forsake you.
“God, it is too hard.”
Nothing is impossible for Me, My daughter.
Sheridan wept quietly. She was His. No matter what. No matter what.
“Oh, Mamá, He talks in the raindrops, too.”
* * *
“Señora! Señora!”
Making yet another round of the empty square, Sheridan meditated on God’s love. She plowed through her memory for Bible verses and stories, stuffing them into her emotional corners, rousting the anger and loneliness that had filled them for so long.
It was an all-consuming exercise. The calling voice scarcely registered.
“Señora!”
She heard Mercedes’s shout and turned toward it.
From the steps that led to the covered walkway in front of the shops, the girl gestured frantically for Sheridan to join her.
Sheridan waved and then felt water swirling at her ankles.
“Señora!” Behind her the innkeeper and others yelled and gestured for her to move.