Troubled waters, p.13
Troubled Waters, page 13
“The truth—that you had a family emergency.”
“What did they say? Word for word, Mitchell.”
She could hear him chuckling softly on the other end. “It was Thornton Winslow again, and they want to meet you a week from Tuesday.”
“That’s not word for word.”
“Beth scheduled you a flight out next Monday at noon, I think.”
“Who’s filling in for me?”
“That’s not your concern.”
“It is my concern.”
“It’s not your concern and I’ve got to go. Cheese enchiladas with bad Mexican rice and bland refried beans can barely be tolerated when hot.”
“Are you mad?”
“Mad?”
“About the network. Nothing’s for sure yet.”
Macey could almost see him grinning through the phone. “You know this is my dream for you.”
She fell backward onto her bed, her feet flying up in the air like a teenager on the phone with her prom date. “This is unbelievable is what it is!”
“You deserve it. You’re the best of the best, and that’s who works for the network.”
“Thanks, Mitchell. Please tell Bethie to call me on my cell if anything changes.”
“I will.” She could hear him beginning to eat as he said, “And come back when you need to. I’m serious. If you need to stay a couple of extra days, then do it.”
Macey stared at her toenails, made a mental note to get a pedicure when she returned home, and said, “See you Tuesday.”
After hanging up with Mitchell, she lay on the bed for a while, wishing she didn’t have to stay another day, worrying about her mother’s financial situation, and dreaming of New York all at once. She halfheartedly did stretches while lying on her back and wondered if anything would ever come of her relationship with Noah if she stayed here or he moved back to New York. She admitted to herself it was a silly thought to entertain, but such thoughts were the safest—the ones that had little or no chance of ever coming true.
The few pleasant thoughts that did come were instantly shattered by the intrusion of a violently loud memory of the last time she saw her father. His words echoed crisply, as if they were spoken in person.
“How could you betray me like this? How could you betray God like this?”
She sat up abruptly, breathing hard, drawn to the blackness of the night sky. She walked with trembling legs over to the window and pushed up the sash, letting in the thick sticky air. Outside, the stars were as vivid as anything she’d ever seen, and she appreciated the way the country’s scarce light allowed the sky to show off its own.
After a few minutes, she closed the window and moved back to her bed. Unzipping her suitcase, she felt around the small pockets of her makeup bag for the familiar bottle of sleep aid. She found it with little trouble and swallowed two pills without water.
Quickly she changed into a cotton T-shirt and boxer shorts, washed her face, brushed her teeth, and crawled into bed. For a moment she thought she heard Kenny Rogers belting out “Lady,” but she didn’t have long to think about it. The music met her dreams, dancing together as if lovers, while she drifted off to sleep, never moving a muscle.
Twelve
Oh how He loves you and me . . .’ ”
Macey couldn’t help but hum along. She knew the words by heart, and although she didn’t believe a single one of them, she felt an odd comfort in following along with the melody. The rest of the small congregation sang loudly and off-key, but with enthusiasm.
Across the aisle, seated at the end of the pew two rows in front of her, sat Noah and his two girls. With the third and final verse Pastor Lyle lifted his arms, indicating the congregation should rise, which they did in perfect unison. Macey welcomed the stretch. Her back muscles had begun aching twenty minutes into the sermon, and forty minutes later she had still been sitting in the same position, waiting for Pastor Lyle to conclude.
She’d hardly listened. She found herself watching Noah’s every move instead, which wasn’t much. Occasionally he’d glance down at his girls and quietly hush them, and once he took a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote something down. Other than that, he sat motionless and listened intently to the sermon, as if the president of the United States were standing behind the pulpit.
Her mother, too, took great interest in the short man up front, so Macey endured the boredom, fanning herself with her bulletin and admiring the colorful stained glass. She’d sat in these pews more times than she could count, between her father on her left and mother on her right. To her left was an empty space now. She couldn’t decide whether this comforted her or saddened her.
The song finished, and Pastor Lyle made a hurried announcement about watermelon and chicken as church members turned to one another and pumped hands as if business deals were being made. Widespread grins glinted across the crowd. Macey decided to stare at her expensive Cole Haan shoes, hoping not to see a hand poked out at her, or a flashy smile, or a sympathetic tilt of the head. She managed to look up once and was surprised to see Noah turning and squeezing his way through the slow-to-disperse crowd. As he emerged, Savannah popped up at his side, an endearing grin revealing one missing top tooth.
“God DID answer our prayers, Daddy!” she said, looking up at her father and then back at Macey.
Macey smiled but didn’t quite understand. She clasped her hands in front of herself and tried to look graceful.
“You, here at church,” Noah explained, patting Savannah on the shoulder. “We prayed you would come to church.”
Macey wanted to point out that it was because of her mother’s financial mess, not a divine act of God, but instead she kept quiet and tried to maintain her smile.
“Sorry about the heat,” Evelyn said, moving to the side as another member squeezed by the outside of the aisle. “We have air-conditioning, but it makes such a racket that no one can hear Pastor Lyle speak. So we voted several years ago that we’d rather endure the heat than miss a single word from the sermon. They keep it running right up until the service starts and then they turn it off. Normally that’s sufficient, except on the hottest summer days, when all these bodies just heat the place up.”
Patricia suddenly emerged from the swarm of bodies.
“Well, let’s go, people! The food’s not going to eat itself. What are you waiting for—a formal invitation? Them flies are gonna help themselves if we don’t get out there.”
Stephanie, now standing next to her sister, said, “Daddy! Can we go?” Noah nodded, and the girls slid through the crowd with ease.
Evelyn turned to Macey. “It’s the church picnic. There’s more food than anyone can dream of.”
Macey wasn’t sure what to say. Were they going to go to the church picnic two days after the funeral? The last thing she wanted was to have to see all those people again and listen to all their drippy condolences. What were the chances of the church’s summer picnic falling on the one day she decided to show up at church? Pleasant memories of calmer, serene times flooded her conscience, but she immediately pushed them out. That was then. This is now. A lot had changed.
Evelyn cleared her throat. “Well, we probably should get back. Macey probably doesn’t want to—”
Macey was just about to nod in agreement to whatever her mom was about to suggest when she felt a strong hand take her forearm and begin leading her toward the door. “Of course Macey wants to stay,” Noah was saying, and Macey found it odd she wasn’t fighting too hard against his attempt to persuade her. “Don’t you?” He smiled mischievously.
“I’m tired,” she replied, but it was a lie. She’d slept like a rock the night before. Then, before she knew it, she was standing outside on the church lawn, along with a hundred or so other bodies lined up at three long tables of food. She’d once heard that the chances of getting food poisoning at a potluck event were one in four, but she had a stomach of steel. It came from years of stress. She prided herself in being able to tame an upset stomach as if it were a helpless mouse. She could almost will the nausea to disappear.
Macey listened to Noah instruct his girls from several places back in the line on how to carry their plates without spilling baked beans on their pink dresses. They nodded and tilted anyhow, but an elderly man with a pleasant demeanor came to their rescue and steadied their plates while guiding them to a nearby table.
Noah laughed. “Thanks, Mack,” he said before shifting his attention to Macey. “So it’s been a while since you’ve been to the church picnic.”
Macey stared at the table in front of her, inching forward with the line. “Seventeen years.”
Noah handed her a plastic plate and fork and took the same for himself. They parted at the table, each one taking a different side, and excused themselves as they reached for the same dish. Their knuckles slammed together directly over the coleslaw.
“You like coleslaw, too, eh?” Noah said, shaking off the pain in his hand.
Macey smiled as she scooped a large portion onto his plate, then served herself. She continued on in the line, trying to find anything that seemed less likely to kill her after being left out in the heat. Noah, on the other hand, piled his plate high with everything he could cram on. Somehow he got through the line before she did. He stood and waited for her while she debated over whether or not to try what obviously was Oda Yeager’s blue-ribbon fried chicken.
“A leg or a thigh?”
Macey looked up across the table to find Twenty grinning at her and holding a fork over the decorated tub of chicken. He was missing a tooth, something she hadn’t noticed before, and for a moment he seemed vaguely familiar. It was as if he’d asked that exact same question twenty-five years ago when she stood in line at the identical summer picnic.
“A thigh,” she finally answered.
Twenty pierced a piece of the chicken and said, “I always love a good thigh,” then plopped it on her plate. Macey couldn’t help but snicker at Twenty’s innocent remark.
She joined Noah at the end of the serving table. They walked a few yards together toward an open table under a large shade tree, somewhat isolated from the rest of the crowd. He waited for her to sit before he took a seat next to her.
“The food’s already blessed. We just missed it because we were inside.” He picked up a dinner roll, took a bite, and looked at her as if she were about to say something, which she wasn’t. So she started in on the coleslaw and kept her eyes on her plate.
The low roar of a feisty crowd was enough to fill the silence at their table. It amazed her how acceptable silence was out here. Back in the city, silence was avoided at all costs. If there was even a second of silence during a broadcast, heads rolled. Even at home she always had the radio or TV switched on—sometimes both. And at night she went to sleep listening to one of a thousand CDs she owned. The morning started with her favorite talk radio program blaring out from her clock radio. But here it was okay to sit and eat and not say anything. It made her nervous, but she endured it.
One table down, she watched Patricia listen intently to the elderly people, who were complaining of their many aches and pains. Her eyes were fierce with concern, and Macey marveled at how Patricia actually seemed to care. She figured this was why Patricia always talked loudly. Most everyone she knew was nearly deaf. Back in Macey’s world the elderly were often brushed aside as a mere inconvenience. She’d once watched a middle-aged businessman shove an old man out of the way to get to a taxi. And most every time elderly people fumbled around a bit in their wallets or their purses, or couldn’t understand how the gas pump worked, or needed help seeing where to sign a credit card slip, heavy, intolerable sighs would escape from nearly everyone around.
At another table nearby, several younger women, even some teenagers, listened as a middle-aged woman described the new sewing machine she’d purchased from Sears. At this same table men were laughing boisterously as someone told a fish story. Though Macey had lived half her life here, now the place felt foreign to her. At least partly. Deep inside it touched her as warm and familiar, but she wouldn’t allow herself to think too long about the familiar part. With just a glance over to the back side of the church, she could see herself running across the plush grass, barefoot and free, with all the other little children. In another glance, there she was with her father, attempting to fly her first kite on a nearly windless day.
Pastor Lyle had been the pastor of the church but a few years before Macey left. Pastor Rolley had been the pastor before him—elderly, stoic, and almost perfect in Macey’s eyes. He died peacefully at age seventy-seven while taking a nap on a Sunday afternoon, three hours after he’d preached a sermon on perseverance. Macey had cried desperately at his funeral, and even her father, not a man of much emotion, had excused himself from the reception afterward.
Pastor Lyle carried his plate from table to table, greeting everyone and mooching some items he’d missed on his first two passes through the line. Her mother sat with Pepper, Patricia, and Tutie, all of them looking particularly interested in what might be going on at her table.
Macey gave a short wave to all of them and then looked at Noah. “Looks like we’re being studied,” she said, and Noah looked up and waved at the ladies, as well. They giggled and turned away as though they were all fifteen and the high school quarterback had just looked their way. Macey shook her head.
“What?” Noah said.
“You. You’ve got this whole town wrapped around your little finger. They all love you.”
“I love all of them,” he said softly, then glanced over to check on his girls, who were both busy eating watermelon and spitting the seeds as far as they could, which was mostly just to the edge of their little chins. “My life was such chaos before. But now it’s peaceful. Good. Pure.” He said the words with such conviction, Macey had to look away. She hardly knew what any of these words meant anymore.
She wiped her mouth and pushed her plate away. “I couldn’t wait to get out of this place.” She glanced at Noah, who didn’t appear to be fazed by her bluntness. “This town had nothing to offer me.”
“Well, I guess you’re quite a success story. A big time anchorwoman. Possibly going to the network. I suppose all of this isn’t your cup of tea.”
“Why’d you move here? I mean, the middle of nowhere hardly seems a place an artist like you would land. The scenery here’s nice, but by no means is it breathtaking.”
“Storms.”
“Storms?”
“There’s no other place in the world where you can see storms like you can in Kansas. Plus, I like the way of life here. And the river.”
A crowd had gathered at a nearby table, and laughter erupted after Macey overheard the words fire and hair. She hoped they weren’t talking about her tick incident. “Interesting,” she said to Noah.
Noah sipped his tea. “So that’s why you left? Because this town wasn’t big enough to hold all your dreams?”
Macey stared hard at him. “You think you’ve got me figured out, don’t you?”
He shrugged and smiled a little. “No, not completely. I can’t figure out why you’re always so defensive.”
Macey frowned as her eyes narrowed. “Defensive?”
“See?”
Her jaw clenched. “I asked a question. That’s not the same as being defensive.” But the tone in her voice made this response sound defensive, and now her arms were crossed tightly against her chest. “I’m not being defensive!” He only smiled and cut into his carrot cake. This man was infuriating! “I just hate it when people think they’ve got me pegged. That they’ve got me all figured out. Things aren’t always what they seem, you know.”
The small piece of cake was already gone. Noah found his napkin, wiped his mouth, and asked, “What things?”
“Just things—big things, small things. Things.” His soft stare melted her heart and enraged her both at once. “Like me, here today, at church.”
“You’re not here at church?”
“Nooo. What I mean is that I’m not here at church because I woke up this morning and felt the glory of God shine through my window, beckoning me back to a place that I—” She stopped herself. A light southerly wind picked up just in time to dry the beads of sweat that had just formed on her forehead.
“So why are you here? Free food?”
“My mom needs my help. I’m going to have to stay one more day. She wanted me to come to church. So here I am.”
Noah glanced over at Evelyn, who was in conversation with some of the other women. “She looks fine to me.”
“She’s not fine.”
“Well,” he said, suddenly standing, “then I guess it’s a good thing you’re staying.”
“Where are you going?”
“To get us some more tea.” He smiled as he took her glass, his arm brushing against hers. “I’ll be right back.”
Macey watched him walk over to the coolers. Then she covered her eyes in humiliation. This man was a walking paradox, and he was about to drive her crazy. Yet, when she got tense and angry, he didn’t seem bothered by it. Every other man she’d known couldn’t handle her mood swings, her fury. She never blamed them, either. Not for that, anyway.
Noah returned with the drinks and then told her about last year’s picnic and how the girls had gotten into a fight with eight-year-old Timmy Willows over ice cream. As she listened, it dawned on her that all the tension she’d felt before was now melting away like the ice in her tea. The tables of food were now swarmed with flies, but no one seemed to care. With the hot sun high in the sky, and laughter and joy mingling among animated conversations, Macey suddenly realized that, for the first time in as long as she could remember, she had no idea what time it was. Nor did she care.
