Stories and Articles by J. Timothy King

A Tribute to Lorelai

timk — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 00:00:00 -0700

I bet you thought she didn’t exist,
Laura’s nemesis.
I swear, I’ve met her.
I’ve stared her in the eye,
And she is death.

She spins a careful web.
She is never wrong.
Artful, she lures the victim.
Graceful, she quaffs his breath.

He knows not how nor why.
The more he fights, the worse his bind.
He is a weeping husk.

This is, to her, normality.
Life is a myth.
Real is conformance and pow’r.

Yet I pray Mia will take me in,
That I might live again.

I wrote this poem in the midst of a bad job, a dysfunctional employer-employee relationship. Everyone says they appreciate ingenuity, initiative, and individual personality— Who wouldn’t? But in practice, some companies are just plain intolerant toward their employees. Dress used to be the bugaboo of the corporate world. Now it’s operational conformance: You will not improve the process. You may be yourself, but you will fit in. Or else you will leave. I left, to work at a tiny, fast-paced company, the entire staff of which could fit into a large conference room. And I’m motivated and happy again. -TimK

Abigail White

timk — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0700

She never imagined that this would be the defining moment of her life.

Born Abigail Little, she had grown up with platinum blonde hair and deep brown eyes. As a teenager, she obsessed about her appearance and social behavior. She was smart and pretty, funny and good-natured. She was the girl every boy wanted to kiss and every other girl wanted to be.

As an adult, she married and mothered. Crow’s feet etched their way around her eyes, and though still potentially attractive, looks mattered progressively less to her. She bought nice clothes for her children; sweats and sneakers for herself. Her hair became frizzy and wiry. She put all her energy into her family, all her time into her home.

When the kids were old enough for school, she took a job as groundskeeper at a local amusement park. She was always cleaning up someone else’s mess, but she didn’t mind. In fact, it was an honor, for she knew the story of the broken window. It has been said a building can be vacant for years without becoming dilapidated, until even a single window gets broken; and then the whole building will become uninhabitable within days. Abigail knew that just one piece of trash, and her entire world would begin to disintegrate.

It was this passion she threw into her work. As a result, she was late one day. She was late picking up the kids from their after-school program. She got bawled out. Actually, the woman was very nice to this overworked mother. But Abigail couldn’t see it any other way. She had failed her duty.

It was then she realized, she was being controlled by circumstances. She had lost the excitement, her passion for life, her passion for her own life. She lived for everyone else, where she had once lived for herself.

The next day, she blew off work. She got in the car and drove across the state. Then she walked into the First Bank of Everytown, U.S.A., she walked up to a teller, pulled out her gun, and demanded they fill the satchel with cash.

Carolyn and Amanda in the Dark

timk — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 00:00:00 -0700

Joanna T. Knight is a pseudonym. It’s also an anagram of Jonathan T. King (which is also my name). -TimK

Once there were two bears named Carolyn and Amanda who were sisters and best friends.

One night, after their mother and father tucked them in and turned out the light, Amanda suddenly realized her night light wasn’t shining.

“Carolyn,” she said to her older sister, “I can’t see, because the night light isn’t working.”

“Don’t worry,” said Carolyn. “It probably just needs a new light bulb. We can fix it tomorrow. Just close your eyes and go to sleep. There’s nothing in the dark that isn’t there in the daytime.”

Amanda closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep. But she kept feeling someone in the room watching her.

She opened her eyes and looked carefully around the room. In the dark shadows, she saw something with long, skinny arms, wearing a hat, sitting on her desk chair.

She whispered at her sister, “Carolyn! A ghost!”

Carolyn sat up in a daze. “Huh? Where?” she asked.

“Right there! On the chair!”

Carolyn squinted at the shadows. “It’s just your hat and coat. You hung them there before you went to bed, remember?”

Amanda looked again. Her coat sleeves looked like the long arms of something sitting in her chair, wearing her hat.

“Oh,” said Amanda.

“Just try to go to sleep.” And Carolyn lay back down and rolled over.

But as soon as Amanda closed her eyes, she heard a noise outside the window. It went screech—tap tap tap, screech—tap tap tap.

She opened her eyes wide and shivered. The sound came again screech—tap tap tap, screech—tap tap tap.

“Carolyn?”

“What?” mumbled her sister.

“I think a monster is trying to get in our window.”

“It’s just the wind blowing the tree outside. Sometimes it scrapes against the house. Please, relax and go to sleep.”

So Amanda tried again to go to sleep. She closed her eyes and listened.

She heard a sound in the hallway. Pat pat pat pat pat.

It was getting closer. Pat pat pat pat pat.

Amanda couldn’t move. Pat pat pat pat pat.

And then it scurried across her bed and up into her lap!

Amanda bolted upright and screamed. She screamed as loud as she could.

And as fast as he could her kitty cat Whiskers ran off her bed and out of the room.

By this time, the whole house was awake. Amanda’s father came running into the room and turned on the light. “What happened?” he asked.

Amanda was crying. “My night light isn’t working, and I thought Whiskers was a monster and was coming on my bed to eat me.”

So he hugged her, and he tucked her in again and turned out the light.

He sat next to her and stroked her hair. “We can fix the night light tomorrow. But what you should do tonight is think about happy things. What kind of happy things do you like to think about?”

“How about rainbows?” asked Carolyn.

Amanda liked that idea. “Yeah,” she said, “and candy.”

“And birthday parties.”

“Ooh. And balloons in animal shapes!”

So Amanda closed her eyes and thought about rainbows and about candy, about birthday parties and cake and ice cream, and she dreamed she got a balloon shaped like her kitty cat Whiskers.

And she opened her eyes, and it was morning. She had slept the whole night.

And she forgot all about her broken night light, which they never did fix.

Children and Toilets

timk — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0800

Kids and toilets don’t mix. They’re always going wrong at the most inconvenient times, like when I need to go.

I pushed open the bathroom door and almost stepped in it, a puddle the size of Lake Erie. Carefully lifting the lid confirmed my suspicions. The bowl was filled to the brim. Inside was a tiny log of poo and a half-roll of toilet paper.

“Shit,” I said. Then, “Gerald Ferris Robinson, Junior!”

“What?” I heard his voice echo from somewhere on the first floor. You know, whenever the Beaver’s mother used his full name, he came running.

“Come here!”

Feet bounded up the stairs, making a noise disproportionate to their size.

“What is it, Ma?”

I motioned to the toilet and surrounding flood.

He said nothing.

“I have to use the toilet, and now I can’t. I work really hard around here cleaning up after you. And I really wish you wouldn’t make my life more difficult.”

He seemed to stand a little shorter.

“That’s all I wanted to say.”

He quietly slunk downstairs, turned on the television, and turned up the volume.

I hated working in the toilet. When I was growing up, whenever my mother asked me to clean the bathroom, I would wear heavy latex gloves to protect me from the germs. I would used a disinfecting cleanser, and when I was done, I would carefully remove the gloves and throw them in the trash. Then I’d wash for 15 minutes, all the way up to my elbows, like a surgeon.

Now, plunger in hand, I needed to unclog the drain. I always got Jerry to take care of this kind of thing. But Jerry wasn’t home from work yet, and I had a pain in my butt that called out disaster, and I don’t mean the kid. As I worked, I splashed even more water onto the floor. I felt wet floor sliding under my shoes.

Then I felt long, wet hair sticking to my neck and water dribbling down my blouse. I shook my head to clear the feeling. I hadn’t had long hair since early in ninth grade.

The front door opened. A little voice screamed “Daddy!” Then thump-thump-thump, boom! and Jerry said, “Oomph! Watch my back! Where’s your mother?”

“Upstairs, but…” and I couldn’t hear what came after.

I continued to pump on the plunger handle. Footfalls ascended the staircase, stopping when they reached the top.

“I see,” Jerry said. Then he paused. “We need to clean up that puddle before it seeps through and damages the floor.”

“Look, I work really hard around here, and this wasn’t even my fault.”

“Okay.” He measured his words carefully, but before he could continue, I butted in.

“It’s the same thing, every day. He never listens. He never cleans up after himself. He makes a mess and then expects me to fix it. And now I can’t even use the bathroom, because the toilet’s clogged!”

“Do you want me to do that?”

I took a deep breath. “No. I have it.”

“Then I’ll get some towels for the floor.”

When he got back, I tore into him. “No, we can’t use those. Just let me handle it, would you?”

“What should I use?”

“I’m taking care of it.”

“No you’re not. You’re unclogging the toilet.”

“It wasn’t my fault!” I said.

“I know that. What’s with you and toilets? Just let me do it, okay?”

I shrunk back, silent. I was dry, but I felt drenched from head to toe, as though water were everywhere. I felt tears push from behind my eyes, but I held them back. Suddenly, I was on the floor. I forced my hand down into the bowl, scouring the trap with my fingers. I felt nothing in the water.

“What are you doing?” Jerry sounded angry.

“I just want my necklace back.”

“Necklace? What necklace?”

I ignored him, continuing my search. He grabbed my shoulders and tried to pull me back, but I yanked myself away.

“No! It has to be there! It has to!”

“Olivia, you’re getting shit all over your hands!”

“Why did you do this to me?”

“Little Jerry’s only 6. Little kids need to get the knack of that sort of thing.”

“I need to find my necklace!”

“Olivia, calm down!”

The next thing I new, he threw me into the shower, undressed me, washed away everything. I don’t remember him starting the water, picking me up, wrestling me under the warm rain. I don’t remember relieving myself, but clearly I had; I hate to think where. I also don’t remember him drying me off, putting me to bed, cleaning up the mess.

I woke up in bed. It was dark out. Jerry walked in and sat down next to me. I propped myself up on my elbows.

“Hi, hon. I must have drifted off. I had the strangest dream.”

He summarized for me the evening’s events. “I know a good psychiatrist,” he said.

“What?” I felt my face turn hot.

“He wants you to keep calm and to see him tomorrow at 11:30. Does that work with your schedule?”

“I don’t want a psychiatrist!”

“Look, Olivia, that behavior wasn’t… healthy. You could have a brain tumor. You have to talk to a doctor.”

I sighed deeply. “I don’t have a brain tumor.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do, and I don’t want to talk about it.”

Jerry sat beside me. “What’s going on, then?”

I closed my eyes for a moment to settle my stomach. Then I sat up and kissed him. “What do you want for dinner?”

“I made some burgers and fries for Little Jerry and me. We saved you some.”

I ate in silence. Jerry sat at the table with me. I could almost hear his thoughts, still thinking about the head shrink. But I wasn’t going to have any of it. I knew what had happened; I knew there was nothing wrong with me; and I didn’t want to talk to any mind-doctor about it.

When I was 9 years old, my brother Lee died. I was only a little kid and he about to start college, but he always had time for me. We played with dolls, painted and drew, watched TV, read books, went bike riding. Mostly I remember talking with him. He was like another parent to me, grown up and wise, but without any of the emotional distance that so often separates parents from their little girls.

Then one August day he got a cold, which turned into a chest infection, which turned into pneumonia. No matter what the doctors did, he wouldn’t get better. Lee had fallen victim to a little known disease called AIDS. We don’t know how he got it, though my parents always told me it was from a blood transfusion he had when I was a baby.

During the last days, I sat with him every day. We both knew what lay ahead. We spent endless hours together telling each other all the things you save up until the very end, but which most of us never get the chance to share. To this day, I can’t read Tuesdays With Morrie.

On one of these visits, I was wearing a gold, heart-shaped locket Lee had given me for my seventh birthday. Inside was a picture of the two of us from a photo booth at the mall.

Lee noticed the locket and smiled. “I remember that,” he said in short, grungy bursts.

I opened it up. There was a picture of Lee and I, smiling and healthy. Inside the cover was engraved, “Brother and sister forever.”

I looked at Lee, but I said nothing. There was a brick in my throat.

Lee took a heavy breath. “Wear it, and we’ll be together.”

From that day on, I always wore my heart-shaped locket, even to bed. It might seem silly, but to me it all made perfect sense. I kept it close to my heart so that someday I’d see Lee again in heaven. I couldn’t take it off, or else I would lose him forever.

So I wore the locket, but I never forgave God for taking my brother away.

In ninth grade, I began junior high. I recognized a few people from middle school, but there were also many strange faces. One day near the beginning of the school year, I got a pass during English class to use the bathroom. I hated using any public restroom, but some things can’t be avoided. I did the best I could. When I was done, a group of girls were loitering around the sinks. They were taller than me, and I did not recognize them from any of my classes. I knew they probably weren’t supposed to be there.

I tried to ignore them. I just wanted to wash my hands and get back to class. But one of the girls stopped me before I could reach the sink. She had short hair and an athletic build, and she was wearing ripped jeans and black boots with rivets. As she approached, she looked down into my eyes from above with a menacing coolness.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

I froze for a second. Then I ventured, “I just want to wash my hands.”

“No, I mean, what are you doing here? In this room?”

My mind blanked out. Fear surrounded me. I felt as though I were being frozen inside of a giant ice-cube. I wanted to say something witty and threatening, but I didn’t know even how to begin. If I had been able to pull it off, that would have contrasted nicely with the dainty, pink blouse and frilly skirt I was wearing. Maybe it was best that I said nothing.

The girl stepped back a moment and smiled. “I love your hair,” she said. “Blonde and pink go together.”

I laughed a nervous “Thanks.”

“How did you grow it so long?”

“I’ve just always had long hair.” I choked the words out.

Then she noticed the heart charm I always wore around my neck. She examined it in her hand. “What a pretty necklace.”

“My brother gave that to me,” I blurted out.

She yanked it from my neck and threw it in the toilet. Panicked, I dashed after it, kneeling down next to the bowl, poised to grab it back, mustering the courage. But before I could, the other girls shoved my head in. They flushed. The current sucked in my long hair, which clogged the drain. Disgusting, cold water came up around my face. I closed my eyes and held my breath and scrambled and shoved against the bowl, wanting to get away, wanting to breathe, wanting to cry.

Instead, I felt a hand wham down on my head, shoving me in further. The toilet flushed again, and water overflowed onto the floor.

I got away. I was sitting on the floor in the center of a miniature lake. My hair was soaked, and water stains spotted my clothes.

The dark-haired girl craned over me, and as she talked, she accented each syllable with a nasty finger pointed at my forehead. “This is our room. You stay out.”

One of the other girls was holding a large wad of toilet paper, which she threw into the toilet. Then they left.

I still wanted to cry, but after all that, I could not. I crawled back to the bowl and rooted around for my necklace. But it was gone. Still, I continued my search.

The door opened and I heard the dark-haired girl speaking with a woman.

“I just came in here, and she was down on the floor with her arm in the toilet and water everywhere.”

“Thanks for bringing it to my attention. You can go back to class now.”

Footsteps echoed off the hard, cold walls, approaching. They stopped.

“Well, are you planning on cleaning this up? Or shall I call the janitor?”

I ignored her.

“Hey!”

She came closer, probably as close as she could without stepping in water. I did not look, but I heard her heels clap on the dry cement.

“Look, you,” she said, “this kind of behavior is unacceptable. I don’t know what they do at your house, but here we don’t stuff toilet paper in the toilet and then play with it!”

For the first time, I acknowledged her. I stood up, stepped back, and faced her. She was short for a teacher, but stocky. She had a painted on face and dirty-blonde curls, and she wore a pine-green business suit and skirt.

When I said nothing, she seemed annoyed. “Well? Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

“This isn’t my fault.”

“No, I suppose the toilet faeries did it, right?”

“That girl— She threw my necklace in there and did this to me!”

“You mean Samantha Haverhill?” The expression on her face was as if I had just told a very unfunny joke.

“I don’t know her name. The dark-haired girl you were talking to.”

“Samantha is one of my best students. I don’t think she would be involved in any trouble.”

I just looked at her.

“Come over here.”

She helped me dry off and had my parents take me home. They wanted to know the story, but I didn’t want to tell it. I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. And I forgot. I forgot everything. The girls, the locket, Lee, everything.

Mom and Dad noticed changes. I cut my hair. I talked differently. I dressed differently. They sent me to a psychologist. I told them to leave me alone, that I was “just growing up.” They seemed to understand that on some level, but the psychologist didn’t. He kept pushing and pushing, week after week, session after session. I lied to Dad and told him the psychologist kept asking about sexual abuse. Then my parents saw things my way, and eventually things did reach a new normal.

But I didn’t want to talk about any of this with Jerry. And I definitely did not want to see a psychiatrist, because the psychiatrist would want me to remember, and that would be bad. So I ate my dinner as though nothing were awry, except that I was eating by myself.

Little Jerry came up to me and wrapped his arms around my waist and said, “Mommy, after you go to the doctor and you get better, can you read me Mouse Tales again?”

I scowled at my husband from across the table, such that my son could not see.

Jerry did not respond.

I looked back at Little Jerry. “I can read you Mouse Tales tonight. Okay?”

He looked up at me. “What about after you go to the doctor?”

“I don’t need to go to the doctor, Little Jerry.” I touched his nose with the tip of my finger and smiled.

He smiled back and went off to play with his trucks in front of the television.

Jerry said, “You do need to see the doctor.”

“Okay,” I said, but I had no intention of seeing a psychiatrist.

The next day I blew off the appointment with the psychiatrist. But I did call my own doctor and got her to recommend a neurologist. I was able to make an appointment for the following week. When Jerry found out, he was miffed, I could tell, but he said that he was glad I was seeing someone and that I should keep him posted.

The next weeks passed without incident. Each morning I awoke, made everyone breakfast, saw Jerry off to work, got Little Jerry on the bus to school, washed the laundry and dishes, cleaned up from the night before just in time to get Little Jerry from the afternoon bus, helped him with his homework, cooked dinner, cleaned some more, saw Jerry home, had dinner, put the son to bed, and put myself to bed just in time to start over again.

I kept the appointment with the neurologist, who scheduled an MRI, even though he didn’t think it would turn up anything. The MRI turned up nothing out of the ordinary. Everyone wanted to know if I had been under abnormal stress. I told them, no, I hadn’t.

A couple weeks later, we had my parents over for a Sunday afternoon feast, the centerpiece of which was a lovely honey-baked ham.

Dad finished his last bite and said, “That was delicious. You know, Olivia wouldn’t even eat ham as a child.”

“Why not?” asked Little Jerry.

“Because pigs are dirty animals and ham comes from pigs.”

“Yuck!”

“But the farmers keep them clean, and when we cook the ham, that kills all the germs.”

Now Big Jerry chimed in. “She’s still afraid of germs, though. When did that happen?”

I regarded him, suspected he was up to no good.

“I don’t know. She wasn’t always like that. I remember one time when she was about three, we thought she was taking a nap in her crib. She was so quiet.”

Mom said, “Richard, we’re eating.”

“Little did we know what she was getting into!”

“What?” asked Little Jerry.

“Her diaper.”

“Huh?”

“She had gone poop in her diaper, and she decided to finger-paint.”

“Eww!”

“Yup. It was everywhere. The crib was white when we bought it. But she turned it brown. Even the slats were covered. You know, the poles in the crib?” He moved his hands as though he were slathering something all over the slats of a crib.

I was no longer eating.

Then he reached his arms over his head. “The wall, too, solid brown, as high as she could reach. Her entire body, even her face, completely covered.”

“And who cleaned it up?”

“Oh! I picked her up from the shoulders, like this.” He pinched his fingers as though he were holding something toxic. “I just threw her in the tub and turned on the water. Then the crib. We got out the Lysol. I think we had to get a new mattress.”

“And that’s why she hates toilets?” Jerry asked.

But there was no answer. Only Little Jerry was laughing. There was an awkward pause.

Then Mom said, “Little Jerry, why don’t you show me your room?”

“Okay. I got a new truck! Wanna see?”

She ushered him off. Then Dad told Jerry the story about Lee. I didn’t object, nor did I add anything. I didn’t feel like talking. I didn’t feel like listening. I cleared the table and washed the dishes. In the background, I heard them talking about me, when I started high school, when my personality changed. I don’t know if they were aware I was listening. I don’t know whether they cared.

When it was time for Mom and Dad to go, I saw them to the door, said goodbye. And then I stopped breathing.

I dreamed I was in a sunny, green field. Samantha Haverhill was there. She was a teenager, but she was still taller than me. She towered over me brandishing a knife. I tried to move, but my muscles wouldn’t budge. I felt a sharp pain in my chest and I saw that she had cut me there with the knife. Then she reached inside my chest and yanked out my heart. I stood silently, unable to move.

Then Samantha dropped my heart into a hole in the ground where I was standing. She filled the hole with dirt. And I fell down and died. It’s a myth that you’ll die for real if you die in your dreams. I had died in my dreams before. My chest still hurt.

Samantha wanted to eat an apple from the tree that had grown where I had died, where she planted my heart. So she talked to the tree, “I’ve been searching for you for years, and I’ve been hungry all that time. May I please have one of your apples?”

I spoke to her out of the tree. “These are my apples. I don’t have to give you any, and I need them for my family.”

“Please. You have enough. Your family is getting fat, and you don’t even eat any yourself.”

“My blood flows through this tree like sap. These are my apples to give or to withhold.” Then I walked out of the tree, and for the first time, I was taller than Samantha Haverhill.

“Okay,” I said. “You may have one apple.”

She picked an apple, and where she had picked it, two new apples appeared.

I woke up, but not in my own bed. I was propped up, and there were wires and tubes connected to me. In the background, I could hear hospital noises. My chest still hurt. I looked around and saw Jerry sleeping in a chair, with sunlight pouring through the window all around us.

“Jerry,” I tried to say, but it was too hard to talk.

A black nurse walked in the room, and smiled. “So, you woke up.” She checked the I.V. and took my blood pressure as she talked. “I’m Adelle. Don’t try to move yet. You have a catheter in you, so you won’t have to pee. If you need anything else, you can push this button.” She picked up a button on a wire and put it in my hand. “I’ll tell the doctor you’re awake.”

But before she left, she woke up Jerry, who was happy to see me. I didn’t remember when last I’d seen him happy. He kissed me and stroked my hair and said, “I’m so glad you’re alright.”

“What happened?” I eked out.

“The operation was a success.”

Then I remembered. I had severe trouble breathing. An ambulance rushed me to the hospital, where they panicked and performed tests and panicked some more. They always tried not to show that they were panicking. Several hours later, I had an emergency open-heart bypass operation.

“Little Jerry?” I asked.

Jerry smiled. “Mom and Dad are staying with Little Jerry.”

I smiled, too.

Over the next months, I learned to let others do things for me. I was always afraid things wouldn’t get done. But I had no choice, and Jerry made sure of that. He worked from home frequently. Mom and Dad came over from time to time. Even Little Jerry learned to help out.

One day, I got an unexpected email. It was from Samantha Haverhill. She said we had gone to high school together and that she had something that she thought belonged to me. She wanted to meet.

I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want to think about her. I ignored her email, but for some reason I could not delete it. Every time I considered it, I put it off. And the longer the message sat in my in-box, the more I did want to see Samantha Haverhill and do to her what she’d done to me.

I replied to her email and arranged to meet her for brunch.

We met in a classy tearoom. I recognized her immediately. Her hair was longer, but she was still the dark-haired girl.

She rose as I approached. “Hi. Olivia?” She offered me her hand.

She was about as tall as me. I suddenly noticed her face. It was softer than I remembered, despite marks of age. I introduced myself, and she began to talk.

“I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Twelve Steps. I’ve been going through a twelve-step program, and one of the things they tell you to do is to find everyone you’ve wronged and ask forgiveness. So I’ve been hunting down all the people I’ve wronged in the past. I want to try to make things right.”

I thought I remembered that from an episode of Seinfeld. “All the people you’ve wronged? That must be some list.”

Without missing a beat, she replied, “Yes, it is. And you’re the last name on it. I looked for you for years. I didn’t remember your name. All I had was one clue that helped me find you.”

She reached into her purse and brought out a delicate chain necklace with a gold, heart-shaped charm. She set it on the table.

I picked it up, opened it. Inside was a cheap photo of Lee and me smiling at the camera. I put it all together. She tricked me into thinking she threw it into the toilet. She swiped it instead.

“Will you forgive me?” she asked.

I felt like punching her in the face. “I don’t have to forgive you,” I said.

“I know.”

“There will always be people who won’t forgive you for the things you did.”

“You wouldn’t be the first.” She seemed resigned to fate and almost sad about it.

We were silent for a long minute.

Samantha stood. “Well, thanks for meeting me, anyhow. I’m glad to have given you back your necklace. Have brunch on me.” She placed ten dollars on the table and was about to walk away.

“Wait,” I said. I sighed. “Sit down.”

She sat back down.

I spoke in a harsh, angry whisper. “You don’t seem to realize what you did to me. My brother gave this to me before he died, and when I lost it, I thought I was going to die. You ruined my whole life! I cut my hair, changed my clothes. I lied to my parents. Damn it! I can’t lead a normal life because of you.” And I couldn’t stop. Against all reason, I found myself pouring out my soul to this person. The more I talked, the more I was surprised at what I was saying. I felt as though I were sitting as a third party to the conversation, listening to myself, getting to know myself again after all those years. I felt less and less angry. Instead, I felt sadder and sadder.

And finally I wept. For the first time in twenty years, I wept.

Slowly I began to realize that Samantha did not need me to forgive her. She had already come to terms with her daemons, or else she wouldn’t be here. She did not need me to forgive her. Rather, I needed me to.

That August, I spoke at a fund-raiser for AIDS research, in honor of Lee. I told them our story and moved the room to tears. They gave me a standing ovation. I know that sounds corny, like that’s how the story’s supposed to end: “Everyone lived happily ever after,” and all that garbage. Everyone did not live happily ever after.

We still visit with my parents from time to time—that will never change—and now I even occasionally laugh at Dad’s stories.

I still hate toilets, but at least now I can work with them.

Samantha Haverhill and I will never be close, but we do occasionally write.

And I grew my hair long again. I like it that way.

Churches and Innovation

timk — Thu, 30 Sep 1999 08:29:00 -0700

H’s comments last Sunday, on changes and trying something different, inspired me. I’ve jotted down a few of my thoughts, mostly culled from Peter Drucker’s book Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which I recently re-read several times.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen very few innovative successes in churches. We usually think of innovation as something that businesses engage in, but there’s no particular reason why this has to be true. Surely innovation does work in business. And surely the church is no business. But that doesn’t mean that innovation can’t work in the church. But the church faces different obstacles, pursues different ends, and uses different tactics.

Why do churches fail? There are a number of reasons. The most important is that churches, like other public-service institutions, tend to maximize rather than optimize. After a certain point, spending even more on the same thing meets with rapidly diminishing returns.

When you go the grocery store, you buy one or two loaves of bread. If you have a large family—or if you really like bread—you might buy several. But you probably don’t buy 20 loaves. What would you do with all that bread? Even though you like bread, you know that the $15 or $20 spent on extra bread would be much better spent on soup, meat, or something else. It would achieve far greater results in terms of satisfying your family’s overall food needs.

But public-service institutions are generally rewarded for effort, rather than for hard results. More effort means bigger budgets and larger programs, even if results fail to follow. They also tend to see their goals as moral absolutes (rather than using moral absolutes to define their objectives), and their programs as working toward those absolutes (rightly or wrongly, consciously or unconsciously). Suggestions that they try something different, in order to achieve better results, are seen as an attack on the organization’s raison d’etre. Failure is often just a reason to redouble efforts. And waste more resources.

So, the first prescription against failure: Have reasonable objectives and realistic goals.

The head of the Crusade Against Hunger is quoted as saying, “Our mission will not be completed as long as there is one child on the earth going to bed hungry.” Yesterday in the London Independent, Tony Blair was reported to say that he wouldn’t relax his agenda until poverty had been eliminated. Many Christians see the role of the church as evangelizing the world. While these ideals may all be laudable, the world is a pretty big place with an awful lot of hungry children and more than its fair share of poverty.

The reality is that these jobs are much too big for any of us mere humans to handle. We have to leave them in God’s hands. We have to trust that He will somehow coordinate all the ongoing efforts, in order to reach as much of the world as possible. That He will provide work for the poor, and food for the hungry. If we try to take on the entire burden ourselves, we are doomed to failure. We may spend all our energy pushing the programs beyond where they’ve achieved optimality. Or maybe we won’t even seriously try, for lack of a reasonable objective.

What we ought to do is ask: What does God want us, in our little corner of the world, to do for Him? What is within our abilities? What will achieve the greatest results with the resources we have? Where are our strengths? And how will God use them as part of His ultimate purpose? It is part of the pastor’s prerogative to help us answer these questions, to take advantage of the opportunities God offers us.

God does indeed present us with opportunities to serve Him. And, here again, churches, as institutions, are often among the worst offenders.

I knew a church who, quite unintentionally, had a certain woman in its congregation. This woman frequently encountered people who were in dire need of salvation. And she befriended them, shared Jesus with them, and brought them to church. These people were from the dregs of society and were largely overlooked by the religious establishment. Within six months, one of the pews was half-full of people who had formerly avoided churches and Christians.

What to do? Convert the unexpected success into an opportunity. Perhaps analyze what this woman is doing that’s working so well. Perhaps there’s some way to duplicate the success. Perhaps there’s some aspect of the church that feeds these people. At least, there’s some aspect of the gospel that she has effectively, consistently communicated to a rejected demographic.

The unexpected success represents a change that has already taken place. It results from an unintentional tactic that has already worked. It is, in fact, the least risky source of innovative opportunity.

And it’s also the most overlooked and despised, because it represents change. The people in the church in question didn’t see that their church was filling up with unbelievers. They didn’t see God working in marvelous and mysterious ways. What they saw was that the faces in their Sunday morning service were changing. That their worship was being disrupted by people they considered low-life undesirables. And they unabashedly, in the name of all that is good, spurned the newcomers. That church had floundered for decades before, and it has floundered ever since.

We all become anxious at change. But remember: Change means opportunity!

Change always means opportunity for the person who’s able to exploit it. In our case, it’s an opportunity to serve. Structural changes. Demographic changes. Even failures represent opportunities.

After World War II, the American Catholic Church saw more and more educated lay people in its parishes. An educated laity is much less likely to accept the word of a priest at face value, without asking questions, without understanding the matter first-hand. By the late 1960’s, there was also a decline in the number of men entering the priesthood, resulting in a shortage of priests. Most of the Church saw these changes as direct threats. But one archdiocese saw opportunity. It took the simple step of appointing lay professionals to handle administrative functions that were previously handled by priests. As a result, it ended up with a different problem. Priests from all over the country wanted to get into this one archdiocese. Because there, and only there, they could do the things they entered the priesthood to do.

Which brings me to the third rule: Practice entrepreneurial judo.

In other words, analyze the efforts of other churches and organizations. Determine where those efforts fall short. Perhaps they fall short because the organizations don’t see precisely what God is doing. Or perhaps because they lack the resources to do the whole job alone. It doesn’t really matter. In any case, find people whose needs are not being met, and meet them. Or, as Paul put it, “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.”

This strategy works especially well in the public-service sector. Since so often public-service institutions maximize rather than optimize. And they overlook unexpected successes and failures.

It is the least risky innovative strategy. Coupled with the unexpected success or failure, the surest sign of opportunity, the pair is quite powerful. And, as we have seen, ignoring them can be deadly.

Entrepreneurial judo also works especially well in the presence of rapid structural change. Indeed, effective innovation is always necessary in the face of structural change. And the most sure-fire indicator of structural change is rapid growth. In other words, when the next big revival hits, lots of churches are going to be put out of business. Because they will fail to meet the spiritual needs of the millions of new christians pouring into the fold. If they hold faithfully to the old model, they will become relics of the past. (Who was it who said that when God bring revival, he shakes things up?)

The only way to survive will be to establish reasonable objectives and realistic goals, look for changes that can be turned into opportunities, and serve by meeting the needs of others.

Coffee

timk — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 00:00:00 -0800

Do you know what’s the worst thing that can happen in the morning? That one thing that can take a great morning, like today’s was, and all but ruin it? And this morning was indeed great. Yesterday was President’s Day, and a lazy Tuesday morning is what that particular holiday is good for. It was a delightful, easy start to a short week after a long weekend. I felt relaxed and vibrant, even if my head was a still little achy.

Not from a hangover. You see, the down-side to long weekends is that I invariably miss a few doses of caffeine. Yes, I do own a coffee pot, and I even have beans with which to use it. But on weekends I’m a lazy bum, especially on Sunday, and half of the time I can’t find my favorite mug, and most of the time I need first to fill the water filter and wait interminably for the clear liquid to trickle through, and after all this the final brew tastes and looks like radioactive waste, because the pot is dusty and dirty, and the funnel needs to be washed, and the grounds are stale. And I can’t even muster the will to traipse to Dunkie’s down the street; besides which, their coffee is almost as bad as mine. Fortunately, on Sundays we visit my parents, and I can always bum a cup off them.

What irony! You’d think a coffee freak would be a master of the brew. Indeed I possess all the requisite skill and talent, frequently expounding on the art to my coworkers in the company cafeteria. I can tell dark-roast from light merely with a deep breath. With a sip, I can tell you when you ground the beans and how long the pot has been sitting there. Once, my parents picked up an extra can of coffee at the grocery store—it was on sale. They offered it to me. Coffee in a can, I wasn’t sure whether it was a gag gift. (It wasn’t.) All of this is true. I take my caffeinated beverages very seriously. But when it comes to weekends, I’d rather bear the withdrawal than get up off my butt.

Anyone who’s experienced the withdrawal knows how big of a bum this makes me. Now, I don’t drink much. Only a couple cups a day tops. I take it in half-cup doses, because any more and by the time I get to the bottom of the cup, the once-steamy liquid would be cold. (And we can’t have that.) Still, by 3 o’clock Saturday afternoon, I’m feeling it, the symptoms. And I have little excuse. A mere hundred milligrams of caffeine would chase away that little guy nailing his pictures to the inside of my skull. I wouldn’t forever sleep that twitch-filled sleep. I could actually get my laundry done. By yesterday afternoon, I was taking Ibuprofen and microwaving tea (Earl Grey, hot).

Therefore, last night I actually slept, and I awoke this morning—good news—with little more than a sinus condition. On top of that, today was the little one’s first day of preschool and the first time since we moved in that the wife and I had the house all to ourselves. And love in the morning is my favorite kind. So I came into work this morning feeling good. And I knew I would soon feel better, because our coffee machine is better than the ones in some restaurants.

Then I encountered that one thing that can wreck the day after President’s day. Taking a cup, I drew up a measure of black liquid from the thermos, added just enough half-and-half (no sugar). The cup burned in my hand; the pot had been freshly brewed. I took a gentle sip, slurping between puckered lips. And now I’m gagging.

How often do I have to tell these people? It’s so simple? What kind of lazy idiots do I work with? How often do I have to tell them to rinse out the pot? That battery acid is at least 20% left-over from Friday. Damn. If there’s one thing worse than weak coffee, it’s week-old coffee. Of course, they probably can’t even tell the difference, the plebeians.

So now I’m standing with a cup of what appears to be the waste product of some mutant alien fungus. And what to do? Do I dump the pot and start again? And waste what’s in there? No, the philistines will drink the swill, so I can’t waste it.

Do I use the other thermos? The other thermos is empty. That is, it hasn’t been used since Johnson was in power, and it has a dark, grimy slime sloshing around in the bottom with brown flakes peeling from the sides. It definitely needs to be washed and scrubbed.

Or maybe I should just choke down what’s in my hand. After all, sometimes we all have to make sacrifices.

What am I talking about? No! I allow myself only a couple of cups, and I’m gonna enjoy them!

So I do it up right. Grab the bottle brush. Not that one; it smells funny. Use the other brush. A little dish soap. Lots of hot water. Scrub, scrub. Scrub some more. Rinse thoroughly. Twice. (The only thing worse than four-day old coffee is coffee flavored with a pinch of dish soap.) While I’m at it, I’ll wash out the funnel too. A dry paper towel to wipe the grime out of each little crevice. Then with soap and water.

Now for the coffee bean. We get pure Arabica pre-ground in sealed bags (metalized plastic). It comes in a variety of roasts and blends and lasts long enough for us to go through it before it goes stale. At least I get to choose what kind I want, something on the lighter side; the lighter the roast, the more the caffeine. I believe we have a nice breakfast blend. Hmm. Let’s see. Sumatra. Kenya. French roast. We’re going in the wrong direction here. Here’s some straight Columbia Supremo (roasted medium). I guess that’ll do in a pinch. Digging deep into box, I pull out some more. More of the same. For crying out loud! Hold on. Here we go! I probably got the last one. Coffee filter. Coffee grounds. Coffee maker. Push the button. It magically dispenses just the right amount of filtered water, pre-heated to just the right temperature, forming a dark, aromatic liqueur that dribbles into the pot.

I stand by the window with my arms folded. I stand and stare, hypnotized. Finally, the machine beeps at me. I place the spout into the thermos, close the lid, prime the pump. I take a deep breath and dribble about 6 ounces of the ambrosia into my cup. I add just a little half-and-half. I blow over the hot liquid. The delicate fragrance entices me. I sip. It works its way into my mouth and through my olfactory passages. I sigh.

Finally, nirvana.

In the Past

timk — Tue, 08 Apr 2003 00:00:00 -0700

At first, he didn’t even know why he did it. It’s one thing to live with the mystery of one’s past; far more terrifying to come face to face with it. And yet here was Dylan Antonin Rogers, hunting down his own ghosts. Circumstance did not force him into the predicament. Rather, he chased it like a dog trying to bite the tires off an eighteen-wheeler. It happened on one of those find-your-long-lost-friends-from-high-school web sites. Of all the people he could try to look up, there was no good reason to pick Aubrey. She was just a childhood crush, not a close friend, but his memory of her could destroy him.

Dylan, at the time a new teenager struggling with the wild passions of adolescence, had in those days dreamt of being together with Aubrey. This was no sexual fantasy—he had no experience on which to base one. This was the confused desire of a thirteen-year-old boy, a wanting to be near her, to smell her long blonde hair, touch its delicate curls, to caress her lightly freckled nose, to stare into those sharp blue eyes, feel the gentle curves of her back. He longed to say to her what was on his heart and hear her respond in kind, then to kiss her soft lips, to taste them. How his heart burned, and how it tore when circumstances brought them apart.

He had cracked, yes, embarrassed himself, but even worse, embarrassed Aubrey. Not that it would have mattered: he was moving away to Boston, half a country distant from Medina, Ohio, and they would probably never again meet. During months of Algebra and Science classes he had sat at his assigned desk just behind hers. Each time she stirred, a halcyon breeze carried her scent to his nostrils. Each time he looked up, he saw her there. If only he reached out his hand, he could touch her beautiful locks, could sweep them aside, tuck them for her behind her young ear, as she was wont to do, and whisper words that would make her smile and blush and shrink and float all at the same time. But she didn’t even know he existed, and now time was out. He had to let her know or forever lose the chance. But he was a kid, and kids do stupid things. For weeks afterward Dylan cried himself to sleep—though he would never admit it—embracing his pillow, imagining it was her, inventing as a balm for his delirium a day when they would be brought together once and for all.

That was decades ago, 25 years in fact. Now Dylan was happily married, Katharine his bride a beautiful gentlewoman with golden hair and deep brown eyes, as intelligent as she was graceful. He was a mildly successful accountant, heavily involved in his local church and Rotary club, and respected. The two lived in their own two-story, four-bedroom, New England suburban home with their three beautiful children. He had staunch friends and a satisfying life. He didn’t want to change it.

Yet he still remembered, and he still ached. The memories were fuzzy, events from an eternity ago, but he felt as if they had occurred only yesterday. Despite all the happiness Dylan had found, the simple truth is that he would never again feel a longing as deep as the childhood passion he had felt for Aubrey.

At first, he told himself it was mere idle curiosity. Read email. Pull up a web site. I wonder what ever happened to Aubrey? What Dylan hadn’t expected was that wondering was better than actually finding out. There it was on the computer screen: Aubrey Keaton, now Aubrey Halpern. His heart paused. She had gone to college and had two pet cats. Her current occupation: homemaker. His heart fell flat. He couldn’t explain why.

“Hi, dear,” Katharine approached. “What’s up?” She was leafing through a catalog of some sort. Now she bent down and gave him a peck on the cheek.

“Just reading my email,” he replied dryly.

That was no lie. Even now he wanted to move his mouse to the “email Aubrey Halpern” link sticking out of the page before him. But what could he write? Hi. You probably don’t remember me, and if you do it’s probably a memory you’d rather forget. But I’ve been thinking about you. And please don’t think I’m a psychopathic Internet stalker, ’cause I’m not. No, that wouldn’t do. This was just silliness, leftovers of a childhood fantasy. He closed the browser window.

Denial did little to ease Dylan’s heartburn. During idle moments he found himself thinking about Aubrey, dwelling on a few good-but-painful memories he had laid away in his mind. He was genuinely surprised each time he caught himself engaged in this daffy pastime and would sternly scold himself for obsessing over this girl—no, a woman he didn’t even know.

Here was such a moment, a wedding no less. Dylan hated social functions. He’d always hated them. And sometimes he even begrudged Katharine his company. With her outgoing personality and strong features, she spent the day exhibiting charm and finesse, buoyed on a cataclysm of socialites. Meanwhile, as usual, he would stand by and smile and drink and nod at the conversation and try to look as though he felt he belonged there.

Dylan temporarily tuned in to one of the guests chatting with Katharine: “… which reminds me, congratulations on your last column, the one on the free-speech implications of campaign finance law. It was quite thought-provoking.”

“Thank you, Earl.” She smiled. “That’s very kind. I understand you know a little something about free-speech law.” She winked.

Earl—How did she keep track of all these names?—was some sort of civil-rights lawyer or something. They all chuckled at the little joke. Inside, Dylan yawned. He dove in for another sip of his Coke and lime before he realized that he had already finished it off.

The woman continued, “Tell me, what impact do you think these laws could have on freedom of the press? In particular, I’ve wondered about…” The voices melted into the background as Dylan quietly lumbered off to freshen his drink.

Waiting at the bar was a slender woman with platinum hair that curled in slightly at the ends. Dylan approached, and she smiled in his direction. He returned the favor but said nothing, stepping up to wait his turn at the bar.

“Hello,” the woman said.

“Hello.” Dylan turned to her. She had a cute, tastefully made-up face that revealed the first signs of age. She looked familiar, like he ought to have known who she was, but the man had met so many people that day that their faces melded into a hideous collage in his recollection.

“You’re Katharine Rogers’s husband, right?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He still smiled.

“I’m Aubrey Halpern.” She reached out her hand.

Dylan froze. He did not believe in miracles, but even less in impossible coincidence. However, now he couldn’t deny the obvious. She had changed, of course, but this was the same girl he had sat behind in middle school. She still had the same oval-shaped face, the same soft features, a freckled nose, subtle eyebrows, and silver-blue eyes. For several seconds, but what seemed to his stilled heart only an instant, the man’s senses closed off to the world around him. He took her hand, felt it in his. He saw only her face. He heard her breathe, as the celebration around fell silent. Were it not that a woman stood before him, rather than the young girl on whom he had a schoolboy’s crush, he would have concluded he was daydreaming again.

She retrieved her hand in order to take her drink, which now waited for her. She eyed Dylan curiously. The bartender was asking if he wanted anything.

“Coke and lime, please,” he said softly. Then, turning back, “I went to school with a girl named Aubrey.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Aubrey Keaton, I think it was. That was a long time ago, in a place far away, in Medina, Ohio.”

She searched his now stoic face. “I went to school in Medina. And Keaton is my maiden name,” she admitted.

“My name’s always been Dylan Rogers.”

Slowly her bright eyes grew even brighter. She stood with her mouth agape. “Oh my! We went to school together!” she exclaimed.

Both were giddy.

The man behind the bar set Dylan’s full glass on a napkin on the counter.

“What are you doing all the way out here?” Aubrey asked.

“Well, my family moved to Boston when I was a teenager.”

She thought a moment. “Yeah, I remember that.” Then her smile dissipated.

A pause.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was a stupid kid.”

“Huh? You’re sorry? What for?”

“Well—” He thought a moment. “I embarrassed you. It’s fuzzy, but it’s one of the last memories I have of life in Medina. I sort of, um, made a pass at you. In front of everybody. I guess everyone thought it was a cruel joke, what with me moving away and everything, but— Well, I just didn’t know what I was doing. I was a stupid kid.”

She slowly shook her head. “I don’t remember being embarrassed. I do remember being disappointed that you were moving away.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry things were what they were. But it’s not your fault.”

A knot formed in Dylan’s chest. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“So,” she continued, alighting upon a stool, “you’re married to Katharine Rogers.”

“Yep. I guess so.” He sounded a little less enthusiastic this time.

“She sounds like a very nice woman.” Aubrey brushed a few strands of hair behind her right ear.

“What about you?” he asked. “Is your husband here?”

“Nope.” She displayed a bare finger on her left hand. “Separated. For a few months now.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” He truly felt sorry for her.

“Oh, don’t be.” She waved the thought away with her hand. “I’m not.”

They talked and talked. Hours disappeared. Aubrey had been married twice, divorced once, and pending the paperwork would have a second divorce. She was visiting Boston, being a friend of the bride’s family. She had studied journalism in college and now worked as a freelance tech-writer. She had a perky personality. She also made a habit of casually dismissing anything that didn’t fit in with her view of the world. Occasionally, though, when talking about her youth, Aubrey would give a thoughtful pause, as though she weren’t so sure of herself after all. Before they knew it, the evening had escaped them.

Katharine walked up, caressed the back of her husband’s neck. “Hi, Hon. I see you made a friend after all.”

“Oh, yeah. This is Aubrey.” He pointed to the woman sitting next to him. “Aubrey, this is my wife Katharine.”

“Glad to meet you, Aubrey,” Katharine said and shook the other woman’s hand.

“Likewise.”

Dylan continued, “Aubrey and I went to school together when we were kids back in Medina, Ohio.”

“No kidding?” Katharine thought for a moment. “We have to get back to relieve the baby-sitter or she’ll start charging us overtime,” she joked, “but I’d really love to chat some more. Can you come over for coffee?”

Katharine played the perfect hostess. She also didn’t believe in back-room politics or suspicion or spying. She was a direct person. Yet she always seemed to find a way to say things, no matter how bad they were, in a way that made you glad she’d said them. That’s why Dylan felt so guilty paying more attention to the strange woman in their livingroom than he did to his own wife. Of course, he reasoned, the wife probably didn’t notice, since she was herself paying more attention to Aubrey than to him. That, after all, was her job as perfect hostess.

The younger children had gone to bed. The eldest Rogers child, Andrea, sipped a glass of milk as she chatted with the adults for a few minutes. Then she retired as well.

Aubrey clearly felt at home with Katharine’s hospitality. And so, when the latter finally excused herself for a minute, Aubrey insisted to Dylan that she help carry the dirty coffee cups and dessert plates into the pantry. It was a small pantry. He turned and suddenly found his body trapped against hers. Time stopped once more.

“I can’t believe it. I never thought I’d see you again,” he admitted.

“Me neither.”

Then she kissed him. Memories that were burned into his mind, rehearsed a thousand times o’er and repressed far past the boiling point, welled up inside. A power stronger than any he had ever experienced overtook him. He lost control of his faculties. Dazed, he kissed her back, wrapped his arms around her and cuddled her just as in his dreams. He tasted her sweet breath, thick with carrot cake and coffee. Then he embraced her, basked in the fragrance of her hair, which he traced with a finger around her ear and down her neck. It was a miracle. They had actually met, fallen in love, and now could live happily ever after.

But happily-ever-afters never come, do they? Suddenly, he pushed her away.

He shook his head. “Do you think— I mean, I don’t think— I can’t have an affair.”

“It’s not an affair if we don’t have sex.” Her eyebrows raised slightly with a sly grin.

“That’s not the point, Aubrey.”

Her mouth flattening, she gazed up into his dark eyes. “I know. But—” She was strangely nonplussed, and the words came out hushed and choppy, as if a rendition of a secret ransom note cut and pasted from a hundred incompatible newspapers and magazines. “I never thought, ever again, I’d ever see you, and now I’m finding, again, I’m falling in love. And I don’t want it to end the same way.”

There was nothing he could do. Truthfully, he didn’t want it to end that way, either. There was a brick in his stomach. He didn’t want to hurt Katharine, but the girl before him had taken control of his senses. She was an undead, a ghost of his past come back to haunt him. His fingers retracted in fright. He shivered with cold. His lips trembled. There was no way to escape the torture he was at that moment living, causing his body to convulse in tormented agony, spasms of passion and regret and sadness and loneliness.

So he kissed her again, a deep passionate kiss.

And that’s when Katharine returned.

They were alone.

“Why? Dylan?”

Silence.

“What happened? I thought we were doing well. Are we in trouble, Dylan?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so—”

“So then what’s this all about?” Her mien was earnest.

Dylan’s eyes pointed toward the empty corner. “I don’t know. I have to take a drive.”

He moved toward the door, but she stepped in front of him.

“Wait. Please. We can talk this out. Whatever has happened, whatever the problem is, we can work it out.”

“It’s nothing that you’ve done, Katharine. Nothing that you haven’t done. It’s just— I must be going cracky. I— I don’t know who I am anymore.”

He left.

Water covered the windshield. April raindrops fell steadily from above and spattered from the road below, a continuous rattle periodically interrupted by the thunk-thunk, thunk-thunk of the wipers. Man was alone, his thoughts in communion with the road and the radio as it channeled the spirit of Edwin McCain: the trappings of love. He winced at the metaphor.

It was true. She felt the same as he. She had come from the grave, bringing the feelings that he had buried with her so long ago. She had proposed a suicide pact. It was a drug, this passion. It was an addiction. It deranged him and conscripted him into its service. He was out of control. He was miserable.

And what about the kids? He recalled the night of Andrea’s birth. The pregnancy had proceeded smoothly enough. But Katharine’s cervix refused to dilate. Twelve laborious hours later, the doctor performed a Caesarian section. During the interim, Dylan sat by, sleeping not a wink.

He recalled the first time he saw Andrea, in the operating room. The air was thick with an indescribable feeling, a fulfillment and excitement that only new fathers experience. Katharine was exhausted from the ordeal, and he held her hand as their new daughter took her first breaths in this world. They were a family at last.

The oldest is always the hardest, because she’s always the first.

Dylan remembered Andrea’s first day of school. She cried on the way to the school bus, because she didn’t want to go alone. Somehow, Katharine turned this little girl’s terror into enthusiasm, and she got off the bus that afternoon anxious to go back the next day.

Then she ran up against reality: some kids are just nasty. One time, she even got into a fight. Her mother was livid. But Dylan and Katharine were a team. Whenever one needed a time-out, the other picked up the slack.

Dylan loved his daughter. He feared for her. He so much wanted her to grow up without pain. He wanted to protect her from life. He knew he couldn’t. How did he make it even this far?

A woman’s voice spoke. “Hi! Who’s this?”

“This is Michael. I want to dedicate a song to my wife Sarah. Today’s our 40’th wedding anniversary.”

“Forty years? Wow! She must be a really special lady.”

“She sure is. Also, our youngest daughter is getting married next month, and so Sarah’s been really busy helping with the wedding plans.”

“Ooh.”

“It isn’t as bad as it sounds.” A snicker. “She always knows just when to step in and when to let go, and she’s always been there for all of us, especially me. I can always be myself with her, because she loves me for who I am.”

“A soul-mate.”

“Absolutely. I don’t even know how I could have made it through this life without her.”

“Well, Michael, I’ll see if I can find something special for you and Sarah.”

Michael Bolton began to sing “Only A Woman Like You.”

Dylan headed back toward home.

Katharine was sitting on the edge of the couch, her elbow in her hands. She did not look up. “I thought you would find someplace else to sleep tonight.” She choked on the words, her eyebrows forming a low V-shape between her eyes. She continued to stare into space, as though no one of any significance was there.

Dylan knelt next to her, gently took her arm. He looked up into his wife’s tear-mottled eyes. “I love you,” he managed to whisper. He inhaled a deep unsteady breath and blew it out again. “Our relationship isn’t built on feelings. It’s built on love, and I love you.” His whole face tightened as he fought to contain himself. Then, caressing a gold lock around the edge of her ear, he kissed the end of her nose. And she fell, wrapped her arms around his body, right there on the floor, and nestled her body in his arms. And they wept.

Finally, Katharine gazed into his eyes and tried to speak, but it only came out a feeble squeak. “I love you, too.” She squeezed him tighter, and never had to let go.

Living Inside a Top

timk — Sun, 19 Sep 2004 00:00:00 -0700

With thanks to Tom DeMarco, Timothy Lister,
and those whose names are withheld for their own protection.
-TimK

I’m not leaving.
But my resume is up to date.

I’m just experiencing culture shock.
In a culture of oneupsmanship.

But I’m not one of those who wash out.
And go on to bigger and better things.

Reasonable hours: The average engineer works 56 a week.
And makes 87 thousand dollars a year.

And the payscale is competitive.
With the third world.

And fair.
To those rewarded with a cut.

I’m proud to be one of the winners hired.
Then told what not to do.

Proud to be developing a great product.
With second-class quality standards.

Proud of my accomplishments.
Overcoming conjured-up crises.

Proud to be one of the team.
That can’t get together on anything.

I’m not leaving.
But my resume is up to date.

Love Through the Eyes of an Idiot

timk — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 00:00:00 -0800

Now read the book! Click here for more information.

I remember the first time I made a woman blush. I don’t remember her name. Actually, she was little more than a girl, and I was still a boy, a child, an idiot in fact. I would remain an idiot until just before I got engaged. We were in our early twenties, and we still thought of ourselves as kids, not adults. She was a temp, filling in as receptionist. And she was cute, real cute. Her dirty blonde hair revealed the soft features of her neck and jaw. I wonder how much time I blew chatting with her rather than doing work. (I didn’t get fired.)

She said she had a boyfriend, and I believed her. I’ve never liked lies, even little white lies, intended to manipulate people. So if the boyfriend story was a fib, I didn’t want to know it.

She also said the relationship wasn’t serious. I caught the hint; I wasn’t that ignorant. But I was uncomfortable getting involved with someone who would break up with her “boyfriend” for me. I was looking for a relationship, and if she’d break up with him to go with me, what would stop her from breaking up with me on account of someone else? I wasn’t stupid; just idiotic.

It was the last day of her job with us. I knew I would miss wasting time with her. This was it, she said; she wouldn’t be back.

“That’s a shame,” I said.

She looked at the carpet and smiled, and her face changed from freckled cream to some shade of pink.

Sometimes I think women don’t realize the power they hold, how good it makes a man feel to please a woman.

I should’ve gotten her phone number. I should’ve given her mine. True, maybe we would never have used them. But I didn’t even think of that. I simply wrote off the opportunity, in exchange for a little boost of ego.

I had no excuse. It wasn’t like it had been with the girl who sat next to me in my high-school French class. She was friendly and perky, and prettier than most. One day we were studying the use of the verb aimer. The teacher gave a quick rundown of phrases, after which the girl turned to me and lightheartedly remarked, “Je t’aime beaucoup!” I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even smile.

Yes, I have a way with the ladies.

Then there was the Stewardess. I do remember her name, but I don’t want to embarrass her. I guess now they’re called flight attendants. I knew that’s what she did because she told me. I knew she had an interesting, steady job and a decent family. And she was nice. She actually talked to me and listened to me and seemed interested in learning who I was. And I had fun learning about who she was. Oh, and she was pretty, too pretty. These were all problems, of course.

I could’ve fallen in love with her. Hell, she took my breath away. I remember the pool party at which I had to shield my eyes to keep from staring. And even then, my mind continued to stare. And when she smiled, dimples appeared in her cheeks, and her eyes lit up the room like candles. Even so, she still made me comfortable enough to carry on a conversation. And we had a few nice talks, which she alone facilitated. (I would never have approached her.)

From me, not even a nibble.

The only girls I showed any interest in were the ones with problems. They were looking for quick fixes to their loneliness or a support system for their psychological disorders. Sometimes, they didn’t know what they wanted. There are too many to count, and I don’t want to dwell on it. A couple of examples will demonstrate just how firmly my head was lodged in up there.

One girlfriend, with whom I had gone steady, broken up, and then gone steady again, asked me to stop off at her girlfriend’s house on our way out to dinner. We were also meeting friends at the restaurant. She needed to stop quickly to pick up something she had lent out. It was an emergency, she said, but she’d only be a minute. She left me in the car as she stepped inside the house. A half-hour later, I started wondering what was taking so long. I investigated. Apparently, she had a personal problem—I never found out what—that she didn’t feel comfortable discussing with me (like most of what she thought and felt). But she couldn’t get to her girlfriend’s house to discuss it with her without a ride from someone, a someone who turned out to be me, and she couldn’t just ask me for a ride. Even if it was indeed an emergency, she had no intention of being only a few minutes. This was not the last straw in our relationship.

More common were the girls I never actually dated. One complained to me incessantly about the dearth of quality guys for her to be with. Now, I was a quality guy, but not for her to be with, I guess. She just wasn’t interested. (In hindsight, I can relate.) She said she didn’t want to lose my friendship. Ironically, that was probably truthful. Naturally, for me, this was the signal to turn the Obsession dial to 11. She was afraid my lust was out of control. Even back then, I didn’t know the meaning of the word. I was eccentric and confused, but quite safe. I haven’t seen her since.

In hindsight, I was lucky. About a year later I met my wife. She wasn’t my wife then, of course. In that span, I had gone from one disturbing experience to another to another to another. How many there were I lost count. Boy, did I know how to pick ’em. And M. was cute and sweet and sane, and she was a brunette (my favorite color), and her name began with M and R (my favorite kind); therefore, I had no interest in her. But I was tired of getting hurt, and I was an idiot, not stupid. So we went out.

At the time, she was studying to be a physical therapist. I was developing some sort of bony growth on one of my wrists, probably due to my poor posture at the computer at work. It sounds gross, but it wasn’t, just weird. After bowling, a movie, and a late supper, we got to chatting about work. I showed her my wrist. The only thing I remember is how gently she took my hand to examine it.

I must’ve freaked her out when I spent over a week deciding whether to ask her out a second time. I should’ve known, but I didn’t realize at the time, how crazy she was about me. Welcome to my world. We did go out a second time, and a third, and a fourth. Within a month we were engaged. I don’t remember exactly how I proposed, or even if I did, but it went something like this:

“I think we should get married.”

“Okay.”

“Well, that was easy.”

The wedding was September 11, 1993. We were husband and wife years before the twin towers fell, and we’ll still be long after they fade into the collective memory. Because true love isn’t about passion or lust or attraction or common interests and personalities. It’s something altogether different. It’s about learning to complement each other, learning to grow with each other. It’s about doing love-things, even when you don’t feel like it, even when life drives you to insanity, even if you think you’ve lost love. It’s about commitment and perseverance and thinking and feeling and happiness. And I thank God every day that I’ve found it.

Read the whole book, including many more anecdotes and juicy details. Click here for more information.

Miracle Cures

timk — Mon, 04 Oct 1999 18:47:00 -0700

Non-profits, such as churches, seem to be particularly prone to the belief in miracle cures. While God does sometimes perform miracles, far more often He works through the mundane. It’s very easy to look favorably upon grandiose projects. It’s easy to want to evangelize the world, or to eliminate poverty. But, try as we might, we can’t. Only God can.

Each of us must ask himself: Where do I fit into God’s overall plan? In what detail can God use me and my church to His ultimate purpose? What specific thing does God want me to do for Him? We need to have reasonable objectives and realistic goals.

Otherwise we will fall into the same traps that have snared a million others. Their goals become self-evident moral absolutes, rather than obtainable targets based on moral objectives. Their programs become the embodiment of goodness. Any suggestion that they try something different, to get better results, is an attack on their raison d’etre. They lose their sense of balance. They waste their resources, fail to slough off yesterday, and let new opportunities slip away.

To give just one example, how many of us know of The Partnership for a Drug-Free America? I guess it wouldn’t be quite so euphonic to name it “The Partnership to Minimize the Damage Done by Drug Abuse.” Yet, if ten million people have to die in the war against drugs, will it have been worth it? Is any price too high, as long as the objective is eliminating drugs, rather than helping drug addicts? And the failure to meet that objective, far from indicating that the objective is wrong, is only an excuse to redouble efforts. And waste more resources. What would happen, I wonder, if small-time inner-city missionaries got the money wasted by anti-drug zealots? As the War on Drugs fades out of vogue, what will happen to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America?

Tomorrow’s churches and inner-city missions will have to pick up the slack. Are we prepared for the opportunity? But more on that some other time…

Governments are non-profit institutions, too. If citizens organizations can be plagued by the disease, how much more so an institution further plagued by the power to compel its will?

I am stymied that christians would seek help from government. Despite decades of political failure. Despite widespread corruption. Despite officially-sanctioned violence against Christians in China, Indonesia, and elsewhere. How many times has Social Security been “saved” by raising taxes and cutting benefits? How many government welfare programs have failed even to reduce poverty? And yet, Tony Blair proclaims that he will not relent until poverty is eliminated!

How will politicians accomplish what God Himself has failed to? How will they find the wisdom and self-control denied to the church? A hundred years of failed attempts have made it clear, government holds no miracle cures.

No, these jobs are much too big for us mere humans to handle. We have to leave them in God’s hands. We have to trust that He will somehow coordinate all the ongoing efforts, in order to reach as much of the world as possible. That He will provide work for the poor, and food for the hungry. If we try to take on the entire burden ourselves, we are doomed to failure.

But God never fails. Nonetheless we need faith to believe it when the world is falling apart around us. We need faith to trust in God. To step out and do what He has given us to do, and to leave the rest to Him. Maybe we don’t understand how God can pull it off. We may never understand. Such is the nature of a miracle.

Government holds no miracle cures. But God does.

On The Beach

timk — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0800

If anyone could see her, he wouldn’t know what she was looking for. She walked along this rock-studded beach, time after time eying the sea.

Her toe banged one of the large rocks, causing her to hobble as she continued her weary search.

She stopped, yes, her eyes wide, gazing out toward the water. Smile on face, she met the object as it approached her.

It was he. And she did embrace him. But her smile turned to tears.

“Damn plan,” she muttered under her breath. “Damn, stupid plan! We were happy. Why did you do this to me?”

The next day, she heard about it on the radio, “From footprints on the scene, authorities are looking for a woman, about five-feet-five-inches, a hundred thirty pounds, with a limp.”

Pine

timk — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 00:00:00 -0700

Each morning Jace walked by her house on his way to school. Each afternoon he passed it on his way home. Sometimes, he would also pass at other times. Occasionally he would catch a glimpse of the bright-faced girl with wavy blonde locks. She sat under the two conifers that towered overhead. But as far as he knew, she never noticed him.

The house itself, a grey Stick Victorian with brown trim, spoke of a happy family. Its expansive porch took a jaunt through the sweet-scented yellows and reds of the flower garden. Little gabled alcoves jutted into the world, embraced by the overall form of the structure, as if its gables were parents looking after their offspring. A squat wall of white stone stood before this all, making up in intensity what it lacked in stature, a formidable protector to all within.

But the trees were even more special, for under these Jennifer would read. Or sometimes she would just be sitting quietly or humming softly a tune Jace didn’t recognize. Jace paid her no heed, or else she might see his admiration. But out of the corner of his eye, he noticed her shapely form, and he fought to keep breathing. And in his imagination, he felt the softness of her pink cashmere sweater in his delicate hands. He felt her fingers running through his thick, dark hair. Her chocolate eyes and his ordinary brown ones got lost in each other. Perhaps his finger stroked the line of her eyebrow, following her face around softly-curved cheek and jaw, finally resting under her chin.

But Jace said nothing, made no motion out of the ordinary. He merely continued walking, as nonchalantly as possible for a big-footed, lanky teen in a grey tee and worn khakis.

Jennifer walked into second-period Algebra wearing a close-fitting, short-sleeved salmon top and jeans. Jace looked up to see her nonchalantly flip her hair over her shoulder, sending a scented breeze wafting over his face.

In fifth-period study hall, Jennifer read. Jace took out a pencil and sketchbook, and he drew. From his seat two rows behind hers, Jace filled a page with sketches. At one point, Jennifer peered in his direction. Jace quickly buried himself in the papers on his desk. It was only partially an act. From his mental snapshot, he saw dark eyes, sultry, staring at him, which with talent and skill he transferred to the page.

In sixth-period English class, Jennifer sat at the desk directly in front of Jace. At one point, she turned to him. “I broke my pencil. Do you have an extra I could borrow?”

“Yeah.” He always carried surplus sharp pencils. Jace handed one to her.

The bell rang signaling the end of the day. As Jace started his walk home, Jennifer caught up to him.

“Jace!” She proffered the borrowed pencil. “Here’s your pencil. Thanks.”

He took it, but just for a moment, she held on to the pencil, would not release her grip, and Jace wondered whether she wanted to keep it. As far as he was concerned, she could. It was only a pencil.

“You were really a life-saver,” she said.

“It was no big deal,” Jace replied. It was only a pencil; he had only saved her a trip to the pencil sharpener.

“Well, thanks anyway.”

They talked as they walked, mostly trivia—school, the weather, the ball game—until they reached Jennifer’s house.

“Well, this is me,” she said.

Jace said nothing.

“Can I show you something?”

Jennifer led him up the path and under the tall trees.

“This is one of my favorite spots,” she said.

The shade was cool, and the air smelled of pine. Birds sung through a light breeze, which gently vibrated the branches in an awkward motion Jace could never figure out. Jennifer leaned against one of the trees.

“Sometimes I imagine standing under these trees and getting kissed by a boy I really like.” She giggled coyly. “It’s just a silly fantasy.”

She rubbed her foot through the blanket of needles underneath. Then her gaze met his.

“I guess everyone has silly fantasies like that sometimes.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“I’d love to see some of your drawings,” she said.

“Huh?”

“I saw you drawing a picture one time. It was pretty good. It looked like you did it a lot.”

Jace was mortified. “Um, yeah, I guess I do.”

“Sorry,” she said. “You don’t have to if you don’t want.”

He pulled from his book bag a sketchpad. “Here,” he said, and handed it to her.

They sat next to each other under the trees, and she opened the first page to reveal a rough rendering of a house. On the next page some neighborhood kids played at the playground down the street. Then came a local road with cars, a bicycle and rider, someone working in an office.

She turned the page again, and saw as if she were looking into a mirror. But the face looking back at her was beautiful, suave, womanly, yet still young. It was the face of a supermodel, but not fake like supermodels can be; it was a real person, of flesh and blood and graphite.

“Oh my.”

Jace tensed and his heart beat faster.

Jennifer swallowed. “This is really good.”

“Thanks.”

The page after that was a collage of Jennifer. She was cute, sophisticated, sexy, humble, studious, and numerous other qualities for which there are no words.

Jace panicked. “Sorry.” He fumbled with words. “I didn’t, uh, mean to, um, stalk you— or anything.”

Jennifer didn’t look angry or scared as she looked him in the eye. She took a breath. “Will you kiss me?”

Jace froze, like a deer mesmerized by a pair of headlights.

As if in a dream he touched his lips to hers, soft and full. She smelled good. He put his arm around her, and his hand passed over the strap of her bra. Her body was warm and there. She put her hand on his leg.

A moment later, he counted her eyelashes. He touched his thumb to her eyebrow and traced it around, and Jennifer snuggled her cheek into Jace’s palm. Her skin was soft. It was smooth. And she looked happy.

“I like you, Jace,” she managed. Then, with a lost smile, “I wish I wasn’t moving.”

“You’re moving?”

“Yes, to Seattle.”

“That’s pretty far,” he said.

“Yes, it is.”

“It sure is.”

“Can you sit with me for a little while?”

The next day, Jace had to walk on the grass as he passed by the house, because the green and white moving van was taking up the whole sidewalk. He hoped to catch a glimpse of Jennifer, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Now when Jace walks by the house, he sometimes sees two young children playing in the yard. Jace has Jennifer’s new address, and they’ve exchanged one or two letters. But he doesn’t know whether he’ll ever see her again. He figures, even if you’re an artist, sometimes you draw dead. Still he imagines he sees Jennifer sitting under the pines, reading or humming softly a tune Jace doesn’t know.

Running

timk — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 00:00:00 -0800

This short-short is based on a true experience. -TimK

Down the sidewalk he darted around the dozens on their way to wherever they were going. He wore dress slacks and a beige, woolen jacket, and his black shoes clapped against the concrete. He stopped at a street corner just long enough to see his breath rise through the air and to hear a verse or two of a crusty-voiced, slurred beggar’s chant: “Disabled veteran. Spare a little change. Spare a little change…” There was more, two syllables, but though he tried to comprehend it, it remained unintelligible.

He crossed the street and continued running, the chant echoing in his mind. “Disabled veteran. Spare a little change. Spare a little change…” What was that last word? It sounded like “get out,” but that couldn’t be right. He tried to breath through his nose.

It was getting dark. He had to use the lighted dial on his watch. Four-fifty. In ten minutes, the streets would be filled with people and cars, a sorry situation for him to be in. He was late as it was. He quickened his pace to the beat. “Disabled veteran. Spare a little change. Spare a little change get out!” Or maybe “about”? Or “amount”?

The interview had been scheduled for 3:30. MapQuest said it would take a half-hour to get there. But this was in the city. He left at 1 o’clock. He was twenty minutes late for the appointment.

Then he needed money to pay the parking garage. He needed to find an automated teller and get out of the city before rush hour, or else what chance did he have of getting home in time to pick up the kids?

Finally, cash in his pocket, he ran down the sidewalk and across the street, just making the light, and into the city commons. He slowed his gait if not his breathing as he passed a businessman walking in the opposite direction wearing a long, cashmere winter coat. He looked up, prepared to say hello, but the man just looked straight ahead. Another beggar, who had earlier been sitting on the grass, was now placed strategically in the sidewalk.

Running once again, he climbed the gentle slope approaching the entrance to the parking garage. His back began to ache, and he also noticed a pain in his right leg. Having labored through the doorway, he floated down two flights of stairs. Then he slowed. The clap of his shoes echoed in the labyrinthine caves of the automobile. A flickering fluorescent light overhead dimly illuminated the way down aisle B.

He fumbled with the keys, his face now dripping sweat, his mouth dry. The door opened. He collapsed in the seat, almost passing out.

“Disabled veteran. Spare a little change. Spare a little change, come on! Disabled veteran. Spare a little change. Spare a little change, come on! Disabled veteran…”

He unbuttoned his jacket and started the car. It came to life, backed slowly out of its space. Then down the aisle toward the exit, and out onto the dark, crowding city streets.

But for once today, he would make it after all.

The Department of Caffeinated Beverages

timk — Thu, 03 May 2001 23:09:00 -0700

I always look forward to Monday morning coffee. It’s brewed fresh, almost worth the $5 fee. But this Monday was different. This Monday offered a first look at a new improved Department—this after I had just figured out their last set of improvements. You see, the DCB brews adventure along with the coffee. I never know what kind of experience I’m going to get. Unfortunately, like every other Monday, I did find out.

I entered the establishment. It looked the same. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all, I thought. I walked up to an empty teller and placed my standard order.

“I’d like a large coffee with cream, no sugar.”

Without a word, the man behind the counter made an expressionless gesture toward an overhead sign, one of several identical placards, hand-crafted in uppercase letters:

TEA AND COLA
THIS WINDOW ONLY

Ignoring the misstatement, I replied, “Okay. So where do I get my coffee?”

He silently reached behind the counter and handed me a full-color brochure: Guide to the new Department of Caffeinated Beverages: Dedicated to serving you better.

“Okay. But where do I go to get my coffee?”

With an indication of actual human emotion, he thrust a finger to the right and sternly intoned, “Over there.”

I turned and saw something I hadn’t noticed before. There was a crowded seating area arranged in two sections with a single aisle between. The seats faced a counter. A sign read:

PLEASE TAKE A NUMBER
NOW SERVING # 21

I took ticket 47 and stood in the aisle. There was no room to sit down. A heavily armed security guard told me I couldn’t stand there. At that moment, I heard a synthesized bell ring, and with a stroke of luck the customer next to me got up and walked to a window at which a young adult male in a t-shirt and jeans was juggling three large boxes of hot liquid. Probably an office runner, I thought. I smiled nervously at the guard and sat down.

I quickly relaxed into the hard plastic seat. I had been late for work before, waiting for a cup of Joe. My employer understood. Reading over the brochure, I learned that a bottleneck of coffee drinkers had been forcing everyone else to wait in line for hours. Therefore, the DCB now has a whole new office dedicated to coffee requests. The Department has also instituted several Healthy Initiatives, so-called, but the brochure was very vague. I feared to learn what they’d done this time. Removed the caffeine? Brewed it cold? Added arsenic?

My thoughts were interrupted by a woman shouting. “Number forty-seven! Anyone have number forty-seven?”

Yikes. With as little fanfare as possible I scurried up to the window. The other customers retreated again into the privacy of their own imaginations.

“I’d like a large coffee with cream, no sugar.”

“I don’t have cream here.”

“Huh?”

“I can give you the sugar, but you’ll have to go over there to get the cream.”

She pointed to the “tea and cola” signs, now a distant memory.

“But I don’t want sugar. I just want cream in my coffee.”

“Is milk okay? I have milk.”

I wonder if you can get that with your tea.

“I’d really prefer cream,” I apologetically stated.

She sighed. “Okay. Fill this out.” She slid a sheet of paper across the counter. “Take it to the ’tea and cola’ window. Then come back here.”

I glanced at the dense page. Form 3921-B: Request for Application of Saturated Fatty-acid Animal Products to Caffeinated Beverages.

“Maybe I’ll just take it black today.”

After-market coffee cream is illegal, but everybody uses it occasionally.

The Widow's Granddaughter

timk — Sun, 17 May 2009 11:36:15 -0700

She was just another job to Jeffrey Tanner, just another account someone defaulted on, just another automobile someone couldn’t afford to pay for, until that day she limped into his office.

She was not someone you would expect to make a difference in anyone’s life. She was neither rich nor powerful. She was not vivacious, not young, not beautiful. She was neither a mover nor a shaker. She hobbled along, a quad cane in one hand, dragging her withered frame behind her, arthritis-infested joints creaking with each lumbering step. She reeked of old perfume; a small, black toque sat atop her thinning, black hair, probably dyed; and when she opened her mouth, from her shriveled face screeched a voice like that of the Wicked Witch of the West.

“I’m Mrs. Mildred Kramer.”

Jeffrey knew the name. He had handled the account personally. For a fleeting moment, he thought of offering her a seat. But then he thought the better of it. She was going to ask for an extension on her loan, and he didn’t want to start by being too friendly, because he needed to get himself into a hard-ass mood.

Instead, he said, “What can I do for you, Mrs. Kramer?”

“I’m here to talk about my car.”

“Well, what sort of car were you interested in?” Play dumb. Make her do all the work.

Instead of answering, she staggered to his guest chair and collapsed into it.

“My son and I bought a car here,” she said, “and you handled the loan.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Jeffrey answered. “Let me look it up.” He punched some keys on his computer keyboard. “Awful nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?” he asked, trying to defuse the situation with small talk.

She eyed him carefully. “I believe we had weather like this in 1982.” Her voice filled with an air of authority mixed with sarcasm, a haughty tone that clashed with its reedy quality.

“Could be,” Jeffrey said. “That’s before my time.” He had found the right account on the computer, even though he didn’t even need to look it up, and now he was tapping sporadically on the shift key and staring at the screen as though it were doing something useful. In the grand scale of things, he didn’t make very many loans, not as many as a bank would anyhow, and few of his accounts defaulted. This one stood out like a sore thumb, because he knew the old woman used the car to do charity work and to avoid becoming shut-in.

“I do remember weather not too different from this in ’96,” he said, continuing the useless conversation that covered up his anxiety. “That was also the year of the blizzard.”

“Fascinating,” she said. “I want to ask you—”

“Here’s the thing, Mrs. Kramer,” interrupting her. The best way to handle a situation like this is to barrel through it head-on. “That account is in default. Unless you remit payment immediately, we’ll need to call the repo man.”

She was unfazed. “That’s what I’m here to talk to you about, Sir.”

“I don’t see what there is to talk about, Mrs. Kramer.” Hard ass, remember. Hard ass. “If you can’t come up with the money, we need the car back. There’s nothing more I can do. My hands are tied.”

Mrs. Kramer looked confused. “I’m sorry. I thought you were the owner here.”

“I am, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything I can do.”

He rose to see her out of the office, but she remained seated. From across his cluttered, oaken desk, she stared up at him with puppy-dog-brown eyes, grasping her cane for support.

She said, “Maybe I was wrong about you.”

Jeffrey walked around the desk, toward the door, but she still didn’t move to stand. She just kept staring at him, as though he were a circus attraction. See the Skunk-Man, the face of a man, the heart of a skunk. Or would that be an insult to the skunk?

Her calm steadfastness was beginning to rattle him. Jeffrey pulled over another chair, near to where Mrs. Kramer was sitting, and rested his foot on it. Then he leaned forward, supporting his body weight on his knee, towering over the old woman. Now he was back on a firm mental footing. Hard ass.

She continued in that same worn, creaky voice, and with the same air of confidence and authority. “In my years—and I’ve had more of them than you might think—I’ve known many people, Mr. Tanner, of all shapes and sizes, and all types. Some were as hard-nosed as a drill sergeant and stubborn as a mule, because that’s what they believed in. But many didn’t believe that, not deep down where it counts. They believed in people.”

Now she leaned forward, as much as her ailing body would allow, and got as close as she could to his face. Her eyes narrowed.

“But I never met anyone who got the way you are, unless something or someone drove him to it.”

For just an instant, April’s face flashed through Jeffrey’s memory. She had made him who he was, and he knew it. God, she was beautiful: skin fair and soft as a cloud on a bright spring day; hair like strands of yellow silk; rich, brown eyes he had felt staring into his soul. He remembered her fondly, painfully, and with bitterness. He hated her for what she did to him, and yet she had forever changed his view of the world.

Jeffrey said to the old lady, “I love your hat. Is it vintage?”

She leaned back in the chair. “My dear late husband gave it to me on our third wedding anniversary.” She chuckled, and it sounded as if there were something caught in her throat.

That seemed a strange gift for a husband to give his wife on her wedding anniversary. “He gave you a hat for your anniversary?” Jeffrey asked.

She nodded. “He said it would bring me luck.” She paused a moment. “Alex reminds me of him.”

“Your grandson?”

“My son,” she said.

“Did he buy you a lucky hat, too?”

She chuckled again. “He bought me something lucky, yes.”

She continued. “Alex worked in a music store, selling musical instruments and such. He made good money, too.”

“Sounds like a good man.” Jeffrey much preferred friendly conversation to hard-nosed business.

“His store came under new management,” the old widow continued. “Then a few weeks ago, a man came to him representing a charitable organization who had had some of its equipment stolen and needed to replace it. Well, Alex had sold them the original equipment, and he put together a wonderful deal for them to replace it, at a deep discount. Alex’s manager didn’t appreciate that.

“However, it seems the thief experienced an inexplicable stroke of conscience, because he left the stolen equipment in a safe place and anonymously called the police.

“Alex of course gladly accepted their return of the replacement equipment, for a full refund. But apparently, the store manager was even more upset that Alex accepted the return than he was at the discount.

“So Alex lost his job at the music store.”

Jeffrey nodded. He didn’t like the direction in which this story was going. “I’m sorry to hear that. Sometimes life sucks.”

“I mentioned that Alex bought me something lucky. He bought me a lucky car. I’m on a fixed income, and I can’t afford the car on my own. But I do need it to get around, and my granddaughter can drive me. Unfortunately, Alex’s current situation has left him short of cash. However, he will get another job, and we’ll make good on the loan, if you will afford us some grace.”

Jeffrey wanted to end the conversation immediately. “Mrs. Kramer, I already told you we can’t—”

“Mr. Tanner, you can do anything you want. What you choose to do is another subject altogether.”

“Look, Lady…” Jeffrey became angry. “You think running a business is all peaches and cream, like I have all the money and all the power and I can get away with anything I want. But that’s not how the world works. It’s dog-eat-dog out there. And if I don’t hold my bottom line, I’m going to be in the poor house. Being nice don’t buy you a load of beans in this world. So either come up with the cash, or I’m taking the car.”

He felt like he had just vomited up his stomach lining.

Mrs. Kramer sat for several seconds. Then she quietly struggled to her feet and without a word hobbled out of the office and into the parking lot.

From his office, Jeffrey watched her through the window. At least the worst was over, for now.

In the parking lot, a young woman began helping Mrs. Kramer into the passenger side of the car, a woman who epitomized youth and beauty. The sunlight glinted off her blonde hair, ruffled occasionally by a gentle breeze, otherwise flowing down around soft cheeks to just past her delicate shoulders. She wore a smart, brown, corduroy jacket and blue jeans, with sleek, brown shoes on her feet. It was an outfit that accentuated her curves just enough, but not too much, and made her look tall and sexy.

Jeffrey’s heart skipped a beat. Almost without thinking, he double-timed it out to the parking lot. As he did, the beautiful, young woman regarded him. Her bright blue eyes sparkled like sapphires set below fine, fair eyebrows, setting off a small, straight nose and pale lips.

“You didn’t introduce me to your driver,” Jeffrey said, slightly out of breath, placing his hands on his hips.

“This is my granddaughter, Mr. Tanner,” said the old widow.

He turned to the young woman, reached out his hand, and smiled. “Glad to meet you.”

“I guess that makes one of us,” she scoffed. Her grandmother had just relayed to her, briefly, the results of their conversation inside, and to the young woman’s mind, that surly response was all a viper like him deserved.

“Marietta, please,” said Mrs. Kramer. “Decorum.”

She reluctantly took his hand for a fleeting moment, leaving her grandmother perched on the edge of the car seat, the old woman’s legs hanging out through the open passenger-side door. The man wore a white shirt and conservative tie, and he stood a half-foot taller than she, with well-groomed, sandy hair, hazel eyes, and a smile that could charm the pants off her. That smile, once she took a moment to notice it, her heart began beating faster.

“Marietta,” Jeffrey cooed, still staring at her, “please don’t judge me too harshly. I think we might be able to work something out after all.”

Mrs. Kramer eyed him suspiciously.

Marietta saw the attraction in his eyes. Moreover, she knew the power she had over men, and she wasn’t afraid to use it, if the situation demanded.

“What changed your mind?” Marietta asked with a flirtatious smile.

“You did,” Jeffrey answered matter-of-factly. He could feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins.

“Well, isn’t that something?” Marietta mocked playfully. “I must be the most persuasive person on the planet.” His cheeks dimpled as he smiled, and for a moment, Marietta wondered how it would feel to brush her finger over one.

“Indeed you are,” Jeffrey said. “Let me buy you dinner tonight, and we’ll discuss it.”

Mrs. Kramer huffed.

“And who knows,” he continued, ogling her up and down. “If the evening goes well, we can swing around to my place for a nightcap.” He sighed.

Mrs. Kramer gaped at him.

Marietta strutted up to Jeffrey, stared him in the face. She got a whiff of his cologne, a gentle but manly scent. She would love to nuzzle up against his neck and inhale, if it weren’t for what he was doing to her grandmother. That angered her.

“You couldn’t keep up with me, that’s for sure,” she intoned. Her eyes pierced the air between them like darts.

To Jeffrey, that sounded like a challenge, and one he would like to accept. “I’m sure I could,” he said, “and I’d like to prove it to you.”

This woman did more than just excite him; she enthralled him. The very sound of her voice, the way it touched on his ear, the way its tone rose and fell, made his heart pound. And now she was so close, he could smell the perfume of her hair, count the freckles on her nose. He imagined he could almost feel her eyelashes flicking as she blinked. If he dared, he could reach out and stroke her cheek, run a finger down her warm, smooth neck, maybe cause her to let out a little moan.

“Marietta!” the old widow scolded, interrupting his daydreams. Then, “Mr. Tanner, my granddaughter will not be selling herself at any price, least of all for something so insignificant as an automobile.”

Jeffrey feigned hurt. “No, of course not. I didn’t mean to imply anything improper. I only meant that”—and he returned his gaze, smiling, to the beautiful Marietta—”it would be easier to talk as friends than as adversaries.”

He hated to use economic pressure to get a date with Marietta, but he had learned to use every means available to assure his success and happiness.

“It works out the same either way,” the old woman said scornfully. Then to Marietta, “You don’t have to do anything for this man. We’ll find an alternative arrangement.”

“I promise you’ll have a good time,” he purred seductively.

“You’re a pig,” Marietta said, still grinning, through clenched teeth. “You know that?”

He told himself he didn’t care whether he was a pig, but he needed to clinch the deal. “Look,” he said, “I know you don’t particularly like me. But if you just give me a chance, I can be a nice guy, and I think you’ll have a good time.” He paused a beat and then added, “What do you have to lose? It’s not like you can’t change your mind later. All I want is for you to give me a chance. A little good food and good company. Won’t cost you a thing.”

“Okay,” Marietta heard herself saying before she could stop herself, and then it was too late to take it back.

Marietta drove her grandmother most of the way home without talking, until the elder Kramer broke the silence.

“He’s not just some guy you picked up in at a bar, you know.”

“I know,” Marietta said. Guy in bars were usually not quite so good looking, she thought.

“This is more complicated,” her grandmother continued.

“I know,” Marietta repeated.

“What do you hope to accomplish by going out with him?”

“It can’t hurt to keep on his good side.”

“You know as well as I do,” said the more experience, older woman, bluntly, “the only way to get on his good side is to sleep with him. At least that’s what he expects.”

“We don’t know that, Gran,” Marietta said, lying. Part of her wondered what she would see if she unbuttoned his shirt, was even anxious to find out.

“I think we do know,” Gran continued. “It was pretty clear to me. And I don’t think you should prostitute yourself. You’re better than that.”

“Look, I’ll just have dinner with him. That’s all. And then we’ll see where we stand. It can’t do any harm.”

In reality, Marietta knew her grandmother was right. He was a pig, and he was looking for a little roll in the hay in exchange for a little favor. And in reality, even under the circumstances, Marietta would have been fine with that, at least until recently.

Back in college, she hooked up with a guy, married him. After the divorce, she spent years flitting from job to job, man to man, and couch to couch, at times living out of a suitcase and bumming showers off her friends. But when her grandfather passed on, Marietta moved back home, with the proviso that she serve as nurse to her ailing grandmother. Living at home again brought her back to a simpler period in her life, and she spent far less time at parties, bars, and clubs, and far more time caring for the one person who had loved her more than any other person in her life.

She told herself this is why she hadn’t dated since moving back home. She flirted from time to time with the orderlies at the nursing home, where some of Gran’s surviving friends lived. But she had not had enough time to look for a man, she reasoned. In the back of her mind, though, she knew that a more fundamental change was taking place. She was trying to get her life back on track.

Preparing for the evening’s date filled Marietta with an array of mixed feelings, like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. On the one hand, she thought he was cute, and under normal circumstances, she would love to go out with him. She would even enjoy running her fingers through his hair, her fingertips just touching his scalp. She wondered if his shoulders were as broad and muscular as they had seemed that morning, and whether he would twinge as she brushed up against his nipples.

Yes, she could really enjoy herself with this one, on the one hand. On the other hand, he was slime, willing to tighten the thumbscrews on a lady as fine as Gran, unless of course he could get a few friendly benefits out of the deal for himself. Talk about mixing business and pleasure! The thought made Marietta a little sick.

On the other hand, she could do this for Gran, because she loved her grandmother, and Gran deserved it. But on the other hand, Gran had already disapproved strongly of what Marietta planned to do, and Marietta admired and respected the old lady. For all her independence, Marietta still desired Gran’s approval, as if she were still a little girl.

At almost half an hour past the appointed time, Jeffrey sauntered into the Italian restaurant where they had agreed to meet. At first, he didn’t see Marietta, and he considered that maybe she had ditched him. Nonetheless, he scanned the room. Romantic music vibrated through the atmosphere, and succulent aromas assaulted Jeffrey’s olfactory senses, making his mouth water. Through the dim lights, he made out Marietta, breathtakingly beautiful in a blue cocktail dress, seated at the bar, nursing a martini. He stopped for a moment to admire her. He sighed deeply. Then he took the stool next to her.

“Hey, look!” she called. “It’s John.”

“Jeffrey,” he corrected her. She smelled like gin.

He looked even better than she had remembered, or maybe she was seeing him through martini-colored glasses.

“Bartender, can you get John here a drink?” she called to the man behind the counter.

“My name’s Jeffrey,” he repeated.

She giggled. “John Chicken-Balls.” Funny joke, she thought, although she didn’t know why.

Jeffrey asked the bartender for a glass of Pinot Grigio, then he turned his attention back to the girl in the blue dress.

“How many of those have you had?” he asked, motioning to her martini glass.

“I don’t remember,” she said. She had been drinking to forget, and it seemed to be working. “But you are late.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. Hey…” The bartender brought Jeffrey’s wine and Jeffrey thanked him. “Why don’t we get a table and get something to eat? Do you like spaghetti?”

She had been gulping her martini when he said this, and just now she started giggling again.

“Did I say something funny?”

Unable to speak, unable to swallow, she nodded and held her hand to her chest. When she finally caught her breath, she said, “I always thought that was a funny word.”

“Spaghetti?”

She giggled some more.

This conversation was making Jeffrey feel uneasy. He wanted to do something to stem the tide of her inebriation. “It’s also fun to eat, and I think it might do you some good.”

“Oh no,” she said, shaking her head and grinning slyly. “If I eat anything, then I won’t get drunk enough to forget what I’m going to do tonight, and it’s very important for me to not know what I’m doing while I’m doing it. You know what I mean?”

“Do I really disgust you that much?” Jeffrey asked.

“Oh yes,” she said. “But you’re as much as I deserve. You know,”—she pointed a finger at his face—”I could really go for you, you know. If you weren’t so mean.”

“Give me a chance.” He smiled. “I can be nice.”

“Oh, yes, you can, you sly fox. But if I tell you to get lost, the deal’s off, isn’t it? So how nice is that? But you know, I brought it on myself. That’s what I get, because that’s what I wanted, dammit.”

She took another swig of martini. “It’s in my genes, you know. I’m from that side of the family. If it weren’t for Gran, I’d be out on the street. And that’s why I deserve someone like you.”

“You don’t even know me, and already you’ve judged me. Is that fair?”

“It’s as much as people like you and me deserve,” she said sadly.

“I’m a nice guy,” he repeated, “once you get to know me. And I’m sure you can be nice, too.”

“Yeah,” she added, “but you’re stingy.”

“I’m paying for dinner, not to mention all those drinks you’re downing. How stingy is that?”

“Yeah, but it’s only because you want something.”

“I want the company of a beautiful woman. Isn’t that fair?”

“Company, right.” Another euphemism for sex? She thought she had heard them all. “That’s right, always take advantage of the the situation, no matter how many people you hurt.”

Her attitude was beginning to annoy Jeffrey, and he briefly considered leaving her so she could finish getting drunk by herself. But he knew he couldn’t do that. Deep down in his gut, he didn’t want to, and he wasn’t sure why. All he knew is that this woman was innately special to him, regardless of how annoying she was this moment.

“If I had simply asked you out, would you have accepted?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Marietta said, reflecting her own mixed feelings on the subject.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” he said. “But I wanted you to go out with me. And at the time, this seemed the only way to get your attention. I’m sorry that it upset you.”

“And you always take advantage of the situation, right?”

“Well, wouldn’t you rather be with someone who could take advantage of the situation, rather than someone who let everyone else walk all over you?”

Before Marietta could answer, the maitre d’ arrived and seated them at a table. Jeffrey asked for “water, lots of water” to drink.

“You know why I’m doing this, though, you know,” Marietta said, apropos of nothing. “It’s not for you, no. I mean, don’t get me wrong.” She touched the back of his hand and smiled coyly. His skin felt smooth, except for fine bristles of hair, almost imperceptible. She lightly riffled it, enjoying the texture under her fingers. “You’re cute. But actually, you piss me off!”

“Is that why you dressed up?” he said. “That cute, blue dress you’re wearing is no house frock, you know.” Jeffrey could tell that she had clearly put some thought into what she would wear. Her natural features required little makeup, but even in this area, he now noticed, she had tastefully applied eyeshadow, blush, and lipstick. He stared into her eyes of crystal Caribbean sea, and he felt a little sorry for her.

“I just wanted to get on your good side,” she said. “But I’m not doing this for you, and I’m not doing it for me. I’m doing it for her.”

“Your grandmother?” Jeffrey said.

“Right,” she said between sips. “Something you wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me,” he said.

“That woman does more for people like me each day than you probably have in your entire life. I don’t know why you would understand. I didn’t even get it until…”

“Until what?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said. She didn’t want to share her feelings about her grandfather’s death with this man. She was still sober enough to realize that. She swallowed another sip of her drink.

“Anyhow,” she continued. “I’m glad you know how to take advantage of the situation, because otherwise you wouldn’t take advantage of a drunk girl, and you may need to do that tonight, eh?” She grinned.

“I guess that depends on how drunk you are,” he answered. “But I have to admit, this isn’t the kind of fun I had in mind.”

“Ooh…” She grinned. “I know the kind of fun you had in mind.” She giggled at her joke.

Jeffrey tried to get her to drink water, warning her, “You’re going to have one awful hangover tomorrow,” but she actively resisted the idea. He did manage to get her to eat some Fettuccine Alfredo, which he reasoned would also help, as well as some shrimp and chicken, and a little dessert. And he successfully shifted the subject of conversation to music, movies, fashion, astrology, religion and politics, anything that would keep her from talking about how much she hated him.

He found himself genuinely enjoying her company, and wanting her to like him. Normally, he would be happy with a date and one-night stand and no commitments for the future. But with Marietta, he decided he was going to do everything he could to woo her.

He obviously couldn’t let her drive home. She did not resist as he put her in his car, but she refused to tell him where she lived, insisting through slurred syllables that he drive her to his place. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

So he took her to his apartment, gave her a T-shirt to wear, held her hair as she lost her mostly-liquid dinner to the toilet, and tucked her into his bed. He crashed on the living-room sofa.

Marietta dreamed that her father had returned. In real life, she never met her father, but she had seen pictures of him from before she was born. Her parents never married, and when Marietta was very young, he abandoned her and her mother. Years later, her mother died in a freak car accident, leaving Marietta with Gran. So while she had some fond memories of her mother, her grandmother was the significant figure from her youth.

In her dream, Marietta knew that Gran was talking to her father, though she couldn’t see her. When he saw Marietta, he told her she had grown up into a beautiful woman. She knew he wanted her to have an incestuous relationship with him, and that if she didn’t, he would abandon her again. While she feared being abandoned, she also loathed the alternative prospect. She heard her grandmother’s voice telling her that it wasn’t worth it. But Marietta had resigned herself. She undressed, lay on her bed, terrified, and sobbed and wailed. Suddenly, Prince Charming appeared, speaking kindly to her, stroking her hair to soothe her. But she was so terrified, she didn’t believe he could do anything to help her. Then her mother’s ghost appeared and scolded her father, telling him he couldn’t do that, because he didn’t care for Marietta as a true father would. Prince Charming kissed Marietta, which finally calmed her, enraptured her in fact. In that instant, she fell in love, and they began to touch each other’s faces as they kissed passionately.

Marietta awoke with a knot in her stomach, shivering, and with a headache as big as the sun. She quickly determined where she was, but her memories of the previous evening were mixed with dream images. She assumed the worst. Feeling half a slut, half a whore, she rushed to get dressed, grabbed her purse, and stumbled through the apartment toward the front door.

Jeffrey yelled to her from the kitchen as she passed. “I’m making us extra-large omelets. Here, I’ll pour you a glass of orange juice.”

Each word grated on her head like a wood rasp. “No, no,” she eked out. “I’m— Uh. I’m late for work.”

The previous evening, when he had asked her about her job, she started going on again about how much she owed her grandmother and how he wouldn’t understand. At that point, he had quickly changed the subject. He had assumed she spent most of her time taking care of the elder woman.

“Well, at least grab a banana or two and a bottle of water.” He picked up a banana from the fruit bowl and held it out to her.

Half stooped over, fumbling in her purse for her keys, she stopped for a moment. It seemed a non-threatening enough gesture for him to make. “Thanks,” she said, as she accepted the banana. “Uh. So are we all set?”

“What do you mean?”

How could she ask him if they had slept together, and whether it was good enough, and still maintain what little self esteem she had left?

She tried again. “The car, are we all set with the car?”

“Your grandmother’s car,” Jeffrey said. “Don’t worry. We’ll work out something.”

This confirmed her fears, that they had had sex and that she had forgotten it. She turned to leave, because she was about to break down in front of him.

“By the way, how do you expect to get anywhere without a car?” he asked.

“But,” she said on verge of tears, “I thought you said it was all set.”

“Yes,” he intoned slowly, “but it’s also still parked back at the restaurant, and I don’t think you’re going to walk all that way.”

“Oh shit!” Marietta said, holding her head between her hands. “Why did this have to happen to me?!” Then, “Ow.”

He walked over and wiped a tear just beginning to trickle from her left eye. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”

“You have no idea,” she said. “Gee, those eggs smell good.” She glanced longingly at an omelet steaming on the stove.

“They’ll make you feel better. Sure you don’t have time?”

“Uw…” She shook her head. “This was a bad idea. I should never have done this. Thanks for everything, but I really need to get away from here. I’ll call a cab.” She started rifling through her purse again. “Where’s that damn cell phone?! Ow…”

“You really need to stop that.” In his most charming voice and with his most charming smile, he added, “I’ll drive you, but I want you to eat some hangover food first. You can use my phone to call in sick, if you need to.”

“You don’t need to buy the prostitute dinner and breakfast and drive her around, too. I’ll find a way home, and you don’t have to worry about it.”

“What are you talking about?” Jeffrey was genuinely confused.

“Sex for a car. That’s what it was, and I know it was my idea, and I’m not blaming you, but let’s just be honest about it. And now that it’s done and over with, I just really want to get out of here.”

He shook his head. “There was no sex.”

“But,” Marietta puzzled, “last night, this morning…” She pointed toward the bedroom.

“Honey, the only thing you did in my bed was pass out.”

“Oh no,” Marietta groaned. “All that and for nothing?! Ow…” She really did need to learn to control the volume of her own voice.

He grabbed her shoulders and gently ushered her into one of his dining room chairs. Then he knelt beside her, holding her hand.

“Look,” he said. “It wasn’t for nothing. We had a good time, at least I did, except that you drink like a fish, and you’re a mean drunk. Didn’t see that coming. You kept railing about how much you hate me. Then you wouldn’t let me drive you home, so I brought you here.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I remember that.”

“Well, then, that’s it. You slept in the bedroom, and I crashed out here on the couch.”

Marietta was beginning to regret that she had prejudged him. She agreed to stay for breakfast.

After a three-egg omelet and a large glass of orange juice, Marietta’s head felt a little better, and she was actually beginning to laugh at Jeffrey’s jokes and enjoy his company. And she felt a little guilty about that.

After breakfast, he drove her to her car.

“Would you like to try for dinner again?” he asked.

Marietta hesitated. She evidently had misjudged him, and she still thought he was cute, and he probably deserved a second chance, since she had so screwed up the first one. But agreeing to date him was what had gotten her into trouble in the first place, and she felt there was some reason she shouldn’t go down that path again, and God knows what her grandmother would say. Ugh. She wasn’t ready to start dating again!

“I’ll cook for you,” he said.

“I don’t know,” she replied.

“I studied as a professional chef.”

“Before you got into used cars?”

“Yes, that’s right,” he said. “You won’t be disappointed.”

She eyed him suspiciously, but he had his dimples on, and she couldn’t tell what was going on behind that smile. Was this just a story? Another scheme to get her into bed?

“I promise, I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

“That’ll be some trick,” she said sarcastically and then instantly regretted it. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

Jeffrey smiled his most charming smile and gently touched her shoulder. “So what do you say? Dinner tonight? For real this time?”

His touch passed through her body like a bolt of electricity. “Okay,” she said. But she was thinking, Isn’t that how I got into trouble in the first place?

All the way home, Marietta worried about what she was going to tell her grandmother, about everything. As she entered the front door, she listened for signs that Gran was up and about. She walked toward the kitchen, where she heard movement.

“Gran? Is that you?”

“Yes,” came the reply. “You’re late, by about 10 hours.” She was shuffling across the floor, a tomato in one hand, her walker in the other, making her way toward a cutting board she had laid out on the kitchen table.

“Yes, I know. I’m sorry I didn’t call.”

“Uh huh,” said the old woman. “Is everything taken care of, then?”

“With the car? Yes,” said Marietta. “He said we can work out a repayment plan.”

“Fine. We’ll speak no more about it, then.”

Marietta stepped up and grabbed the tomato from her grandmother’s hand. “Here. Let me do that for you.” She retrieved the chef’s knife from the large silverware drawer and began by cutting out the stem and slicing the tomato in halves. Still worried about what to say, worried about what Gran must think of her, the emotions from that morning churning, Marietta began to cry.

“Do you want to talk about it?” said the old woman.

Marietta shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve made a mess of everything.”

“What do you mean? What happened?”

She began to cut one of the tomato halves into wedges, but gave up and set the knife on the cutting board.

“You’ve been so good to me, Gran,” she said. And all I’ve done is ruin my life.”

The old woman grinned a little. “My Little One, you’re still young. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

Marietta shook her head again. “I’m almost 30. And what have I got to show for it? I flunked out of college; I’m divorced; I’ve been fired from every job I’ve ever had; I’ve spent almost all of your money. The only thing I’m good at is being a slut. And I don’t even know how to do that right anymore!” She took a moment to sniffle. “And you’re not going to be around forever. Once you’re gone, I won’t even have you to kick around. Serves me right.”

The old woman had been listening attentively. Now she spoke. “Marietta, you know you haven’t been fired from every job you’ve had. And you didn’t flunk out of college; you quit, because it wasn’t right for you, and that was the right thing to do. And it takes two people to make a marriage fail, just as it takes two to make a marriage work. And I have plenty of money to meet my needs, as long as I budget it. And you’ve always survived, because you’re tenacious, and that’s an admirable quality, one that most people never obtain. And I’ve never let you kick me around. And I’ve always been proud of you for doing what you thought was the right thing, even if I disagreed. That’s all that’s happened here.”

Marietta shook her head some more, slowly, because it was beginning to pulse with pain. “That’s not what happened. I made a mess of everything.”

“What happened?” the old woman asked again.

Marietta gulped. “I— uh, had a little too much to drink. And I— That is, nothing happened. Jeffrey was a perfect gentleman.”

“Jeffrey?” she asked, taken aback that Marietta would speak of him so warmly.

“Yes. He bought me dinner, cooked me breakfast, let me crash at his apartment. He listened to me insult him to his face. He held my hair…” She began to sob. “I so misjudged him. I can’t do anything right, can I?”

Gran was smiling the tender, knowing smile of someone who’s been around the block more than twice. “No, you didn’t misjudge him,” she said. “I think you were right about what he was aiming at. But when the chips were down, maybe his true nature shone through.” She paused for a breath. “Do you like him?”

“I don’t know,” Marietta said, regaining control over herself.

“Are you sure? You seem to be acting very emotional, over someone you have no feelings for.”

“Maybe a little,” Marietta admitted. She wiped her eyes with her hands. “But I don’t think it’s right, and I hate that. And I don’t know how I’m going to face him after the fool I made of myself last night.”

“Didn’t you already see him? I thought you said you had breakfast together.”

“Yes, but he also asked me to dinner.”

“I think maybe he has feelings for you too,” Gran said.

Marietta puzzled over that statement. What could he possibly want? she wondered. It didn’t make any sense.

During the day, Marietta took her grandmother to her doctor’s appointment, then to the grocery store, and later, to the nursing home to visit some of her few remaining friends. The old folks always enjoyed visits from Mildred and Marietta. Between all the activity, she had little time to ruminate.

What time she did have alone with her thoughts, however, Marietta found herself troubling over her dream. Even though it had troubled her, she didn’t share her dream with her grandmother. It was too emotional and too disturbing. She felt that she needed to process it in her own mind first, try to understand what it meant.

Like everyone else, Marietta had dreamed strange dreams before, but she imagined, even Freud would have trouble with this one. And who was Prince Charming? He was dressed in normal everyday clothes, wore normal everyday cologne, yet in her dream, she knew he was a prince, and specifically that he was Prince Charming. When he looked at her, she felt drawn to him, and when he spoke to her with his warm, soft voice, she felt he was a part of her world, and when he touched her, she felt comforted, safe. This was a character whom she had never met and who had never before haunted her dreams. Still, he had a familiar quality to him that she couldn’t put her finger on, as though she should know him, or know who he is.

Jeffrey, on the other hand, dinner plans dominated his thoughts. He knew Marietta liked Indian food, and he planned an Indian-themed menu: rice, sauce, soup, spiced fish, and dessert. He was planning the perfect evening. She was closer than ever to succumbing to his charm.

Unfortunately, his preoccupation affected his ability to concentrate on his work. One of his top salesmen even noted how off his game he was. Jeffrey replied, “Sometimes life gives you a second chance.”

When April had left, she made it clear the reason: because Jeffrey “didn’t fight to keep her.” Those are the exact words she used, words that would forever be burnt into Jeffrey’s memory. He had fallen deeply in love with her, had given her anything she wanted. Apparently, that wasn’t enough. She wanted space; she got it. She wanted freedom; he gave it. That turned out to be his downfall. They say that if you love someone, let her go, and if she returns, it was meant to be. Jeffrey used to believe that, a long time ago. Now, not so much.

It had been that many years since he had met someone who excited him as much as April did. He believed life had given him a second chance, and this time he was going to do it right. This time, he was going to keep her.

He left the shop early, in the hands of his capable staff. He stopped off at the grocery store on the way home, to buy some fresh fish, a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, and numerous other odds and ends, including a new package of condoms, because he was running out. Packing up the wine, he thought of how he would have to carefully regulate the amount of it that Marietta drank, and he chuckled. Once he got home, he tuned in a soft jazz station on the satellite radio and began to prepare the food. a dance of aromas and flavors, choreographed right down to the plating of each course. Then he showered and dressed.

The scent of the simmering spices wafted down the hallway and even permeated the air outside Jeffrey’s apartment building, where Marietta first noticed it. She rang for his unit, and he buzzed her in. Inside, the smell was even stronger. Marietta’s mouth began to water, and she suddenly realized how hungry she was. She had not had much to eat all day, managing only a quick lunch between taxiing her grandmother around. She got home just in time to freshen up and throw on a clean blouse and skirt, some one-inch heels, and a barrette for her hair. She had been trying to play down the “date” aspect of the evening, but she instead found that she was nervous that everything go well, and she didn’t understand why.

She found Jeffrey waiting expectantly for her at his apartment door, smiling that smile of his, and she suddenly realized who Prince Charming was.

“Why couldn’t you have been this charming yesterday?” Marietta asked, one candlelight dinner later.

The food had been both delectable and beautiful, each plate a portrait, a work of art. It had felt almost criminal to eat it. Jeffrey could have cooked at a five-star restaurant. With a talent like this, what could have possessed him to become a used-car salesman?

The company also had lived up to the hype. When she talked, Jeffrey seemed genuinely interested. He even asked about her past, and she revealed bits and pieces. Somehow, in his presence, she remembered only the pleasant memories of her life. She even got to ask him how he ended up a used-car salesman, and learned that it was because he enjoys interacting with people. He certainly was good at it, if the way she felt was any clue.

“I’m always this charming,” Jeffrey replied to her question. “But you were upset with me last night.”

“No,” she countered. “You were an ass. Or at least I thought you were, trying to bully me into sleeping with you. Now, you’re actually nice. You know, no expectations.”

“I want you to like me,” he explained.

She felt betrayed. “Is that it? You’re only playing the Prince Charming act because you want me to like you?”

“You’re a beautiful and interesting woman. Isn’t it right that I should want you to like me?”

“I guess so,” she admitted, but she still felt let down. “I just thought that, maybe, you were being nice because, well, maybe because you felt…” She didn’t want to finish the sentence, because she didn’t want to be disappointed. She finished off the last of her wine instead.

But he knew how he felt about her, and he completed the sentence himself. “You mean you wanted me to like you, too?” he said.

“Forget it,” she said. “I need another glass of wine.”

“You also need to drive home,” he objected, “and you can’t do that if you’re drunk.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine,” she said.

She carried her glass to the kitchen counter on which stood the half-empty bottle. Next to it sat a plastic grocery-store bag, which Jeffrey must have left on the counter, amongst a clutter of items that needed to be put away, and peeking out of the bag was a brand new, unopened package of condoms.

If Marietta felt betrayed before, now she felt defrauded. Something inside of her snapped. She was suddenly sick and tired of men. In a fit of lividity, she grabbed the bag of condoms and marched back out to the dining room.

“What the hell is this?!” she demanded.

“That, my dear,” replied Jeffrey casually, “is a box of prophylactics.”

“And what did you expect to use them for?!” She quickly changed her mind. “Never mind. I don’t want to know!”

She threw them onto the dining room table and marched over to the living room couch, where she had stashed her purse.

Jeffrey had followed her, anxious to calm her down.

She turned around and found herself face to face with him, blocking her path to the door.

“Hold on,” he said quickly but smoothly. “You have the wrong idea.”

“You know what gets me?” she steamed, hurt and angry. “I actually thought maybe you had feelings for me, maybe you actually liked me. And I come to find out it’s all an act. All you really want is a roll in the hay!”

“Not since yesterday,” he said, but she ignored him.

“It’s all you men always want. It’s all just a big act. There’s nothing real in there, is there? Nothing genuine!”

She turned to walk around him, but he grabbed her by the shoulders. He was no longer smiling.

Now, he was angry. “You want real?” he said. “You want genuine?! How’s this: When I first met you, I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. And since then, I’ve been unable to think of anything else except seeing you, and hearing your voice.”

“Oh, save it!” Marietta shouted, pushing him away. And she was gone.

Over the next weeks, Jeffrey tried everything he could think of to recapture the beautiful Marietta’s affections. He sent her flowers, arrangements that specifically reminded him of her. He sent her presents, gifts that he knew would impress her. He gave Hallmark quite some business, spending an inordinate amount of time picking over the selection of “I’m Sorry” cards, “Missing You” cards, “Love You” cards, and just plain “Thinking of You” cards. He wrote her long love letters, full of romantic, passionate sentiments from his heart. He didn’t know that they all went unread. He only knew that they went unanswered. He even visited, several times, delivering homemade, gourmet meals for Marietta and her grandmother to enjoy, but Marietta was always “out.”

His performance at work suffered to the point that his staff began mumbling, worrying about their future job prospects.

And then there was the recurring nightmare in which a large, deformed creature chased him and April, kidnapped her, dragged her away, imprisoned her Jeffrey didn’t know where. He spent many sleep-filled nights searching for her, never to find her, often waking abruptly in the middle of the night, panting, drenched with sweat.

He made one last visit to the widow. “Could I speak with you for a few minutes?”

Forever gracious, she invited him in for some tea, and he accepted.

“Is this about my loan?” she asked, once they were seated and sipping.

Jeffrey honestly had not thought about the loan since his life had been thrown into a tizzy.

“No,” he admitted. “I haven’t even thought of that in weeks. We’ll work something out, but can we talk about it later?”

“Yes, of course. What was it you wanted to speak to me about?”

“Has Marietta told you about our last date?”

“A little,” she said.

“I’ve been trying to let her know how I feel about her, but I don’t think the message has been getting through.”

“Yes, I know. She may still doubt your sincerity.”

“Maybe you could talk to her? Try to convince her that I’m sincere?”

The widow appeared to take a moment to think while she sipped her tea. “When she first met you, why were you so manipulative? Why did you not just ‘be yourself,’ as they say?”

“I didn’t want to lose her, before I even had a chance…” He let his words trail off.

“Yet, that appears to be exactly what you have done.”

“You don’t think there’s any way I can redeem myself?” he asked.

“I think you’re still asking the wrong question,” she answered.

Jeffrey thought about that, but his brain was beginning to hurt. She wished the old woman would stop talking in riddles and just give him the answer. He sipped from his own cup.

“This is the first time I’ve seen Marietta stand up for herself,” she said.

Jeffrey didn’t believe that. It didn’t make sense. Marietta could be such a firebrand.

The old woman continued. “She’s always been attracted to the wrong kind of men, and she’s always let them use her and leave her. Ironically, you seem to have turned her around.”

Jeffrey shook his head, confused. He had not done anything, and he had never met that Marietta, who let anyone walk all over her. But there was another, more pressing thought that raced through his mind. “Are you saying I’m the wrong kind of man?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I guess it depends on how much respect you’re willing to give her.”

The two sat quietly and sipped. If there was nothing he could do to redeem himself, then what was left? Maybe he should just try to be himself, whoever that was. Ever since April left him for another man, he had learned never to leave anything to chance, always to manipulate every situation to his advantage. But if he couldn’t convince Marietta to be with him, maybe she needed to decide to accept or reject him for herself. That would open him up to loss, but he had, it seemed, already lost her, and maybe vulnerability would give him one last chance.

He decided to go for the big play, his last-ditch effort, double or nothing, a last-second full-court shot, everything on double-zero, the Hail Marietta… if providence would supply one last opportunity.

Meanwhile, Marietta quietly descended the old, carpeted staircase, having just awoken from a nap. Her clothes were mussed, and her hair was disheveled, and she was padding in stockinged feet toward the kitchen, where she planned to make herself a snack. But she never made it to the kitchen, because she stopped and stared when she noticed who was sitting on the living room couch, drinking tea with her grandmother.

He looked up from his tea and stared longingly into Marietta’s eyes. Pure joy at the sight of her formed his face into a smile.

Marietta’s heart skipped a beat in anticipation and hope. But then she thought better, and she turned back toward the kitchen.

He placed his cup and saucer on the coffee table and stood. “Please, please, don’t go,” he begged.

Instinctively, she turned back to face him. “Why not?” she challenged.

He didn’t even think the words before he said them. “Because if you do, you’ll break my heart.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Oh yeah,” she said sarcastically. “I’m sure.”

The words stung him, like little darts jabbing their way into his gut.

She continued. “You never give up, do you?”

He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t answer.

“It’s all just a big game to you, isn’t it?” She began to raise her voice. “I’m just another challenge, another notch on your bedpost. You know something? You make me sick!”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You sure are!” she retorted, but he sounded different, more genuine. She wanted to believe him, but how could she? “What are you sorry for?” she asked.

“I’m sorry for doing to you what you’re doing to me right now.”

That took her aback. For once, she didn’t know what to say. So she listened.

“I thought I needed to pressure you or trick you in order to have a chance with you. But I was wrong. I never meant to hurt you, and you were never a game to me.

“You’ve had a long time to get angry at me, but the only thing that’s been building in me is affection for you. I don’t know why I feel this way about you, because it doesn’t make any sense. But I do, and I can’t help it.”

Then he went to her and kissed her on the forehead. And he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to himself, and she did not resist, because something about what he was telling her rang true. And he ran his fingers through her hair.

“Ow!” she said, as his finger caught on a snarl.

“It’s a little bit tangled,” he said.

“Oh!” She stepped back and hid her hair with her hands. “I must look a mess.”

He beamed at her. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve seen for weeks.”

That made her happy, and she allowed herself to remain happy about it.

Then he did kiss her, tenderly and fully on the lips, caressing her ear with one hand and her back with the other.

And she kissed him back.

They did not live happily ever after, as they would have in a fairytale story. In fact, this was probably one of the worst ways to begin a relationship, plunged as they were into an emotional conflict.

But somehow they did make it, through many long talks and much personal growth. Marietta learned to trust that she did have a special place in Jeffrey’s heart. And Jeffrey learned to trust that Marietta had a special place in her heart for him.

They married after two years. In that time, they all had grown to be close, and at the wedding, Marietta’s grandmother gleamed with such pride, one might think that her entire life had been leading up to this single event.

A month after the newlyweds returned from their honeymoon, Mildred Kramer left to be with her Lord. Of sound mind to the end, she simply went to sleep one night and never woke up again. Marietta was devastated, naturally, as was her husband. But Jeffrey helped make the arrangements, and the two consoled each other.

Then, while the memory was still fresh, Marietta became pregnant. She marveled at the symmetry of life and death, and she prayed each day that she would be as good a mother to her Little One as her grandmother had been to her.

Why Drug Prohibition is Ungodly

timk — Tue, 13 Jun 2000 16:02:00 -0700

The failure of drug prohibition dwarfs that of violent crime. Drug prohibition is the direct cause of most violent crime. Peaceful non-governmental public-service organizations—churches, inner-city missionaries, drug intervention programs—could accomplish ten times over what the government can, if only we Christians were permitted to give our money to them instead of to the DEA.

But none of this really matters. Because the strongest case against drug prohibition is simply that it is anti-christian and immoral.

Tell me, if you discovered that your own son or daughter were involved with drugs, what would you do? Would you turn her in, so she could spend years imprisoned under mandatory-minimum sentencing laws? Or maybe you would willingly forfeit your belongings under our nation’s anti-racketeering laws. Or you could make an anonymous tip and inspire a SWAT team to kick in your door in the middle of the night. Or perhaps, as a last resort, you could leave your daughter’s life in the hands of the pushers and black-market thugs.

The politicians in Washington know the correct answer. Whenever one of their sons or daughters is caught with drugs, they treat it as a private family matter. They even pull strings to get the DEA off their backs. But, in their arrogance, they refuse to let America’s parents take responsibility for their own families.

There is nothing godly about using the force of the police power to quell consent. Is it good when government social workers intrude into the homes of christian home-schoolers? Is it right to force people to associate with homosexuals? Should we rejoice that our tax dollars are being used to fund smut and anti-christian schools? Yet this coercion flows from the same idiocy that promotes drug prohibition.

When will we ever learn? As Christians, the first thing we need to do—before anyone is ever going to take us seriously—is to acknowledge that every human being has a God-given right to be a sinner. Each of us is responsible to God for his own behavior. And to intrude into that sacred relationship is simply wrong. It was wrong when men took up swords to civilize, as they said, the heathen. It is still wrong today.

The only moral course is to end drug prohibition, and to return responsibility for righteousness to America’s families and churches.

You Might Be a Libertarian if...

timk — Mon, 03 Jan 2000 00:00:00 -0800

You might be a Democrat if you believe that a school that can’t teach kids to read is qualified to teach them about sex.

You might be a Republican if you believe that this same school is qualified to teach them about God.

But you’ll become a Libertarian when you realize that only government monopoly schools have trouble teaching kids to read.

You might be a Democrat if you think tobacco smoke is more dangerous than AIDS.

You might be a Republican if you think marijuana smoke is more dangerous than tobacco.

But you’ll become a Libertarian when you realize that government agents are more dangerous than all of these put together.

You might be a Democrat if you believe guns cause crime but criminals don’t.

You might be a Republican if you believe new gun laws are bad but bad gun laws should be enforced.

But you’ll become a Libertarian when you learn of the thousands of Americans who are assaulted, raped, and murdered every year because their government has taken away their Right of Self-defense.

You might be a Democrat if you believe government welfare helps the poor.

You might be a Republican if you believe corporate subsidies bring economic prosperity.

But you’ll become a Libertarian when you notice all the political interests lining up for tax-funded hand-outs up on Capitol Hill.

You might be a Democrat if you believe a person has a right to sell porn, but not tobacco.

You might be a Republican if you believe a person has a right to choose his own employees, but not his own sexual orientation.

But you’ll become a Libertarian when they strike a bipartisan deal to outlaw all these things.

You might be a Democrat if you think the military starts more wars than politicians do.

You might be a Republican if you think Democrats start more wars than foreign meddling.

But you’ll become a Libertarian when your own son or daughter enlists.

You might be a Democrat if you believe taxes are good for America.

You might be a Republican if you believe public debt is.

But you’ll become a Libertarian when you realize that it really doesn’t matter how you pay the salaries of all those government bureaucrats.

You might be a Democrat if you believe that objective standards are racist but racial quotas are not.

You might be a Republican if you think Democrats are full of themselves but families and churches couldn’t make it without your help.

But you’ll become a Libertarian when you decide that politicians don’t actually know what they’re talking about and don’t really care.

You might be a Democrat if you think taxes are too low but prices are too high.

You might be a Republican if you think taxes are too high but government spending is too low.

But you’ll become a Libertarian when you conclude that prices are too high because taxes and government spending are also too high.

You might be a Democrat if you believe culture didn’t exist before the NEA.

You might be a Republican if you believe morality didn’t exist before the DEA.

But you’ll become a Libertarian when you wish that you could forget them both.

You might be a Democrat if you believe gun owners are evil for exercising their rights under the Constitution, while pornographers are good for exercising their rights under the Constitution.

You might be a Republican if you believe the ACLU is bad because it ignores parts of the Constitution, while the Christian Coalition is good because it ignores parts of the Constitution.

But you’ll become a Libertarian when it becomes clear that today’s Constitution is merely a convenient seive that politicians use to bash each other over the head with.

You might be a Democrat if you believe socialism hasn’t worked anywhere it’s been tried only because the right people weren’t in charge.

You might be a Republican if you believe authoritarianism hasn’t worked anywhere it’s been tried only because the right people weren’t in charge.

But you’ll become a Libertarian when you discover that liberty does work, everywhere it’s been tried, for those who are bold enough to try it.