Making Faces (16 page)

“’Til death do us part,” Rita promised, her
face lovely in its sincerity.

When Becker kissed her
smiling lips, sealing the deal, Bailey closed his eyes, and Fern
reached for his hand.

It only took about three months before Rita
drifted out of sight. The occasions she was seen in public with her
husband, she kept her eyes carefully averted and other times wore
sunglasses even when it was raining. Fern called regularly and even
stopped by Rita's duplex a few times. But her visits seemed to make
Rita nervous. Once Fern swore she saw Rita pull into her garage
just before Fern arrived, yet Rita didn't answer the door when she
knocked.

Things improved slightly when Becker got a
job where he traveled for several days at a time. Rita even called
and took Fern to lunch on her birthday. They ate enchiladas at
Luisa's Cocina, and Rita smiled brightly and reassured Fern that
everything was just fine when Fern asked gently if she was okay.
According to Rita, everything was just wonderful--perfect. But Fern
didn't believe her.

Fern didn't tell Bailey about her fears for
Rita. She didn't want to upset him, and what could he do? Fern saw
Becker every once in a while at the store, and though he was polite
and always greeted her with a smile, Fern didn't like him. And he
seemed to know it. He was always perfectly groomed, every dark hair
in place, his handsome face clean-shaven, his clothes crisp and
stylish. But it was all packaging. And Fern was reminded of the
analogy of the grease her father had shared with Elliott Young once
upon a time. Fern couldn't have been more than fourteen, but the
lesson had stuck.

Elliott Young looked nothing like his son.
He was short, maybe 5'8 at the most. His blond hair had thinned
until he'd finally shaved it off. His eyes were a soft blue, his
nose a little flat, his smile always at the ready. Today he wasn't
smiling, and his eyes were heavily ringed, like he hadn't slept
well in a long time.

“
Hi, Mr. Young,” Fern said, a question in
her voice.

“
Hi, Fern. Is your dad home?” Elliott
didn't make a move to enter even though Fern held the screen door
wide in welcome.

“
Dad?” Fern called toward her dad's
office. “Elliott Young is here to see you.”

“
Invite him in Fern!” Joshua Taylor called
from the recesses of the room.

“
Please come in, Mr. Young,” Fern
said.

Elliott Young shoved his hands in his
pockets and let Fern lead him into her father's office. There are
various churches and denominations in Pennsylvania. Some say it's a
state where God still has a foothold. There are lots of Catholics,
lots of Methodists, lots of Presbyterians, lots of Baptists, lots
of everything. But in Hannah Lake, Joshua Taylor ran his little
church with such care and commitment to the community that it
didn't matter to him what you called yourself, he was still your
pastor. If you didn't sit in his pews each Sunday, it really made
no difference to him. He preached from the bible, kept his message
simple, kept his sermons universal, and for forty years he had
labored with one goal: love and serve–the rest would take care of
itself. Everyone called him Pastor Joshua, whether he was their
pastor or not. And more often than not, when someone was
soul-searching, they found themselves at Pastor Joshua's
church.

“
Elliott!” Joshua Taylor stood from his
desk as Fern led Elliott Young into the room. “How are you? I
haven't seen you in a while. What can I do for you?”

Fern pulled the French doors shut behind her
and walked into the kitchen, wishing desperately to hear the rest
of the conversation. Elliott was Ambrose's dad. Rumors were, he and
Ambrose's mother were splitting up, that Lily Young was leaving
town. Fern wondered if that meant Ambrose would leave too.

Fern knew she shouldn't do it, but she did.
She sneaked into the pantry and positioned herself on a sack of
flour. Sitting in the pantry was almost as good as sitting in her
father's office. Whoever had framed up the house must have scrimped
on the wall that divided the back of the pantry from the little
room her father used for his office, because if Fern wedged herself
into the corner, not only could she hear perfectly, she could even
see into the room where the sheet rock didn't quite reach the
corner. Her mother was at the grocery store. She was safe to listen
without getting caught, and if her mother suddenly came home, she
could swoop up the full trash and pretend like she was just doing
her chores.

“
. . . she's never been happy. She's
tried, I think. But these last few years . . . she's just been
hiding out.” Elliott Young was talking. “I love her so much. I
thought if I just kept loving her, she would love me back. I
thought I had enough love for both of us. For all three of
us.”

“
Is she determined to leave?” Fern's
father asked softly.

“
Yes. She wants to take Ambrose with her.
I haven't said anything. But that's the hardest part. I love that
boy. If she takes him, Pastor, I don't think I will survive. I
don't think I'm strong enough.” Elliott Young wept openly and Fern
felt sympathetic tears well in her own eyes. “I know he's not mine.
Not biologically. But he's my son, Pastor. He's my son!”

“
Does Ambrose know?”

“
Not everything. But he's fourteen, not
five. He knows enough.”

“
Does Lily know you want the boy to stay,
even if she leaves?”

“
He is legally my son. I adopted him. I
gave him my name. I have rights like any father would. I don't
think she would fight it if Ambrose wanted to stay, but I haven't
said anything to Brosey. I guess I keep hoping Lily will change her
mind.”

“
Talk to your son. Tell him what is
happening. Just the facts–no blame, no condemnation, just the fact
that his mother is leaving. Tell him you love him. Tell him that he
is your son and that nothing will change that. Don't for one minute
let him believe that he doesn't have a choice because of blood. Let
him know he can go with his mother if that is his wish, but that
you love him and want him to stay with you if that is what he
wants.”

Elliott was quiet for several long minutes,
Joshua Taylor too, and Fern wondered if that was all that was going
to be said. Then Joshua Taylor asked softly, “Is that all that's
bothering you, Elliott? Is there something else you want to talk
about?”

“
I keep thinking that if I just looked
different, if I looked more like him, none of this would be
happening. I know I'm not the best looking guy in the world. I know
I'm a little on the homely side. But I exercise and I keep myself
trim and I dress nice and wear cologne . . .” Elliott Young sounded
embarrassed, and his voice drifted off.

“
Looked more like who?” Joshua Taylor
asked gently.

“
Ambrose's father. The man Lily can't seem
to get out of her system. He wasn't nice to her, Pastor. He was
selfish and mean. He pushed her away when he found out she was
pregnant. He told her he wanted nothing to do with her. But he was
handsome. I've seen pictures. Looks just like Brosey.” Elliott's
voice broke when he said his son's name.

“
I've often thought that beauty can be a
deterrent to love,” Fern's father mused.

“
Why?”

“
Because sometimes we fall in love with a
face and not what's behind it. My mother used to pour the grease
off the meat when she cooked, and she stored it in a tin in the
cupboard. For a while, she used a tin that had once held those
long, praline-covered cookies with hazelnut crème inside. The
expensive ones? More than once I got that tin down thinking I'd
found my mom's secret stash, only to take off the lid and see
smelly mounds of grease.”

Elliott laughed, getting the point. “The
container didn't matter much at that point, huh?”

“
That's right. It made me want cookies,
but that container was major false advertising. I think sometimes a
beautiful face is false advertising too, and too many of us don't
take the time to look beneath the lid. Funny, this reminds me of a
sermon I gave a few weeks back. Did you hear it?”

“
I'm sorry, Pastor. I work nights at the
bakery, you know. Sometimes Sunday morning I'm just too tired,”
Elliott said, his guilt over missing church evident, even through
the pantry wall.

“
It's okay, Elliott.” Joshua laughed. “I'm
not taking roll. I just wanted to know if you'd heard it so I
wouldn't bore you silly.” Fern heard her father turning pages. She
smiled a little. He always brought everything back to the
scriptures.

“
In Isaiah 53:2 it says, “For he shall
grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry
ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him,
there is no beauty that we should desire him.”

“
I remember that verse,” Elliott said
softly. “It always struck me that Jesus wasn't handsome. Why
wouldn't God make his outside match his inside?”

“
For the same reason He was born in a
lowly manger, born to an oppressed people. If He had been beautiful
or powerful, people would have followed him for that alone–they
would have been drawn to him for all the wrong reasons.”

“
That makes sense,” Elliott said.

Fern found herself nodding in agreement,
sitting there on a sack of flour in the corner of the pantry. It
made sense to her too. She wondered how she had missed this
particular sermon. It must have come when she sneaked her romance
novel in between the pages of the hymnal a few weeks ago. She felt
a twinge of remorse. Her father was so wise. Maybe she should pay
more attention.

“
There's nothing wrong with your face,
Elliott,” Joshua said gently. “There's nothing wrong with you. You
are a good man with a beautiful heart. And God looks on the heart,
doesn't he?”

“
Yeah.” Elliott Young sounded close to
tears once more. “He does. Thanks, Pastor.”

After Elliott Young left, Fern sat in deep
contemplation in the pantry, her hands clasped around her knees.
Then she went upstairs and began writing a love story about a blind
girl searching for a soul mate and an ugly prince with a heart of
gold.

Iraq

“I would really like to see a woman that
wasn't wearing a tent over her head. Just once! And I would
appreciate it if she was blonde or even better, redheaded!” Beans
moaned one afternoon after guarding a lonely checkpoint for several
hours with only a handful of women clad in burkas and children
coming through to make them feel useful. Maybe it was ironic that
Beans longed for a blonde when he was Hispanic. But he was
American, and America had the most diverse population in the world.
A little diversity right now would be welcome.