Potter Springs (6 page)

“Not particularly.” He loosened his tie and yanked it too hard, snapping the fine silk in the quiet room.

“But how could you let this happen?” His mother shrilled on. “Your career, all that you’ve wanted?”

“I still want those things.” He didn’t know if he meant it, or if by force of habit, he still played her game.

“Well, what did James Montclair have to say about this?” James held a second-place spot in Marianne’s list of all-time favorite
people, second only to Jesus.

Mark wasn’t sure he’d even made the list. “He said that he wished us well.”

“And?”

“And that I need to look for work elsewhere.”

“Oh my God.”
Marianne’s taking the Lord’s name in vain testified to the fullness of her devastation.

Katy finally picked up on the conversation. She turned from the window. Her eyes, a steelier variation of Amanda’s blue, nailed
Mark where he sat. “You mean to say you’re without gainful employment?”

“For now. I have a severance package.”

“Severance?” Marianne’s lace handkerchief muffled her sobs.

“You’ve married my daughter”-Katy pointed her manicured finger at him-“and
you don’t have a job
⁷
”

“I’m working now. They’re giving me two months to finish up. Until they find a replacement for me.”
Until Amanda begins to show.
“But I’ve got some feelers out.”

“Feelers? What kind of feelers?” Marianne raised her head, eyes puffy. “Where?”

“Some places here in Houston. Ad agencies. I’m thinking of getting out of the ministry.”

At this, Katy joined them in the seating area. “That’s an excellent decision, Mark.” Dragonlady, as he’d taken to calling
his mother-in-law in private, actually smiled at him. She patted his knee, her bejeweled fingers like sparkly claws.

He watched the glitter, the spark of old money and ironclad rules, and felt the room get smaller.

“I’ve got some great contacts,” Katy said. “I can put in a word, get you started on a meaningful career.”

“Ad agency?”
Marianne looked horrified, as if Mark announced plans to pursue a career as a male stripper. “But what about your calling,
Mark?”

“To tell you the truth, Mom,” he admitted, “I’m not hearing it so loudly right now.”

Yet, he remembered when he was called, as if it were yesterday. At Calvary Baptist Church, in Lubbock, Texas. Mark sat in
the deep red church pew, fourth row on the right, with his mother.

Wind whipped through the trees outside the stained-glass windows. Shadows of the slender limbs bowed and strained toward the
church’s white one-story cross.

He was twelve, skinny and fatherless. Doyle Reynolds had chosen to leave his marriage of seventeen years for Mona Torkman,
a junior sales associate at Southwest Pharmaceuticals. She was married to Mr. Torkman, Mark’s seventh-grade science teacher.

Doyle had loaded up his charcoal gray El Camino, shabby suitcases and cardboard file boxes stacked high under the camper,
and left town with Mona. He never came back.

Mark became the man of the family before he became a teenager. He skipped adolescence and moved right on to adulthood, stepping
into the role of sole emotional supporter for his devastated mother. At night, he’d lie in bed with his stomach clenched and
endure the waves of her tears wafting through the duplex’s tissue-thin walls.

Until the saints at Calvary Baptist came along.

They invited Mark and Marianne to church picnics, his mother to ladies’ groups, Mark to weeklong campouts. He watched his
mother’s shoulders lift after months of crying into her pillow. And the burden from his own shoulders grew lighter as potlucks
filled their empty evenings.

He first heard about his need for Jesus at camp, around the crackling campfire with other sweaty twelve-year-olds. Like the
rest of the kids, he held a broken tree branch and listened spellbound to his new hero: Kenny Keisling, camp counselor.

“Boys, it’s a decision only you can make. The Word says, ‘For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.’ That
means you’ve missed the mark, fellas. You ain’t perfect, ain’t never gonna be. You can try all you want, but if you want forgiveness,
if you want to be good, you need the Lord.” Kenny waved his well-worn Bible in the air.

If you want to be good.
Mark thought of Mr. Torkman, a gangly man who wore corduroys and button-downs with wrinkled collars. How his former favorite
teacher wouldn’t look at him in class, how the other kids snickered like rats all around. Then the relief when Mr. Torkman
took an extended leave of absence, and eventually moved away, leaving whispers in the hallways like ghosts of shame.

“It says right here”—Kenny poked an ivory page—“that the ‘wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through
Christ Jesus, our Lord.’”

To Mark, the camp leader looked like a gladiator, some kind of warrior.

“So, what’s it going to be, guys? Will you take the gift?” Several boys were already nodding. Kenny waved a knotty branch
in the air.

One by one, Mark watched his peers throw their sticks in the fire. A sign encouraged by the camp counselors to show they’d
given their hearts to Jesus. The ceremony ended with a rousing rendition of “I Surrender All,” each of the four verses sung
a cappella, and with much emotion.

Mark kept his stick, the rough places hurting his palm where he gripped it so tightly. He mumbled through the song and stared
at his tennis shoes, clumped with mud from a week in the outdoors.

But later, just before the start of eighth grade, on a day when the wind threatened to split the trees in two, Mark heard
it. The call. Not from the red face and passionate voice of a younger Pastor Fred Wilburne, but somewhere deep inside. He
walked forward on heavy feet, down the plush scarlet liner, and knelt at the altar. He read the chiseled words on the light
oak table—
THIS DO IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME
—just before he closed his eyes.

He didn’t listen to the prayers over his head or the choir singing praises. All he heard was the quiet of his own pleading
voice, “Please, God, I don’t want to be like my dad. Make me good, Lord. Please make me good.”

He stood to face the congregation. They clapped and smiled at him. His mother’s tearstained face shining with pride. Mark’s
heart swelled. He’d done a good thing. He
was
good.

He wanted to be saved from that, free from the “like father like son” curse. The one that left people wounded in its wake.
He tried to walk the straight and narrow, fighting his desires. But still he fell. Fell hard, his sophomore year, with a buxom
cheerleader named Macy. Found out what he’d been warned against all those years in Sunday school, and that he liked it.

He felt sure his church friends would read it on him, a scarlet
A
scripted on his forehead. But they didn’t, and Mark discovered an inner division to his soul. That a righteous man could
sometimes dance the crooked path, teasing fate, dabbling in temptation.
Let not your right hand know what your left hand is doing.

So he led a split life. Right versus left. Right against wrong. He read Paul’s lament a million times.
I do that which I do not will to do.
The flesh and the spirit at war. He lost more times than he wished to count.

Then the saints at Calvary Baptist hallelujah’d his decision to go to seminary on Graduation Sunday and helped raise tuition
through bake sales and craft bazaars. They sacrificed, pledged and sent prayer cards. “We’re behind you!” they cheered. “Praying
for you daily,” they promised. Their faith in him shamed him for his failures and thrilled him all at once.

Some of these same folks from Calvary Baptist drank punch around the fountain today when his beautiful bride announced to
all, by accident, that she was with child.

His child.

Right hand met left, his divided worlds collided. Leaving broken pieces of his pride, for everyone to see. The truth he’d
suspected all along.

He wasn’t good at all.

D
ust particles danced in afternoon sun, filtered through the windows of the apartment. They rotated and spun to an unheard
song, then gathered, clinging to the photo in Amanda’s hand.

She blew them away, soft as a southern breeze. Slick fax paper captured the blurry image of the fetus, black-and-white swirls
promising new life. She traced her fingertip over the curves. Followed the tiny length of legs and arms. Lingered over the
head and heart.

A medical font pronounced the mother as
Amanda Thompson,
along with the date and baby’s measurements at ten weeks. Just before the wedding.

Two months had passed, and Amanda’s stomach could no longer be hidden under superstrength girdles. She’d never felt right
about them anyway, for fear of squishing the baby.

Since Mark’s tenure ended last week, she didn’t have to worry anymore. No more false sunny appearances on Sunday mornings,
doodling on her bulletin and counting the minutes until the charade was over.

James Montclair had the nerve to ask about her health on their last Sunday. Not caring who saw, she rubbed her midsection
and grinned a Cheshire smile. “Just fine, Jimmy. Just fine.”

Amanda got up from the nappy apartment carpet and stepped carefully over her list of thank-you notes from the wedding. Piled
all around her lay crystal bowls and heavy linens, priceless china and the few oddball gifts. A nacho warmer. A set of hand-knitted
pot holders. A hideous clock with pigs cavorting on it. From Mark’s side, she had no doubt.

She changed the radio to something bouncier, to get in the mood for organization. Her decaf iced tea melted, so she dumped
out the huge plastic glass and made a new one with fresh mint from her window box.

Settling herself back in the one circle she’d managed not to clutter, she picked up the picture again, postponing the tedious
art of writing thank-you notes. Choosing instead to dream.
Little One. Half-pint. Two Bits.

Not knowing the sex of the baby was killing her, but she and Mark would find out in a few more weeks. She’d go back to Dr.
Hoffman’s office, lie down on that vinyl green “lounger,” and stick her feet in the freezing stirrups. She’d do it cheerfully,
because she’d get to hear the baby. To see the baby.

At the first appointment, she’d felt so nervous she’d been afraid she might pass gas right there on the table. The thought
gave her the giggles. Mark’s exasperated look couldn’t squelch her laughter, but the chill from the clear gel sobered her.

Lisa, the technician, a skinny girl with long permed hair and puffy bangs, seemed perfectly at ease poking around her most
private areas.

Amanda kept her eyes glued to the screen, a small monitor to the side. She couldn’t really make out the lima bean shape but
uh-huh’d knowingly as Lisa listed off her baby’s critical parts.

The heartbeat, big rhythmic booms, had been so strong it startled her, like heavy orange basketballs thumping in practice
in a high-school gym. That sound, the hugeness of it, made it all real.

Amanda met Mark’s eyes as hers filled at the sound-the external proof of the internal. Her baby’s music.

Mark slid his gaze away and focused on the screen. Wordless. He hadn’t made the leap to expectant fatherhood yet, not quite
in the way she’d hoped. But he would. He just needed more time. After all, they’d gone through so many changes already.

When the communications firm had cutbacks, she’d agreed to a part-time position to preserve her job. Now, with Mark out of
work, the financial strain became evident in the hours he spent at the kitchen table, brooding over the bills and job listings
in the paper. With the pregnancy and lack of money, their dancing dates had waned away. Even finding time for movie nights
at home proved difficult, with Mark on the computer for hours. Polishing his résumé. Searching for opportunities.

But she knew, when Mark found another job, and especially when the baby came, things would get better. Easier.

Like they were before.

Amanda replaced the sonogram photos in her memento box, an old cardboard boot box she hoped to replace with something prettier.
Pregnancy tests, doctor receipts and prenatal brochures spilled out. Her baby stack grew as fast as her stomach.

Digging through the pile, her hands found an oversize album easily. She’d bought the Beatrix Potter baby book at Hallmark.
Fell in love with it at first sight. With no regrets, she handed over her Visa.

When she showed the treasure to Mark, proud of her purchase, he said it was too expensive. He obviously didn’t share her unbridled
enthusiasm for whimsical flowers and little mice. Not to mention flagrant disregard for their strict financial plan.

“I’ve got no job, Mandy,” he’d reminded her. “We’re on a shoestring. This severance isn’t going to last forever.”

So, she hadn’t started using the album in case she had to return it. But the baby book had a spot ready for the sonogram photo,
outlined with ivy petals and impish critters. She itched to go ahead and paste the picture in, but she was trying hard to
be a good wife.