The Good Atheist (33 page)

Now she was gone and the fairy tale looked like it was ending, and I was back to being just a frog. I finished the beers, and the exhaustion of the past few days and sleepless nights finally caught up to me. I curled up on the couch, still holding the picture of Selene, and fell asleep.

• • •

The next morning I was stiff and sore from my night on the couch. I decided there was no sense sitting around an empty apartment waiting for Selene to call asking for a divorce. I decided I might as well go into the office, bury myself in work, and try to forget. I started getting ready, going through the empty motions, and had a shower. After my shower I stood in front of the dresser, looking through the drawers for a pair of clean underwear, when I noticed the corner of a piece of paper sticking out from underneath the travel bag that I’d left on the top of the dresser the night before.

I picked it up. It was a single sheet of folded paper, and I opened it. It was in Selene’s hand writing.

Gone fishing. You can catch me if you still care. You know where to find me.

It took me a moment before I realized she had to be referring to the cottage. It was the only place we’d ever talked about fishing.

In a sudden flash I realized she hadn’t left. She was at the cottage, waiting for me.

A new sense of life and hope filled me. I barked orders at Ellie to get me a flight to Vermont while I threw a few more things into my travel bag. Thirty seconds later she responded that I was booked on a flight to Logan with a connector to Burlington. Then she called me a cab.

Before leaving the house, I left instructions with Ellie to tell Selene, should she happen to call, that I was on my way up to the cottage. The cab got me to the airport in plenty of time. I found a lounge not far from my boarding gate and settled into a chair to make some calls.

The first one was to Selene. There was still no answer, but if she was at the cottage then she was out of cell coverage. I left a second message telling her I had found her note and was on my way up. Then I called Jorge to tell him I was on my way back to Aylmer. I carefully avoided any mention of Dad in case the Tolerance Bureau really was trying to use me to find him and were listening in.

I had one more call to make and dialed it next. My boss answered and I told her I wouldn’t be into work for a couple more days. She was somewhat less than pleased.

The cold silence at the other end of the line spoke volumes, signaling the end of my once-promising career at Telzon Wireless.

After a moment she asked coolly, “What’s it this time? Another death in the family?”

There was no point in being disingenuous. “I’ve had some marital problems, and I’m heading to Vermont to patch things up.”

Her husky laugh sounded of too many years smoking cigarettes. “Oh, please. Is that all? And I thought it was something serious.”

“This is serious.”

“I won’t be able to help you with this, Jack. Not this time. This is past the point of ridiculous. I can’t cover your butt any longer.”

“Sorry you feel that way, boss, but this is important. I thought I’d lost my wife and now I have a shot at saving my marriage. I’m going for it.”

“Oh, please. Don’t tell me about marriage problems. I’m on my fourth life partner.”

“Well, I’d like to keep my first, if it’s not too late. I’m old-fashioned that way.”

“Look, whatever her problem is, she’ll get over it. She’ll come around, you’ll see. After a few days she’ll be back. She just needs some space to cool off.”

“Not sure I want to take marital advice from you, Sandra, with your track record.”

There was a long pause. The air between us dropped several more degrees.

“No need to be nasty, Jack. I like you. I really do, but you’re a real pain. The only reason I put up with all your crap is that you’re so good at what you do. But I can’t cover for you any longer.” Another pause, and then the ultimatum. “If you don’t show up today, then don’t bother coming back at all.”

I heard my flight being called and people around me started making their way to the boarding gate. I had to make a decision whether to get on that flight or not.

I thought about my wife. Her smile upon which the sun rose and set. The laugh lines around her eyes. The way she looked at me. The way she kissed me. We’d promised to share our life together, and it wasn’t too late to save it.

The alternative was a little white cubicle, in which I had the privilege of being underpaid and bored out of my mind, accessorized with ignorant coworkers and its attendant jerk-boss.

It was a no-brainer.

“Then you leave me with no choice. I’ll save you the headache of having to fire me. I quit.”

“Don’t do this. Finding work can be difficult.”

“Sandra, in the last few days, I’ve been in a real fist fight with the police, stun-gunned, interrogated by Inquisitors, thought I’d lost my wife, and found my father whom I thought was dead. It seems to me that just having to find another cubicle in which to be bored is the least of my worries.”

“You’re torching your career, Jack. What will you do?” she asked gently. This was classic Sandra, alternating between hard-assed nasty and gently sweet.

“I could always grow organic tomatoes. There’s a huge demand for them in New York, I hear.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Sandra, I think sacrificing my marriage on the altar of a career for the privilege of sitting in a dingy cubicle eight plus hours a day would be stupid. But what I’m doing isn’t stupid.”

I must have hit a nerve. Maybe it was the memory of four marriages that she had sacrificed for her career. Her next words dripped with cold fury. “Have it your way, loser. You’ll never work in the industry again.” She hung up before I could answer.

“Fine by me,” I said aloud into the dead air between us. Organic tomatoes were starting to look promising.

It was reckless, I knew. But sometimes you had to take a chance on what was important. I could always find another job with an annoying boss, but there would never be another woman like Selene. I ran through the gate just before it closed and never looked back.

Four hours later I landed in Burlington, rented a car at the airport, and drove north as fast as I could. I made it to the cottage just around dinner time.

• • •

I parked in the driveway between the cottage and the tool shed beside Selene’s car. I got out of the car, breathed in deeply, and looked around. The roof on the shed was still unfinished, just the way I’d left it. Packages of unopened shingles were still stacked on the roof. The new black shingles I’d nailed into place only covered half the roof, contrasting sharply with the old warped grey ones.

If I lived to be a hundred, I doubted I would ever get used to the utter quiet. After the noisy chaos of the city the silence was stunning. A leaf detached itself from one of the large maples next to the shed, and I was sure I could hear it swish through the air as it spiraled down towards the ground.

Lights were on inside the cottage, and smoke rose from the chimney. I grabbed my bag out of the car and walked up the porch to the door.

Had there been another car in the driveway other than Selene’s, I might have been better prepared for what I found inside. I stood just inside the front door, listening to the sounds of cooking coming from the kitchen. Since the appliances were all dumb, Selene had to be doing the cooking herself.

But before I could say ‘Honey, what’s for dinner?’, two children ran out of the second bedroom, raced through the living room, brushing by me and straight into the kitchen without stopping.

“Mom, when’s dinner going to be ready?” one of the children asked.

Mom?? I thought.

“Shush. Be patient,” replied a strange female voice.

“There’s a man at the door,” the kids said in unison.

“I thought I heard the door open.” It was Selene. “Tell him to come in.”

But the kids tore out of the kitchen and ran back to the bedroom without even looking at me.

I followed the voices into the kitchen. My wife stood at the stove, stirring something in a pot while something else sizzled in another pan. A young woman was at the counter next to her, cutting vegetables. I stood in the entrance for a moment taking it all in. Selene used to think cooking meant taking something out of the freezer and putting it in a smart stove, letting the stove read the instructions from the package and do the rest. Watching her cook at a real, primitive stove was a moment to be savored.

Neither one of them noticed me, intent as they were on the meal preparation. “Boy, I wish I had a camera,” I said.

They both swung around at the sound of my voice. Selene smiled and came straight over to me. “Hi, honey,” she said, the uncertainty evident in her voice.

“Can we go someplace to talk?” I asked.

Selene followed me outside, still holding the spatula she had been stirring the pan with. We walked across the lawn away from the cottage and stood under the old maple next to the pond. We wouldn’t be overheard out here, even if one of the guests happened to come out onto the porch.

When we reached the big maple tree I grabbed her gently by the shoulders and pulled her close. She didn’t try to pull away, and our lips met.

We kissed long and hard under that old maple.

“I thought you’d left me,” I said when we came up for air several minutes later.

Selene wacked me on one of my biceps with the spatula. “I thought you’d left me, you moron.”

“Then I guess that makes us even.”

We kissed some more, then I looked into her eyes and said what I’d come up here to say. “Selene, I love you and never want to lose you. I want to make this work.”

With those words the emotional dam broke in both of us, and the tears came unashamedly. She buried her face in my shoulder. “Jack, I’m so sorry for what I did to you and that poor girl. I don’t see how you can ever forgive me.”

I thought about Paige. There was nothing we could do for her, the deed was done. She was in God’s hands now. But I thought about Christ’s promise to forgive all those who come to him and confess their sins. “Selene, I’ve already forgiven you. Jesus has forgiven me, and he can forgive you too.” That’s when I told her about Christ and his saving grace.

We’d always had a good laugh together at believers in the past, but she wasn’t laughing now. She listened carefully to what I had to say.

“That’s a lot to think about,” she said when I’d finished.

“But you will think about it?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Can I just ask you one thing?”

“What’s that?” She asked.

“Why did you do it? Why did you turn Paige in?”

She looked away into the distance. “I was jealous. I was so afraid she’d steal you away from me.”

“Why on earth did you think that?”

She looked back at me and rolled her eyes. “Men can be such morons. Isn’t it obvious? She was young and pretty, and I’m, well…” She unconsciously touched the scars on her face.

I took her hand away from her face and held it.

“You should know me better than that,” I said.

“It’s been known to happen.”

“Maybe with some other guys, but not with me. Never with me.” I caressed the scars on her face with my other hand. “Selene, you were the most beautiful woman in the world when I met you. And as far as I’m concerned, you still are. I’ll never leave you.”

“When I thought you’d left me,” she said. “I couldn’t face sitting around our apartment, waiting for a phone call, wondering when, or if, you would ever come back. So I came up here to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“You, silly. I didn’t know if you’d go back to our place in Chicago after, well, after the way you left that last night we were together. But I knew you’d come back here. I wanted to be here when you did.”

That explained why I hadn’t been able to reach her and no one had heard from her. There was no cell coverage in this remote area.

“I love you,” I said.

She smiled and said, “Me too.”

“I’m glad to hear that, because you might not be happy with what I’ve got to say next.”

Her eyes widened. “Hmm?”

“I lost my job. I’m not sure if I got fired, or whether I was able to quit first, but either way I don’t have a job.”

“I see.”

“And we don’t have any money left in the bank. I spent most of it the last few weeks looking for Dad. And I probably owe Jorge whatever is left.”

“Is there anything else? You seem to be on a roll.”

“Well, yes. On a more positive note I found my dad.”

Her face lit up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. “Oh, Jack. That’s so wonderful. When do I get to meet him?”

“Soon, I hope. But it will take some careful planning.” I told her about my father’s situation in New York, and how he was in hiding with his wife.

We both fell silent and stood together under the tree. A few more leaves drifted down around us. I looked around the property. “I think we should keep this place,” I said.

Her response was quick. Clearly she had been thinking about it. “All right, but on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“We get internet service and install a wireless router. It’s driving me nuts not having internet access out here.”

“Deal,” I said. The last we’d talked, she was adamantly against keeping the cottage. “What changed your mind?”

She took a deep breath. “It’s good for the soul.”

“What about your work?”

“I can write appliance personality apps from here as well as anywhere. What’s the point of all the wonderful mobile technology we have these days if we can’t live where we want?”

“That’s good to know, because you might have to support me for a while.”

“Any ideas on what you can do up here?” She asked.

My grandfather’s greenhouse was visible on the far side of the field. “Yeah. Tomatoes.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can take over my grandpa’s greenhouse operation and grow tomatoes. Do you have any idea how much real, organically grown vegetables sell for in the cities? We’ll make a fortune. And that would get us to New York on a regular basis.”