Walk on Water (18 page)

What was the use?

“Yes,” I said honestly. “How rude of you to notice.”

Tearing open a
Splenda
packet he poured half of it into my cup and set the rest aside. Then he added cream to the coffee until it was beige.

“Hope it’s not my fault,” he said stirring my cup.

“You did send me to bed without my supper,” I replied forthrightly.

Luke smiled, sliding the exactly prepared cup of coffee over to me.

“All the more reason to treat you to a good breakfast,” he said.

A little smiled played around his mouth. He didn’t hate me. I drank my coffee, and it had never tasted so good; soothing, satisfying, sweet, settling the butterflies in my stomach. We were still friends. A waitress arrived at the table to take our orders. When she was gone with our requests: egg white omelets and whole wheat toast, Luke refilled his own cup of coffee and took a drink.

“After the accident,” Luke began. “For the first few of days I was pretty much out of it. They pump you so full of drugs in the beginning: painkillers, sedatives, antibiotics. It’s a wonder you don’t spontaneously combust. In the meantime they tell your family how bad it is. When I started coming around I wanted to know for myself, but all I got from everybody was ‘You’re going to be fine.’ It wasn’t true. I knew it. I just needed somebody to confirm it, to say how bad, but no one would. I kept seeing all these worried faces all around me, hanging over me. People crying. Whispering. But all they kept saying was that I was going to be fine. They were lying to me, Rachel. With good intentions, but still lying. And you know what happened, I kept imagining the worst. You see, if you don’t have information you make it up. You will fill in the gaps. So long story short hiding the truth doesn’t help. It just makes things worse.

“You think you’re protecting the other person by hiding it, but you’re not. I had to learn that—really learn it I mean, the hard way. By doing it myself, and then by having it done to me.

“I think what people are really trying to do is protect themselves. A lie gets easier to tell than the truth. There are times when you don’t even have to say anything for the lie to be told. Silence lies too. When I got hurt, I needed my family to be honest with me, Rachel, to help me cope with it. But because they couldn’t face it, we all told the lie. I ended up putting on the good-face too, for their sake,” Luke smiled crookedly. “But the truth won’t go away. Stem cell research, robotics, electrical stimulation. We tried everything. Or they did anyway. I kinda checked-out. Money can’t buy miracles but it can pay for delusion. I guess people do the best they can, but they made it harder. I hate letting people down, Rachel.”

He took another drink of coffee.

“But back to last night,” he went on. “Who were you trying to protect? Me? My mother? Yourself?”

Picturing him alone, frightened, imagining the rest of his changed life, while the people who loved him pretended everything was going to be all right, I couldn’t speak. I took another drink of coffee.

“I know something happened between my mother and you,” Luke continued. “She said something, something pretty bad. I come back, looking for my ‘hot date’, and she’s all triumphant and you’re camped-out in the ladies’ room. So now you can force me to speculate and take a chance on me imagining worse than what really happened, or you can be straight with me. You’re a counselor, Rachel, you know how it works. The Bible says the truth sets you free, right?”

“Did you ask her?” I finally spoke in a husky voice.

“I don’t really trust her perspective, Rachel. Do you?”

“Luke…I don’t want to…to say something…”

“Bad about my mother? Just tell me what happened, and I’ll be judge. For God’s sake, Rachel, at least protect yourself.”

“She said I only want to be with you for your money.”

Luke sighed and then chuckled dryly.

“And that she was going to stop me,” I continued. “Because you wouldn’t. Because you’re willing to settle for me now, because…because—”

“I’m a cripple,” Luke finished for me.

I nodded.

“Is that it?” he asked.

Wasn’t that enough? Yet he seemed unfazed.

“Most of it,” I answered.

“Tell me all of it, Rachel. Let’s get it on the table, before the eggs come. I need to know what I’m dealing with.”

It did seem to help, repeating it out loud instead of chanting it in my head. Words that last night—all night—had sickened me now only made me sad, and I found myself on the verge of feeling sorry for a woman who could think such things about her own child. Luke was right, I was a counselor, and the Bible did say truth was liberating.

“She said I was a mistake,” I told him now, and in a way I was finally uttering the secret I had been keeping to myself. “My being born I mean,” I explained.

“
People
can’t be mistakes, Rachel,” he replied. “They can only make them.”

“My mother’s mistake then.”

“You’re not a mistake. You do know that, right?”

I nodded. But what kind of life might Mommy have had had I not come before she finished high school? Maybe she would have married first. Or gone to college herself, and had a brilliant career, and a rewarding retirement. And I might have a father.

“Wow,” Luke now said thoughtfully. “She must have rehearsed. That was a lot to cover, and I wasn’t gone that long.”

“I don’t think,” I started. “I mean…she’s just trying to look out for you in her own way. She doesn’t want you to get hurt.”

“Don’t, Rachel,” said Luke, shaking his head, smiling ironically. “Don’t take her side. And don’t ever put her between us again. This,” he added, pointing to me and then to himself. “Is ours. You’re my friend, not hers.”

“I don’t think she would have me,” I said finally able to smile myself.

The waitress set her tray down on a nearby table and proceeded to serve us our meal.

“Can I get you anything else?” she asked.

“We’ll need some more coffee,” said Luke.

“Sure thing, sweetie,” she replied, darting off to her station.

The food smelled very good and I was ravenous, however, Luke was waiting for me to say Grace. The waitress respectfully waited too before grabbing the carafe to refill it. The first bite of omelet was resting on my tongue when Luke said, “I would have you.”

“Excuse me?” I replied.

“Eat,” he instructed. “You think we can play hooky all day?”

.

SEVENTEEN

L
uke signed the credit card bill and put down the pen.

“Ready?” he asked.

I wasn’t. I didn’t want our time together to end even if it was only until the next time. Driving over here I had been so afraid that it would be ending for forever. Why was it that I must always leap to the worst case scenario? Never ever a happy ending. It wasn’t part of my mental make-up, at least not for myself. In my work it was very thing that I counseled clients
not
to do. God—I even had the bumper sticker
Visualize Peace
. When was I ever going to practice what I preached? Luke and I were as we had been, maybe even as we had
always
been, except for those two decades in between, and here I was, still kind of stunned by it.

“Okay,” I agreed, compliantly folding up my napkin and placing it on the table.

He had to go work even if I didn’t, although I supposed I could now, energized, as it were, by a world now made of marshmallows.

“Busy day?” Luke asked me.

“To be honest with you,” I confessed. “I took the day off.”

“So you are playing hooky all day,” Luke smiled.

“I am.”

“Called in sick, did you?”

“I did.”

“Friday flu?”

“You do not have to look so superior about it, Mr. Sterling. It does happen. People can wake up feeling like crap even on a Friday.”

“Except you aren’t sick.”

“I was. You said it yourself—rough night.”

Now Luke laughed. I loved his laugh. Even at my expense.

“They do say breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” he said.

“Among other things,” I quipped and got up from the table.

Outside the day was cool and overcast, but I was feeling all sunny and warm inside. Walking me to my car, Luke asked what I had on tap for the day.

“A nap?” he queried.

“Christmas shopping,” I answered.

“Christmas shopping already?”

“What do you mean
already
? It’s November, and they’ve been counting down the
shopping days until
for weeks now. You should come with me. I could use a well-dressed male perspective shopping for my cousins.”

“And be one of those guys carrying his wife’s purse? No thank you.”

With the word
wife
buzzing around in my brain, I lost focus for an instant.

“I’ll buy you lunch,” I recovered and offered. “In the food court of course,” I said leaning against the back of my car.

“That’s not much of an incentive,” replied Luke.

“Lunch is a bonus. My company is the incentive. And I promise to carry my own purse the whole time.”

“I’ll do it on one condition.”

“Which is?”

“I get to change my clothes.”

“But you’re so adorable in your button-down shirt and sweater,” I smiled. “Totally preppy.”

“Yeah, that’s the look I was going for.”

I followed him to his house in my car, and when we got there Luke had me pull the Corolla into the garage next to his Mercedes.

“It’ll take me a minute,” he said once we were in the house. “Make yourself at home.”

“Okay,” I said plopping down on the leather couch while he went to his bedroom to change.

Luke’s home.
I looked around the room, reveling in being here, even as I lamented not being able to return the gesture. A home could speak volumes about its owner, revealing things that even clothes did not. People said that my condo was homey, comfortable, and cheery, with cat toys scattered here and there, lots of books, and an assortment of religious totems. I supposed it was obviously feminine but it wasn’t frilly. I was proud of it, and I wanted Luke to see it. I wanted to cook dinner for him and play my music collection; maybe even digging out the
Sony Walkman
and cassette. He’d probably get a kick out of that. I wanted him to see the art that I had collected over the years, and tell him the stories about who had given me what or where I had bought it.

But a flight of concrete steps with an iron railing denied all of that. These days when I would climb those stairs—there were seventeen of them—I would think about the enormous barrier they were to Luke and to others like him. What was it like to suddenly find yourself confined to only a portion of the world, especially when once upon a time the whole place had been yours? No wonder his family had had a hard time dealing with it. I sort of did too. We were probably all a little guilty of idolizing him, then all of a sudden our god not only had clay feet, but crippled ones.

I checked my cell phone for messages. I had felt it vibrating during breakfast but had ignored it. As expected, there was a message from Corrine demanding details. There was also one from Brian asking to get together. He was really nice so what was I going to do about him? Guilt was not one of your most romantically motivating emotions. Sighing I returned my phone to my purse.

Luke wheeled back into the great room, and a burst of heat pulsated intensely between my legs when I saw him. Embarrassed, I stood up quickly. His khakis had been replaced with jeans but everything else was the same, and he looked scrumptious. I swallowed hard as if that could tamp down my hungry need to kiss him deeply.

“Ready?” I said in a voice made creaky by desire.

“Let’s roll,” Luke replied.

It was late morning when we arrived at the Galleria, so although it was a Friday and kind of the start of the weekend, the parking lot was relatively empty as were the stores. We began my gift-quest at Macy’s in the men’s department among a kaleidoscope of shirts that must appeal to any and every style. Luke, however, remained skeptical.

“I’m telling you, Rachel,” he repeated his earlier warning. “You better go with gift cards. Preferably generic ones, like Visa or American Express, and let your cousins buy what they like.”

“That’s no fun,” I replied. “Who wants to see an envelope under the tree on Christmas morning?”

I was pondering a nice powder blue oxford and carried it over to a rack of ties to look for a good match.

“Have you met any teenagers?” asked Luke incredulously as he followed me.

I would be meeting his and very soon. The Saturday after Thanksgiving I was invited to Luke’s house for dinner and Luke’s children would be there, although Luke Jr. didn’t really count as a teenager anymore. I was nervous to meet them but eager at the same time.

“This blue goes with everything,” I said about the shirt. “It’ll be perfect for church, or a job interview. Maybe for a nice date with a jacket.”

Luke shook his head dubiously.

“What?” I asked, settling on a dark blue tie to be on the safe side. “You wear button-down shirts all the time. Light blue ones too. And you’re very GQ.”

“I’m also old enough to be your cousins’ father,” he replied.