Walk on Water (3 page)

Mommy had matured into quite the
good Christian woman
with all that that entailed. Plus she had never seemed to trust men very much, and this male coworker of hers was not helping the Y-chromosome case. She had never married and no longer seemed inclined to even though there had been boyfriends. A couple of them had been in her life for long periods of time. One of them I had even called uncle. But I couldn’t recall any of them spending the night, and sooner or later the relationships had ended for one reason or another, which Mommy generally refused to talk about—at least to her daughter.

Mommy had also been really fond of Robert. She liked having him around to handle such things as home repair jobs and negotiating with auto mechanics. She had kept one of our wedding pictures hanging in her lab station at work until the divorce had been final. Fundamentally she believed in marriage, and she really didn’t want me to have a baby without a husband first, although as my reproductive clock continued to wind down Mommy was beginning to change her mind about even that. “Times have changed,” she had begun to say. “Women have more choices.”
Sisters were doing it for themselves
so the song went, and they were not ashamed to admit it, or to show it. Perhaps it was out of necessity.

“Guess who I saw today,” I started with my news when there was finally a lull in Mommy’s reports.

“Who?” she asked.

“Mrs. Sterling.”

“Betty Sterling?”

“Uh-huh. At Northside Mall.”

“Hmm. How long has it been?” she asked as if she really might be counting the time.

“Twenty years at least,” I supplied.

“Did she talk to you?” asked Mommy skeptically.

“Yes, Mommy, of course.”

“I’m surprised.”

“I was too. There she was at the Bath & Body Works, with one of those little red baskets just like me.”

“Maybe she thought you were a clerk,” said Mommy.

“Oh Mommy,” I sighed.

“I’m serious. She wouldn’t be surprised at all to see you working in the mall. Did you tell her you’re a family counselor?”

“Mommy.”

“Some people don’t change.”

“She can be a little aloof sometimes,” I conceded.

“Sometimes?” exclaimed Mommy. “That nose of hers might as well be a balcony the way she looks down on people.”

One year Luke had invited (pleaded with) Mommy and me to the Sterlings’ Christmas party. Finally persuaded to go, Mommy had splurged for the occasion, buying both of us new dresses at Dillard’s Department Store, and a pretty crystal bowl as our gift to the Sterlings. When we had arrived at their house, Mommy had been embarrassed to park our Ford Escort out front, and the evening had slid downhill from there.

“Don’t you both look nice,” Mrs. Sterling had granted graciously in their gorgeous foyer with the marble floor. “Not everybody can wear that shade of red, Sally. You look just like a piece of candy. And Rachel, it’s so nice to see you in heels, dear. Good for you! High heels slim the calves.”

For the two hours that we had endured at the party, Mommy and I had clung to a corner together, feeling out of place, awkward, and embarrassed, in short miserable. All Mommy had done was fret over her dress.

“I knew I should have gotten the black one,” she had complained. “Everybody knows you’re supposed to wear basic black to these things.”

“It’s Christmas, Mommy,” I had attempted to console her. “Red is perfect.”

“Not this red. And it’s too short for a woman my age.”

“I think you look nice.”

“Like you would know,” Mommy had snapped. “I look like a piece of candy. And I can’t believe she talked about your legs like that. What does she think—that everybody wants to look starved to death?”

Luke had tried to make us feel welcomed and Mr. Sterling too, but the party had been large and they had had other guests to attend to. As we had been getting our coats, Luke had made his way back to us.

“You’re not leaving already, are you?” he had asked anxiously.

“I gotta to be at the hospital early in the morning,” Mommy had lied.

“But you don’t, Rachel,” Luke had replied. “Stay. I’ll take you home.”

Of course there had been no way I would stay and send Mommy home alone. And for us there had never been another Sterling Christmas party. Mommy still brought it up sometimes. She was not one to let things go.

“Mrs. Sterling told me to tell you hello,” I said to Mommy.

She was quiet.

“And she gave me some news about Luke,” I added.

“Oh?” Mommy perked up. “How’s he doing? He must have a dozen kids by now.”

Luke’s four children had come in rapid succession.

“They have just the four,” I answered Mommy now. “Luke’s divorced.”

“Divorced?”

“Yeah.”

“Humph. Mr. Right married wrong. Well I can’t believe that. Guess you can’t trust anything these days.”

“Lots of people do, Mommy. Get divorced, I mean.”

“Lots of
people
might. But according to his dear, sweet mama her only child is better than just people. And you used to think he was mister special yourself. They must have spent a million dollars on that wedding. Remember that ice sculpture of the dolphins. It was so over the top.”

“He moved back to Dallas,” I said.

“Oh? Do they still live in that big house on Swanson Street?”

I wasn’t really surprised that she still remembered their street.

“I don’t know,” I answered.” I guess. I didn’t ask.”

“Moved back in with his mama and daddy, huh? So he must be broke. That’s a lot of child support, I don’t care how rich you are, and they make them pay according to lifestyle. Judges can take everything. I’m not surprised Luke didn’t look us up. He’s probably embarrassed.”

I—we were a part of his past. It was probably best that he should remain a part of ours.

“Well Mommy, for all he knows I’m married after all.”

“So?”

“I’m just saying. It could be awkward.”

“Robert never tried to keep you from having friends, including male friends,” replied Mommy leaping to Robert’s defense as usual.

“I know,” I agreed.

“Luke could have gotten in touch with you if he wanted to. He knows where I work.”

That was true too, I thought as I rode the trend line downwards. It was a dose of reality, but it was only a dose, and tonight not enough for a cure. I could still hope.

After I said goodnight to Mommy and hung up the phone, I resumed the pointless vigil and practiced sounding sympathetic and supportive when—if—Luke told me about his divorce. It was important to sound reconciled about mine too. Regardless of what he said about Christina, I must not say anything bitter about Robert, which should be easy enough because I wasn’t bitter. I wanted Luke to believe that I had moved on, especially from him. Bruce Springsteen’s song about
Glory Days
was basically depressing.

Still it was permissible to be nostalgic within reason. So when I eventually began playing old CD’s that seemed okay. I would do it just for tonight. Tomorrow I would get myself together and get back to normal. And stay out of Northside Mall for a while.

With
Lionel Richie’s
greatest hits playing in the background, and T-T nestled in my lap purring contentedly, I allowed myself to remember. The way Luke had loved Richard Pryor, the way he could laugh so hard he would cry. The way his brow would crinkle when a text intrigued him or a professor fascinated him. The way he would dance with every girl at a party but always walk me back to my dorm first before he would do anything else. It had showed that he cared, even if it had stung a little being always left behind.

Choosing to be even more morose, I went into my bedroom closet and dug out my old
Sony Walkman
. In the same box I also kept a cassette tape that Luke had made for me, a tape he had labeled,
Rachel’s Favorites
, declaring it was for our road trips between Austin and Dallas. For these trips, Luke would drive and I would be assigned radio duty, which included deciding which cassette tapes to play, because he had had one of those fancy radio/tape decks installed in his apple red Trans Am.

“I wish you had something besides shake-yo’-booty stuff,” I had complained. “You, Lucas Sterling, lack the soul of a poet.”

“Hey!” Luke had replied. “I like poetry. I just want it to a beat.”

Josephine Garner “Lyrics, Luke,” I had schooled him. “The words have to stand on their own. Without a synthesizer.”

Rachel’s Favorites
was ninety minutes of lyric-driven songs by the Isley Brothers and Dan Fogelberg, Anita Baker and Joan Baez, The Commodores and Barbara Streisand, LTD and Simon and Garfunkel, Stevie Wonder and Madonna, in other words just about every love song he had concluded that I had liked. I still liked them, even now, as Barry Manilow sang into my ears through headphones crumbling with age. I should buy a pair of ear buds for the player. Did they even make cassette tapes anymore? Or
Sony Walkmen
?

The telephone rang again and I reluctantly shut-off the player. How dare this caller interrupt my trip down memory lane I thought resentfully. The caller-id showed an area code and number that I didn’t recognize. Well at least it wasn’t Robert.

“Hello,” I answered, expecting some telemarketer to launch into a script word-for-word.

“Hello, Rachel.”

Luke.

.

THREE

S
t. Ives appeared to be one of those locations typically frequented by successful sophisticated urban professionals, the kind of place where they brewed their own beer and served bison burgers with sliced avocados and black beans. The kind of place Corrine would love. The kind of place Luke would choose. I couldn’t begin to count all the new things, food, films, and people he had introduced me to. Being with him had always been a little intimidating, scary even. Were my clothes okay? What fork should I use? Remember the bread roll goes on the smallest plate. Don’t applaud in the middle of a symphony piece. Leave your politics at the door.

“Your mother thinks I’m ignorant,” I had once lamented to Luke.

“I think you’re great,” he had replied.

“You think I’m funny.”

“That too.”

But I had wanted to be more than his funny
little sister,
entertaining him, his family, and his friends with my working-class ways. Although I had never resented his many successes because there had been no reason to. He had never lorded it over me or anybody and merely taken it for granted that everybody was capable, everybody had potential. Discipline, determination could fix anything. In Luke’s world the playing field was always level. Everything worked out. Such was his world. He had probably worked hard on his marriage. He wouldn’t like being apart from his children.

“Hard work won’t fix everything, Luke,” I recalled telling him once.

“You don’t believe that,” he had replied.

Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t.
Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap
seemed simple enough except when it didn’t work out that way and somebody got screwed. And I had certainly seen a decent share of screwing.

The St. Ives’ large, curvy bar was built of exquisitely polished wood. Cozy leather booths, each with their own overhead light fixtures, lined the walls. Luke had also never pretended to prefer noble poverty to privileged prosperity. He was indeed his mother’s son. Mr. Sterling was the social climber in their family, having risen above a humble rural working class background by first becoming a teacher, then a prominent businessman and respected politician. Luke, coming late to his doting parents, had been expected to follow the abundant path they had levelly laid before him.

Mommy had great expectations of me too, only her aspirations were necessarily lower. In our case I had come too early, and to her alone, when she was just seventeen. I used to think that Luke and I becoming friends had been like some kind of natural experiment in sociology, a kind of testing of the American hypothesis that all men—and women—were created equal. It sure sounded good in spite of the evidence.

Mine had been, and still was, the
bleeding heart
determined to hold fast to the roots that let me completely identify with the people I wanted to work for. For me, it had always been, and still was about justice. Luke, on the other hand, could afford to see it as charity.

“You can count on my support for your causes,” he had informed me during one of our philosophical debates. “After all somebody’s got to pay the utilities.”

“You’re going to be my sponsor, is that it?” I had asked, dubious of his capitalistic compassion.

“Every day of the week.”

“And then claim it as a tax deduction, I suppose.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Republican,” I had charged as if it were a dirty word.

Which to Mommy and me, it was sort of. We were both devoted, determined, defiant Democrats in a land that had already canonized Ronald Reagan and pronounced itself Bush Country. But maybe Luke had been right too. Sometimes when I wrote a check to some kind of
United Way/Red Cross/Big Brothers Big Sisters/Save the Children
organization, I would think of him, imagining him doing the same, just able to write bigger checks without hesitation.