Anyway, Ray wasn't much better. Though his affections had shifted to Irene and he loved her character, the was still consumed with becoming somebody, having i.things, giving her (all right, giving himself, because Irene
didn't seem to care as much) a nice house in a great
neighborhood, a trophy car, and an income to afford it all. He was determined to be transparent with Irene, however, if she was serious about considering him. 'No more games. No more pretending. He would be more of :..a man of character, but he wanted what he wanted and :she might as well know that up front.
couple
":: at dawn. He was awakened by his phone. "What think
!ye of me now?" Kitty purred.
"I think we need to talk."
"What?"
"You heard me, Kitty."
"Don't tell me you're having second thoughts."
"I.wouldn't call them second thoughts. But we do need to talk."
3 3 1
"Don't do this, Ray. We're engaged."
"What makes us engaged? I never even proposed." "You bought me a ring!"
"You bought you a ring. Listen, Kitty, let's not.do this by phone. I'll come get you."
The line went dead.
By the time he had walked all the way to Kitty Wyley's sorority house, wishing the whole way he could somehow justify having someone with him--Irene, of course--he had at least talked himself into being strong. It wouldn't be easy. He had to own the blame for almost all of this mess, but he could not give in, would not back down. He wouldn't be able to live with himself if he left Kitty with anything less than a complete severance of the relationship. Otherwise, Irene would never allow him in her future. Ray had to keep all that in the forefront of his mind, no matter how Kitty responded.
She might bargain, beg, plead. The easiest course would be to let her promise to change and give her that chance. But that wasn't fair. Why should she change? Her values were conventional and acceptable to most. Why should he be the arbiter of her life?
Ray entered the sorority house, and it was clear the word had already spread. More girls than usual were up and around, and all were giving him the cold shoulder and the evil eye. He could read their thoughts. How dare you show your face? How could you have done this? You'd better come to your senses.
I'll tell her you're here," one said. "Wait in there."
Tim LaHaye & Jerry B. Jenkins
pointed to a TV room, where he and Kitty had spent lot of time. He couldn't help casing the place, looking for an easy exit. This was worse than waiting for a punishment from his father.
He sat, tempted to flip on the TV for something to
Get his mind off the tension, but that would project the
Wrong image. It was only fair that this at least appear as tic for him as for her.
But he could not match her look. In a floor-length
hair piled atop her head, no makeup, Kitty shut door against the eyes of several girls just happening
. Ray had to admit she looked good in spite of it all. Of course, she had looked better. But this was what he could have awakened to for the rest of his life: someone who didn't need an hour before the mirror to look presentable and yet would likely be prepared to invest the time.
"Hey," he said.
Kitty nodded and sat across from him, her face with tears, nose red, hands balled into fists a raggedy tissue showing. She was not wearing diamond. "Okay, what?" she said. "I'm not ready," he said.
"Ready for what? This? I'm not going another minute without you telling me what's going on."
"Not ready to get married."
"We're not getting married, Ray. Not today. Not this month. Not next month. You've got a long time to prepare yourself for the wedding."
332 333
"There's not going to be a wedding."
"Oh," she whined, "don't do this! Why? What changed your mind?"
"I never had a chance to make up my mind in the first place, Kitty. You jumped the gun. You made assumptions. You pushed me way past my comfort level."
"You didn't want to get married? Where did you think this relationship was going? You think I was sleeping with you for fun? Why did we talk about where we'd like to live, what kind of cars we wanted, how many kids we wanted? You can't tell me you were thinking of a future without me in it."
"Granted. But you got way ahead of me."
"Fine, my bad. I'll reel it back in. I'll return the ring and we can slow down. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare
you. I just thought we were on the same page."
"We're not."
"But we can be, right? You just want to concentrate on your studies and your flying. We don't have to get serious about the wedding until the end of the school year."
"No, Kitty. I'm done."
"Done with what? With me?"
"Done with us. I'm telling you I'm not ready, and
I don't think I'mmno, let me be clear. I owe you that." "You sure do."
"I am not ever going to be ready. I don't want to marry you."
Her face twisted into a grimace, and she had to fight to be understood through her tears. "Why? What have
Tim LaHaye O" Jerry B. Jenkins
I done that was so awful? I got ahead of you? Forgive me for loving you that much! I'm sorry I didn't notice
You weren't on board. I can learn from this, Ray. Don't
me."
"I just did."
"Ray!"
"I don't mean to sound so cruel, Kitty, but I've been far too long, and I've been wrong." "Pretending to love me?"
"Yes. I mean, I thought I loved you; I really did. But don't. I don't see us together in the future, and you
need to know that. I know it's my fault. If I hadn't been giving the wrong signals, we wouldn't be sitting here
now."
"Ray, I'm begging you. Just step back a little. Give some time. Think it through. We're perfect for each other
I've never loved anyone the way I love you."
"Kitty, stop. You must stop. I'm so sorry; I really am. But it's over. I don't mean to be harsh, but you have to believe me. The easiest thing in the world would be to keep but that would just prolong the inevitable." "You hate me that much?"
"I don't hate you at all. I'll miss you. I will. But
I can't pretend anymore."
"Is this the let's-be-friends pitch now? Because
I can't--"
"Neither can I, Kitty. We've been way too close for :that to ever work. This has to be it, and we have to become a memory of something that almost worked."
She buried her face in her hands. "I just don't
334 335
understand," she said, shoulders heaving. Ray wanted to put an arm around her, to hold her. But he must not. "What will I tell people?" she said. "Dumped the day after I showed off my ring?"
"Tell them I was a scoundrel, not what you thought I was. I didn't want to say this, but you can do better. Guys will be lined up around the block."
"Well, I may not be here," Kitty said, wiping her nose. She pulled the ring from her pocket and handed it to him. "There's nothing I can do?"
He shook his head. "I'm sorry. I really am."
"I wish I could say I hate you."
"I wish you could too. I take all the blame, Kitty." "That makes no sense. Something made you fall
out of love with me."
"It's-not-you-it;s-me is such a cliche, but--"
"Yeah, it is," she said. "So please, Ray, spare me that."
He nodded. "We don't have to be friends, but let's not be mean, okay?"
"Why would I be mean?"
"Because you're angry, and you have a right to be. I'd understand. But I won't be bad-mouthing you. And we will likely run into each other. I'd like to think we could be cordial."
She forced a smile. "I can't promise I won't be badmouthing you, Ray. But, yes, if we ever see each other again, you can expect me to be cordial."
TWENTY-FOUR
BY THE
TIME Nick Carpathia was twelve years old he was president of the international Young Humanists, despite the youngest member by two years. He chaired in Luxembourg (where he learned enough
ian to add a smattering of it to his fluency French and German) and spoke at two international
Ls---one in the United States, where he spoke and one in Hong Kong, where he spoke Chinese. He was featured in Time magazine, where it was noted
wore stylish suits and tied his own neckties. He also asked about his plans.
"I want to serve mankind," he said. "I will support
myself in some kind of business, because I am entrepre- by nature, but I expect I will wind up in some of public service."
"Entrepreneurial," the reporter said. "Where does
!a young man learn a word like that?"
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339
"The same place an old man like you does," Nick said without a smile. "By reading with a dictionary handy."
The story made him a hit in Cluj-Napoca and at his school, but when Viv Ivins tried to make a big deal of it, he sniffed. "It means nothing if it is not the cover story."
Irene was true to her word. She made Ray Steele wait exactly two months before she agreed even to go out with him. In the meantime, Kitty Wyley had become the talk of the campus, at least in sorority and frat circles. She quit showing up to class, and within a week she had left the university and moved back home.
Ray reluctantly accepted calls from both her dad and her mother, as well as her stepdad, having to rehearse for each the incidents that led to his decision. "I accept the blame," he said. "I handled it all wrong. She's a wonderful girl, and I wish her only the best."
Her father was the only one who seemed to understand. But then he was the one who had had an affair and left Kitty's mother, probably inflicting upon himself many of the same travails Ray faced. Both her mother and her stepdad tried to shame Ray and tell him what a scoundrel he was.
Word soon came from northern Indiana that Kitty Wyley was engaged.
Though not officially dating yet, Rayford and Irene spent time together as they had before, only more now because he didn't have the other "obligation," which
338
Tim LaHaye (- Jerry B. Jenkins was how they came to refer to Kitty. To her credit, Irene did not allow Rayford to bad-mouth his former girlfriend.
"She never hid who she was," Irene would remind
him. "You knew what you were getting into, and you contributed as much to that mismatch as she did."
The truth was, Irene drove Rayford crazy with the waiting. The most were she allowed occasional embraces,-
peck on the cheek. She wouldn't even hold his hand.
He couldn't take his eyes off her, and his attention
seemed to have a positive impact on her.
She
appeared to have an extra spring in her step, and she always looked her best. The closer the time came to their first
real date the more anxious Rayford became. He wanted
iit to be perfect, but she kept reminding him that just
I
being with him was all she cared about. That first date went off without a hitch, and they :were soon deeply in love, but Irene made it clear she didn't plan to sleep with him until they were married
ti and they weren't planning that until the end of his ; senior year. He accepted this at first, but the more time they spent together and the more amorous he felt, the more he b6came convinced he could wear her down, 'weaken her defenses, make her succumb to her own love and desires. When she didn't, he grew sullen. Finally she told him, "If this is going to become an issue, I'm going to quit looking forward to being with you." " "Because I want to love you?" "There are all kinds of ways to show your love for me,
Rayford. Including waiting. We're going to talk about this, because it's important to me. And what I care about, you need to.care about, or this will never work."
"Since when did you become a virgin, Irene? I mean, in this day and age? You're not telling me..."
"I didn't say I was a virgin. But I can't say I was ever really in love before either. I just want us to wait. And if you love me--"
"Got it," he said. At times he still tried to push her, but he soon realized she was resolute.
Rayford had long been embarrassed by his cumbersome name. But Irene liked it and never called him Ray. When she shortened it, it became Rafe. And so he began introducing himself as Rayford, signing that way, having it sewn onto his shirts and printed on his name badges.
When Irene's mother endured a rough patch with her new husband--a career military man like Irene's late father--Rayford decided he would spend as little time in the air force as possible. He couldn't be sure it was the milieu that made some men hard to live with, but he didn't want to risk it. Anyway, the real money was in commercial piloting, and that was where his heart lay.
Because Irene had been a military brat and had never sunk roots anywhere else, she was content to be married in Indiana. They had the wedding in the spring of Ray-ford's final year of school, so the crowd at Wayside Chapel was made up mostly of school and ROTC friends.
Rayford was alarmed to detect the first stages of ntia in his father. He kept getting lost in the tiny and he told his son the same stories over and over. When Rayford got his mother alone, she burst into tears. "I'm losing him," she said. Rayford feared she had become fragile too. Having parents older than his friends' parents had been an embarrassment when he was young. Now it was a real problem.
"I suppose it would be too much to ask," she said, would you help your father sell the tool and die."
Of all things to bring up on his wedding day. "Yes, would be too much to ask," he said. "I know nothing about the business end. And with me there he would get it into his head that he didn't have to sell. He would be
me every day to just take it over, and that's the last
thing I want. Mom, if his mind is fading as fast as it ears, you're going to need me making as much as I can to help take care of him."
Rayford could have had no idea how prophetic that statement
Within six months of their wedding Irene was pregnant. Rayford was logging as many hours in the air as he could every day at a small air force installation near O'Hare Airport in Chicago.
And then he and Irene were invited to his parents'
wedding anniversary. What a sad event that turned out to be. Distant family members unable to attend his wedding somehow made the effort to get to Belvidere for this, some curious about Rayford's wife but most--he was surembelieving they were seeing the last of the elder Mr. Steele as they knew him.
Saddest for Rayford was watching his parents sit for
340 341 their formal photo. He read panic on his mother's face, as she was already burdened with not letting her husband out of her sight. He had deteriorated even since the wedding. Having married late and waiting to have Rayford, his parents were already pushing seventy and looked older than that--nothing like the youngish parents of Rayford's contemporaries. The best photo showed Mr. Steele with a childlike smile of wonder, and Rayford knew he would not likely remember posing for it.
If Rayford heard it once, he heard dozens of times that day his father asking lifetime friends and relatives, "Tell me your name again." Mr. Steele greeted his own younger sister three times as if she had just walked through the door. "I know you!" he said. "So glad you could come."
The anniversary cake had thirty candles, of course, and Rayford's father watched with curious glee as his wife blew them out in three great puffs. "How old are you?" he asked. "Aren't we going to sing the birthday song?"
The party was almost over. Rayford's father had gone to take a nap even before some of the guests began leaving. Rayford's mother pulled her son into a corner. "There's something I want you to pray with me about, Son," she said.
His eyes darted. This was not like her. Surely she wasn't going to ask him to pray right then and there. "You still pray, don't you,
Rayford?"
"Uh, yeah. Sure. 'Course I do." He couldn't remember the last time. And what God was allowing to happen to
Tim LaHaye & Jerry B. Jenkins
father wasn't likely to change that. Irene resented for allowing her father to be killed. Well, this was
It would have been easier to hear that his father had been hit by a car or died in his sleep. "Just don't ask me to pray for Dad's healing, because that's not
Going to hapine--"
"That's not it," she said, fighting to keep her composure- "It's just that Daddy and I had a goal. The odds against us because of how old we were when we but we've talked about it since the day we fell in love."
Rayford was already uncomfortable with this, whatever it was. He had never heard his parents talk about in love. They were nice enough to each other, didn't argue or fight much, but neither had they ever been terribly affectionate.
Rayfor'd and his mother kept being interrupted by
People saying their good-byes. "Mon, we're being rude.
Can't this wait ?"
"I shouldn't burden you with it anyway," she said. "You're the hostess. You should--"
"Fine," she said, abruptly moving toward the door.
Rayford couldn't deny he was relieved, but he felt watching her do her duty with a tightlipped her face red and her eyes full.
Irene slipped her hand into his. "What was that all about?
When he told her, she said, "Rafe, you must it. She won't get back to it. Convince her it's your priority. You're all she has left. She has to know she can unburden herself to you."
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"Irene, whatever it is is going to require something I don't have to give. You and I are trying to get established. I want a house, a decent car or two, a good job . . ."