Old Fashioned

“Now I’m starting to think Bill may be my toughest competition.”

  “When he’s the president of the United States, battling aliens and flying an F-16, yes. Otherwise you’re fine.” She grabbed his wrist, checked the time. “It’s almost eleven. If we don’t get home soon, one of us turns into a pumpkin, and I’m betting it’s not me.”

  She made him laugh. A lot. He pulled out some money and put it on the table. “If you don’t mind, I gotta go to the little boys’ room. Stay out of my pockets.”

  Clay went to the bathroom, splashed his face with water, stared into his reflection, unattractively highlighted by bright fluorescent lights. “You are boring. You are. She’s bored out of her mind, Walsh. You used to be so . . .” He looked down. What he used to be was dangerous. Sure, he’d been fun. But it came with a lot of destruction.

  He looked himself in the eye again. “She does laugh at your jokes. When you manage to get one out. Just be a little more . . . less brooding. Don’t think so hard. Just go with it.” His hand gestures to himself were suggesting it was going to take more than a pep talk. He sucked in a deep breath. “No. Don’t go with it. That’s what got you in trouble. Pace yourself. Be . . . careful.” He straightened, grabbed some paper towels, wiped his face off. “In other words, be boring.”

  Clay opened the bathroom door, rounded the corner, and was stopped dead in his tracks by the crowd in the restaurant. Everyone was looking at him and cheering and clapping and chanting, “Tee-tee! Tee-tee! Tee-tee!”

  Instinctively he wanted to crawl under a table, but he found Amber in the crowd. She was chanting the loudest, wildly clapping, grinning from ear to ear. So he decided to do the exact opposite of what his gut was telling him.

  He bowed. Then raised his arms in victory.

  The crowd went nuts.

  RIGHT ON TIME. And they weren’t waiting for the weekend anymore either. It was Wednesday, the day Amber got off work at four. At four thirty, Clay was at her door, knocking.

  Her new Spanish CD was playing as she greeted him. “Buenos días, stress boy. I’m thoroughly enjoying my presents.”

  “Bueno.”

  “You’re sure you can take off work this early?”

  “Well, I am the boss.”

  “Very well.” She picked up the shoe box she’d made for them. “Shall we?”

  “I can’t let you get all the kicks.” He held up his own shoe box, which had been tucked under his arm. It read Amber on top. He shook it and opened the lid. “Pick one.”

  That landed them at the library. They sat at a cozy table near the window as late-afternoon sunbeams majestically anointed the stacks of books they had opened all around them.

  “‘’Tis easier to keep holidays than commandments,’” Clay said. “That’s Benjamin Franklin.”

  “Ha. That’s true. I definitely prefer holidays.” Amber looked down at the book she was holding. “‘Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.’”

  “Nice. Who said that?”

  “Martin Luther King Jr. How about this one? ‘When you’re attracted to someone, it just means that your subconscious is attracted to their subconscious, subconsciously. So what we think of as fate is just two neuroses knowing that they are a perfect match.’”

  “And who said that?”

  “Nora Ephron, Sleepless in Seattle.”

  “Would you like to come over to my house tomorrow?” He blurted it out, shattering the silent code at the library. He didn’t seem to mean for it to come out that loud. And then he looked as if he wasn’t even sure he’d meant it to come out at all.

  Amber gazed at him, waiting for a punch line. But he was serious. “See where you live? Yes. That I would like.”

  “Make some dinner together?” The slightest pink blush colored his cheeks.

  Amber couldn’t resist the grin that was emerging. “Alone? Just the two of us?”

  Turned out, no. They had a third wheel. Clay picked Amber up in his truck, then went to get Aunt Zella, who sat between them on the upholstered bench that was the front seat of his truck. She should’ve known better, but if it was going to be anyone, she might as well get to know some of his family.

  They pulled into the driveway of Clay’s house. Amber peered out the window, unabashedly curious as to what kind of home Clay Walsh would live in. It wasn’t too surprising, all things considered. Redbrick, older but well maintained. And unbelievably, there was a white picket fence around the yard.

  Clay smiled at her. “You love it.”

  She nodded.

  Amber helped Aunt Zella out of the car, and Clay unlocked the front door. Inside was clean, full of light, minimally decorated with lots of neutral colors. Definitely could use a woman’s touch, like a rug or a lamp or some kind of a paint splash. On a wall just inside the front door was a small, framed scroll with what she guessed were the Ten Commandments, apparently written in Hebrew. For how much he heeded those rules, she’d kind of expected them to be painted across his ceiling or something. She gave the frame one more sideways glance. It felt like the commandments were staring her down. Probably because she’d never been good at keeping them.

  She kept following him. No TV. Lots of books, piled everywhere. A basketball sat in the corner.

  “Come look at our garden,” Aunt Zella said.

  As Amber followed her to the back door, she peeked into the bathroom. Toilet seat down. Bed made in his room.

  Neat and tidy. Just like his life. Anything else, she supposed, would be too shocking to get over.

  Outside, there was no back porch. A couple of deck chairs, sans deck, were all that made up the backyard. A grill sat near the door on the grass. Aunt Zella pointed to the garden. It was the tiniest square piece of land, three or four feet wide, right along the side of the house, bumping into the brick. A few empty tomato vines limply clung to the soil.

  “Clay grows tamaters for us. Right there. Cans them too. He’s well trained.”

  Clay walked out and turned the grill on.

  “I’m showing Miss Amber here our garden.”

  Clay gestured at it. “Aunt Zella, it’s just that little square. All the plants are dead anyway.”

  “You mind your own beeswax. She looks impressed.”

  Amber smiled, trying her best “impressed” look. Clay shook his head. Aunt Zella took her hand and walked around the house with her, pointing out the garden box with a few tools visible under the almost-closed lid. She stopped there, grabbing a hoe and a packet of seeds. Then she shuffled back to the garden.

  “Hold these, will ya?” she asked, handing Amber the seeds. With shaky hands, she began turning the soil at their feet. Amber watched the dirt turn over and over, gently and methodically.

  Clay called from the back door, “Aunt Zella, it’s too close to frost. Won’t make it.”

  Aunt Zella dismissed his input, waving an aggravated arm at him. She took the seeds from Amber and started sprinkling them on the ground. Amber watched quietly.

  Then, in a soft voice, Aunt Zella said, “Sometimes, even when the soil isn’t perfectly fertile and the season isn’t well-timed and the seeds might sprout during the coldest of days, it doesn’t mean a nice tamater plant won’t make it. Sometimes you gotta throw all your seeds into the soil and see what happens.” She started tossing the seeds everywhere.

  Clay threw his hands up. “Really? I just bought those seeds for next season. On clearance.”

  Aunt Zella gave Amber a knowing wink. “And sometimes I just do stuff like this to make him think I got the dementia.”

  Forty-five minutes later, Clay had produced a beautiful meal. Steak. Steamed green beans. Potatoes au gratin, for goodness’ sake! Apparently it was a recipe passed down from Aunt Zella’s side of the family.

  Clay pulled out chairs for Amber and for Aunt Zella, who was seated at the head of the table.

  Aunt Zella gestured toward the table and Clay simultaneously. “No candles? No flowers? I’m ashamed of you. Ashamed. Let’s pray.?
?? She held out a hand to Amber. Then the other to Clay.

  Amber reverently bowed her head. She’d never been around a table where people held hands and prayed. She breathed quietly, shallowly, waiting to see what would happen. It was the kind of nervous quiet where you can hear your chair squeak with every small movement. She tried hard not to move.

  After a stretch of silence, Aunt Zella said, “Thank You.”

  And like that, it was over. Amber looked up, and both Clay and Aunt Zella had already opened their eyes and started eating. It was sincere and reverent and so . . . simple.

  The meal passed with Aunt Zella sharing childhood stories of Clay—a wild, rambunctious, delightful little boy who could engage a crowd of strangers on the street as easily as he could a room full of adults or a playground full of kids.

  “Oh, boy, he always had me laughing. Had everyone laughing. I’ll never forget seeing him on the playground one day at South Elementary School. There was Clay—couldn’t have been more than six or seven—with a toy guitar, pretending to be Elvis. All the girls were chasing him around and screaming.”

  “Aunt Zella . . .”

  “I’m just saying. You used to be a chick maggot—”

  “Magnet.”

  “—to borrow a term from your decade.”

  “Okay, okay. Enough about me. Aunt Zella, isn’t it about time for you to nap or something?”

  Amber helped him clear the plates. By the time they’d started washing the dishes, Aunt Zella was in the living room in the recliner, fast asleep, clutching her jar of canned tomatoes.

  “That is so precious,” Amber said as Clay handed her another plate to dry. “You’re blessed.”

  “We have this ritual—tradition—which she’s very fond of. Whenever too much time goes by without a visit, she mails me a single bag of tea as a reminder.”

  As he scrubbed a pan, Amber noticed the sleeve he had rolled up. It rose when he reached for the soap. And there on his forearm was a barbed wire tattoo. It startled her and she tried to look away but she couldn’t. Then he noticed her and quickly pushed his sleeve down. She cleared her throat and kept drying.

  “Then you and Aunt Zella, you drink the tea together?”

  “Yes.”

  She dried her last dish and turned toward Aunt Zella again. “She looks so peaceful.”

  “She’s faking.”

  “Oh, she is not.”

  Clay stepped closer. Reached across Amber for a towel, brushing her arm and then her hand.

  Amber turned from him, happy to be pursued. Two could play at this game. She stepped away, gazing at the bookshelves. “You read all those?”

  Clay followed her to the living room—she could hear his footsteps behind her. “Most of them.”

  She glided her fingers across the spines. The Rule of St. Benedict. The Confessions of St. Augustine. Then she pulled out a hardbound copy of Flowers for Algernon. “I read this in tenth grade. So sad. ‘Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye.’ That hung on my bulletin board for a while. It was actually first said by Plato.” She was putting the book back on the shelf when her attention was caught by another book. “Is that a Bible?”

  “It is.”

  “May I?” She pulled it out carefully, reverently. It was heavy, the leather soft, worn. “What parts of it do you believe exactly?”

  He only smiled like that was a conversation for another day.

  “Okay. Well, any favorites, then?”

  “‘Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.’”

  Amber looked down at the pages. “That’s in here?” She thumbed through, feeling the paper. It was so thin but strangely strong and durable. Some of the pages were crinkled. This book had been read many times.

  She came to the front. A dedication page.

  For Clay, from Kelly.

  “Who’s Kelly?”

  “She gave him the Bible,” Aunt Zella said from the recliner, eyes still closed. “Changed his life.”

  “Told you,” Clay said, nodding to Aunt Zella.

  He reached for the Bible but Amber turned. There was a photograph sticking out that had been tucked between the pages. She slipped it out and studied it. College days for sure. Clay’s bright-blue eyes drew all the attention, but there were others in the photograph. David. Lisa. A girl hanging across Clay’s shoulder. She was tall and thin, with silky white-blonde hair. Hollow, defined cheeks. Beautiful lips. Her eyes were doe-like, more innocent than the other three.

  She looked up at Clay. “Don’t want to talk about it?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Amber is a bright girl,” Aunt Zella spoke up again from the recliner. “Give it a shot.”

  Clay took Amber’s arm and guided her away from the living room. They walked to the front porch, where he leaned against the brick, staring out into the neighborhood. His expression drifted in and out of sadness.

  “Kelly was my last real girlfriend.”

  “Before all your theories.”

  “She was the first girl I ever actually cared for. She gave that Bible to me just before we broke up. I used to make fun of her. . . . I don’t even . . . I can’t understand why she ever liked me. What she saw in me.” Clay lowered his head, as though the words would hardly come out. Amber touched his shoulder and waited patiently. “She wanted to . . . she wanted to wait. And of course, I didn’t wait. I never waited. Nobody ever made me wait. So I hooked up.” The muscles of his jaw protruded. A dog barked next door. “With one of her friends.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “It gets even messier.” A long sigh escaped his lips. “On the rebound, she started dating some other guy. He got her pregnant. And they got married. I hurt her. . . .”

  She watched him mindlessly rub his forearm, right where the tattoo was hidden underneath his shirtsleeve, then looked down to the Bible she was holding. “Is that what made you change?”

  “It wasn’t one big thing. It was more like a lot of small things that added up. And that book didn’t help much. Sometimes I wish I’d never opened it at all.”

  “Why?”

  “Once I read it for myself, I couldn’t make fun of it anymore. Maybe someone else could, but I couldn’t. I felt accountable for the first time in my life.”

  It was quiet for a moment. Amber let him think, made herself process all he was telling her. This was more than he had ever opened up about.

  The mood lightened a bit as he glanced at her, smiling, like some weight had been lifted off him. “There was . . . something. A sense. Like a voice but—”

  “You hear voices?”

  “No, not like real . . . Wait.”

  “What?”

  “Shhhh. There it is again. A whisper. It’s telling me . . . it’s telling me something about you!”

  She hit his arm. “I’m serious. Tell me more about all of this.”

  “I can’t explain it. Still. Even now. It’s not easy to put into words without sounding like a crazy person.”

  “I already think you’re a crazy person.”

  “Ask her to go to church with ya sometime.”

  They turned to find Aunt Zella standing behind the screen door, still clutching the tomatoes.

  “Thank you, Aunt Zella.”

  “You go to church?” Amber asked.

  “Not much anymore. I did.”

  “The people there weren’t perfect, so he felt out of place,” Aunt Zella said.

  “I believe that,” Amber said with a small smile.

  Clay looked at her. “I just drifted away from it. Had my fill of the hypocrite show.”

  “Well, I’ve never been to church, so I think you and I should go sometime. I would like to experience that with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “G
ood Lord, you two! Both of ya. Take me home already. This is getting painful.”

  “GOD LOVES EVERY boy and girl. Everywhere around the great big world. Every color and every size. Some are silly and some are wise. But God loves every one the same. He knows your giggle and he knows your name!”

  And then all the little kids at the front of the church shouted their own names at the top of their lungs. The congregation laughed and applauded.

  Clay glanced at Amber, who was enthralled, clapping and laughing too.

  That was the squeaky, shiny kind of show everyone liked to see. Clay’s gaze drifted to an older couple, three rows up, one seat over. Dressed in their Sunday best. Then another man, sitting alone, arms crossed.

  When he first started attending church, it was all he’d hoped it would be. He went through a whole repentance process with the help of others in the church. Then the head deacon had an affair with the secretary. And the music minister ran off with another man. And the walls all started crumbling. He could trust nothing coming from the pulpit. No handshake. No pat on the back. It struck him one day, as he was trying to make his life right, that in many ways, the people inside the church were just as broken as the ones on the outside.

  Then came the Sunday when he just didn’t get out of bed.

  And then another. And another.

  Pretty soon he didn’t step inside the church again. But sometimes he would take his Bible to a bench nearby, where he could see the steeple rising into the sky and all the beautiful stained glass. Inside, it was too messy. But outside, he liked the strength of the stones and the stately invulnerability of its walls.

  A boy, six or so, dressed in a miniature suit, walked up to the stage, holding a small Bible. The teacher nodded and he began to read. “‘Mercy and truth are met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.’” His face twisted into a question mark. “‘Kissed each other’?”

  The crowd chuckled, and as the laughter died down, Clay did the only thing that felt right at the moment. He slid his hand over Amber’s, his fingers slipping between hers, like vines entwining. They both pretended to watch the front of the church, but every single movement she made registered right in his heart.