Possibly out of deference to their age, Reesi and the rest of the group look to Hank and Mary to start them off. Hank is 74, which they know now because it’s the first thing he tells them. “Well, I’m seventy-four years old, and here I am with you young folk, like I’m a young buck or something. But I only just found the Lord some three years ago, and I have this young lady to thank for that.” He looks to Mary, squeezes her hand, their fists knotted together and set on the long meeting table like a shimmering volcanic rock specimen. Mary, who smiles with the corners of her eyes and lets Hank do the speaking for them, looks to Reesi about 60 — definitely older than Ros (whose 49th is coming up, that reminds her), but younger than Hank.
Or maybe she’s more like 55; her skin is pale and grayish, nearly translucent, like the wrapper of a cold spring roll; her hair hemp-like in color and texture. Reesi has noticed that fair, thin women like Mary — women who, in their younger years, make short, round-faced women like herself feel like graceless boys — tend not to age very well, particularly around the eyes and neck. It’s sweet, though – Hank’s “young lady” remark — and his smile, too, even though Hank has terrible teeth (a smoker, for sure; at least up until three years ago). Hank and Mary both demur, which seems to delight and embarrass the others sitting around the table.
It’s Week 1 — INTRODUCTIONS — and Pastor Rick has a way of making them feel like they’re his very first group of pre-marrieds; when in fact, of course, he’s a pro. He nods at Hank then turns his attention to Charlotte and Gary, who are new to First Assembly, like Reesi and Max, sort of. “I’m Charlotte…”
“…and I’m Gary…”
“…and,” they look to one another, a quick double-step to decide who goes next. They are both smooth-faced and tan, a chubby, frenetic pair, who bear a slight resemblance to each other, the kind that looks as if it’s evolved over time, like a human and its pet. Charlotte lets out a half-laugh before assuming the lead. “We’ve recently moved back to Lacey after a couple of years out west in the Bay Area. We’re freelancers, and both of our families are just over in Ulster. I do content management for Soulmates-dot-com,” she smiles a mischievous smile, “and Gary is currently looking for work…”
“I’m an actor,” Gary says, bursting forth and blushing at the same time. He is balding, better looking than Paul Giamatti, thinks Reesi, but not far off the type. “And I’m also good with electricity and sound systems… if you happen to know anyone who needs that kind of expertise.” Charlotte, who’s been sitting forward and turned toward Gary with her arm around his chair back, moves her hand to squeeze his shoulder.
“What kind of actor?” Reesi asks, clearing her throat of the frog that swallowed the end of “actor.”
“Theater mostly. I’ve done a lot of classical — Chekhov, Ibsen, Shakespeare of course…”
“I fell in love with Gary’s Puck. I wasn’t much of a theater person at all, really, but my friend Rachel dragged me one time to…”
“Actually,” Pastor Rick interrupts, “we’ll have some time later on to tell more of our stories. Why don’t we continue around the table.” Charlotte sits back in her chair, hands clasped and placed neatly in her lap (as if it’s something she’s taught herself to do, a calming strategy), as everyone retracts for a beat in the face of Pastor Rick’s benevolent authority. “Jeff?”
Jeff is sitting next to Reesi, his fiancée Ada on his other side. It’s hot, so there is an oscillating fan going in the corner of the room, and Jeff’s fruity-minty hair gel tickles Reesi’s nose. She fights off a sneeze, determined not to draw attention until it’s her and Max’s turn.
Jeff and Ada moved up to Lacey from Brooklyn two years ago. Jeff is a painter and graphic designer, Ada is a poet. They moved “with” a group of other Brooklyn artists to start up a creative commune, as Jeff puts it.
“At the time, I was actually dating another guy in our group,” Ada says, looking at Jeff, quietly beaming. “But, well, love happens.” Everyone nods in ascent, a collective braVO. Love, marriage; that’s what they’re all here for, after all. Reesi can’t help but wonder about the other guy, who maybe had simpler hair.
“And,” Ada continues, “we were both pleasantly surprised to find that we’d both grown up in the church but had kind of drifted away. I guess that’s where it started; we seemed to be the only two people in our whole neighborhood getting up on Sunday mornings to go to church.” Ada squeezes her shoulders together up by her ears, Jeff purses his lips into a witty frown-smile that brings to Reesi’s mind a sudden, unwelcome vision of Charles (her own “other guy”), which she blinks away. Pastor Rick eyes the clock on the far wall. Reesi takes a deep, slow breath and sits up straight.
“And we’re glad for that,” Pastor Rick says, then turns to Reesi and Max. “And last but not least.”
It makes sense to Reesi that Rick would come around to them last. (He seems to her the sort of painfully heroic man who, running headlong into a burning building, would save the neighbor’s children before his own.) She and Max don’t, after all, really belong in the group, and they wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for Max’s mother Georgia. But Rick has a good poker face; you can never really tell what’s behind that frozen three-quarters smile. Reesi finds herself wondering who among them he’d save first from the fiery inferno, and secretly hopes it would be her.
“We actually live in the city,” Max says. “But my family is here, and we plan to be married at First Assembly, by Uncle… I mean, Pastor Rick.” Reesi doesn’t even need to look around to register all the eyes lighting up. We’re related to Rick Callaghan, this great man of God? And not just related; Georgia Warren is Rick’s older sister, the Callaghan matriarch.
For a moment, despite herself, Reesi swells with pride. She’s going to be a Callaghan, after all. And in this town, that’s near royalty.
But she is knocked back to reality by the look on Charlotte’s face as she studies Max. He is still talking, but Reesi stops hearing him, because Charlotte’s perplexity feels so pointed; she almost starts to feel like it’s directed at her.
When he’s done, Max sits back into a semi-slump and folds his hands across his chest. He looks satisfied while the rest of the group sits erect and vaguely alarmed, which makes Reesi think of yet-to-be-dressed mannequins. It’s Rick who rescues them from their clashing silences. “My sister Georgia – who some of you know as Deaconess Warren — and her late husband Don were missionaries in South Korea,” he says, his voice smooth and deep. “We’d been hearing so much about Georgia’s work with the orphanages there, so we weren’t all that surprised, really, and delighted of course, when they came back from their service term with baby Min-soo — our Max. And boy how times flies; here he is a grown man, with his lovely bride-to-be Reesi.” Reesi smiles, Rick smiles, everybody smiles. And for a moment, all Reesi sees are blank clay faces, stamped on either side by crow’s feet.
* * *
It was Max who first got her interested in plastic surgery. He probably didn’t even mean to, Reesi recognizes now; he was just talking, like he does sometimes. For a while, she thought she’d go into gynecology. It was a sure thing for a female doctor, and her half-sister Ros, in loco parentis in these matters, approved; that was important. But Reesi hung on Max’s every word back then, and it felt to her like he was saying what she’d been thinking before she had the words: “I mean, we’ve got these scientific advancements, it’s only a matter of time before it’s as common as, say, braces for your kids. The stigma will evaporate completely. So the next level is for it to be more natural, not so creepy and overdone. If 60 is the new 50, then the idea is to help someone look the part, not reclaim her 30s. And you can approach it with the whole-health deal. Diet, exercise, sleep, all that jazz. Put in the love, take out the ghoulies.” Reesi giggled at that last part. Max, dynamic fifth-grade teacher, always ready with an argument both convincing and entertaining, sometimes forgot his audience.
This was before they were engaged; before they were seriously dating. Charles was still calling Reesi every so often, usually when one of his sons did something to really piss him off and he needed her to remind him that things could be much worse. They would meet for lunch or coffee — Reesi was limiting it to daytime hours at that point—and he would lean in over the table and reach for her hand (invariably with his right hand; he wasn’t one of those who took off his wedding ring, but he always knew where it was), and she’d let him hold it for a minute, press down on her knuckles, one at a time, big to small, with his strong thumb. It felt good, but then it didn’t, and she’d pull away. She could always smell that cold-blue disinfectant smell on him, which made her paranoid around Max (did she smell like that, too?).
Reesi didn’t really have to say anything to remind Charles, to make him feel better about his sour marriage or his ungrateful kids; just seeing her, she knew, and knowing her story, did that. Going back with him to the hospital — storage room 401, their “special place” — would have finished the job, full consolation; but she was done with that. She and Max were not yet a couple, officially, but they had been to two baseball games, a movie, and he’d cooked her dinner once at his apartment in Washington Heights. Spaghetti and meatballs. The meatballs were homemade, he’d even grated the Parmesan.
Part Two
“COMMUNICATION” — Rick writes across the top of the white board — “is the foundation of any strong marriage. Without good communication, none of the other building blocks stand a chance.” Rick looks around the table, makes eye contact, as if to say, This means you. Standing there beholding his own narrow, blocky handwriting, over six feet tall, with his Liam Neeson wavy hair, sage-green V-neck sweater and chocolate brown Rockports, he looks to Reesi like he could be on cable TV. Or maybe even network. 60 is the new 50, definitely.
But there is something unmistakably sad in his eyes, and Reesi wonders if everyone else sees it. Probably not. She was the only one peeking during the opening prayer, after all. As Rick spoke the words — “Shine your light and your love upon these men and women as they embark on this wonderful journey” — his voice smooth, as always, and solemn; he raised his face just slightly to the ceiling, eyes open, expression eerily blank. No wonder he looks so young, Reesi thought. A blank face is a line-less face.
After each class so far, last week and this week, a different couple has descended on Max and Reesi. It’s the closest she’s ever felt to celebrity, and she decides it’s not such a bad feeling. To be descended upon, just because.
Last week, it was Mary and Hank. “And what do you do, Risa?” Taller by half a foot and standing very close (faint scent of citrus cool), Mary somehow did not feel imposing. She spoke in a near-whisper, her mouth barely moving, and yet Reesi could hear the clear, bell-like tone in her voice.
“It’s Reesi,” she said. “Short for Marisol.”
“Oh, how lovely. Like Mary and Soul.”
“Riiight.” Reesi nodded and smiled, then jumped in before Mary had a chance to ask about the name’s origins. “I’ve just finished residency. I have a fellowship for the next two years.”
“Oh, how wonderful,” Mary said. “Young women do the most ambitious things these days.” Then, calling Hank over with a wave of her long fingers, “Dear, Reesi is a doctor. Isn’t that something?”
Hank lumbered over; something apparently not right in the hip. “Well, my goodness, yes. I was an army physician, myself. Gave it up after this.” He pointed at his thigh. “You see things, and you come home, and you’re ready to sell carpet or teach math.” Reesi assumed he did both. “Anything that keeps you indoors and clean and all in one piece.” He laughed a scratchy, gut laugh.
“Vietnam,” Mary mouthed into Reesi’s ear. Then, to Hank, “Now, dear, stop that; you’re scaring Reesi.” Mary gave him a push, and he turned to talk to Gary and Charlotte.
“I can’t imagine being a doctor in wartime,” Reesi said.
“Well, now,” she said. “I guess you might say you are a doctor in wartime. There are so many wars going on these days.” She sighed, shook her head. “And all that terrible business in Haiti. You know the church is sending a mission group to Port-au-Prince this summer. Hank and I plan to go. You should join us.” She didn’t know exactly what her face did when Mary said this, but it was enough to soften the furrowed brow that had sunk into dunes between her eyes when she spoke the word “Haiti.” “Oh, but I’m sure you two are so busy. With your work, and getting ready for your wedding.” Reesi was about to blurt out that they were having more of a non-wedding — just Ros, probably, not Brian or the boys, and definitely not the professor — when Max came up from behind, his right armpit locking into Reesi’s left shoulder.
“We’re keeping it small,” he said. “Just local family and a few friends.” Next to short Reesi and reed-thin Mary, Max (really only 5-foot-8) seemed suddenly enormous, with his soccer player’s heft and commanding way of speaking.
“Oh, but your mother…” Mary’s expression grew seriously concerned.
“She agrees,” Max said, firmly, but with, Reesi thought, an extra dose of perky.
Mary seemed to pull away from them, just a hair, lemon-orange dissipating. “And what about your family, dear?”…
* * *
It was the time after the meatballs, in Reesi’s tiny galley kitchen, shaking chicken thighs and bread crumbs in a plastic bag – Max knew all kinds of wondrous, homey cooking tricks – that he brought up the plastic surgery idea. He spoke so breezily and yet convincingly, like he’d barely given it a thought and it was written in stone all at once. He was like that with most things, she’d come to discover — “Look, it’s simple,” was his favorite preamble to any one of his cheerful pronouncements, as in, “Look, it’s simple: kids need attention, they need to know someone gives a hoot if they do their homework, if they understand fractions, if they get the solo in the school musical. Nothing else really matters.” Or, “Look, it’s simple: you and Ros were never that close, and it’s complicated, but she’s your sister, and she cares about you, so we should go over for dinner if she’s invited us.” When Reesi asked about the adoption, about what it was like to grow up in a religious family, he said, “Look, it’s simple: mom and dad were good parents, they always paid attention, they were proud of me when I won spelling bees or made the game-winning goal. The church was always their thing, but it wasn’t a big deal, to put on a suit or tag along to a luncheon. A lot of people went on missions and did a lot of good, because of them.”
“Because of you?” She imagined little-boy Max, bowl haircut and swinging his legs, sitting behind the podium on stage at the missions conferences – in Madison, Colorado Springs, Madras, Seoul – where Don and Georgia would speak.
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“Do you care about where you come from?”
“I come from Lacey.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Mom isn’t into that. The tracking down. They weren’t good people.”
“What does that mean – ‘good people?’” She was expecting a bright, “Look, it’s simple” response, one that she could hang onto and believe in with Max’s same ease — about what makes good people.
“She was a prostitute, Reesi. He was a G.I., probably cheating on a wife or a girlfriend. Are these people I should be hunting down?” She wanted to respond, but didn’t have any words. She thought back to Thanksgiving with the Callaghans — the ruddy-cheeked boys in their primary-color polo sweaters and the little girls in velveteen skirts and cable-knit tights; hard-boiled eggs from the backyard hens, dried dates in butter-drenched stuffing, and endless bottles of non-alcoholic sparkling cider. She thought of the giant plate of sliced persimmons, brought out by the time she was making her third round at the buffet table. “What a beautiful orange color,” one of the cousins said, “I don’t know that I’ve ever had a persimmon.” “I got them from a Korean grocer,” another cousin-by-marriage said. “Told me they’re the best thing for digestion, magical health power. Who knows if it’s true, though; people will say anything to sell something to you.” “Maybe Max would know,” the other cousin said.
“Maybe Max would know what?” He had come up behind her, reaching for the pumpkin pie.
“About persimmons. Magical healing powers, according to the Koreans?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know about that,” Max said. He stepped around to the far side of the table, eyes on more desserts, and that was the end of that. Simple.
The day they met in the ER (Reesi was in the last week of her emergency med rotation), when the boy from Max’s class with the gash in his forehead, impatient with their flirty banter, looked up at them and asked, “Are you two related?” — Reesi stole a sidewise glance of Max and her in the door-glass reflection and saw something she liked. A kind of matching – their half-breed whispy brown hair and dark eyes; and a lock-in fit — Max’s shoulders-back heartiness to her eager admiration. By the time they’d known each other a little over a month, she’d already begun screening (and then ignoring) Charles’s calls. She didn’t yet know about Max’s world in Lacey. She definitely didn’t know about Georgia, or Pastor Rick or First Assembly.
Though she might have guessed. Given how much and how long Max hung back. On overnights. On “crossing the line,” as he put it. The church may have been “their thing,” but clearly Max wasn’t untouched; before him, Reesi had never met a guy she didn’t have to fight off by the third date. Max was different, a foreign species — like someone held by a strong hand. She wanted to be held, too — by Max, by whatever was holding him.
Today, Week 2; it’s Gary and Charlotte who descend. “Now Reesi, Gary and I have been trying to figure out where you’re from.”
“As an actor,” Gary says, “I’ve been trained to study people. Gestures, accents, defining features. But you… can’t quite place you.” They are both close-talkers, the sort of people who hug and kiss indiscriminately. Charlotte’s chubby hand squeezes Reesi’s elbow. She can see the dry cracks in Charlotte’s full lower lip, orange lipstick flakes congregating at the corners. She has a nice mouth underneath all that moisture neglect, Reesi thinks.
“New Jersey, originally,” she says. She is not trying to be cheeky. She knows what they’re asking. But she needs some stalling time, and she’s found this is a way to ease in. Max inhales, she can feel him itching to jump in, to rescue her with his own half-answer; but something in her quickens, a tiny balloon inflating in her chest, and she presses her other elbow into Max’s side. Communication.
“Yes, but where are you from? Where do your parents come from?”
Part Three
“Are you happy?” Ros asked. The question was a throwaway, Reesi knew. She could tell Ros had the earpiece on, probably washing dishes or something, water running in the background. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s great, honey. You were alone for so long, and you’ve been like a different person. But it’s fast, isn’t it?” Ros didn’t know about Charles. Two years Reesi had kept it from her. Not that it was hard. Between her boys Nick and Teddy, daily visits to the professor at the hospice home, and her new Vice Principal-ship at the charter school, Ros had her hands full. And God knew Brian was no help.
“Sure, I’m happy, yeah, of course. We should try to get together again soon. Max is great.”
“I know Max is great. He got Nick talking for what, almost half an hour? Must have been some kind of lifetime record.”
“Nick is just, you know, finding himself. He’s…meditative.”
“He’s stoned.”
“Really? In the house?”
“I told him that he could smoke in the house if he promised only to smoke in the house.”
“Jeez.”
“It’s the new parenting.”
“I didn’t smell anything.”
“That’s the other condition. He has to sit by an open window in his room or in the boys’ bathroom. Brian would kick his ass.” Reesi bit her tongue to keep from saying, “And yours, too?” They didn’t talk about Brian.
“Teddy, too?”
“Teddy is the opposite. We can’t shut him up. He’s been taking these economics classes at the community college with some B-celebrity libertarian type. Who knows where they get these guys. But Teddy can’t stop talking about all this Tea Party stuff, and I think he’s been hanging around late nights with the teacher-guy — Lance, or Leander, or something…”
“Leander?”
“What kind of college professor hangs around with 19-year-olds and goes by his first name?” Boom. There it was. There was always a moment in her conversations with Ros when it was time to go. When Reesi knew where it was going and she had a split second to come up with her excuse for hanging up. She wondered how conscious of it Ros was, if it was a kind of code on her part as well. Did she load up the words “college professor” like a pistol?
It was going to be tough this time, though. To cut it quick. She still had a few things to tell Ros about Max, about their getting married, about First Assembly. She wanted to know what Ros thought, even though she knew she would have to brace herself. Why did she even need to tell her? Maybe she was always trying to push their half-sisterhood into something more whole.
“When I was in school…” Ros started in.
“That was 30 years ago, Ros.” Reesi’s anxiety was expressing itself in pissiness, she knew. But it was true: exactly 30 years. She never asked, but she has wondered if her birth that year was what sent Ros packing, or what brought her back (or both); the timing, of when Ros and the professor got news of her existence, has always been blurry. Except for the fact that it was less than nine months after Ros’s mother died. That was always very clear.
* * *
Reesi tells herself that it’s not the most gripping story, really. Everyone has a story, after all.
Her mother Belinda was a nurse, recently emigrated from the Philippines. She was Ros’s mother’s home care nurse, for almost two years. Her family was devoutly Catholic. She had a husband and a four year-old daughter back in the Philippines, to whom she sent most of her money, while she lived in the basement of her uncle’s house. She was not beautiful, but she was kind, so Reesi’s been told. “I would not have suspected,” Ros has said, matter-of-factly. Nor did Ros’s mother. There are no photographs, but Reesi is oddly certain (she is so infrequently certain) that she resembles Belinda.
And, while it seems unlikely, Reesi imagines Belinda — in her younger years, perhaps — with a latent, unrelenting curiosity; a need to question and to know things, why this and how that. How else to explain the attraction between her and the professor, endowed chair of the philosophy department; Reesi’s father. A man who railed before packed lecture halls, with equal parts inspiration, charisma, and invective, against religious faith of all shapes and sizes. How else to explain the affair that went on for more than a year — according to Belinda’s aunt, her only confidante, who came stealthily and contrite to Ros one night, having been strictly forbidden by her husband to have anything to do with Reesi, let alone raise her — while the professor’s good (and by all accounts faithful) wife lay dying in her sick bed.
It was during those last few months of Ros’s mother’s life, when Belinda learned she was pregnant, that she broke it off with the professor. “He didn’t know about you,” Ros told Reesi, when she was old enough to ask. “He absolutely didn’t.” She has no choice, really, but to take Ros’s word for it. “He was as shocked as the rest of us.” She didn’t look Reesi in the eye for this last part, which makes it somehow true for her.
Though “shocked” is one of those words, safely unspecific; unsettlingly so for Reesi all these years. After leaving her home-care post, Reesi’s mother worked the night shift at Mercy Hospital, which made it easy for her to get hold of the pills she swallowed, a month after Reesi was born.
This is as far into the story as she usually gets — with someone who’s really listening, anyway. There is more, of course – how Ros, precocious and already settled on a major in early childhood education, ultimately convinced the professor to take Reesi in; how the professor then conveniently took on long-term appointments in Germany and France, while Ros interviewed nannies and later moved back home; how Ros consulted a Filipina classmate of hers to come up with a name — Marisol, Maria of the Sun, Lonely Maria — because neither Belinda nor the professor could be bothered, or bear, to do it…
How the professor’s mind began to falter, in small ways at first, until the phone call came, the panicked woman with a heavy German accent, who said she’d just gone out to work in the garden for an hour when he’d wandered off and then started in with some teenagers outside a convenience store (a security guard broke it up in time).
But it’s a good stopping point, Reesi has found, for most people. With Charles, she told it in bed, and when she was done, he held her; but then he had to get home, before his excuse for being out late wore thin.
She told Max everything, and he’s gotten good at his own short version: Her mother killed herself after Reesi was born, she was raised mostly by her half-sister. He says it in a tone of finality (Look, it’s simple…) that precludes further questioning. Reesi wasn’t there when he told Georgia, but she’s guessing this was how he told it.
* * *
The first time Reesi met Georgia – she and Max took a bus out to LaGuardia, Georgia was outbound to give a keynote address at a conference near Chicago — she held one of Reesi’s hands in both of hers, leaning in with her heavy, powdered lids lowered, her breath sweet and sharp, like a strong medicinal tea. “Max has told me so much about you,” she said. “What a blessing that you two have found each other. God is so good.” She squeezed her hand so tight, Reesi felt as if Georgia meant to squeeze that goodness, or God himself, into her bones, her blood. Georgia’s brassy blonde hair was swept away from her face in a neat, snake-coil bun, and her full red lips and matching caftan, which she wore like a royal robe, seemed to throb with her passion for this… this finding, this goodness. Something in Reesi strained towards her, like a shaded, shivering seedling toward the sun. She seemed to know, even then, that she would always remember Georgia’s radiance in that moment; her perfect aliveness.
* * *
Week 3, the topic is MONEY. Jokes abound about who holds the purse strings; designer shoes and KitchenAids vs digital gadgets and power tools. Reesi notices that Max has gotten awfully comfortable in the group; a slight center-of-gravity shift. Tonight, he flashes the easy merriment that never fails to win over his 11 year-olds.
“The truth is, this costs more than Reesi’s trims,” he says, taking off his baseball cap and pointing to his beautiful bushy mane (he’s way overdue for a haircut, Reesi thinks; Georgia would not approve). “And I’m the one more likely to fork over three-hundred bucks for enameled cast-iron; Reesi’s pretty happy with PB&J for dinner.” He turns to her with a grin and squeezes her arm, everyone laughing. It’s true that she’s not much of a cook. There was always a nanny or housekeeper to do it, so she never bothered to learn, or cared to. But the PB&J part is an exaggeration; she always looked forward to dinners out with Charles, he’d find an adventurous place for them, usually in the outer boroughs, somewhere he’d never been before. Or so he said, anyway.
Rick starts in on his Bible lesson, about the love of money being the root of all evil, then into the parable of the talents. Reesi’s heard all these before, somewhere, somehow, not in church, just in general reference. She’d never heard the weeping and gnashing of teeth part before; it’s familiar, but not in the context of the talents parable. She thinks to herself, Put in the love, take out the ghoulies. It doesn’t seem funny, though.
Part Four
Week 4: TEMPTATION. Rick told the group last week that they’d be divided into men and women for this week’s class; Rick’s wife Lila would lead the women. Reesi finds herself looking forward to class. After the opening prayer, Rick and the men file out and head for the fellowship hall. “Exhibit A,” Rick says, making a gesture, like a valet, toward the five sitting mock-smugly in hard-leather arm chairs. “Make sure the women are comfortable; your comfort is her comfort.” Grunting laughter and merry ascent ripple through the departing men.
Lila, mother of four (the youngest boy came eight years after his sister), is a tall, plain woman, full in the hips, with a Dorothy Hamill haircut. An easy face — button nose and thin lips. All twill pants and untucked collar-shirts, hard for Reesi to imagine a wedding gown on her. A little gruff in manner, as if she has a roast in the oven she needs to get back to, and quite possibly she does. A strange match for Rick, at first blush anyway. She still wears her engagement and wedding rings — a stunning diamond and ruby set, incongruously sparkly on her mannish hands. Reesi hadn’t noticed at Thanksgiving and wonders if she wears them just for this occasion.
“So, let’s get to it,” Lila says, looking down at her open leather-bound NIV, dispensing with introductions. “Rick tells me you all had some homework this week.” They were told to be hyper-aware of “moments of temptation” throughout the week and to write about them in their pre-marital journals. Reesi didn’t know what this meant, and when she asked Max, who was knee-deep in grading papers, he said, “What do you think it means?” which at first she rolled her eyes at, playing along — it was one of his stock teacher-answers — but then he went back to his red circles and check-marks, and she realized she was on her own.
“I’m not sure I really understood the assignment,” says Ada, taking the words out of Reesi’s mouth. Ada is wearing, as always, a cool vintage outfit, except this week she’s a bit more casual in red leather sneakers and wide-cuffed jeans. She is probably about the same age as Reesi, but her effortless stylishness makes her feel both older and younger at the same time. “I mean, it’s not like I pant after other guys on a regular basis.”
They all laugh nervously, except for Mary, who smiles through a squint. “I thought of it in a more general sense,” she says, even-toned. “The temptation to see yourself as more valuable or attractive than your partner. Especially when he behaves in a, you know, unseemly way.” She raises her eyebrows just slightly. “This elevation of your self; it’s the mustard seed of sin.” There is a subtlety to her answer that Reesi’s finds impressive, if not completely comprehensible.
“Good, Mary,” Lila says, pointing her pen. “For the men, temptation may be more straightforward. TV ads, magazine covers, the Internet…”
“I wrote about the Internet,” Charlotte says.
Lila pivots to Charlotte. “Tell us,” she says. Charlotte blushes, but more like someone flattered than embarrassed.
“I’m a compliance specialist for this dating site, I’m sure most of you know it, it’s aimed at Christian young people” — her eyes fix on her journal on the table– “it’s my job to monitor profiles, make sure the content is wholesome, you know. And mostly it is, but every so often, there’s an infiltrator — someone who thinks it would be funny to pose as a Christian and then post something lewd or pornographic.” Charlotte seems to sense the shift in temperature in the room, the turn toward pity. God, how awful. “It’s funny, really; and after a while you start to feel sorry for these people for not having anything better to do then pull these pranks.” She laughs a nervous laugh, her attempt at deflecting the pity unsuccessful.
“That must be very hard for you, Charlotte,” Lila says, her voice cool, like a TV therapist.
Charlotte looks up now, newly alert. “No… sorry… oh, that’s not what I wrote about, actually. It’s the sifting through all the profiles; you know, all these bright and shining young men and women. They’re so ready, so eager. It’s all appropriate material, but you can almost feel it… the… the… sex.” She says the word softly, almost sadly.
Her jowls sag heavy, and her cheekbones seem to disappear behind mushy masses of skin. It’s unbearable, Charlotte’s sadness. Reesi wants Lila to break in; someone, for God’s sake, say something…
“But what is tempting about it?” It’s Ada, who goes in gently.
Charlotte raises her eyes to Ada’s, a terrible, quivering smile not quite taking shape. “To be 43, and still… without experience. I mean, Gary. He jokes that he has enough for both of us. And then backtracks to say that we’ll both start new, virgins in Christ and all…”
“Wow,” Ada says, somber now. “That’s my line. To Jeff.” She bites her upper lip, hard – not like she’s going to cry, but like she wants to hit someone. “He doesn’t buy it, though. He takes it personally. But I mean, what’s with the double standard?”
“You mean, you and your fiance…?” Mary’s face finishes the question.
“We were up Sunday mornings, sure; but that doesn’t mean we weren’t both out Saturday nights.” The mood has turned. Lila sits down at the head of the table and flips to a new spot in her Bible.
“Lila,” Mary says, “this subject seems somewhat… generational, doesn’t it?”
Lila apparently doesn’t like the spot she landed on; she flips again. “How do you mean, Mary…?”
“Max and I are both happy that we’ve waited,” Reesi says. The words spill out, she’s not sure her mouth has moved at all; if she is the ventriloquist, or the dummy. She feels weirdly lightheaded and lead-footed at the same time.
Lila looks up, and for an instant, she seems caught between grateful and dubious. She stands again. “Georgia and Don, of course, were such strong teachers and advocates.” Reesi had heard about their seminar series from the ‘90s, “The Purity Promise,” which apparently you could get on DVD. But it seemed somehow unreal to her (Max claimed he’d never seen it himself).
“Well,” Mary says, “I’m very glad to hear that I am wrong about the generational differences. What a blessing, Marisol.”
“Good for you two,” Ada says. She half-lowers her wispy lashes in a kind of reverential defeat: touché.
Lila lifts her Bible with both hands up close to her face. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” Charlotte nods her head, laugh lines sinking into the corners of her downturned mouth. Each of them seems to fold inwardly for a moment, like tulips at night, but then the words Lila has spoken soak in, down into the soil which is now loose, disturbed; and Reesi feels the inner eye of each woman once again turns toward her. Briefly, she sees what they see: Marisol, lonely sun, bright and solitary, shining her light over all.
* * *
After class that night, Max stays over at Reesi’s, as he does at least twice a week now.
They devour their greasy late-night noodles, and before they can clear the cardboard containers from the table… she is straddling him in his chair, running her hands through his newly-trimmed Clark Kent waves and grinding her pelvis, deep, rhythmic, into his. Max is there in a flash, his momentary surprise like a cardboard cutout before a steamroller. He pulls her shirt up over her head and flings it into a table lamp, unhooks her bra, his face and mouth and tongue everywhere now in her breasts. His head smells like hot grease and shampoo, she is grabbing hard at his hair, and then he is standing up on his powerful legs while she locks her ankles around his waist. He walks them over to the couch in two potent strides then piles on top of her, pulling off her pants and his, the suffocating weight of him crushing and squeezing everything out of her — breath, fear, reverence, loneliness, all her heat and light. He is fucking her, and she is fucking him, and she moans and moans, and he whispers hotly, between breaths, “What… the heck… happened… tonight…’ and she answers him, in her head, You are not your own, you are not your own, put in the love, put in the love…
* * *
“It’s not for me,” Max had said, “it’s for them.”
They’d laid out an old baby blue bed sheet at Fort Tryon, and brought along their books. It was Sunday afternoon, an almost-summer day. They’d been moving the sheet every hour when the shade crept too far. “Why don’t we just move way over there,” Max had said, pointing toward a spot where sunbathers had congregated. She told him she wanted to have her head in the shade and the rest of her body in the sun, so she could concentrate; she’d be taking her board exams in two weeks.
The sun was beginning to sag when he brought it up. Reesi wondered if he’d been wanting to start the conversation all day and then realized he was running out of time. She turned to him, still lying on her stomach. His head blocked the sun except for a few rays that shot out over top into her eyes. She squinted at him and said nothing. She couldn’t see his face, but somehow knew he was studying hers.
“I mean, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a little bit for me.” He leaned heavier on his elbow, picked at the grass. Now he was barely blocking the sun, but the full late-day radiance was less blinding than those few stray beams. His skin deepened to a beautiful olive in that light, he looked thoughtful and worried and sweetly boyish. “Say something,” he said.
She was very still. She wasn’t smiling, outside or inside. Her breath grew shallow as the word “should” filled her head. You should be happy about this. This should be the moment of a lifetime. You should put him out of his misery. You should say something.
“You mean, like, in your family’s church?” He nodded his head, didn’t look up. They’d been together nine months by then; she’d been to Thanksgiving in Lacey, up to visit Georgia with him a few times. She understood by then that Georgia would always make her wishes and opinions explicitly known, like when she made clear — unbeknownst to Max, who left them alone in Georgia’s kitchen while he went to dig up some books from his old room – how she felt about plastic surgery. We saw in Korea that all the women, young and old, were slicing and reshaping their beautiful faces. I don’t approve of that.
Max still didn’t say anything. Reesi ventured, “As in, making an honest woman out of me?” He snorted an unseemly laugh. The subject of his family, their religion, anything related to them, had lately ignited in Max sparks of she-didn’t-know-what.
He snapped shut his world studies teacher’s edition and sat up. “Why should I feel bad about this? Why is marriage a four-letter word around here? Or church, for that matter?” He was almost shouting. One of the remaining sunbathers turned to stare.
Reesi sat up and looked into her lap. Her chest felt tight, and when she raised her eyes, she saw an anger in Max’s face, all concentrated between his eyebrows, that she’d never seen before. She considered holding her silence, but he bore into her, his questions demanding a response. “Is this… is all this because of…?” He flashed her a look, she didn’t have to finish. They’d been sleeping together for months. Mornings after, he’d leave early for school, and kiss her goodbye while she was still half asleep. There would be something in the kiss, a tenderness; but also a lingering heaviness that she didn’t understand. Whatever it was, she relished it, it seemed to tether him to her more securely each time.
“Rees…” He was standing up, brushing off his shorts.
“What? Really… I just…” She was starting to feel like a kid, two-handing him in a wrestling match.
“You really don’t understand.”
“I really don’t.”
“There’s no way you could.” This came out sounding like an accusation, as if the ending to the statement was you don’t understand anything. She thought he should apologize. But he didn’t.
“We’re 30 years old,” she said. A bitchiness crept into her voice; it came from a scared place inside that she couldn’t locate, let alone control.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It’s like your mother is still…”
“Don’t, Rees…”
He stood with hands on hips looking off at New Jersey. She could see him drifting off, away, while panic roiled inside her and erupted into words. “Is it like you’re their property?”
Abruptly, he started to pack up. She stood up slowly, and watched. While he flung and snapped the sheet around, he said under his breath, “I really sometimes feel sorry for you.” Late into that night, they talked on the phone, in sad sleepy voices. He told her that he loved her and wanted to take care of her for the rest of their lives, but that it wouldn’t feel right until they were married. She told him okay. He asked her to try to understand, his mother and father were very sacrificial people; she said she understood. He told her about the classes they’d have to attend at First Assembly, and she said that sounded fine. His voice grew lighter and warmer as the sun came up. That panicky part of her had become achy and tired, and all she wanted was for Max to not be angry anymore. And so, they became engaged, and Max started to feel better, and they began spending more time in Lacey.
Part Five
Week 5: FORGIVENESS. Relieved that it’s the last class, Reesi settles in at the table, as Ada leans in and asks quietly under the din, “You’ll come on Sundays, won’t you?’ She notices Jeff slouched forward, trying to catch what Ada could possibly be whispering to her.
Lila is back. She and Rick have a story to tell. After the “amen” of Rick’s opening prayer, Lila sits forward at the table’s head, Rick leans back in his chair to her left. He seems to Reesi strangely subdued tonight.
They were arguing one night over Lila’s mother’s involvement in raising their oldest son, who was almost three at the time. Rick was still a seminary student then, they were worried about money, and Lila’s mother never much cared for the idea of her daughter as a minister’s wife. “The arguments came to a head one night, and Rick…well, he started to lose control.” Reesi looks back and forth between them and senses a weird sort of disconnected connection, like the plexiglass of a prison visiting booth. “We’d had heated arguments before, I knew Rick could lose his temper; but this was the first time I’d ever felt… unsafe.” Rick’s lips are pursed, his eyes fixed on some invisible sight, while he rocks, just barely, from the shoulders up. “By God’s grace, nothing happened that night. I walked out of the room and Rick went for a drive.” So it wasn’t that incident that required, as Lila puts it, “a true understanding of forgiveness.” It was shortly thereafter, the dust barely settled between them from that night, when Lila came home from a women’s prayer meeting to find Rick on the back porch with his head in his hands and her son balled up in his bed, not exactly crying, more like hyperventilating. When Lila asked him what was wrong, he couldn’t speak; his right cheek was red and hot, growing purple and black by the second. “You realize that you have a choice to make. It has nothing to do with the way you feel. It’s a huge leap of faith. That God sees you and loves you, even when your spouse can’t.” Lila’s voice grows steadier and calmer as she comes to her conclusion, Rick’s head bows.
Charlotte pulls at the outer edge of an eyelash and nudges her tears away with a knuckle. Mary nods her head just slightly, as if she’s heard the story before. Reesi looks sideways at Max and wonders what he’s thinking. Hank, sitting across from her, squints his eyes at the bookshelves, and Reesi senses anger. Or maybe she is projecting; because what she wants to know is — was Lila’s mother a real bitch? Was the boy a brat? Later, after class, when she says to Ada, “You know, I think Max wants to find a church in the city,” she sees disappointment cloud over Ada’s eyes, and she thinks, maybe she wanted to know, too.
They attend service on Sunday, so that Rick and Lila can announce the “graduation” of the four couples. They all line up next to the pulpit, Rick and Lila stand behind and lay their hands on four shoulders; Rick chooses Max’s and Reesi’s, his hand feels warm and strong. Lila gives each couple a slim and shiny softcover with thin script lettering called Loving Together, Praying Together as they file back to the pews.
The main event today is Georgia’s brunch.
The house is immaculate and fresh as always. It’s a perfect summer day, Georgia’s lilac bush is in full bloom and its scent is everywhere. The buffet table is set up on the wide wraparound front porch and is furnished with the usual bounty: soft-scrambled eggs and sausage links on sterno trays, a huge plate of fruit salad, warm biscuits, a pyramid of assorted tea sandwiches (while Rick says grace, Reesi notices Georgia reaching over to straighten out a rogue triangle). It’s just Max and Reesi, Rick and Lila and the kids, and Hank and Mary (who, Reesi has just learned, has known Georgia and Rick since grade school), but it looks like half the town is coming. Reesi goes straight for the coffee then makes herself a small plate of fruit.
Max, Rick, and Georgia huddle together at the spot where the porch turns the corner. Their mostly-eaten plates sit in a row on the wide railing, and they drink seltzer-and-orange-juice from large goblets. The lilac rises up and branches out behind them. Georgia is the tallest of the three, by the feathery poof of her new hairdo, which is more of an old hairdo that makes Reesi think of Kim Novak in some Billy Wilder movie that Max likes. Today she wears a loose tan tunic and skirt-pants and flits about, trailing a tinge of irritation. Reesi overheard something about discord over a speaking fee.
Georgia catches Reesi’s eye and breaks off gently from the trio, brushing her hand on Rick’s arm. “Reesi, come help me bring the desserts out,” she says into Reesi’s ear.
In the kitchen, the housekeeper stands at the double sink filling the basins. “I’ll do that, Carmen,” Georgia says, shewing her off. “You can take the large tray out and start collecting the plates.” Carmen wipes her hands on her apron and hurries out, but not before Reesi studies her gorgeous smooth dark skin; she must be in her 40s but has the face of a twenty-five-year-old. “Isn’t she stunning,” Georgia says, reading her mind. “If Don were still with us, I might be worried.” Georgia’s tone strikes Reesi as heavy with nonchalance.
When the basins are filled Reesi begins handing Georgia pots and mixing bowls and cooking utensils, which she submerges and swishes around in the sudsy water. “Why don’t you let me do that,” Reesi says. “Your sleeves…”
“Oh no, dear, don’t. It’s your celebration today. In fact, have a seat, I want to have a chat with you.” She climbs onto a stool at the island, while Georgia continues to move about, piling things into the basin. A few moments later, she stops abruptly, having nowhere near finished. She wipes her hands on a dish towel and turns to Reesi. “Rick and Lila do a wonderful thing with that class.” She is rubbing the fingers of one hand with the other, and Reesi sees now the crooked joints and thick knuckles that caused her to stop.
“Yes,” Reesi says. Georgia smiles and turns to the cupboard to pull down a coffee mug, pours herself a full cup from the percolator, holds it in both hands up to her chin.
“Did they end with the Forgiveness lesson?”
“Mm,” Reesi nods.
Gerogia takes a deep long gulp of her coffee. “So powerful.” Reesi watches the steam rise and thinks, God that must be scalding hot. “There’s nothing more important. We are all imperfect, we can’t expect our spouses to be super-human. Men especially. But we do that; we expect them to be everything we aren’t, to make up for our own weaknesses. God accepts us as we are; we are called to do the same.” She starts to hum a few bars of a familiar hymn. “’ Just As I Am’ — it’s my favorite, you know.” She slurps her coffee, now more gingerly. “I suppose that’s also why I feel the way I do about cosmetic surgery. We should love our own faces, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Reesi says, readying words that she seems to have already rehearsed in her head. “In theory. But… life can be…unfair sometimes. To our faces, included. If there’s a way to… give yourself a lift, you know. Or, change your outside so that it matches your inside…”
“When Don and I lived in Korea,” Georgia interrupts, “we used often to go to the bath houses.” She speaks now with purpose, as if she’s arrived where she’s intended to go all along. “They’re built on natural hot springs, and everyone goes — young and old, rich and poor. It’s about health and long life, not vanity. Some old women are there every day, hunched over and wrinkled as raisins; but giving their circulation that daily jolt. It’s what’s inside, Reesi, not outside; the blood pumping, the muscles breathing.” She pauses here, an inscrutable smile breaking. “But, there was one young woman I met there who thought like you. I’m not sure what exactly drew us to each other, but we became great friends. And she would tell me that she was planning to have her eyes done – that cutting they do to make them bigger, plus colored contact lenses – and her lips, to make them fuller. I begged her not to, told her over and again how beautiful she was. We had her over for dinner a few times, and Don agreed; that she was beautiful just as she was. We both grew to love her very much.” Georgia looks up and away, pensive, a shadow of brooding. Reesi focuses on the lines across her forehead; the thick fleshiness at her jaw line; the folds in her neck.
And then, quickly, Reesi looks up and away as well. She realizes — it hits her like oncoming high-beams in the fog — that Georgia is trying to tell her something. And she knows, at once, that it’s something she does not want to know.
* * *
So it is a different image of Georgia – an earlier vision, that pulsing radiance from their first meeting — that Reesi will summon up, years later after the accident; when Max’s girlfriend Patty will call her from Lacey Memorial in a panic (Max being too distraught to make the call himself), and she will drive up there to put the bones and skin of Georgia’s shattered face back together again. She will reach for her memory of Georgia as she was on that day, when they first met and Georgia held her hand so tightly; she will remember her heat, her regal perfection. The goodness.
But she will have to conjure in her mind Georgia’s eyes, which she will be hard-pressed to remember. She will see lively grey-green globes, complex and light-shifty and full of questions. Or, maybe, these are Belinda’s eyes that she sees; or her own; or those of the woman at the baths whom Max, shortly after their divorce, would learn was his mother.
* * *
There is singing coming from outside on the porch, but Georgia seems not to notice. Is it in my head? Reesi wonders. O Lamb of God, I come, I come… To Georgia, she says, standing: “We should get back to the party.”
