Susan drove through the deepening dusk. Five lanes of red brake lights led the way. She felt on edge, half expecting a timer to ding and then poof! Her car would shake and rattle and roll itself into a pumpkin with a bunch of white mice jumping around it.
An unscheduled meeting had delayed Drake. He couldn’t make it to the beach house for dinner and recommended they meet at a Thai restaurant. Located just off the freeway in a strip mall, it lay equidistant between the coast and home.
At least he had called. At least he had called before she cooked the pasta. The spaghetti sauce could keep; the table could be unset later.
With every passing mile the hymns grew fainter in her mind, the warmth of the scene of a candlelit dinner in front of a cozy fire grew dim. She felt cold.
Lord, please stop the silly imaginings. You are my song. You are my warmth. You don’t live exclusively at the beach house.
Her teeth chattered, and she turned the heater fan to high.
At last she reached the exit, parked in the mall lot, and entered the restaurant. Drake wasn’t there yet. Would he want her to wait at the door until he arrived or should she—
Drake screens every jot and tittle of what you do…
Susan asked for a table, followed the maître d’ across the dining room, and then redirected him to a booth. She sat, drank tea, and read the menu.
You go, girl. You don’t need anyone else’s permission. You’ve got Mine.
She checked her cell phone. No missed calls were indicated. The power was on, the ringer volume set to high. The time glared. He was twenty-five minutes late.
Traffic? Endless meeting? Accident? Or simply no consideration for his wife…
As the waiter approached with a fresh pot of tea, she decided to order.
You go, girl. Fly. Fly for all you’re worth!
Drake arrived along with the Tom Kha soup.
“You already ordered?” He slid into the booth across from her and, without benefit of menu, told the waiter he wanted Phad Thai.
The young man left.
“Sorry I’m late. You know how those guys can talk on and on—Your hair.” He stared now.
Susan smiled and touched it, dipping her head every direction to give him a full view. “What do you think?”
“What did you do?”
“I had it cut.”
“It’s, uh, different.”
“Mm-hmm.” She loved it. Obviously he didn’t. It was extremely short and layered and, she thought, flattering. And unbelievably carefree. “It’ll grow.” She frowned and rephrased that. “You’ll get used to it.”
He tried to smile, but the corners of his mouth wouldn’t stay up. “I suppose the ladies will like it. It’s a, uh, a more contemporary style than what you normally have.”
“The chignon is a timeless classic, but I’ve worn one for twenty years. I was just ready for a change.”
He only stared. He looked tired, but elegant as ever in a lime green tie and deep brown suit.
“Nice tie.”
His smile turned genuine. “My wife gave it to me.”
She smiled again. “How are you?”
“Busy. Usual Easter season preparations. Palm Sunday is this week.”
She nodded. She knew that. She didn’t want to talk about that. “I hoped we could finish our last conversation.”
The waiter interrupted to serve Drake’s soup.
While he took his first sip, she explained. “The one about our being apart.”
“I don’t know what else there is to say, Susan.” He shrugged. “We’re not together on Kenzie. You went behind my back and met with the kid’s mother. Do you know what that makes me look like?”
“I said I’m sorry for going behind your back.” She pressed a hand to her stomach. “But I think there’s something else to discuss.” Her appetite was gone, and she sensed her memorized talking points disintegrate on the spot.
“Like what?”
“Like…”
He set down his spoon. “Things are beginning to appear odd. You were at the wedding Saturday night but not in church Sunday morning. I’ve been making excuses for you for a week and a half now. When are you coming home? I really need you beside me this Sunday.”
That wasn’t the issue, was it?
“I do need you, Susan. What exactly are you waiting for?”
To tell people the truth. To stop pretending. You have My permission.
She cleared her throat. “I didn’t want to talk about this in public. I really wanted you to come to the beach house for dinner.”
“That couldn’t be helped. If you want private, there is always our own house just up the freeway.”
She would not be thrown off track. “Drake, what I’m waiting for is for us to stop pretending. To be open about Kenzie with the congregation. To admit to each other that we were in the same situation she’s in right now when we got married.”
“Susan!” His tone in those two syllables spat chagrin, a spray of darts pierced her being. “That’s far behind us. God has forgiven us and forgotten it.”
She ignored the pain. “But sometimes I don’t know if I’ve forgiven myself. I know I haven’t forgotten.” Her eyes filled with tears, and a new thought drenched her soul. “I never mourned our baby. I have never even acknowledged his or her existence.”
He inhaled sharply.
“We’ve forced Kenzie to believe she has to be perfect to win our approval or God’s. She needs to know we have feet of clay.”
“Like mother, like daughter.”
His words whipped more harshly than a slap on the face.
Something welled up within her, something she’d never felt before. Her body went hot, and then, in a flash, it went cold. A stillness settled into the very core of her being. The room faded from view. Her thoughts zeroed in on one thing.
“Yes, I got pregnant out of wedlock. But you know what, Drake? You were there when it happened.” Somehow her purse was in her hand. “I’m going to leave now. You know where to find me. I even have a cell number.” Somehow she was standing beside the table. “It is so pathetic I didn’t even have my own phone because you didn’t think I needed one.”
A few moments later she sat in her car, shaky hands stabbing the key everywhere but into the ignition, unable to remember how she’d gotten from the table to there.
Susan tromped barefoot at the ocean’s edge under a starry sky, and little by little the rage burned itself out.
Pugsy chased darting sandpipers and pawed at tiny crabs wriggling into the sand in the backwash of receding waves. With only occasional glances in her direction, he raced and halted and raced again, choosing his own route, wild with delight at not being attached to his leash.
Susan understood. Not that she’d quite grasped the wild with delight behavior yet, but her self-imposed leash was gone. She alone was responsible for herself. What freedom existed in that!
The whole thing frightened her to pieces.
“Lord, are You in it?”
Something was broken between her and Drake. If they did not face that fact, it couldn’t get fixed, could it? If she continued to kowtow and to tell him he was right no matter what, didn’t she simply prolong the dilemma? Surely God did not mean for a wife to totally suppress her own heart and mind, did He? Perhaps, after all, there was truth in Natalie’s opinion that Susan’s version of submission had gone haywire.
“Lord, if You are not in it, stop me.”
Put me back in the straitjacket?
She shuddered at the thought. It would be worse than a straitjacket. It would be more like death. Like climbing again into a tomb and being trussed up for a second time in a burial shroud.
She plunked down in her dry-clean-only lined powder blue business suit skirt, pressed the heels of her bare feet into the cold damp sand, and crossed her arms over her bent knees. Boundless sky and ocean filled her vision.
“Lord, You didn’t raise Lazarus just to die again, did You? He must have been living proof of Your love and power. A constant reminder to his family of Your reality, of Your hand in their lives. Please.” She sighed. “Oh, please make it so with me.”
As the next wave rolled toward the shore, an organ prelude came with it. Susan hummed along, and then she lifted her chin and her voice.
“‘Christ the Lord is risen today. Alleluia!’”