Chapter 1

How much less man, that is a worm? and the son of man, which is a worm?

—Job 25:6

 

 

 

 

I am a sinner.

That’s the first thing you need to know about me. Some might say a worm, although when it comes to worms, there are so many various types. The second thing you need to know is that those who brought me up and exposed the fact that I’d been caught in the act, “the very act” of adultery, weren’t really after me. By this I mean: they were out to expose, to trick really, the thirty-three-year-old pastor who’d already effectively turned many of their lives and traditional beliefs upside down and on their sanctimonious heads.

So this wasn’t really about me and the man I’ve loved since the very first day I laid eyes upon him, two months and fifteen days shy of me being fourteen years old. The afro-sporting, caramel-hued man of sixteen and a half who wore a grown-up hat (a fedora, I believe it was, although I didn’t know the name of it at the time), cocked (as was also his head) ever so slightly to the side. He smiled at me. And his eyes . . . His eyes lassoed my heart before his bass voice ever even uttered the first sound that would completely rein me in to tie our hearts and forever knit our souls together.

Oh, I know you think that this is all an exaggeration. But the fact that I’m a little over fifty now proves my point. That tiny spark lit all those years ago was burning strong inside of a roaring fire some forty years later. What would you call it?

So if this is the case, you might ask, then why were he and I caught in adultery? Why is this not a celebration account of our blissful years of holy matrimony together?

Simple. I’m married and so is he. But we’re not married to each other. In the past forty years our paths have crossed (on occasion) here and there. At one church program and, early on, one funeral of someone we both knew. And then there was the one surprise time at a department store (which I confess was weird and quite awkward for me). Especially since he had two of his (what would eventually become) three daughters with him, and I had my three daughters and a niece with me. He teasingly introduced me as “This would have been your mother.” I believe he said would and not should. I’m pretty sure that’s what he said: would, although I confess maybe I wasn’t listening as closely as I could or should have. How was I to know he’d be saying something weighty like that? I mean, I was still in shock at running into him in the women’s department at Rich’s in the mall.

Then came the time, ten years ago, that changed everything. The time he called my business, The Painted Lady Flower Shop, not knowing he’d be reaching me.

When I saw his name and number on the caller ID, I confess I could barely breathe. I tried to decide whether I should answer it or just let it go to voice mail, knowing full well I would not return the call if it did and that there was no one else in my one-woman shop to do it. And if I did answer it, should I let him know it was me, or just be as I am with everyone and anyone else who calls?

Cool, calm, and in my most polished professional voice, I answered on the third ring. And as soon as he learned he was speaking to me, he veered away from what he’d originally called for. We did, however, eventually come back to it: he needed flowers . . . for his wife . . . of twenty years now. The woman he’d married and was still married to. The girlfriend, actually, he was dating when he and I first met. The one he’d continued dating after he’d stepped up and asked me to slow dance to a song that, to this very day, still takes me back to that night of him gazing into my eyes as I stood on the next to the last step in the basement at a house party.

“Flowers for your wife?” I said with as much excitement as I could muster. “Oh, that is wonderful!” I was happy for him; really I was. His ordering flowers had to mean things were going well for the two of them. After all, he was calling to order my most expensive arrangement of flowers for his wife—although I suppose it could just as well have meant they were having major problems and he was trying to find a way to fix things. That’s the thing about flowers: giving them works in either case.

I explained I could have them delivered wherever he wanted. He wanted, instead, to come by the shop and pick them up. I told him I’d have them ready on the day and time he desired.

When he walked into my shop, older (in his midforties then) but still just as handsome (if not more so) and as debonair as I’d remembered him the last time our paths crossed almost ten years earlier, I wasn’t ready. No, no, the flowers were ready and waiting. The best job I’d ever done (if I may say so myself).

I wasn’t ready.

Not after my knees discovered it was him and cowardly buckled—completely betraying me by refusing to do their part in holding the rest of me up.