Leave me alone, you freaking nut!”
The words were loud enough on their own, but they were magnified even more as they bounced off the walls of the entrance. The few people making their way in or out, myself included, could only stare.
There were five of us at the moment, but I knew our small crowd wouldn’t be small for long. Of all the instinctual abilities granted to humanity, few were more ingrained and absolute than the predisposition to gawk at an unfolding spectacle. We enjoyed peeking into the suffering of others, if only to convince ourselves that even though things in our lives might be bad, there was at least one other person in the world who had it worse. If only for a little while.
The person who had it worse than everyone else, at least in that place and in that moment, was a man. One of two principal actors in a drama that was growing increasingly passionate and voluminous. The other was a woman who seemed more than a little agitated. The two stood on opposite sides of the doorway no more than five feet apart. Her face held a motionless scowl that could turn holy water into vinegar. He countered with a confused, caught-in-the-Twilight-Zone stare.
Men do not usually enjoy the mall. It’s the shopping and the crowds and the excessive spending. Not me, though. While I could probably think of few things I would rather do than shop, I actually enjoyed the mall. It was a great place to exercise that aforementioned human curiosity. I’d seen some strange sights there, sights like the one unfolding before me. Which, by the way, happened to be a bit stranger than usual. Because I was used to being the watcher, not the watchee.
I was the confused man with the caught-in-the-Twilight-Zone stare.
I was the freaking nut.
My primary purpose for driving the thirty miles or so over the mountain to the city that day was not to people-watch. My intentions were much more functional—I needed a new hat. I wavered a bit in going, since it was to be a solo trip. I hadn’t seen the Old Man in a while, but even then I didn’t reckon he counted as real company. I figured I would need company for a trip like that. Charlottesville was a very cosmopolitan, very hip, and very liberal city. And I was a very country, very simple, and very conservative man. The two often clashed, sometimes with disastrous results. But in the end greed won out over better judgment, and I went anyway. I really wanted that hat.
I arrived early—except for a few employees and the dedicated troupe of elderly walkers, I pretty much had the place to myself. The smell of fancy coffee lured me upwind to the food court. I studied the menu. Between the fancy words and the fancier prices, I decided I’d better not.
“When in Rome,” the Old Man said.
I turned around and there he was, the very picture of a fancy men’s magazine cover. Pinstriped suit and fedora, silk tie and pocket square. Both just right.
“Where you been?” I asked him.
“I got a lot on my plate, Andy,” he said. “There’s always something going on in the spirit world, stuff behind the scenes. And don’t ask me, because I can’t say. Besides, I don’t want to be getting too familiar. Might make the magic go away.”
I didn’t know what any of that meant, but I figured standing in line at the fancy coffee place was neither the time nor the place. I stole a glance to make sure no one was looking at me and said, “You look nice.”
“Like I said, when in Rome.”
I bought my fancy coffee—mochalottasomething, which the man with the twelve earrings behind the counter said was a best seller—and guided the Old Man toward the sports store. We walked and I sipped, and in the process I decided the only difference between the five-dollar coffee in Charlottesville and the fifty-cent coffee I served at the gas station was a prettier cup. Lesson learned. I bought my hat and made my way back up the mall, Old Man in tow. All was well.
He said something from behind as I reached the three big sets of doors leading to the parking lot. When I turned to answer I saw a blur of a woman rounding the corner. Huffing and puffing and mumbling to herself. Her orange sweatshirt proudly announced her attendance at the University of Virginia. Three giant Gap bags, a pink-striped Victoria’s Secret box, a cup of coffee, a big pretzel, and a purse were all haphazardly arranged in her arms. Her lower lip stuck out and she let out a puff of air to shift a strand of brown hair that had fallen over her right eye. She steamrolled toward me while trying to look at the expensive watch on her left wrist.
“Watch out behind ya,” I told him. “Don’t think you can get run over, but this lady might be able to anyways.”
We exited the mall and I stepped to my right, holding the door open with my left hand.
She charged ahead, still trying to check the time and still not quite doing it, then glanced up just long enough to gauge her distance to the door. Which, thanks to me, was already open.
I noticed the flash of confusion on her face. She kept racing forward. I looked at her. She looked at me. I smiled. She didn’t.
And then she stopped. And by that I mean in an instant—moving and then NOT, like the Road Runner did in those old cartoons. It was so fast that the inertia kept her hair and bags going forward until she jerked them back.
“Excuse me,” she said.
I kept smiling, thinking she had somehow misread the situation. “I got it,” I said, holding up my free hand. “Come on out.”
“Excuse me,” she repeated. The tone in her voice suggested I was the one who had misread the situation.
So I said “I got the door” again nice and slow, because sometimes that’s how you have to talk to college kids. “Come on.”
Her face contorted into a look that was half indignation and half surprise. She blurted out a humph that served as both a warning and a way to get that testy bit of brown hair away from her eyes once more. She fumbled with her bags to free a finger, which she pointed at me. I had the feeling it wasn’t the finger she really wanted to use.
“Don’t you hold that door for me,” she said, eyes bulging. “I am perfectly capable of opening the door without the assistance of anyone else. Particularly someone like you.”
First thought: Someone like me?
Second thought: I should’ve stayed home.
“I’m sure you can, ma’am,” I said. “But I just thought—”
“—I don’t care what you thought! What is this, big strong guy rescues puny helpless woman? I don’t need your help, big strong guy. I just need you to get out of my way.”
“But ma’am, I didn’t mean any—”
And that was when I was cut off by her “freaking nut” comment. Plus a few others I don’t really care to repeat.
The woman’s rant had escalated in decibels and language enough to become quite the attention magnet. Most everyone entering or exiting the doors paused to watch. She looked like an idiot, I thought. Then I considered the fact that standing there holding the door open probably didn’t make me look like Einstein much myself. And I couldn’t blame the spectators for spectating. I would have stopped and watched, too.
I looked over to where the Old Man stood. As his attention was currently on the small piece of lint he was trying to pick from his sleeve, I doubted I could count on any assistance from him. The thought did occur to me that maybe I really had done something wrong. That was followed by another thought that I had done no such thing. My grandparents raised me to be a gentleman. A gentleman loved his God and his country, said “sir” and “ma’am,” and took his cap off during the national anthem. And a gentleman held the door for people when they were walking through with an armful of stuff.
“LET GO OF THAT DOOR LET IT GO NOW,” she screamed. And stomped her foot for effect.
I rubbed my beard and thought. The rational side of me said this was no big deal, that if the lady wanted to go through the door on her own, I should let her. But the irrational side demanded I stand my ground, partly out of a deep ethical conviction that it was the right thing, and partly because I had decided that no yuppie college girl was going to tell me what to do.
I tried the Old Man again. The piece of lint was now gone. He looked at me and pulled a coin out of his pocket, positioned it with his hand, and flipped it.
The coin was still on its upward motion when he said, “Do you need to call it?”
I shook my head. The coin disappeared into the air. I turned back to the lady.
“I ain’t gonna do it,” I said.
Her face flushed to the point where I was worried she might spontaneously combust. I glanced toward the crowd, which had now swelled to at least a dozen nosy souls. More vocal, too. There were now mixed chuckles and catcalls. More than one person wondered aloud what the big deal was anyway. One voice pronounced the whole situation as stupid. But it was not, and that was the one point upon which the lady and I agreed.
I decided to try a diplomatic approach.
“Ma’am,” I said, “I’m not trying to play a big macho thing here. I just thought that with the pretzel and purse and the unmentionables there, you might appreciate a little help.”
“I don’t need your help,” she said, though she had to reposition the weight in her arms to say it. “I don’t want your help. Do you understand me? I am not a helpless child. I am a woman. And I am perfectly capable of living my own life without you or anyone else sticking their nose into it.”
And on she went. And on and on. That lady screamed at me like Hitler behind a podium. And as was usually the case with people who yelled hysterically at me, I started to tune her out. Started thinking about who this woman was and what she was trying to say exactly and when she would stop. About where our society was headed and why people had to be so doggone prideful and mean.
“…and don’t you ever think otherwise, do you understand me?” she said.
I had neither the desire nor the inclination to tell her that I did not understand because I hadn’t heard a word she said. So I just stood there and watched her glare, waiting for another puny retort. So, too, did the crowd, all of whom were no doubt mentally hedging bets on what would happen next.
But by then I was convinced she would stand there and lecture me until the Rapture if she had to. I was tired. Tired of holding that door open and tired of being in the city. I just wanted to go back over the mountains to Mattingly where the normal folk lived.
I took a deep breath and said as humbly as I could, “Ma’am, I am truly sorry for offending you. I didn’t mean it. You’re right. You can handle this quite well on your own.”
She started to say something else, but the door closed and cut her off. I looked to where the Old Man stood. No one was there.
There was disappointment on the faces of the men in the small crowd, either because they wanted to see me wait her out or because they wanted to see her slap me. The faces of the women were mixed. They knew all along there could really be no winner.
I glanced back inside. The woman was still high above me on her soapbox, mouthing words that were surely meant to undermine both my honor and gender. No one, though, seemed interested anymore. Satisfied that she had just won a monumental battle for women’s rights, she adjusted herself, turned around, and pushed the door open with her hip.
And then she tripped. It was not the sort of slow-motion tumble you’d expect, either. This was quick, almost instantaneous, as if irony had sprouted arms and decided to clothesline her. Coffee and pretzel and purse and unmentionables scattered in all directions. She hit the concrete with a loud thud.
There was silence all around.
The woman sat momentarily confused in a heap of freshly stained Gap T-shirts and a rather attractive nightgown. I barely managed to keep a straight face.
“You should help her up,” the Old Man said from beside me. “Jesus would help her up. It’d be a turn-the-other-cheek kind of thing.”
I shook my head no at first, then sighed and took a step toward her. Laser beams shot from her eyes and bore into my head.
“However,” the Old Man clarified, “you’re not Jesus.”
I agreed. And from the look of things none of the other folks still milling about were Jesus, either, because no one moved.
The woman jerked herself up and then shot back down. She gathered the merchandise that had spilled around her, shoving her purse into a shopping bag and her pretzel into the now-empty coffee cup. She rubbed her sweatshirt in a futile attempt to erase the coffee stain, which managed only to weave it more into the material. Then she darted away like an Olympic walker.
The crowd began to disperse, some heading to the parking lot and others into the mall. One man opened the door for his wife, who laughed as she walked through.
“Well,” the Old Man said, “I guess we’ve done all the damage we can do here. What say we head home?”
“Oh, so now you’re giving me advice. Where were you a little bit ago? You could’ve warned me she’d go nuts.”
He shrugged as we made our way to my truck. “My job isn’t to keep you out of trouble, Andy. It’s to point out things you’re going to need someday. Speaking of which, you’d better hang onto that hat. That was one of them. Besides, you did the right thing.”
“I really don’t think I’m gonna need that,” I said. “Did you see her? She was mad just because I was a guy.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he said. “Maybe. Then again, maybe she’s had some rough dealings with men before. Or maybe she’s just a college kid who wants to prove she can survive on her own. She might have done the same thing if there was a woman holding that door instead of you. You’re seldom privy to the stories behind the actions, Andy.”
“Seemed to me that she was just naturally mean.”
“Remember when Cain killed Abel and then God asked him where his brother was? Cain said, ‘I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?’ That’s the first question the Bible ever records a human asking. I think there’s something to that.”
I unlocked the door and climbed in. The Old Man was already in the passenger seat.
“So are we?” I asked. “I mean, we’re all about the individual. We’re free to pretty much do whatever we want so long as we don’t break any laws. Our lives are our own. So how much responsibility do we have toward one another? A lot? None? As I recall, God never answered that question.”
“Sure He did.” He cleared his throat and raised a finger. “‘As I have loved you, so you must love one another.’”
“Oh come on,” I said. “I have to love that woman? Because if I do, you can forget it. And I am mostly sure that whatever feelings she has for me can definitely not be characterized as loving.”
“But you did love her,” he said. “You tried to help. The sort of love you’re supposed to have for others is love that’s a verb, not a noun. It’s a love that does something rather than is something. Remember that. That’ll come in handy, too. And there’s one more thing.”
“What’s that?” I asked him.
“Sometimes love isn’t just caring for others. Sometimes it’s allowing yourself to be cared for, too.”