Before going to sleep that night, Lisa bubbled over with excitement as she filled Gladys in on what happened with Mrs. Reiner. “Gladys, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She asked Hope such direct questions, questions you and I wanted to ask. Mrs. Reiner didn’t mince any words, but was still very gracious. It was amazing that she picked up on the same things you and I did, she just had the courage to drive her questions home.”
Turning off the light, Gladys said, “Both you and Mrs. Reiner received some great gifts today. We just need to keep praying for Hope. Good night, Lisa.”
By eight o’clock the next morning everyone knew there was going to be a wedding in the house on Saturday. Susan headed over to the Thomas’ very early, while Scott called his sister, Carol Anne. “Mom and Dad are going to need my help today, Sis. You know our mom. I suspect she has already gotten Dad down in the basement, up on a ladder, going through boxes of decorations. I need to keep Dad off of ladders, and be the one carrying all the decorations up and down the stairs for him.”
“Sure,” Carol Anne responded, “bring the kids as soon as you get them loaded in the car. Harry is going to be running one or two errands, one of which is picking up a wedding gift, but then he will be home most of the day and can help me with the kids.”
“I should be able to pick up the kids before suppertime, Sis, and thanks for letting us dump them on you with such short notice.”
Just as he thought, Scott came down the basement stairs, only to find his dad high up on a ladder, reaching for a box on the very top shelf of the storage room. Not wanting to startle him, Scott waited until his dad was safely descending the ladder to begin his scolding. “Mom, I told you I would get the boxes down. Dad, you know the doctor told you not to get up on any ladders anymore. Give me that box and get down from there.”
“We just wanted to get a head start going through all these boxes,” Bill protested. “Your mother couldn’t remember which box had those beautiful white candleholders. We haven’t used them in years, but they will be perfect for a winter wedding.”
“Nevertheless, Dad,” Scott continued to scold, “none of us want you getting hurt. What kind of wedding will it be if we have to haul you down to the emergency room?”
“Caroline,” pleaded Bill, “tell your son I’m not too old to take care of my own home.”
“I’m staying out of this,” Caroline laughed. “Scott, you know there is no stopping him when there is work to be done. Bill, let Scott get the rest of the boxes down while you and I dig through these boxes. Those candleholders have to be in one of them.”
As they continued to pull out decorations, laying out the ones Caroline thought she might use, she asked, “Son, have you talked with Pastor Mark yet?”
“Yes, I called him even before Ben suggested this wedding to Lisa,” Scott said as he brought down another box. “Ben didn’t want to get her hopes up and then find out we couldn’t pull this off. He is set to go.”
As Caroline went through another box, she said, “Since the house is already decorated for Christmas, I can’t very well redecorate from scratch; besides, Lisa doesn’t want us to go to too much trouble. She doesn’t even want to buy a new dress for the ceremony, but Susan is going to make her. I think they are going out after breakfast. I want to hurry up and get these things arranged so I can start on the wedding cake. I need to bake the cake today so it is fully cooled and ready to decorate tomorrow morning.”
“You love all of this, don’t you, Mom?” Scott teased.
“You know she does, Son,” Bill answered for his wife, “she is in heaven, and it is extra special because it is for Lisa.”
***
Susan popped into the basement to let them know they were leaving, “Scott, Lisa and Hope are ready, so we are heading out. We won’t be more than two hours, I expect. Lisa has that beautiful linen suit Gladys made for her this year. She actually said she was considering driving all the way back home to get it, but I talked her out of it.”
“If we had thought about it a few days ago,” Scott said, “we could have had Mrs. Bascom go into Gladys’s house and overnight the suit to her.”
Susan sat down on the stairs, completely aghast, “No one has thought about Ruth Bascom,” she declared. “How could we all have overlooked her? She would be devastated if she missed Lisa’s wedding. Mom, I’m going upstairs and call her right now and invite her to Lisa’s wedding. She can bring Lisa’s suit with her.”
A few minutes later, Susan was back down. “We are all set. Mrs. Bascom is going over to Gladys’s in a few minutes to gather up Lisa’s suit, blouse and shoes. I told her she can spend the night after the wedding since Hope will be heading back to California, and Lisa will be off on her honeymoon. I knew you would not mind, Mom.”
“This is why weddings take more than three days to put together,” Caroline protested. “You just cannot remember every important detail and that detail was huge. Thank you, Scott, for saving the day.”
Scott shrugged, knowing he had not really remembered Mrs. Bascom, “So, Susan, you don’t need to go shopping now, do you?”
“Yes, Scott, Lisa still needs a few cute outfits to wear to dinner. She did not pack with her honeymoon in mind, remember?” Then realizing that Lisa had also forgotten Mrs. Bascom, Susan turned and headed upstairs to let Lisa know she would be getting married in her favorite linen suit after all and that Ruth Bascom would be in attendance.
By the time the girls got back from shopping, the cake was cooling on the baker’s rack and Caroline had drawn out the design she intended to use on the cake. Bill and Scott had made several runs to different stores gathering up special candles, food coloring, as well as mints and nuts. Bill was now at the kitchen sink washing the large crystal punch bowl and the cups that went with it; while Scott was busy down in the basement ironing his mother’s favorite linen tablecloth.
Once these tasks were completed, Bill and Scott disappeared for a few hours. They joked that they wanted to leave before Caroline thought of another job for them, but Caroline knew they had an important errand to run, so she just smiled and sent them off.
Around one o’clock, Ben and Benny arrived, having completed their own morning of shopping. “I don’t know about you, Lisa,” Ben teased, “but I am all ready for our honeymoon. If you don’t like one or two of the shirts, you can blame Benny. He insisted that I buy something not quite so generational.” Turning to Benny, he asked, “That was the term, correct?”
Benny just shook his head in fake disgust, “Getting my dad to buy new clothes is a real pain. Getting him to buy something different was almost impossible.”
Wanting everyone out of her kitchen, Caroline suggested, “Since everyone grabbed lunch while out shopping, how does a fresh pot of coffee and a plate of Christmas cookies sound? I mean, I want all of you in the living room and out of my kitchen.”
Feeling as though everything was well in hand, everyone took a seat and looked forward to a relaxing afternoon of visiting. The conversation drifted to anything other than the wedding. Once she was certain everyone was settled in for a while, Caroline slipped out and got back to her preparations, free from prying eyes. As the visiting weaved from topic to topic, Benny remembered the story Gladys had promised to tell and asked, “Gladys, now would be a good time to tell us about your brother, Charlie, wouldn’t it?”
Gladys thought about it for a moment, and then suggested, “Benny, although it isn’t all sad, it really is quite a sad tale. I’d hate to introduce such a story when we should all be focused on the happy event that is going to happen tomorrow.”
“But when will we all be together again?” Benny asked. “Hope is leaving right after the wedding, and I know she wants to hear about Charlie, don’t you, Hope?”
“Actually, I do, Gladys. If Ben and Lisa wouldn’t mind, I’d like to hear the story.”
Looking over at the wedding couple, sitting snuggled up close together on the sofa, Gladys asked, “So, do you mind a little trip down memory lane this afternoon?”
Lisa, having heard most of this story before, deferred to Ben, “Ben, would you mind hearing a story that taught me not to judge another person’s life experience? You will understand once Gladys tells it.”
“Sounds intriguing,” Ben responded, “Gladys, we are all ears.”
Gladys began at the beginning. “I had just started my senior year of high school and life was pretty good. I had a loving home, wonderful parents, two great brothers, and I felt in control of my life. I guess you’d say I was quite proud of myself. We were not religious people, but we were good people.
“Charlie was considered the golden boy by all of us. You’d think that would have given him a swelled head and made Bill and me jealous, but it didn’t. Charlie was the most loving big brother a girl could ever want. He was my protector, my counselor, my event planner, my rock. Charlie never resented me tagging along on his many errands around town. Everyone seemed to know him and like him. I remember feeling so proud when someone would ask me, ‘Aren’t you Charlie’s little sister?’ He was just one of those kinds of people that everyone wanted to have as their friend. His friends would come to our house just to hang out, but Charlie always made sure his friends treated Bill and me with respect.
“That October, Charlie was going to school full time, expecting to graduate almost a year earlier than expected because he had taken extra classes every summer. He had just gotten a new part-time job downtown and he was happier than I had ever seen him. Then, one evening, just after supper, the doorbell rang and our lives went into a tailspin. I remember Mother falling against our dad as the policeman at the door told us that Charlie was dead. At first, it would not register with me. Charlie can’t be dead, not my Charlie. I remember running up to my room because I refused to listen to anymore of these lies. It was someone else, someone else’s Charlie, not ours. My father came up to my room and I will never forget the look on his face as he told me that he needed to go down to the hospital and identify Charlie’s body and that I needed to come downstairs and sit with my mother.
“I didn’t know how I was going to get through that night; little did I know there would be so much more to get through. Several hours later our father returned home, a broken man. At first he just fell into our mother’s arms and wept uncontrollably. Bill and I just sat there watching our family dissolve right in front of us. This could not be happening to our family, not ours, but it was.
“Finally, my father gathered up enough courage to tell us what he needed to tell us. My father knew his news would destroy our mother, but because it was going to be in the morning paper, he had no choice. You see, our brother Charlie was not just dead; he was not just killed; he had been tortured for hours before his death. I just kept repeating, ‘who would do such a thing to our Charlie?’
“I remember vividly the pain on my father’s face as he told us about Charlie’s last hours. You see, my dad knew he would not be able to keep this horror away from us, so he wanted us to hear it from him first.
“I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to think about it. I wanted to just run, but I sat there frozen, unable to process what my father was saying. I wanted him to shut up! I kept interrupting my father with, ‘Are you sure that was our Charlie?’ or ‘You made a mistake, Dad, you must have identified the wrong person. I refused to believe that this could happen to Charlie.’
“Amidst all of her own pain, my mother pleaded with me to stop. ‘Gladys, please don’t make this harder on your father than it already is. We have to accept the fact that ‘he’ is gone.’ That night, my mother could not even say his name and ordered, ‘Please stop interrupting and let your father talk.’
“So I did. I sat there and listened to my father tell us what that horrible person had done to our Charlie, how he must have suffered, and I knew I would never be the same again. I learned that Charlie had been bound and gagged, and had three fingers cut off. I learned that while he was still alive someone cut off his left ear and jabbed a stick into his right eye. He had been burned all along his arms and legs, which the police suspect was done by a welding torch of some kind, and then finally, mercifully, they stabbed him in the heart, and he was gone.
“The police told our father that they had no idea who had done this terrible thing to our Charlie. For weeks the police followed up every lead but they all went nowhere. For months we waited for some explanation, some rational reason, something that would make sense out of all of this pain. Charlie was dead and buried, but life was not going on; everything just stopped meaning anything to me. I hardly remember my senior year of high school. I tried to just stay numb. I was long since cried out and had no more tears in me. I didn’t care about anything anymore. I was afraid to care.
“Then, almost eight months later, the police got a break. Someone came forward and told the police a guy in their neighborhood had been bragging about ‘killing that white kid.’ The police finally had a name, but could not find him. They learned that he had skipped town about a month after the killing and no one knew where he was.
“I remember staring at the suspect’s photo in the newspaper. After all, they were not sure he really was the one who had done this terrible crime, he was just a suspect. I studied that picture, trying to see something in those eyes that would explain how those eyes could have looked at my brother and done those things to him. By the time they found him hiding out in Chicago, I already knew he was the one we had been looking for.
“I remember sitting in the courthouse when they brought him in for arraignment. He was shackled hands and feet, with a crazed look in his eyes. My numbness was gone in a flash. All I wanted to do was make this guy hurt the way he had hurt my brother. I had never known this kind of anger. While he stood there with that contemptuous smug face, I wanted to kill him. I wanted to torture him like he had tortured my brother. I began to fill my heart with thoughts of what I would do to him, dwelling for hours on vivid details of exacting my revenge.
“It took many, many months before he went to trial. During that whole time my rage was focused on him and him alone. I thought of nothing else. I read every newspaper article written about him and hated everyone who was trying to help him.
“By the time he went to trial, I was almost twenty-one. I had already lost three years of my life reliving every moment of Charlie’s last hours, and then I sat in that courtroom listening to the medical examiner tell the gruesome details of our brother’s last hours and my rage became white hot. This guy had done these things to my brother and my rage grew. My rage became so huge it could not be contained to this one person. This guy was no longer just the one who had killed my brother. He was no longer the guy who happened to be black, but became the black guy who killed my brother. Suddenly, I now hated every black guy, and then it was every black person. After all, I had enough hate to go around.
“Now, before you think my hatred of blacks was just the result of my growing up in Georgia, I need to tell you that if it had been an Irish person, I would have hated everyone Irish. If it had been a Jewish person, I would have hated every Jewish person. I had so much hate inside of me I needed people to hate just so I would not explode from the pressure of holding onto it. The sad thing was, however, few people challenged my new found hatred of blacks. They probably assumed that I was just one of so many others who thought like I did.
“By the end of the trial, we knew he was going to be found guilty, but that wasn’t enough for me. Nothing would have been enough for me. Because of his age, he was given life in prison, and I remember thinking what about my brother’s age? I had an unquenchable need to see someone suffer like I was suffering.”
Everyone had been quiet while listening to Gladys tell her story, but Benny could no longer hold back his emotions at hearing this terrible saga. “Gladys, I would want to kill him, too. Someone like that does not deserve to live. You had every right to feel that way.”
“Benny, Benny, Benny,” Gladys pleaded. “That man had almost destroyed my family. I was letting him destroy me as well,” Gladys explained. “You have no idea what that kind of rage can do to you. At first, you believe it is your friend, the one companion you can count on to endure this pain you are carrying, but soon it turns on you and devours you completely and all you are left with is your rage.”
Benny stared at Gladys, studying this sweet old lady he’d come to admire, before stating, “I understand what you are saying, Gladys. It’s just that I can’t picture you being that angry person.”
Gladys smiled at Benny, “I was that person, Benny, and more. I thought I could contain my rage, only spewing it out at those I blamed for all my pain, but I was wrong. That kind of anger is a poison that seeps into all of your thinking. The trial was over, he was in prison, and I was now twenty-two and thought I was handling it pretty well and going on with my life, until I met Karl Carter, my future husband.
“We had gone on several dates before the topic of our families came up. I tried to avoid it, but he was persistent. At first, I tried to just give a glossy overview, simply stating facts and moving on. Karl could see the rage in my eyes and wanted to know everything, but I refused to talk about it, so he stopped coming around for several weeks. At first, I didn’t care. How dare he try to invade my private world, the one I guarded so closely, but I found I really missed his company and wanted to see him again.
“One afternoon, I saw him walking up my street and I went out and sat on the front step so he could not miss me. As he reached the front of my house, he stopped and gave me one of his beautiful smiles and said, “Gladys, are you ready to be honest with me yet? What are you so afraid of? If I am going to get seriously in love with you, I have to know who you really are.”
“Wow,” said Benny. “He didn’t mess around, did he, Gladys?”
Gladys let out a big laugh. “No, Benny, he was serious. He really liked me, but he was not going to date me anymore unless I came clean with him.”
“What did he mean by ‘come clean with him,’ Gladys?” Hope probed. “Were you trying to keep the fact that your brother had been killed a secret?”
“No, Hope. Everyone in our town knew about Charlie,” Gladys explained. “He was talking about how I was handling it. You see, Karl could see that I had a hair-trigger temper, ready to go off whenever someone I considered an enemy crossed my path. I didn’t even realize just how obvious it was to him. I thought I was doing a better job of hiding it than I really was.
“Karl sat on my porch and told me how it made him feel when I had acted so rudely to his best friend, Tobias. He said I had no right to judge every black man, treating them all as if they had personally tortured my brother. He told me Tobias was the godliest man he knew and that he would give anyone the shirt off his back.
“I remember snickering at his description of this black man. I was so profoundly poisoned by my rage I could not even imagine a black man being trustworthy, but here was Karl, attesting to his friend’s character, and I had a real problem with that. A problem that Karl knew was a deal breaker between us.”
Benny sat up, engrossed in this tale, and asked, “So, what did you do, Gladys?”
“I promised him I would try. I didn’t really think it was possible, but I promised I would try, and he accepted that. Karl began by having me come down to the loading dock once a week so we could have lunch with Tobias. We were both very uncomfortable. Tobias was well aware of how I felt about him, but he was always very gracious toward me. He understood the pain I was suffering from my loss. We never discussed this until years later, but Tobias was willing to tolerate my unspoken resentment because he and Karl understood that I was unaware of what was really wrong with me.”
“What was so wrong with you, Gladys?” Benny asked in the most incredulous voice.
Laughing at this young man, who could not imagine this sweet old lady having anything wrong with her, Gladys admitted, “I had a lot of things very wrong with me, Benny, and I will be eternally grateful to both Tobias and Karl for their willingness to be patient with me. You see, I knew I was being unfair to Tobias, just because he was a black man, but I could not let go of my anger. After a few lunches, I asked Karl if we could sit together, alone, without Tobias. I even teased him that we could sneak a few kisses in if Tobias was not around.”
“And he didn’t go for that?” Benny asked with great surprise.
“No, he didn’t, Benny. I guess I wasn’t as tempting a dish to him as I thought I was,” Gladys teased. “But seriously, Karl knew that he could have no future with me as long as I remained so full of anger and was so lost.”
“Lost?” Hope questioned.
“Oh my, yes, Hope,” confessed Gladys willingly. “I was truly lost, but it was Tobias and Karl that kept lighting the way for me, even when I resented having the light shone. You see, I was actually quite happy in my misery, at least I thought I was. So, instead of getting rid of Tobias, Karl increased our lunches with him to three times a week. For months I would just sit and listen to these two friends talk, but slowly I found myself asking questions, joining in, and looking forward to our lunches together.
“You see, Tobias really was an interesting guy. He had been through a lot of terrible things in his life, too, and he understood my pain. I would listen as he told stories from the Bible; stories that actually made sense to me. He was able to make that book come alive because he really and truly believed it held the answers to all of man’s questions. After a while, I actually forgot he was black and began looking forward to our lunchtime Bible studies.
“Then, one day, Tobias brought his lovely young wife to our lunchtime Bible study and everything changed in an instant. I remember turning the corner, excited to get to our regular seats at the wooden table under the sycamore tree, when I saw them. In that instant, Tobias, again, was just a black man, daring to have his arm around a black woman. Suddenly, I was filled with my old companion, rage. I remember thinking, ‘How stupid could you have been? He almost fooled you.’ I no longer looked at him as the wise and kind Bible teacher I had come to admire; after all, he was just another black man, so I turned and started to run.
“Karl caught up with me a block or so down the street. He had seen the look on my face and knew I was in trouble. He begged me to come back with him, but my rage was making me blind and deaf to his pleadings. Three years of rage at every black person on the face of this earth suddenly rested on Tobias’s shoulders and I didn’t care. I didn’t even care if I lost Karl because of this; I just didn’t care.”
Benny blurted out, with some relief, “Well, Gladys, you must have cared a little because you ended up marrying him, right?”
Gladys gave Benny a wink and answered, “Yes, I did, Benny, but not while I was so damaged and broken. He pleaded with me to return to the table. He told me, ‘Gladys, it is time for us to start talking about your rage against black people, and who better to be honest with than someone who is paying the highest cost for that rage right now?’ ”
Gladys smiled at everyone in the living room before saying, “I thought he was talking about Tobias paying that cost. What he really meant was that I was the one paying the highest cost for my rage and he and Tobias wanted to help me see it.
“I finally agreed to walk back to that table one more time, that table where God’s Word had been shared with me, the place where I was told about how much God loves us, and the place where, just two days earlier, I had almost surrendered my heart to God. My pain was causing me to be blind with anger, deaf with rage, and comfortable with my misery. But something deep inside of me yearned to hear more about this God of love Tobias talked about, so I agreed to return to the table and try again.
“As we walked up to the table Tobias jumped up and said, ‘Gladys, I would love to introduce you to my bride, Ruth. Ruth, this is Gladys, the young woman I’ve been telling you about.’ ”
Hope jumped up and shouted, “Ruth? Ruth Bascom? Tobias was her husband?”
Beaming with love and pride, Gladys said, “Yes, Hope, the very same. You see, if I had refused to return to that table that day, I doubt if I would ever have surrendered my heart to God. If I had not returned, I also know that Karl would never have married me, and I might never have known the blessing of having Ruth Bascom as my most cherished and best friend for the past fifty years.
“Hope, my returning to that table, although difficult at the time, was such a small act on my part. Simply being willing to turn around and walk back to that table with Karl changed my whole life; but Hope, God uses those simple little steps of faith and surrender to make huge changes in our lives. I shudder to think where my life would have gone had I listened to my anger that day.”
Then, looking over at Lisa before continuing, Gladys again tried to say something Lisa had refused to hear for the past eleven years. “You see, Hope, if I had refused and had gone on with my rage, I believe I would have turned out much like Lisa’s mother, your grandmother, Marjorie Miller. My rage and pain was such a part of who I was, it would have destroyed me. And so, when I see someone like Marjorie Miller, even though her behavior is indefensible, I see someone I was well on the way to becoming if Karl and Tobias had not reached out to me, and if I had not chosen to respond. Without God and His people, I could easily have become a Marjorie Miller.”
“But you didn’t, Gladys, and that’s the point,” replied Lisa with more gentleness than she had ever responded to this topic. “You accepted God’s gift of Jesus and my mother has not.”
“The point is, Lisa, the only difference between your mother and me is that I accepted the help when it was offered, and she has not. Karl and Tobias were willing to keep reaching out to me, even though I was rude and skeptical. It was Ruth and Tobias Bascom that had led Karl to faith and it was the three of them who brought me to Jesus. They taught me that walking with God means living a forgiven life. They taught me what it cost God to offer that forgiveness, and that I could never earn it as it is a precious gift offered to all who are willing to accept it.”
Hope sat quietly studying this woman to whom she owed so much. She thought about Lisa, hearing about this same free gift of forgiveness when she was so broken and damaged by a life of drugs and prostitution; how the idea of being forgiven must have thrilled Lisa’s heart. Hope pondered all that Gladys was saying about how God wants to forgive, not condemn; how He wants to restore, not reject; how He wants a relationship, not religion. “I’ve never heard any of this before,” Hope confessed to Gladys, “I thought God was someone you had to fear, but you are telling me He wants to love me. I think I am going to need some time to digest all of this, but I promise you, Gladys, I will think about it.”