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Zoe
Zoe couldn’t believe it, but she was actually a little excited to get back to that church sign. Painting it had been fun. As she daydreamed about it during math class, she realized she probably shouldn’t hurry to get the sign done. She still had about six hours of service left. She didn’t know what came after the sign. Probably something far less soothing.
The day dragged by, but eventually she was outside in the fresh air and then she was walking down Providence Ave toward her grandmother’s building. When she couldn’t see Rachel outside this time, she was disappointed. They had said three-thirty again, hadn’t they? It wasn’t three-thirty yet, but Rachel had been early last time.
The homeless man sat on the church steps singing. This wasn’t good.
Zoe had decided to just pass the church on by and maybe come back after three-thirty, but Rachel stepped outside just as Zoe was in front of the building.
“Yoo-hoo!” Rachel waved, looking like a lunatic. This time she wore a brown hat with hideous purple fringe dripping off it. The hat had been designed by a drunken cowgirl in the Wild West. “Do you need to go home first?”
Zoe glanced toward her grandmother’s building and then headed across the church’s lawn. “No, I’m okay.”
Rachel came down the steps and met her in the grass. “Would you like to continue painting?” she asked as if this whole thing had been Zoe’s idea.
“Sure.” Zoe looked over her shoulder. “Is he going to be a problem?”
Rachel didn’t look. “I don’t think so. He’s not a problem until he’s a problem, right?”
Zoe had no idea what that meant, and she wasn’t excited about walking past the man to get her paint and brushes.
“I’ll go get your things.” Rachel waved toward the sign. “You go get emotionally prepared.”
Zoe laughed. She didn’t think she needed to get emotionally prepared to paint a church sign, but okay. She went to the sign, dropped her backpack in the dead grass, and rolled up her sleeves. Yesterday’s paint had dried and blended nicely with the original. She wasn’t going to have to repaint the whole sign. Bummer.
Rachel appeared beside her and set the paint down. “I’ll be right back. I need my chair.”
Zoe took a long breath. What an odd predicament she’d found herself in. Doing community service—that she didn’t hate—with a crazy old woman—whom she didn’t hate. Life was full of surprises.
Zoe took one of the paintbrushes out of the plastic baggie and then opened a paint can. She dipped the brush into the sunny yellow color, which deserved a better name than Unmellow Yellow. “I will call you Splashing Sunshine,” Zoe whispered.
Rachel reappeared as Zoe scraped the excess paint off the brush. “How was school?”
Zoe straightened and shrugged. “I don’t know. School was school, I guess.”
“Did you get to talk to Jason?”
Zoe frowned. “Uh, yeah. I talk to him every day.”
“Cool.” Rachel cracked open a soda and took a long drink.
She hadn’t offered Zoe any. Zoe expected more probing questions, but Rachel was apparently out of them and was instead content to stare off into the distance as Zoe worked. The silence went on for so long that Zoe started trying to think of something to say. “I think this sign’s almost done.”
Rachel didn’t answer, so Zoe looked at her to make sure she wasn’t dead. She could hardly see her eyes because the brim of her floppy hat drooped down over her face.
“So what do we do next?”
“We fix the window.” A question lurked beneath her words.
Zoe stopped painting and looked at her. “I didn’t break it.”
Rachel pushed the brim of her hat up and studied Zoe. “I believe you.”
Zoe exhaled. “Thank you. I wish my grandmother did.”
“I’ll tell her.”
She went back to painting, trying to act as though she cared less than she did. “Tell her what?”
“I’ll tell her to believe you. I’ll tell her that you’re telling the truth.”
Zoe was touched by this. “How do you know I’m telling the truth?”
She took another drink of her root beer. “I guess I don’t know, but you told me that you drank moonshine and then hitched a ride with an invisible angel, so I doubt you’d lie about the church window.”
Zoe stopped painting and looked at her again. “You think there was an angel?”
Rachel hesitated. “No, actually, I don’t. I think it was Jesus himself, but I didn’t want to freak you out.”
Zoe snorted. Yeah, right. With an entire planet to take care of, like Jesus would show up to carry her home. “I doubt it,” she mumbled, but Rachel didn’t say anything, so Zoe didn’t know if she’d heard her. “I don’t know how to fix a window,” she said more loudly.
“That’s all right. I do.”
“Really?”
“Yep. I can fix just about anything.”
Zoe stared at her. Was she kidding? An old lady who could fix anything? Was there any such thing? “Why?”
“Why what?”
“How are you able to fix anything? Isn’t that usually a dude thing?”
Rachel shrugged and took another swig. “I had a great dad. He taught me things. But also, it came naturally to me. And then I worked in a shoe factory for twenty-five years.”
Really? Rachel had worked in a factory? “You were a working mom?”
“Yes. There weren’t a lot of them back then, but I was one of them. But my children still turned out just fine. They live nearby. We are very close.”
“Girls?”
“One of each.”
“Do they go to church?” Again she was surprised by her own question. Why was she so interested in Rachel all of a sudden? Because she’s the only one here, she told herself.
“They do. They are strong in the Lord. So, your grandmother, myself, and the rest of the women used to go to a different church. My children grew up there, but when my children had children, they wanted to go to a church that had programs for little ones. Our church was a dying one by then, and now it’s a dead one. But they go to great churches. I visit on occasion.”
“Cool.”
Rachel snickered at her. It was a little strange that she’d just called that story cool. “I’m tempted to ask you if you want children, but you’re probably too young to think of it.”
Zoe thought carefully. She appreciated Rachel asking intelligent questions and wanted to give an intelligent answer. “I don’t think I’ll have kids.”
“Why not?”
Zoe was done with Splashing Sunshine. She tapped its lid back into place and opened the Blarney Stone. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m very maternal. And I doubt I’ll ever get married.” She laughed. “I know you can have babies without a husband but that sounds even worse than having some with one.”
“Why do you doubt you’ll get married?”
The real reason? Because she didn’t think anyone would marry her. She was too ugly. “I watched my mother’s marriage fall apart. I watched her go through the divorce. It all seemed more trouble than it was worth.”
Rachel didn’t say anything and Zoe glanced at her to see if she’d heard her. It seemed she had, but she had this amused, curious expression on her face, as if she was waiting for Zoe to say more, as if she didn’t quite believe her. “Divorce is awful,” she finally said, “and while I know sometimes it’s the only option, I think most of the time people pull that particular trigger too quickly. Every marriage goes through ups and downs, and you’ve got to ride through the downs to get to the ups. Too many people jump off at the downs.” Rachel pointed at the sign. “You missed a spot.”
Annoyed with the micromanaging, Zoe stepped back to see where she’d missed. Then she stepped forward again to fix her error. She might as well tell Rachel the truth, right? They were trapped there together with nothing else to do, and Rachel was the first person to really listen to her, ever. Even her therapist back in Missouri had sort of stared at her with this glazed expression on her face, and Zoe had known she was just waiting for the clock to run out.
This wasn’t the case with Rachel. Zoe couldn’t imagine why, but it seemed Rachel actually cared about her.
“I also highly doubt that anyone will ever want to marry me.”
She expected Rachel to say something obnoxious like, “Oh, you don’t know that” or “There’s someone for everyone.” But she didn’t. She just sat there staring at her.
And though Rachel hadn’t argued with her, still Zoe felt the need to defend herself. She pivoted so that Rachel could get a good look at her. “Look at me. I look like a horse. I’m six foot two. Six foot two. What guy is going to want a girl who is six foot two? And then I’m ugly. And then I’m fat.” Tears sprang to her eyes so she spun back to her work. Part of her desperately hoped Rachel would argue with her. The rest of her thought that, if Rachel did argue, then Rachel would lose all credibility as a counselor.
There was a painfully long pause. Good. She wasn’t going to argue with her. But that meant that all of what she’d just said was true.
“Do you know how tall I am?”
What? That was her response? Zoe turned to look at her. She remembered being folded up with her in the back seat of Gramma’s car. She’d been pretty tall. “I don’t know, maybe six foot?”
Rachel smiled. “I’m about six foot one now, but at my prime, I was six foot two. Six foot six when I wore heels.”
Why on earth would she wear heels?
“Keep painting. I want to show you something.” Slowly, she set her soda can down in the dead grass and then got up and went inside.
Zoe watched her go, but then looked away quickly when Derek waved to her.
