Irises (31 page)

“So how do you know Marcos?” Mr. Canuto asked.

Mary hesitated and then said, “From school. We met in art studio.” It was sort of true.

“You're going to help with the mural?”

“I don't know.”

“He could use your help,” Mr. Canuto said.

“I can't.” Mary said. She thought of Mama and Kate and all that was ahead of her.

“You want to help him but you can't, or you don't want to help him, so you can't?”

It took her a few seconds to understand the difference. She felt herself blushing. She hadn't painted an eagle since
.
.
. since she painted that eagle for Papa.

“You know how he got beat up?” he asked.

“He said he had to get in a fight.”

“Yes. That's more or less right. He had to. Only it wasn't a fight. It was a beating. He had to get beat up before he can get out of his gang. Did he tell you he was trying to get out?”

She remembered his first visit to her backyard. “Yes,” she answered.

“He's a good kid. He just needs a second chance.”

She wanted to tell him that whatever Marcos needed, it wasn't her, but she couldn't. A strange pang of joy kept her from speaking.

Marcos came out with a white envelope in his hand. Mr. Canuto patted him on his shoulder, looked at Mary as if they had just agreed on something, and went back inside.

Marcos stood back to take in the whole wall. Mary could see he was imagining how the mural would look when it was
finished. She walked over to stand beside him. The wall was so
blank, so open, so ready to be painted. She said, “If you do all the preliminary work, I suppose I could come now and then to make sure you're getting the detail work right.”

“Eally? Oo would do dat?”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“Mister Canuto is gonna pay me even dough he doesn ave to. Oo can ave aff of vat I get.”

“Half? My part is worth more than that,” she said, pretending to be serious.

“Aff and aff,” he said firmly.

He offered his hand to seal the deal, and after a moment of deliberation, she took it.

 

K
ate needed to talk to Simon and to Andy. She decided to start with Simon. She waited for him by his car after school on Monday and watched him emerge from the building, Bonnie by his side. As soon as they saw her, Simon whispered something to Bonnie and she disappeared back into school.

Simon approached her, a serious look on his face. But she knew him well enough to know he was not angry. It was the kind of focused look he put on when he did the books after the restaurant closed.

“Thank you for letting me talk to you alone,” Kate said, looking in Bonnie's direction.

“No problem,” Simon said.

She leaned on the hood of his car. “Simon, I owe you an apology.”

“Forget it,” he said. He didn't sound bitter. He sounded more as if he wished to avoid any discussion of their breakup.

“I don't know what happened.”

“You were being honest.”

She smiled at him. He was a kind, kind person. “Actually, I need to apologize for my behavior way before that night. I've been a jerk.”

“A jerk? How?” He opened the back door of the car and threw his backpack inside.

“It's taken me a while and I still don't have it all figured it out, but I actually don't think I was honest with you —”

“Oh, Jesus! So now you're going to tell me that you never felt anything for me. Is that what you want to get off your chest? Please, I don't need you to be
that
honest right now.”

She stopped. Maybe he was right. Maybe what she was doing was more for her own sake. “You're right, you're right,” she said quickly. “I don't want to unload my own guilt on you for what I did.” She paused and then decided to continue. “But I think you need to know that I took you for granted, that I never appreciated you the way you should be appreciated. You have a good heart, and I didn't deserve you.”

He looked at her as if assessing her sincerity and then he offered her his handkerchief. She dabbed her eyes. She hadn't come to cry in front of him.

“That's twice I've seen you cry,” he said.

“I wasn't supposed to cry.”

“You didn't come here to make up, did you?”

She shook her head. “You'll be happier with someone like Bonnie, trust me.”

“So what exactly did we have these past two years? We were friends who made out
.
.
. occasionally?”

She knew he was partly trying to be funny, but she considered only the serious side of what he said. “We were very good friends.”

“Being very good friends is not so bad, you know. My mom and dad are very good friends. I think that if you marry your very best friend, you're starting out pretty much where you want to end up. That other stuff, the romance, disappears after a while. That's what everybody says, anyway. We're comfortable with each other, we respect each other. If you wanted to go to Stanford, I wouldn't have stood in your way.”

“Simon
.
.
.” She lowered her eyes. “You're a good person.”

“But
.
.
.”

“The other night, the morning everyone was looking for me, I ended up spending a very sleepless night thinking about you, among other things. The one thing you need to know is that I
liked
being with you. That wasn't pretend. There may have been reasons I was with you besides the fact that I liked spending time with you, but those other reasons don't take away the fact that I liked spending time with you. Does that make sense?”

“Can I ask you something? Something that's none of my business?”

She knew what he was going to ask. “Sure.”

“Where were you that morning we couldn't find you?”

She reached out and touched his arm. “You broke up with me that night, remember?”

“So you
were
with another guy.”

“Nothing happened,” she said to him. “Trust me.”

“It doesn't matter.” She detected sadness in his voice. T
hey turned to
see Bonnie coming out the front door of the school. Apparently, she had decided that she'd given them enough time.

“I would like it to matter,” Kate said. “The next few months will be hard for me and Mary. We could use a friend. And
.
.
. I could use my job back. I'm the best waitress you have. You're not going to fire the most dependable employee you have just because you broke up with her. You're too good a manager to let that happen.” She wasn't asking. She was telling him, reminding him.

He tilted his head backward and smiled. “We'll see,” he said. “I guess you better go now.”

“Do you think Bonnie will ever talk to me again?” she asked.

“Give her time. I'll make sure she comes around,” he said.

Andy was sitting at his desk, staring out the window. She looked at him for a few moments before knocking, and in those moments he reminded her of her father. He too used to look blankly ahead as if waiting for the Holy Spirit to drop the right word into his sermon. Andy turned around and sprang to his feet as soon as he heard the knock. “Kate!” he exclaimed.

“Do you have a minute?”

“Yes, come in.” He closed the door behind her. She sat on the edge of the sofa and he pulled his desk chair around to sit in front of her. “How've you been? I didn't see you in church yesterday.” She could tell he was at a loss as to how to proceed. He hadn't called since the night they spent together. She had told herself she didn't care, but still, the courteous thing would have been to call. Simon would have called.

“I've been more or less okay.” She waited.

“I'm sorry I haven't called. You left so . . . abruptly. I wa
sn't sure
. . .”

She waved him off. “I went to see a lawyer last week.”

“Oh.” It took him a few seconds to understand. “About your mother? You're going to go through with it?”

“Not immediately. When the time is right.”

“You're sure about this?”

“I'm sure.” She paused. “I have a theological question for you. Is guilt a sign that what we are doing is wrong?”

“That's a difficult one.” He shifted in his chair.

“My head tells me that I'm doing the right thing, but my heart is full of guilt.”

“Guilt about what?”

“Guilt that I'm ending my mother's existence on earth, that I'm taking away whatever possibility of life she has, however remote. Guilt that I'll be hurting Mary so much. I haven't done anything yet, and I can already tell that I'll feel bad for a long time, maybe forever.” She turned to look at the bookcase, which was now filled with his books. “What do your books tell you about guilt?”

“The thing is, sometimes we feel guilt when we shouldn't, and sometimes what we call guilt is simply the pain that comes from doing what's right, even if it hurts others. I'm not sure you'll ever stop feeling that pain in what lies ahead for you. It doesn't matter what you call it. It's going to hurt. . . . But you're smiling. What are you thinking about?”

“Talking about guilt reminded me of the other night at your apartment. Did I make a fool of myself?”

“No, why do you say that?”

“Agreeing to go to your place.” She blushed.

“Kate, I'm just as responsible for that as you are. I'm only human, and you are very attractive, as you know.”

“I'm grateful that we talked, I really am,” Kate said. “I stayed awake after you went to sleep and among many other things, I kept replaying in my mind my mother's words when she took me to Stanford four years ago. She said that God wanted me to be as smart as I could be, to hold nothing back, to become a good doctor so I could help others. And then she said no one should keep me from my dream unless I let them. And I asked her, ‘Why would I let them?' and she answered, ‘Because you love them.' It's funny that I never focused on the fact that dreams could be abandoned or postponed because o
f love
.”

“I think it takes a certain kind of love to make our dreams come true,” he said.

“My mother's words reminded me of your sermon, remember? You said that to love is to deny yourself, to put others first. Then I thought about your ambition, about how you wanted to be the pastor of a big church in a rich community.”

“And you think there's something wrong with that?”

“It's just that I saw myself in your ambition. At one point I wanted to go to Stanford and be a doctor and I had good reasons for wanting that, but then I lost sight of other good things in my life . . . like Mary. Wanting to go to Stanford is fine, but there are things that are more important. That night, I saw I had lost track of those other things.” She looked into his eyes steadily, seriously.

“And you think I have too?” he asked defensively.

She ignored his tone and she went on, “When you told me that you wanted a bigger church, I thought of Father and all the sacrifices he made for his little church. He loved this church. Day by day he picked up his cross and carried it. I thought of all the people who serve the church in their own small way, like Mrs. Alvarado and her electric organ. They deserve a pastor who is committed to them.”

“Just because I want to eventually move on, doesn't mean I'm not committed to doing a good job while I'm here.”

“I don't mean to judge. I'm doing it, I know, but I don't mean to. What was it that you said in your sermon? ‘The truth of love, the truth of sacrifice will set you free.' All I'm trying to say is that love and sacrifice are more important than my ambition.”