CATHEDRAL - Patrick Sean Lee (best books for 8th graders txt) 📗

“I’m sorry.”

I close the cover of the phone slowly, staring off at nothing. The dog keeps barking.

 

                                 

Roosevelt Lodge

Matthew

 

 

I have dinner with Frank and Michael tonight. It’s Frank who speaks most often this evening, and I’m thankful for that. It seems he gives some thought to his questions and remarks—there is no silliness or flightiness about him. Michael asks but one specific question, “What time is it?” three times in the forty-five minutes we sit at the table. I don’t know why. Frank politely tells him the exact hour and minute, three times.

We are served by a rather downcast looking Mrs. Davenport who says only four words. “Gentlemen, enjoy your meal.” Sirloin steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans—salad. My mouth waters, but I eat only the salad, the potatoes and gravy, and the butter sauced beans. I ask myself why, when Isabella is long gone and I am so hungry for the beef?  

I actually enjoy the salad. What on earth has happened to me?

Michael wants to bend my ear after having been so uncommonly quiet during dinner, asking me the question as I rise and wipe my mouth with the napkin, about what kind of life a famous author lives—and am I inclined in any way toward the same sex. As though the two were in any way connected. Frank grabs him by the arm and yanks him toward the door.

“Michael, you fool. What kind of question is that?” he asks. Shakes his head. Scowls.

I am taken off-guard a little, though I should not be, knowing that Michael tends at all times to say the first impulsive thing that comes banging into his head. I know next to nothing of gay relationships—what attracts one person to the other—and I know less about this couple personally, but I have come to the conclusion that either Michael is sitting on a vast fortune that Frank is tapping, or else Frank is crazy.

As Frank drags Michael out I answer the question in a kind, but matter-of-fact manner. “I prefer women.” The one who has gone and I may never see again.

They turn once they have left and walk across the gold amber glow of the building to the sitting room where Mr. Davenport has no doubt kindled a warm, cheerful fire. I am in no mood for warmth or cheer, nor am I in any mood to listen to Michael if Frank takes the muzzle off him and lets him rev the engine of his mouth. I cross the hall and go upstairs to my room alone in a state of growing despondency.

Isabella told me to begin the book again. Somehow I must.

It is a fact. Writing is not inspiration or emotion. It isn’t driven by flashes of genius or sudden insights. It is work, and the only way to accomplish the end is to sit down and do the beginning. Look at the screen, put my fingers on the keyboard, and begin to type. By some miracle, if I can discipline myself to do only this, I will by the end of my session have five, perhaps ten pages, and they might even, by some other miracle, be very good. A beginning following a simple ‘The…’ that I do not despair of and erase.

Thus, with her face floating in and out of my mind’s vision, I place my fingers on the keys and start.

 

 

                                  

                             Roosevelt Lodge

 

    

“There was a lake that lay like a…”

Delete.

“I stood beside the water. It was late September.

Delete.

Despair.

 

“He knew she would appear. He sensed it…”

 

Believe This

 Isabella

 

 

I see him standing outside on the doorstep holding the precious bag in his left hand, a finger of his right hand, arm extended, poised out of view at the doorbell. He’s gazing straight ahead at the sheers on my side of the glass. I make no movement, standing less than five feet away, invisible to him—no sudden change of the shadows. He closes his eyes for a second, and now he pushes the button. The familiar chime rings out. I cringe.

I dressed in loose fitting jeans, a 49er sweatshirt, cherry-red with butter-yellow lettering across the chest. Sandals. I pulled my hair back into a tight ponytail…is it so necessary to look this plain?

“Hi.”

Brad doesn’t respond, simply raises the gifts and hands them to me. As I take them gently from him I slip, and accidentally brush my fingers over his. He reacts with a look of definite pain in his eyes, and my resolve weakens. I look away and pray for strength. This is so hard.

“Thank you. Do you want to come in?” I say.

“Yes.”

My living room is comfortably arranged, with two winged back chairs standing at a slight angle to one another, pointing inward on one side. They are separated by a round, inlaid end table graced with a bouquet of fall flowers. A sofa on the other side, close to the interior wall. Brad leads the way—he’s been here a hundred times. I set the bag onto the glass-topped coffee table in front of the sofa, and then sit down in the center without thinking. Brad takes a seat in the chair farthest from the archway separating the foyer from this room. Neither of us speaks for the drawn out moments it takes for me to discard the speeches I rehearsed throughout the night—words and explanations and pleas that suddenly are lost in the terrible moment. Stanfield silently jumps onto the sofa and meanders across it to me. I quietly lift him by the stomach and set him onto the Persian carpet beneath my feet. He barrels a meow, then wanders back out of the room.

I suppose I must move forward.

“May I?” I reach for the gifts in the multi-colored bag in front of me.

“Yes, of course. I…uh, well, you know. I put great thought into selecting…those things. They were meant to be given to you at our dinner Saturday. I want you to have them. Will you at least keep them, Isabella? Will you…”

“Yes, of course I will, Brad. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Open them, please.” Which I begin to do. Piece by piece, wrapped as only a man could think of doing in sheets of crinkled blue tissue.

The tea candles, he explains, signify—had meant to signify, anyway—our four years together. The coffee mugs, a pillar candle that makes me smile. Another book of poetry. I glance at the somber bronze cover, and then open it and read one or two pages. The word ‘love’ seems very prominent, which considering his tastes...

I close it sadly and place it onto the table, then look across at Brad. He looks particularly anxious, nervous. That hopeful look is still there, but it’s crouched in fear.

“You missed the last one, Is. The best one. The one that spoke to me most intimately.” His eyes fall to the bag.

My heart contracts in my chest. It seems to want to stop beating, but I pull myself together, reach deep into the bag, and remove an ebony-colored, velvet box containing something small inside. I move my fingers along the sides of it, beneath the lid, then lift it and un-layer the white tissue. Lying in the center is a golden heart surrounded by a delicate golden chain. Sucking in a deep breath I lift it out carefully and let the chain unravel. It is so beautiful, and I wish I hadn’t seen it. This is more than I can bear.

“Open it, Is.”

I stare at the heart, purse my lips; close my eyes. I feel the small latch on the side and lift it with a finger, then open my eyes again. The lid separates, and I drop the locket as if it has bitten me! Inside, words are etched.

Listen…

“Oh my God, no! No, no, no…what is this?”

Brad jumps to his feet in shock that is almost as total as mine. Surely, of all possible reactions, this was the one he had probably never considered. He moves quickly around the table and kneels, first shooting a questioning look at me, then down to the rug where the locket lays open at my feet.

“Where did you get this?”

“What? What is it, Is?”

I shoot my hands down to the cushions and sit upright. Brad now holds the open heart in front of him in his palm, waiting for my answer. I Push myself up from the cushion again, and then look down at my once-lover kneeling, confusion swirling in his eyes. How did those words come to be in the locket?

“Where did you get this? Who wrote those words? I…” My voice is shaking.

 Brad looks one more time at the etching as though he needs to reassure himself that the three words were still the same as before, and then up at me. “Down on Main—at Chanson’s. What is it, Is? Why are you reacting this way? I thought you’d love it. What’s the matter? Tell me!”

The message is too close to the voice inside me that surfaced at the most unexpected of times at the lodge. It speaks the same thought, opens the dialogue of a romantic disclosure. The beginning of a beautiful poem or letter. How did whoever wrote the three words anticipate them, steal them from my mind?

“How did you…how did you…how? Where did you come up with those words, Brad? How?”

Brad stands, still in confusion, trying to come up with a response. “They were already on the locket—that’s why I picked it. I have no idea who wrote them, it just sounded…oh, Is! Like something you would say. I thought it would touch you, move something inside you. I thought you’d written the message somehow.”

The breakup has disintegrated from anticipated moments of sweet reminiscences, tenderness, hope, a turning back of the clock. The melting of my bitterly cold feelings via the golden heart vanish into insult, and Brad is suddenly pitching side to side in a boat thrown angrily around in bitter waves—heading out to sea instead of to the safety of a familiar shore. I regain my composure. I try, anyway.

“I’m sorry. It hit me wrong, I guess.” I’m sniffling. “Thank you. Leave it, now. I’ll…it’s beautiful. I’ll keep all of these things…Oh, Brad! I don’t want to do this, not like this. I don’t want to end it this way. Forgive me, but please, go now.”  

Not what he wants, not what he expected. I turn and stride over to the archway, Brad still holding the locket with a puppy-dog look washing over his face. I face the alcove on the other side of the hall,