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

get this straightened out. I’ll call that guy from Berenson’s. He’ll have our order within an hour. Guaranteed. To heck with the mart,” I console her.

Gloria scowls and begins to fish through the white plastic containers one by one in search of healthy flowers. Annie follows me out into the shop work area, then into my small office.

“Coffee?” I ask, going directly to the desk loaded with paperwork, wholesale bills, notes. The framed photograph of Brad and me standing at the end of the pier in the sunset greets me. I turn it down on its face.

“Yeah, I made a pot just before you got here. I’ll get us a cup. You want to call the mart, or should I?”

“No, I’ll do it. Just hurry back with some caffeine. I’ve been drug free for a week now. I need a fix.”

She starts for the door as I cross around the desk and roll the chair out, then she stops and turns, as if she’s forgotten to tell me something important. She asks in a concerned voice, “You okay? You seem…different. Everything alright with you and Brad?”

I look across the desk at the down-turned photo, then up at her as I sit. “No, actually. I called it quits with him night before last when I got home.”

Annie’s jaw drops and she returns to the front of the desk, places her hands onto its edge and bends forward to stare at me. I’m not sure if she’s angry, or merely shocked beyond belief. She thought Brad was Mr. Perfection, just the thing I needed. She was like my best friend in high school, amazed and delighted that I’d captured the heart of the football team’s captain back then. And now?

“Why? Jesus, Is, what happened? You two were so right for one another,” she finally blurts out.

“I don’t know, Annie. It’s been a long time coming. Months and months.” I’m struggling to give her answers that I don’t really even have myself. I move the miniature vase from its spot to the right atop a few papers on my desk, the Inhabited Vase fashioned by an artist back east. Its colors are liquid, alive, encased in blown glass. Brad gave it to me. Everything I look at seems to have a connection to the man I just stuck a knife into. I feel a little nauseous, a little ashamed.

“That’s why you cut your vacation short. To come back and…what did he say?”

“He took it better than I expected.” I stop. I don’t want to go over it again, not in my mind, not out loud, not at all. “Hey, go get that coffee, huh? I need a cup. I’ll call the mart. Go! We’ll talk about it later.”

She peers down at me with a look of consternation on her face for a long second, then pushes herself upright and walks out of my office. I try to get connected to the mess at hand, thumb through the stack of receipts that have accumulated since last week. I locate the one for the order of white daisies—ten bunches, along with twenty bunches of assorted colors of carnations, miniature roses, snapdragons, leather fern, plumosa, camellia leaf…an entire page. I glance down the list quickly, then begin to lift the phone to punch in the number of the mart. The phone rings at the same instant I lift the receiver, and I say hello.

“Is, it’s Brad.” He sounds deflated and waits for a response. I don’t want to say anything to him. Why did I think he wouldn’t call? I guess I didn’t, for some reason, but here he is.

“Yes?”

“Look, I’m sorry…I mean I know I’m probably bothering you, but…I don’t know. I thought about what you said all day yesterday, and all night. It doesn’t make sense…” He hesitates, giving me the opportunity to continue for him.

“It doesn’t make sense, but it’s finished. I’m so sorry…it is. I just can’t do it anymore. Please, let’s leave it at that. Please. I told you I don’t know all the reasons myself. It just dried up inside me. Us,” I tell him in a conciliatory, soft voice. If I didn’t believe he’d fully accept it yesterday, I’m positive he won’t accept it today. I feel his anguish, but I can’t help him. He’ll have to get through this by himself somehow. I flash on the grieving process. Shock. Denial. Anger. Finally, acceptance and peace.

As I wait for his response, Annie appears in the doorway with two steaming cups of coffee in either hand. She takes one look at me with my hand over the receiver, making a shhsh-ing face at her, and stops dead a foot inside the office. On the line, Brad is silent. I’m trying to concentrate on what he looks like on the other end after what I just said, but all my mind can focus in on is Annie standing like a statue, her brow and eyes coiled into a huge question mark. I press my hand a little tighter over the receiver, say in a low voice, “Who’s watching the front?”

Annie takes the cue, walks to the desk and sets the cup in front of me, then with one final look of “what’s up?”, turns and leaves me to deal with the broken heart on the other end of the line.

“Brad, I’ve got to go…”

“Wait! Isabella, I just need to know. I need reasons. I need hope…please.” His voice is plaintive. I know this is all going to take months, not weeks, of excruciating pain on his part. I wish I could help, but that is the point. I can’t, and there’s no sense offering him the crutch of further communication. It’s over.

“No, Brad. I…just accept it. I’m…sorry.” That word again. Inadequate. I hang up and quickly punch in the number for the mart. I have a business to run, and I have to stay busy or I’m afraid I’ll cave in to the instincts bouncing around in my head. The coffee tastes wonderful, unlike the taste in my mind. A woman with a very practiced, musical voice answers. I tell her who I need to speak to, and after a minute or two on hold I get connected. I’m angry sounding as I explain the situation to the guy. He agrees to do whatever is necessary to correct the problem, blah, blah, blah. I thank him and hang up. One fire extinguished. I lean back in my chair and look around the small room. My degree from Stanford, class of 1988, directly across from my desk. Why did I hang it there? The reason escapes me. On either side simple framed photographs of Daddy and Mother standing outside our home with its two-story portico, white clapboard siding, deep blue front door, three tiers of brick steps leading up to the long porch. Mother had turned to look at Daddy at the very moment the shutter snapped, I think because he’d made a silly comment about something. I can’t recall, now, nearly a quarter of a century later. They were madly happy in those days. Me…I was madly in love with Chris, and finding out what having sex was all about. I took the picture the morning after the shocking thrill of the first time. I wonder as I stare at the photo where Chris finally wound up in life? We were good lovers, I think, but I really can’t be sure. It was so, so long ago, and the memories of those times are covered over with a cloudy film, as if the mental pictures have begun to turn gray and fade into dozens of other images.

The Petals and Bows filing cabinet is in the corner; beside it is a simple coat tree with an umbrella stand, gleaming chrome that I found at L. A. Furniture a month after signing the first lease six years ago. A chair next to that, four feet from the left corner of my desk, sitting catty-corner. To my right on the wall above the three foot-tall bookcase filled with supplier catalogues, design manuals and such, are more photographs; Snaps of elaborate weddings Gloria, Annie and I created, a picture of Caroline and Sammy from a few years back. More photos of Brad and me at various places—all with him smiling and looking down at me. I wonder if I should remove them now, or wait? But why wait? I stand and head for them as Annie returns.

The store phone rings and Annie pokes her head back out the door. “Glo, can you handle the calls for a minute? We’re tied up in here.”

Gloria shoots right back. “No! How the hell am I suppose to…”

“Please. I forgot to say please. Just give us a minute, hon. And watch the front, too, would ya’?”

I can hear Gloria mutter something foul, and then the ring is cut off when she picks up the phone in the back room. “Petals and Bows. Can I help you?” I think she’s not happy this morning. Even on a dead day like today she doesn’t do well schmoozing with customers, even when her mood is pink with happiness.

Annie shrugs, comes in, and then closes the door.

“Now, what happened Is? Fill me in why you dumped the perfect man.” She grabs the chair from the corner, turns it backward in front of the desk, sits down, and plops her arms crossed over the back. I sit again and wish it were a week, or a month, or a year from now. I don’t like any of this because it reminds me of looking at a deep cut in my skin, or a burn. I have to close my eyes the minute I dare to peek at it.

For some reason I think of “Saving Isabelle”, of all things; of Matthew alone at the lodge with Michael and Frank, and poor, poor Sylvia. Poor Matthew. I remind myself as I imagine his face, his eyes and lips, the look he gave me when I told him I was going home. He had absolutely nothing to do with me leaving Brad. He didn’t. He didn’t. I can’t even mention him to Annie. She’d add two and two and come up with six.           

I look over at my best friend. “Time, that’s what happened. Time wears down mountains.”

She frowns. Her golden-skinned face is gorgeous. Large sienna eyes, over-the-top lashes, and full lips that I’d die for. That’s the main reason I hired her—she’d knock every male customer straight to their knees, and imagining their wife or lover as her, they’d buy the house. That and we were the best of wild, young friends for ten years. Seriously, I remind myself, when it gets right down to it, Glo can’t match her when it comes to design work. Well, that.

She shakes her head now.

“No, that’s no answer. What changed? Are you…seeing someone else, maybe? Tell me. He was so good to you. His kids? His car? The shape of his nose? What?”

“Annie. I can’t put my finger on any one particular thing. Yes, his kids—I don’t want to be a mother, though I like them both terrifically. They’re great kids. He was good to me, way too good, I suppose. Jesus, Annie, he gave me a gold locket for my birthday when I got home! A golden heart-shaped locket with a diamond in the center—and a strange, familiar inscription inside! Yes, I know he loved—loves me more than anyone I’ve ever met. He was all over me emotionally, too all over me. Too everything for too long. Maybe I was just suffocating in his love, I don’t know. I changed, that’s all.” I picked up the order for flowers lying on the desk, began to roll it up into a doobie cylinder, then let it uncurl again.

“Sooo…you can’t let it simmer? Think it over? Figure out what he really means to you deep down inside and try to rearrange some of your life? Isabella, you’re thirty-six. You’re beautiful, God