Chapter 25: Heart Brakes
On the initial physics of Rob + Katherine
“Don’t tell him you’re not a virgin,” Grandma says, then wipes away the crumbs of a biscuit from her coral pink mouth.
“We’re not even there yet!” I snap, face flushed. “I still gotta get the guy to ask me out.” And then yanking on my end of our tug-of-war rope once again, I add, “But when…if it comes to that, I’m not gonna lie to him.”
“Well, that’s your decision,” she says while she stirs Sweet N’ Low in her ice tea, pinkie finger delicately splayed midair, “I just don’t want him to think you’re tarnished.”
We’ve been sitting at Luby’s scheming for over an hour--Mom, Granny, and I. Getting Rob to fall for me is, pathetically, one of the only fires we three can circle our wagons around at this point in our relationship.
A younger version of me that’s been gagged and thrown in the cellar of my unconscious wants desperately to gush and effervesce with them all day. Instead, as you see, I’m beginning to veer towards moralism.
“You could faint in the choir bleachers so he’ll rescue you,” Mom says with a wry smile.
“I need to get going,” I sigh. Because we’re getting nowhere. And I can no longer put off disemboweling myself with the Calculus II homework I need to finish before tomorrow’s quiz. I roll my pleather tufted chair away from the table and grab my purse.
“Do you need gas money?” Barbara asks, and I know this is her apology for the mention of my non-virginity, so I shake my head and hug her, then Mom, perfunctorily.
Driving home to my teeny, tiny studio apartment, I’m thinking about how weird it is that my Cal II professor never makes eye contact with us while he’s lecturing, when a white sedan cuts me off. I hit the brakes to avoid a crash and I’m safe. But the pedal squirms beneath my foot and a noise like the rubbing of two sheets of sandpaper fills my ears. At the next stoplight I start to breathe again, and to the drivers in the lane next to me I must seem mental. Because instead of wearing the wrinkled frown of someone who just dodged a fender bender, I’ve got on my best and brightest shit-eating grin…
***
It’s a pathetic excuse, but it’s honest. Girl with failing brakes seeks the righteous action of a gearhead young man.
I’d called his house and braved the catch in his mother’s voice when I asked to speak to him. Now here I sit in the church parking lot waiting for him to arrive.
10 minutes go by. 20.
I’ve tucked away my flip phone out of nerves because I don’t want any distractions or last minute tips from Mom or Granny.
30. 45.
I’m now fully bathed in surrealism. I’d expected many things to go wrong with this forced setup, but not being stood up. Finally, I open my phone to find three messages from a New Mexico area code I don’t recognize. I dial.
“Katherine?” he answers.
“Yes?”
“I tried calling you.”
“I--I had my phone off,” I say.
“That’s what I figured.”
A gargantuan silence stretches out before me.
I’m in a dense orchard where the trees bear words as their fruit and someone’s taken an axe to my step stool.
“Uh, so my Dad accidentally took the keys to my car. Which is why I’m not there to meet you.”
“Oh,” I manage.
“So how about you come pick me up at their place, and then to make this up to you, I’ll take you out to dinner.”
I’m smiling, forgetting that that’s not a word that is communicated over the phone.
“Well?” he asks.
“Oh, oh yeah that works. But what about my brakes?”
“Sure,” he says, and I can hear the smile on his mouth. “I can take a look at those, too.”
***
To have him in my car, to sit across from him at a quaint, family-owned New Mexican restaurant, it’s like gaining proximity to a celebrity, or to someone from the past you’ve only read about or seen depicted in movies.
I’m working against a power gradient.
Yes, there’s his age, but also the fact that he’s the pastor’s son, which makes him kind of a spiritual Kennedy. To be in his family, where ministry concerns are surely discussed, means that he knows all about my mother’s handful of marriages. He’s heard about how her appearance morphs with each new relationship. He’s probably aware of the embarrassing number of times she’s asked to sing the songs she’s written about Jesus at church.
Plus, he’s got the artist vibe. His clothes are simple--an ocean blue Merino sweater, Levi’s, low top Converse--but his dark, thick-rimmed glasses border on exhibitionism. He exudes the confidence that only creatives have in their own aesthetic. And as a card-carrying member of the uncultured, I don’t dare question it. But I maybe gawk, just a little.
To his vibe let’s add his mood. He seems amused that we’re here after months and months of hesitation; he’s half-observer and half-participant. Polite and interested and irresistibly self-possessed, he’s still somewhat holographic, like if I reached out to touch his face my fingers would pass right through him.
So I smile. I try to seem older. I hold his gaze until I can’t stand it any longer.
I whisper 1,000 hallelujahs to the invisible hand that’s built another step stool for me to harvest words. I’m so grateful to be able to string them together in coherent sentences, simple garlands of meaning.
I tell him that I’ve been invited to apply for a research fellowship at Johns Hopkins. He says he’s trying to figure out his next steps after architecture school. We both agree that the world needs Jesus. The conversation flows well, I guess. But what we speak about is less memorable than the feeling that I’m selling myself to someone who’s both attracted to and unsure about the product on offer.
Like Heidi chasing Rick so many years ago, I’ve turned the ignition. Rob accepts that. But this tall, dark, elusive pastor’s son wants to keep us in neutral, no sudden acceleration. And the brakes? Yes, those need fixing, and it’s a job he can do.
Push and pull, pedal and brake--our rhythms are there from the very beginning. Me anxious, insecure, but hell for leather with this man. Him on guard, intrigued, hoping we’re not headed for a world of hurt.