Once they left, the most we ever heard from them was a card at Christmas. It was a wrenching break, especially for Rick. And now they’re suddenly on our doorstep again? I don’t know what to think.
“So have you thought about what you want to do for your birthday?” I ask.
“It depends,” he says. “Are we going to be here or out of town?”
“Your dad has the whole month of October off, and we thought we’d take a little vacation. Maybe we could go somewhere for your birthday.”
“California?”
“Somewhere closer,” I say. “How about D.C.? We could see all the sights.”
“That’s not a vacation, it’s a field trip.”
When Rick came home from the staff meeting over the summer announcing his four-week vacation—a sabbatical, he called it—he dropped the whole thing in my lap to plan. Figuring out where to go and what to do, scheming a way to get the boys out of school for a week or two without looking like delinquent parents—it was all up to me. Never mind that I hadn’t known far enough in advance to put money aside. Never mind that Eli’s idea of fun was visiting his cousins in California (something he’s only done once before) and my eighteen-year-old, Jed, responds to every idea I come up with by saying, “Sure, fine, but you’ll have to go without me.”
Nobody wants to do what I want to do. Nobody can agree on anything else. And if I don’t come up with something for them all—for my husband and my two teenaged sons, the men in my life—then they’ll blame me for having failed in my most basic, primal duty. I just can’t win.
“You know something—” I begin.
But Eli’s not paying attention. He’s already fished his iPod out of his jeans pocket and plugged the earphones in. He can’t sit for five minutes without playing on that thing, and I’ve resigned myself to it. Now he taps his thumbs on the screen, absorbed in some game. I know better than to mess with the radio dial, though. He likes to blanket himself in white noise.
We pass a Greek diner, then a cluster of fast-food outlets. We pass the bowling alley and the office my childhood doctor practiced out of, then the Timonium Race Track and State Fair Grounds. I’ve never been to a horse race there in my life, or to Pimlico either. We pass gas stations and car dealerships, the sticker prices rising like mercury the farther north we get.
In the parking lot at Giant, Eli announces he’ll stay in the car. Big surprise—I didn’t see that one coming. With the door half open, I check my shopping list one last time to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything. Mussels and scallops, Rick’s favorites. When you’re entertaining a Porsche-driving lawyer and his Ivy League wife, you have to keep up appearances. Not that I care about that sort of thing.
“Am I forgetting anything?” I ask aloud.
Eli looks over at me, but he isn’t listening.
I’m positive I’m forgetting something. Maybe. Maybe not. I always feel like I’ve forgotten something.
On my way inside the grocery store, I say a little prayer. Not a pious prayer by any stretch.
Please, Lord, don’t let there be anybody from church here.
Confession: There are things you want to do in private, anonymously, and grocery shopping is one of them. When your husband works at a church of thousands, you’re likely to be recognized in the most inconvenient places.
As I’m peering through the frosted glass at the seafood counter, I hear the screech of grocery cart wheels over my shoulder, followed by the high-pitched voice signifying the fact that, no, I have not found favor with my Father in heaven.
“Hey, girrrrrrl.”
I put my smile on before turning. “Hi, Stacy.”
“Hi yourself, Beth. I was just thinking about you.” Stacy Manderville pulls to a halt next to my cart, her elbows propped on her own cart’s handle, giving my shopping a once-over before continuing. “Got some big plans or something? I thought you’d be getting ready for the road trip.”
“Not until next week,” I say.
“The whole month of October, huh? What are you going to do with yourselves?”
“I have a few ideas.”
“I bet you do.” She looks me over now, blinking a few times, probably trying to imagine the kind of ideas a pastor’s wife can come up with. But then Stacy knew me long before I was a pastor’s wife. We were in high school together. That was before Stacy married into the opulently wealthy