Conceived Without Sin (10 page)

Dear Jesus,
Buzz prayed.
Grant my friend the gift of faith. And give me a plow to put my hand to.

Then he got up, sat next to Sam, and pulled out his rosary beads. They were simple; made out of wood. Buzz prayed silently. He didn't want
to make Sam nervous, or appear to pressure him to pray along.

Ten minutes later, Donna walked up and knelt at the grotto in front of them for several minutes. She turned and smiled at her friends, then sat down next to them. There was a bead of sweat on her forehead–Sam guessed it was from the walk up the hill from the bus stop.

It was sunny and cold, but not windy. There were only a few other
pilgrims at the shrine, and they were at the stations of the cross. Sam and his friends were alone at the grotto.

Sam, responding to grace he did not believe in or feel, found himself fumbling for his keys. He worked the key for his old pick-up truck off the ring.
I don't need two cars,
he thought.

He took Donna's hand, and placed the key into her palm, and closed his hands around her hand.

"What's
this?" she whispered.

"Keys to my pick-up," he informed her in a hushed voice. "I'm giving it to you."

She let out a breath, shook her head, and smiled. "I can't take it."

"You need wheels. I have my Accord."

Buzz, who had been praying with his eyes closed, opened them and whispered to Donna, "Take the keys. And why are we whispering? There's nobody here."

Donna closed her eyes. She had been praying
for a sign regarding Sam minutes before. Now he was giving her his pick-up truck!
What does this sign mean?
she asked Mary.

There was no answer.

She thought of his pick-up. It was old and rusty, but mechanically sound. She decided she wanted it.

If I can't have him, at least I could have his truck.
It had a certain–feminine–kind of logic.

"Thanks, Sam." She gave him an awkward hug.

"You're welcome.
No more busses."

"No more busses," she repeated, looking at the statue of Mary in the grotto.

"No more busses!" Buzz shouted.

"You're weird, Buzz," Donna said.

"Thank you," he whispered, completing the doxology. "Now shush!"

Afterwards, Buzz and Donna made a visit to the Blessed Sacrament in the church next to the grotto. Sam waited in the back of the church.

Donna leaned over to Buzz, and said,
"Well?"

"They had a great time last night. Sorry, Donna."

She closed her eyes and began to pray, stifling tears. When she opened them, she saw a beautiful young nun at the altar, preparing it for Mass. The nun smiled.

They rose to their feet and walked to the back of the church. Buzz told Sam they wanted to stay for Mass. Sam agreed to sit in.

Yeah!
Buzz thought.
I got him to Mass!

Mass was nicely
paced–daily Mass usually is–and over in less than twenty-five minutes. Sam rose and sat and knelt following the examples of his friends. He was silent for the responses and opening and closing songs. Buzz and Donna consciously tried to avoid looking at him. Sam fidgeted with his fingers and the buttons on his winter coat.

All three went to the cafeteria for lunch.

"So?" Buzz asked, lifting a tuna
sandwich.

"How was Mass, you mean?" Sam asked.

Buzz nodded.

"It was moving. I've decided to become a Catholic."

Donna gasped.

"You're kidding, right?" Buzz asked.

"Yes," Sam replied, smiling.

Donna hit him on the arm. "Don't joke about stuff like that!"

She got up and left the table. Sam was open-mouthed.

"What's got into her?" Sam asked Buzz.

"You don't want to know."

+  +  +

Donna walked to
the gift shop behind the church. When she walked in, she saw the pretty nun again, who noticed the dark frown on her face.

"Having a bad day?" Sister Elizabeth asked.

"Dismal." Donna was looking at her boots.

"Oh. Shopping helps. I used to shop when I was having a bad day in my former life. Can I interest you in something? We're not the Eastgate Mall, but we have a fine selection of rosary beads."

Donna looked up, stifling a smile. Sister Elizabeth was young. In her thirties.
Everywhere I look, pretty girls.

But there was kindness in Sister's eyes.

"Unfortunately, shopping only made me feel better for a few hours. I'm Sister Elizabeth. I live here and run the shop."

She held out her hand.

"I'm Donna. I live on the West Side."

There was an awkward silence. Unknown to each other, they both
prayed a silent Hail Mary.

Sister Elizabeth took a deep breath. "Look, Donna, it's really slow today. I'm going to close up for a bit. Do you want to come to the back room and have a cup of tea with me?"

Donna nodded.

+  +  +

Sam had Buzz drop him off at Edwards & Associates after the visit to the Lourdes Shrine. He worked until midnight. Seven years.

6

The next day, Ellen James opened the front
door and saw a delivery man holding one white rose.

"Dear Ellie, Thanks for the wonderful evening. Yours, Sam."

Words did not come to her mind. The emotions from her first night with him swelled gently in her heart. She remembered their kiss, and wondered if she had been too bold.

Then she held the rose up and smelled it. Nature's perfume was her answer.
No, not too bold.

Just bold enough.

Sam's
game had reached the second inning.

7

Sam never told her that the color of the rose had been Buzz's idea.

"Mystery," Buzz had advised over the phone while Sam was still at the office, "is as important to romance as it is to religion. It's what makes it exciting."

"Mystery, eh?" Sam had asked, curious.

"In the Garden of Eden, the serpent offered Adam and Eve the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge,
knowing that it would kill the mystery. Take the joy out of it. Science is interesting, and necessary, but it's not joyful."

"Isn't that anti-intellectual?" Sam countered.

"Not at all. I'm not against knowing things, Sam. I'm against the idea that you can know everything. Send a white rose. She'll wonder what it means, and enjoy the wondering. A red rose is too bold. It means love. Too early.
She needs thirteen more 'contacts' with you. A contact can be a phone call, a date, a letter."

"You go from mystery to counting contacts…"

Buzz had no response to that. He was remembering his first date with Sandi, his ex-wife.

Chapter Five

1

Buzz's first flower to his ex-wife had also been a rose–a red rose.

A tattoo.

Seven years earlier, he had met Sandi at a bar in the Flats. He had been working as a salesman at the time–selling prefabricated chimneys to building contractors during the early eighties building boom, fresh out of Notre Dame. It had been months since he had a steady girlfriend; his father had been in
the final stages of cirrhosis of the liver, and that had thrown Buzz into a funk. He had long since abandoned the already spotty practice of his faith.

He had been with a few other salesmen from work, and she had been with some of her Cleveland friends. They had all gotten together, drank like fish, and danced to the pounding New Wave music of the Talking Heads, the Eurythmics, and the Cars. The
dancing had convinced Buzz that Sandi Hackett was special. She had a manic energy, and a serious way of looking into his eyes as she whirled and juked. She made out with him right on the dance floor. They slept together that night. He moved in with her two months later. He had been with women before her, but the sex had fooled them both. Many people who find compatibility on the dance floor find
chemistry in bed. In former centuries, it was the waltz.

And chemistry was a big part of their time in bed together. Both metaphorically, and in terms of actual practice. Sandi knew all the tricks: spermicides, IUDs, the pill. Condoms came last on the list–they got in the way.

Sandi and Buzz worked and partied and played like two kids in a giant suburban sandbox, piling up debt on their credit
cards, reading nothing more stimulating than
People
and
Sports Illustrated,
shopping at the malls, and generally having the time of their lives. They were the energetic power couple of their social set, the model for their friends with their indefatigable zest for life. It seemed to Buzz as if they were living inside a Wrigley's Spearmint Gum commercial.

He surprised her on her birthday when he
rolled up his sleeve and showed her the rose with
Sandi
underneath it.

And, in their own way, they loved each other. After the athletic playtime in bed, they talked each other to sleep, building lifetime castles in their skies. The plan was set. Enjoy a year of fun. Get engaged and married. Then two years to get to know and enjoy each other and save for a house (Sandi was into selling office copiers
using a spectacular combination of excellent presentation of product benefits and not-quite-mini skirts). Then, finally, two children; hopefully, a boy and a girl–sometime.

When the pastor at Saint Christines turned them down after they frankly told him they didn't plan on coming back to church until their first child's baptism–after all, the kids will need
some
religion–they found a pastor who
would
marry them on the West Side. That pastor was much less rigorous about marriage preparation.

Buzz and Sandi did not have big dreams, but they shared the same dreams. Just having a mother- and father-in-law who paid attention to him attracted Buzz to Sandi. A bonus! That, and her energy in bed. He pictured an entire life of it.

Sandi's parents looked at Buzz's new Datsun 280Z and his nice suits
(off the rack from Syms) and steady job, combined with his sense of humor and devotion to their only daughter, and approved. They even approved of their living together. She had picked a winner.

"She could do worse," her parents said to each other. "He's a good boy. He went to Notre Dame!" (They didn't quite put it this way, but Buzz did keep six or seven of the ten commandments…)

One day in a
bar, Buzz was buzzed when he asked Sandi to marry him. He looked into her brown eyes and up at her sandy hair and said, "Our chances are fifty-fifty one of us will die married to each other. I'm willing to take the chance. Either way, we'll have a few good years together now, while we're young."

I can do better than fifty-fifty,
she thought.

"I'm yours, forever," she told him, looking him in the
eye, raising her glass, meaning every word. At least meaning it when she said it.

They left the bar, drove to J. B. Robinson Jewelers at Great Northern Mall, and bought a thousand dollar, pear-cut ring with very reasonable monthly payments, starting five months after the original purchase. That night, they invited both Jack Daniels and Bud Light to the intimate party at their apartment. Sandi
was a light drinker, but did enjoy a steady toke off a marijuana cigarette. They slow danced in front of Johnny Carson interviewing Dolly Parton, as the stereo played Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon."

Human life has an uncanny way of popping through the tightest cracks in the cold white sidewalk plans of life. Four months after the wedding, Sandi got pregnant.
Somebody must have screwed up
at the G. D. Searle factory,
Buzz had thought at the time.

The Fifth Commandment was one that Buzz was partial to keeping, but Sandi didn't think that abortion was killing. It just couldn't be. Sure, it was ugly. She didn't
want
an abortion. But she didn't
want
a baby right now, either. After a few days of intense discussions, she decided to go along with Buzz and keep the baby, to exercise her
right to choose. Maybe the house would have to wait (day care would put a dent in their house savings).

She was the first of her group of friends to have a baby, and aside from horror stories from her mom and aunt about the pain of giving birth, she had no realistic idea about the time and effort required to care for a baby.

They worked and played and never once prayed until practically the day
Jennifer was born.

2

Mark Johnson hung up the phone in the FBI office. Maggie had not lost her temper this time. Just a steady, strangely sad "no" each time he asked to come see the girls.

"No," she said. "I need more time. I'm just getting my feet on the ground. Maybe later."

So now they were officially separated. With each "no" he feared that she would be able to live without him, and that she
would be able to call the lawyer, and ratchet up the separation to divorce.

The fear turned to anger by the end of the conversation. After all, by Mark's accounting, he had been a good husband and a good father. She said he didn't listen to her, but he had listened. She just didn't like what he said back after she said her piece. She didn't like that he wasn't "there emotionally" for her–whatever
that meant–but he had given her all the emotions he had. She had told him that he wasn't reliable, that he had abandoned her during her times of need on the whim of the moment–that time he had gone hunting the week after their second daughter was born, leaving her alone. But he had already made the plans for the trip, and a man's got to have his freedom, and wasn't Maggie just being a control
freak, and didn't he "pay" for that trip with her angry words and stares for two weeks after he returned?

"You married
me,
not somebody else, Maggie," he had explained to her then. "You knew what I was like when you married me. I was here for the baby. So I took a week off a week later? What's the big deal?"

Then she really made him angry by calling up her mother and her sisters and her friends
and complaining and comparing. Complaining about him, never mentioning the way he provided for the family, or his way with the girls (when he found the time). Comparing him to other husbands.

Being compared angered him almost as much as her taking his business all over the country using the phone lines. After all, what single man can compare with the good traits of ten other guys? It piqued his
sense of justice.

"I have to talk to somebody about our relationship," she pleaded, not understanding that she was taking a knife and sticking it into his heart with every phone call. "Talking to you is like talking to the wall!"

"Good," he replied calmly. "That means I'm the kind of guy who sticks to his principles. Why don't you tell that to your sisters when you're on the phone?"

He had walked
out of the house after that long-ago argument. The needle kept skipping over the same groove.

He went to a bar and had a beer that time. He never had more than one or two beers. He was a tough guy, after all, and he could control his liquor. He could control himself.

But I can't control Maggie,
he thought, looking at the phone, wondering what to do next.

3

Sam and Ellie held gloved hands as they
walked along the wide, empty beach at Mentor Headlands. He stopped walking, and turned to kiss her on the lips, still amazed that she kissed back. It was not a long kiss.

"I want you to meet my father," he told her.

"Yes, I would like that," she replied. "Funny how we both have only our dads."

He nodded. It seemed to Ellie that everything about her and Sam ran parallel like this lake and its shoreline.

"I'll call him," Sam said. "He's going to be in Cleveland for a lecture series next month. We'll go to dinner."

Love. Or so it seemed. Sam had surprised and pleased her when he told her that he wanted to wait a while–maybe even until the wedding, though no firm date was set and no ring was bought–before sleeping with her.

She found herself falling in love with aspects of him she hadn't imagined
on their first, charged night together…

…the way he kissed her, as if that was the only thing in the world to him, not merely a prelude to sophomoric groping or intense coupling. He was not boyish in this…

…the way he seemed to anticipate when she needed the salt shaker at dinner, handing it to her just as she was about to ask him to pass it…

…the way he reached over to tuck her coat neatly under
the seat belt before starting the engine…

…the way he opened doors in such an unassuming way, and at every opportunity was a gentleman. She knew that he had been raised this way, that manners were a part of him, and that they wouldn't fade or lose intensity over time. That was just it: he was not intense in the nuts and bolts movements and motions of spending time with her. It gave all the more
impact to his deeds…

…the way he held her hand with a firmness and a softness all at once. He communicated to her through this simple, gentle way, responding to what she said, to looks she gave him, with his hands. She was perfectly sound in her reasoning that this would portend well as to how he would treat her after they were married, in bed…

…the intensity of his eyes when he sat before a computer
or talked to a client at his business (once, she had taken a vacation day just to watch him work)…

…his immunity to style. He dressed in Brooks Brothers pants, button down shirts (although never white ones), and laced up Johnston and Murphy shoes–and would forevermore. He exuded steadfastness…

…the almost bizarre way he became more physically attractive the longer she knew him. She didn't see
the pockmarks on his skin anymore–only the depth in his eyes. He was thin, but she saw through his thinness to the wiry strength he possessed. And she had been wordlessly thrilled by the gracefulness of his movements on the basketball court during the one time she had gone with Buzz and Sam to watch them play at the YMCA Winter League…

…he called at just the right times. (He had caught on quickly
after Buzz's discussion of womanly emotional time clocks, and still relied heavily on Buzz for advice. Ellen was not aware of this). He did not bring up the topics of commitment or marriage, but he didn't shy away from discussion when she brought them up. There was a manliness to his lack of fear…

…there was the wedding of the daughter of one of Bucky's clients at the Garden Club last week. He
wasn't a great dancer, but it was a welcome change to look up to a man as they waltzed!

But it was the jealous looks of the sharply dressed, handsome men–married and single–when they saw Sam dancing with her that gave her a certain paradoxical satisfaction. She knew that she had been given beauty (and she worked diligently at the health club to preserve it…). She knew that many of the men in the
room–married and single–would gladly, madly date her. She knew that Sam was attracted to her beauty, also. There would be something wrong with him if that was not the case. But she felt that he liked
her,
not just her looks. Distinguishing between the two had always been a difficulty for Ellie with other men. And while it never quite came to the consciousness, the part of her that feared divorce
took solace in Sam's plain looks. All the better to keep other women away from him.

In short, being with Sam was like participating in a low intensity, steady, constant waltz. Strength and gracefulness will capture the heart of a woman over looks and money every time–for the woman who is open to those qualities.

Too often, women mistake worldly success for strength. And style for grace.

Ellie
was mistaken that Sam's lack of handsomeness would protect him from other women. After all, for the same reasons, Donna Beck was in love with him too.

4

"You know what we all have in common?" Donna asked one unseasonably warm spring day, sitting by the pool at Buzz's apartment complex.

"You mean me and you?" Buzz asked.

"And Sam."

"Oh yeah, Sam, that guy who shows up and socializes with us when
he's not working or with Ellie?"

There was a bitter note in Buzz's voice. He missed Sam. They saw him once a week–usually during a weekday–and practically never on weekends. The Wednesday night video was still sacrosanct. Buzz suspected that even Wednesday night would fall by the wayside when Ellie's classes on Wednesday evenings ended come summer. She was getting her MBA.

"Give Sam a break,"
Donna said curtly.

"Boy, you've changed your tune, Donna," Buzz replied, but the bitterness was no longer in his voice.

"Time heals all wounds–and a little dab of Sister Elizabeth helps. I'm over him. Mostly."

Buzz dipped a strip of celery into a bowl of sour cream. He was fighting another diet war–and winning this time. Mostly.

"So what do we all have in common?" he asked.