“The clouds parted over her,” he told in his southern gentleman's drawl. “Nothing could be clearer, as she was the one I was meant to marry.”
This story was like a banner over my childhood, my father’s insistence on love at first sight, on destinies we hardly choose for ourselves. I suppose I expected my own story to come about in this way, with spotlights and cheeky cupid himself making an appearance when I saw her.
Instead, I was at a weekday church group for singles, serving God, tradition and my parent’s expectations. My father was a retired pastor, and my mother the perfect wife. I learned that love and Christian duty were quite synonymous and back then, this was good enough for me. However, though it seemed my years had once crawled by, towards the end of my twenties they quickened, like book pages released fan together in a forward momentum.
“Will you ever marry?” my father would ask. My mother was different, simply reminding me what an eligible bachelor I was, “tall as a steeple, and sensible, too.” In response to this prying and implying, I began to wonder if their story created some sort of pressure. Like, the very moment I met true love, I’d know. Perhaps that is why I hadn’t settled down. I never knew for sure and though it pained me to admit it, no one was as good as my mother.
Especially not Annie-Rae Gentry.
I know her name sounds sweet as pie, but I heard she spent a year or two in a juvenile detention center and I was ashamed for her the day she stood outside the church with a cigarette wedged between pinched lips.
“I remember you,” she said as I unavoidably stepped closer, for she was all but blocking the entrance. “Peter Stevenson.”
“I believe we went to school together.” Before you went to jail, I wanted to say. I eyed the snake tattoo coiled about her bare arm and gulped. She was all skin and bones, dark hair that floated around her shoulders, eyes green like a stale creek.
“I moved away.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Does it matter?”
I made a face at the ground that said I was out of words.
“Hotter than Hades out here,” she said and tossed the cigarette butt onto the pavement. The tip of her sandal came down on it, extinguishing the flame.
“Ironic,” I said, considering her review of the churchyard.
Her eyes lit at my joke, then she turned towards the door. “You going in?”
I followed her.
We sat together in the back row, her taking the first seat. This was preferred territory for me as I’d grown up forced to sit in a front pew.
An organized band sent a melody of worship through the room and I mouthed the words. My eyes occasionally flickered towards Annie, curious if she knew them. It turned out she did and quite well, as the harmony of her voice reached my ears, smooth as honey.
The service began and a pastor spoke on forgiveness. I could quote scripture about forgiveness backward and in my sleep, but next to Annie-Rae her reputation had me in all sorts of conundrums.
After church, we walked.
She smoked.
I couldn’t figure out why I followed her except that I could see a story in her eyes and I wanted to know it.
“You sing like an angel,” I said.
She flicked the cigarette away in an arc. “I grew up in the church, too.”
I listened.
“Got so hurt by life, so lost, I finally took off.” She stared at a line of trees to which we headed.
“You’re back now?”
“Can’t run forever,” she warned, her subtle smile arresting my reservation.
“I don’t intend to.” I’d never run from anything, always forward, desperate to please my parents. Yet, it seemed the harder I tried, the more I faltered. Lately, they’d harbored hope I’d join the ministry but I was happily working with my hands.
“Hmm.”
Again I found myself drawn to the snake about her arm.
She caught me and her lips turned up in a crooked grin. “Snakes mean wisdom, you know.”
“Sometimes.”
A burst of bumpy laughter disrupted the quiet as she crossed her arms. “I have another. Designed it myself.” She turned her back to me with not a hint of warning, lifting her shirt to reveal what appeared to be a bouquet of bluebonnets, the pride of Texas. I noticed the delicate ribs stacked along her side and drew in a quick breath. There were no clouds parting overhead and if anything the sun was gradually taking its post for the night, faint starlight dotting the sky. She tugged her shirt back into place and faced me again.
“Did it hurt?” was all I could think to ask.
She shrugged. “Sometimes you need pain to make something beautiful.”
A cool breeze sucked up the last bit of sweltering heat and caused the leaves of a thick forest to dance alongside our trail. We walked further, enjoying the miracle of a wide-open bronze sky and genuine company
Annie-Rae studied me, her eyes squinted in curiosity. “You’re quiet,” she said.
I was quiet but that didn’t mean my mind wasn’t reeling.
I imagined bringing her home to my folks, this messy-haired, wild-eyed artist who also smoked and only God knew what else. At once I realized she was the first girl I’d ever imagined bringing home and my feet stalled in the street. I tipped my head and scanned the sky, mustering hope for just one remaining ray of sunshine to come down and tell me if I’d done well.
“You’re gonna hear lots of rumors about me.” She stood at my side, her grin still sideways and endearing. “A good bit of them are true.”
Her gaze traced me, as I was a head taller, and though darkness settled, I could see tawny freckles that speckled her cheekbones. There was not another girl like her I had ever seen.
“I’m not who I was,” she spoke flatly, then gulped.
“I’ve never broken a rule in my life,” I started. “Not sure I’m better for it.”
“I don’t know about rules,” she said. “I want to be good, though.”
I considered what this meant, my forehead folded in lines as I tried to decipher her dazed expression.
“I bet you could teach me. I bet you know all about goodness.”
Our conversation took a turn as I told of the failure I’d become.
Not married. Not a preacher. Just another church-goer hoping for destiny to intercept me somehow.
I told the story of how my father found my mother and Annie-Rae bent at her center to laugh.
“That’s hogwash, love at first sight,” she told me and swatted a hand through the air. Then, she lit another cigarette. “There’s just people like you and me, taking a chance.”
“My father’s no liar."
“Of course not. Only a romantic.” She took a drag and eyed me. “You want to fall in love, don’t you?”
“Someday.”
“Someday.”
“Well, falling is an accident, Peter.” I thought for sure she was challenging me, but instead, she laughed.
I realized how right she was, that I had always been a thinker, a realist. My infatuation with idealism came only as a result of my parents prodding, their own story inflaming my notions of what love was. “I’m almost thirty,” I informed her.
“What’s the hurry?”
I felt she read my mind.
We turned and walked in pursuit of our vehicles, everyone else long gone.
“I’m not looking for much-” she started and revealed her own insecurity, arms locked with reservation.
“Yeah,” I managed to say, as it was all I could muster. Then we stood outside her dented car for a suspended moment of time, our eyes locking, understanding one another.
“I think you’re gonna be just fine,” she said to me.
I nodded, for this became true. I had encountered a purer sort of destiny, one without pressure, one that had Annie-Rae Gentry at my side, causing my heart to beat out of my chest.
Forgiveness.
I forgave my father and my mother right then. It wasn’t for fantastical stories that held some degree of truth, but for how they expected me to live their story as some sort of predestined sequel.
I pre-forgave Annie, whatever that meant, for all rumors that might possibly find their way to my ears.
Then perhaps most profound of all, I forgave myself.
She stepped forward once, pressing her ear against my heart in a half-bodied hug. We separated, then she slipped into the driver’s seat of her car, eyes bright and lips pursed. She slammed the door, then rolled down a window. “Alright, Peter. We’ll talk soon,” she said, then she revved the old engine and drove away.
I continued to stand in the quiet parking lot, reflecting on the evening. A subtle smile tugged at my lips and I jangled a handful of keys, tossing them from one hand to the other. I didn’t know everything about me and Annie-Rae, but I knew enough, more than I’d ever known before. I had stumbled upon something special, the beginning of what I truly wanted, a love story of my own.
