The Prodigal Daughter

            White hands clenching the side of a stone table, absentmindedly running a finger along the edge. She couldn’t get her thoughts in order. She didn't know where to put her eyes. It was a beautiful day. The sun bore down on pedestrians who acted like they enjoyed it. The blue sky glinted, and pretended it had never seen a cloud. She probably had friends who greeted this kind of day and saw it as an opportunity to go to the beach. Amy wasn’t one of them, not today. Today she was grasping the surface in front of her, trying to get a grip on the words rushing through her brain.

            “Look, I’m not asking you to tell me. You don’t have to,” Aaron said from where he sat at her side. “I’m just saying it would be much easier for me to understand what’s going on with you if I actually knew about the things you keep hinting at.”

            “Yeah,” she said. He reached out a hand and put it on hers. She rolled her eyes upward. The umbrella above the table was covered in dirt. She directed her gaze back down.

            “But it’s hard,” he said. “I know that.”

            “Yeah,” she said. She removed her left hand from its grip on the table and wiped her palm on her jeans.

            “But I also just want to stress that I’m not asking you to tell me,” he said again. “But you can. You can, and then, hopefully, we can move forward.”

            “I don’t even know what that means,” she said under her breath.

            “What was that?” he asked.

            “Nothing,” she said quickly.

            “Oh,” he said.

            “I just . . .” she started.

            “What?”

            “I just wish we were some place with less people. Somewhere more private.”

            “Okay,” he said, “I’ll keep that in mind.” He looked at the empty tables surrounding them. She could feel her face burn.

            “I mean, I don’t know, I guess this is pretty much as private as we’re going to get . . .” she said. “I think being outside is throwing me off. I feel so . . . exposed.”

            “That’s okay,” he said, “you don’t have to—“

            “Tell you anything. You said that, but also that it would be good.”

            He shrugged. “Well, it’s true. For you and for this discipleship.”

            A long silence followed. Then she opened her mouth and looked him in the eyes. Once the words began dropping from her lips, she couldn’t stop them. They hit the stone table in front of her and shattered. Amy summoned all the fear and trauma she had lived over the past twenty years and offered it to him. She pulled it from the tips of her fingers and from the roots of her hair. She felt her mouth go dry, and still she pushed the words toward him. A numbness began in her feet and crept up her ankles, her shins and thighs feeling like she had run ten miles. Her hands began shaking, but she couldn’t grab onto the table anymore. She was floating five miles above the conversation. At the same time, she was so rooted in her body that she felt like her legs were tied to the bench beneath her. The words, those words that had been so long in preparing themselves, streamed forward until there were none left.

And then they sat in silence again, the only sound her heavy breathing. She looked at him and begged him for something, anything that would surprise her. Aaron looked at her and said, “That’s . . . amazing. I’ve never heard anything like it. Your forgiveness . . . That’s God.”

            Amy wanted to close her eyes and throw her arms around his neck. She wanted him to bury his face in her unruly brown hair so that she could feel the weight of what he said. She wanted to cry, and jump onto the table, and run away. Instead, she sat there and conjured the most sincere smile she could. She said, “Yeah.”

            “Look . . .” he said. “You need to do something fun. Doesn’t that sound good? Something other than focus on . . . that?”

            Amy nodded. Her elation that he seemed to genuinely care about her overpowered her reluctance at this reaction.

            “What would you like to do?” he asked. She shrugged. “If you could do anything in the world right now, what would it be?” She shrugged again. He stared at her for a moment and released an almost imperceptible sigh. “Uh, you like . . . Mexican food, right?” he said.

            She blinked. “Yeah, I . . . I did say that.”

            He started nodding emphatically. “Good, then that’s what we’ll do! I’ll get a group of people together and we’ll go somewhere and it’ll be fun.”

            “Cool,” she said. “Sounds good.” Her brain was rocked by the notion that the person sitting next to her knew everything, knew all the memories that she had so carefully guarded for so long. Amy was hit by a wave of nausea. She closed her eyes. It’s okay, she thought, he wouldn’t have put himself in this position if he wasn’t ready.

            “Are you okay?” he asked.

            She nodded and tried to smile. “Great,” she said. “Text me and let me know about tomorrow.” Amy stood up from the table and pulled her bag onto her shoulder. She hadn’t realized how long they had been sitting and parts of her thighs had gone to sleep. She turned and started to walk away.

            “Amy,” he said, and she turned back around. “I’m really glad you told me. Really,” he said. “I’m honored.”

            She played with a strand of her hair. “Of course,” she said, as though she hadn’t had a second thought.

~

            The next night, they went across town to get tacos. Aaron pulled a group of people to come with them, just like he had promised. Unfortunately, Amy had never seen any of them before that night. Instead of letting her open wounds have time to breathe, she hastily stitched them up and covered them with her hands. She was charming and funny and smiled too much. Nobody could have faulted her behavior, and that was what mattered, right?

            Amy dragged herself so far inside her brain that, the next time she met with Aaron, she couldn’t find her way back out. They were at lunch, and he had a plate of waffles topped with whipped cream in front of him. She nibbled at an apple core.

            He was talking, and she zoned in and out. It was only when he stopped that she recognized the strange feeling between them. “Look,” he said, “I brought a verse for us to study.”

            “Right now?” she said, although this was technically the reason they were meeting.

            “Yeah, I think it would be good for us.”

            He pulled a piece of paper out of his bag and placed it in front of her. It was from Psalms. She stared at it without reading it.

            “I’m just worried about you,” he said. “I’m worried that you don’t really believe God loves you.”

            Amy turned her gaze to his face. She stared at the hard line of his brow and the corners of his mouth, and said nothing. He sat across from her and waited.

            Finally, he continued. “I also want to put it out there that I’m very aware this is an inter-gender situation. If you would be more comfortable talking with a woman, I can recommend some.” This, of all things, was what hollowed Amy out. That she had performed her life story for  him, and that he could still look at her and question if she was honest.

            She felt the words of the previous week fall out of her mouth, but this time she felt them fall on closed ears. The trust that had flowed from her fingertips was stopped up in her hands, and made them ache. She wanted to cry, wanted to slap him, wanted to ask what had changed. What she had done wrong, what had made him believe that she wanted anyone else to help her crawl away. He was trying to help, trying to make her more comfortable but, in doing so, he betrayed her.

            Amy turned her attention back to the paper in front of her. She picked up the pen next to it and started to scribble around the verse number. She let the silence between them build until it was big enough to snap him in half.

~

            Several weeks later, they sat in a group in his living room. She twisted a strand of her hair and waited. The room was bright white and the walls were mostly blank. A few suggestions at decoration had been made, including a movie poster from an old Hitchcock film and an amateur watercolor painting. Post-it notes lined the wall, filled with funny quotes and life advice.

            “Alright, everyone, let’s get started,” Aaron said. He sat cross-legged on the floor, but was still the head of the circle. His green eyes briefly rested on Amy, and flickered away. She took a deep breath.

            “Tonight, we’re going to do something a little different,” he said. “Tonight, I thought we’d let Sarah lead the Bible study for a change.”

            Amy’s stomach flopped over. The girl sitting at Aaron’s left smiled vacantly. Her black hair looped in curls all the way down her shoulders. Amy looked at Aaron, but he avoided looking back. She wanted to hold out both of her hands, grab his and ask what was happening. Why he wasn’t speaking to her, why she hadn’t been warned. Although he had started this group, she had been instrumental in building it up. If she hadn’t held it together with her bare hands, none of them would be sitting here. She scratched her cheek. His promises that she would be doing what Sarah was now doing echoed through her mind. She wanted to make a scene, she wanted to yell, and she wanted to leave.

            Instead, she swallowed down her screams and opened her Bible.

~

            Five months later, she lay in bed for the fourth hour. Her eyes floated from the window to the bookshelf to the wall socket, and back again. Amy could barely move, and she didn’t know why. That will that had always propelled her forward and pushed her into action had slowly deserted her. She needed to get up, but she couldn’t.

            Her phone went off. With a shaking hand, Amy reached out and looked at it.

            It was a message from Aaron. Hi! it read, Really excited for the new year. Looking forward to hearing your ideas for the program.

            Something that resembled fury yawned in the back of her brain and turned over. She sent back, I don’t think I can be a part of the program anymore. I’m not doing very well.

            A few minutes passed. Then he said, Are you okay? Do you want me to call you?

            She stared at the text for a moment. Then she said, No. I don’t know how to talk about it. Amy put her phone face down on the bed. She leaned her head against her arm and closed her eyes.

~

            Her heart pounded as she marched through the night. Amy could feel the effect of the whiskey as she tried to move her legs, could still taste it at the back of her throat. She focused on the bright lights of the restaurant in front of her.

            She walked in and looked around. She gave the hostess her name and was led into the back. She was shown to the table. She saw him staring at her, and wondered if he was afraid. She hoped so. She was ready.

            “Hi,” Aaron said. “How are you?”

            She shrugged. She sat down. Amy tapped her middle finger on the table. The menu lay on the plate in front of her.

            “Aren’t you going to look at your menu?” he said.

            She shrugged. “I don’t really want to be here long enough for that.”

            He stared at her. “Okay. So should we just jump right in?”

            She nodded.

            “I asked you here because—“

            “I bothered you until you would finally make time for me,” she interrupted. “Go on.”

            He swallowed. “Look, I haven’t seen you in a long time, and I don’t know what happened.”

            She blinked. “Do you really not?”

            He shook his head.

            “Do you think I’m an idiot?” she said.

            “No, of course not!” he said.

            “Well, that’s odd. You’re acting like you think I’m an idiot.”
            He looked at her. “Amy, what are you talking about?”

            “You think I don’t know what happened? I was there for all of it.”

            Aaron threw his hands out to his sides.

            She continued. “You found out what I really was, what really happened to me, and the way you acted around me changed. You stopped trusting me, and you took away all the things I worked for.”

            “I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting it to be so . . . intense.”

            “Then why did you ask?” she said. “Why did you hound me until I told you?”

            “Because it seemed important.”

            “It was.”

            “I said you didn’t have to tell me. You didn’t have to.”

            “Right, but you said it would be better if I did.” He was silent. She held out her arms. “And look how much better things are!” she said, with false enthusiasm. She threw back her head and laughed. All the pain that Amy had felt in the six months since they had last spoken came out in the sound.

            “I’m sorry,” he said.

            “It doesn’t matter. I don’t forgive you,” she said. “All of this, all of this bullshit that’s happened between us, it’s going to change me. The next time someone wants to get to know me, I’m not going to be able to share, not the same way. Not after . . .” she felt tears prick the backs of her eyes.

            “I’m sorry,” he said again.

            “Good,” she said, “you should be. You, this whole organization . . . nobody’s who they say they are. I was told everyone takes care of each other. That nobody gets left behind. Well, I’ve spent the last six months crying and throwing up and lying on the bathroom floor because my brain hasn’t been right and I haven’t heard anything from anybody.”

            “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

            “It doesn’t matter. I know what you are now,” she said, and shrugged, “and I don’t fuck with cowards.”

            His mouth curled into a thin line. She stood up. “I really, really would have done anything for you, you know? Anything you asked. If you had asked me to stay, I would have.”

            “Please stay,” he said, his voice coming out in a desperate squeak.

            “No,” she said. “It’s done.”

            She turned and walked away. Her mind felt like it was closing in on itself, so she took a deep breath. Amy had thought that after she said the words, after she had laid out the sentences that she had spent so much time thinking through, everything would be better. Instead, she felt tired.

            When she got home, Amy went into her bedroom and lay on the floor. She rested her hands over her eyes. Despite everything, she still wanted to be a part of it. She wanted to put herself among them and have them take her back. She wanted to forgive Aaron, to slip back into his life and gather him to her.

            But it was too late. She had given all of herself up and been left behind. Amy could go back, but it wouldn’t ever make those things okay. The love she felt for that community would seep out through her feet and puddle on the floor.

            She removed her hands from her eyes. Amy studied the crack in the ceiling, following the way it split and traveled until it met the wall.