The Isaac Project (8 page)

Aunt Margaret took the cutting board to the stove, sliding the knife along its surface. The onions landed in the skillet of hot oil with a satisfying sizzle.

“So where is everyone?” I asked as I took a seat on one of the stools pushed under the counter of the peninsula.

“Running late, but so am I, so it’s okay.” She looked over at me from the stove and shook her head. “Oh no, you’re not done yet. See that metal bowl over there? I need you to mix the Maseca and water.”

“How much of each?”

“Until it’s the right consistency.” Like a seasoned chef, she added black beans, cilantro, and some special seasonings to the now translucent onions.

How am I supposed to know the right consistency?

The finely ground cornmeal tinkled into the metal bowl. Reaching around Aunt Margaret, I took a wooden spoon from the pewter utensil holder by the stove. Or at least I tried to. Before I could lift the spoon an inch, Aunt Margaret smacked my hand.

“Mix with your hands. That way you’ll know when it’s just right.”

Adding water in a little at a time, I dove into the yellow contents of the bowl. The water sloshed at first, as it sat above the denser material beneath, but as I mixed and mashed it was absorbed, becoming a compact, grainy dough.

Aunt Margaret inspected my work, poking at the dough with her finger.

“More water. And try to break up all those little grain balls.”

I added more water and smooshed the mixture through my fingers. It felt a lot like the sand you would use to make a sandcastle with at the beach, a bit gritty and course. I caught grainy balls between my index finger and thumb and smashed until they were smooth.

“This better?”

Aunt Margaret poked the Maseca mixture again. This time her finger slid through.

“Good.” She pulled the bowl a few inches across the counter until it was in front of her. Reaching into the bowl, she pinched off a small portion of dough.

“Now,” she said. “You take some dough and roll it into a ball like this. Then you press it flat with your palms and use your fingers to push the ends out while rotating the dough in a circle until you have a little round cake.”

She handed me the half-inch-thick circular golden arepa, ready to be cooked on the griddle.

The bowl was almost empty, four arepas were cooking on the griddle, and a plateful was keeping warm in the oven, when the door opened and in walked Sam with a lady I could only assume was Lisa.

A tiny slip of a woman, her head barely reached the middle of Sam’s ribcage. She was cute though, with bobbed light-brown hair that reached her jawline and wide almond-shaped eyes. I thought the two of them looked a little out of place together because of the height difference, but I wasn’t about to say that out loud.

Aunt Margaret received hugs from the latecomers, and Sam guided his girlfriend over to me with a hand on the small of her back.

“Luke, I’d like you to meet Lisa.”

“Nice to meet you, Lisa.” We shook hands, and I nodded toward Sam with a wicked grin. “So how did you meet this buffoon here?”

She smiled up at Sam with adoration shining from her eyes, and my stomach caught for a moment.

That’s funny. Must be hungrier than I thought.

“We met on campus. I was studying in the gazebo, and he came up to me and asked me how many times he would have to march around me before I’d fall for him.” She laughed, and Sam shifted his weight, obviously uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. For good reason too. I couldn’t believe he’d say something that corny.

“Really?” I hiked an eyebrow. “And that worked for you?”

She shrugged, but there was no way I was going to let it drop.

“I’m surprised he didn’t say ‘You know why Solomon had so many wives? Because he never met you,’ or ‘Is your name Faith? Because you are the substance of things I’ve hoped for,’ or, and this is my personal favorite, ‘Last night I was reading in the book of Numbers and I realized I didn’t have yours.’”

“Ha-ha very funny,” Sam replied. “But joke all you want. I got the girl, and you’re still single.” If we were kids, I’m sure he would have ended that remark by sticking his tongue out at me.

Ouch. I smiled, but man, that was a sucker punch. I mean, Ms. Stabler threw herself at me, but that wasn’t the type of woman I wanted. There was no depth of character there. I’d just met Lisa, but already she seemed like a nice girl. She had a real soccer-mom vibe going on. Caring. And, judging by the googly eyes passing between the two of them, she was in love with my cousin.

“Hey, I’m happy for you, man,” I said, play punching his arm.

Uncle David came in and laid his briefcase down by the door. He strolled into the kitchen and came behind Aunt Margaret, wrapping his arms around her middle and nuzzling her neck. “Dinner ready? I’m starved.”

Aunt Margaret shooed him away. “Almost ready.” She finished placing the food on the table, and we all took our seats. Bowing our heads, we held hands as Uncle David said a blessing over the food.

“So where are you from, Lisa?” I asked as I passed her the plate of arepas.

“A little town called Meadowlark in California.”

“California, huh? I bet that was a big change when you came out here to Michigan.”

“Oh, Michigan has its perks.” She grinned across the table at Sam.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

“So how’s your search coming?” Aunt Margaret asked as she cut into her arepa, making a pocket, steam rising out.

“Still looking.”

“What are you looking for?” I asked as I added the beans and a few avocado slices into my slit arepa.

“Well…” She flicked another look at Sam and I followed her gaze. Did my cousin have something to do with what she was looking for?

“This might sound wild, but hear us out.” Sam took the avocado plate and slid a few slices onto his. “You know the story of Isaac and Rebekah?”

“Yes…” What did a Bible story have to do with whatever Lisa was searching for?

“Well, let’s just say that Lisa is Eliezer.”

“Eliezer?” My face scrunched as I tried to follow the conversation. None of it made any sense.

Lisa nodded but didn’t look up from her plate.

“As in the man who was sent to find Isaac a wife?” I asked for clarification.

She nodded again.

“Only I’m looking for a husband,” she said when she at last looked up.

I looked at Sam, then back at Lisa, then Sam again. Clearly I didn’t hear right. I could tell things between my cousin and Lisa were serious, but I hadn’t realized he’d proposed.

No, wait. She’d said she was still looking. Then…why…?

Sam laughed at my obvious confusion. “Not a husband for her. For her friend, Becky.”

I leaned forward on my elbows and tried to process what I’d heard. Someone had really asked a friend to find her a husband?

“Why does your friend need you to find her a husband? This isn’t 700 BC.”

What kind of woman would do that? An image of a socially awkward nerdy type with stringy hair, glasses, and a serious overbite flashed through my mind. Maybe the girl didn’t think she could ever get a guy on her own, so she begged her friend for help out of lonely desperation. I vacillated between shock from the sheer ridiculousness of the plan to pity for the outcast lady in question.

Lisa regarded me, searching for something. A test maybe? She gave an almost imperceptive nod of her head. I guess I passed. Or maybe not, because she got up from her chair and went into the living room. I hoped I hadn’t offended her with my incredulity.

The sound of small items being pushed around filled the silence of the dining room as the rest of the occupants around the table stared in the direction Lisa had gone. The noise sounded like someone rummaging through a purse. I guess she found what she was looking for, because she came back to the table and extended a cell phone to me. I took it and peered at the screen. Smiling back at me was a beautiful woman standing beside a large black horse.

This couldn’t be the woman in search for an arranged marriage. Where I’d been picturing stringy hair and an overbite laid thick, dark-blond hair and straight, pearly white teeth. There wasn’t any bookishness or nerdiness about her. This was a woman who wouldn’t have had a problem turning heads and receiving offers of marriage based on her looks.

So if she hadn’t asked Lisa to find her a husband because she had problems acquiring male attention on her own, then it must be something else. Did her inner beauty not match her outer beauty? Maybe she had a quick temper and a sharp tongue. Was she painfully shy and socially awkward? There wasn’t any other explanation.

“Becky is my best friend,” Lisa explained. “She was raised by her grandfather, but he’s dying of leukemia. He said the only thing he wished he could have been able to do before he died was walk her down the aisle and see her happily married to a man who would take care of her.”

Sam stretched out his arm across the table, and Lisa took his hand for support.

“Becky was dating this guy, a real jerk. She caught him cheating on her the same day she found out her grandfather was dying. She was really shaken up about the whole thing. More about Poppy, that’s what she calls her grandpa, than about the sleaze-bag boyfriend. Anyway, the next day she read the story of Isaac and Rebekah and got it into her head that if it could work for them, maybe it could work for her, and she could give Poppy his last dying wish.”

“So you’re looking for a guy who will move to California and marry her?” I tried to soften my voice and remove any trace of skepticism. It was obvious Lisa cared for her friend. It wasn’t her fault her friend was a few sandwiches short of a picnic to think anyone would participate in a plan that outrageous. I looked at the picture on the cell phone once more. Her devotion to her grandfather spoke of a tender heart, but that didn’t mean I’d changed my mind. The whole idea was ludicrous.

Lisa nodded.

“Well, I think it’s sweet,” Aunt Margaret said.

She would. Women always thought ridiculous equaled romantic.

Uncle David rubbed his chin. “It could work.”

“What?” I whipped my head in his direction. That man sitting at the head of the table was assuredly not my practical, logical uncle. Everyone at the table had lost their minds.

“In this day and age, people are always falling in and out of love like it’s some kind of rock to be stumbled over. Love is a choice. Yes, you can feel love for someone. Just look at these two here.”

Sam and Lisa smiled at each other, and I suppressed my immature urge to make gagging noises at them.

“Some days the feeling is strong. So strong you think you might burst. Other days the feeling is so insignificant you might believe it isn’t even there anymore. Margaret and I have been married for thirty-two years, and not all of them were rainbows and roses, let me tell you. Some days I think we were ready to strangle each other. But we made a commitment to one another in our vows, and we choose each day to love each other. I wouldn’t trade this woman for anything in the world.”

He reached over and brought the back of Aunt Margaret’s hand to his lips. “She is the light of my life.” After mouthing “I love you” to his still-blushing bride, Uncle David returned his attention to the rest of us around the table. “But the truth is, whether you feel it or not, you still have to choose to love. If someone went down there and chose to love this girl no matter what, then I think it could work.”

I thought about what happened to my parents. Dad claimed he and mom had grown apart over the years until he didn’t recognize the woman who shared his bed. He said the love between them was lost. As if love was like a pair of keys that a person could misplace. Uncle David’s logic sounded much more, well, logical to me. But this whole conversation was so bizarre. It was hard to wrap my mind around.

Looking back at Lisa, I asked again, still overwhelmed, “Eliezer?”

This time her nod was accompanied with a smile that lit her face, and she laughed. She was enjoying my befuddlement.

“So, Eliezer,” I said. “Have you asked God to show you a sign so you know who this husband is supposed to be? I mean, that is what your biblical predecessor did, right?”

Her eyes twinkled as she stared at me with an odd look.

“What?” I looked at Sam but found he was eyeing me with the same bemused expression on his face that Lisa had. “Was it something I said?”

9

Rebekah

TCHAIKOVSKY’S “THE NUTCRACKER Suite” pierced the silence in my truck as I drove along the pothole-ridden dirt road. I leaned over and picked up the ringing phone, which had previously been tossed on the passenger side of the bench seat.

“Hello?” I tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder and returned both hands to the steering wheel. Just in time too, because I had to swerve left in order to miss a crater-sized pit in the road. The truck bounced along the washboard divots, the springs in the seat of my ’85 Dodge vaulting my backside into the air.

“Hello, Becky, this is Dr.—”

Please God. Not Dr. Henshaw. Not Poppy. Not now.

“Smuthers.”

I released the breath I’d been holding, my hands loosening the death grip on the steering wheel. No reason to get upset. Yet. Dr. Smuthers was a vet and had nothing to do with my grandfather’s care.

“What can I do for you, Dr. Smuthers?”

“Animal control has picked up another horse from the Bronson place.”

She didn’t have to supply any other information. Anyone who drove by the Bronson residence would weep at the sight of their horses. This was the third horse in the last two months that had been confiscated due to animal cruelty from malnutrition. The other two horses’ hips had protruded in such a sickening way. They were so skinny I could’ve literally counted every rib and every vertebra without the need of an X-ray. Being the closest rescue facility in a fifty-mile radius, the two horses had come to reside with me at the ranch.

My cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk in autumn as I exhaled a long, deep breath. It looked as if I was about to inherit one more horse. It wasn’t that I didn’t love the pitiful creatures—I did. It just broke my heart to see them so abused and mistreated.