The Lesson (35 page)

“Kevin hadn’t planned on bringing you groceries that night. He and Lawrence had driven down to Santa Clara from the ship, and their original plan was to stop by your apartment to see you because Kevin wanted Lawrence to meet you. Afterward Kevin was supposed to bring Lawrence by my place to see me. For some reason Kevin changed his plans and decided to bring you groceries, but by then it was too late in the evening to shop. All the stores were closed, so he and Lawrence drove to a convenience store and bought what they could.”

“Ah, that makes sense.” Gina purposely kept quiet about how she had told Kevin that very night to stop coming around. It was painful to think about, and there was no reason to speak of it with Julianne, especially because that part of the story Kevin had evidently chosen not to share with his friends.

The girls returned to the dining room.

“My ears were burning the whole time,” said Larry, smiling broadly.

“Oh pooh. You flatter yourself,” said Julianne, scooting into the booth next to Larry. Kevin scooted further over so that Gina could slide in next to him.

“Well, if not me, that only leaves one other person to talk about,” said Larry.

Gina was hot with embarrassment. Kevin couldn’t possibly know that he was the center of the ladies’ room conversation, but she preferred not to drop any clues, and she hoped Julianne would think to keep quiet as well. She couldn’t get her mind off the things she’d learned from Julianne, and she didn’t want her face to give away her thoughts. A tsunami was building inside her, her emotions shifting and tossing, being pushed along by a mighty wave of powerful revelations. She had always known that Kevin was infatuated with her, but she hadn’t realized that his affections had reached so far back or that they were so intense. In the early days she’d felt nothing at all for him. Her heart had changed since then. But did her affection come close to the depth of his? She wasn’t sure. Kevin was nothing like the man she had thought would make her happy. But she couldn’t deny that, when they were talking on the phone or sitting across from each other in a restaurant discussing things important to them both, she felt happy indeed. Not only that, she felt safe with Kevin, almost a kind of rest. But she had always assumed that peaceful feeling was the result of not worrying about what to say or wear to impress. She had never associated it with love.

Then she saw it so clearly: There was a fine line between friendship and love. But all these months had passed, and still what wasn’t clear was which side of that line—in her heart—Kevin was on. About then Kevin squeezed her hand under the table. She turned and looked in his eyes and smiled. Did he suspect he had been the subject of the girls’ conversation? If he did he gave nothing away.

“I can’t imagine why you’d want to listen to two Robert Redford and Warren Beatty fans go on about other men’s hair and dimples. You’d probably get more excited discussing the main attraction in ‘Jaws,’” said Julianne, throwing a smoke screen over their discussion in the ladies’ room. Gina looked at her with gratitude.

The waiter, clad all in white cotton except for a solid red scarf around his neck, arrived with the Bento boxes. The fish, rice, and vegetables were delicious and beautifully prepared in black boxes with shiny red lacquered compartments, a neat little compartment for each colorful entrée or side, but
Gina was too distracted to appreciate the chef’s artistry. They ate their lunch accompanied by a lot of jokes and Westpac stories, and then the couples parted, each promising to get together soon for a foursome.

“You’re awfully quiet,” said Kevin as they drove down I-680. “You didn’t have a good time?”

“Oh yes, I had a good time. Everything was wonderful. The Flint was very interesting. Your shop, the big guns. Larry is fun. It was nice to see Julianne again. I’m glad for them. They seem happy. Lunch was good. The weather was perfect, too.”

“Then perhaps you ought to tell your face that you had a good time.”

“I’m just thinking, that’s all.”

“On what?”

She didn’t answer at once. “There’s a reason why God made our thoughts private.”

“True.”

The mental tape she’d made of her conversation with Julianne in the ladies’ room continued to play, over and over, in the back of her mind the whole way back to Santa Clara. It was still playing as they pulled up to the curb in front of her apartment.

They sat in her car and gazed through the windshield a while. The sun had dipped halfway below the horizon in a blaze of red. Gold-tipped pink clouds formed a heavenly halo that filled the western edge of the twilight sky.

“Kevin, I can’t invite you in. I told you I’m falling behind in my school work because I’m doing something with you or talking on the phone to you all the time. I have to study tonight, and it’s already late. And you have to drive all the way back to the ship.”

And she needed to think.

“I understand,” he said. Then he took off his glasses, leaned over the emergency brake, and kissed her sweetly on the mouth.

Her heart started that involuntary pounding again. “How am I supposed to concentrate on seventeenth century lit when you do that?”

“Keep your goal in front of you. I do. Get all the knowledge you can while you have the chance. ‘Knowledge is power.’
Meditations
,” said Kevin.

“That’s Francis Bacon. How’d you know that?”

“I finished the B’s in the encyclopedia a long time ago.”

The Jacobs’ Home, Cornell Drive, Santa Clara

“Please pass the Parmesan.”

“Sure, Dad.” Gina picked up the petite crystal bowl filled with freshly grated cheese and handed it to her father.

“What’s happening at school? How’s your grades?”

Mr. Jacobs used a teaspoon, and tapping it gently over another finger, sprinkled the sharp cheese over his steaming plate of ravioli and sugo. The Jacobs’ little kitchen was filled with the good smells and familiar sounds of a family dinner. Except this was not their weekly Sunday afternoon meal. It was a Thursday night, Gina’s twenty-first birthday. A homemade chocolate cake with vanilla frosting sat waiting on the kitchen counter for the after-dinner candles and silly birthday song. It was just Gina’s family, including her older sister and baby niece. Traditional but nice.

“My grades? Hmmm. My grades. I can honestly say that my grades are a true reflection of the amount of time I’ve been studying lately.”

One of Gina’s younger sisters snorted.

“Don’t be a smart aleck,” said Mr. Jacobs, directing his ire at Gina.

Mr. Jacobs
did not tolerate flippancy, likely because of the strict way he’d been brought up. When Gina was a little girl she once asked him to tell her about the worst spanking he’d had as a child. It was one of hers favorite growing-up stories: One night at dinner Grandpa Roy had asked the younger Jacobs which piece of chicken he wanted his pa to put on his plate. The little boy replied, “I’ll have the part that went over the fence last.” Grandpa Jacobs didn’t tolerate flippancy, either.

“I’m sorry, Dad. But it is a fact that my grades also reflect the amount of hours I devote to Big Bick’s. Me and Bick, we’re tight, you know.”

“Your mother and I aren’t sending you to college to become an expert at pouring coffee and filling ketchup bottles.”

“I know, Dad. I appreciate what you and Mom are doing for me. But I won’t be working at Big Bick’s forever. I’m applying for law school in the fall. Before you know it, this will all be in the past. We’ll laugh about it one day.”

Something scratched against Gina’s soul like sandpaper the second the words left her mouth. She felt shaky inside. Would she really apply to law school? Why couldn’t she get peace of mind on this issue?

“You could move back home. Then you wouldn’t have to work so many hours. We have an empty bedroom, you know.”

How could she not know about that blessed begging bedroom? She heard about it every time she came to dinner. That and her lack of an attorney boyfriend.

“Thanks to you and Mom, I have a place near campus. And near my job. That alone frees up time.” Perhaps if she started the first round with diplomatic cheer the match would end with two people still
standing. Everybody happy. Win-win.

“How’s your plumber friend?” said Mrs. Jacobs.

Gina sighed. She would settle for a draw.

“He’s much better. He liked your chicken soup.”

“Good,” said Mrs. Jacobs.

“When do we get to meet him?” said Mr. Jacobs.

“Actually, I was thinking you might like to have him over for dinner sometime,“ said Gina. “I’ve told him about Mom’s great Italian cooking. I think you’d both like him too.”

The question was when. Gina still wasn’t certain how to approach the delicate issue of timing. Were they ready to put their disappointment over Michael behind? It was a matter of reading her parents, especially her mother. Thankfully now that
her father had brought it up, she wouldn’t have to debate it to death anymore.

“Is he Italian?” asked Mrs. Jacobs.

“No, but he loves noodles.”

Gina’s mother looked at her quizzically. “Catholic?”

A rabbit punch. Gina took a moment to recover. “In the universal sense of the word, yes.”

“The other word for those is Protestant,” said Mr. Jacobs, the third man in the ring. Her weaving had not worked.

“He goes to that loony bin church of yours, doesn’t he?” said Mrs. Jacobs.

That tone again. Stay calm. “Kevin visits my church sometimes. But he’s not a member. He goes to a church in San Jose. A big church. Los Gatos Christian. They have a lot of outreach ministries. Like to the poor ... similar to St. Justin’s.”

There. She had stayed calm and kept her voice at normal speaking volume after all. Exude sang-froid, Gina reminded herself, bringing up one of her vocabulary words from a long list she studied weekly to improve herself since she had started at the university. As in, “The witnesses stated that the young woman killed the older woman with complete sang-froid,” which is fancy French for
in cold blood.

Mrs. Jacobs looked skeptical. She started to speak. “I think—”

The front gate squeaked before she could finish.

“I’ll get it,” said Gina. Saved by the bell. She jumped up from behind the table and squeezed between her younger sister’s chair and the wall to be the first person to the front door.

There was Kevin carrying his oversize black leather Bible and wearing his moldy suit, which by now Gina knew was the only one he owned. “You only need one,” he had told her. But he was wearing a new tie, the most garish she’d ever seen. It had a six-inch-high image of the Golden Gate Bridge front and center. Not little bitty Golden Gate bridges scattered over a dark background like most theme ties, which nearly always have enough sense to sit down and shut up. No, Kevin’s tie was unique: one, big, loud Golden Gate Bridge, big enough to span not only the San Francisco Bay but the entire Pacific. Behind the Golden Gate was an even more rare sight in the Bay Area: a clear blue sky without a trace of fog or cloud.

Who would have guessed? The bridge was orange.

“I’m sorry to barge in, Gina. I’ve been looking for you. I need to talk to you.”

“Hi Kevin. I’m eating my birthday dinner with my family right now,” she said, speaking directly to the bridge.

“Yes! Happy birthday! I didn’t forget. It’s just that something has come up and I wanted to talk to you right away. I was nearby so I decided not to bother searching for a pay phone. But I can come back in a little while. I didn’t mean to interrupt a family dinner.”

Gina thought he looked a trifle agitated, but that was understandable since he had not called first. To be sure, though, most of her attention was taken up with the bridge. She couldn’t take her eyes off it.

“I didn’t mean it like that. Come on in. It’s okay. We were just talking about you. My family wants to meet you.”

Kevin stepped through the door
way into the foyer. Before they could round the corner and step into the kitchen, Gina grabbed his arm.

“It doesn’t light up, does it?” She spoke low so the others wouldn’t hear.

“What are you talking about?”

“Your tie. You don’t squeeze something in your pocket and make it light up, do you?”

“I wish. They were fresh out of that type. But I put two on back order.”

Gina’s heart felt like it was going over a big hump on a roller coaster. UP then DOWN. “Two?” she said.

“One for me and one for your father.”

She looked him in the eyes, alarm reflected in her own. “You’re kidding, right?”

Kevin only raised his eyebrows.

“Well, bring him in,” called Mr. Jacobs from the kitchen.

Gina and Kevin stepped into the kitchen, and as they did, she watched as five pairs of eyes went to Kevin, or rather, Kevin’s tie. Then his oversized Bible. She gently took his Bible out from under his arm and set it on the counter and then started the introductions. Mr. Jacobs drafted the youngest sister, Maria, to bring in another chair. Mrs. Jacobs got up and set another place at the already crowded table. Gina and her sisters began passing plates and bowls of food to Kevin.