I needed to tell her about Brady, to ask her advice about how to fix what was broken between us. I wanted to tell her I was learning photography, and how I hoped taking pictures might give me some insight into my mother. Mostly, I just wanted to have a conversation with someone who was the embodiment of the life that waited for me in Lancaster County, should I return to it to stay.
But all I could do was to plug the phone back in, feed Frisco his dinner, and open a can of soup for myself. As it heated, I went into my dad’s study to return one camera to the cabinet and find the charger for the other.
I found it easily. As I was leaving the room, charger in hand, I noticed the beautiful potted palms over by the French doors and wondered if they needed watering or if that was something the housecleaners did. Moving to the kitchen, I plugged the camera into the charger, checked on my soup, and then filled up a big glass of water and carried it back to the study, figuring I was better safe than sorry.
It wasn’t until I had already poured out half the glass that I realized the plants were fake. The water pooled at the base of the “trunk” then spilled over onto the floor. My face burning with embarrassment even though no one else had been here to see, I ran to get a towel and cleaned up the mess as best I could.
After that, I just sat in the kitchen and ate my soup in silence, feeling utterly homesick. I longed for the place where I was loved, where I was surrounded by family. Where potted plants were made of real leaves and grew in actual dirt.
When I was done, I still felt the need to do something active to work out my frustration, so I went into the garage and grabbed the skateboard that had been propped up against the wall since I’d pulled it from the neighbor’s trash yesterday morning. I didn’t know anything about skateboards, but I knew wheels and I knew movement, and I had a feeling I would be able to figure things out.
Fifteen minutes later, I gave up. The problem wasn’t that I couldn’t fix the thing. It was that I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it in the first place. It seemed fine to me. I even climbed onto it myself, gave a little push off, and went rolling across the garage. Fearing I might slip and put a nick or a dent into one of my dad’s beloved cars, I finally stepped back off of the skateboard and put it away. Maybe Brady had some experience with these things and could take a look at it later and give me a little insight. It surely hadn’t ended up in the trash for no reason.
Back inside, I fiddled around with the camera, taking pictures of Frisco and trying to imagine those nine squares. The pictures looked terrible and his eyes were a demonic red in all of them. I read for a while, looked at all the images in the German pictorial where my mother had written something, and then scooped some ice cream into a dish. I turned on the TV for company but had a hard time finding something to watch that interested me, even among the hundreds of channels at my fingertips.
I settled on a documentary about sled dog racing. While I ate my ice cream, Lark texted me.
Hey. Wanna come to church with me tomorrow? It’s at 11.
Lark had said she was a Christian, but I had no idea what kind of church she attended, and that alone interested me. I decided to go, and if Brady didn’t sleep in on Sundays, I thought maybe he could come too. Dad and Liz had a church of their own but attended only sporadically, partly because of his travel schedule and her weekend hours as a nurse. But also because, as my dad stated some time ago, he’d outgrown the need for church attendance, preferring a quieter, more private approach to faith. When I tried to counter that, he had cut me off, saying he didn’t think he needed to discuss his decision with anyone, especially me.
Looking down at my phone, I tried to text Lark back to say that I would like to go and that I was going to ask Brady if he wanted to come, but I was making so many mistakes and getting so many words wrong that finally I just called her instead.
“Don’t like texting?” she answered.
“It takes too long. And it doesn’t seem necessary when I can just talk to you. I wanted to say yes, I’d like to go. Do you mind if I invite Brady along too?”
“Sure, though it’s mostly geared for twentysomethings. You know, people our age.”
People our age. I realized that was one for the list.
The generations are all so divided, even in church.
“Tyler?”
“Ya, I’m here. Your church sounds like our singings.”
“Your what?”
“We have singings every other Sunday night for young people. Our twentysomethings. And teensomethings.”
Lark laughed. “Well, we do more than just sing. The messages are relevant to our age and what matters to us. The people at this church care about orphans and poverty and the oppressed and the exploited. That’s why I like it. The leadership actually puts actions behind their words. You can’t just pray for the hungry when it’s in your power to do more. Know what I mean?”