Choose Me (35 page)

“I’ll walk you to the garage,” I said, my voice as cool as ice.

“You don’t have to.”

“I know I don’t have to. I want to,” I said tersely, and grabbed my leather bomber jacket from the coat rack. The jacket caught
on the hook and I pulled on it a little too hard, sending the whole rack crashing to the ground. I yanked the jacket free
and shoved my arms inside. I hoped she didn’t think I was mad at our breaking up, but mad at her specifically for making things
more difficult than necessary.

We didn’t say anything as we walked to the elevator, and I was glad. I was tired of talking and debating. I knew I was going
to miss her, but I would get over it. At least that’s what I kept telling myself. I thought about how long it would be before
I found someone new, and it made me weary.

Shoving my hands into my pockets, I found an old cigarette, but since I didn’t have a lighter I just let it dangle menacingly
out of the corner of my mouth. Eva glanced at me but didn’t comment.

There was a couple on the elevator, kissing noisily beneath a sea of down coats and wool outer garments. Eva froze, but after
I stepped in, she followed. I recognized the guy. He was a British dude who lived two floors above me, in 6C, and was never
at a loss for female company. A couple of months ago, he rang my doorbell in a panic asking to borrow a condom. When I told
him I didn’t have any, he thought I was lying.
“Dude, I’ll pie you bock,”
he cried desperately as if his life depended on it. Judging by the myriad of females he kept, it probably did. Now he glanced
at me over his date’s head, a bored expression on his face as she began working on a hickey on his neck. Eva busied herself
by putting on her coat and hat, searching for her keys, then buttoning her coat, anything to avoid looking at them, or me.

“Are you going to call me?” the woman asked, her voice muffled as she came up for air.

“’Course I’ll ring you, love.”

“Yeah, like you did last time?”

They looked to be in their mid-twenties. I thought of those days with no regrets. It had been years since I told a woman I
would call her but didn’t. I had outgrown that phase of my life and thought I was headed for something more significant with
Eva.

“You got a light?” I asked the dude from 6C.

The girl looked over her shoulder and inspected us from top to bottom, her eyes heavy-laden with sex, then she leaned into
the guy’s neck, hanging on for dear life. He held out a lighter. I took a deep drag and exhaled loudly with exasperation,
relief, and pleasure all rolled up into one.

“Thanks, man.” I could see Eva ignoring all of us, particularly me, staring up at numbers flashing by like she was mesmerized
by the complexity of elevator mechanics.

We all got off at the lower-level parking garage and walked toward opposite sections. As soon as I saw Eva to her car, I turned
and walked back toward the elevator before the doors closed.

“See you, Adam,” she said.

Without turning around, I waved the cigarette in the air.
“Hasta la vista,
baby.” It was childish, but I was beyond caring.

As the doors were closing, I heard the guy from 6C shout: “Hey man, hold the lift, will ya?” I stuck my hand in the doors
and he jumped on, sighing. “Women. They’re all the same, eh?”

“Yeah,” I said, even though the thought that we had anything in common made me ill. He didn’t know how wrong he was.

IT HAD BEEN
too late to stop. I had gone over the line between right and wrong long before I finally surrendered. Although
part of me wanted to stop, the stronger part of me, my powerless flesh, was ready to forge ahead. After Adam and I presumably
broke up at the lakefront, I tried to listen to my soul instead of my mind. But the thought of never seeing Adam again had
resulted in some emotions I hadn’t expected, and I then realized I was no longer in control. I thought if I held out, he would
come around and see things my way. I realized I wanted something more with Adam, something permanent. As the days went by
and he failed to call, I panicked. I lasted two weeks before I went to his place. I had planned to seduce him, give him what
he wanted—what I wanted—and then walk away from him, forever. In my mind a struggle ensued between good and evil, battling
for my soul like politicians vying for a vote.
You can stop him. Don’t stop him; you want him, too. You care about him; he cares about you.

The warning signs had been everywhere before I arrived at Adam’s loft, and I had ignored them all. First, my car wouldn’t
start; when it finally did, it stopped twice. Then came the winter storm warnings.

Initially, Adam resisted, claiming he didn’t want an unwilling participant. But eventually I was able to convince him, using
the old feminine wiles I had learned from my years “in the world,” because I knew that for men, it didn’t really matter when
it came to sex whether the woman wanted it or not. In the end, I did something I had begun after my mother’s death—I made
believe it was happening to someone else. I pretended I was a spectator, watching a scene unfolding in a movie. I allowed
my body to go numb and let Adam finally do what he had wanted as I went through the motions. It minimized the guilt, the blame,
all the mixed feelings I was experiencing. It was a long way from Adam’s front door to his bedroom and he hadn’t dragged me
kicking and screaming, nor had he carried me. I had been a willing participant. When it was over and I came back to reality,
the conviction was much worse.

The entire time I was with Adam, something felt wrong inside, though everything on the outside felt so right. And then he
gave me his back, his well-defined back of muscled terrain, with his shoulders hunched with tension and doubt. I knew he cared
about me, wanted me, maybe even loved me. When he held me in his arms, I could see it in his eyes as they peered intensely
from under his dark eyebrows, so full of emotion, they spoke to me. That moment, heavy in silence, had said it all and, briefly,
what I was doing seemed right.

But not one part of the night’s short-lived passion was enough to suppress my affront to God. He had provided me with several
ways to escape temptation and I had gone around them all. I had defied Him and disregarded the judgment to come, which I knew
would eventually follow.

When Luciano rang the doorbell, I thought,
Don’t do it, Maya,
even though I had. I said a prayer for her, that she wouldn’t go to a motel with him, that she would change her mind and
go home to Alex. The thought of both of us falling into temptation was too much for me.

Driving home, I couldn’t stop the tears, and the more I tried to block them, the more I cried. I hadn’t cried in years. When
I tried to think of the last time I cried—really cried—I drew a blank. After Anthony and Victor had cheated and moved out,
and when the boys left for college, I didn’t cry, perhaps because I knew all of their departures were for the best. At one
point, I had to park and pull myself together, mentally beating myself up for being so weak.

*   *   *

At home, King was frantic from abandonment and hunger. I had never left him alone at night, and he raced back and forth when
I let him out of his kennel, wagging his nub like a wind-up toy.

“I’m sorry, boy. Mommy’s sorry.”

I ignored the voice mail indicator light, knowing that the usual people were wondering where I had spent the night—I was in
no mood to explain myself to anyone. I couldn’t even face my only Judge.

I felt too guilty and upset to pray, so I jumped into the shower and scrubbed my body hard with the loofah brush, imagining
pieces of my soul going down the drain along with the epidermis of my skin. Unable to look at myself in the mirror, I caught
sight of my toothbrush and remembered the extra one in Adam’s medicine cabinet. I wondered how many women had been in that
same bed, had rolled around in the same sheets; I was probably just one of many. After all these years, how could I have been
so stupid? I thought he had probably lied about not being with a woman for almost two years. In one night, my five years of
virtue had disintegrated.
How easily we can be deceived when we allow ourselves to be deceived,
I thought.

Unable to stop my racing thoughts, I turned on the computer to check my e-mail. The first message was from the “Verse of the
Day” website. Immediately, my eyes widened with shame. I thought twice about deleting it, then clicked on the message and
read Psalm 32:4–5:
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin
to you and did not cover my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord”
—
and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

Almost automatically, I covered my eyes with both hands and began my confession, asking God for forgiveness. I crawled into
bed and pulled my Bible from the bookends on the nightstand and turned to Psalm 32. I read and read until my eyes hurt.

When the phone rang, I awoke to find it was already noon. I was irritable from crying, and from my own anger and guilt. To
top it off, my head was killing me, so I knew it was going to be a bad day. Through my pain and irritation, I squinted at
the caller ID and saw it was Maya. If I didn’t talk to her, she’d keep calling.

“Where have you been?!” she screamed in my ear. The accusatory tone in her voice made me even angrier.

“Maya, don’t start—”

“Did you check your voice mail? Why was your cell phone off? Where were you?!”

“I’m not in the mood. Call me later—”

“Eva!” she said sharply. “Listen to me. Eli and Tony are in the hospital.”

“What?” My voice sounded far away, my ears suddenly clogging up.

“They’re at Marion Memorial Hospital.”

“Where is that?” I asked quietly, not yet understanding, not wanting to.

“In Marion, Illinois, a couple of miles south of Carter. There was a shooting on campus last night. It’s all over the news.”

I couldn’t speak, my voice was trapped somewhere deep in the well of my throat.

“Simone and I are on our way over to pick you up. Get ready so we can drive down there.” She quickly gave me the phone number
for the hospital.

It took almost half an hour to get through to a nurse who knew what was going on. She was reluctant to give much information
over the phone, but admitted that Eli and Tony were in serious and critical condition, respectively. Somewhere between the
time I was placed on hold and hung up the phone, a peacefulness shrouded me. My night of sin with Adam was quickly overshadowed
by concern for my sons. I tried to think positively, convince myself that they were alright, with only superficial wounds.
I packed an overnight bag, trying to forget that the nurse had said they were in serious and critical condition, not wanting
to read any more into their meanings.

I turned on the cable news station and before long the screen was filled with images of a SWAT team storming the college with
assault rifles, students being carried to ambulances, others crying and holding on to each other. I dropped into the nearest
chair, frozen to the TV, unable to move as I heard the reporter’s voice-over:
“Another school shooting, this time at a downstate Illinois college campus … There have been eight confirmed dead … At least
ten more students have been taken to two area hospitals … The suspect is believed to have taken his own life …”

Like many mothers living in the city, I feared so many things, but it was the senseless violence, the knowledge that any moment
your child could be taken from you for no reason, that caused the biggest anxiety. The killing of children while playing in
their backyards or sitting in the front window, or walking to the corner store, had become too commonplace. The things I had
feared when my boys left for college were what most parents feared: the temptation of drugs and alcohol, the wild parties,
the uninhibited, destructive sex. But in addition, I feared the influence of other students who had no moral or spiritual
upbringing. More and more, it seemed like there was no escape from the world of terrorism, war and rampant gun violence that
seemed to get worse every year. I thought by sending my sons away from Chicago to a small college town, they would be safe.
But for a long time, I knew there was no such thing as a safe place anymore.

As I waited for Maya, I reached into the bookcase and pulled out the nearest photo album. I slowly flipped through it, escaping
into the happy memories of my boys: what beautiful babies they had been, how happy they looked over the years, how they had
tried my patience. I would give anything to deal with breaking up one of their fights, or cutting classes, anything except
what was happening. How blessed I had been. In a moment of helplessness, I buried my face in my hands and prayed.
Father God, I will never let another man come before You. Just please, let my babies be alright.

During the four-hour drive, made longer and slower by snowdrifts and freezing temperatures, Maya brought me up-to-date on
all that I had missed while I was with Adam. When the hospital couldn’t reach Anthony or me, they called her as the third
emergency contact. She was able to contact Anthony, who was traveling in New York. He had given permission for the two surgeries
Eli required—one for gunshot wounds and the other, a broken leg. Tony had been shot once in the head, but the bullet could
not yet be removed. Apparently, Tony had been visiting someone in Eli’s dorm, where the shooting had taken place. Some of
the students had been trampled in the stampede that followed the shooting as they ran for their lives. The gravity of the
situation was just beginning to sink in. I couldn’t trust myself to speak, so I listened as Simone asked the questions I could
not utter.

We listened to the radio in silence as more details became available. A freshman, despondent over his failing grades and a
cheating girlfriend, had gone on a shooting rampage in Eli’s dorm, where the girlfriend was attending a party. A couple of
students were interviewed, their voices trembling with fear and tears.
“This isn’t supposed to happen here,”
one student said.
It wasn’t supposed to happen anywhere,
I thought. It had become an all-too-familiar scene, “a sign of the times,” Pastor Zeke would remark whenever a new shooting
tragedy or other catastrophe permeated the news, the consequences of an immoral corrupt society. People in church would declare
that we were in “the last days,” that everything that was happening had been predicted long ago.