Sanctity (30 page)

Charlie didn’t stay long after we finished
our tale.  He was muddy from the waist down and decided to
decline dinner, though both Aunt Margaret and I were imploring
him.

“No, really, I would love to but I think I’ve
tracked enough debris into your kitchen for one day.  I really
need to get home and clean myself up.”

I was not in much better
shape than Charlie and decided I needed to 
clean myself up
 as well. 
I waved
goodbye
from the stairs as Margaret walked him to the front
door.

“Goodnight, Charlie, I don’t know what you
did but I can’t thank you enough,” Aunt Margaret whispered as she
sent him on his way.

We were friends before we were anything else
so it was awkward for me to transition into a relationship with him
but Charlie was patient and generous with his feelings.  As we
grew closer I thought more and more of him and having never had
strong feelings for anyone else I decided that I was very much in
love with him.  We ended up dating throughout our senior year
and he did everything he could to keep our relationship going once
we graduated.   

After high school I followed through with my
intentions and went to the Culinary Academy.  It was a long
commute from Margaret’s so she helped me get a little apartment
about halfway between school and home.  Charlie ended up not
much further from either of us after he decided to study
engineering at one of the nearby technical colleges and moved into
one of the dorms. 

I pursued my degree in culinary arts first
then decided that desserts were my true passion and enrolled for
another two years in the pastry arts.  Charlie graduated one
weekend and I graduated the next.  He took a job and moved
into an apartment downtown.  Our lives were starting to take
shape and seemed to be steering us down a predictably safe and
secure path. 

We visited Margaret often and one night not
long after graduation I mentioned to her and Charlie over dinner
that I wanted to open up my own shop someday and they both seized
upon the idea before I could fully explain my plans.  I had
hoped to get a little experience working for someone else
first, maybe even manage a bakery at some point and progressively
work my way towards a coffee or dessert shop or something along
those lines of my own.  I never had a chance to express any of
those thoughts though. 

“Why wait,” they both persisted. 

Before I knew it the two of them had me in
the thick of things and I was quickly realizing that there was much
more to starting a business than I ever envisioned.  After
finding a suitable location and months of planning Charlie and I
began putting the finishing touches on the café I envisioned. 
We were at the shop the weekend before we were scheduled to open
and I was edgy with nervousness as I imagined a couple of
all-nighters so that when I opened the doors Monday morning I would
have something to offer the first of what I hoped would be many
customers.

“No, a little more to the left,” I
exasperatedly motioned with my hand and called to Charlie as I
pushed my unproductive thoughts aside.   He adjusted the
table a few more inches from the door.

“Now back, more towards me.  That’s
good.  Right there.”

Charlie was looking at me
with his 
are you sure this
time 
expression again.

“Yeah, that should be good,” I circled the
table to be certain there was enough room to navigate between the
front door and the other nearby tables.  “OK, let’s get the
stools.”

Charlie followed me to the back loading dock
and we started bringing the stools in one by one.  I gave him
an apologetic smile as I reminded myself that I would never have
gotten through it all without him and Margaret and their constant
encouragement.  They were both with me every step of the way
while I tried to put my business together and I knew I needed to
show them, especially Charlie, how grateful I was for that.  I
couldn’t help sighing as we placed the last of the stools and I
looked to Charlie with relief. 

“That’s it,” I breathed.

Charlie took a step towards me and gathered
me into a loving embrace, “You did a great job.”  He gave me a
kiss on the cheek as he took a step back and surveyed the results
of all our hard work.

“We did a great job,” I corrected.  “I
could never have done this without you and without Margaret. 
I can’t believe we’re here.  I can’t believe I’m so close to
getting started.”  I looked at my watch, “Let’s call it a
day,” I checked that the doors were locked, took Charlie’s hand and
led us to the back dock by way of the kitchen.  I took one
last look around at all the shiny new appliances and countertops
and the equipment resting in each of their appointed positions
before flipping the lights.  “I thought I would like to eat
out tonight but now I’m not so sure.”

“There’s always take-out, it’s the best of
both worlds.”

“OK, your place or mine?”

“You know, it could be our place,” he was
looking at me with a touch of humor but I knew Charlie was being
sincere. 

It wasn’t the first time it had come up but I
still thought we were too young to take that step.  At least
that was my excuse more often than not.  There was just
something so declarative about living together.  It seemed
like the next step towards the inevitable proposal then marriage
and all the other trappings that came along with it. 

I truly cared for Charlie; he was my best
friend and besides Margaret and Kaley he was my most trusted
confidant.   He seemed to understand me better than I
understood myself sometimes and was determined to keep me from
succumbing to the sense of loss I often felt and never seemed to be
able to shake.  I always imagined that it was losing my
parents that caused me to feel the way I did even though it had
been nearly a dozen years since they passed away and I didn’t
remember them at all. 

Charlie suggested that it wasn’t just that I
lost my parents but that I had lost the memories of them as well
which doubled the anguish I felt.  To help steer me away
from it he kept me busy and active, loved and supported me and did
whatever he could think of to keep me grounded in the present.

I knew that was part of the reason Charlie
and Margaret were so intent on having me get the cafe going. 
I often felt it was a conspiracy between the two of them to keep me
as occupied as possible.  It wouldn’t have been the first
time they joined forces.   Either way, I was sure their
efforts were well-intended and certainly heartfelt.

He was looking at me for
some kind of response, “Actually, my place might be easier, I’ll
need to call it an early night so I can get some baking done for
Monday.  I think I’ll work on some cheesecakes, since they
take me the longest and will keep better than any of the other
pastries I want to make.”   I avoided
the 
our place
 comment rather than inviting further discussion of the
topic.

Charlie looked like he was about to say
something important, took a deep breath and instead simply said,
“Fair enough,” and handed me into the car.

I knew our relationship
couldn’t go on like that forever but until Charlie reached the end
of his extensive rope, I would continue to love him to the best of
my abilities.  As he slid into the driver’s seat I reached
over and rested my hand on his leg.  I gave him
an 
I love you
 squeeze and smiled when he glanced over at me.  He
looked a little sad and the smile he sent back seemed somewhat
forced. 

He drove me to my apartment and we quietly
nibbled our take-out.  “Are you staying tonight?” I asked.

“No, not tonight, I have a thing,” Charlie
said.

I was momentarily relieved but Charlie had
used that excuse many times over the past few years.  I had
always trusted Charlie but for some reason I just couldn’t seem to
accept his explanation that night.

“So are you ever going to
tell me what your 
thing 
is?” My words came out a
bit more abrasive than I intended them to.

He looked at me with a quizzical expression,
“Tonight?” he asked.  “Why would you ask me that tonight, when
every other night it has been nothing but passive acceptance from
you?”  He didn’t sound upset just curiously off guard.

“Passive,” I thought to myself, “is that how
Charlie views me, passive?”  His head was tilted and he was
earnestly waiting for an answer.  I honestly didn’t know what
to say, I looked down at my plate and thought about it for a
moment.

“Well, it’s nothing really,” Charlie
continued.  “I’m just meeting an old friend.”

Missy came to my mind but I knew it couldn’t
be her.  She lived half-way across the country and probably
hadn’t given either of us a second thought.  “OK, guy friend
or girl friend?”

Charlie shook his head, “Guy, if you must
know but please don’t ask me anything more.”

I really wished he hadn’t
said that last bit,
anything
more
, because suddenly I had a million
questions.  I looked up from my plate and was about to start
rattling them off but there was something in his expression that
told me it would have been a dangerous pursuit.  He took his
napkin from his lap and tossed it onto the table.  He pushed
his chair back, walked to where I was sitting, kissed me on the
cheek and the next thing I knew he was gone.

I just sat dumbfounded staring across the
table at the empty seat.  I had a fanatical impulse to follow
him but quickly dismissed it.  “This is Charlie we are talking
about,” I said to myself, “he loves me, whatever he is doing, he
must have his reasons and it is wrong for me to doubt him when he
has never given me any reason to; until tonight.  Tonight,” I
wondered, “why tonight of all nights?”

I busied myself with cleaning up our dirty
dishes and disposing the take-out containers.  When I was done
I took my shower and got ready for bed.  I was still puzzling
over our dinner conversation and couldn’t seem to shake the
question, “why tonight?” it just repeated over and over again in my
mind.  I decided I needed a distraction and sat down to watch
the evening news. 

Once I got to the correct channel I found
that the meteorologist was on and she was talking about the best
times for viewing the annual Perseid Meteor Shower.  She was
pointing to different areas of the country and rattling off times
and for some reason I was fascinated by the idea of getting up a
few hours before dawn and checking it out for myself. 

I began to wish Charlie had stayed; it would
have been a nice romantic gesture for me to wake him in the middle
of the night and surprise him with a spontaneous little
adventure.  Thinking about it made me realize that I didn’t
really do enough things like that to show Charlie that I
cared.  He would often surprise me with a love note in my
lunch bag or flowers on my nightstand, or with some other
knick-knack like the pair of earrings he once got me that
were shaped like rolling pins.  I turned off the TV and
made my way to my bedroom.  I set my alarm so I could get an
early start at the shop and crawled beneath the covers. 

The morning came too soon and it was dreary,
dark and raining quite hard. I ended up hitting the snooze a number
of times before I dragged myself out of bed.  I was not
feeling particularly hungry so after I brewed a cup of coffee I
snagged an apple from the bowl and headed out to the shop.  It
was just getting light as I pulled out of the complex and started
the short drive downtown.

I parked in the rear of the building where
the loading dock was and hurried in through the back
entrance.  I was sure to lock it back up once I was inside the
shop and tucked my things into the office.  I sat for a minute
trying to decide on how many and which varieties of cheesecakes I
wanted to bake.  Once I had a plan I rummaged through the
kitchen and lined up everything that I would need to get
started.  It was going to take a while for the cream cheese to
soften enough for me to use so I wandered back to my office and
started making a schedule for the other pastries I wanted to
bake.

After I was satisfied with my planning I went
back to the kitchen and gave the cheese a little poke.  It was
still too hard to use so I grabbed some sticky notes from the
office and went out to the café and started labeling the bakery
cases with where I wanted to display everything once I put the
finishing touches on them.  It took a while for me to be able
to visualize it all and I ended up shifting notes from one section
of the cases to the next and sometimes back again.

The whole process was
ho-hum and the more thought I put into it the less I liked my
ideas.  I felt distracted by Charlie’s abrupt departure the
previous night and with wondering who he went to see and why. 
It seemed like an obligation to him and not, as he said, like a
visit to an 
old
friend
.  There was nothing in his
expression that indicated that he found any joy in what he was
about to do.  “And why can’t he share this with me?”  I
couldn’t help dwelling on why he would feel that whatever it was,
he needed to keep it from me.

I started imagining all kinds of
possibilities, mostly unsavory ones.  Did Charlie have a drug
habit I was unaware of, or did he owe someone a gambling
debt.  Maybe he had a crazy relative that he didn’t want me to
know about in case it would scare me away from him; that I might
start thinking that he might somehow be tainted with the same
affliction.

I put my hands over my eyes and tried to
shake my head clear of all the restless and unproductive thoughts
swimming around in it.  I took one last glance at the display
cases and decided that if anything needed to be changed it could be
done later when everything was ready to be placed inside.