Читать книгу Promises - Roger Elwood - Страница 11

A nother side of Kyle that Carla saw was his exceptional thoughtfulness, which never seemed put on but to come from the center of his soul…

Her parents both had had to be confined to a retirement center months before she won her Oscar, and so they couldn’t be in the audience at the ceremonies that night. She had arranged for a videotape of the ceremonies and a few days later visited her parents at the center, but Alzheimer’s disease’s relentless march had speeded up a bit, and no one could be certain how much her mother understood about what was going on around her. As for her father, caring for his beloved had proved too demanding, bringing on him a stroke that left most of his body paralyzed.

Kyle and she had visited them for the first time just two weeks ago, and Carla would never forget what one of the nurses had told her.

“Treat him good!” the heavyset woman whispered to her while Kyle was in the men’s room.

“Kyle?” Carla replied. “I wouldn’t do otherwise.”

“He’s a treasure.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s something like when we bring in animals now and then.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is a bond that develops almost immediately, it never seems to fail. Cats especially are a real blessing to these people, you know. Something in a cat, a sensitivity that is just beautiful to witness. The elderly, even the ones worst off, seem to come out of some kind of inner world for the few minutes that they can hold those warm, purring bodies.”

“What does this have to do with Kyle?”

“It’s in him, too, that ability to connect with people. I’ve never seen anything like that. What a doctor he would make! This friend of yours is special. I’ve watched him. He seems to ease the pain of anyone whose hand he holds. I think he does repair their emotions. This lasts only as long as he is with me, but, then, it may be a continuous process, and this is just an awfully important first step.”

The nurse stopped speaking. Smiling, she added, “What it must be like to have him hold you in his arms. He must be a passionate man.”

Carla agreed that he was.

“You are real lucky,” the nurse remarked.

“It’s not luck,” Carla told her honestly. “It’s God opening up his heart and mine to one another.”

“But you might never have met him. That’s luck, the fact that you did, right?”

“No, it isn’t. It’s pure and simple—an answer to a prayer for Kyle and for me. I was lonely. So was he. We felt that way before we ever met one another.”

The nurse nodded as she smiled strangely, and then went about her duties elsewhere in the center.

Carla had lost track of Kyle, but assumed he would be with her parents.

She was right.

He was kneeling in front of her mother’s wheelchair.

Normally, looking impossibly thin-faced, frail, not much more than a living skeleton, Rosemary Gearhart would not have been able to pay any attention to him or anyone else unless she was in a comparatively and increasingly rare lucid moment, but there was no way to predict when this would happen.

But, for Kyle, it would prove different. Every time he subsequently visited her, she would react like she did on that first occasion.

As Carla stood in the doorway, her mother was reaching up to touch Kyle’s smooth cheek.

“Where’s the beard?” she said.

He chuckled agreeably as he told her, “I just don’t have a coarse beard, ma’am.”

Her fingers touched his strong chin.

“Nice,” she said knowingly.

Kyle was surprised at the way she talked, and delighted that she was responding as well as she did.

“Why, thank you, Miss Gearhart!” he told her.

She touched his lips next.

“Are you a good kisser?” she asked abruptly.

“I don’t know how to answer that.”

Carla saw a chance to enter the little tableau.

“He is a very good kisser, Mother,” she said, smiling broadly, while Kyle blushed a very deep red.

Her mother looked up at her and, then, in an instant, the blankness that was part of Alzheimer’s returned, as though her comprehension, to the extent that she could grasp anything at all, was now trained on a scene beyond that one, a scene that only she could visualize.

That would not be Kyle’s only visit.

Over the coming weeks, he would return to the center half a dozen times. Carla did not have to ask him to join her.

“Are you going to visit your folks this evening?” he would say.

“Yes, I am,” she replied. “You’ve got my schedule down pat, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

During the other visits, Kyle seemed to be in demand all over the center, with an astonishing number of requests for a little of his time before he left. Gradually the visits began to last longer.

Carla could not have been more pleased because she was privileged to witness another side of Kyle’s personality that only confirmed what she felt about him.

She would never forget what he told her on the way back to her house that first time, after she asked him about her mother and the other residents at the center.

“What was it like?” she spoke.

“Strange at first,” he said.

“How do you mean strange?”

“I am usually a little shy being that close to strangers. Onstage, it’s not difficult for me at all. The audience is a sea of faces and they all blend together.”

“You can say that again!” Carla echoed his reaction.

“After all, I am not one-on-one with any of them. But today, I must have spent time with at least a dozen folks, aging men and women who needed me a lot more than anyone in any audience has.”

“At the start, it was awkward for you back there.”

“It’s the shyness I mentioned. But that passed soon enough.”

“I’m really sorry that I subjected you to all that, Kyle, and without much warning.”

“Oh, no, Carla, it was fine. I was enjoying myself but then, at some point, it went beyond ordinary enjoyment.”

“And became—” Carla prompted him.

He paused, recalling how he felt, the expressions on pale, wrinkled, liver-mark-splotched faces.

“I thought of what it would be like when my own parents reach that stage in their lives,” he said. “Could I help them in some way also?”

“You were saying that the way you felt went beyond carnal enjoyment as such.”

Kyle leaned over and kissed the tip of her nose.

“Something spiritual,” he said, “my soul touching theirs.”

She rubbed her arm.

“That sounds wonderful but—”

“Eerie?”

“Exactly the word I would have used!”

“I agree with you. But it was pure and beautiful, not dark and sinister, Carla. God’s purpose was being fulfilled.”

…God’s purpose was being fulfilled

“I need to learn a great deal. I don’t have the fix on His Will that you seemed to be blessed with, Kyle.”

“But you can learn. That’s the wonderful thing about faith. It can only grow, and along with that growth comes experience.”

He was holding her hand in one of his own.

“Some are willing and will learn nothing,” he told her. “Those who are eager to learn will be given much.”

“Kyle?” she asked.

“Yes, my love?” he replied with such warmth that she wanted to hold him so tightly that their hearts would be practically touching one another, making it difficult for Carla to control her emotions.

“I have one criticism,” she said, gulping a couple of times.

Kyle was frowning as he asked, “Criticism of—?”

Carla had not meant to make him nervous in any way but that was how he seemed to be reacting.

“You, Kyle.”

“Me?”

He looked so good, his bright blond hair glistening as a ray of sunlight framed the top of his head.

“A halo,” she muttered, trying to get out of the corner into which she had backed herself. “You’ve actually got a halo around your—”

“You’re changing the subject, Carla.”

“I guess I am.”

He was teasing her a bit but with an edge of seriousness as well and said, “You were about to tell me what that one criticism is.”

“I guess I was.”

“What is it? No more evasion, okay?”

“Okay,” she told him.

“Well?”

Carla hesitated, not sure when or if she should say anything after all.

“Go ahead…” Kyle kept prodding. “There is not one word or a thousand in the English language that you would use that could ever offend me or make me want to reconsider our relationship, okay, Carla?”

She was grateful for that reassurance.

“You are beginning to sound like some ultrasophisticated whoever from New York City or someplace. It’s almost like you are putting on a facade that you hope people will think is real. You weren’t like that when we first met. You sounded much more—”

“—normal?” he finished the sentence for her.

“Well, yes, that’s right.”

“You’re not the only one to point that out to me. My father said something just a few days ago.”

Kyle pulled the car over to the side of the road.

“Carla,” he said earnestly, “I’ve dated lots of women, you know. I think each one was special in her own way. But you’re different. You are very special. I find that I am always stretching myself emotionally to keep up with you.”

“But I don’t understand why you would feel that way. We’re on the same level. I’ve never felt that I was above you.”

He seemed unconvinced.

“I want to be a proper husband, a man you can respect. Rely on. I don’t know all that much about you yet I know enough to say that I am looking forward to us spending the rest of our lives together. And I don’t want you to be ashamed of me when we meet those big-time executives you know. It would be terrible for your career to have people saying that you settled for me out of wild passion, that there was no real love involved. What if important folks started whispering, ‘He might be a good lover but he doesn’t have a brain in his head.”‘

Kyle cupped her head in his hands.

“And I want to think that I can be a proper father to any children the Lord blesses us with, Carla, that they can be proud of me, too.”

Listening to Kyle talk about their future, about marriage and the children they would raise together someday, Carla felt so moved with love she couldn’t speak. She took his hand, threading her fingers through his. Staring down at their hands clasped together, she spoke in a quiet voice, one straight from her heart.

“I respect you more than any man I have ever known. More than anyone rich, or powerful or famous. I am proud to be with you and the proudest day of my life will be the day I become your wife.” She smiled tenderly at him. “I hope we’ll be blessed with children. And I pray I’ll be a good mother. I thought I’d done it all and knew it all when I met you. But now I know there’s still a lot I have to learn about life and about relationships, too.”

He slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “We have a lifetime ahead of us, my love. To discover it all together.”