<< Go Back

A Twisted Rainbow

By Roger E. Bruner

Order Now!

Roberto and I stood up to leave Charlotte's office. When I reached down to open the door, my hand jerked back as if the knob had been scorching hot.
Until two hours ago, I'd felt safe and comfortable in my cocoon. But Charlotte's news had ignited and burned it to the ground, leaving me in the ashes. More than a caterpillar, I wasn't yet a butterfly. Now I was terrified I might never become one.
"Joel, Roberto…"
We turned to face Charlotte again. Her smooth brown face made me sigh as I remembered those rich chocolate bars that had just become a past luxury. How many of the other things I'd taken for granted the past several years would I be denied now?
"Men, I can't tell you everything's going to be all right." Charlotte's voice was cracking. "Things will probably never be the same again, but you already know that." If she'd intended for those words to create a mirage of hope, she wasn't the brilliant young lady I'd always thought she was. "I'll pull you out of this mess as unscathed as I possibly can."
Yeah, right! Unscathed and broke. Busted. You've never had to go from having everything to having nothing. I realize now that I'd been too self-concerned to grasp that she was losing everything too. Charlotte, something like this shouldn't happen to twenty-two-year-old nice guys like Roberto and me. It's not our fault.
But Charlotte wasn't to blame either. We'd rescued her from being our boss at the Shop Thru and made her our accountant. She'd done her best to advise and protect us. If not for her astuteness, we'd be in even worse trouble now. We owed her everything, and yet we had nothing left to pay her with.
I don't recall who finally opened the door, but I almost stumbled when I exited to the hallway. I'd been sitting still so long my legs had fallen asleep.
Still reeling from the news about Investments Unlimited, I suddenly missed my red plastic Extreme Gulp mug-the one I never went anywhere without. I'd taken it into Charlotte's office earlier that morning. It would still be sitting on the floor.
But I wasn't going back for it. Not now. I couldn't face Charlotte's pained expression again.
After shaking my legs one at a time to restore the circulation, I stood in the hallway wondering what to do next.
Roberto must've known, though. He was already on the phone with Gloria. He'd reverted from his normal, picturesque English to excitable, lightning speed, probably-more-than-picturesque Spanish. I'd mastered a fair number of Spanish words since we'd become best friends five years earlier, but I didn't recognize many of the ones he was speaking now.
I was probably better off that way.
Flying home today from the west coast, Chrissie would be inaccessible even by cell phone. Her itinerary was so tightly scheduled that she would probably have to run-literally-to make her connecting flights in both Chicago and Atlanta.
I would break the news in person that evening. When I would be inescapably conscious of the adverse effect on our wedding plans. And on our living arrangements. I'm glad I hadn't thought about those things any sooner.
I needed to unwind. To think. Or to stop thinking.
And to pretend that today was some horrendous nightmare I would soon awaken from. If I hadn't been trying so hard to avoid God, I would've prayed.
I really just needed to go somewhere quiet to sort things out.
By the time I reached the inside door to the garage of our rental house, where we'd provided Charlotte office space in one of the spare rooms, my emotional temperature had risen from surprise to shell-shock, from disillusionment to intense anger. I couldn't have been any closer to the top without going over it-and falling hopelessly down the other side.
I'd have to keep from slamming the door as hard as I felt like doing. A repair now would be catastrophic. We would need every penny of our security deposit back.
Geoffrey, no longer dressed in his formal butler-wear, reached the door first and opened it for me. I sighed. That final courtesy was his gift to me. I tried to smile at him, and he tried smiling back, but neither of us had any reason to look convincingly cheerful.
I opened the door of my red Miata. Since the convertible top was already down, I didn't have to watch out for my head climbing in.
I started fretting. To settle our accounts, would I have to give my car up?
No! Surely I'd get to keep my "baby." I would give up my Extreme Gulp mug if I had to. Even my spare mug. But not my red Miata. I could've afforded an expensive car, but this was what I'd fallen in love with. How could I possibly part with it?
I aimed the remote at the sensor and waited for the garage door to open fully before turning the key and stepping lightly on the gas pedal. No matter how bad things were, I wasn't about to commit suicide over my reversal of fortune.
Not even accidentally.
I backed out carefully-my Miata didn't have a single scratch-but once I reached the street, I shifted into first gear and accelerated so quickly I thought my baby would rocket into orbit. The fuel gauge dipped sharply as if the system was about to jettison an empty gas tank.
That would never do. No matter how angry I was, I needed to drive economically. I would also have to avoid being stopped. Policemen who looked the other way before might not be so tolerant now, and a ticket would be an unjustifiable and unnecessary expense.
I'd driven so often to my favorite thinking place-almost daily for months-that the car could almost steer itself to my destination.
Within minutes, I sat at the crest of the steep hill overlooking the river. I'd never understood why a pot-holed road like this one-unpaved and unrepaired probably for decades-came to this point and stopped, but this was my place of solitude. Since I couldn't talk with Chrissie until that evening, I craved-I was dying for-solitude more than ever.
I craved my Extreme Gulp too. Oh, to drown my concerns in fifty-two ounces of Diet Pepsi…
I set the parking brake and looked downhill. Boats of every size and shape moved to and fro along the river. Except for the occasional tooting of horns a gust of wind carried the sound of up the hill, they were too far away to hear.
Although a cacophony of bird calls usually surrounded me upon my arrival, they must have sensed my mood that day and remained silent for their own good.
A squirrel scampering back and forth beside the car infuriated me so much I threw an unopened newspaper in his direction. I missed. Good thing for him; it was a five-pound Sunday paper.
After coming apart upon landing, it flew in every direction. I would salvage my litter before returning home. At least if I cared enough to.
Alone at last, I sat without moving for several minutes.
But the peace this spot had always brought me scampered off with the squirrel and left me agonizing in the turbulence of Charlotte's news.
Charlotte, why did you wait until today to tell us your suspicions?
But would earlier notice have changed anything? Most likely, what had only been Charlotte's suspicions before would've turned my stomach into a missile test site. I would've found some reason to blame myself, and then another of my frequent guilt attacks would have barraged me in earnest.
Every day would have been worse than the one before, and the uncertainty would have played havoc with every important relationship in my life.
"So who's to blame for this mess?" I said aloud. Who really?
Although someone else's wrongdoing had caused this disaster, the problem hadn't begun there. But where? What distant fluttering of butterfly wings was ultimately responsible for today's disaster?
Then it came to me.
I'd never expected my honest answer to a yes-or-no question at church to get me into so much trouble at home. But, more important, I couldn't have anticipated that responding with four words instead of one would also mark the beginning of a revolution that might put me in bondage for the rest of my life.
"Doggone you, Mrs. Gardner," I said to the squirrel that had just scrambled onto the hood of my car, his cheeks swollen mumpishly with a nut he'd picked up after I shooed him off moments before.
He crouched low, balancing the nut on a wiper blade, and stared at me through the dirty windshield as if to say, "My name's not Mrs. Gardner, man."
"Goldie Gardner," I screamed louder, throwing the driver's door wide open and scrambling out as if trying to escape a burning building. The squirrel made a beeline for the safety of a nearby tree, leaving the nut to spin and plunge from the hood, finally rolling between the car's front wheels.
"This is your fault, Goldie. If you hadn't said 'Seek and you will find,' I would've remained miserable only for the duration of adolescence. But, thanks to you, I escaped that wretchedness a few years early only to feel more wretched now. I don't like what my seeking has found."
I wouldn't admit it then, of course, but Goldie wasn't actually at fault. As angry as I was, I wanted-I needed-to blame anyone but myself. Goldie wasn't responsible for the life I'd been living. And she hadn't suggested that I seek the kind of things I'd sought.
The wrong things.
But she did change my outlook. Drastically. And that change was the first flutter of wings that set off an avalanche of events I might never escape the repercussions of.

Order Now!

<< Go Back