Some people call it chemistry, but whatever it’s called, it’s what we had going on between us. We didn’t say anything about it, but there was no denying that it was there.
At nine o’clock she said she had to go. So we put away the hymnbook, and I walked her out to her car, where we stood and talked for another hour.
Just after ten, Brianna looked at her watch and said, “I’ve talked your ear off, haven’t I?”
“No, not at all. I’ve enjoyed it.”
“I’ve never known a guy who was so easy to talk to.”
I smiled. The truth is I’d never been a guy people wanted to talk to. The amazing thing to me is that somehow, for the first time in my life, conversation had come easily. I was interested in what she had to say, and it was no problem knowing how to respond to her.
At eleven, she looked at her watch again. “Oh, my gosh! I’m really going now. Good night. It’s been fun. I think we’ll be ready for sacrament meeting on Sunday . . . if we can practice a few more times.”
“Come for dinner tomorrow night.”
“You’re very free with dinner invitations when it’s not your food and you’re not the one doing the cooking.”
I smiled. “How about if we help out?”
“Let’s do the salad again,” she said with a grin. “That was fun.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I pretended to shoo her away. “Look, are you ever going to leave?”
“See you tomorrow,” she said, then got into her car and drove off.
• • •
The next day, a Friday, Brianna called me on my cell phone while I was doing some routine maintenance at one of my grandfather’s apartments.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Fixing a leaky toilet. What about you?”
“Oh, you know, the usual.” She paused. “I was wondering if you’d like to meet me at five o’clock in Newark at my fitness club. We could work out together, if you’re up for it.”
“Yeah, sure. Just tell me how to get there.”
Because I didn’t want to be late, I actually got there fifteen minutes early and was immediately intimidated by the place. Everything, from the fancy exterior of the building to the green awning over the smoked glass front doors, spoke of money. Somehow my grandfather’s pickup truck, with attached trailer full of yard tools and a riding mower, looked out of place in a parking lot filled with Jaguars, Lexuses, and BMWs.
When I reported to the reception desk in my faded jeans, baseball cap, and mission T-shirt, carrying a plastic garbage bag containing my workout clothes, the tall, blonde girl on duty gave me a skeptical look.
“I’m here to work out.”
“Are you a member?”
“Uh, no. I’ll be the guest of Brianna Doneau . . .”
The receptionist opened a black binder and asked, “How do you spell the last name?”
“D-o-n-e-a-u. Brianna.”
She was so tall, I wondered if she was standing on some kind of platform, and she looked down at me as though I were some sort of, I don’t know, maintenance man.
“ . . . but I guess she’s not here yet,” I offered.
She found the name and closed the book.
“I can’t let you in until she vouches for you.”
“Right.”
She was wearing a black stretchy outfit and looked very fit. For some reason, I kind of started to babble.
“I just moved here. I’m from Utah, but my Grandpa Eddie wanted me to work for him, so I moved back here for the summer. I’ve never been here before. I mean, not right here in this gym. But I was on a mission here for my church . . .”
I could see she didn’t want to hear any of it, and I glanced around the luxurious lobby. There were some easy chairs grouped around a low table with a huge vase of fresh flowers on it.
“Well, maybe I’ll just, uh, sit over there and wait. If that’s all right.”
Maybe she felt sorry for me.
“I guess I could let you go in and get dressed, but if Brianna doesn’t show up in the next few minutes, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
She was wearing a nametag. “Thanks, Chanteuse.”
“It’s Chanteille,” she corrected me.
I used an empty locker to change into my workout clothes, which consisted of a pair of worn, cut-off cargo pants and a plain white T-shirt, with my well-worn running shoes.
While I was getting dressed, I listened to the regulars as they changed and talked. They lived in a different world than mine. Most of them were my age or a little older, and they had obviously all worked hard sculpting their bodies. They looked good and they knew it.
Mostly they talked about their workout regimens. But one toned guy was complaining to his friend about how incompetent somebody named Fletcher was. After a minute, I figured out Fletcher was their boss.
“There’s no soap in the shower,” a naked bronzed god told me as he walked by me. He obviously thought I worked for the fitness club.
“I’ll get right on it, sir,” I said.
That seemed to make him happy.
I went back out to the lobby to talk to Chanteille. “They’re out of soap in the men’s shower,” I said.
“Why are you telling me that?”
“If you give me some soap, I’ll take it in.”
“We have people who do that.”
“Great. So where are these people?”
She paged a guy named Roy Patterson several times with no success.
“Just give me the soap, and I’ll put it in the guys’ shower,” I said.
She shrugged. “I don’t really know where the soap is. We have a person who does that.”
“Well, all I can say is that the guys are taking showers and there’s no soap. How about if you go into the women’s shower room and grab some soap, and I’ll take it into the men’s shower area.”
“I don’t think I could do that, sir.”
I nodded my head. “You know what? You’re probably right.”
Just then Brianna came rushing through the door. My first impulse was to give her a hug, but I didn’t do it for several reasons: First, some of the restraints from our missions were still on my mind. Second, she might not want Chanteille and the gang thinking we were more than friends. And third, of course, had to do with Thomas. I mean, Brianna had made it clear she was practically engaged.
But she seemed to have no reservations because she gave me a quick hug. “Sorry I’m late,” she said.
“No problem. Chanteille and I have just been visiting. Right, Chanteille?”
Chanteille gave a forced smile that lasted a fraction of a second before she turned to answer the phone.
Ten minutes later Brianna led me to a row of glistening exercise machines. Most were occupied by sweating, robot-looking individuals with grim expressions, who did their designated reps and then silently moved to the next station. Each one had a water bottle and a towel. The machines faced a mirrored wall so the clones could each admire his or her body.
“So, how often do you come here?” I asked.
“Usually every day after work.”
I nodded. “Okay, sure, well let’s get started.”
We started at one end of the machines and worked our way down the line. We finished on some treadmills. I hated to admit it, but Brianna was in much better shape than I was. It was hard work keeping up with her, and by the time we finished, I was sweating and breathing hard.
“Are you all right, Adam? You look like you’re hurting.”
“It’s the way I always look, just before my heart attacks,” I gasped, bending over and resting my hands on my knees.
I glanced up at Brianna. She was perspiring but otherwise looked relaxed. In fact, she had a very healthy glow about her.
“Do you want to sit down for a minute?” she asked.
I straightened up and forced a grin. “No. I’m okay. Are we through now?”
“I’ve had enough.” She looked up at a clock on the wall. “What
time are your grandparents expecting us?”
It was just after six-thirty. “I told them we’d be there about seven o’clock, but they said there’s no special hurry.”
We agreed to meet in the lobby, and then we separated to take showers and get dressed.
Brianna followed me in her car to my grandparents’ place. As usual, they were happy to see her again, and both of them gave her a big hug.
Brianna and I insisted on preparing a salad. This time we didn’t drop any tomatoes but just talked about our day, like we might have done if we were a married couple.
It was very comfortable for me—standing next to her at the sink, working together, tearing lettuce, and slicing vegetables and putting them in a bowl. She was apparently comfortable too because she would occasionally lean into me as she reached for something or rinsed her hands.
We didn’t say a word about it though. To do so would have been to admit we were strongly attracted to each other. And that simply wasn’t possible because she was practically engaged.
Maybe I wanted to punish myself. As we worked, I asked, “So, how’s Thomas?”
“Good, real good. Oh, he likes to give me brainteasers with each e-mail. The one he sent this morning was so clever. What does a woman mining engineer say who finally gets rid of the guy she was going with whose first name is Tavias?”
“I have no idea.”
“I got rid of Tavias on ore-bus!” I swear she actually laughed.
I shook my head. “I don’t get it.”
“Well you’ve heard of writ of habeas corpus, right? So it’s like a takeoff. Writ of habeas corpus, which sounds like I got rid of Tavias on ore-bus. He made that up himself.”
After a few seconds of bewildered silence, I burst out, “Really, well, imagine that.” I forced myself to laugh.
“He sends something like that every day. Lawyer jokes too.”
“Gosh, it must be a laugh a minute with him,” I said.
“It’s more cerebral humor than anything else. He’s very smart.”
“I can tell just by that one joke that he is.”
We enjoyed eating dinner with my grandparents. They obviously cared a great deal about Brianna and seemed to be happy that she and I were getting along so well.
After dinner, Brianna and I ended up at the piano in the living room. First we practiced “Each Life That Touches Ours for Good.” She had decided to sing it Sunday for sacrament meeting. We went through it several times, until we were able to do it with no mistakes. And then, with my grandparents sitting nearby, we sang together some other Church hymns.
At ten my grandmother showed us a stack of music and invited us to go through it. “You might find something you’d like to sing.” We had family prayer, and my grandparents excused themselves to get ready for bed.
Brianna and I had a snack in the kitchen and then wandered back to the piano. We went through the stack of music together. One of the songbooks had my mom’s name written on it. It was the score of the musical Carousel. We also found a tattered script with Julie Jordan’s part underlined.
“I think my mom played this role when she was in high school!” I said.
“Great, let’s sing some of the songs.”
I played as we sang four songs from the musical, but the one that meant the most to me begins “When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high. . . .”
After that, we just stayed at the piano, still facing the keys, I guess because Brianna could justify spending time with me late at night if we were involved in music. How could Thomas object if we were just singing together?
“You want to exercise with me again?” she asked. “I’ll probably go tomorrow around noon.”
“No thanks.”
“Didn’t you like it?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Everybody seemed so phony. Like working out is the most important thing in the world. And is it really necessary to watch yourself in a mirror as you go through each exercise? What’s that all about?”
“It helps you see if you’re doing it right.”
“To me, it just seemed like all those people are in love with themselves. That’s no way to live.”
“Do you ever work out?”
“When I got back to Utah after my mission, I started mountain biking on some trails above our house. It was a good release for me. It helped me work through the frustration of creating Web sites all day.”
“What do you do now to deal with your frustrations?” she asked.
I smiled. “I don’t have any on-the-job frustrations now. This is the best job I’ve ever had.”
She told me about some of the frustrations she was having at work—a boss who didn’t give her credit for her efforts, always being given busywork that made a more senior member of the firm look good, having to work with people who didn’t share her beliefs about the importance of being faithful in a marriage.
I tried to be a good listener, and I did my best not to offer any quick solutions to her problems. I just listened and tried to react to her the way her mom might have done if she’d been alive. It wasn’t easy but I did it.
“You’re so good for me, Adam,” she said. “I feel better now. Thanks for listening.”
“Yeah, sure, any time.”
She looked at her watch. “It’s late. I’d better go.”
She stood up, but I reached out and grabbed her hand. “Let’s go through this other book,” I said.
“No, really. I need to get home. Thomas has probably sent me an e-mail.”
The tone of her voice had suddenly changed, and I wondered if she was feeling guilty for spending the evening with me.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” I said. We were still holding hands and acting like it was no big deal, but it was. And we both knew it.
As we walked outside, I said, “I enjoyed singing with you tonight.”
“Me too. It was . . .”
“It was what?” I asked. She didn’t answer, but left me standing on the curb and walked around to the driver’s side, unlocked the car door, and opened it.
“You want to do something tomorrow night? Go to a movie or something?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Adam. Why don’t I call you?”
I sighed. “Okay.”
“But could we practice again, before my sacrament meeting?” she asked. “It begins at nine.”
“I don’t even know where you meet.”
“How about if I pick you up at seven-thirty and then you won’t have to worry about finding the place? And that’ll give us time to practice in the chapel.”
“Okay, great.”
She looked at me across the top of the car. “Adam, I am totally committed to Thomas.”
“I know. Sorry about . . . you know—”
“It was my fault. It’s just that I feel very comfortable with you.”
We said good night. She drove off. And I went to my room and drew another sketch of her. It was good enough to keep. I put it in my closet behind my mom’s artwork.
In my bed with the lights off, I wondered how much my first mom knew about my life. I wondered if she knew about Brianna and, if she did, if she approved of her.
I wished I could talk to my first mom, but I didn’t feel like getting in the closet again to talk to a woman who had been dead for nearly my whole life. I decided that if I wanted to talk to anyone about my life, it should be Heavenly Father.
So I said my prayers and went to bed.
8
At two-thirty the next day, a Saturday, I was mowing the lawn at one of the apartment buildings when I got a call on my cell phone. “What are you doing?” Brianna asked.
“Mowing the lawn. Maybe lawyers can waste the day, but I’m a working man.”
“Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “Can I come join you?”
We ended up together on the riding lawn mower. I let her drive because I was too busy singing country songs at the top of my voice
, including my favorite song, Willy Nelson’s “You Were Always on My Mind.”
“‘ . . . You were always on my mind, you were always on my mind . . .’” I wailed.
“You go, Cowboy!” Brianna shouted.
By the time I finished the song, she was laughing so hard she could barely keep the mower going in a straight line.
“You want me to drive?” I yelled over the sound of the mower.
“No, I’m okay. It’s better now that you’ve stopped singing.”
“What did you say? Is there something about my singing you don’t like?”
“No, you sing okay. It’s just I’m not a big fan of country.”
“You stick with me, girl, and I’ll change that.”
“Thanks for the warning. So, let me ask you a question—is this what you call work?”
“Yes, of course. We’re working very hard right now.”
“It seems to me like we’re playing.”
“Life is for fun,” I said. It was what my first mom used to say, and now it was becoming my motto in life.
After we finished mowing the lawn, we bought some fast food and came back to the apartment building and ate it in the shade of a tree.
My grandfather, when he worked around the place, was a kid magnet and because I worked with him, they treated me the same way. So before long we had six or seven kids around us.
We played “Clumsy Monster,” a game I’d played with them before. Brianna and I were it, but, on purpose, we were so clumsy and slow we could never catch anyone. When one of them would get close, we’d lunge in slow motion to get them, and we’d miss time after time. The kids loved it, and squealed with delight.
Thirty minutes later, Brianna and I were both exhausted, and we told the kids we had to go. They begged us to stay.