Find all the parts of this story here.
Hiding
Sundays were hard. Every week, Cecilia pushed herself to put on her nicest jeans and newest t-shirt, but she still felt lacking. She really should go buy a new pair of pants, but she still didn’t feel financially stable. The income from Gary was helping – slowly. Not quite quickly enough for dress pants, though. How could there not be a resale shop in this town?
Worse than the jeans were the people. Gary and Ephraim seemed determined to introduce her to every human in the pews (a new word!). She had sat with them one week, then with Sam and Sophie, then the formidable Ms. Pauline Johnson, then back to sitting with Gary. She preferred him to all the rest. He didn’t really pay attention to her, but always turned pages slowly and traced words with his fingers. To most, and honestly, to Cecilia at first, it had seemed like he just moved slowly from old age and needed the help of his fingertip to follow the lines of small print in the hymnal (she was rather proud of herself for remembering that word, too). After several weeks of study, however, she quickly realized he only did those things when she sat with him. So much for old age.
She appreciated that they all wanted to help; she really did. She just wished there was a way to help that didn’t involve leaving her feel like a stupid child in an uneducated, inexperienced adult’s body.
In some ways, it felt like it had been so long since she’d had to humble herself to learn something new. Beauty school was almost 3 years ago. Her marriage had begun two and a half years ago – although that held felt like two years of constant learning. High school was even farther in the rearview.
Cecilia realized she hadn’t really opened herself to people in a long time. She didn’t make friends easily, and Caleb had been one of the only people to get close to her in… forever, really. That was only because he pushed. Sure, he was kind and gentle about it. But he had talked to her constantly, asked her out probably dozens of times before she’d said yes, then continued to shower her with attention and affection.
Maybe she should start a patio garden. Working with her hands would feel good. Working with her hands? Says the girl who does facials and cooks all week.
Frustrated and a little disgusted with herself, Cecilia traded her nicest jeans and newest t-shirt for a pair of sweatpants and a scrubby t-shirt. If physical labor was what her brain needed, that was what it would get. She pulled the bucket of cleaning supplies from under the kitchen sink and got to work. She normally spent about an hour a week cleaning her small apartment, and she had already done that on Saturday morning. Today, she set to deep cleaning.
At the church Caleb had brought her to in Madison, she had met a woman named Marly who worked as a professional house cleaner. The woman had talked incessantly about cleaning products and techniques, imbibing her listeners with random cleaning knowledge. The rest of it, Cecilia filled in with logic and the internet.
She proceeded to spend the next three hours doing everything from scrubbing the kitchen and bathroom faucets with a toothbrush to whitening the grout on the bathroom floor with baking soda and hydrogen peroxide. She was actually quite impressed with how much nicer the apartment felt when she was done. Somehow it had become easy to view the place as less-than, when the exterior of the building and the landscaping weren’t as nice as many other places in town.
By the time she sat down to a cold cut sandwich and a glass of water at noon, a headache-inducing mixture of pleasure and guilt swirled inside Cecilia. Why was it so difficult to just be okay? How did one go about making the hard things in life a little easier to get through?
Cecilia spent the afternoon staring at mindless TV episodes on her ancient laptop, while her mind bounced from thing to thing. She found herself down a mental rabbit hole starting in her childhood and making its way to her first date with Caleb.
He had been such a gentleman, even though he was just a college kid. He had dressed up and taken her to a restaurant with table service, not fast food. Scared as she was, Cecilia had known deep in her bones that day that there was something infinitely precious about Caleb Chatsworth.
He had loved her with his whole heart, gifting his strength, joy, and leadership to her. His other gift? The faith that gave him his own strong foundation. It had been so much easier to go to church with Caleb at her side. He understood what was going on, never made her feel bad. He had been a balm to her fear in that place and time.
Now she was on her own, and not for the first time, she looked out over the landscape of her choices and wondered what Caleb would think of her. She had fled their apartment, their church, their friends (who had mostly been Caleb’s, anyway), and she could find no seed of pride in her imaginary Caleb-garden. But she had found a job – two jobs – and a home, and most of the time had dragged herself to church. Perhaps the Caleb-garden had a little love plant for her in this regard.
As strange and new as faith and church had been, Cecilia knew one thing: Caleb would never have allowed her fear to keep her away. But she had. Sitting lost and lonely on her second-hand couch, she buried her face in her hands and cried.
“Caleb,” she whispered. “I think I messed up.”