HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

CHAPTER 14

ARIEL

BEHOLD, CHILDREN ARE A HERITAGE FROM THE LORD, THE FRUIT OF THE WOMB IS A REWARD (Psalm 127:3)

            “Where are we going?” I asked Penny as we prepared to leave her clinic in her pickup truck.

            My sister struggled to get her seat belt under her swollen abdomen. It was the Saturday before Memorial Day weekend, and my nephew was due to be born in early July. “You’ll see, it’s not far.”

            “Why so secretive?” I asked as gravel spun from underneath her tire as we exited her clinic parking lot.

            “I’m not being secretive,” she said, and then inhaled sharply through her nose and sighed. “But you’re not gonna like what I have to say, so I want the timing and atmosphere to be just right.”

            I felt myself tense, and I chewed on my lower lip. I knew what this was about. I may as well have had a scarlet letter on my chest. I recalled the passion between Eli and I the previous night. Although our passionate kisses had turned into something much more weeks ago, last night’s liaison ended with something more than exchanging ‘I love you’ with each other.

            “Marry me, Ariel,” Eli had whispered into my ear at the height of our passion.

            “Okay,” my lips had murmured against his cheek.

            It had become a well-known secret that Eli and I had become an item. I also thought our intimacy was a secret. But secrets involving sin lead to paranoia. So as I road with my sister, with her admitting she wanted to discuss something uncomfortable, I assumed she knew that I was fornicating. I figured Eli must have told Arlo, and Arlo relayed the gossip to her. Now she was going to get back at me for all the years I periodically accused her of promiscuity and hypocrisy.

             I was a professed Christian with regular attendance at worship, and an upstanding citizen involved with PTA and also assistant coach of soccer. However I did have some skeletons in the closet. These bone fragments of sin may seem like nothing to the culture at large. For my most grievous violations of the Decalogue was premarital sex with both of my future husbands, as well as Eli, who now might be my future husband.

            For the casual believer, no big deal, right? Well, as a deaconess in my family’s  conservative church, what Eli and I were doing in the bedroom loomed large and shameful in my mind. Ironically, the looming large actually disappeared as soon as I started kissing him.

            “What are we doing here?” I asked with a frown as she pulled her truck into the Cotton Creek Cove Fellowship parking lot. “You’re not taking me to one of your services.”

            “Sabbath school and worship was this morning,” she replied. “I want to show you the church’s namesake.”

            “What?”

            “I want to show you Cotton Creek.”

            “I thought you wanted to talk to me about something?”

            “I do, at the creek.”

            I shrugged it off and walked with her down a paved trail behind the church. My petite sister walked with great agility. When I was as pregnant as she was now, I waddled everywhere I went. It was in fact beautiful where we stopped. The stream rippled soothing sounds over rocks as the creek twisted under a canopy of large Cottonwood trees and lush green pines.

            Penny smiled with satisfaction as she gently rubbed her belly and stared at the chuckling stream. She seemed to relax as my anxiety grew. The beauty of the place and the gorgeousness of the spring afternoon seemed to mock my unease. A half dozen possible replies to her potential accusations raced through my head. Impatiently I blurted, “So what did you want to me talk about?”

            She glanced at me and then pointed to a bench. “Let’s go sit.”

            ‘Grrrr,’ I thought. But then I was pleased as she waddled a little as I followed her to the bench.

            “It’s pretty exciting that the band’s CD is going to be out in a couple weeks,” Penny said.

            “Yes, it is.”

            “Arlo and Eli sure have been getting lots of interview requests. Both Christian periodicals as well as secular.”

            “Yes, they have.”

            “It is a pretty interesting story. I mean two forty year old guys that spent almost two decades in a Satanic band together suddenly reappear a few years after the dissolution with a Christian band.”

            “A huh.”

            “There seem to be quite a few skeptics.”

            “Right.”

            “I hope they don’t go on tour for a while, what with the baby and all.”

            “Surely this isn’t what you wanted me to come here and talk about?”

            “No,” she said, her face growing serious. “I sold my share of the clinic.”

            This was actually no surprise; she had thrown around the idea for months. She wanted to take her time with the baby but still use her veterinarian talents volunteering with the animal rescue organization she worked with.

            “I was kind of expecting that,” I said. “But surely that’s not why you brought me here.”

            “No,” she said, eyeing me cautiously. She looked away, placed her hands between her knees and sighed.

            How could my spontaneous, opinionated sister be dillydallying so much? I couldn’t stand the tension any longer. “Look Pen, I know what you want to talk about.”

            “You do?” she frowned. “So Arlo must have talked to Eli already, and Eli told you?”

            “No,” I frowned. “I assume Eli told Arlo, and Arlo told you.”

            “Are we talking about the same thing?” Penny’s frown deepened.

            “Look, I know you’re all religious now, and into the Bible, and all what Eli refers to as primitive Godliness stuff. I know what Eli and I have been doing isn’t up to your new standards. Frankly they’re not up to mine either. But I’m human, and in love, and just so you know, we are getting married.”

            Penny’s eyes became like saucers and her mouth gaped open. “What? Married? When?”

            “I don’t know when. He just asked me last night.”

            “Well, talk about stealing somebody’s thunder,” she grinned as she ran a hand through her silky dark hair, which was now well past her shoulders and as long as I had ever seen it.

            “What do you mean?”

            “I mean what I wanted to talk to you about. Will you be my maid of honor?”

            Now I wasn’t the sharpest needle in the sewing basket, but I immediately put one and one together. Stealing thunder and maid of honor. “You agreed to marry Arlo?”

            She looked as happy as I had ever seen her as she bit her lip and nodded. Arlo had been practically begging her for months, but she would only respond with maybes. We hugged and I said, “Congratulations, I’d be honored to be your maid of honor.”

            “Congratulations to you, too,” she said.

            “Will you be my maid of honor?” I asked.

            “I too would be honored. But don’t you want one of your daughters this time?”

            “Who would I pick? Besides you’ve always been my maid of honor. Hopefully this will be the third time’s a charm.”

            She laughed and I asked, “How long until after the baby’s born will you wait?”

            Her face grew serious. “Actually, we’re getting married a week from today.”

            “In a week! Penny, weddings take time to plan. Besides planning, do you really want to be a month away from giving birth in the wedding photos?”

            “Well, here’s the thing. It’s gonna be low key and simple. Other than the parishioners here, there will only be a handful of people in attendance. We’re saying our vows right over there.”

            She pointed at a bend in the creek, just past were the length of water rippled rocks ended.

            “Arlo and I will be in baptismal gowns rather than a suit and dress. Immediately after we say our ‘I do’s’, we are going down into that three foot deep part of the creek to get baptized. So, you could say it will be an unconventional wedding.”

            “I will say. That’s definitely a unique setup,” I admitted. Then I asked her something quite personal, but she is my sister. “So have you and Arlo, you know?”

            “I know what?” she replied innocently.

            “You know, doing the deed?”

            “What deed?” she asked with a frown.

            “Oh, for Pete’s sake, have you two been boinking?”

            She laughed, and I realized that I had just been played by my ultra-serious sister. I laughed too. It was good to see her as lighthearted as I had ever seen her in her entire life. I had viewed her newfound religion as rigid and legalistic, but her joy was palpable. I also considered her impending motherhood and romance as the source. But going forward, there was no denying her and Arlo’s shared faith was at the center of their bond as well as their joy.

            “No, conceiving little Arlo was the only time that we’ve made love.”

            “You’re naming my nephew Arlo Junior?” I asked. Arlo was not necessarily a bad name. That said, I would never, ever name a child of mine Arlo.

            “It will likely be his middle name. Right now we’re considering Jeremiah for his first.”

            I nodded as I refrained from frowning. I don’t think I’d consider Jeremiah as a name for my child, but it wasn’t bad. He’ll probably go by Jerry.

            “When I told Arlo he was going to be a father, he knelt and kissed my belly and quoted Jeremiah 1:5.”

            “Interesting, but I’m glad my days of naming babies are over,” I chuckled. “As a matter of fact, I just had my first sign of menopause.”

            “Oh yeah? What sign was that?”

            “For the first time last month, without being pregnant, I missed my period.”

            Penny looked at me with a stunned expression. “You know your admission about, um, misbehaving with Eli? Did he wear a certain something?”

            “You mean a condom? No, but he had a vasectomy in his early twenties.”

            “He also had it reversed in his late thirties,” Penny declared.

            “No he didn’t, he would have told me,” I replied, thinking what she assumed ridiculous.

            “I don’t know about the second part of what you just said, but I know for a fact about the first part.”

            “How?” I wanted to know as my pulse quickened. It seemed she did, in fact, know something.

            “You know back in February when Arlo shut himself up in his room, and I went and told him he was gonna be a father?”

            “Of course.”

            “It was a couple days after. Arlo, Eli, and myself were chatting before their band practiced, and I distinctly remember Eli talking about being pretty serious with a lady right after their band broke up. She wanted a baby, so he got it reversed. But then he went on to say that she turned out to be infertile. Some time later, they parted ways.”

            “I don’t believe it; he would have told me.”

            “I’m just telling you what I overheard,” she said with a shrug. Then not understanding my fear, she grinned and said, “How about that? You made me aware that I was pregnant, and now it seems I made you aware that you could be pregnant.”

            “Yeah, how about that?” I mumbled.