Not as Bad as I Used to Be

Is it obnoxious to claim you're a better writer than you were two years ago?

The question arises because this morning I got to thinking, "Maybe I'm using the wrong scene(s) from my heroine's past as my prologue." So, despite my mortal need of sleep, I've just opened an earlier version of my novel and read over the incident I had in mind.

Oh, dear, no. That version was too early.

Hmm.  Let me try again with a rendition dated maybe nine months later, just before I cut that scene and the extensive flashback before and after it.

. . . Sorry, no. Though somewhat improved, it's nowhere close to usable. It would need so much labor to lick into shape; it wouldn't be worth it.

How can this be? I've always liked those chapters detailing my FMC's backstory! I'd even considered releasing them all as bonus material with the ebook. But now I'd just as soon parade around outside in my underwear. In the dead of winter. No, no, nodiddy-no-no-no!

I'm nothing to brag about as a writer, but at least I'm not as bad as I used to be.

Free Souls, Chapter 17

"Sandy," her Design professor said to her one day in March shortly after Spring Break, "I'm happy to let you know that your University Chapel presentation will be displayed in the school gallery at the next change of shows."

She straightened up from her drafting table to face Professor Ruben.  "Thank you very much," she said respectfully.

"No, thank you very much," the teacher said.  "It's a privilege having you in my studio. You showed good promise when you started this semester, and you certainly have surpassed all expectations."

"Thank you," she murmured again.  "Do I need to run another set for the exhibition?"

"Yes, that would be a good idea.  The one I have in my office might be a little crumpled at the edges."  Professor Ruben smiled and said, "I hope you realize, Sandy, that only the best work in this school is displayed in the gallery. We do not select projects simply to be representative of particular studios and years.  It is very rare that a freshman presentation makes it in, so when I say your chapel design is among the best of the best, you may believe it is true."

"Thank you," she said once more, beginning to feel like a broken record.

Professor Ruben assumed a hearty tone.  "Well, your hard work is paying off.  And I hope you will understand me when I say that it reflects credit not only on you, Sandy, but also on me and on this school."

She again returned some polite nothing, and the teacher continued on his rounds among his students.  As she watched him go Sandy could barely suppress a raucous laugh.  "Reflects credit, on you, Professor Ruben?  Oh, no, all the credit belongs to a certain man whose initials are J.C. and he's upstairs with Gabriel!"

For a split second the idea was the funniest thing in the world.  Then she realized the implications and made silent, frantic confession:  "Sorry, Lord, that was bad, I shouldn't say that about Jeff, You're the only Lord, You're my only Lord, really, Lord, I'm sorry, please forgive me!"

But despite her protests of contrition her effective church continued to be the school exhibition space on the first floor, and her primary act of worship was haunting that room, hoping against hope that Jeff would come in and admire her work and accept the offering she had secretly made to his glory. 

One time he was there when she was. He was approaching the place where her chapel design was displayed, he seemed to be slowing down to look at it . . . And then Professor Ruben, curse the man! came up wanting to talk to her about something or other. He took quite a long time about it, and his bulk was between her and her spot on the gallery wall, between her and the object of her adoration. By the time he moved, Jeff was gone.  At that moment she knew what it was like to want to kill with her bare hands.

“Lord help me, what an idolater I was! I worshipped him! I even called him my Apollo . . . ” 

There was no excuse for it. Not for her. She of all people should have known better. 

“And it got worse.” 

She grew tired of weaving fantasies about married life with Jeff. They were always set in the vague future, and they were nothing since they might never come true. What it would be like to actually know him physically now, before they lost their time together here? What would she do if he were to take her in his arms some spring evening here at the school, someplace private, and overwhelm her with his love? Would she say Yes? Would he need to ask her to say Yes, or would her Yes already have been said?

By that time she looked back on her pledge of the previous spring as naive innocence. How silly they had all been! A soft nagging voice in her gut occasionally reminded her that the standards she had committed herself to hadn’t been made up by a gaggle of romanticizing schoolgirls.  The voice was easy to ignore. She hadn’t been to church since she was home for Christmas vacation, and as for reading her Bible, why did she need to do that? She knew what was in it already and with all the demands of Architecture school, she rationalized, she simply didn’t have time.

Besides, God must have meant her to meet Jeff, just as she was sure He meant her to be happy– overwhelmingly, deliriously, divinely-- happy with him.

The roof of the Architecture building, that would be the spot. Up there with the starry night spreading its mantle over them . . . “Jam nox stellata velamina pandit . . . ,” as the words of a poem she’d picked up in high school put it, and Jeff Chesters like a young Caesar taking possession of her body, her heart, her soul . . . “veni, vidi, vinci,” . . . a happy country he had conquered a long time ago.

Back then she never realized what a hypocrite she had become. “There I was, despising and condemning the Christys and Elspeths and Martinas, while in my heart I was just as bad as they were! Maybe worse, because I knew better!  Heaven help me, I was sure my beliefs were Christian as ever, just more enlightened, more mature!”

But they had suffered a revolution. By late winter of her freshman year she was convinced that love, True Committed Love (she had thought of it in all upper case), sanctified sex. Oh, of course, marriage would have to follow. Some day. But there was no hurry. The mutual declaration of true love was what made a marriage, not a public ceremony or a piece of paper. God certainly would understand, even approve. After all, wasn’t God love?

“Yes, blast me, and love was God and Jeff was Love and Jeff was god, and sorry, Jesus, seeya later!” 

She thought she truly loved Jeff Chesters, but in truth she was infatuated with the man, besotted by him, and couldn’t tell the difference. She hardly knew where she ended and her image of him began. Early that spring one of Jeff’s projects won the Senior Design Award and Sandy’s joy and pride knew no bounds. “You would have thought I’d won the damn thing myself,” she thought now. He was her Apollo, her god of the sun, her sustenance, her shield; and though she was only a very minor planet in his orbit, she was convinced the day would come when he would notice her and her work and make her his own.

The day came. Or rather, the night.

Free Souls, Chapter 11

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art–
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

From the chancel of the Fourth Presbyterian Church, Sandy, at sixteen the youngest member of the adult choir, lifted up her clear soprano in the ancient Irish hymn.

“Be Thou My Vision” had long been one of Sandy’s favorites. There was something solid, true, and tested about it. Joined with choir and congregation, with the massive pipe organ rolling out the hymn tune “Slane,” she felt herself to be united with the anonymous Dark Age Christian missionary, perhaps St. Patrick himself, whose manifesto it was.  

“Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise . . . ” Courageous, that’s what she would be, whatever life threw at her. Like the hymn's ancient writer, she would stand firm in the power of Jesus Christ. “ . . . Heart of my own heart, whatever befall, Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all. Amen,” she sang, and it was more than a hymn for her, it was a vow and a confession of faith.

Choir and congregation were seated and the Reverend Dr. Alec Wallace ascended the pulpit to deliver his sermon.

Sandy liked to say she’d been a member of Fourth Presbyterian since before she was born, and certainly Dr. Wallace had been pastor there nearly as long as she had been alive. As far back as she could remember she’d seen him standing tall in the pulpit preaching God’s salvation and love. 

This particular morning, he took his texts from the book of Romans. “God loved us even when we were His enemies! Jesus His Son died for you, and you have nothing to be afraid of anymore,” he proclaimed. “Nothing can separate you from His love, nothing! Trust His love for you, you are more than a conqueror in Jesus Christ!”

At sixteen she was no longer a child, to be in awe of him in his long black robe with its red velvet stripes on the sleeves, but she still knew he was speaking for God. 

“There’s no need to be frightened of anything in this world, brothers and sisters,” he urged his congregation, “because the perfect love of God casts out all fear. Believe the good news and praise Him for what He has done for you through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Grounded, that’s what she had become at Fourth Presbyterian. Rooted and grounded in the power and protection of God. Not everyone’s church experience was like hers, she knew that now. Eric’s certainly wasn’t. But certainly, what she gained from her pastor and teachers there gave her every reason not to fear.

From Dr. Wallace, too, had come the awareness of human work as a vocation from God, to be done to His glory. Sandy learned you didn’t have to be a preacher to serve Jesus, you could and should do it just as well as a salesman or a plumber or a housewife. At a young age she had determined that she wanted to be an architect and for years it had only been what she wanted to do for a living. But lately it had broken on her like an epiphany that it could be and would be more than that. The Sunday morning when she’d grasped the connection between the path she had chosen for her life and the Jesus Christ she had come to trust, it filled her with a burst of joy she wished she could have lived in forever.

When had she first had the idea of going into Architecture? She must have been ten or eleven. She remembered going to her father one evening and saying to him, “Daddy, Mark wants to be a doctor and Larry says he’s going to be an airline pilot. Daddy, I’ve decided what I want to be when I grow up.”

Roderick Beichten had laid down his newspaper and smiled at his only daughter. “So what do you want to be, Honey Sandwich?”

“I want to be an architect,” she’d said, proudly.

“An architect! Good for you!” had been her father’s unreserved response. “That’s a very important job.”

“I know! Dr. Wallace told me last Sunday that an architect made drawings so they could build the new Sunday School rooms. I saw them in the church lobby, on the bulletin board. And there’s a colored picture of what the new part will look like. Oh, Daddy, it is so beautiful! I want to be an architect so I can make pictures like that!”

“Being an architect is about more than drawing pretty pictures of buildings, Honey Sandwich,” her father had said, a probing tone to his voice.

“I know that,” she’d replied with a child’s impatience at the stupidity of grownups. “Dr. Wallace said architects have to show the builders how to make the building really strong so it won’t fall down. And he says our architect will be at church next Sunday and if I want to meet him I can, if it’s all right with you and Mommy. Oh, Daddy, may I?”

“Certainly, if he has time. Architects are very busy people, you know. You will have to work very hard when you become one.” (She distinctly remembered how he’d said “when,” not “if.”)

“Oh, yes, I will! I’m working already! I drew us a new house! Do you want to see it?”

“Of course I do, Honey Sandwich. And I’m glad to hear what you want to be. Not very many girls become architects, but if you study hard and keep drawing, I know you can do as well as any boy out there. Maybe better.” He’d winked. “Now go get those house plans of yours.”

Her rudimentary plans and elevations Roderick Beichten had had framed and hung on the wall of his den, and no one had been prouder than he when Sandy was accepted into the prestigious program at the university at Mt. Athens.

Her father, her whole family, actually; her pastor and the members of her church– they had all supported and encouraged her as a girl. They taught her not to fear anything she might encounter.

“So why am I so afraid of what might happen, with the office-- and Eric? Why can't I stand up on my two legs and act like a grown up human being instead of a scared little child?”  She stared out towards the streetlight bright through the naked branches of the tree outside her window. All those early reasons for courage were still hers. But somehow, they remained just beyond her grasp.  She needed to know why.

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by Catrin Lewis, 1983, revised 2014, all rights reserved

Free Souls, Chapter 10

Sandy climbed the stairs to her apartment in a distracted state of mind. She unlocked the door and routinely, almost mechanically, placed her hat on its hook and hung her coat and scarf in the minuscule coat closet. She hardly paid attention to what she was doing: something unsettled and sad had bedded down in the pit of her stomach and would not let her look back on the afternoon with any degree of contentment or rest.

“What do I want, anyway?” she demanded of the four walls. “I should be ecstatic!” 

Her boss, whom she respected, esteemed, and yes, yes, yes, loved had just asked her to accept a promotion to associate architect in his firm! “He runs the best damn design practice in Wapatomekie, and I’m going to be his first associate! And I’m only twenty-eight!” It would bring amazing new opportunities, not to mention an increase in pay, all tied in with the fact that Eric Baumann thought she was worthy of the position. “Ecstacy” certainly should be the word.

But she was not ecstatic. She felt flat, empty, and painfully at odds with herself.

“What’s wrong with me?” she cried aloud as she kicked off her shoes and drew herself up on the sofa. “I was horrible to him! There at the exhibition, and later on in the car! Why can’t I take a compliment from a man I care about with any sort of grace? Would it have killed me simply to say ‘Thank you’ and get it over with? But no, I have to throw it back in his teeth and twist his words!”

But it wasn’t just that. Any other woman, loving a man and wanting to lead him on to love her, would have skilfully laid hold of that compliment (“You look like an Old Master,” he had said, and she had known exactly what he meant: the ensemble was one of her favorites; she knew it became her, though it was too good for office wear). Any woman would have made of his words a golden cord to bind him to her and make him her own. Any woman, that is, but herself.

She was sure Leah Matthews would have taken full advantage had Eric so complimented her. On the thought, she stopped. “He probably has said such things to her.”

But so what if he had? The point wasn’t what he had or hadn’t done, it was what she, Alexandra Marie Beichten, had done and had kept on doing to him.

Painfully, she recalled every word of their exchange over the El Greco. 

A self-justifying voice within her spoke up: “Well, there was no meaning in that, anyway. Totally silly for him to talk about giving you something neither he nor you could ever own. Talk is cheap. Easy enough for him to go on like that, when he’ll never be called on to back it up!”

But the contrary voice died away, suppressed by what she knew was the truth. For what Eric had offered her there in the Spanish gallery was not a priceless Old Master painting, but the assurance, much more valuable, that he could be aware of her wishes and desires, and in some way desired to fulfill them. No, he was not aware of everything she desired– not that, not the impossible That– but to the extent her wishes were right and fitting given their present relationship, that certainly was how he felt.

He’d shown it when he’d offered– no, given– her the position as associate architect. He had known that was something she wanted before she had been willing to see it for herself. The thought had crossed her mind over the past few months, but she had always repressed it as a dim, distant, impossible dream. But Eric had known she longed to handle projects on her own, to make a greater contribution to their mutual effort. And at some cost to himself he had given the opportunity to her.

And how had she reacted? 

"I practically turned my back on him in the car!  I acted like I had nothing to do with him, the office, or our work. Did I really have to make him spell it out for me as if I were a stubborn kid in the slow learners' class?"  But that's what he'd had to do before she would stop putting words in his mouth and consent to receive what he would give.

And then in her heart she had impugned his motives.

"'He's trying to see less of me', that's what you automatically thought.  All your life since you were a kid you've wanted to stretch your architectural wings and fly, and now you're saying 'Feed me, coddle me, don't make me leave the nest'?  He's going to give you more freedom, and you know how hard that must be for him, he's such a strong designer himself.  And your first thought is to think he's deliberately being cruel to you?  Where is your self-respect, Alexandra, your good sense, your-- your gratitude?"

She should have been happy about how things had turned out; happy, joyful, and relieved. But she wasn’t yet and as yet she couldn’t be. “What is wrong with me?” she demanded again. 

Then, “I should call him. He’ll be home by now. Things seemed better by the time he dropped me off, but I should apologize for being such a shrew before that.”

But she knew she wouldn’t even pick up the phone. She knew why she wouldn’t, and she knew what had driven her to act the way she had.

It was fear.

Fear crouched like a shrivelled loathsome gnome visible to her mind’s eye, grinning in her face, mocking her. She got off the sofa, put on the kettle, and made herself a cup of tea. Maybe that would break its grip on her and she could go on with her evening as she had planned. There was an orchestra concert on the radio she was looking forward to listening to. And maybe she would draw a little on the sketches for her dream house.

But twenty cups of tea would have been no charm against a demon so long in residence. And the question of how her prospective kitchen should relate to a possible family room was nothing compared to the problem of how she had gotten to this point in her life and what she should do about it. And she had to do something about it, or her career (she would not allow herself to say “more than her career”) might be in jeopardy.

She pushed back her hair from her face with both hands, as if trying to clear her sight. “Why,” she whispered into the silence, “why do I act like this? Especially towards him? Why am I so afraid?”

Especially when for so long in her life there had been no need to be?

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by Catrin Lewis, 1983, revised 2013 & 2014, all rights reserved