Elly awoke. The dream vanished and she was alone. The curtains glowed with the gray light of dawn.
She threw back the comforter. The chill valley air nipped at her arms and legs. Every time she closed her eyes, remnants of the night just ended filled her with unsated desire. She found her glasses and pulled on her yukata and padded down the stairs to the living room. Curling up on the couch, she gazed through the window at the brightening watercolor sky over Y Mountain.
Did I know it would be like this? Elly laughed to herself. She’d prayed for him to stay. You leave me, that had been her accusation. What had she expected when he stayed? She felt a tear on her cheek, caught it on the tip of her forefinger, and examined the glistening bead in amazement. I’ve got to stop doing this. She didn’t want to become some morose, weepy woman.
“ Ohayo,” came Melanie’s sleepy voice. “What are you doing up?”
“Watching the sunrise.”
“You watching the sunrise? Since when?” Melanie drew closer. “Elly!”
She leaned forward and pulled off Elly’s glasses. “You’ve been crying.”
“I’m okay.” Elly grabbed her glasses back.
A closer examination followed. “You do look—well, you look happy.”
“I am happy.”
Melanie plopped into the armchair. “All right, girl, out with it.” Elly shook her head.
“Elly.”
She bounced to her feet. “Is there a BYU directory around here?”
“In the drawer next to the sink. Why?” Melanie followed her into the
kitchen and peered over her shoulder as Elly flipped through the dogeared pages. “Okay, you’re looking for somebody whose last name begins with M.”
Elly danced away from her. McKenzie, Connor C. 1131 Cherry Avenue. Her eyes widened. That was right across the park.
“Ah! You had somebody waiting for you and you never told me! The Eleventh Commandment, Elly: Thou shalt not withhold the juicy details of a personal relationship from thy roommate.”
“It’s not like that at all.”
“Right. You are so not the teary type, Elaine Packard.”
Elly pouted. “I’m allowed now and then.”
“Well—”
“In time, Mel. I’ll explain everything in time.”
“Promise?”
“Um, well, not everything.”
Melanie growled. Elly ran upstairs to shower and change and get ready for church.
“You know,” Melanie said, as they walked across the law school parking lot, “that we’re expected for family home evening dinner after church? Allan and Roy and Quinn? Two condos over? No need to ask for directions?”
“Oh. Aren’t Jessica and Sharon next door going to be there too?”
“Nice try. Was that, ‘Oh,’ as in, ‘Oh, I just remembered,’ or ‘Oh,’ as in,
‘Oh, I’ve got to come up with an excuse real fast why I can’t come’?”
“I’ve got things to do and people to see.”
“The mysterious Mr. M. He can’t wait?”
“I thought you liked Allan and Roy and Quinn. With me not there, it’s three-on-three.”
“I’m thinking of little unsociable you, my dear.”
Elly shook her head. Having set forth on this course of action she had to reach the end as quickly as possible. Attending church was an excruciating enough delay. “One-thirty, right? If I’m back by two I’ll come right over. If not—”
“Something tells me I won’t be expecting you.”
Elly left as soon as fast and testimony meeting had concluded. Back at the condo, she stood in front of the dresser mirror. Melanie said her blue dress brought out the auburn in her hair. She blotted her lips against a square of Kleenex. She was operating on a lot of assumptions. First, that he lived there. Second, that he’d be there. Third, that he wouldn’t mind her barging in.
He probably wouldn’t even notice what she wore.
Her heart pounded. Elly wrung her hands together, let her arms fall to her sides. There, okay, don’t overdo it. She went downstairs, paused for a mental checklist, closed and locked the door behind her.
I will rise now and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth.
The narrow sidewalk between the condos and the Wasatch Elementary parking lot ended behind the backstop of the baseball diamond. It was going to be another one of those hot August afternoons. But the park was empty. Even the tennis courts were unoccupied. A lone SUV sat next to the covered picnic pavilion next to the parking lot.
She crossed Birch Lane and climbed Apple. Y Mountain loomed high above, a monument of ragged khaki and conifer green that all but closed out the sky. When she came to Cherry Avenue, she paused and looked back. The park below, the arboreal borders of the campus beyond, the far horizon topped by the ridgeline of the mountains west of Utah Lake, a clean blue sky above. Blue was her color today.
The avenue dead-ended at a chapel parking lot. She turned left and checked again. The second house on the west side of the street was 1131, a white brick cottage with dark green shutters.
“Brooks,” the mailbox said. Many families in the Tree Streets rented basement apartments to BYU students. “Okay,” Elly said. She summoned the last few ounces of her resolve, took a deep breath, rang the doorbell, and stepped back.
The bing-bong chimed through an open window, followed by the sound of footsteps. The door opened. An older woman stood there, a curious expression in her sharp blue eyes. She was white-haired and spry of build. A dishcloth was flung over her left shoulder.
“Yes?” she said.
“I’m—um—” Elly stammered. Another breath. “Is Connor home? I mean, does he live here?”
The woman answered with an expression of undisguised delight. “He’s still at church. Why don’t you come in?” She unlatched the screen door.
It was blessedly cool inside the house. The woman explained, “He’s the finance clerk in his student ward. He should be back soon enough. You’re welcome to wait.”
They were standing in the living room. Elly nodded her head.
“I’m Wanda Brooks. Connor’s aunt.”
“Elly—Elaine Packard.”
“Will you be staying for dinner?” Wanda headed back to the kitchen.
Elly had no choice but to follow her. “If it’s—”
“Of course it’s not too much trouble. We have too few guests for dinner these days. I hope you’re agreeable to meatloaf, Elly.”
“Meatloaf’s fine.” The smell from the oven made her mouth water.
“Now, Elly, not to presume upon stereotypes, but perhaps you could prepare the rice? Connor usually takes care of it.” She took three plates from the cupboard over the sink and started to set the table.
Elly found the rice cooker next to the toaster and a ten-pound bag of Calrose Botan behind the breadbox. “How much should I make?”
“Two cups.”
“That’s an awful lot for two—three people.”
“Connor saves the leftovers for lunch.”
“Ah.” She measured two cups of rice into the pan, took it to the sink and rinsed the rice thoroughly. Japanese rice had not been milled with talc for years, but rinsing remained an ingrained practice. She lowered the pan into the cooker, replaced the lid and pressed the switch.
Wanda pulled out a chair and motioned for Elly to join her at the table. “Now, your name has a familiar ring. My late husband Walter Brooks—he taught accounting—knew a young man named John Packard. Lectured on international relations in the MBA program. Worked for General Electric, as I recall.”
“Yes!” Elly exclaimed. “That’s my dad.”
“And we would’ve thought each other complete strangers not half an hour ago. I met your mother a time or two at the odd department soiree. Smart as a tack, was my impression.”
“As a tack, she is.”
Wanda got up from the table. “I see you’ve inherited her good looks and something of your father’s height to boot.”
Elly opened her mouth to protest the compliment and blushed instead. Wanda retrieved a salad bowl from the refrigerator and popped the lid. “It doesn’t look too wilted.” She paused. “Didn’t a Packard get called recently as a Seventy?”
“My grandfather.”
“How about that.” Wanda put the salad bowl and a bottle of Italian on the counter island. She flipped the faucet to the left-hand sink and began filling a water pitcher. “Though I’m afraid you’ve put our pedigree at a bit of a disadvantage.”
A door opened and closed somewhere else in the house.
The rice cooker clicked off. Wanda said, “I never can remember— should we do something about that?”
“No, it’s best to let it steam.”
Elly carried the salad bowl and the dressing to the table. Wanda set the pitcher on the counter. “The McKenzies, I’m afraid, are best known for their several black sheep. But to speak well on my nephew’s behalf, his mother’s father, Hugh Pedersen, chaired the chemistry department for many years.”
Footsteps on the stairs.
“He came to the Y from Southern Utah State.” Wanda looked up and said, “There you are, Connor.”
Elly turned and there indeed he was, looking stunned. She didn’t have the slightest idea what to say. They stood, rooted, for some indefinite period of time. And then she did the only thing she could think of doing— she put her arms around him, closed her eyes, and breathed in his familiar scent, because so many things about him were now so familiar to her.
Their hold on each other at last relaxed and she looked up at him. He kissed her forehead, the way he had the night before in the piercing, aching beauty of that wonderful dream. “Thank you,” he whispered.
Tears filled her eyes. The only thing she could do was hug him again. By the time they’d parted, Wanda had changed out of her dress into a pair of slacks and a cotton blouse.
“Looks like the meatloaf will be done in another ten minutes,” she said, as if this sort of thing went on in her kitchen all the time.
Connor said grace and the food was passed around the table. Elly took a bite of the meatloaf. “This is quite good,” she said.
“Thank you, Elly. Though it’s a recipe very difficult to get wrong.” She said, addressing both of them, “A more important question: how do you two know each other?”
Connor said, “We met in Japan. Briefly.”
“Yes, briefly.” A smile flashed between them.
“As it turns out, I was working for Elly’s uncle.”
“And Connor was one of my other uncle’s students last year. Professor Oh—he teaches in the Asian languages department.”
“Good heavens, you’re connected right and left. You see, Connor, Elly and I were talking before, and wouldn’t you know, Walter knew her father.” To Elly: “Where is he now? I forgot to ask.”
“He’s the mission president in Kobe.”
“More and more impressive. Not that the McKenzies were ever anything less than respectable middle-class artisans, mind you. But they always lacked the necessary manners to rise in society.”
Connor said to Elly, “Aunt Wanda missed her calling as an anthropologist. Margaret Mead McKenzie, Uncle Martin used to call her.”
“The high school librarian’s eye is an observant one.” She addressed Elly, “One thing you should know about McKenzie men, my dear. They may seem fickle as tomcats when it comes to human relationships, but only because they have such binary minds. Every decision is viewed as an all-or-nothing proposition. Half a commitment is worse than none, so none wins. The lukewarm is spewed out!” She emphasized the next point with her fork: “But once they decide on a thing, you can’t fault them for their loyalty.”
“Aunt Wanda makes us sound like a breed of dog.”
“With a little training they fetch and carry quite nicely.”
Elly had to laugh. Though the conversation bordered on the uncomfortably personal, judging from Connor’s reaction, it seemed a familiar facet of the old woman’s character. And yet so divergent from his own. In this family, Oh-ness must be carried exclusively on the X chromosome.