The Humper Game Pt. 05 Ch. 07

We were all still much too hot and sweaty for goodbye hugs to be attractive, but Elise exchanged kisses on the cheek with the rest of us. "I'll see you tomorrow," she told us, heading off toward home.

After Kelly left us, I asked Ellen what was so surprising about Elise's class.

"First, just that she had never mentioned it. But. Phil, I know you won't like it. I don't, myself. But you know I'm sometimes seeing things. Nothing big, like what I told you about before. And I saw that you picked up on what I meant, when I said Kelly was going to meet Sam. Sam's going to come here, to meet Kelly and Elise and Amber, just after Christmas. Elise won't be here, though. But this is a little bigger than that. You need to learn some martial arts, yourself. I don't think you need to become an expert, but—well, you remember Mr. Miles when Wagner went for him with a knife? You're going to need something like that. And I don't know any more about it. But please, sometime soon, talk to Elise about this class and see whether you can't get in on it. I don't want you to lose the time, and I don't want to lose an evening with you every week, but you've got to learn it, somehow! And if you don't do it now, it will take just as much time in the end, and it may be too late."

I noticed that plainly Ellen either really was trusting me, or really thought this was important. Or both, which seemed more likely. Either way, she was pushing me to get involved in a weekly activity, without her but with Elise. One quite possibly involving some serious physical contact, at that.

As soon as we were home, I set potatoes to cook while we showered. Yes, we had a little more than a quickie in the shower. But even so, I managed time to make the potato salad before I went off to my first class. Ellen abandoned me to leave for hers, saying she had someone she wanted to talk to before class—one of her professors, I thought. And I was a couple of minutes late for class, as it happened. Not long enough to cause a disruption, but I really tried to always be on time.

Classes passed by about as usual, which in some cases was pretty well. Pete and Tammy handed me some fliers for the contradance, asking me to post them any place I could and distribute others as seemed appropriate. I had already noted one on the history department's public bulletin board in the hall.

They came and ate lunch with Ellen and me, and I put a flier on the board in that little lounge and gave Ellen a couple for the psych department. I asked Pete how many people would be at dinner, and he said it was just their guests, the four of us, and Kelly. They had invited Kelly and Elise more or less on a whim, as brand new contradancers, thinking that Scott—the musician—and his wife might enjoy meeting them, and vice versa. I told him that Kelly was really looking forward to it, and that she and Elise both were enthusiastic about attending the dance.

I told them that what I was bringing had gotten rave reviews on Labor Day, warning them however that I varied my recipes ad libitum, so that past results were no guarantee of future performance.

Tammy laughed. "I've seen you cooking, so I knew that. I also know that you probably wouldn't try anything really radical without time to do it over, and that you probably tasted it to make sure."

"You haven't seen some of my flops. But you're right, I'd try not to inflict something completely untested on anyone else, and yes, I did taste. Ellen, you don't really count as 'anyone else.' If I make something for us that's completely inedible, we'll have canned soup or oatmeal or something else quick to replace it."

She smiled at me. "Phil, with you, anything. And it hasn't happened yet. I'd say the chances of an unexpected masterpiece outweigh those of an unexpected disaster. Any disaster at all being unexpected."

I said to Pete and Tammy, "We can come pretty soon after our last classes, in case you need help with anything. We'd both like to study if we aren't really needed. Or are your guests already there? We'd enjoy socializing, too, if they are. Tell us what you want us to do, please."

Tammy said, "We won't get home until after five, ourselves. They arrived last night, and they're both very nice. They understand that we can't drop classes and studying to be with them more, and I'm sure they'll also offer to help with dinner. One of them, anyway. That girl, Hannah, is a real bundle of energy. I don't mean she's not a good girl or anything, though. They have a son who's about two, and they said he's entering the Terrible Twos, and that bringing him would have meant staying in a hotel. They said they couldn't inflict him on anyone, especially in tight quarters.

"But I gather they did inflict him on some close friends. At least, he's with those friends. We did have some time to talk yesterday, but not all that much.

"If you want to study, you'd better do it at home and come later. We'd love to have you earlier, to help and to socialize, if you can manage it. I'd especially welcome Phil's help in the kitchen. I think everything's on track—I just think it's likely to taste better if Phil is in on it."

Pete said, more quietly, 'Kelly asked me about—well, us—and said she had asked you first. And that makes sense—she knows you a lot better. It sounded like what you said was just right. Um, cleared up some issues and really happy about it, that's true enough and obvious enough. We owe you so much anyway. Thank you once again."

It was getting a little late. We all hurried off for afternoon classes.

After last classes, Ellen and I met and hurried home. We collected the casserole dish with the potato salad and basically nothing else. If we wound up with time to study, we both had reading we could do on our phones, though that made taking notes and all that really difficult. We stopped by Art's on our way out, leaving him a copy of the flier and encouraging him to go to the dance on Saturday. That dish was heavy enough to make the short walk to Pete's and Tammy's feel a whole lot longer.

When we arrived, Pete let us in. I took the potato salad straight into the kitchen, ignoring the people in the living/dining area. Tammy gave us each a big hug, saying how very glad she was to see us—or me?—and turned her attention back to meal preparations. I said, "We should meet your guests, but if you want help, let us know right away." She agreed, somewhat distractedly, and we left the kitchen.

Pete introduced us to Scott and Martha Davidson, and let them introduce us to Hannah. The first thing we noticed about Scott was that he was really tall. I'm not short, definitely above average, but Scott was a lot taller. Martha was probably about as much above average for a woman as I am for a man, I think. They were both solid in build but not fat at all. Scott was clearly a few years older than Martha. Or I thought it was clear, anyway—you already know that I was no judge of that. They seemed to me old to have a five year old child, much less a two year old.

And while Martha wasn't conventionally beautiful in the way Sam or Ellen or Elise was, I at least found her extremely attractive at first sight, and more so as I got to know her a little. Especially, when she really smiled, her whole face became radiantly beautiful. But most of all, she was just radiantly good and nice.

Their daughter was playing shy. Well, there were four strange adults present, even if she had met Pete and Tammy the day before. Scott picked her up, and whichever way he turned, Hannah turned to face away from us. I was about to circle around, so that she couldn't do that to Ellen and me both at the same time, but before I could, Scott spoke a little sternly to her. He said her name, "Hannah," but pronounced it as if it were the Hebrew form of the name, Channah, the "ch" like a German "ch", almost a gargled "kh" sound, the "a"s as if they were both "ah".

She looked at him, and he said, "Hannah, that's not polite. These are new friends, and you need to meet them." Again, he pronounced her name as if it were the Hebrew form. I found that in addressing her, he usually said it that way, and often in talking to Martha. In speaking to everyone else, he almost always used the standard English pronunciation.

She hid her face against his shoulder, but he said her name again, and she turned and looked at us. He said, "Hannah, this is Phil Morris, and this is Ellen Chan. They are good friends, and also very good friends to Pete and Tammy." He waited a moment, and then said, "And what do you say to them, since you're meeting them for the first time?" and waited again.

She looked hesitant, but after a moment she said, "Phil, I am pleased to meet you. And Ellen, I'm pleased to meet you, too. You are very pretty."

I looked at Ellen, and she said, "Hannah, I'm glad to meet you, too. And I'm glad you find me pretty."

I said, "Hannah, I'm pleased to meet you as well. You're a pretty girl, and you may well be beautiful like your mother when you grow up. But I'm sure your parents have told you that being good is more important than being beautiful. And I can say 'Channah' too, if you would rather I did that. Would you?"

She went shy again, hiding her face against Scott. He said to her, "Hannah, Phil asked you a question. I think I know the answer, and I can answer for you if you want me to. But hiding from people who are talking to you isn't polite. Phil asked how you want him to say your name. He wants to say it the way you want him to. He's being very polite to you by asking. Can you tell him?"

After a moment, she turned back to me. "My name's really Hannah, but Daddy says it the other way. Please say Hannah." She used the standard English pronunciation. She rather spoiled the effect by hiding her face again.

I said, "Thank you, Hannah. I'll try to remember to say it that way. Your name shows that your parents love you. It means grace, or favor, or charm."

Scott gave me a sharp look, but nodded. He said, "Hannah, when you finally decided to do it, you spoke very politely, just the way you should." He bent enough to set her down on the floor again. She scooted off and picked up a book she had apparently been looking at before we arrived.

Scott said, "Bedtimes and nap times have been disrupted. We'll need to put her to bed after dinner, probably before the adults are done." He looked at me. "You've studied Hebrew?"

"No, but I know some words, and 'hen' is one of them."

I'm not going to keep explaining about pronunciation of foreign words. Suffice it to say that "hen" is not said at all like the English word spelled that way. But spelling it "chen" wouldn't help, either.

"In one way that's a pity, but for the most part it's a good thing. My own study wasn't geared to speaking, and it was a long, long time ago."

"I had German in high school, fairly intensively at some points, and Ellen knows Italian. Ellen, I'm ashamed never to have asked you. Your grandparents spoke Mandarin?"

"No, Cantonese, though they could handle Mandarin. And before you ask, my parents know Cantonese but my brother and I grew up with English. I can understand a little bit, but not much. I can actually understand French better than Cantonese, and I never studied French. Italian gives me some clues."

Martha said, "We're both too rusty to be any good, but I had French and Scott had French and German, and as he told you, some Biblical Hebrew for reading." For some reason, she gave Scott one of her brilliant, joyful smiles. It was in the same megawatt range as Ellen's, but made a greater transformation of her face. Just a little, she looked like a different woman, when she smiled like that.

I said, "It's great to meet you, and I hope we can talk a lot more later, but I really should check in with Tammy to see whether she wants help in the kitchen." Martha followed me in there.

Tammy said everything was under control, but I could see that she was feeling a little frazzled—more than a little, really. I asked her what was waiting to be done.

"I was going to make a fruit salad, and I haven't even started on that. There are apples and bananas and grapes, and we have some canned fruit. Use whatever you can find." I got started. Martha went out. There wasn't a lot of room for another person to work. I finished the fruit salad. There were blueberries in the freezer, and after asking I thawed a few of those and added them.

Tammy said, "Does your potato salad need to be heated?"

"All the recipes say to serve hot, but I've almost always eaten it at picnics, chilled, and it's good that way. Let's leave it. Do you have a dessert, or plans for one?"

"My brain didn't make it past the main meal, Phil. If you can find anything to do, that would be wonderful."

There were quite a lot of apples, some of them varieties good for cooking. I peeled, cored, and sliced what I thought would be enough to go around, then put them in a casserole dish. I added raisins and sugar and some spices, and also just a little margarine, with a tablespoon or so of lemon juice over it all, and a bit of flour. I cooked it in the microwave, hovering to make sure it didn't boil over as it cooked down. For myself, I would have left the peels on, but I knew a lot of people didn't like that. Since Ellen was one of them, I was getting used to peeling any apples I cooked.

I took it out, stirred, and tasted it. I put the dish out of the way. I told Tammy, "We can chill that, or else warm it in the microwave when the time comes. Would it be OK if I ran out for some ice cream to have on top? I don't know how long the rest of it will take you."

"Phil, you're a lifesaver. That would be wonderful. The rest shouldn't take long, but it should be long enough." I hurried. The little grocery we shopped at was only five minutes or so away, so I went there. I started to get vanilla, then got chocolate too. That would give people a choice, if anyone really preferred chocolate on baked apples, and I thought of four adults and a five year old together for a week. I would have added strawberry as well, except that I thought there wasn't space in the freezer.

When I got back, Kelly had arrived. She said, "Phil, I didn't know I was going to get your potato salad again. I'm extra glad to be here now."

Tammy had been right, everything was about ready and in fact moving onto the table. Or tables, since their table was just too small for everyone. They had produced a smaller, folding table to add. This didn't leave a lot of room. I wondered where they had gotten extra chairs, too, though some of them were folding chairs matching the table.

As we all sat down, Pete said, "Scott and Martha are Christians, and last night we saw them praying silently before they ate, while Tammy and I had just dug in. I suggested that Scott might as well pray out loud for us all tonight." So we all bowed our heads, and Scott thanked God for the food and for our opportunity to be together sharing it.

As dishes started circulating, Kelly said to Scott, "Thank you so much for praying! I've been trying to get into the habit, and I'm to the point where it feels funny if I don't, but I also feel funny, kind of like I'm imposing, if I actually bow my head and pray, even silently, when I'm someone's guest who doesn't."

Scott looked around the table at everyone before he said, "Unless someone else has something else to talk about, I'd be interested in hearing more about you, why you're at the point of starting to pray at meals, Kelly. We talked a little to Pete and Tammy yesterday, starting with what he said a minute ago. We know they aren't believers, but Pete was raised in a Christian home, and his uncle Jim—the bass player—is a believer. He's used to it, and Tammy says she's comfortable with other people praying. I don't know anything about Phil and Ellen, obviously."

Tammy put in, "My parents are believers, too."

Kelly said, "I'll start by telling you about Phil and Ellen, because I know and it comes into what I have to say about me. Ellen's grandparents were all believers, and her parents aren't and she's not. Phil's parents aren't—in fact his father is militantly anti-religious—but his grandparents, who were believers, raised him a lot of the time, because his father's job takes him away a lot and his mother often goes too. And his grandfather worked really hard to teach him the Bible and talk with him about it.

"OK, as for me, I was raised in a—I guess I should really say a churchgoing family. Maybe a little more than just that, but not much, and I know enough now to see that the church was kind of vague on just what they believed. Some things happened a year and more ago that made me realize that I didn't really know what I believed, much less why. It left me kind of feeling at a loss as to what to do about it.

"Then this year Phil and Ellen started running at the gym, about the same time I was when I made it. Ellen came first, and she's way faster than I am, and she found someone there who works as a running partner for her, Elise. When Phil moved in a week later, he came with her, and he was running just about exactly as fast as I did, so she asked if I'd try running with him. And we've been running together most mornings since.

"The thing is, that gives us quite a bit of time to talk, so I was telling him about all this, a lot more than I've just told you. And he offered to get together with me and work through issues about the Bible. We've been doing it one evening a week, with Phil and Ellen and me, and it's been wonderful. Enough to be more evidence that there really is a God who cares about me and wants me to know him. At first Phil was almost scary, he knows so much. He knows most of the Bible by heart, I think, in the King James, which was scary at first, but he knows to make me look up things and read them, always in context, and we use a modern translation. He still tends to give me more than I can handle sometimes, but Ellen reminds him not to when he starts to do that."

I broke in to say, "I know a lot by heart, but nowhere near most."

"And then, for Thanksgiving, Phil and Ellen were invited to go for the weekend to visit the aunt and uncle of a good friend. Phil had stayed there in August, before he could move in here, and they kind of adopted him. They're strong believers, and in fact John is Professor Emeritus of history at a Christian college near them and teaches Sunday School in their church. And Phil and Ellen asked them to let me come along. And it was wonderful! Phil had been so good for me that I couldn't see how talking to anyone else could help me more, but he was right, they did help me even more. Phil has helped me see what the Bible really says and to start getting familiar with it—and that takes time, more than one weekend, of course—but they could ask about whole different kinds of problems that I hadn't even noticed I have. They're the most loving and wonderful people I've ever known.

"That's probably a lot more than you meant to ask for, I know, but that's really the answer."

I'd been noticing Scott's and Martha's expressions as Kelly talked. Martha was smiling very happily, looking at Kelly but with an occasional fond glance at Scott. Scott, on the other hand, had started looking a bit perplexed as Kelly talked, and more toward the end. When she was done, he waited a little bit, but then spoke up.

"Phil, excuse me, but what is your grandfather's name? And you said you grew up near the District of Columbia, is that right?"

"That's right, I did." I gave Granddad's name, adding, "He and Grandmom were killed in a car accident just over four years ago, by the way."

"This is a real coincidence, and I'm honored to meet you. I'm very sorry your grandfather isn't still alive for you to tell him what I have to say. He had a small reputation because of some little books he had written, on issues of living the Christian life, from a biblical perspective. They were very good, very deserving of a wider audience. Oh. That would be when I was pretty young, before I was really grown up. But when I was in college, one of the leaders in a campus ministry knew those books and knew him, and arranged for him to come and give a talk. I was active in that group, and I got to meet him. I got all those books, pamphlets really, and the books and the talk had a huge impact on me at the time. They were things I really needed to hear right then.