Chapter 22

There is nothing like anticipation to give you raw nerves. Things had been moving fast, week by week building up to the proposal and acceptance – and now there was nothing to do but wait. Kevin found himself bouncing back and forth between rejoicing exceedingly with great joy, and swearing he was going to go nuts before the wedding could happen.

And so he went through his days. Sometimes in the space of an hour he'd go from breathless anticipation – literally breathless, his heart pounding so hard that he thought it would force its way out of his chest – to a fit of wondering whether the wedding would ever take place. He never knew when he went to bed what mood he'd be in the next morning, and each morning he knew that by the time he got home from work his mood would have changed several times.

The highlights of his week were Wednesday nights, and Sundays. It wasn't just that he saw Karin, and it wasn't just that he got to gather with the saints – it was both. They were still dating – if you could call it that now that they were moving toward a wedding – once or twice a week, but the double dose of his Christian family, and his great love, was overpowering. And he wasn't sure which joy was the greatest. Both were new to him. He'd only been a Christian a few months, and he'd only known love a few weeks, and the exquisite newness of both experiences combined in an ecstasy that, he sometimes thought, would burn out his mind.

Karin was somewhat calmer, but that was simply experience. She knew that Kevin was, in some ways, as innocent as a newborn, but she'd been through this mill before. True – Jerry had proved to be a despicable user of women, at least he'd used her, but she had experienced falling in love, and courtship, and marriage. At least she'd thought she was falling in love, but in retrospect she wasn't sure. She'd respected Jerry's competence at his work. She'd enjoyed the charm he'd unleashed on her as he pursued her. She'd found herself overwhelmed by the attention he gave her during the days preceding the wedding. But had she, after all, loved Jerry Segura?

That was, indeed, a question. She contemplated it frequently. She knew without a doubt that she loved Kevin Farley, and she knew that he loved her – which, she now saw, she had never been sure of with Jerry. Could a man who truly loved her have become, by the end of their wedding night, so brutally sarcastic, so demeaning, so contemptuous of her body and her mind and even her performance in bed? She wanted to shy away from that last consideration, but ordered herself to face it. Sex isn't marriage, she told herself, but it's a part of marriage, and if I'm going to examine this I can't avoid that part of it.

Jerry would come to her two or three times a week, spend five or 10 minutes, and then roll over and go to sleep. Never mind whether she was satisfied. He never asked. He never, as far as she could tell, even tried to make it pleasurable for her. She had been, she understood now, a sex object in the most literal sense.

Was that love? She couldn't believe that it was.

She had not, of course, been to bed with Kevin, and wouldn't until after the wedding. Even if he wanted to – and he hadn't shown the slightest sign of wanting to – she would refuse. But she could compare him with Jerry in other areas, and Jerry came out poorly. Kevin didn't have the charm, and he didn't have the money, and he didn't have the trappings of success, and he didn't have the education. But from the very beginning, even when they were simply people who'd exchanged names at the door of the church building, he had treated her with respect. He might have come, as she'd learned, from a culture which had institutionalized the objectification of women, but he had always treated her as a person – not something to "win," but an individual to respect.

Yes, Kevin loved her, and she loved Kevin. That, then, was definite. Had Jerry loved her? That seemed to be a definite negative. Had she loved Jerry? She had to admit that she hadn't. There had been infatuation, yes. There had been, before the wedding, considerable physical attraction – and that had, in fact, lasted a little way into the marriage, before Jerry's belittling words had killed it. But love? No. She had thought she'd loved him, but now she knew better.

And that was a relief. The marriage had been a horror, and she'd gone into it for all the wrong reasons, which upset her now that she saw how blind she'd been. But to know that she had not loved Jerry, that her attraction had been merely that, freed her to love Kevin without reservation. There would be no question in her mind, no wondering whether there was any remaining desire to go back. Go back to that? Not likely, Kari Bunny. Not likely.

And that little lecture, with its use of her mother's old endearment, settled the matter. She was going to marry Kevin Farley, and she was going to use her experience to keep on an even keel. The emotional waves might batter her, but she could, now, weather the storm, and not go aground on the rocks of paranoia and indecision.

It was a little bit after 5 in the evening when Kevin's phone rang. He didn't have caller ID, just a phone – it was the first phone he'd ever had in his name, and he didn't know what all the extras were – so he had no idea who was calling until he answered it.

"Kev, it's me. I wonder if I could come over for a while."

"Karin, are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm okay – but I want to see you."

They'd seen each other the day before, at church and at what was by now the traditional after-church lunch, but seeing Karin was never a bad thing. "Sure, babe, come on over. You know where I'm at?"

"No, I guess I don't. In all the time we've known each other, I just realized I've never been to your apartment."

"Okay, Kar, just come up Juan Tabo to Candelaria, and then over to Adams ... that's west on Candelaria. When you come to Adams hang a right. You'll know it's Adams 'cause there's a light, and a school. Adams will curve left, an' just before the curve Aztec takes off to the right. I'm right off Aztec." He gave her the name of the apartment complex, and the apartment number. "You got that?"

"Yes, Kevin, thank you. I'll be there in half an hour or so."

"Okay, babe, drive careful."

He scratched his beard as he hung up. He had no idea what Karin wanted, and though she'd insisted she was okay she'd sounded nervous. He knew she was a bit nervous about the upcoming wedding – though they hadn't set a date yet. The anticipation was affecting her, if not as overtly as it affected him. But it had sounded like more than that...