Promises

“I kind of think that you’re perfect, Kyle.”

“No!” he declared, his insecurity gone but something of even more concern replacing it. “I’m not. Only one man was.”

“Jesus?”

“Yes, Jesus. He was the only truly perfect man. The Bible says so, and I have never felt otherwise.”

“What about me? Is there something that I have a tendency to do that annoys you, Kyle?”

“Nothing, really.”

“But you said I wasn’t perfect.”

“You seem edgy now.”

“Edgy? What do you mean?”

“As though you’re waiting.”

She was now the one to face insecurity, regretting that she had ever gone in the direction of what the two of them were discussing.

“You’ve lost me,” Carla spoke.

“Waiting for me to let you down.”

She was silent for a moment, then nodded grudgingly.

“So it’s true!” Kyle exclaimed, surprised at himself.

“Yes, it is,” Carla admitted.

“You must have been hurt real bad in the past.”

“I have been.”

“You think I’m too good to be true, is that it?”

“Pretty much.”

“I’m real, Carla. I don’t have time for subterfuge, you know. The games that people play with one another. I hate that sort of thing. I live life with more urgency than a lot of people because none of us know what tomorrow will bring.”

“So do I. But it seems to be all that I have ever known. Few quiet moments, not much occasion to trust in the Lord, as you would say.”

“How sad.”

“Oh, yes, sad is the right word.”

“Not knowing who to trust—what that must do to your emotions!”

“But it’s typical of my profession. Phoniness is common. And actors are good at this, good at being convincing. They rope you in, and then when they are through with you, they cast you aside.”

“Have you done that to others?” Kyle asked.

She looked at him, having hoped that he would not ask her anything like that but now that he had, she struggled with an answer.

“I have,” she acknowledged. “There have been relationships built on pretense and deceit.”

“Is the one between us any different, Carla?”

“Of course.”

“You say that easily.”

“I meant it. I think that I am—”

She stopped herself.

“Go ahead,” he encouraged her.

“It’s hard,” she said.

“Hard to be honest?”

“Very hard, Kyle.”

“I’m willing to listen. I won’t pull away, Carla. I’ll stay right here and you can tell me whatever it is that you want to say.”

“Falling in love with you,” she said, forcing the words out.

He smiled in his most sensual way.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” he said, his voice not much above a whisper.

His gaze did not waver. She felt as though he were looking right into the center of her soul.

“Carla, it’s the same with me,” he finally told her. “I think I’m beginning to fall in love with you.”

Part of her rejoiced at hearing him say that but another part did not, the part that had felt so much hurt over the years, so much disappointment in her relationships with men.

“You don’t know what you’re getting into,” she admitted.

“I think I do.”

“You can’t possibly know!”

“You’re an actress. What more is there?”

“I’ve not been as pure in my life as you have.”

“Do you think I’m naive, Carla? I have friends who have been in show business for many years. I know what goes on.”

“I’ve not been as bad as some women I know. My involvements…never with married men. I—”

“Shush!” he told her. “None of that matters.”

“If you only knew!”

“I don’t need to know.”

“But—”

“But nothing, Carla! Last week, you and I went to church. And you walked down the center aisle when the invitation was given at the conclusion of the service.”

It had been a remarkable experience for her. She seemed to have been lifted up out of her seat and nearly pushed down the aisle.

“The sermon seemed to be about people like me,” she recalled.

“I think it was, Carla…about people who are convinced that they have led a life so sinful that there can never be forgiveness for them, not ever, as though God has written them off. Do you feel the same way now?”

She felt some resentment at how he was categorizing her feelings but not enough to contradict him, at least not then.

“Not as much. But you can’t expect me to change in an instant.”

“That’s right, I can’t. Yet I want you to know right now that since God has forgiven you, and forgotten your sins, so have I. As far as He is concerned, they never occurred. They are gone, totally, eternally gone. It’s that way with me as well, Carla.”

“Are you sure?” she pressed. “Are you absolutely sure, Kyle?”

“As sure as I am of my Lord Himself.”

He reached out for her, and she moved a few inches into the circle of his arms.

“It’s as though I have never lived before now,” she whispered, hating to feel so emotionally naked at that relatively early stage of their relationship, but unable to restrain herself, unable to slip into some kind of deception.

“The difference is that you now have something really worth living for,” he told her. “It makes all the difference in the world.”

She wanted to dispute this young man named Kyle Rivers, to tell him how close to arrogance that statement was, but she stopped herself, because she realized that he was not talking wholly about himself but, rather, Someone else.

“I do…” she continued whispering.

“You do what?” he asked.

“I do love you.”

She smiled at him.

“I want to kiss you now,” Carla said, “the longest, sweetest kiss in history!”

“You expect me to object to that?”

“Not one bit.”

“Well, I don’t.”

…the longest, sweetest kiss in history.

It probably did not come close to achieving that record but trying was still a lot of fun.

Chapter Three

A nother side of Kyle that Carla saw was his exceptional thoughtfulness, which never seemed put on but to come from the center of his soul…

Her parents both had had to be confined to a retirement center months before she won her Oscar, and so they couldn’t be in the audience at the ceremonies that night. She had arranged for a videotape of the ceremonies and a few days later visited her parents at the center, but Alzheimer’s disease’s relentless march had speeded up a bit, and no one could be certain how much her mother understood about what was going on around her. As for her father, caring for his beloved had proved too demanding, bringing on him a stroke that left most of his body paralyzed.

Kyle and she had visited them for the first time just two weeks ago, and Carla would never forget what one of the nurses had told her.

“Treat him good!” the heavyset woman whispered to her while Kyle was in the men’s room.

“Kyle?” Carla replied. “I wouldn’t do otherwise.”

“He’s a treasure.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s something like when we bring in animals now and then.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is a bond that develops almost immediately, it never seems to fail. Cats especially are a real blessing to these people, you know. Something in a cat, a sensitivity that is just beautiful to witness. The elderly, even the ones worst off, seem to come out of some kind of inner world for the few minutes that they can hold those warm, purring bodies.”

“What does this have to do with Kyle?”

“It’s in him, too, that ability to connect with people. I’ve never seen anything like that. What a doctor he would make! This friend of yours is special. I’ve watched him. He seems to ease the pain of anyone whose hand he holds. I think he does repair their emotions. This lasts only as long as he is with me, but, then, it may be a continuous process, and this is just an awfully important first step.”

The nurse stopped speaking. Smiling, she added, “What it must be like to have him hold you in his arms. He must be a passionate man.”

Carla agreed that he was.

“You are real lucky,” the nurse remarked.

“It’s not luck,” Carla told her honestly. “It’s God opening up his heart and mine to one another.”

“But you might never have met him. That’s luck, the fact that you did, right?”

“No, it isn’t. It’s pure and simple—an answer to a prayer for Kyle and for me. I was lonely. So was he. We felt that way before we ever met one another.”

The nurse nodded as she smiled strangely, and then went about her duties elsewhere in the center.

Carla had lost track of Kyle, but assumed he would be with her parents.

She was right.

He was kneeling in front of her mother’s wheelchair.

Normally, looking impossibly thin-faced, frail, not much more than a living skeleton, Rosemary Gearhart would not have been able to pay any attention to him or anyone else unless she was in a comparatively and increasingly rare lucid moment, but there was no way to predict when this would happen.

But, for Kyle, it would prove different. Every time he subsequently visited her, she would react like she did on that first occasion.

As Carla stood in the doorway, her mother was reaching up to touch Kyle’s smooth cheek.

“Where’s the beard?” she said.

He chuckled agreeably as he told her, “I just don’t have a coarse beard, ma’am.”

Her fingers touched his strong chin.

“Nice,” she said knowingly.

Kyle was surprised at the way she talked, and delighted that she was responding as well as she did.

“Why, thank you, Miss Gearhart!” he told her.

She touched his lips next.

“Are you a good kisser?” she asked abruptly.

“I don’t know how to answer that.”

Carla saw a chance to enter the little tableau.

“He is a very good kisser, Mother,” she said, smiling broadly, while Kyle blushed a very deep red.

Her mother looked up at her and, then, in an instant, the blankness that was part of Alzheimer’s returned, as though her comprehension, to the extent that she could grasp anything at all, was now trained on a scene beyond that one, a scene that only she could visualize.

That would not be Kyle’s only visit.

Over the coming weeks, he would return to the center half a dozen times. Carla did not have to ask him to join her.

“Are you going to visit your folks this evening?” he would say.

“Yes, I am,” she replied. “You’ve got my schedule down pat, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

During the other visits, Kyle seemed to be in demand all over the center, with an astonishing number of requests for a little of his time before he left. Gradually the visits began to last longer.

Carla could not have been more pleased because she was privileged to witness another side of Kyle’s personality that only confirmed what she felt about him.

She would never forget what he told her on the way back to her house that first time, after she asked him about her mother and the other residents at the center.

“What was it like?” she spoke.

“Strange at first,” he said.

“How do you mean strange?”

“I am usually a little shy being that close to strangers. Onstage, it’s not difficult for me at all. The audience is a sea of faces and they all blend together.”

“You can say that again!” Carla echoed his reaction.

“After all, I am not one-on-one with any of them. But today, I must have spent time with at least a dozen folks, aging men and women who needed me a lot more than anyone in any audience has.”

“At the start, it was awkward for you back there.”

“It’s the shyness I mentioned. But that passed soon enough.”

“I’m really sorry that I subjected you to all that, Kyle, and without much warning.”

“Oh, no, Carla, it was fine. I was enjoying myself but then, at some point, it went beyond ordinary enjoyment.”

“And became—” Carla prompted him.

He paused, recalling how he felt, the expressions on pale, wrinkled, liver-mark-splotched faces.

“I thought of what it would be like when my own parents reach that stage in their lives,” he said. “Could I help them in some way also?”

“You were saying that the way you felt went beyond carnal enjoyment as such.”

Kyle leaned over and kissed the tip of her nose.

“Something spiritual,” he said, “my soul touching theirs.”

She rubbed her arm.

“That sounds wonderful but—”

“Eerie?”

“Exactly the word I would have used!”

“I agree with you. But it was pure and beautiful, not dark and sinister, Carla. God’s purpose was being fulfilled.”

…God’s purpose was being fulfilled

“I need to learn a great deal. I don’t have the fix on His Will that you seemed to be blessed with, Kyle.”

“But you can learn. That’s the wonderful thing about faith. It can only grow, and along with that growth comes experience.”

He was holding her hand in one of his own.

“Some are willing and will learn nothing,” he told her. “Those who are eager to learn will be given much.”

“Kyle?” she asked.

“Yes, my love?” he replied with such warmth that she wanted to hold him so tightly that their hearts would be practically touching one another, making it difficult for Carla to control her emotions.

“I have one criticism,” she said, gulping a couple of times.

Kyle was frowning as he asked, “Criticism of—?”

Carla had not meant to make him nervous in any way but that was how he seemed to be reacting.

“You, Kyle.”

“Me?”

He looked so good, his bright blond hair glistening as a ray of sunlight framed the top of his head.

“A halo,” she muttered, trying to get out of the corner into which she had backed herself. “You’ve actually got a halo around your—”

“You’re changing the subject, Carla.”

“I guess I am.”

He was teasing her a bit but with an edge of seriousness as well and said, “You were about to tell me what that one criticism is.”

“I guess I was.”

“What is it? No more evasion, okay?”

“Okay,” she told him.

“Well?”

Carla hesitated, not sure when or if she should say anything after all.

“Go ahead…” Kyle kept prodding. “There is not one word or a thousand in the English language that you would use that could ever offend me or make me want to reconsider our relationship, okay, Carla?”

She was grateful for that reassurance.

“You are beginning to sound like some ultrasophisticated whoever from New York City or someplace. It’s almost like you are putting on a facade that you hope people will think is real. You weren’t like that when we first met. You sounded much more—”

“—normal?” he finished the sentence for her.

“Well, yes, that’s right.”

“You’re not the only one to point that out to me. My father said something just a few days ago.”

Kyle pulled the car over to the side of the road.

“Carla,” he said earnestly, “I’ve dated lots of women, you know. I think each one was special in her own way. But you’re different. You are very special. I find that I am always stretching myself emotionally to keep up with you.”

“But I don’t understand why you would feel that way. We’re on the same level. I’ve never felt that I was above you.”

He seemed unconvinced.

“I want to be a proper husband, a man you can respect. Rely on. I don’t know all that much about you yet I know enough to say that I am looking forward to us spending the rest of our lives together. And I don’t want you to be ashamed of me when we meet those big-time executives you know. It would be terrible for your career to have people saying that you settled for me out of wild passion, that there was no real love involved. What if important folks started whispering, ‘He might be a good lover but he doesn’t have a brain in his head.”‘

Kyle cupped her head in his hands.

“And I want to think that I can be a proper father to any children the Lord blesses us with, Carla, that they can be proud of me, too.”

Listening to Kyle talk about their future, about marriage and the children they would raise together someday, Carla felt so moved with love she couldn’t speak. She took his hand, threading her fingers through his. Staring down at their hands clasped together, she spoke in a quiet voice, one straight from her heart.

“I respect you more than any man I have ever known. More than anyone rich, or powerful or famous. I am proud to be with you and the proudest day of my life will be the day I become your wife.” She smiled tenderly at him. “I hope we’ll be blessed with children. And I pray I’ll be a good mother. I thought I’d done it all and knew it all when I met you. But now I know there’s still a lot I have to learn about life and about relationships, too.”

He slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “We have a lifetime ahead of us, my love. To discover it all together.”

Chapter Four

An Oscar!

It was coveted by virtually everyone in the moviemaking business.

Carla Gearhart had placed the statuette on the mantel over her fireplace at her home in Brentwood, Tennessee almost as a talisman to ward off failure.

For a while it seemed to be working. Winning an Academy Award for Best Actress had opened up a new career for her and revived the one she had started with when she was in her late teens: country music.

What a night that Monday was, with an in-person attendance of thirty-five hundred producers, directors, studio executives and many others, as well as a television viewing audience numbering into the millions.

Betting handicappers in Las Vegas and elsewhere were loading the odds against her, in part because no country music singer had ever gone from the Grand Ole Opry to any kind of real movie stardom, but also due to the kind of role that she had played: an obsessive, control freak mother who drove her daughter to a successful suicide attempt and her husband to booze. The film was dark, sad, largely downbeat. And her competition included more than one previous Academy Award winner.

Yet she won.

Columnists, media reviewers and others speculated after the ceremony had ended that Carla had been absolutely convincing in playing a character who was utterly opposite her own personality. None of the others did anything that the Academy Award voter had not seen them do before, however well they did it.

Carla was a breath of fresh air!

The morning after the annual ceremony in Hollywood, and the winners’ parties afterward, was precisely when her agent received a dozen phone calls from the various studios as well as major independent producers, most of whom would have little to do with her before she was able to hold the Oscar in her hand, and smile.

“You’ve got no worries, Carla!” Irving Chicolte had told her over lunch that next day, less than two hours after she had managed to drag herself out of bed, the two of them now sitting at a favored table in the most coveted section of a restaurant only minutes from the auditorium. But then Irving was a master of feel-good sensibilities, and would have told her the same thing if she had just been signed to do a role in a grade C quickie.

He was a genuinely sweet man, this bald-headed, bushy eye-browed, dimpled little character, a leftover from another era, surviving, and doing it well, in an industry of cookie-cutter young Turks, some of the other agents laughing at flashy old Irving behind his back but, at the same time, jealous of the deals he was able to secure for his clients, some of whom had been with him for decades.

More honest than he was willing to admit for fear of blowing his image, Irving Chicolte turned down deals that were suspect, telling people that he could not face his cigar in the morning if he ever threw his integrity out the window. Producers and studio executives, while not themselves above shady business from time to time, found dealing with Irving curiously reassuring, which was why he still had a varied roster of clients.

But it was Carla Gearhart who invariably seemed to require a wholly disproportionate percentage of the man’s efforts. She was hardly over the hill, but her singing career had been sliding because she revealed a penchant for accepting any kind of gig anywhere just to keep working. The only time she truly felt alive and functioning as a worthwhile human being was onstage before an audience. Her act defined her as a woman, because her work was her only reason for living.

Until Promises.

The truth got through even to Carla eventually.

Irving received the script from a producer at a major Burbank film studio who had her in mind for a part other than the lead. But as Irving read it, he had some sort of hunch that she was just right for that main role. He campaigned for the change, telling the producer and the studio brass bankrolling Promises that they could not have her for any part except the starring one. And Irving was promptly told that this was a possibility but she would have to screentest for it. Irving assured them that this was fine.

His hand was shaking as he hung up the phone on his cherry wood desk in an office that was more like a plush penthouse suite.

What have I done? he thought. I must have let the pressure rot my brain. It can’t be anything else.

Two nightmares.

One that he would have to face was telling Carla about the screen test; the other was getting her to do something better than simply coast through it on the assumption that being a big name in one sector of the entertainment world made her automatically an equivalent powerhouse in another.

Irving thought he would have to battle her for days.

But when he asked Carla, she agreed right away. Not one second of hesitation! And she rehearsed like a woman possessed, almost maniacal in her determination.

The result: she got the role, and just over a year and a month later, won an Oscar for best starring role as an actress.

Finally, at lunch the following day, Irving managed enough chutzpah to ask her why she gave him no trouble when he told her about Promises originally.

“That surprised me, too,” she confessed.

“What are you saying?” he asked, puzzled. “That you don’t know why you went along easily?”

Her smile then was the most radiant he had seen for a very long time.

“Obviously something is going on here,” Irving observed slyly.

“As I look back now,” Carla said, “I guess I can think of a reason that I wasn’t aware of at the time.”

“Tell me, Carla.”

“Because it was what God wanted. There’s a verse in the New Testament that suggests God gives each of us who acknowledge our dependence on Him a certain peace that passes understanding from time to time.”

“God?” Irving repeated. “New Testament? Carla, you’re scaring me.” Carla knew Irving had been raised a Christian but his faith had long ago lapsed.

“Yes, God, my good friend. And not like that cigarsmoking old comic actor, either.”

“I never heard you talk about Him before now.”

She paused, thinking, and then threw her head back, long strands of flame red hair flowing down her back, and said, “I have met a man.”

“So what does that have to do with God?” Irving asked lamely.

“Because, I think, it’s true that heaven opened up and dropped Kyle Rivers right in my lap.”

Irving Chicolte was twenty-five years older than Carla, and looked it, while she was in her early thirties and could have played a high school or college student.

“Now, now, I feel happy for you,” he told her, the father part of him coming to the surface. “But I’ve got to ask why you have kept him a secret until today?”