3~Early Warning Signs

Warning Signs of Potential Abuse in the New Relationship

September 1978

I met him at a girlfriend’s birthday party, a potluck barbecue. He was putting the final touches on a green salad.

“This,” my friend Leo gestured towards the nondescript bespectacled man, “is my very best friend and brother in the Lord.”

“Hi,” I offered and then casually picked up the salad tongs and began to stir his handiwork.

He snatched the tongs out of my hands.

“I just arranged those layers,” he muttered as he laid the tongs out of my reach and rearranged the cucumber slices I had just displaced.

Startled at his response and unaware he had been perfecting the perfect salad, I excused myself and realized, without regret, I didn’t even get his name.

As fate would have it, when I sat down later to enjoy my steak, I was seated next to “Salad Man” who I discovered was named Tom, his manner now much more amenable, though without apology. By the time our steaks were half-eaten, our conversation had evolved into intense discussion about the moral realities of our lives. We agreed on a number of topics and I found myself disclosing things to him that I hadn’t even shared with some of my closest friends.

With the last bite of steak, Tom abruptly interjected, “”Well, if we’re going to go for that bike ride, we better get going.”

“Excuse me?” My mind lagged somewhere between the last complete sentence and the last bite of steak.

He continued in the tone of an instructor delivering a very dry lesson in chemistry. “I don’t usually give girls rides.”

So why are you giving me a ride? And on what bike? My mind sputtered in confusion, but the words couldn’t find their way out.

He rose solemnly from the bench, turned and headed for the house, without looking back to even see if I was following. Without another word he strode through the house and out the front door. Despite my bewilderment, I scurried behind him.

“Here.” He jabbed a bright blue helmet at me. “You need to wear this. Not that I mind,” he added, “but the government seems to think it has the right to tell me how I’m going to ride my bike.”

In a matter of moments, we ascended the breathtaking Junipero Serra freeway, a gently flowing river of asphalt atop the ridge that separates the San Francisco Peninsula cities from the Pacific Ocean. The abundant lush greenery of the mountainsides bordered the empty freeway on that warm September evening. The sun lingered low in the sky and the wind on my face felt exhilarating. I wrapped my arms tighter around Tom but resisted pressing my face into his shoulder.

If this man asked me to marry him tonight, I would say yes.

I shook my head, stunned at the words burrowing their way through my mind. Where did that come from? I glanced at the back of his helmet and studied his broad shoulders. I don’t even know you. I don’t even know where you live. My thoughts bristled but my potential fiancé seemed oblivious to my argument; until the motorcycle slowed abruptly and Tom eased onto the dusty shoulder.

For a brief moment, I panicked. Surely he can’t read my mind, can he?

He brought the bike to a halt, pushed down the kickstand and stood up. I let go of him and let my left foot drop to the pavement. He didn’t turn around but just stood there for a moment.

“Gas cap fell off,” he mumbled as he climbed off the bike.

“Oh.” My thoughts relaxed but my breathing and heart rate were still on the fast track. I slithered off the back of the bike and shoved my hands into my jeans’ pockets.

We separated in different directions scouring the roadside grass. As I searched for the gas cap, I stole an occasional glance at Tom. He wasn’t really bad looking after all. His rugged yet angular face bore a remarkable resemblance to Clint Eastwood. The aberrant thought that sneaked into my mind, just before the flight of the gas cap, had not gone away. Why in the world would this man suddenly become a marriage prospect? Was I really that desperate? I pushed the idea back in my mind when I spotted the cap in the grass across a ditch.

“I found it,” I called out and waved it above my head.

We reached the bike at the same time and Tom replaced the cap without a word—not even a word of thanks.

When I arrived home that evening, I called my younger sister, Rhonda. “I’ve met the man I’m going to marry,” I told her without any real excitement.

Rhonda laughed and sputtered, “You met this guy tonight and now you want to marry him?”

“I didn’t say that. I said he’s the man I’m going to marry.”

“And you know this because?”

“I just know it.”

She proceeded to throw everything at me I had already thought of: I knew nothing about him. I didn’t particularly like him. I had no idea who he was except he was a friend of Leo’s … not a ringing endorsement in her mind.

When the phone rang early the following Saturday morning, I groaned and turned my head on the pillow. “Yes?” Spit dribbled down my chin.

“I don’t know if you remember me …” he started.

I nearly choked and bolted upright in bed. I wiped the slobber from my face. It was Tom. I sat speechless. He explained that Leo was visiting his home, a cabin on a remote mining claim in the Coast Range south of the Bay Area. He wondered if I might want to come down and join them.

“I … I … I’d love to!” I stammered.

I grabbed some essentials and flew out the door. My roommates screamed out after me I was crazy. I knew that, but nothing was going to keep me from this trip.

More than three grueling freeway hours later, and after a quick stop at one of the two gas stations in Coalinga, I drove up a very winding Los Gatos Canyon Road. Caught up in the enjoyment of the drive, I nearly missed Tom’s old green Ford pick-up truck waiting at a roadside gate.

My heart leapt to my throat when I saw him. It melted back down to a puddle in my belly when he grasped my hands in greeting. For a moment, panic struck. There were no other houses. There were no cars driving by. We were in the middle of nowhere at the intersection of Tom’s life and mine. The winding asphalt of Los Gatos Canyon could take me back to my world. On the other side of the shiny silver gate lay a world from which I sensed there would be no turning back.

After a few moments of instructions, on which I tried very hard to concentrate, Tom opened the metal-pole gate and then stood and waited until I drove through. He locked it behind me and allowed me to take the lead so I would not have to “eat” his dust over the five miles of dirt road. My eyes lingered on the reflection in my rear-view mirror at the safety of the paved road; and at the man who held the keys to my future.

The five miles of dirt road traveled up and over hills and down through dry, rough creek beds. My little MG bounced and bumped through the hot summer dust over rocks that threatened to eat the rubber right off the tires. At last I noticed the “second road heading off to the right, just past the third creek crossing.” This was his “driveway.”

He actually lives here! I gaped as I drove the last stretch of dirt road to the small white cabin. The structure was definitely small. It didn’t appear to be much bigger than a storage shed you might find behind a much larger house; only the larger house was missing.

Once inside, I stood in the middle of a single unfinished room not much larger than the playhouse my stepfather built in my childhood. Sunlight poured through the west-facing window without argument from any shades, fan, or air conditioner. Portions of the wall were covered with unpainted sheetrock, the rest left bare exposing framing and insulation. Furniture was an endangered species.

“So, this is it, huh?”

“Honey, I got a big outdoors.”

His nearest neighbors, other than the coyotes and rattlesnakes, lived at least eight miles away. The cabin had no electricity. Three kerosene lamps with crystal clear glass chimneys were set about the room, just like in an old western movie. I noticed, with relief, a telephone on the old wooden desk in a corner by another window.

After a grilled-steak dinner, Tom and I hauled sleeping bags up the creek, or rather the dry creek bed. He held the flashlight, so I scrambled in his wake. I stumbled over uneven ground, rocks in the creek bed, and steep dry banks. I managed to maintain some semblance of cool—and that, only because he never looked back to see how I was doing. Further and further from the cabin, I worried about wild animals, but Tom didn’t appear concerned.

We pushed through into a small level clearing surrounded with scrawny little scrub oaks. Tom spread out our separate sleeping bags with appropriate walking space between them. We sat and talked under the stars for hours. Sometime in the middle of the night we were discussing marriage—our marriage—though carefully couched in a framework of God’s calling. Nothing to do with love. With this business transaction laid out on the table, or rather out on the rocks in this situation, we both drifted off to sleep, each in our own separate cocoons.

The next day spilled into the canyon with musky smells of oak leaves and decomposing earth....