“The Lord Always Provides” by Michael McGrath

In late June 2023, on a trip to Calgary from Chicago, I arrived at O’Hare much earlier than usual and was at my gate killing time when an elderly couple approached. Both shuffled as they pulled their roller bags behind them; he bent over in the shape of a question mark, and she, with the aid of one of those canes with four rubber tips attached to its base. After settling into their chairs, the man, who was seated next to me, introduced himself as Don.

Oh God, I thought, and while I wouldn’t say that I was annoyed, exactly, I definitely wasn’t in the mood to participate in any preflight small talk, as I had other things on my mind. My wife, Malla, and I had purchased an apartment in Calgary the previous summer, and I was heading back to finish furnishing it. Now, I know what you might be thinking, but it’s not like we’re made of money, my wife and I, far from it, actually. Our purchase benefited from good timing more than anything else: a favorable exchange rate combined with a soft apartment market, driven by a surplus of inventory when people began moving into larger homes during COVID, enabled us to emerge from the deal without a mortgage. Up to this point, we’d been anything but extravagant in furnishing the place: most of our purchases had come from Facebook Marketplace and vintage shops. Having decided on a retro look, the apartment now had a cool ‘60s vibe: an Arborite dinette set, an electric-blue velveteen sectional sofa, a black-and-white polka-dot rug, and matching throw pillows. Scandinavian lounge chairs. Funky light fixtures. A framed cover of a 1961 Playboy. MCM—Mid Century Modern—is what I’ve been told is the style, but I prefer to call it EDM, or Early Dean Martin, instead. My main concern on this trip was the second bedroom. On first seeing the place, Malla had suggested turning it into a den so that I’d have somewhere to write. A Persian rug soon covered the cork flooring, and a rolltop desk, an eyeball lamp, and a vintage radio were then added to the space. Presently, photos of old Chicago Stadium and Wrigley Field were packed in my carry-on luggage. Some were in black-and-white, some were in color, and all of them were destined for the den. The only thing left for me to do was figure out what to do about the sleeping arrangements for some old friends of mine from Denver, Rob and Dana, whom I’d invited to stay with me during their upcoming visit to Calgary. Originally, I had planned on giving them my bed while I slept on the couch or perhaps an air mattress, but that idea was quickly abandoned a few days later when Malla called from work, informing me that she, too, had booked a ticket to Calgary. The trouble was, she would arrive around the same time as Rob and Dana. There was absolutely no way I could possibly ask my wife to give up her bed, and in the many restless nights that followed, I failed to come up with a solution. And so, on the day of my flight, after waking up at two a.m. and unable to fall back to sleep, I found myself at the airport nearly three hours before my scheduled five-thirty departure, still fretting about where to put my guests.

“Where are you from?” Don asked me after I’d begrudgingly returned his introduction with one of my own.

Calgary by way of Canmore, I told him, but since my retirement, I’d been living in Chicago. Don then informed me that he and his wife, Edie, were from Grande Prairie, a small city in northern Alberta, and were returning home after attending a convention in South Bend, Indiana. I considered asking him what kind of convention he and his wife had attended at this stage of their lives, but then I noticed a book on missionaries that he was holding and thought better of it. Oh God, I again thought, only this time, as I glanced over at the collection of pins adorning Don’s woolen, flat-topped cap—Grande Prairie Lions Club, the Knights of Columbus, the Kinsmen Club, the Shriners, Billy Graham Crusades—I wasn’t bothered so much as bemused. Ah, missionaries. Bless their stupid hearts.

My flight still wasn’t due to start boarding for at least another two hours, and rather than relocate, I decided to take my punishment like a man. It turned out that Don had met Edie, who was from Philadelphia, in bible college, and they’d been together ever since. “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” he told me.

“He sure does,” I answered, wondering what I’d done to deserve this.

Shortly after they were married, I soon learned, it was off to Ethiopia for the two of them, where they remained for the better part of the next decade in order to spread “the word.” As Don and Edie expounded on their efforts to bring light to the third world, I shifted my focus to a young woman walking down the aisle toward us. I’d noticed her a few minutes earlier, sitting at the end of the row with a guy who I took to be either her boyfriend or husband. They looked to be around the same age, early twenties, I guessed, and as she passed, carrying a laptop, she knocked Edie’s cane askew. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she gushed, extending her hand and tapping Edie’s knee. “I just need to charge my computer.” The young woman plugged her laptop into the nearby charging station and then sat down across from us. She had shoulder-length hair and a round face, her rosy-cheeked complexion giving off a wholesome glow, as if she were appearing in an orange-juice commercial. “I hope you don’t mind if I keep y’all company for a while.”

“That would be lovely, dear,” Edie answered, her voice a whisper, and the young woman leaned forward in her seat, apparently so she could hear her better. “Where y’all from?” she asked Don and Edie.

“Grande Prairie, Alberta,” Edie told her, then added, “That’s a city in Canada. Have you ever heard of it?”

I expected the girl to ask if it was anywhere near Toronto, the way most Americans do when asked about Canada’s geography, but her response was even less informed: “Canada! Oh my, no. I don’t know anything about Canada!” She pointed her finger into the air above her head and giggled. “Other than it’s up north somewhere, but I bet it’s heavenly.”

“It is beautiful,” Don agreed. “And how about you? Where are you off to today?”

“My husband and I are missionaries, and we’re on our way to India to do God’s work.”

OH GOD! The words screamed through my mind. Forget heaven, I was trapped in hell. At that point, I suppose I could have exited stage left, but having been brought up in the Catholic church myself, and all the accompanying Catholic guilt that went along with it, I couldn’t bring myself to grab my bag and walk away. And so I continued to listen as these three God Squaders exchanged syrupy-toned pleasantries. And let me tell you, and I’m sure this doesn’t come as any surprise, they hit it off big time.

Her name was Gabby, and was she ever. Like Don, she was from the boonies—a small town in the northwest corner of Missouri. She and her husband also met in college—”Wheaton College, imagine that!”—and like Edie, she’d majored in evangelistic chorale. “Not only is my voice God’s instrument, but it’s just so much easier to engage the congregation into worship when everyone is singing His praises,” she proclaimed. As she stated before, she had no idea where Grande Prairie was, or even Alberta for that matter, but she was sure she could find it on Google Maps, and, of course, she and her husband would love to stay with you guys if they ever came to visit. “Let’s exchange emails and phone numbers right now, before I forget,” she said, fawning over the two flattered seniors.

When the subject of families came up, Don mentioned that he was the eleventh of twelve children. “And are they all believers?” Gabby asked.

“Oh, yes. Our family has been very blessed in that regard,” Don answered.

Gabby shook her head and, sighing, cast her eyes downward as if she were about to deliver some bad news, which, in her own way, I guess she sort of was. “I can’t say that I’ve been so fortunate,” she said. “I myself have only three siblings, and they are all extremely skeptical when it comes to the Lord.” When she finally looked up, she changed course, telling Don and Edie about the church she and her husband were in the process of starting. “It’s been very challenging at times, as I’m sure you can imagine—very, very challenging—what with all the fundraising and all, but no matter how desperate and destitute things get, we find a way to survive.” She paused a moment and smiled gratefully. “The Lord always provides.”

The longer Gabby yammered, the more I was reminded of the ending to the movie Revolutionary Road, where Richard Easton’s character, Howard Givings, turns his hearing aid off rather than listen to Kathy Bates, who was playing his overbearing wife, Helen, drone on and on. At this point, I looked down the row at Gabby’s husband, who was dressed in a polo shirt, khaki shorts, and a pair of Vans. Sitting cross-legged with headphones on instead of a hearing aid, he too was smiling peacefully, just like poor old Howard Givings, a look of absolute contentment on his face as, uninterrupted, he watched a program on a laptop of his own. With still over an hour and a half to go before boarding, there was no such escape for me, and, oh God, how I wished I could be so lucky.

***

In the end, I did not get my wish, but as luck would have it, two of my closest friends, Michael and Susan, who happened to be vacationing in Thailand when I arrived in Calgary, left me the use of their mid-size SUV. Home Depot, Canadian Tire, Best Buy, Walmart, Costco, Safeway: all were now easily accessible, allowing me to put the finishing touches on the apartment. All except for a guest bed, that is. Everything I looked at in that regard—second-hand couches and foldout sofas, mainly—was either was too expensive, too ugly, or too big to fit comfortably into the second bedroom/den, and, ultimately, now desperate and destitute myself, I wound up shopping at the destination loved by university students the world over, home of affordable knock-down Scandinavian furniture and cheap meatballs and hotdogs: the one and only, IKEA.

On arrival, I headed straight to the living room section to look at the selection of futon sofa beds. Never a favorite of mine, I figured a futon would at least work as a stopgap until I was able to find something more suitable, so I approached the nearest salesperson I could find, a woman with dyed sandy-blond hair wearing a yellow shirt with a bright, bold blue Hej! printed on the back. Though helpful, she was unable to show me anything I liked. The futons themselves, I could have lived with—they were compact and comfortable enough, especially for the short term—but the patterned covers that came with them were grotesque: loud, gaudy hues that insulted my eyes. There was no way I could look at any of them on a daily basis without wanting to throw up.

“Have you checked out our daybeds?” the saleswoman asked after I told her thanks but no thanks.

“Daybeds? I don’t even know what one looks like,” I told her.

She then escorted me over to her computer, where she pulled up the store’s bed department. “This is a daybed,” she explained. “They are a bit more expensive than a futon, for sure, but they’re also a little classier, if you know what I mean.”

For the first time in my search, I’d finally found something that looked halfway decent. The daybed shown on the screen was painted white with three storage drawers running along the front of it. When not extended into a bed, the bottom half retreated under the mattresses, leaving a loveseat-sized seating area. Pair it with a body pillow and a nice-looking comforter, I thought, and Bob’s your uncle.

When I arrived in the bed department, I scanned the area for another yellow-shirted employee. This time it was an Asian fellow wearing black-framed glasses. “Hey,” I said, but just as I finished asking him for help, a tanned, shapely woman approached. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, and her long, coal-colored hair hung halfway down her back, matching the black Lululemon ensemble she was wearing. “You know what?” I continued. “Take care of this person first. I can wait.”

“No, no, it’s OK,” the woman told me. “Go ahead. I’m in no rush.”

“I won’t be long,” I promised. “I just have some questions about the daybeds.”

The daybed display was only a short distance away, and as the salesman and I spoke, I noticed the woman inching toward us, leaning, hovering almost, as if she were afraid of missing out on something. The price for the daybed in question was five hundred and fifty dollars. The salesman told me, but that was just for the frame. I’d also have to buy two mattresses to go with it, the price of which would vary depending on what type I chose.

I quickly did the math in my head and, realizing the bed was probably going to cost over a thousand dollars, thought, That’s a lot of money to spend on something that’s hardly ever going to be used. “Thanks,” I told him. “But I’ll have to think about it.”

As I stood deep in thought, staring at the daybed and rubbing my chin with my fingers, the salesman went back to help the woman, but when he got to her, she said, “Just a minute. I’d like to talk to that guy you were just helping.”

“Excuse me,” she said when she reached me, and after introducing herself as Diana, she continued: “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation just now. My husband and I have a daybed exactly like this one— it’s practically brand-new, only been slept in a couple of times. We’re in the middle of moving into a new house, but it’s not finished yet, and until it is, we’ll be living with my parents. We have to be out of the place we’re renting by tomorrow, and rather than put the daybed into storage with the rest of our stuff, I’ll sell it to you for four hundred and fifty dollars.”

I had spent the last eight days driving all over hell’s half acre buying things Malla and I needed, and, despite the fantastic price, I was in no mood to go to the edges of the city chasing a daybed. One of the reasons we bought the apartment was its location, close to the city center, and only three blocks from where I’d lived before my retirement. “Where’s your place?” I asked.

“Inner city,” Diana Daybed said.

She told me her address, and it was only nineteen blocks away from my apartment. I could ask my friend Roger, who had a truck, for his help, and drag along his brother Mark, who lived only six blocks from Diana Daybed, and maybe even one of Mark’s two sons for another set of hands. “Sounds good,” I said, thinking, Start the car! Start the car!

“But remember, it has to be picked up by tomorrow, or the deal’s off,” Diana Daybed reminded me.

“No problem,” I assured her, and as we shook hands, I heard an overly perky, saccharine-laden, almost giddy voice pipe up in my mind, trilling, “The Lord always provides. The Lord always provides. The Lord always provides.”