Danielle Steel - Amazing Grace

“Something wrong, Mel?” Tom asked her when he came to pick her up for dinner that night. They went to a sushi restaurant that they both loved. It was quiet, pretty, and the food was good. It had a serene Japanese look to it, and as Melanie looked across the table at him, she smiled.

“No, something right, I think.” She told him about the meeting she'd had that day with Father Callaghan. She said Maggie had given her his name when she said she wanted to do volunteer work. He ran two orphanages in L.A., and a mission in Mexico, and was only in L.A. part of the time. She'd been lucky to call him when she did. He was leaving the next day.

She told Tom about the work he did, mostly with abandoned children, young girls he rescued from brothels, boys who'd been selling drugs since they were seven or eight. He housed them, fed them, loved them, and turned their lives around. There was a shelter for battered women, and he was helping to build a hospital for people with AIDS. He worked with similar people in Los Angeles, but his real love was what he did in Mexico. He had been doing it for more than thirty years. Melanie had asked him what she could do to help him. She had wanted to volunteer in L.A., and thought he might ask her to write a check to help with the missions in Mexico too. Instead, he smiled at her, and invited her to come and visit there, and told her he thought it might do her a lot of good. It might give her answers she was seeking and had talked to him about, in her own life. She had everything in the world to be thankful for, she told him, success, fame, money, good friends, adoring fans, a mother who did everything for her, whether she wanted her to or not, and a boyfriend who was wonderful to her, a really good person whom she loved.

“So why am I so unhappy?” she had asked the priest, with tears running down her cheeks in rivers. “I hate what I do sometimes. I feel like everyone owns me, except me, and I have to do everything they want, for them … and this stupid ankle has been killing me for three months. I worked on it all summer, and now I can't get it better. My mom is mad at me because I can't wear heels on stage and she says it looks like shit.” It was all jumbled in her head as it came tumbling out like building blocks from a child's dump truck. Her thoughts were scattered all over the place. She could identify them, almost, but she couldn't make sense out of them, or make anything useful out of her concerns. He handed her a couple of tissues, and she blew her nose.

“What do you want, Melanie?” Father Callaghan asked her gently. “Never mind what everyone else wants. Your mom, your agent, your boyfriend. What does Melanie want?”

Before she could stop them, the words blurted out, “I want to be a nurse when I grow up.”

“I wanted to be a fireman, and I wound up being a priest instead. Sometimes we take other paths than the ones we expected to take.” He told her he had studied to be an architect, before going into the priesthood, which he found useful in the buildings they were putting up in the Mexican villages where he now worked. He didn't tell her he had a Ph.D. in clinical psychology that was even more useful to him, even in his dealings with her. He was a Franciscan, which worked well in his chosen line of work, but he had toyed with the idea of being a Jesuit. He loved the intellectual side of his Jesuit brothers, and enjoyed heated debates with them whenever the opportunity arose. “You have a wonderful career, Melanie. You've been blessed. You have a tremendous talent, and I get the feeling you enjoy your work, some of the time anyway, when you're not performing on a broken ankle, and no one is exploiting you.” In her own way, she was no different than the girls he rescued from brothels in Mexico. Too many people had been using her. They just paid her better for it, and the costumes were more expensive. But he could sense that everyone, including her mother, was pumping her to do their bidding, until the well ran dry. It had started to run dry for Melanie on her last concert tour, and all she wanted now was to run away and hide. She wanted to help others, and get in touch with what she'd experienced in the Presidio after the earthquake. It had been a time of epiphany and transformation for her, and then she had to go back to real life.

“What if you could do both? Do the work you love to do, when it's not overwhelming, maybe even on your terms. Maybe you need to take some of that control away from others. You can take some time to think about that. And take some time out of your life to help others, people who really need you, like the earthquake survivors you helped with Sister Maggie. Maybe the balance in your life would make more sense then. You have a lot to give people, Melanie. And you'd be amazed at what they'll give you back.” Right now, no one was giving her anything, except Tom. She was being bled dry.

“You mean like work with you here in L.A., or in your mission in Mexico?” She couldn't imagine being able to find the time. Her mother always had plans for her, interviews, rehearsals, recording sessions, concerts, benefits, special appearances. Her life and time were never her own.

“Possibly. If that's what you want. Don't do it to please me. You make a lot of people happy as it is, with your music. I want you to think about what would make you happy. It's your turn, Melanie. All you have to do is get in line, step up to the booth, and get your ticket. It's waiting for you. No one can take that away from you. You don't have to get on the rides everyone else wants you on. Get your ticket, pick your ride, and have a little fun here for a change. Life is a lot more fun than you're allowing it to be. And no one should take that ticket away from you. It's not their turn, Melanie. It's yours.” He was smiling at her, and as she listened to him, she knew.

“I want to go to Mexico with you,” she said in a whisper. She knew she had no major engagements for the next three weeks. She had a few interviews lined up, a photo shoot for a fashion magazine. She was recording in September and October, and was scheduled to do a benefit sometime after that. But none of them were things that couldn't be changed or canceled. All of a sudden, she knew she had to get away, and it might do her ankle good to stop working for a while, instead of trying to hobble around in high heels to make her mother happy. Suddenly, it was all too much. And he was offering her a way out. She wanted to take that right he was talking about. She had never done what she wanted in her whole life. She did what her mother told her, and what everyone expected her to do. She had always been the perfect little girl, and now she was sick of it. She was twenty years old and wanted to do something that meant a lot to her for a change. She had a feeling this was it. “Could I stay at one of the missions for a while?” Melanie asked him, and he nodded.

“You can live in our home for teenage girls. Most of them have been prostitutes and drug addicts. You wouldn't know it to look at them, they look like angels now. But your being there might do them a world of good. And you too.”

“How do I get hold of you when you're down there?” she asked, feeling breathless. Her mother was going to kill her if she did this. Although who knew, she'd probably try to turn it into a golden press opportunity. She always did.

“My cell phone works, and I'll give you some numbers,” he said, jotting them down. “If it doesn't work for you to come down now, it might be easier for you in a few months, like next spring. This is pretty short notice in a life like yours. I'll be there till after Christmas, so come whenever you want, and stay as long as you feel like it. Whenever you show up, Melanie, we'll have a bed for you.”

“I'm coming,” she said with a look of determination, realizing that things had to change. She couldn't keep her mother happy forever. She needed to make her own decisions too. She was tired of living her mom's dreams, or being her dream. She needed her own. And this was a good place to start.