Things Worth Remembering (25 page)

Nine years later, thinking about it still makes me sick. Can I rate the worst moments of my life? I do believe I could come up with a top ten list. Until Maisey’s anguish erupted so violently at the dinner table last night, the number-one worst moment of my life by far was the afternoon I told Luke I had been unfaithful.

I’m in the middle of Illinois, driving farther and farther into what is now a horrible storm. Frightening black clouds met me when I drove across the Illinois state line, and now my windshield wipers can’t keep up with the torrents of rain. Unable to see the lines on the road, I pull over and park under an overpass, hazard lights blinking. I stare out my windshield at the apt image. Nature, smiling with me earlier at Mother’s good news, is now weeping with me. She is sobbing.

I dig in my purse for a Kleenex and press number two on my speed dial, hoping for a connection.

“Hello,” Luke says.

“It’s me,” I say. “I’m driving through terrible weather.”

“I can barely hear you.”

I move the phone closer to my mouth, but I can’t do anything about the downpour and the rumble of thunder. “Is this better?”

“Some. There are tornado warnings all over Illinois, Kendy. Marcus and I have been watching the Weather Channel. It’s beginning to get bad here too. You need to get off the road.”

“I suppose. I’m tired anyway. Really tired. I saw a sign for Effingham just before I pulled over. I’ll stop there for the night.”

“Be careful, and call when you’re in a room.”

“I will.”

“Are you crying? You sound like you’re crying.”

“It’s just . . . I’m so close, Luke. I want to come home. I could have been there in two hours.”

“I know, but it really is too dangerous.”

“Okay. I’m just being silly.”

“Call me when you are in a room,” he says.

I slide my phone into a pocket in my purse and tell myself there’s nothing to cry about.

But last night Luke and I lay in the same bed with too much distance between us, and tonight this storm has caused a literal separation.

My memories have made that unbearable.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Maisey

Marcus has gone to bed, so the knock on my door is probably Dad.

He opens the door and peeks in.

“You’re not asleep, are you?” he asks, though he can see perfectly well that my light is on and that I’m sitting up in bed looking at a
People
magazine.

“Your mom has run into bad weather,” he says, “and she’s spending the night in Effingham, Illinois. She and your dress won’t be here until sometime tomorrow morning.”

“Okay,” I say.

He turns to leave, and in spite of the reprieve I’ve just been granted, my heart is heavy.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” I say, stopping him before he makes it to the door.

“Sorry for what, Maize?”

“Sorry I’ve disappointed you.”

He smiles. “I’m quite sure your mother would like to have made the same apology to you. We all disappoint those we love at some point, don’t you think?”

“Children of dust?” I say, wanting to assure him I heard his lecture, even if I hadn’t exactly appreciated it.

“All of us.” He comes back to my bed and kisses my forehead. “Sleep in peace, honey.”

He is gone, but the words remain.

Sleep in peace
. He has borrowed the phrase from Mother. One of the most memorable times she used it was the night of Caitlin’s party. After my parents had told me I was grounded for an entire month, Mother came to my bedroom.

“Asleep?” she asked.

I didn’t say anything, hoping she’d think I was, but she came in despite my silence, sat beside me on the bed, and brushed my hair away from my forehead. “You know,” she said, as though she had no doubt I was awake, “I have a favorite wish for you, Maisey. Actually, it’s a prayer. I pray that you’ll live each day so that you can always sleep in peace.”

She sat there a minute before she stood up, kissed the top of my head, walked to my door, and shut it quietly behind her. That was the night I almost told her what had been bothering me for so long. I had the perfect opening:
Have you always
slept in peace, Mother?

I wonder what she would have said.

I set the magazine on my bedside table. I’d really like to go to sleep so that this day can be over. This is a night for visiting weird places, and I don’t
like it.

I get up, walk across the hall, and tap on Marcus’s door. Nothing. I open the door and hear his soft, even breathing. At least someone is sleeping in peace.

I return to my bed, already heading for another weird place. Next stop, the third grade, when a girl at church accused me of stealing her purse.

I wonder if she has quit making groundless accusations. After she had involved our teacher and every kid in junior church in the stolen purse caper, she found her pink patent leather purse sitting on a bookshelf where movies were kept. My theory is she put it there while she was playing foosball after our Bible lesson was over. But instead of apologizing for her slander, she said I stashed it there when I realized I’d been caught.

From the first false accusation until the last, I cried tears of anger, frustration, and embarrassment. Mother took one look at me when I came upstairs to the main auditorium and said I looked mad enough to spit nails.

Dad was on a business trip that weekend, so while Mother and I hurried to the car, I gave her a blow-by-blow account of what had happened in the church basement. “It was so unfair, Mom!” I wailed as we buckled ourselves in. I said this before I remembered that my mother had forbidden me ever to say the all-purpose phrase “That’s not fair!” She always said, “A good many things in life aren’t fair, so deal with it!”

But this time, as she pulled her car into the street, she let it go, which shocked me. She shocked me even more when she said she didn’t blame me for being so mad, and she absolutely astounded me when she drove around the block like an Indy race-car driver, shouting, “Hold on to your seat, Maisey. I’m gonna find that girl and run right over the little liar!” That made me scream and laugh all at the same time, because my mother wouldn’t run over anyone or anything. She cringed and cried the day she hit a squirrel that ran in front of her car, even though it jumped up and staggered away.

But of course my accuser was nowhere to be found, and Mother wasn’t really looking for her at all; she was looking for a parking place. This talk couldn’t wait until we got home. She parked under a shade tree in an empty parking lot, slipped off her seat belt, and turned to smile at me. Her smile, along with all the craziness, calmed me somewhat.

“I know what happened was unfair, honey,” she said. “And borderline cruel. But I doubt anyone really thought you stole the girl’s purse. Regardless, you need to forgive her. You need to forgive her for your sake, because bitterness will eat you alive. You need to forgive her for the sake, because she needs absolving and Jesus has shown us the glory of that. And you need to forgive her for the sake of the kids in Junior Church, because one of the last things Jesus prayed for was unity. We can’t be divisive, Maisey. We just can’t.”

I could almost hear angels singing in the background, and I knew Mother was right. What I didn’t know was how I was ever going to be able to forgive a girl who would make such an accusation.

I asked Mother if she had ever had to forgive something hard. That’s when she told me about her dad. “So,” I said when she started the car again and headed for home, “if he ever calls you and wants to see you, will you let him?”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen, Maisey, but if it does, yes, I’ll see him. Actually, I wish something would transform his heart so drastically that he would want to do such a thing— for his sake.”

“Have you ever had to forgive anything else that was hard?”

“Not really,” she said.

We drove in silence a few minutes before she said, “Well, that’s not exactly true. I’ve had to forgive your gram for a few things.”

“Like what?”

“Like not going with me to pick out my wedding dress.”

“Oh my,” I said, sitting beside her that day.

Tonight, Dad’s question won’t leave me alone: “What have you done?”

Something terrible, I suppose. One of the worst things I’ve done may be this: buying my wedding dress without Mother.

What other horrible places must I visit before sleep will come?

No need to ask—I know exactly where I’m going.

When Mother lost the baby and went to her room, part of me was glad I didn’t have to see her, but it comes to me now that part of me was destitute. I remember the snowy afternoon Dad and I watched a show on the National Geographic Channel about moose. They can stand six feet at the shoulder and weigh as much as eighteen hundred pounds, and those antlers should be one of the wonders of the world. I wanted Dad to take me to Yellowstone or Alaska to see one until the documentary explained what happens to a one-year-old moose. It seems like a moose has a baby every year, and when the female gets pregnant with the new baby, she drives away the one still by her side. Sometimes she does this quite forcefully. We watched as the yearling tried to come back to his mother, and I stood up in horror when she chased him back across the creek again. He was left to face the world alone. I wanted to cry for the poor thing. All he wanted was his mother back, but all the wanting in the world wasn’t going to make it happen—a new baby was on the way.

I understood his longing.

I wanted my mother back too. Oh, how I wanted her back. But so much was in the way. Her disloyalty to Dad infuriated me, and her betrayal of our code of ethics sickened me. And now I have to wonder if I was both infuriated and sickened when she abandoned me for a baby who had died before he lived.

So, I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sure I did grow up knowing the necessity of forgiveness, but I have just not been willing to forgive these things hidden so long and so deep in my heart.

What
have
I done?

Is it my mother’s sin I have paid for? Or is it my own?

Kendy

Neon
No Vacancy
signs fill the night sky.

I finally find a place to stay, but by the time I make it from the parking lot to my room, I am drenched. This is why I have left Maisey’s dress locked in the car. I fervently hope there isn’t a size 6 woman out in the storm, gripping a crowbar and looking in car windows for the perfect wedding dress.

I’m grateful the young man at the desk gave me a toothbrush and a tiny tube of toothpaste. I hope the flimsy thing will make it through two brushings. I towel dry my hair and hang my jeans, blazer, and bra on the shower rod, asking them to be dry by seven o’clock tomorrow morning, eight at the latest. My damp T-shirt is subbing for sleepwear—call me uncomfortable.

After checking in with Luke per instructions, I read Psalm 103, using it as a prayer, really. I often begin my prayers like the psalmist: “Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.”

Then the thanksgiving begins. “Thank you for removing our sins as far as the east is from the west. Thank you for healing me, for crowning me with love and compassion, for giving me so many good things, for renewing my strength like the eagle’s.”

After praise and thanksgiving come petitions, of course. Mother needs physical healing, Maisey needs emotional healing, I need strength and wisdom, and Luke . . . what does Luke need? Comfort? What else? Well, I’m not quite sure, but God knows. I have many petitions before my prayer time is over. Needy, that’s what the lot of us are. But I’m trying to remember what God has shown me time and time again: He is able to provide. We have this recurring dialogue:
I can’t
, I say. He says,
But I can
.

I close my little Bible, snap it, and put it back in my purse. Then, knowing what an incredibly busy and stressful day tomorrow will be, I turn out the light, anxious to get to sleep.

When I called Luke earlier, I told him again how exhausted I am, and he told me to get a good night’s sleep. I said I’d like to, that I need to, but the prospect seemed unlikely.

Those words were a self-fulfilling prophecy. Here I lie— eyes burning,
body weary, soul aching, and wide-awake. Call me wretched.

I suppose that’s a slight exaggeration.

Wretched is more fitting for how I felt the days after I told Luke about Clay and me. When I finally went into the house, he had left a note on the kitchen table saying he was going back to Indy to help his dad. I hadn’t heard him leave. Help his dad with what? I didn’t dare call and ask.

Whatever they were doing, it was so late when they finished that he spent the night with his parents. When he got home from work the following day, we talked to Maisey but not to each other and hoped Maisey didn’t notice.

When it was time for bed, I asked him if he’d like me to sleep in the guest room.

“Yes,” he said, “I think I would. But we don’t have that luxury.”

He said Maisey had been through enough in the last year; she didn’t need any more worries. So for her sake, we slept in the same bed, but we didn’t touch each other, not once. Luke’s pain and my fear made sure of it.

This went on for two wretched weeks.

Then he came home early one afternoon and walked outside, where I lay stretched out on the lounger, dozing behind my sunglasses.

“Okay,” he said, and I stirred.

“Here’s the deal,” he added.

“Okay?”
I asked, removing my sunglasses and placing them on top of my head. I couldn’t quite comprehend that Luke was standing beside me on this weekday afternoon speaking to me at all, much less saying, “Okay, here’s the deal.”

“You’re changing schools, so I’m making some changes too.”

He pulled a chair up and sat down facing me. “I’m moving home.”

“What?”

“I’m moving my office to the house and going into the Indy office once or twice a week. Partners have their privileges. I have a lot of clients on this side of Indy anyway. But that’s not the point. The point is I’ve missed out on too much. That’s going to stop.”

I was stunned.