Beyond that, I had explicitly told Deirdre that I wouldn’t be interested in dating a widower. Why would she do this to me? To my exasperation, I could feel tears welling up. I was turning into one of those lachrymose females that populated Fanny Burney’s novels. At least I hadn’t started fainting all the time.
“Oh, Aunt Katrina, don’t cry!” Deirdre sounded aghast. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t know it would bother you that much! Please forgive me!” Her own eyes were spilling over.
I sighed. I couldn’t stay upset at someone who was genuinely distressed—someone I’d known since babyhood and had never really wronged me before. I pulled her into a side hug as best I could in my small car. She held me tight.
“It’s ok. I forgive you.”
She sniffled and I reached into my glove box and pulled out an unused fast food napkin from the stash I keep in there.
“Here you go,” I said. “Blow your nose.”
She obeyed and wiped her eyes, too. “Are you going to tell my mom?”
“I think you should tell her,” I said. “If there’s any fallout from this I want her to know the situation.”
Deirdre nodded sadly. We drove back in silence.
The following week seemed to drag on and on as I graded papers, taught classes and edited an article for a history magazine. I still hadn’t shaken the resentment that had descended on my heart, and as for the meeting with the art teacher, I just tried to keep my mind off the subject. I knew things weren’t right between me and God, and that my attitude was abysmal, but I wasn’t ready to stop sulking yet.
By the time Saturday came around again and Becky and I were sitting in the pew of the Methodist church for the foster care meeting, I had nearly decided to go to Papua New Guinea instead. I just wanted to leave my whole life behind and start over somewhere. All the rest of the people there were couples, which seemed to confirm that foster care wasn’t for me.
The first line of George Herbert’s “The Collar” recited itself in my head as I sat there: I struck the board, and cried, “No more; I will abroad!” It was Herbert’s defiance against becoming a clergyman, which, of course, didn’t apply to me, and I conveniently forgot the end of the poem.
The lady who got up to speak was a large, cheerful-looking person. She started off explaining the need for families. She painted the picture of abandoned children needing love so clearly that anyone with half a heart would have signed up to be a foster parent on the spot. Then she went on to tell us of the difficulty of the task. The trauma that so many kids came with. The chance for heartbreak, the loneliness, and the stress. That part was painted so clearly that anyone with half a brain would have run the other way. Then she said she was going to interview a woman that had been doing foster care for the last eight years.
It was supposed to be inspirational, I think. The woman shared her journey through infertility and her initial reluctance to take on any children that were not biologically hers. Eventually she was able to let go of the dream she had had for a traditional family and opened her heart to the children in need. It hadn’t been all rosy, by any stretch. Her heart had been broken more than once, as well as many items in her house. It was worth it, she said.
She and her husband were very noble, of course, but I was still bothered that her dream of giving birth had never come true. It seemed to me that with so many women in the world unwilling to be mothers at all these days, God ought to have let her give birth to at least one child.
“Wow, that was inspiring, wasn’t it?” said Becky when the meeting was over.
“Mm-hmm,” I said. I had the feeling that if I thought about it too much I would find out there was some kind of lesson I was supposed to be learning from it, and I wasn’t ready to back down yet. Becky signed up for foster care training right away, but I said I needed to pray about it more. I felt a pang of guilt when I said it, realizing that I really hadn’t been praying much at all in the last couple of weeks. I pushed the thought aside to deal with later.
On Thursday afternoon I was sitting in the bookstore preparing for class when Kim texted me.
“Are you at the bookstore? How about I bring you dinner there so we can chat?”
“YES!!!!” I wrote back.
She showed up at five-thirty with fried rice and Mongolian beef from Yang’s Yummy House (a name which I suspect sounds better in Chinese). We sat on the floor because the only chair in the place was Frank’s desk chair.
“This tastes so good,” I said, using my chopsticks to pluck out another piece of beef from the carton.
“Yang’s knows how to do it right,” agreed Kim.
I was conscious of a disinclination to share what was really going on in my heart. Kim wasn’t the kind of friend who would let me alone until I came out of my bad attitude all by myself; she would badger me and cajole me and hit me with Scripture until I could do nothing but repent. I kept our talk confined to how her own kids were doing and her struggle to deal with her cousin’s drug problem from two states away.
I thought we were sailing along pretty well with our conversation, and then she said,
“I wanted to invite you over for dinner next Wednesday.”
“Sure!”
“There’s a catch.”
“Ok, what do you need me to do?”
“To sit through dinner and be nice to another guest.”
“Who’s coming?”
“Jason Evans. Deirdre’s art teacher.”
I looked at her in disbelief. “Kim, no! I’m sure he already thinks I’m after him after the stunt Deirdre pulled. You can’t do that to the poor guy! Invite him to dinner and, ‘surprise!’ I’m there.”
“Hey, hey, hang on. Give me a little credit! I wouldn’t do that.” Kim looked a little hurt.
“Then what is this?”
“He asked me to host a dinner where he could get to know you a bit more.”
“Whaaaa?”
Kim looked entirely too smug. “It was totally his idea.”
“But Kim…I already told you. I don’t want to date a widower.”
“I’m giving you a chance to change your mind.”
I shook my head. “Look, if Todd couldn’t make me change my mind…” Oooops.
Kim’s face lit up. “Todd? How does he come into it? Did he say something?”
“He didn’t say anything. And I found out he’s divorced.”
“Why? I mean, why is he divorced?”
“I have no idea.”
“But you’ve ruled him out as a possibility.”
“Yes. To put it in your own words, I’m waiting for a Captain Wentworth. Someone who will say ‘I have loved none but you.’”
“You also said that if God wanted you to marry a widower, you would.”
“Well, He didn’t send me a memo telling me I had to marry this one.”
“Katrina…”
“Look,” I said, losing patience. “I’m not giving God orders, am I? I’m not demanding that he give me the man of my dreams, and that if he doesn’t I’m going to grow bitter.” I thought it best not to mention that I was currently struggling with resentment. “If He doesn’t send me the kind of man I’m willing to marry, I’ll happily remain single. That’s not being dictatorial, is it?”
“Oh! So you’ve decided on the two paths you are willing for your life to take, and God can choose either Plan A or Plan B. He’s not free to make an entirely different plan for you?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Isn’t it?”
I was quiet for a moment. Kim had a point, but I was unwilling to admit it.
“So I have to marry anyone who asks me?” I said belligerently.
Kim shook her head. “You know that isn’t what I’m saying. If the man doesn’t have the right character, or you don’t feel attracted to him, or there is some other impediment like that, then you shouldn’t marry him. Of course. But what if a woman told you she was only willing to marry a rich man? Or a perfectly fit and healthy man
? Or someone with a graduate degree? Would you still be arguing that she was right to hold out for those things in a husband and not consider anyone else?”
I looked at her for a long moment. “You’re making too much sense.”
“Yes, I know. I’m good at that.”
I made a face at her. “It’s not like I have a choice to make here anyway. Todd never did ask me out and now I’ll probably never see him again. The case is cold. And Jason certainly hasn’t asked me to marry him, let alone date him. Besides, a man with a daughter...”
“What’s wrong with a man that has a daughter?”
“Are you kidding? Have you not read Wives and Daughters?”
“No, but you made me watch the movie. Come on, you could never be a stepmother like Hyacinth. Not even if you tried.”
“It’s just complicated when there are children.”
“Not as complicated as when there are ex-wives with shared custody on top of it.”
I goggled at her. “Heavens, I never even thought of that.”
“Ok, just say you’ll come to dinner. Ed is friends with Jason and the girls are already friends. It’s not like a first date with just the two of you.”
“And what if he doesn’t like me?”
“Then you won’t have to make a decision about marrying him.”
“That’s not what I meant. I just don’t want to feel rejected.”
Kim pointed her chopsticks at me. “Aha! The truth comes out. This is less a matter of principle for you and more a matter of not getting hurt.”
“So? I’m human. I don’t want to be hurt.”
“Neither does he. But he’s taking a risk and testing a possibility. The least you could do is meet him halfway.”
I heaved a dramatic sigh. “Fine,” I said, “but I’m doing it under protest and just to get you off my back.”
“You won’t be sorry,” she said.
“We’ll see,” I muttered.
The week seemed to speed up after that; it went by much too quickly for my liking. I dreaded the thought of the dinner at the Coles’ (finally, I had something in common with Jane Austen’s Emma!) but I was also anxious to get it over with. I wasn’t sure which I was more afraid of: Jason deciding he didn’t like me enough to pursue me or deciding that he did.
Monday was the April meeting of the library book club. This time we had read David Copperfield and my plan was to talk about the book as a coming of age novel. For some reason, however, the discussion kept coming around to the choices David made in his adult life, particularly his marriage to Dora. Several members of the group admitted that their first infatuation had made them just as blind as David.
“It’s odd,” said Josephine, who was only seventeen but frequently made the most insightful comments, “but I always thought old books didn’t really explore the subject of being with your second love. But this is the third novel this year that has done that.”
“That’s true,” said Gary, a middle-aged trucker who broke every stereotype I had ever believed about truckers. “First there was Laurie in Little Women, then there was Marianne in Sense and Sensibility, and now this one.”
“There are two second-love stories in Sense and Sensibility,” said the lady whose name I can never remember. “Marianne was also Col. Brandon’s second love.”
“They aren’t quite the same, though, are they?” I put in. “There’s quite a disparity in the characters if you think about it. Marianne didn’t marry Willoughby, but he was not worthy of her love—quite a bad guy, in fact. When Laurie didn’t marry Jo, she wasn’t a bad girl, just not the right girl for him. And David Copperfield did actually marry Dora, who wasn’t bad either, but not the best match for him. And if Col. Brandon had married Eliza, they might have had a very happy marriage, but of course we’ll never know.”
“That’s not quite what I was getting at,” said Josephine. “I was just saying none of them were married to their first love by the end of the novel, and yet each one had what you might call a perfect match. I thought that was more of a modern concept, but I guess I was wrong.”
“Yeah,” said a guy named Brady who rarely spoke. “I thought classic novels always promoted the one-and-only love idea. I’m glad they don’t.”
In desperation I turned the conversation toward a comparison of Uriah Heep and Mr. Micawber and kept it there until it was time to go. But afterwards I sat in my car in the parking lot and stared into the darkness. Francis Thompson had not been kidding when he called God “the hound of heaven.” I now knew what it felt like to be hunted. I grabbed my phone and looked up the poem; I hadn’t memorized all one hundred and eighty-two lines and I wanted to read it again.
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vista’d hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasm’d fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’
I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside).
I stopped there. That was what I was afraid of: that if I surrendered my plans I would have nothing. I would be stuck in a pathetic life—perhaps one even more pathetic than my current one. And all I would have would be God.
And what would be wrong with that?
“All right, Lord, I can take a hint,” I said aloud, then shook my head. A hint? This was not a hint. It was a bash over the head. I tried again. “You win, God. I know that trying to thwart Your plan is useless. Whatever You decide to do happens, no matter how much I wish for it to be different.” I stopped again. I was making God sound like blind, malignant Fate. “I know you do everything for my good,” I went on, “and it will all work out in the end. But the thought still terrifies me. Please, please, can you make it be not too bad? I’m scared.”
It could not have been called a glad surrender or even a wholehearted repentance. It was, however, the first crack in my defences.
The dinner went off better than I would have expected. Kim and Ed had ordered pizza, and we all sat around their living room and stuffed ourselves. Deirdre must have been given explicit instructions about what she could and could not say, because no embarrassing comments or questions came from her. She and Tori stuck together like glue.
Jason asked me a few get-to-know-you questions and seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say, but he spent more time talking to Ed than to me, which was quite a relief. I couldn’t tell if I could be attracted to him or not. He was nice-enough looking, and a friendly guy, but I wasn’t sure I could like him as more than a friend. I told myself firmly that it didn’t matter right now, and turned my attention to Josh, who was suggesting we all play Clue.
“There’s too many people,” Deidre objected. “It’s only for six people and we have twelve.”
“We could do teams,” said Tori.
Sam and Ben put in their vote for playing with teams, and the adults capitulated. It seemed I couldn’t get away from murder, even in my leisure time.
“I’ll get it set up,” said Josh, and departed to the games cabinet.
“By the way,” Kim told me as we cleared the table for the game, “would you be willing to help with the foster families’ Fun Day this year? It’s the first Saturday in May.”
“Sure, that’s right af
ter the semester ends. What are they doing this time?”
“It’s a treasure hunt in the woods, near your favorite spot.”
“Oh that’ll be fun. I just hope it doesn’t rain.”
“Well, that’s always a risk, isn’t it? It’s what we get for living in Washington. We’ll have some things we can do even if the weather’s bad.”
Josh came over to the table with the game just then and he and Mia set it up. We all drew names for teams and then crowded as best we could around the table. I was paired with Sam, who was far more competitive about it than I was.
“Who do you think did it, Aunt Katrina?” he whispered after we’d all taken several turns.
“I still don’t know,” I whispered back.
“I wish we had a real detective here,” he grumbled.
So do I, I thought, and then wanted to kick myself. Even if I was willing to consider being someone’s second love, Todd was still not Our Kind of Person. That was a character issue, and it wasn’t something I could ignore. I forced myself to focus on the game.
Chapter 10
On Thursday morning there was an email from Sheila in my inbox.
“I’m rewriting the last three chapters,” the email said, “and I have a question. Would it be the butler or the housekeeper who would be in charge of decanting wines?”
That was a good question. I was pretty sure I knew the answer if the setting were in England, but I wasn’t sure about the colonies. Of course the jobs of servants in the two places were almost identical, but there was always the chance this might be one of the things that was different. In fact, hadn’t there been a reference to decanting wine in that American butler’s memoirs I had thumbed through while Cassie was reading Modern Chivalry? The thing was, he did mention the housekeeper more than once and I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t in connection with the wine. I decided it would be best if I checked it out.
Brought to Book Page 11