Her eyes were red and wet. “We’re dead.” She took a deep breath. “You’re not dead. You escaped the massacre barely in time.”
He had to be supersharp for this. “Talk to me.”
She shrugged under the weight of the world. “I’ll start at the beginning. As soon as I called you, I grabbed everything out of my out-box and ran after Dale as silently as possible. I lost him at the elevator, but I saw he got off on the fourth floor, so I ran up the stairs. I saw him go into the Hostmark Room.”
“Not the Stone Room?”
“Not where we normally meet, no. I entered right behind him, and you should have seen John’s face. First, he was startled, and then he was furious. He actually blurted out, ‘What are you doing here?’ I know, I just know Dale was thinking about chasing me back out, but I suppose he knew he didn’t dare. I said, ‘This is an executive meeting and I’m dean of students. Is there a problem?’”
Ken smiled. He could just picture the scene.
“I asked, ‘Will we wait for John Macy?’ and Dale said, ‘No.’ So I said, ‘He’s usually the first one to come in. He must not know about it,’ and I stared right at John Nordlund. We all knew John M. was ready to side with you.”
Ken laughed aloud. “Beautiful! Just beautiful. You let them know you were onto their shenanigans, but you didn’t say anything accusatory.”
“They went around the room as always, and when they came to me, I spread the out-box papers in front of me. I said, ‘My show-and-tell,’ and picked up a letter to a junior in engineering. ‘This young man went to the bursar’s to drop out. They sent him to me. His mom had a hysterectomy but is basically bedridden from a serious infection. She desperately wants him to stay in school, but he has to take care of her and his brothers. So he and I put heads together and worked out a plan where he works in the herbarium in return for tuition; this is the letter confirming the agreement. He’s going to be a great engineer in a couple years. And he is one of over two dozen students we’ve helped in the last couple of weeks.’”
“Nicely done, showing a positive outcome with a human face instead of just spouting statistics.”
She looked so weary and sad. “But my pitch didn’t make any difference. They’re phasing out the aid aspect of the department. They said students will have to find outside aid and scholarships, that we can’t afford it anymore. They have to keep the department because it’s written into the structure. But they’re diverting the funds, and without sufficient funds, we’re sort of hollow. Just standing around staring at the wall.”
“There may be legal avenues. I’ll talk to Gerry. I doubt John or Dale will change their minds without a legal shove in that direction.”
She nodded. “Incidentally, my future is assured. After the vote, and as the committee was breaking up, John sat down beside me and leaned in. Then he laid a hand on my arm. ‘Now, Sandy, you are probably worried about your future, that you might end up without a job. Please don’t be. Regardless whether you remain as dean of students, you’ll have a place in this university. Maybe over in procurement. But you’ll have something.’ Those were his exact words, but I did not repeat them to you condescendingly enough. He talked to me as if I were a high school freshman! I was so repulsed I wanted to break a chair over his head, but I knew I didn’t dare burn that bridge, so I just took it.”
Ken studied her a moment, then stood up and crossed to the main bookcase, his old bookcase. “I understand your favorite celebratory drink is San Christoff Sparkling Cider.”
“San Chris— What?”
He pulled the bound student aid reports from 1993 to 2002 off the shelf and tossed them aside on the floor. Yep, it was still there. He pulled the bottle of sparkling cider out from the space behind the reports, crossed to his desk, got the cork puller out of the bottom left drawer, and went to work.
She gaped. “What…?” She twisted around to stare at the blank space on the shelf. She twisted back and watched him pull the cork. “You mean that was there all this time?”
“I got the primo, you’ll notice, not the less expensive stuff. It was going to be for some special occasion, but it’s worth pouring now.” He picked up her coffee mug, dumped the coffee out into the queen palm beside the window, and poured sparkling cider nearly to the rim.
“Wait. Here.” She handed him the spare mug out of the right-hand drawer.
He poured himself a libation and settled into the wingback chair. He raised his mug. “A toast to the woman who has what it takes and has never realized it. You did us proud.”
“But I couldn’t cajole them into giving us the money we need.”
“As I’ve so often told Steig and Marit, ‘Whether you win or lose may be controlled by someone else, but only you can do the very best you can.’ You did the best you could. That deserves celebration.”
She smiled and sipped, then took a healthy swig. She stared at nothing a few moments, then asked, “So how’s it going on the home front? Quite a change for you two.”
He wished she hadn’t asked that, because she was too good a friend and colleague for him to get disingenuous. But he didn’t want to dump on her when she was under such a black cloud already, so he shrugged noncommittally. “We’re trying, and they’re trying; we’ll get by.”
She didn’t ask anything; just gazed at him.
The silence became unbearable and he dumped. “Jakey’s having a hard time of it, and Mellie has buried herself in her books. She’s a good reader; she told me she took a test her teacher in Texas gave her, and she reads at eighth-grade level. But that’s not adjusting, that’s escaping. And they don’t have enough to occupy them all day. I guess Mona and I have lost that touch.”
“Mona and you did a pretty fine job of raising responsible adults.”
“Thank you. But this is different.”
“You have to remember that Steig and Marit never had to deal with abandonment. Abandonment by both parents yet.”
“Steig didn’t abandon them. He…”
“Ken, I know Steig better than those kids do. I’ve been in your home and around your whole family for nearly a quarter century. And you know Steig better than I do. You changed his diapers and taught him to use a fork. And you taught him to man up. You and I know absolutely that Steig will not willingly abandon his children. If he has to drag himself through a minefield, he’ll get back to his kids.”
“So why do you say…?”
“Those children have known Steig less than ten years, Ken. You tell them they can trust him, and Mona assures them they can trust him, but their experience tells them otherwise. He’s gone. If he’s gone a year, that’s ten or twenty percent of their lives. They don’t yet possess our assurance that he’s trustworthy, especially when their mother walked out.”
Ken nodded slowly. Of course Sandy was right. He thought again of the tears and sadness as Mellie tried to deal with her loss. Abandonment. In her eyes, that was exactly what it was. No calls, no Skype. No Daddy. And no Mommy. And Jake, only five, having to handle the same unspeakable loss; no wonder they were not the perfect angels that Steig and Marit had been. Usually. Well, sometimes.
Child psychologists would be quick to say that to a child, relationship is everything. Adults might be distracted by pretty toys or fancy belongings, but to children, family is everything. Everything. These two children had just seen their family, the most important thing in their lives—the only real thing in their lives—shatter irreparably, and there was nothing they could do about it. The insight almost brought Ken to tears.
“I don’t know what I can do to help you and your family, Ken. I’m at a loss here, but I’ll keep you in my prayers. And I’ll try not to ask for help so much. You don’t need this job on your plate, too.”
“I can’t just see it disappear, either. I’ve had a vested interest in it for far too long to see it evaporate.”
She smiled. “I won’t let that happen. Now that I’ve been at it firsthand, I see the difference it makes. It’s my fight, to
o, now, Ken.”
Ken finished his cider. Her words comforted him more than she could know.
She poured herself another mugful. “I’ll talk to Gerald Leach. See if our law counsel has anything to offer.”
Ken stood up. “Our help getting him through school means that much to him. Besides, I don’t think he likes John’s department very much. Apparently they gave him a difficult time. Well, Sandy. Hang tough.”
She came around the desk to give him a hug. “You hang tough, too.”
Ken left.
Now what? He ought to get home soon. The traffic by now would have smoothed out. He could go I-39. He walked across campus to the parking lot.
Bless her, Sandy had given him immense insight into the children’s needs. He still didn’t have any idea what to do, but at least he could see more clearly what they were battling. He could glimpse the depth of their sorrow.
The road had cleared out considerably; not that many people were entering and leaving Madison at this time of day. He passed a Cracker Barrel, which reminded him he had eaten no breakfast, savored no coffee. Should he get breakfast at home, assuming Mona was in a mood to let him back in the house? No, it was almost lunchtime. So he turned around the block and went back to the Cracker Barrel.
He bought a paper at the restaurant door and took it in with him. The smiling hostess seated him in a booth and plopped the menus in front of him. Should he have breakfast or lunch? Something brunchish would be the most appropriate. He settled on a cheesy omelet, received his coffee and sent in his order, and opened the paper.
Steig didn’t express much respect for newspapers or for news in general. “Same things happening to different people and the same people doing goofy things.” That about summed it up.
You are so right, Steig.
Where was he? Ken wondered. Special Forces are elite, so Steig was serving with the best of the best, but where? Obviously, it was nowhere with adequate cell service. Carefully Ken scanned the international news page, looking for mentions of deployment, transfers, or hot spots. That didn’t mean much, of course, since the army could be sending Steig to someplace that was not a hot spot yet. Nothing jumped out at him.
He found the crossword puzzle and folded the paper open around it. He reached in his breast pocket for a pencil. Nuts. He had not put a pencil in it before he left. Oh, well.
“Excuse me, sir. Your omelet.”
“Thank you.” Ken smiled and put his puzzle aside.
The waitress smirked, although it was mostly a smile. “Pen?” She held one out.
Ken accepted it. “Why, thank you. That is most thoughtful.”
“I’m a cruciverbalist, too.” Smiling, she left.
Now Ken had even more to think about. Here was a woman in a job that one usually associated with limited education, using the word cruciverbalist. Obviously, her world was much larger than one would expect. And the children came back into his mind. For the next six months to a year, Mona and he would be their caregivers and teachers. They could merely babysit, or they could widen the children’s horizons in ways that Steig, when he returned, would not have time to do.
Travel. Where could they travel? Travel broadens one’s horizons. Either this was a very tasty omelet or he was hungrier than he’d realized or both. Travel. Mona and he had full custody, but it would probably involve considerable legal hassle to take them out of the country. Somewhere stateside.
Historical areas? They were pretty young to appreciate Gettysburg or somewhere like that. Natural areas? They’d love seeing any wildlife that popped up, but mountains, lakes, and canyons? Not so much. The hash browns were good, too.
That left museums. And museums were increasingly catering to youth. There was his answer. Go down to Chicago for a couple days, spend at least a day at the Field and another at the Museum of Science and Industry, an afternoon in the planetarium. He wouldn’t mind seeing Chicago again himself. Milwaukee would be good, too. It had enough to fill a two-day visit.
And then his idle dreaming stopped short. Mona was all wrapped up in her business. She would never travel far or for an extended trip. He began to resent her business, and that was ridiculous. But—well, there it was.
Her business was helping her stay on top of her chronic depression, too. The kids were going to encourage depression, so he’d better not ask her to travel. Some of her really depressed swings had been murder to live with, punching bag or no.
She was emotionally fragile. Would her tendency to depression rear its ugly head when she tried to take care of two children who were just as emotionally fragile?
Ken could see no rainbow in the clouds ahead.
Chapter Nineteen
Find a pony farm. Find a pony farm. Nothing in the phone book. Mona googled pony farms/Madison, WI. Bingo. West of their area about ten miles. She looked over their website, Clauson’s POA’s and Norwegian Fjord Horses. “Rent a pony” was listed among their services. She punched in the number.
She explained what she was looking for, and the woman from the farm chuckled.
“This age is our favorite kind of birthday. We already have one party in the morning, so could you arrive, say, two? We have a party room with a freezer if you want to bring ice cream, and we have a special surprise for the birthday child.” She gave the cost. “And that includes the children meeting some of our stars, and we can include a buggy ride with one of our Fjord horses for an extra ten dollars. I can e-mail you the contract, you e-mail it back, and then you may pay that day when you arrive. There is a list on the contract of all the things you can bring.”
“You certainly do a good job of making this as easy for your visitors as possible.”
“Years of experience, my dear. My name is Beverly, and I will be your greeter.”
“See you on Saturday, and I’m so grateful we can do this on such short notice.”
“We had a cancellation; that’s why.”
Mona hung up and leaned back with a smile. This was a gift of God, she realized; a cancellation just when she needed the pony farm. Thank You, Lord!
Now what to buy for her present? Which reminded her of the black garbage bag that held birthday and Christmas presents for both of the children from their daddy. Their son had always been so well organized, but this was beyond believable. Lord, keep him safe wherever he is. These kids need their daddy so desperately.
Every evening Mellie’s prayers for her daddy grew a bit longer, often ending with tears leaking into her pillow. Every evening Jake asked, “Daddy Skyping tonight?” And Ken responded with, “Guess we’ll just have to wait and see. He’ll Skype if he can.”
Mellie’s school year had been nearly over when Steig brought her to Wisconsin, but the local school was not. Wednesday Marit picked her children up after the final half day at school, and with all the cousins and Grammy in the van, they headed for a picnic up at the park. While the lake was still too cold for swimming, the kids played in the creek, and even Jake wore mud from head to foot by the time Marit called them back for lunch.
“Wash your hands at the faucet and let’s eat. Grammy and I are starving.” She smiled at Jake. “And I brought hot dogs just for you.” At Arne’s groan, she shook her head. “Don’t worry, son, we have peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches for you and anyone else who wants one.”
“What are you today, short order cook?” Mona asked as she dug a hot dog out of a thermos and stuck it in a bun for Jake. “You put what you want on it.” She knew his father usually still did those things for him, but she figured he was old enough to decorate his own hot dog—along with a host of other things, like choose his own ice cream flavors and dish up his plate at the supper table.
“Just for today and a proper school-is-out celebration. Tomorrow they are on their own.”
As soon as everyone was eating at the table, she and Marit moved their folding chairs into the shade and settled in to eat and chat. Giggles grew in intensity.
“What’s going on up there?” Marit tri
ed to sound menacing, but Mona shook her head.
“Nothing.” Standard answer meaning Mom should probably go check.
With a sigh, Marit got out of her chair, and as soon as she saw the sight, she stopped and sighed again. “All right. Torin, Jake, do not put anything more in your mouth until you chew what you have.” Their cheeks bulged like two busy chipmunks. “The rest of you, knock it off; Brit, you know better.”
“You always blame me.”
“You’re the eldest; you should be setting an example.” As soon as the two lost their fat cheeks, she gave them all the stink eye and returned to her chair and her iced tea.
A couple of minutes of peace and someone asked, “Can we go back to the creek now?”
“Has everyone finished?”
“All but Torin, and he’s always the last one.”
“Okay, the rest of you clean up, and when Torin is finished, you can head for the creek.”
Multi-toned groan. Brit went into big sister mode and rapped out the orders. Within a few minutes, the table was indeed cleared and they were off to the creek.
“Every home needs a place for kids to dig and a creek running through it. Best child sitters in the world.” Marit sipped her tea and closed her eyes. “Hear the laughter? They are having such a great time, and it doesn’t cost a dime.”
Mona caught her up on the surprise at the pony farm party, and Marit grinned at her. “Good job, Grammy. I bet you put that place in your file for future kid parties.”
“I sure did. I’ll take pictures, or rather you’ll take pictures and we can put them in the file, too.”
“Did you tell her what you do? Maybe she’ll knock a bit off the price if you will send families her way.”
Mona shook her head. “Naah, her prices are rock bottom already.”
“Still…”
“To change the subject, I know I’ve asked before, but is there any chance you could come work for or with me for a while?” She went on to describe the proposal she put together for the preschool. “Your dad is really against me taking this on because of our two new family members.”
The Second Half Page 17