“How much are they asking for the apartment?”
“Two hundred and sixty-five thousand.”
John gave a long low whistle. “For that little place? Outrageous.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Lindsay said with a moan.
Circling back to address the practicalities of the situation, John asked, “Have you found another apartment yet?”
“No.” She started to sob again. “I haven’t even looked. This is New York. No building will rent to someone who doesn’t have a job. They ask for employment references.”
“Is there something I can help with?” John asked.
“There’s nothing anyone can do,” she repeated. “The job market is terrible. Sara had to leave New York and go live with her sister in Florida just because she couldn’t find work.”
“Why don’t you do the same thing?”
“Move to Florida?”
“No, come home. Take some time off and get your thoughts together. It’ll be easier to decide what you want to do if you’re not so pressured.”
“Oh Dad, I can’t possibly…”
“Sure you can. You’ve got no reason to stay in New York.”
“Yes, I do,” she answered, “I’ve got to look for a job, and then there’s all this furniture…”
Lindsay looked around the room and realized she actually had very little. A bed she’d ordered online, a dresser she’d gotten from the Salvation Army Thrift Store, a sofa that had been left by the previous tenant, two lamps, an on-again off-again television and a bunch of books. In truth there was nothing to keep her here. Everything she’d valued was now gone. She could even feel the person she once was disappearing bit by bit. If this were a month ago Lindsay would have refused such an offer. She would have explained that she had a life she loved right here in New York. Okay, maybe her life wasn’t perfect, but neither was it terrible. Of course that was a month ago. Since then everything had changed.
With a note of melancholy still threaded through her words, she asked, “Are you sure you wouldn’t mind?”
“Mind? Why, I’d be delighted. You can have your old room. We’ll give it a fresh coat of paint if you want. The weather’s still good, we can have a few cookouts…”
He painted a picture that Lindsay rapidly became part of. It would be as it had always been. She could already see each and every room of the house, her old car sitting in the garage, a flowered comforter covering her bed, the smell of hamburgers sizzling on the grill, friends, laughter. She even pictured the small white dog running beside her. A warm surge of a happiness rose in her heart, and she answered yes without pausing to consider that things never stay the same.
~ ~ ~
This is where it all starts to go wrong; I can already see it happening. Lindsay was supposed to go to Florida and visit Sara for a month. That’s where she was going to adopt the dog that would be her constant companion for the next three weeks. Then on a Saturday afternoon as she strolled along the sand at Saint Petersburg Beach, she’d meet the handsome young architect who is right now planning a Florida golf vacation. I had it worked out perfectly. But this all goes back to what I said earlier. Lindsay is totally unpredictable. Now with this new turn of events, I have to start scrambling around for another plan. It’s not as easy as you might think. Handsome human males with a pleasant disposition are not exactly falling off of trees, if you know what I mean.
The danger in this situation boils down to one simple fact: when humans are in love, everything is right with the world. If Lindsay had gone to Florida and fallen in love with the architect, she’d have no problem with her father marrying Eleanor. But she’s coming home brokenhearted and miserable, so all I can say is watch out!
~ ~ ~
The next morning Lindsay rose early and began packing. By noon she had emptied out the refrigerator, packed her laptop, two books and the clothes she’d be taking. Anything that didn’t fit in the large suitcase Lindsay left behind. After two years in New York, her life had become so small it could fit into one suitcase. When she wheeled the bulging bag into the hallway and closed the door behind her, there was no hesitation in her movement. She didn’t bother to look back or double-lock the apartment door.
She stepped from the elevator tugging the suitcase behind her, crossed the lobby and handed Walker the keys.
“I’m leaving,” she said. “Would you mind calling the Salvation Army to come and pick up the stuff in my apartment?”
“Okay,” he answered. “Where you off to?”
“Home,” she said. “I’m going home.”
The old man smiled. “Good. Real good.”
Eleanor
John is the sweetest and most loving man I’ve ever known, but he’s got a blind spot when it comes to understanding a woman’s feelings. He thinks Lindsay will see me as a second mother, but that’s pure foolishness. She’s a grown woman, not a child. It’s more likely she’ll consider me an adversary, and I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if she felt downright resentful. I’ve been there, and I know how I felt.
I was fourteen years old when Mama and Daddy got divorced. They fought tooth and nail until one day he slammed out the door and never even looked back. Three years later Mama remarried, and I just about hated her for doing it. I hated Mama and my stepdaddy too. Every word out of my mouth was an argument, and if she looked at me crosswise I’d say she was doing it because of him. It took me almost two years to warm up to the poor man, and when I finally did he turned out to be a really good stepdad. Matter of fact, he was the one who taught me to drive after Mama gave up, claiming I was hopeless.
Regardless of what John thinks, I’ll bet Lindsay feels about like I felt. It’s something to ponder, that’s for sure. Hopefully there’s a way to get around what she’s feeling, but right now I don’t know what it might be.
One thing I do know is that he should have told his daughter about us long before this.
“I’m gonna tell her tomorrow,” he said. Then he suggested we all go out to dinner and get acquainted. I squashed that idea pretty darn quick.
“You can’t just shove me in Lindsay’s face and expect she’ll like it,” I said. “The child needs time to adjust to the thought of her daddy remarrying.”
Take her to dinner, I told John, spend some time being interested in what she has to say, and then tell her about me. If he starts off talking about me like I’m just a close friend, she’ll be less likely to have a heart full of anger.
A situation such as this is almost like reaching for a stray dog. You don’t know what hurts that animal’s suffered. If you try to grab hold of it right away, the dog can easy as not sink its teeth into your hand. The only way to make friends is to wait and let the animal come to you. People aren’t all that different. John’s got to give Lindsay time to sniff me out and make sure I’m not looking to harm her.
I’m praying he has the good sense not to mention the idea of us being married or me being Lindsay’s second mother. The truth is a person only gets one mother, and there’s no one in the world who can take her place. Only a fool would try to be something she’s not. Lindsay doesn’t need a replacement mother, but after hearing what I’ve heard I’m betting she could use a good friend.
If she’s willing to let me be her friend, I’ll be way more than happy.
Cupid
The Homecoming
I watched Lindsay walk out of her apartment building, and I could see she had no regrets. Unfortunately, I do. I’m right back to square one when it comes to finding her Mister Wonderful.
Lindsay thinks her troubles are over, and she’s convinced she’ll find the same happiness she had as a child. What an odd lot humans are. History books, songs and stories are filled with tales of those who’ve made the exact same mistake, and yet every human thinks in their case it will turn out different. Few ever come to realize that love, wonderful though it may be, is not always easy. They look at it through rose-colored glasses and see nothing but blue skies and sun, when in
truth love often comes wrapped in a storm cloud. Eleanor and John will soon become painfully aware of this.
~ ~ ~
Dragging the suitcase behind her and bumping it up and down the curbs as she walked, Lindsay headed toward the Budget Rent-A-Car on Thirty-First Street. After filling out several forms that were not at all complicated, she drove away in a Honda Civic, turned down Twenty-Eighth Street and pointed herself toward the Lincoln Tunnel.
When she left New York the sky was overcast and dark grey, the clouds low and weighted with rain. The drive through the tunnel was ten, maybe fifteen minutes, but when she exited on the New Jersey side the sky had cleared, and the sun glittered so brightly she had to flip down the visor. Lindsay took this as an omen and began to believe her life was going to get better. By the time she reached into her handbag to pull out a pair of sunglasses, she was certain of it. That certainty grew with every mile she traveled.
She snapped on the radio, and Mariah Carey was singing One Sweet Day. Lindsay had loved the song back in the days when she’d been happy, long before Bethany was gone, long before she’d moved to New York. As she sang along, her thoughts drifted back to the friends she hadn’t seen in so many years, friends she’d promised to call and never quite gotten around to doing it.
“What a terrible friend I’ve been,” she sighed. “I should have stayed in touch. I could have called once a week or even once a month. Anything would have been better than letting all this time go by and doing nothing.”
Lindsay suddenly remembered Donna Bobbs calling months ago and leaving a message on the answering machine. She’d mistakenly erased the message and never returned the call. Thoughts of Donna brought to mind thoughts of Josie Leigh; the three of them had been like the Three Musketeers since second grade. Josie’s was the shoulder Lindsay cried on after her mother’s death. Josie was the one who tore into Alice McDougal when she made fun of Lindsay’s glasses. Josie was the best friend anyone could wish for, and yet last year Lindsay hadn’t thought of sending a birthday card until almost a month after the date. Reasoning that by then it was too late for sending one, she hadn’t bothered.
Friends are forever, she told herself. Donna and Josie aren’t the type to be angry with me for forgetting a birthday or not returning a few phone calls. Why, I’ll bet they’ll be really glad to hear I’m back.
It may have seemed like months to Lindsay, but it was almost two years ago that her friends stopped calling. They stopped calling because they almost always got her answering machine. After numerous tries, they gave up and moved on with their lives. Lindsay can’t see that now, but she will.
She doesn’t know Donna Bobbs married Derek Langer more than a year ago and moved to Ohio. As for Josie Leigh, she’s now a successful attorney with a drop-dead gorgeous boyfriend and no time for Lindsay. And that handsome lad who lived down the block, the one who was her secret crush? Well, he’s now married and lives in HoHoKuus with a wife and three toddlers. Nothing stays the same. Not for Lindsay, not for John, not for anybody.
After Lindsay counted up all the friends she was going to call and all the things she was planning to catch up on, she turned to thinking of her father.
Poor Dad. I have all these friends and he has nothing. I’ve not only been a bad friend, I’ve been a terrible daughter. I should have come home more often and spent more time with Dad. He’s not getting any younger.
As she pulled onto the New Jersey Turnpike Lindsay pictured her father rambling through the house all by himself, and she began to sense how lonely he must have been. When she tried to recall the last time she’d been home, it shocked her to realize it had been two years. Two years since she’d visited Medford or stepped foot in the house she’d grown up in. She recalled the look of her father on that last visit. He’d pretended to be cheerful, even told a few jokes and funny stories, but his laugh wasn’t the same laugh she’d once known. A blanket of sadness had settled over him, a sadness that made his blue eyes appear grey and his mouth droop at the corners. He hadn’t asked her to move back home, but Lindsay knew it had to be what was in his heart. Why did I not see that, she wondered. Why did I not see how much Dad needed me?
She drove for forty-five minutes; while her eyes focused on the road ahead, her mind leafed through a photo album of memories. When Lindsay left the turnpike and turned onto Route 70, she felt the warmth of at long last being home. She grabbed her cell phone and pushed speed dial 2. Phillip had been number one, but weeks ago he’d been deleted. Now there were only five numbers programmed into her phone. The Big Book Barn and the pizza delivery place would be deleted before the day was over. Then there would be just three: Amanda, Sara, and her father, who was number two.
He answered before the telephone could ring a second time, “Hi, honey. Are you on your way?”
“I’m almost there,” she answered. “Ten minutes, maybe fifteen.”
“Can’t wait to see you,” he said. “Drive safely.”
He was waiting alongside the driveway when she pulled in.
Her father appeared more robust and cheerful than Lindsay remembered. She kissed him on the cheek, and he pulled her into a bear hug.
“It’s good to have you home,” he said, and his voice wrapped itself around her with a familiarity she’d almost forgotten.
John tugged Lindsay’s suitcase from the trunk of the car and carried it into the house. She followed behind saying, “You don’t have to do that, Dad. I can handle it myself.”
“I know you can,” he answered and continued up the stairs. He lifted the oversized suitcase onto the bed and told Lindsay to join him in the kitchen when she was ready.
Lindsay unzipped the bag, removed her laptop, the few toiletries she’d tucked around the edges and three of her very best dresses. She left the remainder. She was going to be here for a long time; the clothes could wait until later when there’d be plenty of time for unpacking. For several minutes she stood looking at the room: the teddy bear sitting in the chair, the lace runner atop the dresser, the curtains at the window, pink curtains her mother had sewn.
These things, Lindsay realized, were the reason she hadn’t come home. In New York she could fool herself into believing her mother was elsewhere. Not gone forever, just simply elsewhere. Here Bethany’s absence was absolute. There was no elsewhere. Mom was gone, the kind of gone that slices into a person’s heart like a razor blade.
Standing there, where everything was just as it had always been, Lindsay felt the hole in her life growing bigger and bigger. The memories that had distanced themselves while she lived in New York suddenly came alive, and with them they brought a sense of shame. She had selfishly stayed away and left her father to face this alone. It was an ugly truth that now stood naked before her. Never again, she vowed. Never again would she leave him alone.
~ ~ ~
This is exactly what I feared would happen. Lindsay is one of the few humans with what we call misappropriated affection. I’ve only had a handful of these cases, but my counterpart in California encountered one hundred and thirty-six in just the last century. Of course, his problems are unique. There was the movie director who…no, in the interest of decency I think it best I not tell that story.
Back to Lindsay. There is no cure for misappropriated affection. The only thing I can do is provide a distraction, which then becomes the target of her love. Ergo the dog. You might not have seen it, but I know for certain. Lindsay fell in love with that dog the minute its picture flashed on her screen. This is another thing that baffles me when it comes to humans; even those without the capacity to love one another will love a dog. Of course compared to humans, dogs are easy. They’ll love any human I give them. The only problem a dog ever has is switching from one human to another. They’re fiercely loyal, which is something that’s not necessarily true of humans.
~ ~ ~
By the time Lindsay arrived downstairs, John had brewed a fresh pot of coffee. She sniffed the air and asked, “Is that Starbucks?”
When J
ohn said it was the same old Maxwell House they’d been using forever, she smiled then filled a large mug and joined him at the table. They were not five minutes into the conversation before she asked, “Do you still miss Mom?”
“Of course I do,” John answered.
“Yeah, me too.” She looked at him and smiled. “It’s nice that you’ve kept everything just the way Mom had it. That shows how much you love her.”
“Well, actually, the sofa is new,” John said, “and the porch furniture and the dining room light fixture.” He was trying to drive the conversation around to where he could mention that Eleanor had picked out those things, but he didn’t get the chance.
“It’s a good thing Mom married someone with principles. I hope one day I’ll meet a man just like you, someone who will love me, the way you love Mom.”
A finger of apprehension poked at John’s stomach. Lindsay’s words were present tense, not past. Words, John thought, it’s only words. He hesitated several minutes and carefully phrased his answer.
“I did love your mother,” he said cautiously, “and I always will. She has a very special place in my heart. Losing her was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to endure.”
He paused long enough to let the thought register, then said, “But life moves ahead whether we want it to or not.”
“I know,” Lindsay said.
John was on the verge of mentioning Eleanor when Lindsay spoke again.
“It’s just that Mom was so special,” she said wistfully. “No one could ever replace her.”
John decided this was not the right time to mention Eleanor, so he settled for changing the subject. “How about having dinner at McGuffey’s tonight?”
Lindsay nodded. “Okay.” She remembered when McGuffey’s was Pub n’ Grub. Back then they had a salad bar, and the waiters were college kids who wore jeans and green logo tee shirts. She hadn’t been back for years—five, maybe more.
Wishing for Wonderful: The Serendipity Series, Book 3 Page 5