Return to Harmony

by Janette Oke

  “Dylan,” Jodie said, then stopped. She pushed herself back and fought for control. She was stifling sobs as she fumbled in her pocket for a hankie. Bethan handed her a clean simple linen from her own pocket. Jodie blew and dabbed at the tears on her cheeks. She looked at her friend and said, “I don’t want him to know I came.”

  Bethan nodded agreement. That was a sentiment she perfectly understood.

  “I was afraid he’d already be back. Maybe I hoped… I don’t know.” She struggled to draw a steady breath and almost succeeded. “No. If that’s the way he wants it, then good riddance.”

  “Oh, Jodie,” Bethan whispered.

  “He said that he wouldn’t be calling on me. Not ever again.” Her chin trembled, and one tear escaped to roll down her cheek. But she dragged in another breath and managed to hold to her control. “He said we have to stop seeing each other. That it’s all over between us.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Bethan murmured.

  Jodie stopped to take a long look at her friend’s face. “You don’t sound surprised. Don’t tell me he told you about it first.”

  “I’m truly sorry,” Bethan repeated. “I prayed and prayed it wouldn’t come to this. But… but it really…”

  Surprise managed to clear Jodie’s eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  “Come and sit down,” Bethan hurried on. “I’ll fix some tea and we can talk—”

  But Jodie pushed the hand off her arm. Her eyes were beginning to gleam with an emotion other than distress. “Bethan Keane, did you know about this?”

  “Well, I…”

  “Did you?”

  Bethan was unable to look into those dark eyes and face the anger they held. She swallowed and licked at dry lips. She said slowly, “He had no choice.”

  “He talked to you?”

  For a moment Bethan hesitated. But she had to be truthful.

  “We… talked,” she admitted, swallowing hard again.

  “You knew.” The words were clipped.

  Bethan found tears now forming in her own eyes.

  “And you…” The blaze of anger in Jodie’s face nearly choked off the words. “You think that he’s right.” It was not a question. It was a condemnation.

  “He can’t… he can’t marry outside the faith.” Bethan slowly raised her gaze, pleading with her eyes and her voice. “Jodie, you’ve changed. You don’t go to church, you don’t pray, you’ve pushed God—”

  “And I thought you were my friend,” Jodie said between clenched teeth and took a step away.

  “I am,” Bethan cried, and felt as though all the pain and hurt Jodie had arrived with had been stabbed into her own heart. “I pray for you every night. I—”

  “Don’t bother,” Jodie hissed. “I don’t need your prayers. I don’t want your prayers. I don’t—”

  “Jodie, please.”

  “I suppose you told him that he had to be rid of me,” she said in icy tones, belying the fire in her eyes.

  Bethan stood mute. There was no point in arguing about how or what she actually had said. But she couldn’t admit to it either— hearing it from Jodie’s mouth made it sound so wrong.

  “I thought we were friends,” Jodie said again, biting off the words.

  “Jodie, believe me, this has nothing to do—” Bethan suddenly was weeping so hard she could hardly continue. “I love you like a sister—more.”

  The contempt in Jodie’s face was worse than the anger. Bethan took a step toward her, but she spun on her heel and headed for the door.

  “Jodie, please. Don’t leave like this. Please.”

  Jodie whipped open the door, then wheeled about. “I thought you were the one person I could count on. And that perhaps Dylan would love me enough…” She shook her head violently, casting off bitter tears. “I see I was wrong. All wrong. There is no real love in this whole sad, sick world. And don’t try to tell me about your loving God. He has never loved me. Never. He took my mother. He took Dylan. And now…”

  She did not say the word “you.” But Bethan knew. The unsaid word hung in the air between them.

  “Jodie, please.”

  “It was your choice.” Jodie’s voice was as cold as the wind blasting in through the open door. “Your choice to end our friendship. Something tells me that wasn’t all, though. You had to do the choosing for Dylan as well.” She stepped into the darkness, stopped once more, and said, “I never want to see you again as long as I live. Never.”

  THIRTEEN

  THERE WAS VERY LITTLE of spring’s gentle transition. The cold continued through the third week in March, and then was followed by some of the hottest early weather anyone could remember. Jodie walked the lane back toward school beneath trees which appeared to have exploded into bloom. Every street, every garden in Harmony was a riot of color. She scarcely noticed it at all.

  The school was strangely silent as she let herself in and walked to the principal’s office, where she had been told to make an appearance. She knocked on the closed door, and at the sound of the muffled voice, she swallowed nervously and let herself in. “Hello, is this, I mean, are you—”

  “Yes, yes, come in and shut the door.” The woman wore a brown dress of heavy weave; it looked uncomfortable and scratchy in this sudden hot weather. Jodie watched as the woman shifted with the impatience of someone who was both overtired and overhot. She also refused to meet Jodie’s eye—a bad sign. The woman sighed noisily as she opened the file in her lap, read a moment, and only then raised her head to look—not at Jodie, but at the chair in front of her. “Sit down, please.”

  Jodie did as she was told, struggling to keep her sinking feeling at bay. She licked dry lips with a tongue that felt like sandpaper.

  “My name is Mrs. Roland. I am Assistant to the State College Admissions Director, which means I am responsible for interviewing candidates.” The words were spoken in a distant monotone. She shifted again and said with genuine irritation, “I have been traveling now for four solid weeks, and did not bring a thing suitable for this hot weather. I had expected to be home long before now.” She sighed, clearly displeased with this disruption of her schedule. “But after the Chancellor received your letter, he contacted me himself and told me to come by.”

  Jodie’s throat was too parched to reply. She gripped her hands together in her lap to keep the trembling from showing and gave a single nod. Which was lost on the woman, as she still had not looked directly at Jodie.

  “Your records are very good, Miss…” She had to stop and search the top of the page before she could add, “Harland. But I must tell you, the application request has reached us quite late. Not to mention the fact that you are interested in scholarship assistance.”

  “Something… something came up that I thought might change my plans,” Jodie said miserably, her voice barely audible. She did not wish to even refer to the dreams, the plans, much less explain the situation.

  “Very good indeed,” the woman continued, ignoring her. “And the written reports from your teachers are equally impressive. Especially the one from, ah, yes, here it is. Miss Amanda Charles.” One long strand of dark brown hair escaped from beneath her flat bonnet and plastered itself to her cheek. Impatiently the woman turned over the letter from Miss Charles, read a moment longer, then sniffed and spoke to herself, “I do so wish these village teachers could learn to write without hyperbole. They do absolutely nothing for their students’ chances by such blatantly exaggerated praise.”

  Jodie felt a sudden flush rise of irritation. She kept from snapping out a retort only by biting down hard on the inside of her cheek. Miss Charles was the most honest person Jodie had ever met.

  The woman sighed her way back to the front of the folder and read over Jodie’s application once more. “Chemistry. How odd. Not to mention requesting the Lerner scholarship. You realize, of course, that the Lerner is given only to two students each year.”

  This time Jodie did not even bother to nod. The woman’s tone said it all. Jodie sho
uld not be even wanting to study chemistry, much less applying for the scholarship. The sinking dejection solidified into a leaden ball in her stomach.

  The woman plucked a lace handkerchief from her long brown sleeve and glanced out the room’s single window as she wiped the perspiration from her face. “I do so wish it would go ahead and storm. Every single afternoon this week, it has seemed as though I’m being forced to work in an overheated smokehouse.”

  Jodie remained absolutely still. She had no desire to trade comments about the weather with this lady. It was hard to maintain her control, but she refused to give the older woman the satisfaction of seeing how upset she was.

  The woman stuffed the handkerchief back out of sight and gave Jodie a patently false smile. “Your records would certainly earn you a place in our English program. Or languages. French, perhaps. Or even Greek, if you are so inclined. There are several church organizations which offer partial scholarships for young ladies such as yourself who wish to become teachers.”

  “No, thank you,” Jodie said coolly, taking great satisfaction in the steadiness of her voice.

  Mrs. Roland gave her a sharp look. “And why not, might I ask?”

  “Because,” Jodie replied. “I am going to study biochemistry.”

  Although how she was going to accomplish that now, without a college enrollment, much less the scholarship, she could not afford to think about. Not now. Not until she was out of here and away from this woman.

  The woman examined her for a long moment, then returned to the folder. Her chair complained as she shifted position again.

  “Biochemistry,” she said slowly, penciling something in the margin of Jodie’s application. “You realize, of course, that you would be the only young lady within our entire chemistry department.” When Jodie did not respond, Mrs. Roland raised her head once more.

  “And just what is it about biochemistry that appeals to you so?”

  “It is the best initial degree I can obtain,” Jodie answered, “to go into bacteriology.”

  The woman and her pencil became utterly still. Then she said, “So what can you tell me about bacteriology as a field?”

  Jodie wasn’t sure if the woman really wanted an answer, but she decided to seize the opportunity before she was brushed aside with another offhand comment. “It began in the middle of the last century,” Jodie began slowly, cautiously, watching her listener. “Louis Pasteur demonstrated that fermentation was not an instantaneous process, but rather was a natural result of bacteria multiplying when granted access to air. His research led to the development of a vaccine against rabies, and the treatment of milk to prevent it from carrying disease.”

  Mrs. Roland leaned forward in her chair. When she did not speak, Jodie continued, “Robert Koch, working in Germany, used Pasteur’s methods to study anthrax. He was the first to develop systems for staining, fixing, and culture, which allowed bacteria to be seen and studied. He went on to identify the tuberculosis bacillus.

  In this country, Howard Taylor Rickets studied typhus.”

  Jodie was warming to her subject, and her voice grew animated in spite of her tension. “Joseph Lister is using his work and Welch’s study of gas gangrene to revolutionize surgery. In Russia, Elie Metchnikoff has successfully shown how white blood cells are the body’s defense against infection. That is where my primary interest lies.”

  There was a moment’s silence before Mrs. Roland murmured, “How remarkable.”

  “Yes.” Jodie’s enthusiasm carried her on, her voice now impassioned over the enormous advances in her chosen field. “Metchnikoff demonstrated how polymorphonuclear leucocytes can be seen under the microscope to actually ingest bacteria into their cytoplasm. Not only that, but it has now been proven that some bacteria actually produce toxins, to which the body develops natural antitoxins. This means that the body defends itself both in a cellular and humoral—or chemical—fashion. Emil von Behring has taken a child suffering from diphtheria and treated it with the antitoxin from another patient. The child recovered. This is revolutionary. It means that a lot of other diseases might be treatable with natural antitoxins.”

  Jodie stopped herself then. But her mind had been awakened and leapt off in a dozen different directions. Just as it always did when she started discussing what she had been reading and studying. But if she kept talking, she knew her disappointment at being rejected would only be worse. She would be even more exposed than she already was. Because the next thing would be to talk about how desperately she wanted access to a laboratory. And to other people who shared her interests. She might even reach the brink of confessing just how lonely she was here, how cut off she felt from the world and all that was happening. Especially now—now that she did not have a friend with whom she could share her hopes and dreams and hungers. But Jodie did not want to speak of that. So she clasped her hands together and waited as the woman’s pencil scratched across the paper.

  Finally the woman looked up once more, and Jodie realized that the hostility was replaced with genuine interest. “The scholarship board is scheduled to meet only once more this spring, Miss Harland, and that shall take place in one week’s time. I would strongly urge you to come to Raleigh and allow them to meet with you personally. Can that be arranged?”

  “Yes,” Jodie said, suddenly having difficulty finding air to draw into her lungs. “Oh yes.”

  FOURTEEN

  BETHAN HESITATED OUTSIDE the apothecary entrance.

  She always had to stop at this point, catch her breath, and pull herself together. Here it was, already the end of the summer, and still she had not accustomed herself to this rift with Jodie, her absence from Bethan’s life.

  Some nights she woke up, her pillow wet with tears she had shed while dreaming, and wondered how she would ever manage without her best friend. She had run the scenes with Dylan and Jodie through her mind a thousand times. She never found a satisfactory answer as to how she might have done it differently. Better, yes—no doubt she could have said it better. But would it still have turned out the same? Such nights always ended with the wish that once, just that once, she had been smarter, had possessed some of Jodie’s intelligence, and had known how to do things just right.

  It had been a difficult summer all around. Dylan had alternated between needing her comfort and support and withdrawing into icy silence. Her father had been caught up in some big statewide project to teach farmers new methods and was gone almost all week long.

  And her mother’s health had not improved; if anything, the heat had seemed to worsen her ailment. Moira’s joints had continued to ache, her fingers and elbows and ankles and knees swelling up at times to nearly twice their normal size.

  And Jodie…

  As long as she could remember, Jodie had always been there for her. Whenever there was bad talk or unpleasant news or struggles which threatened to overwhelm her, Jodie had always managed to be the strength Bethan never felt she had enough of, the one to whom she could always turn. And now she was alone. Bethan’s body felt wounded by the pain of her heart. It was as though she had lost a limb. And the only solace she knew came during her times of prayer.

  Bethan gathered her courage and pushed open the apothecary door. Her nostrils instantly recognized all the smells she associated with Jodie and her questing spirit. She gave as brilliant a smile as her quaking heart would permit and said brightly, “Good afternoon, Mr. Harland. It’s me again.”

  Nowadays Parker Harland wore the same gray sweater summer and winter, as though he had somehow managed to draw away from the seasons as well as most everything else. He peered over the top of his half-moon spectacles and mumbled, “Afternoon, Bethan.” His words were not slurred, rather just poorly put together, as though there wasn’t enough emotion behind them to give them proper shape. “Your mother doing any better?”

  “Afraid not.” She doubted that he cared much one way or the other. But the usual exchange helped ease her own nerves. “The only thing that seems to help any these da
ys is when I rub her with that liniment of yours. Can I have another bottle, please?”

  He was already reaching behind the counter. He put down the bottle, rolled it up in brown wrapping paper, twisted the top into a tight curl, then said, “That will be seventy-two cents.”

  “I am much obliged,” Bethan said. She peered into the back room, as she had every visit over the past five months. Jodie was not to be seen. Bethan took a steadying breath. This time she would simply have to ask. “Could I have a word with Jodie?”

  For an instant the indefinite fog which surrounded Parker Harland disappeared. A sharp gaze reached out from the years before his wife’s illness and pierced her. “You mean to tell me that Jodie did not tell you?”

  “About what?”

  “If I told her once, I told her a thousand times. This silly quarrel has gone on far too long.” Parker Harland shook his grizzled head. “That girl thinks I don’t notice anything. But I notice plenty. It’s just some things don’t seem important since…” He allowed the sentence to fade away, as though the thought was simply too hard to finish.

  Normally Bethan would have tried to say something in consolation. But just then she did not have the strength. Gripping the shelf, she kept her body erect and repeated softly, “Tell me what, Mr. Harland?”

  Parker hesitated, then said as gently as his permanent gruffness allowed, “Jodie left this morning for college up Raleigh way.”

  Bethan managed to stop the gasp in her throat. Jodie was gone. “She did? Of course she did.” Bethan kept speaking because it was the only way she could keep from coming to pieces right then and there. “College. In Raleigh. Of course.”

  She picked up the liniment bottle and began to make for the door. She was determined to hold on, though the goal seemed at the top of a steep rise. “Well, it’s my own fault for leaving it until the last minute. I should have come sooner. I’ll not bother you any further, Mr. Harland.” Her numb fingers found the door and managed to open it. Sunlight washed over her. “Isn’t it just a lovely, lovely…”