by Nancy N. Rue
I wasn’t sure I was. All I had succeeded in doing was making Weezie more miserable than she was before. I had to admit I felt better, but I found myself wishing for a different reaction from her. And I wasn’t sure why I cared.
I stopped thinking about her when we got to communion, because it struck me as I was watching the people across the circle get their bread that maybe they weren’t all good church people. That maybe some of them had as many problems as I did, had done as much stupid stuff, were dealing with demons of their own. But there we all were, like the tax collectors at the table with Yeshua. I liked that.
When the service was over, Rocky said, louder than he had to, “You want to go for a coffee over at the Galleon, Red?”
Before I even had my mouth open, Weezie said, “I want to go!”
“Okay,” I said.
Rocky squeezed my arm, but I gave him a look and he got it.
“Can she come, Lou?” I said.
It was the first time I ever caught him by surprise. I was surprised he didn’t drop his teeth.
“You sure?” he said.
I shrugged. “Why not?”
Weezie, meanwhile, was running her tongue back and forth over her braces and shifting her eyes like she couldn’t decide where they should land. At last, she couldn’t bring herself to throw my nice back in my face. She really must have a crush on Rocky.
I couldn’t blame her.
I got busy trying to stuff that thought away while Weezie grabbed Rocky’s hand and hugged his arm and tugged him toward the door. We were halfway across the street before he had a chance to whisper, “You owe me, Red.”
“It was your idea,” I whispered back.
It didn’t seem to occur to Weezie that I was the reason she got to sit on a stool at the Spanish Galleon like a princess and drink hot chocolate with whipped cream and yak at Rocky until his eyelids were at half-mast.
Even in the truck on the way to her house, she went on and on to Lou about how Rocky rocked, and that must be why his name was Rocky, and how it double-rocked that he held her hand when they were crossing the street.
Like he had a choice. I tried to stop wishing he’d been holding mine. This was not the time to get weepy.
When we pulled up to the mini-mansion, Lou looked down at her without a twitch in his lips.
“Did you thank Jess for including you?” he said.
She cut a look at me like I was the one asking her to use some manners for once.
“You’re the one who said I could go,” she said to Lou.
“I was about to say you couldn’t until Jess invited you. Jess, not Rocky.”
I had to admit, the girl was a pro. She didn’t even hesitate before she had her eyes rolling and a sigh blowing out of her nose.
“She only invited me to impress you, Daddy,” she said.
Lou shoved the truck into park and snapped off the ignition. I curled my fingers around the door handle. So he could get mad. He did it in the same quiet way he spoke when he meant it. But it sent the message clearer than a full-blown fit.
“Would you mind waiting here for a minute, Jess?” he said.
I shook my head.
“You and me, Weezie,” he said. “Let’s go.”
While he was getting her bag out of the back, she shot me another look. If she’d been Chelsea’s Chihuahua, she would have bitten me.
I told myself I shouldn’t watch as Lou pointed to the front step and she sat down and he stood there, one foot on the step, one hand on his hip, and talked in a voice so low there was no way I could hear it even with the truck window open. But I did watch, because Weezie did everything but put a bag over her head to keep from showing any expression in her face. How did she do that? He wasn’t even talking to me, and I had a lump the size of a California roll in my throat.
When she’d gone into the house and he turned to come back to the truck, I saw by the way he was swallowing that he had one too.
He didn’t say anything until we were out on A1A again, and I sure wasn’t going to start a conversation. When he did, his voice was sad.
“You were nothing but generous to Weezie all weekend,” he said. “I’m sorry she didn’t respond very well. It surprised me.”
“It did?” I said, and then clapped my hand over my mouth. “Sorry,” I mumbled between my fingers.
“Are you?”
“I kind of am. Mostly I’m trying to be nice.” I probably should have added that it was Rocky’s idea, but I didn’t.
“Just because you’re nice doesn’t mean you can’t be honest,” Lou said. “It didn’t surprise you that Weezie acted like a little brat to you when you were going out of your way not to cross her?” He gave me a glance. “And we’ll get back to that part in a minute.”
Oops.
We pulled up to a shaggy-looking building with a sign that said A1A Crab Shack. Lou turned off the motor but he made no move to get out of the truck.
“Let’s face it,” I said. “She hates me. You can say she’s just jealous, but I think she proved that’s not it. I basically told her she could have you–I mean, all to herself–and that wasn’t good enough.”
He nodded at the windshield. “She wants you gone.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t add, “Duh.”
“You like crab?” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Then let’s find out.”
He didn’t start back in on the Weezie thing until we were sitting in a chipped, red wooden booth back in the corner of the place, each of us with a crab cake the size of a Frisbee in front of us. Lou let me go nutso over the amazing taste of it for a minute before he got serious again.
“Did your mother ever explain to you why she didn’t tell me she was pregnant?”
I stopped chewing.
“I really am going somewhere with this,” he said.
I shook my head.
“It was because she knew I would be a terrible father.”
“How would she know that?” I said.
“Because I was a drunk.”
I choked on a mouthful of coleslaw and had to drain half a glass of sweet tea. He waited until I could breathe again.
“We were the ultimate party animals, your mother and I,” he said. “The only difference between us was that she knew when to stop drinking and I didn’t. No–” He erased the air. “She could stop and I couldn’t, only I didn’t know that then. I didn’t know I was an alcoholic until after I married Weezie’s mother. I promised I would stop drinking when Weezie was born, but I found out I didn’t have the power to do it myself, so I just kept on.”
I put my fork down and started tearing up my napkin in my lap, just to make sure I was in a real place, hearing a real person talk.
“I don’t know if Weezie remembers what kind of father I was before I moved out. She was only three, and I hope she doesn’t.” Lou sat back and stretched his hands out flat on the table and looked down at them. “But she does remember that I disappeared from her life for four years. And when I came back, sober and humbled and ready to be her dad, she wasn’t all that excited about the idea.” He looked up and tilted his head at me. “Sort of like you.”
I just nodded. I was afraid to blurt out anything.
“For about a year she didn’t want to come stay with me on weekends. Then when she did, she’d scream and cry and carry on every time I took her home, until I finally got it out of her that she was afraid I would disappear again and not come back. We’ve only had anything close to a decent relationship for the last year and a half.”
“And then I came along,” I said.
He leaned toward me. “I’m not excusing her behavior, Jess. I probably should have seen it coming. But I am asking you to be patient for just–”
“I am being patient. I was so nice to her this weekend.”
“Yes, you were.” The twitch came back to his lips. “And I suspect that wasn’t all out of the goodness of your heart– not that I didn’t appreciate it, b
ut didn’t you have an ulterior motive?”
“What’s that?” I said, although I actually knew. I was stalling.
“An agenda. Something you hoped to get out of it.” He gave me the full grin. “Like seeing her go nuts.”
There wasn’t any point in denying it. I was convinced now that the man read my mind.
“Okay, at first, yeah. Rocky thought I should try it.”
Lou’s eyebrows went up, but he just motioned for me to go on.
“But once I got into it, I don’t know–it felt kind of good. I really wanted her to stop, y’know, fighting me. I guess I should just give it up and leave her alone. Or maybe you should just send me home.”
I really hadn’t planned to say that. And even when I did, I wished I could take it back–because Lou looked as if I’d slapped him in the face.
“You still want to go back?” he said. “I thought you were liking being here.”
“I am–I do–I mean, I think I do.” The hamster wheel threatened to rev up again. I didn’t know what to say about how I felt because I’d just now discovered I was feeling it.
Lou closed his eyes and nodded. When he opened them, they were strong again. “That isn’t for us to decide right now anyway, Jess. I heard from your mother last night–well, from her doctor. I didn’t want to tell you until we were alone.”
“Tell me what? Is she okay?”
I was halfway out of the seat. Lou’s eyes told me to sit down and I did.
“She’s not making as much progress as the doctor would like, and he wants to keep her in in-patient care for a while longer, until they get her stabilized.”
“She’s in the hospital. She has to take her meds.” Unlike me, who could flush them down the toilet. “What’s to stabilize?”
“Bipolar disorder is hard to medicate. They have to get just the right balance so she won’t keep going back and forth between–what do you call them–In-Bed Phase and No-Bed Phase?”
I wanted to cry. It was the first time anyone else but me had said those words that way. Weirdly, it was like Lou putting his arms around me. I was glad he didn’t. I would have started bawling, and I wouldn’t be able to stop.
“You okay?” Lou said.
I shook my head.
“Do you want to hear the rest?”
I nodded.
He still just looked at me for a few seconds before he went on. “Her therapy isn’t going well. She isn’t being as cooperative as they need her to be, and they still feel like she’s a danger to herself. It doesn’t matter how good the medicine is, she isn’t really going to heal until she faces some of her issues.”
“Her demons,” I said.
Lou’s eyes went soft. “Yeah,” he said.
“Like being an alcoholic is your demon, and ADHD is mine.”
He waited, like he knew there was more. And there was. I wanted to ask him if he ever heard of a guy named Yeshua who drove out demons. But for some reason I couldn’t. Not yet.
“Will it be that hard for you to stay here for a while longer, Jess?” he said.
I looked down at my napkin, which was in shreds on my lap, the seat, and the floor.
“You don’t have to answer that right now–”
“No,” I said. “It won’t be that hard. Where else am I going to go anyway?”
He pulled his eyes away and nodded. “Right,” he said. “You ready for dessert? They have killer key lime pie.”
“Bring it on,” I said.
But I knew there was something else I should say. And once again, I couldn’t.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When ten o’clock came around that night, Lou handed me my Sleepytime tea and put on the geezer rock CD and told me good-night from my bedroom doorway.
Before he turned to go, he said, “Are you sleeping better now?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I guess I am.”
“Must be the bedtime routine,” he said. “I’m a firm believer in it.”
He looked like he, too, wanted to say something else, something sad maybe, but then he just tapped the doorframe and said, “’Night, Jess,” again and closed my door.
As soon as I heard his footsteps fade to his room on the other side of the kitchen, I slipped my hand under the mattress and went for the part of the bedtime routine he didn’t know about. It was hard to even imagine going to sleep now without RL.
When it fell open in my lap, the words practically grabbed me around the wrist, kind of like Rocky always did.
Yeshua has something he wants to say to you, I read.
Me?
Okay, this was really getting weird. And yet–I dug it. I dug it like nothing else.
He originally said it to a crowd of people who came to hear him teach–and he’s said it to everyone who’s come to him ever since then. Since you keep coming back, he wants to say it to you.
So it was me, exactly me, Yeshua wanted to talk to, just like he did Simon and James and John and Levi–
Speaking of Levi, I’d meant to ask Lou why he named his Harley Levi. Just out of curiosity–just in case–
I shook my head. Lou had never read RL or he would have told me that day on the plane. This was obviously only for certain people–and I was one of them. Go figure.
I sank back, one foot propped over the other knee, book leaning against my thigh, and read on.
But I’m telling you up front: some of it you aren’t going to like. Nobody does. But it’s the truth, and if you don’t believe it and live it, you might as well forget about reading it.
Like I was going to stop now. I scowled at the page. Get on with it already.
“If you’re ready for the truth,” Yeshua said, “here it is: Love your enemies.”
“No way,” I said out loud.
I told you you weren’t going to like it. You ready to chuck this?
“No,” I said. “Go ahead.”
“Let your enemies bring out your best,” Yeshua says. “Instead of letting them make you lose it, take it as an opportunity to be your best self, your true self.”
“I’m going to do this how?”
“When someone pushes you to the limit, pray for her. If she smacks you in the face, don’t hit back. If she tries to run off with your best jeans, give her the jacket that goes with them.”
He was right. I didn’t like it. But it was like a train wreck: I had to keep looking at it.
“If somebody does something to you that is totally unfair, see it as a chance to do the right thing. No more I’ll-get-you-for-that, because if you’re going to follow me, you’re going to have to be more generous than that.”
“If you’re talking about Weezie, all bets are off. I’ll be nice to her, but I can’t love her.” I wriggled to a sitting position. “Besides, who said I was going to follow you? I don’t even know who you are!”
But you keep coming back to try to find out, don’t you?
Okay, it had me there.
Yeshua makes it even clearer: “Just ask yourself how you want people to treat you, and then you treat them that way. Because, seriously, if you’re only loving to people it’s easy to be nice to, do you expect some kind of medal for that? Anybody can do that. If you only help the people who do stuff for you when you’re in trouble, big deal. Gang members do that for each other. If you only give for what you expect to get out of it…”
I got the idea, but I wasn’t buying it. Did this guy expect me to be a doormat?
“I’m going to say this again: Love your enemies. Help and give without thinking they’re ever going to do the same for you.”
“You were right,” I said, straight into the book. “I don’t like it.”
“But I promise you–I promise–that if you live this way, you won’t be sorry.”
I wanted to close the book and toss it in Weezie’s little pink trash can. But I didn’t, because I couldn’t. It was like it knew me inside and out and I couldn’t let go of that. But–dude– love my enemies? Love Mrs. Honeycutt? Love the doctor who put
my mom in the hospital? Love Bonsai when he gave me the hairy eyeball and Lou when he planned out my life?
Love the little Weezer when she didn’t even respond to “nice”?
I glared at RL again. “When’s Yeshua going to drive out some more demons?” I said.
What do you think he’s doing right now? I read.
That was enough weirdness for one night. I started to tuck the book back between the mattresses, but I changed my mind and put it under my pillow.
By Wednesday, I was pretty sure it hadn’t been my imagination that Lou seemed like he wanted to say something sad Sunday night. Every time I caught him looking at me when he obviously didn’t think I knew he was looking at me, his eyes were drooped at the corners and he was swallowing a Ping-Pong-ball-size lump in his throat. I missed that twitchy thing he did with his lips.
I almost asked him a couple of times why he was acting like somebody had died and he was working up the nerve to tell me, but whenever I started to he’d smile and suggest that we go body surfing after work or hit the A1A Crab Shack for supper instead of cooking. If that wasn’t a signal that he didn’t want to talk about it, I didn’t know what was. Besides, I was a little afraid of what it might be.
And everything else was going so better than its usual crazy, I didn’t want to mess it up. For openers, Bonsai didn’t fire me, which meant he either didn’t hear Weezie that day or he didn’t know what ADHD was. Maybe they didn’t have it in Japan. Anyway, he said I could watch him cut the bamboo leaves into shapes, which was so completely cool it was all I could do not to grab the little knife out of his hands and beg him to let me try it.
Instead, I said, “I never saw anybody decorate food before.”
Bonsai grunted. “You think this is all for decoration?”
“It isn’t?”
He tapped the tiny net he’d just made with the tip of his pointed knife. “Shikibaran is put underneath to keep the sushi from drying out. Sekisho”–he directed the point at the cutouts that looked like rows of grass–“go between the pieces of sushi like walls to separate them. The acid in the leaves kills the bacteria. It’s all there for a reason.”
It still looked like art to me, and I totally wanted to do it.
When I told Lou about it while we were doing the dishes that night, he raised both of his eyebrows about up to his red hairline.