by Judy Baer
I’m more transparent than I thought. “You have an interesting understanding of women.”
Randy sighed. “Sisters. Three of them, all older. They thought I was their toy, that Mom had me just for them. They did me a favor, they tell me, by ‘breaking me in’ for other women. I’ve been trained to wait until last to get into the bathroom, share my razor and wait patiently in the car while they run into the store for ‘just a minute.’ I was also told that it was important that I always share my dessert with the woman with whom I was having dinner, because there are no calories in food eaten off someone else’s plate.”
“You’re a dream man, Randy. Somebody should snap you up. I’m surprised that you have any time at all to spend with me.”
“There’s no one else I want to spend time with, Cassia.”
I’m fond of Randy. He’s gentle, caring, attentive and sweet. If only I didn’t keep thinking about Adam…. Even when he’s gone, Adam still trips me up.
“My life is too complicated right now. I don’t want to burden anyone else with my dilemma.”
“Not everyone sees you as having problems, Cassia. Some might say you have the answer to problems.”
“I’m sorry, Randy, I didn’t mean to complain. Sometimes God’s children don’t get all the details until the plan is set.”
“May I call you this weekend?”
“Sure. Thank you.” I hesitated. “Sorry. I hope I haven’t hurt your feelings.”
“You’re a one of a kind, Cassia. I can’t help myself. I want to keep coming back for more.”
We said our goodbyes and I sat back in the chair to brood over the conversation. I need time to sort things out in my head. The truth is, not only am I stymied about the lottery money, I’m not finished processing all I’ve learned about Adam from his cousin and Whitney. None of it makes sense. It’s as if we’re talking about two different people—the noble, honest, good-as-his-word Adam and the deceiving, anything-for-a-buck, journalist-without-integrity Adam. There’s no common denominator, no way to marry the two in order to discover who Adam Cavanaugh really is.
Everything feels murky, as though I’m stumbling along in a crushing fog, not able to judge or even see my next step.
Tell me, Lord! Show me something. Anything!
And the first verses of 1 Corinthians 13 came to mind. I reached for my Bible and began to read.
If I had the gift of being able to speak in other languages without learning them and could speak in every language there is in all of heaven and earth, but didn’t love others, I would only be making noise. If I had the gift of prophecy and knew all about what is going to happen in the future, knew everything about everything but didn’t love others, what good would it do? Even if I had the gift of faith so that I could speak to a mountain and make it move, I would still be worth nothing without love. If I gave everything I have to the poor people and if I were burned alive for preaching the Gospel but didn’t love others, it would be of no value whatever.
If I gave everything I have to the poor people…but didn’t love others, it would be of no value whatsoever. My mind wrapped itself around that verse and wouldn’t let go. Knowledge, prophecy and generosity aren’t enough without love. Nothing I can give will be enough if there isn’t love behind it. I felt shivers scamper through my body.
God really makes me work for my answers, but His clues are right on target. If I gave everything I had—which these days is quite a bit—to the poor without doing so in an attitude and spirit of love, it isn’t enough. It’s my heart that has to be right.
My mind became a whirling cyclone of thoughts, fragments of advice and bits of Scripture that had been collecting since that fateful winning day. God can really knock me off my feet sometimes.
Sure, I’m planning to give everything I have to the poor. But am I giving it in a spirit of love? Hardly. I’ve been behaving like a put-upon, overtaxed whiner. I’ve felt imposed upon and shouldered with an unpleasant burden that interferes with the “work” I’m doing for God. Shame bled through me.
What an ego I have! The money is the work I’m to do for God. Granted, it is fine to be knowledgeable about where it should go and wonderful that I want to be generous about it. It’s the love part that has been AWOL—that love I need to show as I give the gifts, the love I offer as a humble representative of God.
It’s a dash of cold water on my feelings to realize that I haven’t been trying to give the money away in the spirit God wanted. I’ve been trying to throw it at people as if to get a stain off my own hands. I thought of Mary Magdalene pouring costly perfume on the feet of Jesus and wiping it away with her hair. Granted, the perfume was expensive, but it was not only about the perfume, it was about the way it was offered—with love and gratitude, not grumbling and complaining.
I blew it. Clueless Cassia, that’s me.
And for the first time in weeks I begin to see at the end of the tunnel a light that isn’t a train.
CHAPTER 28
Adam stared out over the water listening for the loons and wondering how he’d come to this. It wasn’t that his family’s lake cabin wasn’t pleasant or that the place wasn’t beautiful. There were clean sheets on the bed, fresh towels in the bathroom and a well-stocked larder.
The only thing wrong was the company he was with—himself.
No matter how many hours he fished, how many birds he counted or the number of crossword puzzles he did, he couldn’t get his mind off Cassia.
He’d come to the cabin to sort out his thoughts and make some plans, but the silence up here in the north woods was noisy, his mind filled as it was with Cassia’s sputtering words and injured tone.
And the worst part of it was, Adam mused, that when he wasn’t thinking about Cassia, God was bugging him. They were playing tag team with him, he decided, each taking turns demanding better of him. Cassia was a voice for forthrightness, while God was the whisper that kept reminding him of their past relationship, their falling out and Adam’s rejection of Him.
“Just leave me alone!” Adam said aloud. “I’m not the great guy either of you want me to be!”
I want you as you are.
Adam squinted toward the sky. He’d heard the message as clearly as if it had been spoken, but he knew it was coming from deep inside himself.
“Who’d want me in the shape I’m in?” Adam muttered. “Burned out, angry, frustrated, taking advantage of people who call me friend? You don’t want me hanging around You.”
Yes, I do. I came for people like you.
Adam recalled a time when these internal dialogues with God were natural and comfortable for him—before Burundi. Well, it certainly wasn’t comfortable now.
“What about all those people I saw suffering and dying? Why are You pestering me when You have lives to save?”
Adam paused as if waiting for an answer, a defense, an excuse from the Almighty. He tensed, listening, feeling, watching, but he felt nothing.
“So now where’d You go?” he demanded irately. “If You were really God and not just my imagination, You’d let me know You actually existed!”
Still nothing.
“So You don’t exist outside my imagination? Is that it?”
More silence.
“Without proof, without helping those children in Burundi, how can I know You’re here? That You exist at all?”
Adam gave up the fruitless dialogue he was having with thin air when he looked up to see a doe and twin fawns only yards from him, staring his way with glistening black eyes and sweet expressions. So perfect on their pencil-thin legs, coats glinting in the waning light, they hardly looked real. What miraculous creatures they were.
Since he was a little boy, he’d loved the deer herds that roamed these woods. He’d spent his allowance money on salt licks to put near the cabin to lure them nearer. Deer were one of God’s most graceful creations, his mother always said.
Funny, the family had told him that deer were more scarce around the cabin than usual this yea
r. It was as if this little trio had appeared just for him….
Maybe God had sent them as a small reminder that He was in charge….
“Don’t be silly,” Adam said aloud. But what was he talking about? Was it silly to believe in a nonexistent God ? Or was he silly playing this sad game of not admitting that God was everywhere, simply because he refused to look?
CHAPTER 29
I’m floating in the Bermuda Triangle of men and sinking fast.
Randy… Ken… Adam…the three points of my triangle. Randy courts me like a queen. Ken’s persistence in bulldozing his way to my affections is very flattering. And Adam, the most unfortunate choice of all, a non-Christian, has absconded with the goods, my heart, and is unaccounted for, AWOL, missing in action. I don’t give my heart to just anyone. That’s because once I give it away, I don’t know how to get it back.
“There’s a new show at the IMAX,” Randy said, “and a new Thai restaurant opening near there. What do you think?”
“I think that people should eat more meat and potatoes. Doesn’t anyone ever open a pot-roast-and-mashed-potatoes restaurant anymore?” I added, “I’d love to go out tonight. I’d like to have an excuse to get dressed up.”
“Theater tickets and a restaurant downtown it is.” I could hear his delight despite the crackly connection of his cell phone. “I’ll see what is available and call you back.” He hesitated before adding shyly, “Thanks, Cassia. This will be great.”
Yeah, great.
Here I am feeling sorry for myself because a big creep betrayed me and ignoring a darling man who would turn cartwheels down Nicollet Mall for me if I asked him. Maybe Randy is what God wants for me. It obviously isn’t Adam. Who am I not to give it a chance?
Okay, Cassia, the pity party is over.
At the end of our evening together, I glided from Randy’s car to the apartment building in a happy haze, feeling really good for the first time in days. I enjoy being pampered and indulged, and Randy is doing his best to make sure it happens.
I allowed my hair to have its own way tonight. Randy said I looked like Nicole Kidman. I could agree with that—if she stuck her finger in a light socket. I tossed back my head to get the riot of curls out of my way and waved to Randy as he drove off.
Feeling pink and happy all over, I stuck the rose Randy had given me between my teeth and drifted toward my front steps. I went for stylish, sophisticated and elegant as I made my way, Audrey-Hepburn-in-Breakfast-at-Tiffany’s-like, to the doorway and resisted kicking off my snug pumps and carrying them in my hand. Playing dressup is fun. I’ve been imitating a bag lady long enough. The opportunity to wear the ubiquitous little black dress that Jane had given me for my birthday made me realize that I can’t hide in my apartment any longer. If I’m going to be a philanthropist, it’s time to act like one.
I’ve lost a few pounds—nerves, I suppose—and look good. I know that because I admired a pretty woman reflected in the mirror at the theater until I realized it was me. Maybe I should wear my hair this way more often.
Humming, I checked my box for mail and sashayed toward the steps. I’d almost passed Adam’s door when I realized it was ajar.
Cool. Whitney and Chase are back.
I hummed a little louder and knocked on the door. “Yoo-hoo, anybody home? I’ve read those books you gave me, Whitney. Should I bring them down to you?”
The door swung open and Adam filled the doorway.
At least, I thought it was Adam.
He looked dreadful. Exhausted, bloodshot eyes, stubbly five-o’clock shadow, stained and wrinkled clothing and a frown so deep the creases carved through his brow like fissures. He looked, as my grandmother might declare, like death warmed over.
We stared at each other openmouthed. I’d never seen him look so awful, and he’d probably never seen me look so good.
I am normally makeup free, barefoot and clad in jeans and a T-shirt, my hair more tamed than combed. Tonight I’d taken extra care—eyeliner, mascara, lipstick, panty hose, the whole nine yards. Talk about two strangers meeting like ships in the night.
Then, before either of us said anything, Pepto marched up to me and did a figure eight around my ankles.
“Cassia, I…” Adam struggled for words, but they didn’t come. He looked as though he could drop to the floor and fall asleep where he landed.
“You’ve been gone,” I said inanely.
“You met my cousin Chase.”
At least he was equally inane. “Yes. He and his wife are very nice. Pepto likes them.”
Adam looked down at the cat as if surprised to see him there. “He’s going to stay with them for a while.”
“You’re leaving again?” I heard the quaver in my voice and hoped it hadn’t been evident to him. The last thing I want him to think is that I care. I don’t want to care. I want to look at him and feel nothing—not anger, disappointment or betrayal, and certainly not attraction.
So start cooperating, emotions.
What option do I have other than to forget him? I certainly can’t overlook II Corinthians 6:14.
Don’t be teamed with those who do not love the Lord, for what do the people of God have in common with the people of sin? How can light live with darkness?
“I doubt you’ll mind, considering…everything.” He looked at me so sadly that for a moment I forgot how underhanded and scheming he was. He bent to pick up Pepto and absently scratched the cat’s neck. In the silence that hung between us Pepto’s purring sounded like the Indy 500.
“I know it’s not going to mean anything to you after what I did by betraying your trust, but I’m sorry. I knew I should have told you why…what motivated me to…” Something flickered in his eyes. “But that doesn’t really matter. It was my decision to deceive you, and I have to take responsibility for my actions.” He stopped himself, deciding he’d said too much. “You have no idea how sorry I am.”
No? You have no idea how sorry I am, either.
He started to leave, paused and turned back to look me straight in the eye. “You look beautiful tonight, Cassia. But then again, you’re always beautiful, inside and out.” And he turned and shut the door behind him, leaving me standing in the hall with my jaw hanging.
I stormed around my apartment fuming about our highly unsatisfactory encounter, slamming doors and being as generally pouty and childish as I knew how, hoping that if I couldn’t sleep, Adam wouldn’t either. I don’t know what I’d expected when we met again, but nothing this anticlimactic.
I suppose I should be happy. Adam will not be around to exacerbate my discomfort. He won’t be here to remind me of how I’d trusted him and what he’d done to reciprocate. He’d apologized. And he looked terrible—thin, gaunt, miserable. Even if I were a vengeful person—and I’m not—I’d have to think he’d suffered enough.
What had I wanted? Anguished apologies? Resolution? No. I wanted clarity. Who is Adam? The good Adam is a humanitarian, an honest, reliable, kind guy. So who is this bad guy who has lied to me, manipulated me and been so untrustworthy? I just don’t get it. I really want a reason for what has happened. I don’t want it to be only about the money. I want to hear that Adam can justify his action. I want to trust him again. But he hadn’t even attempted to defend himself. His silence makes it very clear that he had no excuse.
I stood in front of my open refrigerator staring at the contents. Carrots, lettuce, shredded cheese, orange juice and a piece of leftover lasagna. Sometimes, in my enthusiasm, I carry this healthy eating thing a little too far. Finally, desperate, I dug into my cupboards until I found a bag of chocolate chips, made myself a pot of tea and drowned my sorrows in front of a two-hour Lost in Space retrospective on late-night television.
Not one of my better moments, I’m afraid.
CHAPTER 30
I groaned, wishing the Monday-morning sun streaming through my window had an off switch. How rude of it to come up now, when I was finally falling asleep….
I bolted upright to stare
at the clock. Ten-fifteen!
“Oh, no, Winslow. Why didn’t you wake me?”
The dog gave me a puzzled glance, as if to ask why today was the day he should have played alarm clock. After all, I’d been the one grumbling all week when he needed to go out for a walk at 6:00 a.m. I grabbed the thin cotton robe from the foot of my bed and threw it on as I hurried to the window.
I opened the blind and my heart sank.
Adam’s Hummer was parked out front, engine running. The front door on the sidewalk side was open. He put a carrying crate onto the front seat, the same crate I’d seen coming into this place barely three months before. Even from a distance I could see that Pepto was unhappy. The crate wobbled as though there were a pair of tiny sumo wrestlers hammering it out in there. For a small cat, Pepto maintains a big presence.
As I watched, Adam closed the passenger door, circled the front of the vehicle, jumped inside and drove off. Gone. This time, I deduced, for a very long time.
I automatically lifted my hand in a pathetic wave. He wasn’t the man for me, but it was still terribly hard to let go.
“Schizoid,” I muttered as I sat down. “Make up your mind.” Adam was gone to wherever it is that Adam goes. Even the threat of Pepto had vanished.
“Well, we’re free as birds now, buddy,” I said to the humongous head lying on my knees.
Free as birds. If that were true, then why did I feel as if I’d just had my wings severed from my body and my heart? There was only one place to go to heal.
“Long time no see, Cassia! Welcome.” My friend Greta Hanson greeted me with a hug while the six or seven people who were also in the Simms all-purpose store nodded agreement. “We thought you were never coming home. Didn’t you miss us? Where are Jane and her hubby?”
“We” and “us.” As usual in Simms one person feels perfectly free to express the minds of all. Though the townsfolk might debate over which church had the best potluck suppers or whether Oscar and Minnie Johnson should have painted their house bright or pale yellow, they usually formed a united front on the big issues.