As a young woman, Jan had been nothing like Beth. Worrying about being true to her faith? Rejecting a man because he wasn’t a Christian? Her main focus in those days had been how tight she could wear her jeans without making her father mad. How to control her coarse red hair. How to pass math.
And Thomas. Jan definitely had been all wrapped up in Thomas Wood.
Chapter Ten
S he did not like his feet, and she was thankful he never wore sandals. In fact, Jan rarely saw Thomas in anything but his leather, steel-toed work boots. Winter, spring, summer and fall, the man kept his great big clodhopper feet tucked inside a pair of bleached white socks and those well-worn boots.
But Jan knew Thomas’s feet. They were like his hands to her now, so familiar she could draw a perfect picture of them from memory. During two years together, Thomas and Jan had bit by bit uncovered every private, intimate part of each other’s bodies.
At first they had done nothing but hold hands. Jan adored Thomas’s big, callused fingers and thick palms. They made her feel small and fragile. A man with hands like that could take care of a girl. And Thomas had.
But he wasn’t satisfied with just threading his fingers through Jan’s. Neither was she. Pretty soon, they were kissing. And then holding each other close. And finally came the day he took off his boots.
“Good gravy!” she exclaimed as he peeled off a sweaty white sock. “Thomas, that is the most enormous foot I’ve ever seen!”
He grinned, his thick brown hair hanging down over his collar and his dark eyes sparkling. “Wood feet,” he said. “We’ve all got ’em.”
Thomas wiggled his toes, cartoon toes with white nails like fish scales. He stuck his foot down into the water of the stream, where he always took Jan to be alone with her. Then he unlaced his other boot, pulled off his sock and put that foot into the stream.
“Wood feet, Wood hands, that’s me.” He looked at her sideways, a crooked grin on his mouth. “I’m Wood all the way. What do your feet look like?”
“Normal, thank goodness.” She kicked off her sneakers and set her bare feet beside his legs. “These are what normal toes look like.”
“Mmm.” He picked up her foot in both his hands, bent over and kissed it.
“Thomas Wood!” Jerking away, she let out a squeal. “That is gross. My feet are sweaty!”
“I love your feet.” He grabbed it again and spoke in a West Texas drawl. “Gimme them purty little feet, girl.”
Before she could stop him, he was cradling both her feet, rubbing them up and down with his thumbs and kissing her toes. His lips on her soles sent a fire roaring up through her chest. She gasped and flopped back onto the green, green grass.
And that was how it went. Day after day. Night after night. They had been like two firecrackers, fuses lit up and ready to pop. Did they do a thing to prevent it? On the contrary. They just stoked the fire.
By the first semester of Thomas’s senior year at the university, Jan was so mad for him that she could hardly make it through her classes. She was a sophomore, but just barely. Telling her parents she had been too young to start college at seventeen anyway, she managed to talk them into letting her take just a few courses that fall. She spent the rest of her time improving her tan, fixing her hair and working at the ice cream shop enough hours to pay for the constant stream of new clothes she felt sure she needed.
Not that she had any trouble keeping Thomas’s eyes fixed squarely on her. The man made a beeline to her house after his last class every day. They hopped into his car and drove somewhere. By that time they had several favorite places to be alone, and Jan had long ago gotten past the surprise of bare feet.
“I’ve got to tell you something, and I’m not sure how,” Thomas had said one afternoon as they sat together on a blanket by the stream. “I don’t want you to get upset.”
Jan had realized he wasn’t himself the minute she climbed into his big blue Mercury and scooted over beside him. He was holding on to the steering wheel as though the car might suddenly decide to take them off on a joyride. Eyes on the road, he had driven out to the stream, helped her spread the blanket and unloaded the picnic she’d packed for them. Instead of his usual talk about what he was learning in his college classes—Thomas loved his agriculture major and couldn’t think of much else besides school and hanging out with Jan—he had been silent.
They ate sandwiches, and she told him about a dress she had her eye on in one of the department stores. It was a pink-and-orange sundress with little strings that tied at the shoulders. She didn’t think her dad would let her keep it if she brought it home, even though she would pay for it with her own money that she’d worked hard to earn. Her parents were so conservative. They had no idea what the real world was all about.
Jan had chatted on and on, and the whole time, Thomas kept picking up pebbles and shooting them like marbles into the stream. Finally, she’d had enough of his preoccupation and asked him what was going on.
“Well, just go ahead and say what you have to tell me,” she said, “and then you’ll know whether it’s going to upset me or not.”
“You’ll be mad. I know you will.”
She stared at him, her mouth going dry. “You want to go out with someone else?”
“No!” He swung around, clamping his hands on her shoulders. “No, Jan. Never. You’re the only girl I’ve ever loved this way. You’re all I want. All I’ll ever want. You have to believe that.”
“Okay.” Her voice was hushed. “Then what is it? What can be so bad?”
He dropped his hands and looked away. “I got my internship assignment.”
“Well…we knew that was coming. You’ll be out of town for a semester. But we can call and write. And you can come home on weekends. It won’t be fun, but we can make it, Thomas.”
“Jan, I wasn’t placed near Tyler.”
“Where, then? You told me you thought you might get the internship in Shreveport. That was the one you wanted, wasn’t it?”
“They didn’t give me Shreveport.” He flipped another pebble. “I decided not to tell you this, because I figured it would never happen…but there were two openings overseas. I went ahead and applied for them, because you know how I’ve always wanted to travel. And I got one. It’s in Sri Lanka. A tea estate up in the highlands. The tea company will pay for my flight and my room and board and everything. This afternoon, I went over to the Ag building and talked to Dr. Heffert about whether I should do it. He thinks it’s a great opportunity, and he says I should go. So I accepted.”
He reached for a pebble, and Jan grabbed his hand. “Wait a minute—you’re leaving America? You’re going overseas?”
“Sri Lanka. It’s an island near India. It used to be called Ceylon, and they grow amazing tea there.”
“I don’t care what it’s called or what they grow! Thomas, how can you abandon me for an entire semester? We won’t see each other that whole time!”
“Jan, listen, it’s not that bad.” He turned and cupped the side of her face with his hand. “Please don’t worry. We can write letters every day. I’ll be back in time for my graduation in May.”
“May! But that’s forever!”
“Five months from the day I leave Tyler. It’ll go fast, I promise. I’ll be working hard to learn everything I can. And you’ll be busy with your classes and your friends. Look at it this way—you’ll be free to do whatever you want. You can go to girl movies and the mall and stuff. And Jan, you can spend more time on your paintings. I really want you to go somewhere with your art. This way, you won’t have me around bugging you all the time.”
“You don’t bug me! I love you, Thomas. I want to be with you. I don’t care about movies or the mall. And my paintings are stupid. I wish I’d never even shown them to you.”
Tears began to well, and she battled to keep them back. The few times she had cried, Thomas fell apart. He couldn’t stand to see a single tear, and he just went all to pieces. She had to speak firmly and make him und
erstand that this simply was not possible! Five months on some foreign island growing tea? Absolutely not. He belonged in Tyler, Texas, and she was going to be strong enough to force him to see that.
“You don’t want to learn how to grow tea,” she informed him. Swallowing at the lump in her throat, she squared her shoulders and continued with her argument. “You’re Thomas Wood. Why would a Wood want to know about tea? Woods grow roses. Woods have grown roses for generations. You should be doing your internship with your father at his nursery like I told you.”
“Jan, the college won’t let me do that, and besides…I’m not sure I want to grow roses for a living.”
“What? You never said anything to me about that.”
“I know everything there is to know about roses. There’s no challenge to it. I want change. I want adventure. I want to go different places and try new things.”
With every sentence, Jan felt as though Thomas had punched her in the stomach. She blinked, but the tears welled up anyway. How could this be happening? It was far worse than just going overseas for five months. Thomas was telling her he was choosing a whole different life from the one she wanted.
“But you’re a Wood,” she managed to choke out, as if repeating it would somehow make him change his mind. “You can’t grow tea.”
“I can grow anything I want.” He leaned back on his arms and lifted his face to the sky. “I bet I can grow tea better than they ever imagined. I bet I can streamline their production process and identify diseases and keep their trees healthier than anyone they ever hired. The whole idea of stepping into something new really appeals to me. It’s change, you know. I want to change. I’m sick of being a Wood who can only grow roses. People hear my name, and that’s the first thing they think. But I want out. Out of roses, out of Tyler, even out of the States. Tea could take me all over the world. They grow it in lots of places, and there’d be no stopping me once I learned the basics.”
By now, Jan could hardly see through the blur of tears streaming out of her eyes, down her cheeks and onto her blue-jean-covered knees. She couldn’t believe he was saying these things. What about all her hopes of getting married and buying a white clapboard house and raising kids and dogs and growing old together on the front porch in their rockers? How could this be happening? It was a nightmare beyond her worst imaginings.
Pushing back her hair, she sniffled, and he turned his head as if surprised to find her still sitting there. “Jan?” he said. “Oh, no. Oh, baby, please don’t cry. It’s all right. I’m just talking, okay? Just dreaming big dreams. Don’t get all upset.”
“What about me?” she blubbered. “What about my dreams? What about us?”
“I see us together always, babe. I mean that. But you’re young, and so am I. We don’t have to settle down right away.”
He tried to pull her into his arms, but she pushed him away. “How can we be together always if you’re on some island and I’m in Texas? Huh? Did you think of that when you started dreaming big dreams?”
“It’s not any old island, it’s Sri Lanka. And it’s just for five months. We’ll be fine. I love you, and nothing can change that. I promise. Please believe me, Jan, and stop crying. I promise I won’t leave you alone. I’ll be with you for the rest of our lives, okay? Okay?”
She allowed him to draw her close, and she buried her head in his shoulder. Tears of hurt and frustration surged out as though she hadn’t cried in years. Was he promising marriage? Or threatening to discard her in favor of change and tea and seeing the world?
“What if you find another girlfriend?” she wept.
“I won’t. Nobody on an island off the coast of India could interest me.”
“You mean there might be a girl somewhere else who could interest you?”
“No, of course not!” He began kissing her wet cheeks. “Jan, please believe me. You’re everything. Everything I ever wanted.”
“I’m not tea!”
“But you’re you. You’re the woman I love.” Threading his fingers through Jan’s thick hair, he pressed her against his chest. “Come on, baby, you know how much I love you. We’re perfect together. We match. We fit.”
She sighed and closed her eyes. Maybe things weren’t so bleak. At least her reaction proved to her how much she wanted him—and proved it to Thomas, too. And they always got exactly what they wanted.
Beth opened her eyes to a shaft of sunlight streaming in through the window in the spare bedroom, and she knew immediately what she was supposed to do. Be obedient to God. Simple. She would set aside the silly rush of jangling nerves that went off every time she thought of Miles Wilson’s handsome face and dry wit and suave British accent. Those things were shallow. Meaningless. What counted was his heart, and it wasn’t where it needed to be.
The moment she sat up in bed and swung her legs over the side, a pang shot through her heart. But Miles was seeking! He really had wanted to know about the Bible and the Christian life and the teachings of Saint Paul. Who better than Beth to tell him? God had put Miles beside her in that airport in Kenya. Even put his feet on her luggage! How much clearer could it be? She was the one to lead Miles to Christ.
Beth stood and grabbed her bathrobe. No way. That was a complete rationalization. She wanted to see Miles again, and so she conveniently decided she was the only one to guide him onto the straight and narrow. Ha! God could use any of His servants to accomplish that task. Beth had done her part, and the Holy Spirit could do the rest.
Perhaps the Lord had put Miles into her path to spark his interest in a life of faith, but there her responsibility ended. Beth walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She knew all too well the perils of dating someone who didn’t share her religious and moral beliefs. In fact, she thought as she stepped under the stream of warm water, dating was turning out to be a fairly bad idea all across the board. Thankfully she’d had the sense to break things off with Joe when she got back to New York after her trip to Botswana. Dumb to date your boss. Dumber to date someone with whom you could never imagine sharing a life.
Joe called himself a Christian, but he didn’t give much evidence of it. He rarely spoke of his faith. Only went to church when she was in town. And certainly didn’t live the most surrendered life she had ever seen. In fact, more than once, she’d heard him blatantly lie—telling his secretary to inform a caller he was out of the office when he wasn’t. Little things like that taught Beth where his heart was.
When Beth had informed him she didn’t intend to see him again outside the office, Joe had accused her of being rigid, morally uncompromising—as though that were a bad thing! She rinsed the shampoo out of her hair as she recalled his concluding words to her. Your standards are too high, Beth. You’ll never meet any man perfect enough to please you.
Stepping out of the shower, she dried off and wrapped her hair in the thick pink towel her mother had provided for the guest bath. Beth peered at her reflection through the steam on the mirror. Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls.
Right.
Were her standards really too high? Did she expect perfection in a man? And if so, wasn’t that her mother’s fault?
Probably so. How could any child grow up in such a happy family…in such a pink bedroom…with such zippy sayings painted on the walls…and not have high expectations? The Lowell family had been perfect. A model mother and father. Well-behaved children. Paintings of roses hanging in every room. Ideal.
Except not.
Nothing in this life was perfect, Beth thought as she examined her eyebrows. There were always problems like Thomas Wood and Lou Gerhig’s disease and other faulty things getting in the way. That’s why Christ had come, though, wasn’t it? She had just read it in her Bible. “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”
Wanting to be sure, she padded back to her room and flipped open the small book. Yes, there it was. The fifth chapter of Romans. Saint Paul had spelled out the whole thing in
his explanation of the two roles of Adam and Christ. Because one person disobeyed God, many people became sinners. But because one other person obeyed God, many people will be made right in God’s sight.
Right in God’s sight—even though we’re flawed and sinful and diseased and…and not even the real daughter of our daddy. Beth bent over the Bible on her lap and pressed her hands against her eyes, trying to push the tears back inside. She—who tried so hard to follow Christ, whose standards were deemed “too high,” who did everything she could to be perfect—was born because of sin.
Not her own sin. The wrongdoing belonged to her mother and the man Jan Calhoun chose to have sex with before marriage. Thomas Wood.
Beth let out a growl of frustration and anger at the very thought of the man. She hated him! Why did he even have to exist? Why had he walked into her mother’s young life, tempting Jan away from the truth? He was disgusting! They both were filthy. And Beth was the product of their selfish, thoughtless passion.
She felt like she needed another shower! She was illegitimate! She was a mistake! She was a blunder, an error, a lapse in judgment. She was nothing but a biological product of two stupid people who didn’t even love each other and couldn’t be bothered to get married and try to behave decently!
Disappointment, irritation, annoyance and resentment built into another snarl as Beth yanked off her robe and threw it on the bed. While she dressed for the day, her rage built. Nobody should be allowed to have mistake babies. Mistake babies didn’t belong. They could never be part of a real, true, honest family. Mistake babies were better off never to have been born than forced to try to fit with people who didn’t even really want them in the first place.
Leaves of Hope Page 13