Wheels (Tabor Heights Year Two)

by Michelle Levigne

  "It wasn't handicapped parking, it was special parking for pregnant women," Natalie murmured as she reread the letter for the third time. She nodded, feeling that little thrill of anticipation fluttering in her chest like she always got when her boss offered her a new assignment. She laughed as she read the P.S. under his signature.

  I'd really like to talk with you some time about why exactly these kinds of stories catch your attention. Yeah, I should have been a psychotherapist. What can I say? I was born nosey.

  "Blame Tommy Donnelly," she said as she tapped on the "reply" button and shot off a short acceptance email. This was the kind of assignment she had been dreaming about ever since she was hired by America's Voice, even before she graduated from Southeastern Christian College. A series of features solely associated with her byline and a chance to make a difference was a reporter's dream.

  The short story, and all you're getting, is that I had a friend when I was a kid who ended up in a wheelchair. I think about him when I see people in wheelchairs and other handicaps, struggling to get around in a world that isn't built to accommodate them.

  Natalie almost closed her tablet before she remembered why she had gotten online again. She read through the forwarded email. Short and simple, nothing fancy, no signature line indicating what Suzette had done with her life, where she worked. She used a Hotmail email address with her full name, so maybe she wasn't married. Natalie snorted and couldn't quash the thought that no man in his right mind would want to be tied to "Saint" Suzette for the rest of his life.

  Take the board out of your eye, she silently admonished herself before taking a deep breath and copying the email address to a blank email form. She worked for nearly half an hour, trying to find the right words. Part of her wanted to tell Suzette how reluctant she had been to respond, that she hadn't wanted to revisit the pain the older girl had inflicted on her in college.

  She wrote one email requesting that Suzette stop trying to make contact, that she couldn't think of a single thing they had in common to justify re-establishing contact, and even wrote, Don't claim to be a Christian, because all I saw in you was self-righteousness and legalism when we were roommates. Natalie immediately deleted that, and tried to feel some shame in the satisfaction she got in writing it. She had gone for years, mentally replaying those unpleasant months in the dormitory, coming up with fine, strong, sometimes brutal words to put Suzette in her place and crush her arrogance. She had even dug through Scripture to find the right verses to prove Suzette had been wrong in setting herself up to judge whether Natalie was a "real" Christian or not.

  Sighing, Natalie silently prayed for forgiveness. She was wasting time and energy here, just like she had done for years, wanting to batter Suzette and punish her and make her apologize in tears and humility.

  It took the perspective of finally growing up, of learning to identify troublemakers so she could avoid them and not give them any ammunition against her, for Natalie to look back and see what she had done wrong. She had to take some of the blame, and she had to admit that she was walking in her father's footsteps in how she reacted to Suzette. Natalie made a mental note to sit down with her father and ask how he had gotten over his anger and hurt, so he could sit with the broken, humble man and counsel with him. She might need his lessons and wisdom to deal with Suzette.

  If she ever finished writing this email.

  I'm hesitant to make contact, because our relationship was a painful, shameful episode in my college life. If you're trying to find closure and healing, then go ahead and write to me, but understand that I reserve the option to refuse to respond further, and I expect you to respect my desire for silence.

  "Not very gracious, is it, Lord?" she whispered as she read through the few sentences it had taken her more than half an hour to write. "But it's the best I can do right now." She tapped the "send" button and closed her tablet. The hour was late and she needed to get some sleep.

  As she washed up for bed, Natalie decided her email would serve as a test. If Suzette was only trying to make herself feel better, playing a religious game of self-righteousness, she would be offended and snap off a vicious, condemning letter. If she was genuinely repentant, she would accept Natalie's right to be cautious and protect against further attack.

  "What if she wanted to make friends after all these years?"

  Natalie snorted at that speculation. Definitely, she was overtired and should have been asleep hours ago. Her mind flashed back to one of Suzette's confrontations in their dorm room. She had claimed she was criticizing Natalie because she cared, because they were friends. All Natalie had managed to respond at the time was, "In a pig's eye," one of her grandmother's favorite responses to a very obvious lie. Later, of course, Natalie had thought of the perfect response.

  A friend is someone who knows all about you, and accepts you just the way you are, someone had once said. Suzette had never been Natalie's friend because she had never taken the time to get to know her, and definitely didn't accept her just the way she was.

  "Please, Lord, don't let this be a big, ugly mistake," Natalie whispered as she lay down and reached for the lamp on the nightstand.

  Saturday, March 21

  Tommy ignored five emails from Jarod, marking them as spam, before reading another. He wasn't surprised that it was more of the same, ignoring Claire's existence and talking about what a hypocrite their father was. Tommy spent some time trying to figure out his estranged brother's strategy. Was he playing his tried-and-true game of giving Claire the silent treatment until he decided he could use her again? Did he think if he pretended nothing had happened, eventually Claire would welcome him with open arms when he showed up again? Maybe he reasoned that if he didn't scold Claire for not accepting the world according to St. Jarod, she would be grateful for the second chance he offered?

  "I'm warped, but not that warped," Tommy muttered, finally giving up on trying to figure out what was going on in his brother's mind. It was a waste of time, and threatened to give him a headache.

  He could protect himself, though. He went into his email controls and entered Jarod's email address so it would be blocked. That afternoon he went to Stacy Belmont, the computer guru at the Mission, to ask her how he could block Jarod's emails from reaching anyone at the Mission and Tabor Christian. He wouldn't put it past Jarod to try to do an end run around his siblings. After all, he had done it before, approaching the leadership of their previous church, asking for an intervention to "heal" his family, giving them his version of reality. Maybe his tactic had worked before, but Tommy felt good about the church family at Tabor Christian, their ability to spot a manipulative Pharisee and put him in his place. Still, it was always smart to do as much defense as possible in advance.

  Asking for Stacy's help required telling her part of the story. Tommy was surprised at how ashamed he felt, as if Jarod's duplicity and conniving had somehow tainted him and Claire. Stacy laughed and hugged him when he stumbled confessed how he felt.

  "It's okay," she said. "No need to go any further. You have people in your past you don't want to talk about. We all have that. My past tried to catch up with me a few months ago, but you know what? The saboteur hurt herself more than me. She might even have helped me."

  "So I should let the Jerk come back and slit his throat even more?" Tommy shuddered, earning a grin and a slap on the arm from her.

  "That's not what I mean. Grandma taught me that there's nothing wrong in resisting the devil, as long as I keep my own nose clean." She turned back to her computer and rested her hand on the keyboard. "You want to keep this guy from reaching anybody in power at the church. I get that. Maybe you should let someone in power know he's pestering you, and then don't exactly block his emails from getting through, but go to someone who's on your side, and let that person deal with him once and for all."

  "You can do that?"

  "I am the wizard of the web. Nowhere near Baxter Stemple's skills, but adequate to protect my favorite funny man."

&n
bsp; "Have I asked you lately to marry me?" He fluttered his eyelashes at her, holding his clasped hands under his chin.

  "Last week. Don't push your luck. I might just say yes."

  "And that's supposed to scare me how?" He barked laughter when she stuck her tongue out at him.

  Monday, March 23

  Stacy's advice stuck with Tommy. She configured the email program to take Jarod's emails to the Mission and church staff and put them in storage, and set up a flag to let him know when one came in. Tommy could decide what to do with the email bombs after he looked at them. The next Monday, he went to see Pastor Wally as soon as the elderly minister came in to work.

  "See, the thing is, Jarod keeps talking about our father and I've been thinking about him more than I have in years and…" Tommy shrugged. "I don't want to think about him."

  "You can't exactly make yourself stop thinking about someone," Pastor Wally said after sitting in silence, contemplating his clasped hands on his desk blotter. "It's like telling yourself not to think about pink elephants."

  "I'd rather think about blue elephants, thanks very much."

  His quip didn't earn a chuckle from Pastor Wally, and that warned Tommy that he was about to be hit with something he might not like very much. In a way, though, he decided that was comforting. At least Pastor Wally was taking this as seriously as he did.

  "Last year was healing for Claire. Not just the satisfaction of seeing Jarod rejected as a liar and an intruder, but realizing that she was finally safe among people who wouldn't side with anyone who spoke badly about her." He chuckled. "Having Paul ready to step in and defend her helped a lot, too. My point is that you might just need to confront your father to find some healing of your own."

  "No thanks," Tommy said, so softly he almost couldn't hear himself.

  "There's a wound that needs to be opened, drained of poison that you might not even know about." Pastor Wally shrugged. "Hear what he has to say. If your brother is so set against him, chances are good he really has changed, he's repentant."

  "Like that's going to do me any good?" Tommy flinched, hating the sharpness in his voice, the way it tried to ring off the walls of the office.

  "Your father might just need forgiveness more than you need to forgive."

  "Yeah, well, maybe I'm not a mature enough Christian to forgive."

  "Maybe. And maybe you need to learn that about yourself."

  Those words stayed with Tommy. When he rolled out of the minister's office and went to monitor playground time, he thought about telling Claire what had been happening since her wedding day. Tommy wondered why Pastor Wally hadn't told him to talk to Claire about the whole problem. Did he think she already knew? A few moments later, he pushed away that theory. Pastor Wally was a substitute father for them, and he was perceptive enough to realize that if Claire hadn't come to him with Tommy's problem by now, she didn't know. So why hadn't he counseled Tommy to talk with Claire? Jarod's schemes were as much her problem as Tommy's.

  "One battle at a time," he mused, and managed a weak smile.

  Monday, April 27

  "Should have known." Natalie put down her tablet and flipped the cover closed, shutting down the email program as the waitress taking care of all eight tables in this little diner came with her lunch order.

  "Here you go." The waitress put down the cups of soup, cole slaw, and cottage cheese in front of Natalie and picked up the saucer full of emptied creamer packets. "More?"

  "Please. That's got to be the best coffee I've had in the last month."

  "You know what they say about people who live on coffee more than anything else." She took two steps back to the station against the wall that held the three-burner coffee machine and scooped up a handful of creamers from a bucket of ice with one hand and the freshly brewed carafe of coffee with the other.

  "No, what do they say?" Natalie managed to smile, while the contents of Suzette's latest email bounced around in her head.

  The waitress grinned, put the creamers on the table, filled Natalie's coffee cup, and shrugged. "Don't know -- I thought maybe you did. Sure that's enough food?"

  "I've been sitting for three days straight, no exercise. Don't want to outgrow my jeans before I get back to the main office."

  Natalie managed to hold onto her smile as the waitress laughed and scurried back to the pass-through to get her next order. Then she sighed, hunched her shoulders and dipped her spoon into the soup. Funny, but just ten minutes ago, she had been wishing she could indulge in a big sandwich like that guy sitting by the door was tearing into, what looked like three inches of corned beef, dripping melted Swiss cheese, thousand island dressing, with a huge plate of steaming French fries.

  Thanks to Suzette, Natalie figured she wouldn't really be hungry until tomorrow.

  The last two months had been surprisingly nice. Suzette was complimentary about Natalie's stories in America's Voice, showing a real understanding of what went into magazine writing, appreciative of the composition of the accompanying photos. She had been apologetic, explaining that she realized now she had been trying to make up for her "wild" lifestyle before she transferred to SCC, and she saw evil in everyone because there was so much guilt and sin in her own life. Then Suzette added that explaining what was going on in her life to make her so hard to live with wasn't excusing how she had treated her roommates. Too bad her friendliness and humility hadn't lasted nearly long enough, as evidenced by today's email. If she was setting up Natalie to use her for her own profit, shouldn't she have worked a little harder and longer, to ensure she was thoroughly duped?

  Natalie took a mouthful of soup -- minestrone in a creamy broth -- and found it just as delicious as it smelled when the women at the table next to hers had eaten it. Spicy and smooth and heavy with vegetables and pasta. Too bad she found it hard to swallow.

  Oh, get over it. If you actually started buying her 'let's be best pals' act, it's your own fault.

  She continued slowly spooning up the soup, and with the other hand flipped the cover off the tablet and awakened the email program. Natalie read, and snorted softly when she realized she had hoped she had misunderstood Suzette's request.

  Chapter Four

  In her last email, Suzette had shared that she had always dreamed of a career in music, but had finally accepted the fact that her voice was weak and she had no stage presence. She had taken some correspondence courses in music composition and song writing, and found a lot of satisfaction in them.

  It makes me appreciate even more what it takes for you to write your stories, the hard work, how you put together phrases to get as much information in as small a space as possible.

  "I fell for it," Natalie muttered, as she switched from soup to cole slaw.

  In her last email, she had expressed interest in seeing one of Suzette's songs, and admitted that she had played with the idea of a music ministry in high school, traveling with a singing group two summers in a row. Suzette had responded almost immediately, including the lyrics for two songs and marking places where she was still having trouble getting the phrasing right. Her admission of being stuck and asking for any advice Natalie could offer had been flattering -- until she neared the bottom of the email.

  I just can't seem to get my songwriting career going. I don't know who to talk to, where to send my work. I know I just can't send an envelope of lyrics to one of the big Christian music companies -- not without an agent, anyway. I envy you being able to write, and having all those connections. I bet you know people all over the country, in so many different industries, especially Christian ministries. Like music. I am so envious. People like you, with all your talent and knowing the right people, you just amaze me.

  "So help me, if she asks me to recommend her to my agent…" Natalie sighed.

  She didn't have an agent. People just assumed that since she was published and made her living writing, she had to have an agent, that anyone in publishing of any kind automatically had an agent. Even if she did have one, there was
a big difference between literary agents and entertainment agents, which was what Suzette needed.

  Natalie finished the cole slaw and cottage cheese, finished her soup, and got the courage to read the rest of the email. Suzette didn't come right out and ask to use those connections she envied. That didn't mean she wouldn't ask eventually. Natalie had learned through bitter experience that it was wisest to head someone off at the pass before gentle hints turned into blatant requests, then demands, then furious recrimination.

  I wish I could help you, she wrote, dashing off an email before she paid her bill and got back into her car to finish the last leg of the trip to headquarters. But I don't have any connections in the Christian entertainment field. I wouldn't know where to start.

  By the time Natalie had reported in, met with the editorial team to finalize her stories for the next two issues, and reached her apartment that evening, Suzette had replied. Natalie imagined her eagerly waiting for her email, ready with the next phase of her campaign.

  Silly, you certainly do know somebody in Christian music. Did you forget that incredible story you did on Firesong, when they led the music at the Allen Michaels crusade in Houston? It was in the January issue. I must have read it a dozen times. I just cried. They have such an incredible testimony, and you made it come to life. You'd help an old friend, wouldn't you? Just pass my songs on to Firesong? You're good friends with their writer, after all.