The Merciful Scar

by Rebecca St. James

  That thought was interrupted by the sudden sense that something large and smelly was behind me. When I turned I found myself looking directly up into Hildegarde’s enormous brown eyes.

  Make that ticked-off brown eyes.

  Even if she hadn’t delivered a moo loud enough to start a stampede, I would have tried to leap over the fence just from the sheer indignation that flared her nostrils. I didn’t care if her horns had been taken off with a chain saw; it was that gigantic head that freaked me out.

  I at least had enough of my wits left to straddle the fence. But once I was up there, Hildegarde shoved that head against my leg and I couldn’t move. Below me, Petey was bleating piteously and I tried to lean over to at least touch her. But with one leg immobile and my other foot now caught in the lower slat, all I could do was wave one arm blindly in Hildegarde’s direction in the hope of connecting with her nose so I could punch it.

  The cow was bawling, the lamb was crying, but somehow I still heard a male voice yell, “Man, Hildegarde, no wonder you don’t have any friends!”

  The big head moved and my back leg released. But there wasn’t time to get myself back in balance on the fence. Arms flailing, I went over, barely missing Petey as I fell with a splat into the muddy, poopy bottom of the bums’ pen. It was apparently an event not to be missed, because I was instantaneously inundated with curious lambs, all discussing the matter inches from my face.

  Above me Andy hung over the fence and grinned down. “How ya doin’, Bo?” he said.

  I laughed. And then I laughed some more. And I kept laughing until I was barely breathing and Andy was pulling me up by both hands.

  “This is a good look for you,” he said.

  “Shut up,” I said, and then threw my head back and laughed even more. The inevitable snort produced a spray of gunk, which drove the hysteria to another whole level.

  “I’m just gonna have to hose you down,” Andy said.

  “Is Petey okay?”

  “You didn’t squish her. Come on—”

  He dragged me all the way up to the area where the vehicles lived, pulled out a hose, and proceeded to do exactly what he’d promised. I didn’t know which was making me squeal louder as he turned the beyond-icy water on me and sprayed me from ponytail to hiking boots—the cold, the hilarity, or the fact that the more he squirted the more I looked like I had entered a wet T-shirt contest.

  “Stop!” I said. Rather unconvincingly.

  “You’ve still got stuff in your ears—let me get that!”

  “No!”

  Andy turned off the hose, looked at me, and let out the single most authentic male laugh I’d heard since the boys in my preschool class giggled about farting noises. It was the kind of laugh I hoped I would never hear the end of.

  Another hope foiled, however. Andy looked past my shoulder and his face sobered. As far as I knew, only one person could make that happen that fast.

  “I’ve got this handled,” Andy said between his teeth.

  “I have no doubt,” Joseph answered. “But if there’s going to be a this, son, you’d better be honest with Frankie.”

  I heard his boots crunch away, spurs jangling behind me. He took the delight of our moment with him.

  “I’m, uh—I’m gonna go get changed,” I said. I was already backing up.

  “Yeah, go,” Andy said.

  But I wasn’t sure he was talking to me.

  There is no this between Andy and me, I told myself as I half-ran to the Cloister. And I am not going to get involved in whatever drama is playing out in that family.

  Good luck with that.

  Fine. If the Nudnik wouldn’t shut up, I could at least—God, can you do Your thing and keep me out of it? I’m not ready for that.

  Huh. Now that’s the first thing you’ve said that’s made sense.

  I stopped in the doorway and let that whisper one more time. I was still standing there when Emma appeared in the living room, took one look at my soaked-through self, and laughed. Really laughed. As in giggles that bubbled up in the mezzo-soprano range somewhere.

  “Let me guess—you fell in the water trough,” she said.

  “Worse,” I said. “You don’t want to know.”

  I wanted to tell her, actually, but as far as I knew she hadn’t had a change of heart about Andy, and what was the story without him?

  “You’re headed for the shower, right?” Emma said, giggles still dancing in her voice.

  “Yes—and I won’t clog the drains.”

  “You didn’t know,” she said. “I was being a witch that day.”

  Wait! I want to hear that again!

  But I said, “It’s okay,” and went off wondering who this girl was and what she’d done with Emma.

  I wondered even more when I came out in clean clothes and still-wet shampooed hair and Emma was waiting with two large mugs whose aroma laughed in the face of Starbucks.

  “Where did you get that?” I said. “It smells amazing.”

  “I made it.” She handed me a cup. “I’m drinking mine on the porch if you want to . . .”

  She let that trail off and exited through the front door. I followed with my mouth watering. I barely waited until my buns hit the seat of the rocker Bathsheba was curled under before I took the first sip. Emma watched, eyes expectant.

  “Okay, that may be the best coffee I have ever tasted, ever. And trust me, I drank a lot of it in college.”

  “You consume a fair amount in the army too,” Emma said.

  “Yeah, but I bet it didn’t taste like this.”

  “Unh-uh. The secret to this is Hildegarde’s cream.”

  It was too late to gag. I’d already admitted the stuff was the nectar of God. And as ecstatic as it was making my taste buds, I would happily die from salmonella.

  “Can you taste the hay?” Emma said.

  “Come to think of it, yeah.” I was suddenly blinking. “It makes me think of sitting in the pen with Petey. But now she’s off to kindergarten.”

  “Ugh. Separation anxiety. I hate that.”

  I took another sip so I wouldn’t blurt out some question that would send Emma skittering back into her den. I liked her being out of it.

  I did say, “Thanks for sharing this with me.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s like a friend of mine used to say: ‘There’s nothing wrong with just improving the moment.’”

  “I like that,” I said. “There are definitely plenty of moments that need improving.”

  Emma grunted. “Tell me about it.”

  I wanted to. Maybe I would have if a white sedan hadn’t appeared over the rise in the driveway and fishtailed toward the main house.

  “Somebody doesn’t know how to drive on a dirt road,” Emma said. “Who would come up here in a car like that, anyway?”

  “You don’t recognize it?”

  Emma shook her head.

  We watched as the car stopped where the driveway ended. Its brake lights flashed as if it were annoyed by the lack of pavement. Frankie came through the gate and she and the two dogs greeted the driver as he stepped out of the incongruous white Lincoln and used the door as a shield against Norwich and Undie.

  “Doesn’t like dogs,” Emma said. “Shows up driving a stinkin’ Lincoln. This guy’s lost.”

  But I found the tabletop with my coffee cup and stood up, already trembling.

  “Yo, Petersen.”

  I turned woodenly to Emma.

  “What’s wrong? Do you know that guy?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s my father.”

  Share this chapter with your friends!

  I already believed in God. Now I had to accept that God believed in me. #TheMercifulScar

  Chapter

  TEN

  Emma stood up like a pole beside me as my graying-blond, too-tanned father spoke with Frankie in words we couldn’t hear.

  “I take it this isn’t a good thing,” Emma said.

  “I don’t know yet,” I said.

 
Her grunt was almost sympathetic. “You want me to go up and see what he wants?”

  “No.” I lowered myself back into the rocker. “I’ll just wait.”

  “Okay,” Emma said. “I’ll wait with you.”

  Bathsheba waited, too, until Sandy Petersen and Frankie started to make their way up the knoll. Then she untangled herself from under my chair and sailed off the porch without touching the steps. She was on my father’s heels before he got within ten feet of the house, snapping at the hems of his pressed jeans.

  “Knife pleats?” Emma muttered. “Really?”

  The group kept moving—Bathsheba snarling and nipping, my father attempting to kick at her and missing, and Frankie commanding, “Off, girl. Off.”

  “That dog might be worth something after all,” Emma said.

  I went down the steps and called to Bathsheba. She paused and looked at me, and then went back to setting up for a full attack on my father’s leg. I had to go over and grab her by the scruff of her furry neck.

  “It’s okay, ’Sheba,” I said. “He’s not going to hurt me.”

  Well, the jury’s still out on that.

  Bathsheba grumbled and circled around to sit at my feet. Emma had been right about her worth: my father had been knocked slightly off-kilter by the whole thing, which gave me a moment to take the temperature, the way I always had to when I saw him for the first time in months. It was anybody’s guess what it might be—bone-chilling, tepid, or sunny and breezy. I didn’t hold out much hope for the latter at that point.

  But to my amazement, Dad put his arm around me and tugged me into his side. I heard Emma mumble, “Gee, could ya spare it?” but in my show-no-affection family, a sidearm hug was like killing the fatted calf in anybody else’s. He added a disarming smile, too, but it was the eyes that got me. They were looking directly into mine, blue for blue, with no agenda to dart them on to the next thing. He was looking at me, and I melted.

  “I’m sure you two could use some alone time,” Frankie said. “Emma, you want to come up and help with supper?”

  Emma looked at me as if she was waiting for a go-ahead. I nodded to her.

  But I also watched her and Frankie make their way down the knoll in the wind that was just kicking up. Frankie put one hand on top of her cap and linked the other hand around Emma’s elbow. I felt a tug inside.

  My father was literally tugging at my hand. “Let’s go in and talk,” he said. “It’s a little gusty out here for me.”

  This is nothin’, pal. You need to cowboy up.

  In a starched Oxford shirt and polished Western boots that looked like he’d just taken them off the rack, Dad did look singularly out of place, not something I could ever have said about him before. He either created the environment he wanted or he simply didn’t show up. But he was here and he seemed to want to be, and I couldn’t help warming to that.

  I kept a firm hand on the still-grumbling Bathsheba until I left her on the porch and led Dad inside. She jumped up onto the rocking chair and peered in the window like a private investigator.

  Dad stopped in the middle of the living room and did a survey. “I like what you’ve done with the place,” he said, tongue planted firmly in the proverbial cheek. “What’s it got, a five-star rating?”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You want some coffee?”

  “No, I want to look at you.” He took me by both shoulders and held me out in front of him. The blue eyes shimmered. “You look better than I expected you to. Nice to see a little color in you for a change. And a little muscle tone.”

  Are these supposed to be compliments?

  I tried to smile. “How did you expect me to look?”

  Dad nodded to the two recliners by the side window that neither Emma nor I ever sat in. The way they were arranged called for two people curling up.

  I followed him over and sat stiffly, despite the overstuffed arms that invited a true sink-in-and-veg. Sitting and talking was never my father’s approach. Usually when he showed up with a smile and a one-armed hug, he followed up by rubbing his hands together and saying, “Okay, this is what we’re going to do.”

  Yeah, watch yourself. He’s acting like an actual father.

  Just like I’d always wanted him to. But that wanting had gone on for a long time, so I resisted the chair’s embrace and stayed on guard.

  Dad leaned toward me. “First of all, kiddo, let me just say how sorry I am—”

  Say again?

  “—that you’ve been suffering. I had no idea Wes was going to turn out to be a . . . jerk.”

  Yea, Daddy. Keep that vocabulary clean.

  “I should have seen it,” Dad went on. “I’m usually a better judge of character than that. Guy’s a good actor.”

  It struck me to ask: “Did Mother tell you we broke up?”

  “She did not. I got my information from the little weasel himself. I know this has been tough on you, really tough, but kiddo, you dodged a bullet with that character. A guy who gets his girlfriend’s best friend pregnant . . .”

  Whoa.

  “. . . and expects his girlfriend to go on with him as if nothing happened would give you nothing but heartache if you married him. I don’t care if he did take Clarabelle or Annabelle or whatever her name is to have an abortion . . .”

  WHOA.

  “. . . if he cheated on you once, he’d do it again.”

  I pressed both hands to my mouth and squeezed my eyes closed, but I was too late to shut out what my father had just marched past me like a funeral parade.

  Wouldn’t do you any good anyway. Come to think of it, you should’ve seen this coming.

  I should have. I could hear Wes’s voice now, saying, “We took care of that. We took care of everything.”

  That was why Isabel had called him crying that Saturday night.

  That was where they were, he and Isabel, all that Sunday while I was preparing for my betrothal like the village idiot. My life wasn’t the only one that had been lost because Wes couldn’t make a commitment to anything but himself.

  My skin screamed.

  “Now, let me be clear,” Dad said, as if I weren’t disintegrating before his eyes, “I did talk to your mother, which is how I knew where to find you. I have to tell you, kiddo, between her and Wes, I can understand why you’d think the world wasn’t a place you’d want to live in. She has the emotions of a . . .”

  Okay, look, don’t go off the deep end. He’s gonna talk ’til he’s done and then he’ll leave and you can—do whatever. For now, just sit there and, I don’t know, pray or something.

  All I could think of to pray was Please don’t let me lose it. Please.

  My father was indeed still talking and he didn’t seem to be even close to wrapping it up. “I’m just so, so sorry I wasn’t there for you. I wish you’d called me instead of your mother.”

  “I didn’t call her,” I managed to say. “Wes did.”

  “See? One more reason he’s a loser. Did he even know you at all?”

  I just shook my head.

  “No matter.” Dad moved to the edge of the chair and took both of my hands. He turned over my wrists so my red-yarn scar was visible.

  What are we, Father of the Year now?

  “I’m glad you weren’t very good at it,” he said with a wobbly smile. “But it’s going to be okay. I’ve already made arrangements to move you to one of the highest-rated private care facilities in California, near the ocean even.”

  He held up one hand as if I’d made a move to protest. I hadn’t moved at all. I couldn’t.

  “I’m not going to just take you there and leave. I’ve rescheduled all my obligations for the next few weeks so I can be close by and help you work all of this through.” He gave me more of a wink than a smile. “And we’ll keep your mother as far out of it as possible, yes?”

  Dad waited no longer than a nanosecond for a response.

  He ain’t no Sister Frankie, for sure.

  “I’m going to say this again: I am
so sorry I wasn’t there for you. I don’t know if I could stand it if you took your own life, kiddo. I just don’t know.”

  I might have corrected him then—told him I never intended to take my own life—if it hadn’t been for the tears in his eyes. Real tears. “You can get past this, and I’m here to help you. You and me, kiddo.”

  O-kay, you’re thinking this through, right? You might want to go with that praying thing.

  Dad glanced at his watch. “It’s pretty late in the day to be starting out now and you’ll probably want time to pack.” He gave me another once-over. “Or maybe not. The clothes you’ve had to wear up here won’t be what you’ll want in California. No worries. We’ll go shopping tomorrow if you’re up for it. So let’s do this: since our flight doesn’t leave until late afternoon, I’ll go back now to my hotel in Conrad—if you can call it that—and I’ll swing back up here a little before noon and we’ll drive the rental car to Great Falls, pick up a few things for you, and still catch our plane to Santa Barbara. How does that sound?”

  “Hello?”

  I had never been so glad to hear Frankie’s voice.

  “It’s okay—come in,” I said.

  I didn’t look at my father. He had succeeded in turning me back into a small piece of marble that was about to be picked up and moved. How was I supposed to answer him?

  Frankie slanted her head in, and I could hear Bathsheba resuming her grumbling on the porch. “Supper’s almost ready,” Frankie said. “Mr. Petersen, can I interest you in some lamb kebobs? We have plenty.”

  “I don’t think so,” Dad said. “I really need to get going.”

  Get him to stay. Do it.

  “I wish you would, Dad,” I said. “They’re amazing cooks.”

  I turned to my father in time to see him regrouping, just behind his eyes.

  “If that’s what you want, kiddo,” he said, “that’s what we’ll do.”

  Good job, kiddo. Good job.

  Dad hunched his shoulders against the wind as we walked up to the main house, a posture I knew was not amusing him. As she always did, Frankie hooked her arm through mine and smiled into every gust that whipped at our hair and made off with our breath. And just as always, she was able to converse as if we were in a tearoom, chatting over china cups.