She makes me smile.
After we disconnect, I call Mother. Phillip answers and says Mother’s doing fine. The doctors are in the room talking with her, so I ask Phillip to tell her I’ll be thinking of her even during the wedding rush and that I’ll be at her apartment Monday afternoon.
The one person I can’t call right now is Maisey. And while that makes me sad, I’m trying to remember that I have a lot to feel good about this morning: Paula is a friend who sticks closer than the brother or sister I never had; Mother is doing well, and a letter tucked in the outside pocket of my purse says in black-and-white that she loves me, that I am her joy, for goodness’ sake; and despite the convoy of semitrucks on the road today, I have a tenacious husband following me so closely I can see him, along with Maisey’s wedding dress, every time I look in my rearview mirror.
These things and almost nonstop prayers have given me courage. I need courage. Luke has talked to Maisey, and I’m glad, but now she and I must talk, and too many things can keep that from happening. I’m quite sure Maisey will jump at any chance to avoid speaking with me.
Dear God, that’s what she’s been doing for years, isn’t it? And now, at long last, I finally know the real reason why. I’m not surprised Maisey blew up Wednesday night. Did we really expect her to come into my dark bedroom nine years ago, curl up beside me in my comatose state, and sweetly ask, “Why were you kissing Uncle Clay last week?” And when would have been a good time to say something? What words could she have used to tell me what she saw and how she felt about it?
She finally found some Wednesday night, didn’t she?
“I hate you!”
It is quite tempting to relegate to my subconscious her hurtful words and the look of contempt and rage on her beautiful face when she shrieked them at me. But I have no time for that. Instead I’ve been taking them out and looking at them from all angles. I’ve been asking God to help me think right.
I’ve been asking him to finally let me hear what has been so hard for my daughter to say.
Maisey
“Wake up—it’s your last full day to be Maisey Anne Laswell!”
I cannot believe it! Jackie has jumped into the middle of my bed, shouting this command with no restraint whatsoever.
Using both hands, I jerk the pillow from beneath my head and cover my face with it, a shield from her enthusiasm.
“Hey,” she says, grabbing the pillow and holding it out of my reach, “aren’t you glad to see me?”
“I can’t see anything,” I say, squinting in her direction. “What are you doing here?”
“I told you. We’re having a moment. One I didn’t exactly plan. But when I woke up this morning, I just knew I should get over here so we could have this special time together. After today, our lives will never be the same, Maize. That’s a big deal and—surprise, surprise—I’m aware of it!”
“How’d you get in here?”
“Well, your house is practically deserted. No one came to the door when I rang the bell, so I used the keypad on the garage to let myself in.”
Big mistake, giving her that code.
She jumps up and opens the blinds, flooding the room with light.
“Maybe you’d like to throw cold water on me while you’re at it,” I groan.
“Don’t even try to act like you’re not touched by this grand gesture,” she says.
The time for sleeping is beyond retrieving, so I get up to wash my face and brush my teeth. When I return to the bedroom, she is sitting on the bed, waiting impatiently for me. She wants to know what I did yesterday, and I join her on the bed, sitting cross-legged as I fill her in, leaving out the parts about my fight with everyone Wednesday night and the talks with Dad yesterday. But I do tell her about Gram’s heart attack and Mother’s being somewhere in Illinois with my dress.
“Wait a minute!” she says. “If your gram isn’t coming, does that mean my bedroom will be vacant tonight?”
I don’t follow.
“My bedroom,” she says, pointing across the landing.
“Oh, I guess it will.”
“So, Sarah and I can stay here instead of the apartment. Is that not perfect?”
Marcus comes through the open door then, looking as sleep-logged and dumbfounded as I must have looked when Jackie landed on my bed a few minutes earlier.
“Hey, big boy, don’t look so disappointed to see me,” Jackie says, glancing in his direction. “I know you didn’t come in here to spoil your record with only one night to go.”
I knock her off my bed.
Marcus helps her up, saying he is glad to see her and that I talk too much. Then the three of us traipse downstairs to find something to eat, surprised that Dad isn’t already stirring up something. The kitchen is eerily empty. “Where do you suppose Dad is?” I ask even as Marcus reaches for an envelope leaning against the bowl of lemons on the table. He hands it to me.
“This is becoming a habit,” I say. I read the short note aloud: “ ‘I’ve gone to be with your mom. We should be back by noon tomorrow. Have a good morning. Love you—Dad.’ ”
“Well, that’s good for your mom,” Jackie says, “but bad for us.”
“We’re college graduates,” Marcus says. “We’ll come up with something to eat.”
“No problem,” Jackie says, “Maisey’s a chef.”
Marcus looks at me. “True.”
Chef or no chef, I allow Marcus to fry the bacon, and that, along with cereal and fruit, constitutes breakfast. Then Marcus sends Jackie and me upstairs. “Chat,” he says, “while I clean the kitchen so well Kendy will think we went out for breakfast.”
Jackie and I have almost two hours together before I have to leave for the airport.
“Come with me,” I say as we stand by my car in the driveway.
“No can do,” Jackie says. “I have things to do. You’ve had a shower; I haven’t. I’ve got to do something with myself. One of my good friends is having a wedding rehearsal and dinner tonight, you know.”
“Oh, well, get on it, then.”
“Besides, the drive from Indy may be the only time you have to spend with Sarah one-on-one.”
“You’re sweet,” I say. “Really sweet.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she says, waving and heading for her car.
I get in my own car, thinking how glad I am Jackie showed up so early this morning. She startled me awake before the daisies around my window frame could mock me with their cheerfulness. Or worse, rebuke me with their mere presence.
“Here’s what I envision,” Mom said a month before my twelfth birthday. She had finished tucking me in, but instead of turning out the light, she had scooted me over to lie beside me.
To envision something sounded rather exciting.
I sat up and looked at her. “What?”
“We probably should have done it before now. Last year at least, when you started fifth grade.”
“What?”
She patted my pillow so I would lie down again. “Don’t you think it’s past time for the teddy bears to go?”
I’d always liked the border—groups of bears in their pastel frocks, dancing in a conga line. But I was rather tired of pink, and now that Mom mentioned it, I was ready for something more grown-up.
“So what do you ‘envision’?” I asked.
“Golden yellow walls,” she said. “Maize yellow, to be exact.”
“Like bananas?”
“Like the sun.”
“Like yield signs?”
“And the tassels topping a field of ripened corn.”
“And school buses.”
“Like the center of a daisy,” she said, kissing the tip of my nose.
With that one, she won.
“That, in fact, is part of my plan,” she said. “If you approve, of course.”
Several weeks later she had gathered everything she needed for the transformation. “It’ll be done for your birthday,” she said.
We moved the
furniture to the center of the room, taped off the woodwork and ceiling, and laid down plastic tarps on the carpet. Mom did the bulk of the painting, especially the trim, but I rolled the middle of the walls, and we agreed the golden yellow paint was much more suitable than pink paint and teddy bears for a girl only one year away from becoming a teenager.
“Yet it’s cheerful,” Mom said. “Perfect for your personality.”
What made it really pretty, though, were the daisies. Jackie said they were “just too much,” the exact thing she would expect for Spoiley Girl’s room. We sat on my bed all morning and watched Mom stencil the white daisies with their green stems and leaves all around the white frames of my two windows. When she was finished we took a lunch break before she went upstairs and put up my white valances and handed me pillows to put on my white bedspread—two square yellow ones and a green one shaped like an M and sprinkled with yellow polka dots.
“Finally,” Mom said, pulling something huge from under my bed, “the pièce de résistance!”
“The what?”
“The main and best thing,” Mom said. “Well, of course I think the daisies are the best thing, but, Maisey, I think you’ll enjoy these.” On the wall where the door is, she hung two big bulletin boards, long rectangles trimmed with white frames. “You can put up whatever you want—posters, pictures, memorabilia.”
“Mem-o-ra-bilia?” Jackie mouthed when Mom looked away to straighten one of the boards.
“There,” Mom said when everything was finished. “What do you think?”
“I love it,” I said.
That night when she turned out my light and said, “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite,” I told her the bedbugs said they hadn’t appreciated all the commotion, but they thought my room was adorable, a perfect place to hang out.
And in the morning when I woke up, I saw the daisies and remembered Mom rocking me when I was little, singing in her soft, soothing voice, “My sweet girl Maisey is more darling than a daisy.”
Kendy
Marcus has gone to the store and picked up ingredients for a chef’s salad and has it ready when we pull into the driveway just after noon. None of us wants more than that, knowing Dottie has planned quite a nice dinner at the inn for after the rehearsal.
“Maisey picked up Sarah at eleven,” Marcus says. “They stopped to eat at a Chinese place in Indy. Apparently Sarah was starving.”
We are sitting at the kitchen table, which is a little awkward. We haven’t gathered here since Wednesday night, when the four of us were caught in the whirlwind of Maisey’s pain.
While we eat, Luke and I fill Marcus in on the events of the last twenty-four hours, and now we are sitting here for no other reason than we don’t want to get up. After a short, silent prayer for courage, I broach the subject of Wednesday night, or at least allude to it.
“I hope I get a chance to talk to Maisey today.”
Luke collects our plates and puts them in the sink, refills our glasses.
“I do too, Kendy,” Marcus says.
“But you’re here now,” I say, reaching over to pat his hand. “So let me tell you how sorry I am that you have been drawn into this family crisis. I’m sorrier, of course, for the poor choices I made nine years ago that have led to it. But by God’s grace, Luke and I have moved past that sad chapter of our lives. Unfortunately, we had no idea what Maisey had seen, no idea what she has been dealing with all these years.”
Marcus leans over and kisses my cheek. “Things will be better now, Kendy.”
This thoughtful gesture takes me by surprise, and I tear up and smile at the same time. “I hope so, Marcus, I really hope so.”
I send Luke and Marcus out to shoot baskets, saying it will be a good way for them to pass the time while they wait for the other members of the Blair clan to show up. Marcus says he needs the practice. Meanwhile, I clean up the kitchen, my specialty. The effects of Marcus’s kiss linger, delighting me, comforting me, and imbuing my solitary task with grace. I am happy, even in my distress, because whatever else happens, Maisey is marrying a man overflowing with admirable qualities, not the least of which is mercy. Once again I count Marcus among my best blessings.
I barely finish in the kitchen and unpack the two little bags Luke carried in from my car when the first Blair brother arrives. By two o’clock they are all here, and Pete the dog is safely deposited in the “guesthouse.” I’m not sure Dottie is entirely happy with the accommodations, but Doug, Marcus’s dad, assures her the dog will be fine, and she puts a smile on her face, gives Pete three dog biscuits, and tells him she’ll see him soon. Doug shakes his head, and Marcus laughs.
They’re here short of an hour when Maisey and Sarah arrive. Marcus, coming downstairs with his things, puts everything down and hugs Sarah and then Maisey.
“Are you going already?” she asks.
Then because Maisey has arrived, everyone congregates back on the porch with another round of sodas and tea and discusses the matters at hand for Marcus and Maisey: the rehearsal, the dinner, the wedding ceremony, the honeymoon, and their immediate plans on their return. But before long, Dottie stands up and says they need to get settled in the inn so that she can make necessary preparations in the room reserved for the rehearsal dinner.
We stand in the driveway, waving, saying we’ll see them at the church at six. When the five cars pull out of the driveway, silence seems to fill the earth, or at least our five acres of it.
Maisey breaks the silence.
“Do you mind if I take Sarah over to Jackie’s for a while?”
“Don’t you want to check on your dress first?” I ask. The first thing I did when we arrived home was to take it upstairs and hang it in her closet.
“We won’t be gone long,” she says. “I’m sure my dress is fine. You and Gram made certain of that. Thanks for going to get it, Mother. But I left Sarah’s dress at Jackie’s, and I really do want to make sure the hem is right on it. Jackie’s mom said she could take care of any last-minute alterations if I got it to her today.”
What can I say, especially with Sarah standing here?
“Fine. Tell Jackie hi. Be safe.”
And they are off.
Luke is too, cleaning up e-mails and returning calls during this lull. Not much left to do before we meet at the church. I, having chosen the patio over the chaise in my room, am sitting here trying not to brood. I don’t know when I thought Maisey and I would have time to talk.
“Hey,” Paula says. “I took a chance.”
I look up and see her standing beside me, wearing her sunglasses and hat and holding a water bottle.
“I’m glad you did,” I say. “Perfect timing, in fact.”
“What is that!” she asks, looking toward the pen where Pete is sitting—wondering, I’m sure, what he did to be banished to the netherworld.
“That’s Pete, the Blairs’ dog. Not pretty, is he? I thought Marcus was Dottie’s youngest child, but I was wrong; Pete is, by twelve years. Dottie’s crazy about that dog, hard as it is to imagine, so would you please pray nothing happens to him out there?”
“Well, I can tell you that will be way down on my prayer list.”
“Move it up, will you? Honestly, I have visions of Dottie driving up Sunday and Luke running out to meet her with Pete’s collar and an apology.”
“What are the chances?”
“The way things are going? Probably fifty-fifty.”
“Come now,” she says.
“He’s not a pup.”
“I predict he’ll be fine. I’m in a positive mood, mainly because of the dress I found for the wedding. It’s perfect.”
“I’m glad something is.”
“I take it you haven’t talked to Maisey.”
“No, but she did thank me for bringing her dress. And without a trace of sarcasm.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Beats ‘I hate you’ by quite a lot.”
“Do you want me to come to the rehearsal a
fter all? Moral support?”
“No, you were right. I need to give my attention to the Blair bunch. Goodness, there are a lot of them. Maisey really is marrying into a wonderful family.”
“It would be so good for both you and Maisey if you can talk to her before the wedding.”
“I just have to, Paula. Maybe there will be time tonight. The kids are doing it the old-fashioned way. Marcus won’t be seeing Maisey tomorrow until she walks down the aisle. Since Mother isn’t here, the three of us should be alone at some point tonight. That is if she doesn’t tell me at the rehearsal dinner she’s spending the night at Jackie’s. Now that Mother won’t be here to distract us, I wouldn’t be surprised. I know she doesn’t want to talk to me about what she saw or what she said.”
“And you do?”
“Can you imagine anything worse?”
“There’s genocide.”
“Well, yes, there’s that.”
Paula walks over to the edge of the pool with her empty water bottle and dips it under the water. Back in her chair, she dribbles water on her arms and legs and hands the bottle to me.
“I don’t know how much a talk the night before her wedding can accomplish,” I say, trickling the rest of the water on my arms, “but I want to at least tell my daughter how sorry I am. Then tomorrow, if she lets me catch her eye when she’s walking down the aisle, there can be truth and a measure of peace between us. I’d like to accomplish that much—for her sake. And for the sake of the wedding she has looked forward to since she dressed her bride doll with such care and hopped her down our staircase, humming a perfectly pitched ‘Wedding March.’ ”
Paula reaches over and squeezes my hand. “That will be first on my prayer list, then,” she says. “But don’t worry—Pete will be second.”
We sit here, staring across the field, comfortable in silent camaraderie, until Luke comes out and asks if we want something to drink.
“Bring your wife something,” Paula says. “I should go. I have errands to run before dinner.”
I tell Luke not to bother, that I’ll come get something as soon as Paula leaves.
She has been gone awhile now, though, and here I sit, close to lethargic. I should go in. Miller and Anne will be here any minute. If they said five, they’ll be here at five.
Things Worth Remembering Page 21
