by Judy Baer
“And I’m ashamed to say,” Joe added softly, “that I wasn’t so sure you were telling the truth, either. I’m sorry, Norah.”
“We both thought that you and Connor…it was hard to believe anything else when the two of you spent the evening together on the Lady of the Lake. Then there were the flowers and the candy and you brought Auntie Lou home and we both thought that wasn’t a good idea….”
“Are you saying that the two of you went behind my back and started a relationship?” It was ludicrous. “Are you joking?”
“We didn’t plan it that way, it just happened!” Lilly’s nose was red and puffy. “I blamed you for trying to steal Connor and…”
“And managed to get between Joe and me, instead?”
“It’s my fault, too, Norah,” Joe said. “I felt like you were pushing me away.”
“Appearances can be deceiving,” I murmured as I heard my world tumbling down around my ears. “Did anyone ever consider asking me what was going on? Or believing I was telling the truth?”
“We know that now. We were both hurting and…”
“And you looked to each other for comfort?” I was dumbfounded. “How many times have I lied to either of you in the time we’ve known each other?”
“I was jealous,” Joe admitted miserably. “And Lilly really needed someone.”
“Oh, please! Lilly accused me of being in love with a man she was attracted to, so to get even, she got involved with the man I was seeing?”
This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. I don’t live my life like a soap opera and this mess is getting far too sudsy for me.
Disregarding a person’s faults brings love. There it was, one of those pesky pop-up Scriptures flashing onto the display screen of my brain just when I’m ready to be good and angry.
“Lord,” I petitioned silently, “this is too much to disregard. My dearest friends betrayed me.” The guilty parties sat across from me, the expressions on their faces alternating between hope and apprehension.
I knew what they wanted me to say. “I forgive you. It’s okay. I understand.” But if I opened my mouth and said that to them right now I’d be the world’s biggest hypocrite. It’s not okay. It’s the furthest thing in the universe from okay.
Joe! The man who said he wanted to marry me! With my best friend?
How dare he? I’d counted on Joe….
Counted on him.
Counted on him for what? That still small voice that could resound so loudly between my ears prodded me.
To be there, of course, waiting patiently, like Bentley waits for me by the front door holding my slippers. To be there if and when I decided I’d marry him. To be there when I need him without much regard to when he needs me. To be there even though I know deep in my heart that he’s not the one for me…there are no bells with Joe. I love him but he doesn’t make my heart chime with passion. If I’m honest I have to admit that the music between us is missing.
So, that silent yet prodding voice persisted, how dare I keep him on hold while I’m looking for someone else?
All this flitted through my mind as we sat in a visual staredown, each of us bracing for whatever the other would say next. Lilly was poised like a deer on the edge of the forest, watching me to see if I were going to remain calm or raise a rifle to my shoulder and blast her into oblivion.
A profound wave of disappointment washed over me, so deep and strong that I wanted to weep. The disappointment was not that I’d somehow “lost” Joe to her, but that she hadn’t trusted me. Had all her talk about becoming a Christian been for my benefit alone? A verbal salve meant to pacify me into believing she bought into my faith? Was it so difficult to believe that anyone could walk the path Christ had laid out for us? A path of honesty, righteousness, compassion and forgiveness…
Ouch!
When God makes a point, He’s not always subtle. No matter what else is going on here, between the three of us, love found and love stolen, Christ is in our midst. What would He have me do here and now? In this moment?
Not being Jesus, I knew I wasn’t going to handle this gracefully. Maybe I couldn’t even be charitable, but I had to try.
“I’m very hurt. And maybe not all that surprised. I have to admit that my first reaction is to tell you both to get out of my life. My second reaction, the one that doesn’t come from me but from the One I try to follow, is more benevolent.”
My mind galloped through snippets of Scripture like an out-of-control race horse. Proverbs, Matthew, Colossians, Luke…“Good sense makes a man slow to anger…If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you…As the Lord has forgiven you, so you must forgive…And if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”
I wish I could say those verses made me calm, cool and collected, but I can’t. What they did do was keep me from putting my foot in my mouth and walking around in there.
“I…I don’t know what to say,” Lilly said.
“It was never our intention…” Joe began.
“Do you believe us, Norah?” Lilly pleaded.
“Probably more than you believed me when I said there was nothing between Connor and me.” And it certainly explains why Joe wasn’t cooking dinner at home the other night.
Lilly paled.
“Will you forgive us?” Joe asked, misery oozing out of every pore.
“Frankly, at this moment, I don’t feel like it.” I took a deep breath. “But ultimately I’ll have no choice.”
They stared at me, baffled.
“It’s not because I want to but because He wants me to.” I gestured upward for lack of a better place to point. “I know you aren’t bad people and it’s not wise to throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
Lilly began to speak but I stopped her.
“I don’t want to talk anymore right now. Honestly, I don’t know what I might say.”
“We’d better go.” Joe stood up. He looked me square in the eyes. “Norah, I think I love and respect you more now than I ever have. You’re real. It’s real, that faith of yours. I’m humbled.” And he turned and left.
I stared at the wall for what felt like hours after they’d gone, warring emotions playing out on the front line of my mind. Then I paced around the apartment, Bentley anxiously tailing me, as I spoke my mind—to Joe, to Lilly and to God. When I’d given them all a good talking-to, I sank onto my bed, spent.
No matter how I turn it over in my mind, which I’ve been doing for days now, the truth is the same. I hadn’t loved Joe as he’d deserved to be loved. Since I’d told him I wasn’t ready to commit, there should be no reason to be angry when he moved on. That made no sense whatsoever and, if I’m anything, I’m a woman who likes things that make sense.
Worse—or better—yet, there’s a crazy, inexplicable part of me that’s happy for Lilly. She found what many women dream of. I saw the way she looked at Joe. I could practically hear the bells between them.
I rubbed Bentley’s head—he hasn’t been more than twelve inches away from me since this entire mess came to light. “God’s doing a number on me, Bent. I’ve been betrayed. I should be angry. I should want to yell and scream and throw something.”
Bentley looked up at me, alarmed.
“But I don’t feel like it. I feel…quiet, like I know this was the right thing to have happen. It’s just plain weird.”
I suspect it’s that “peace that passes understanding” thing. It’s divine and there is no way to comprehend it on my own but I am grateful to have it now. It is the only thing that can help me preserve and not destroy my relationship with Lilly and Joe.
I grabbed Bentley by the head and kissed his nose. His little tail thumped wildly and I know he tapped in Morse code, “Welcome back, Norah. Welcome back.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Forgiving is one thing, forgetting is quite another.
I feel raw when I think about Lilly and Joe,
even though I know logically that my relationship with Joe would never have progressed any further than it had already. Lilly is so ashamed of having done what she, ironically, accused me of doing, that she’s constantly trying to ingratiate herself with me. She doesn’t need to, not for my sake, but for her own. That’s the way it is with God and us, too. He’s already forgiven us but we just can’t seem to accept it and are always trying to make ourselves “good enough” for Him. It is as hard to receive forgiveness as it is to give it.
Fortunately Annie asked for more hours this week because she’s decided to take classes at the University this winter to become a veterinarian. I’m so excited for her that I’d pay her way if I could. In lieu of that, I’m staying away from work so she can earn a few extra bucks.
I was bottom-up, digging in my garden, when I heard a man clear his throat directly behind me. I turned around and nearly gave Nick an appendectomy with my garden trowel.
“You shouldn’t surprise a woman with a weapon,” I warned.
“Good thing I have fast reflexes or you could have eviscerated me with that thing.” Nick had his hand in his pocket, jingling loose change, hardly the pose of a frightened man.
“I doubt it. It’s not doing anything to these weeds except maybe giving them a bad scare. The little roots just go into hiding until my equipment is in the garden shed and then they start growing again.” I scrabbled to my feet and dusted off the knees to my jeans.
“Need help?”
I thought about Nick’s green thumb and was tempted. “I’d like to say yes, but the manners I was raised with tell me I should ask you if you’d like some iced tea, instead. Besides, I could use a break.”
“Anything I can do to be of service is fine with me.” He dropped into a chair and watched me peel off my garden gloves.
“I’ll be right back. I even baked chocolate chip cookies today.” I looked down at my shoes. “Not like yours, of course. These are from a roll of cookie dough in the refrigerated section. Does that count?”
“It does in my book.” Nick looked so at ease and right sitting on my porch that he could have been a permanent fixture in my life. Then I turned to go into the house and saw Bentley waiting patiently on the other side of the patio door with his adoring eyes fixed on me. I don’t ever want to have to choose between Nick and my other permanent fixture, Bentley.
The telephone rang as I walked through the patio door. It was my mother, ready for a chat. After five minutes I got a word in edgewise and promised to call her after Nick had gone. It wasn’t until I’d poured the tea and put the glasses on a tray with the cookies that I realized that I hadn’t shut the patio door behind me. My four-footed detainees had been sprung from the joint and were enjoying freedom on the patio with Nick.
More accurately, two out of three were enjoying freedom. Hoppy had found the lettuce I’d planted for him in my flower bed and was gorging himself like a professional glutton.
Bentley, who didn’t like to be outside except on my patio, was, to my surprise, showing curiosity toward the tall, handsome stranger backed up against my fence. Bentley, who is afraid of everyone and everything, was sniffing Nick’s shoes.
I was interested in Nick, too, especially the ashen color of his face and the way he gripped the wrought-iron railing that encircled the terrace. He was as frozen looking as my lawn ornament of an erect toad holding a fiberglass umbrella.
“Bentley, leave Nick alone,” I ordered. Actually, it was more of a suggestion. Bentley doesn’t do well with raised voices. Still, it was enough. He slunk off, tail between his legs, as though I’d screamed at him at the top of my lungs.
“You can move now,” I told Nick. “He won’t be back unless he’s invited.”
I saw the tension seep out of his expression and his shoulders relax. Nick had felt truly in jeopardy from a dog that’s scared of his own image in a mirror.
“You’d better tell me about it,” I murmured as I handed him a glass, “because otherwise I don’t get it. Not you, a policeman and a horseman.”
Nick glared at me as if I’d loosed the Hound of the Baskervilles on him.
“What? Did your mother get scared by a Doberman when she was pregnant with you? Or was it a hundred and one Dalmatians?” My joke fell flat.
“I almost died because of a dog like that.” His words were soft and fierce.
“Like that?”
I turned to stare at my dog. Bentley was sitting in the baby pool I keep outside for him on hot days. He was holding a rubber bone in his mouth and looking about as bright as a burned-out lightbulb.
“A pit bull mix.”
“Staffordshire terrier and beagle with a few other lineages thrown in,” I corrected automatically, my mind trying to get around what he’d just said. “You almost died?”
Nick had gone too far to go back now. “Drug raid. We’d been watching the house for days. There were some nasty operators in there so we had plenty of backup, but none of us had any idea that they kept attack dogs inside the house.” He lifted his arm. In the sunlight, the ribbons of scars on his arms stood out in stark relief.
“Dogs did that to you? I thought maybe you’d had a car accident and gone through a window.”
“Not dogs, just one dog. I was on my way to the second floor of the house when he came flying out at me from the top of the stairs. His razor-sharp teeth—” Nick shuddered and had to gather himself together to continue “—looked like they’d been honed with files. He grabbed me at the shoulder and as I tried to shake him loose he hung on. He slid down my arm without easing up, his teeth taking my flesh with him.”
I stared at him in horror as I imagined, from the shape of the grooved scars, how it had happened.
“I fell backward down the stairs and he came with me. When I landed on the ground, he went for my neck.
“I’d almost bled to death by the time I got to the hospital. They gave me several pints of blood and lost count of the stitches somewhere after five hundred. The bites got infected and for a while, the doctors weren’t sure they could save my arm. I was in the hospital for two weeks and in physical therapy for months.” He paused and drew a deep breath. “All because of a dog like yours.”
Bentley stared at both of us with an innocent “Who? Me?” expression on his face.
“And now I wish you’d put him inside, Norah, because he’s making me very nervous.”
I jumped to my feet and grabbed Bentley out of the pool. I wrapped him in a towel lying on the deck chair and hurried him inside. As I went through the door, I heard Nick say, “Be careful, Norah. Never trust…”
I returned to the patio with a sickly knot lying lumpishly in the pit of my stomach. A vast chasm had grown between us in the time I was gone.
“Nick, I am so sorry. I’ve been so blind. I had no idea….”
“I should have told you before, but I didn’t want…” He paused to stare at me. “I didn’t want you to know I was afraid.”
“Afraid? Why wouldn’t you be afraid? In a situation like that you would have to be crazy not to have been afraid. And now you feel this way about all dogs?”
“I know it’s irrational but I can’t seem to shake it. Especially not around dogs that look like…” His gaze rested on Bentley on the other side of the window and I knew that sweet and stupid face I love so much provoked only horror in Nick.
“Oh, boy. Big obstacle to overcome,” I murmured with exquisite understatement.
“You could say that. Walking through the door of your shop makes my heart pound like a trip hammer. What if there’s a dog loose in there? What if you’ve got Bentley with you at work? It’s not rational, but fear doesn’t have to be rational. Coming so close to death made me reevaluate my own life. It’s when I turned to God. That’s the gift that came out of being on death’s doorstep. I’m not ungrateful for that. Much as I want to I don’t know how to shake this phobia. I’m sorry, Norah, but I cannot tolerate one of the things you love most—dogs.”
I thought about
the Bed and Biscuit and about Bentley and Hoppy who were staring curiously at me, their human.
“Are you sure?” I ventured. “Never?”
“I can’t imagine it. I’m sorry.”
Well, that’s that. My only consolation is that I’ve never heard bells when I’m with Nick, either.
Winky has become fixated on body parts and romance.
“Great legs, sweetheart. Vavavoom!”
“Better than yours.”
“Nice buns! You make my heart sing.”
“You make my head ache.” No wonder. I’m carrying on a conversation with a bird. Between him and Asia Mynah, I could have been chatting all day long.
“Come ’ere and gimme a kiss, baby!” Winky has perfected smooching sounds to go with his catcalls and whistles.
“Not on your life, bird beak.”
I poured myself another cup of coffee hoping the caffeine would kick in soon. I’d slept very little last night and when I did, I dreamed that Nick was being assailed by a dog that got larger and fiercer in every dream. If that had happened to me just hearing about the attack, I can only imagine what Nick’s nightmares must be like.
I have a fear of heights that has no rational explanation, but every time I come too close to a twentieth-floor hotel window, my stomach feels like it has been on a roller coaster ride; my breath grows short and my heartbeat escalates. It’s nothing I elicit or intentionally think about. It just happens—like what happens to Nick when he sees Bentley.
I’d resent someone pooh-poohing my experience or telling me I’m being silly. It was only five years ago that I learned to sit in the IMAX theater with its steeply graduated seats and watch the movie’s wild camera angles. I still cover my eyes when my heart can’t take it.
“Great buns! Groovy.”
“Actually, it’s a muffin, Winky,” I said, wishing his previous owner had taught him to say, “You look lovely today.”
Then Winky nearly split my eardrum with a wolf whistle. Even though I was sure he’d caused permanent damage to my hearing, I had to smile. Winky seldom uses his wolf whistles on me.
