Blue Heart Blessed

by Susan Meissner

  Ramsey is sitting on a sofa, reading a newspaper. ESPN is playing on a TV monitor across the room. Another man is asleep in an armchair. Ramsey looks up as I step into the room.

  “You’re back.” He folds the paper and places it on the table in front of him. “Dad’s asleep, though.”

  “I know. I saw him. It’s actually you I wanted to talk to.”

  He says nothing but his eyes communicate curiosity. I take a seat beside him on the sofa. “Remember earlier when you said you didn’t see any way out of taking your dad back to Duluth with you?”

  He clearly is wondering where I’m going with this. “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ve found a way out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve found a way for your father to stay at The Finland, and for you to be near him and for you to have a contract to work on.”

  He looks positively baffled.

  “The owner of my building wants you to put a green roof on The Finland.”

  “You can’t be serious.” Baffled has given way to suspicious.

  “I am very serious. We had over eighteen hundred dollars in water damage last spring. And I bet with one of your roofs, that wouldn’t happen anymore. And it would improve the look of the building and be an additional asset to the tenants. Plus, Reuben, the owner, keeps an apartment in the building that is fully furnished and unoccupied. Reuben lives in New York and only comes to the Twin Cities a couple times a year. So you could stay right in the building while your dad gets better and while you build the garden.”

  He opens his mouth to say something, closes it and then opens it again. It’s like he has twenty comments to make and he doesn’t know which one to deliver first.

  “Are you telling me in the last thirty minutes you made all these arrangements?”

  I can’t tell if he’s impressed or disturbed by such a notion. “Well, it wasn’t hard to convince Reuben that this is a great idea. And it’s not a stretch of the imagination to think that you and Liam could stay in his empty apartment. It makes perfect sense. It’s empty. And it’s right next door to your Father’s apartment.”

  “But you don’t even know what I charge to build a green roof.”

  “I seriously doubt you would charge us something unreasonable. If the project is fair market value, Reuben will gladly pay it. He thinks it’s a great idea. He loves gardens. And so do I. And you could take as much time as you needed.”

  “It only takes a couple weeks to build one on a roof the size of yours.”

  “But you could take as much time as you needed.”

  Ramsey stares at the table in front of him, obviously deep in thought. When he raises his head, the suspicious look is gone and in its place is unease.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asks softly.

  What should I tell him? That I’m slightly neurotic, recently rejected, unable to let go of the past, and fairly addicted to his father’s brand of compassion? It’s probably all true, but I doubt it will go over well. Truth can be told in a variety of ways. I choose different words.

  “Your dad has been like a father to me.” My voice is not much louder than a whisper. “This last year has been a really hard one for me. I don’t know if I would’ve made it without your dad’s friendship and counsel. My own father is dead. And I miss him terribly. To be honest, I don’t want to lose your father’s presence in my life.”

  Ramsey looks back down at the table, his gaze unfocused. I know my words have hit him in the place of our common ground—the aching heart. We’ve both just been through a year that brought us to the edge of despair.

  “And because your father doesn’t want to leave,” I add. “He deserves to be happy.”

  More seconds of silence.

  “You should have an elevator in that place.” He says this like it’s his last line of defense.

  “We have a service elevator at the far end of the building. No one but Mario ever uses it, and he only for moving heavy things. It’s the old-fashioned kind with a gate. But it works.”

  Ramsey runs his palm across his face. He is hesitant.

  It occurs to me that if he moves to The Finland for the rest of the summer he will be just mere minutes away from his ex-wife.

  I wait.

  “What kind of roof is it?”

  I breathe a half-sigh of relief. This is progress. But I don’t know what he means. “Kind?”

  “Flat, sloped or pitched?”

  “Oh. Flat. It’s covered with pea gravel.”

  He cocks his head. “You’ve been up there?”

  “I go up there all the time.”

  “What for?”

  “Because it’s quiet and peaceful and uncomplicated up there. There’s nothing but sky and pea gravel and other roof tops.”

  He seems to consider this for a moment. Then he exhales, like he’s letting out the last breath of his resistance.

  “I’ll look at the roof tonight and I’ll let you know.”

  “So Father Laurent can stay?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  He gets up and walks away. The man in the chair snorts himself awake, changes position and falls back asleep.

  Thirty-five

  Dear Harriet,

  Okay, so I blew it today when I accused of Ramsey of being selfish. So let’s not even discuss it. I apologized. And I was sincere. I really do regret saying what I did, even if it might be a tiny bit true.

  He looked at the roof of The Finland just before dark. I went up there with him. He kind of stared at my two Adirondack chairs for a moment, but then he walked off the square footage, peeked over the limestone rim and inspected the tuck-pointing on the bricks closest to the top. Then he put his hands on his hips and said, “I can do this.”

  I don’t know if he meant he can do the roof or he can lay his head to rest at night only a few miles away from the Horn Blower. Either way, it was the same thing as saying Father Laurent can stay. At least for now.

  The fact is, Father Laurent doesn’t want to move. This is his home. We should all be bending over backwards to make sure he can stay here. I know I have ulterior motives. I know I could mail a box of little blue hearts to him in Duluth and he could bless them one by one and send them back. But this really isn’t about those little blue hearts. It’s about keeping my world spinning on its new axis. I really don’t want to grapple with changes that will mess with that. Every time I think I’ve got my feet firmly on the ground, it starts to shift and tip. It’s like little gnomes are watching me try to keep my balance and when it looks like I’ve got it, they yank the rug I’m standing on. I need for everything around me to just be still.

  Even as I write this, I realize this is probably just how Ramsey feels, like a novice gymnast on a balance beam stretched across hot coals. This afternoon while I was trying to convince him to stay in Minneapolis—and thinking he was just wanting to keep his life trouble-free—it dawned on me that he fears walking the balance beam with Kristen practically watching from the sidelines. He’ll be just minutes away from her, for as long as he and Liam stay here. He might even run into her and the Usurper at the grocery store, or the mall or on a lakeshore path. Maybe he’ll run into them while they’re strolling with their new baby—the one Kristen was carrying when she told Ramsey she was leaving him.

  Oh, to have such a thing in common. Rejection.

  I wonder if he feels about Kristen the way I feel about Daniel. I don’t actually love Daniel anymore, not like I did. It’s hard to keep loving someone who doesn’t want you. But then to have that person choose someone else? To have them choose your replacement and to see them clearly and deeply in love with that other person? That’s the strongest poison there is. That will kill love.

  But it won’t kill the hurt. That you have to murder yourself.

  Maybe that should be one of my Rules of Disengagement: Be ready to choose a method of execution. Plan to take an active role in killing the desire within you for things to be back the way they were
. You must slay it with your own hands. No one can do it for you. The love you had for that person who rejected you can be stripped away in an almost passive fashion. But the wish that you could rewind the clock, change the course of time, know the moment when they began to love you less so that you could freeze that moment and massage it away, that you have to put to death—you alone. You must show no mercy. If you do not kill it, it will kill you. And you won’t even know that you are dying.

  Dear Daisy,

  I’m trying to think what your Father Laurent would say to you if you had written these words to him and not me. I think he would say it’s not about killing the hurt as much as it’s about releasing it. You can kill an angry beast that is trapped at your feet or you can lift the pin and let it go. It seems to me if you kill something, then there are remains. What do we usually do with remains? We bury them. And we leave a headstone to mark the spot.

  If you set something free—push it away and walk away—there is nothing left to remind you of its existence except your own memories of having had it. Which, my dear, are not all bad.

  I am proud of you for apologizing to Ramsey. But I think we both know you did it not because you shouldn’t have said something so unkind, but because you couldn’t live with knowing you said something Father Laurent would never think you capable of saying and thinking nothing of. Ramsey clearly has an impression of you given to him by Father Laurent. That impression matters to you.

  As it should.

  Harriet

  Thirty-six

  Max, Liam and I decorated the outside of Father Laurent’s room with balloons and streamers in preparation for his homecoming this morning. Rosalina baked a cake—low fat, of course. Mario spruced up the service elevator, painting its walls a soft cloudy blue. And Mom and L’Raine made sure there were no spiders, cobwebs or layers of dust in Reuben’s cozy apartment. When Father Laurent arrived this morning, the whole building turned out to welcome him home. You’d think he was a war hero returning to America after years away. Liam made sure his grandfather knew he’d had a part in helping Max and I decorate the third floor hallway. Ramsey seemed to note this with interest as well.

  I am immensely glad today is Saturday and that my fabulous college girls are downstairs manning Something Blue. Neither Mom nor I nor L’Raine wanted to miss seeing Father Laurent come home to where he belongs. The fanfare was appreciated of course, but exhausting. As soon as Father Laurent received our hugs and well-wishes, he went inside his apartment to lie down. Liam and Ramsey left shortly thereafter for Duluth to pick up more belongings and Mom and I promised to look in on Father Laurent until they returned.

  It is now late afternoon, Father Laurent is reading the newspaper and I’m attempting to clean out my fridge. I’ve put it off as long as I can because I hate doing it. There are containers at the back that scare me silly. I don’t care that the contents are snug inside sealed, molded plastic. I’m going to throw them all out—plastic containers and all—without even peeking.

  Mom knocks at my front door, opens it and pops her head inside. “Daisy?”

  “In the kitchen, Mom,” I yell back.

  She rounds the corner and looks down on me from the other side of the open fridge door.

  “Kellen just called. He’s coming to Minneapolis tonight.”

  “That’s nice. Is he coming by?”

  “Well, he’d like to.”

  “Does that mean he can’t?”

  “No, he can, but he was thinking he’d just swing by. He wants to pick you up to go out to eat.”

  I toss a little blue container of unknown matter into the trashcan. “Don’t you want to come?”

  “Well, he was thinking it would be just you this time.”

  “What? A little brother-sister bonding?” I laugh at the thought because Kellen is more like an uncle to me than a brother.

  “No. Not really. Laura will be there, too. ”

  I look up at her. “Mom, what’s this about?”

  “He just… Oh, for Pete’s sake. Daisy, Marshall Mitchell would really like to see you again. He and Kellen have been doing some business together and your name has come up and he wondered if you’d care to see him. He asked Kellen if he thought you’d be open to that.”

  He asked Kellen?

  “He couldn’t ask me?”

  “Well, maybe he thought you’d say no.”

  “So, asking Kellen is safer because why?”

  “I don’t know, Daisy. All I know is Kellen said he’s in Minneapolis this afternoon to take care of some business. And that he and Laura are meeting Marshall later for dinner and he thought you might want to come.”

  I stand up and search the countertops for my cell phone. “Where’s he at?”

  “I don’t know. I think he’s already here in the metro somewhere.”

  I find the phone by the toaster and snatch it up. I punch in Kellen’s speed dial and wait. He picks up on the fourth ring. I can tell by the background noise that he’s in his car.

  “What’s all this about, Kellen?”

  “C’mon, Daisy. It’s just a harmless double date. He likes you. He wants to see you again.”

  “He likes me? He doesn’t even know me!”

  “Well, he’d like to get to know you.”

  “Why couldn’t he have called me himself?”

  “Well, he didn’t want to scare you off.”

  I begin to pace the kitchen. Mom has closed the fridge door and is standing there, watching me, rapt. “Scare me off?” I reply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “He didn’t want to seem too forward. He could tell you’d been hurt before and he—”

  I don’t even bother to fiddle with the volume of my voice. “What do you mean he could tell I’d been hurt before? What did you tell him?” Mom’s eyes bug out at my verbal explosion.

  “Daisy. Calm down. He could tell. You spend any amount of time around a hurting person and you can tell. It’s not that easy to hide hurt from a perceptive person.”

  “So Mitchell Maxwell is a perceptive person!” I sound a little like the Wicked Witch of the West.

  “Marshall Mitchell. And yes, he’s a very compassionate, perceptive kind of person. I think you’d like him, Daisy.”

  I pause for just a moment to calm the demons inside me who want to screech.

  “What have you told him, Kellen?” It takes me a moment to say this.

  “Daisy—”

  “What have you told him?”

  “After he told me he could tell you were hurting, I did tell him you were engaged recently. And that your fiancé had called it off.”

  He can’t see me, but my face floods with color nonetheless. Mom sees it. She looks away. Even she can sense Kellen has said too much.

  “Kellen, I can’t believe you did that,” I moan.

  “Why? Why not? It’s true.”

  “It’s none of his business.”

  “Daisy, it’s been, what, a year? When are you going to get over this? You need to start getting out and meeting other people.”

  I am almost speechless. Almost.

  “I thought you were the one person I didn’t have to worry about measuring up to, Kellen! When Mom tried to fix me up with Marshall that first night, you were on my side!”

  “There aren’t sides to this, Daisy. And that was before I knew him. He’s a really nice guy.”

  “So is our mailman.”

  “Daisy.”

  I stop my pacing and search my brain for a wisp of common sense. Harriet, where are you? I wish I could run up to Father Laurent’s apartment and ask him what I should do. But he just got home. He’s recovering from a heart attack. I can’t do it.

  Lord, Lord, tell me I’m not being ridiculous about this. Lord, tell me I’m not being unreasonable.

  “Daisy?”

  Then from somewhere inside me I hear echoes of what Harriet “wrote” to me last night; that I need to stop looking for ways to kill my hurt and start looking for ways to let it go.<
br />
  Easier said than done. It’s kind of hard to let go of something that seems to be attached to you with super glue.

  “Daisy, are you still there?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “So will you come?”

  “If Marshall really wants to see me, then please tell him to stop by the store sometime and maybe we’ll go get a cup of coffee together. I’m not going to go out with a man I don’t even know, Kellen.”

  “It’s just one date, Daisy.”

  “Yeah, well, my relationship with Daniel began with just one date.”

  “So did mine with Laura and look how happy we are.”

  “I’m not coming, Kellen. And not because I’m afraid to. I’m not shopping for a new man to love. And that’s what this would feel like to me. Like a shopping trip. I’m flattered Marshall wants to see me again; surprised, actually. If he really would like to get to know me as a friend, then tell him what I told you.”

  Kellen is silent for a moment. “All right. Are you mad at me?”

  “I’m getting over it.”

  “He doesn’t feel sorry for you, you know.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It wouldn’t have been a pity date.”

  Oh, that’s comforting.

  “No, but it would have been a shopping date,” I tell him. “For both of us. I don’t want to go shopping.”

  “So going out for a cup coffee sometime isn’t shopping?”

  “It wouldn’t be for me.”

  He exhales. “Okay. I’ll tell him.”

  “You can still stop by and say hello.”

  “You mean just me and Laura.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. We’ll do that.”

  “All right.”

  “So you’re not mad.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  We click off and I turn toward Mom as I lay my cell phone back on the counter.

  “He meant well,” she says.

  So did the men who built the Titanic.