Chill Out, Josey!

by Susan May Warren

  SUSAN MAY WARREN

  Chill Out, Josey!

  Published by Steeple Hill Books™

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you for reading Josey’s continuing adventure! First, I have to set the record straight. I did not give birth in Russia. However, I was pregnant twice. In other words, I did my research.

  For their participation in those long nine-month periods, I am so grateful to the friends and family God brought into my life to help me walk that road—

  MaryAnn and Curt Lund—thank you for giving the Wandering Warrens a place to live during those last crucial weeks (and during newborn season!).

  My friends with the FER CoMission teams, especially Cindy K, Patty M, Kathy C, Melanie R, Janet G and everyone else who assisted me in carrying heavy bags, lamented the heat and prayed for me.

  Krista Stroever and Joan Marlow Golan with Steeple Hill Books for their excellent editorial direction and for believing in Josey and her crazy adventures.

  Andrew, my sweet hubby, without whom I wouldn’t have the treasures of our four children.

  David, Sarah, Peter and Noah, for being the kind of kids I would take anywhere. Because of you, I would do it all again.

  Chapter One

  Happily Ever After

  There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

  —George Sand

  Mr. and Mrs. Erland Berglund

  request the honor of your presence

  at the marriage of their daughter

  Josey Lyn

  to

  Chase Anderson

  On Saturday the 5th of August

  Two thousand and six

  At 2:00 p.m.

  Gull Lake Community Church

  34 Chester Street, Gull Lake, MN

  A reception will follow

  at Berglund Acres,

  2210 Berglund Road, Gull Lake

  Chapter Two

  Not Quite Happily Ever After

  I don’t expect to live in Happily Ever After all the time, really, I don’t. There’s nothing wrong, however, with having high—or even reasonable—expectations out of life. Like not having my sister/matron of honor go into labor during my wedding ceremony. Or needing to take over as labor and delivery coach after said sister’s husband keels over at the first hint of pain (hers, not his). Like expecting my new husband/dream man, the one who made the effort to chase me to Russia and back, to refrain from playing football in his rented tuxedo, while waiting for the baby to appear. Or having a dream-come-true honeymoon in the beautiful Canadian Rockies. (Okay, that did happen.)

  Most of all, a gal would expect that her mother would be on her daughter’s side and try not to sabotage her fledgling attempts to be the perfect wife.

  Maybe she’s not wholly to blame for the chicken Kiev fiasco, but my mother is known for her diabolical plots. She knew what she was doing.

  Let me back up to the Sunday after we arrived home from our honeymoon. Chase and I have known each other all our lives, ever since the first day of kindergarten when he decided to show his affection by a snide remark about my lunch box. Which earned him a thunk over the head. However, despite that obvious display of love, and living next door to him my entire life, it took my going to Moscow to see that Chase, with his tousled golden-brown hair, his swagger and laughter, and my hometown of Gull Lake, Minnesota, are everything I ever wanted. And, although Chase is adventure and sweetness wrapped up in a delicious package of hard muscles and twinkling blue eyes, the best thing about Chase is that he loves me.

  I couldn’t wait for us to move into my tiny apartment above the local convenience store—the one with the view of Gull Lake, and the free-of-charge seagulls crying in the background. It’s a cheap little love nest, and I even cleaned out half a closet and two drawers. Not that Chase needed much room.

  His earthly possessions consisted of two duffel bags—one which held his wadded dirty clothes, the other his high school letterman’s jacket, his arrowhead collection, an army hat he once wore hunting and a camp stove. I have a sad feeling he used that stove more than once in his childhood, camping out to avoid going home. We moved the lot in before we left on our honeymoon. So I spend an hour Sunday unpacking.

  I love Sundays. Normally, I fill the morning with church, then spend the afternoon with a good book, some iced tea, and finish with a pedicure while watching the Sunday Night Movie. I know it’s not high entertainment, but it’s my life, okay?

  Emphasis on my.

  So, our first Sunday back, I unpack our bags. The sun is still high and hot above the bay and the smell of late summer thickens the air. Chase has gone out for groceries, and I grab the newest Grisham for some couch time.

  Chase returns. My hunter-gatherer, bringing home the kill. He kisses me, goes to the kitchen, fills the fridge and joins me on the sofa. The foot rub is nice.

  But, you know, it tickles just a bit, too, so I pull away and smile at him.

  He smiles back. Picks up the remote.

  I have to interject here that the first commitment Chase made to our marriage, even before the “I do,” was a satellite-television order in our names.

  Yeah, okay, I liked seeing the bill addressed to Chase and Josey Anderson. But to be honest, I am not thrilled with watching the National Geographic channel every waking hour. The life cycle of the praying mantis just doesn’t do it for me.

  I close my book. Get up.

  There are only two rooms in this apartment…I go to the bedroom.

  Uh-oh…Chase appears at the door, a kooky smile on his face.

  I get up, act innocent and brush past him. “I’m going out for a walk.”

  A half hour later, I’m back, and he’s on the sofa. Oh yippee, there’s a riveting show about the mating habits of the Siberian tiger.

  I check my watch.

  “I’ll give you a thousand dollars for use of the remote.”

  He glances at me, smiles. “I have a better offer.”

  Okay, I was sorta kidding, and he better be, also, because the movie starts in ten minutes. I don’t smile. “Can I watch TV?” I ask, cutting through the innuendo.

  His beautiful smile vanishes and I feel like a heel. So much for wanting to be the perfect wife. But hello, we’re talking the Sunday Night Movie here.

  He hands me the remote. Gets up.

  And I realize something. He’s not leaving.

  Which I know I should have been up to speed on when the pastor said “Man and Wife,” but, well…He’s. Not. Leaving.

  He’s here. Making noise in my kitchen. Bringing out a bowl of chips and cheese, and bumping me as I put on my nail polish.

  Crunch.

  Crumbs spill, onto his jeans, the sofa, my toes.

  Crunch.

  I pump up the volume, focusing on the heroine kicking….

  Crunch. “Want some?”

  Did he forget I’m on a diet? I take a chip, hating myself for my weakness.

  Crunch.

  I stare at him, at his rumpled hair, his dirty T-shirt, his ripped jeans and…is that a smell coming from his bare feet?…and the truth hits me like a bulldozer.

&nb
sp; He’s staying.

  Like…for-ev-er. This is a picture of my Sunday nights from here to eternity.

  There are nasty, non-newlywed words forming as an image of us fills my brain. I’m a chip-eating, three-hundred-pound couch potato who can’t even reach her toes. My brain is filled with useless facts about pygmies in Borneo, and I’m reduced to bargaining marital favors for the remote. Sorta makes a girl wanna get up and run. And not for exercise.

  But Chase didn’t marry me for my propensity to throw in the towel. Just two years ago at this time, he showed up at my sister’s wedding toting a buff and tough fiancée, a woman who made me feel like a cave girl in a poppy-colored dress. And did I take that sitting down?

  Nyet! I ran off to Moscow. Where I taught English for a year, learned how to surf the Moscow metro, communicated in passable Russian, dated a guy who worked for the Embassy—yes, say it, Em…ba…see. Has a nice ring, doesn’t it? And even led an old lady to the door of salvation.

  I can fix this.

  It’s not that I expect to be a perfect Proverbs 31 wife, but I’d like to come close. It’s a good list, and aside from the outrageous things like knowing how to sew, it ends with my hope for our marriage—“Her children rise up and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praises her. Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.” That’s what I want. To surpass all expectations, all hopes, all dreams, and to have Chase rise up—maybe from the sofa?—and call me blessed.

  I can be the wife he needs, the wife who helps him eat healthy, who creates a home of refuge and happiness, a home Chase never had.

  And no, I don’t aspire to be June Cleaver, but a blend, perhaps, of June and Lara Croft…a woman of wisdom, courage, and incredible curves. A woman who takes his breath away. In fact, I’m even thinking that God might have some input on that. Lately, and especially since my stint in Moscow, God and I have been on regular chatting terms. I do most of the chatting. But occasionally He chats back. Sometimes He does it through the Bible. Other times, He uses people.

  Take, for example, the conversation I have with my mother on Monday on the telephone, in between proofing the police beat, transcribing the city commissioner’s report and choosing the recipes for this week’s Gull Lake Gazette, where I work as editor.

  Mom: “Are you coming to Jasmine’s baby shower on Saturday? You know it’s a couples’ shower, so bring Chase.”

  Me: “Chase has football practice.” (Translation: Chase would rather have his molars ripped out by a bobcat than go to a baby shower.) “Can I bring something?” (I’m really good at the conversational bait and switch.)

  Mom: “No. Jas and I have it covered.”

  Of course. Because, while neither of them will say it, they don’t think I’m capable of cooking even the most modest of grilled cheese sandwiches.

  Okay, I admit it—yes, I once tried to make a grilled cheese sandwich in a toaster. But good grief, I was ten, and who knew the cheese part would come unglued from the bread and meld with the grates of the toaster? We needed a new toaster anyway.

  Me: “Are you sure I can’t bring something?” (At the very least, the sub shop has that party platter.)

  Mom: “How are you and Chase settling in?”

  (Where do you think I got the bait and switch from?)

  Mom: “Have you used the cookbook I gave you?”

  Joy of Cooking. It’s about the size of War and Peace, with such essentials as how to can pumpkin and devein shrimp. Yeah, I’ll use that information every day. Still, it was considerate of them to think of my weaknesses…or maybe I should read that as a challenge? I mean, how would my mother feel if I gave her a dictionary for Christmas? Yeah, I can spot a dare when I see one.

  And, I did pick up a Martha Stewart Living magazine on my honeymoon….

  Me: “I’m trying something new tonight.”

  Mom: “What?”

  I reach for the magazine, paging through it. And this is when my day takes a nosedive…

  Chicken Kiev. Of course Martha’s helper is posing with a delicious-looking meal and it’s like a lightning bolt to the brain.

  Me: “Chicken Kiev.”

  Was that a chuckle coming from my mother’s end of the telephone? I’m going to say it was a…burp. It better have been a burp.

  I arrive home on Monday night, after work, to find Chase already home from in-house teacher training at school. Which is only slightly weird because I thought he had football practice.

  He’s parked…guess where? And I’m only momentarily snagged by the bathing habits of the hippopotamus. Pay attention, Chase.

  I’m headed off to the kitchen with my fixin’s for chicken Kiev.

  How hard can this be?

  “Really, G.I., I don’t need gourmet.” Chase says this as we watch Clark, our fire chief, emerge with the offending pot. Smoke continues to filter out of the apartment, and it’s brought the locals out for some summertime entertainment. Unfortunately, his use of my nickname, as in G.I. Joe, only slightly dulls the pain.

  Please, just shoot me. Now.

  Who knew that grease had a combustion point? And a thank-you-oh-so-much goes to the dime store for the automatic smoke detectors that dialed the fire department. I think I could have figured out how to put out the fire.

  Maybe.

  I have tears running down my face and it doesn’t help at all that while Chase’s arms are around me, he can barely hold in his laughter.

  Yeah, hardy har har, chip-boy. We’re both going to starve to death.

  I should have learned something from the grilled cheese sandwich episode.

  I push away from him, walk down to the park and sit on a bench.

  The sun is turning to liquid on the horizon, and the gulls wander the beach. Every morning during tourist season, the Park Department comes out with rakes and spends the morning grooming the beach.

  It’s a while before Chase joins me. He’s probably consorting with the local hose draggers, while they chortle at his fate. Methinks that a bunch of guys who call training a night of viewing old Third Watch reruns while eating buffalo wings and downing Heinies should mind what they say.

  Chase sits down beside me. “You’re the greatest,” he says.

  Oh, I’m feeling like the greatest. That’s me, Great Josey, the Chicken Kiev Killer.

  Thankfully, I have ultimate control at the newspaper, so this story won’t be making even the police beat.

  He puts his arm around me. Unfortunately, Chase knows just how to yank me out of self-pity, right into gratefulness. He’s tender and kind and grinning as he pulls me onto his lap. “Besides, I don’t even like chicken Kiev.”

  Now he tells me.

  He runs his hands through my hair and pulls me to him. So I can’t cook. Maybe there are other things I can do. But it’s starting to dawn on me that this wife thing might be a bit more unwieldy than I thought. I mean, I wanted to take his breath away…not suffocate him.

  Hours later, I’m lying in bed watching the ceiling, Chase beside me. The apartment smells of grease and smoke, and my stomach still roils from the tacos we had down at Jakey’s Tacos and Burgers.

  But I’m not thinking about tacos. I’m thinking of the time when Chase was ten, and one night under the Milky Way sky, he sneaked over to my house, climbed up our gutter and we sat together on my roof—while Jasmine eavesdropped in the bedroom. He said nothing for the first half hour—and I in my jeans and jammies nearly froze my backside. Then he started crying.

  That rattled me. But, because we were ten and I had no idea at the time that I loved him, I put my arm around him. We sat there until Jasmine fell asleep and the lights went out at his house.

  I never asked, but three days later, I saw his mother in the grocery store, took in her dark glasses—hello, who needs shades in the dairy department?—and I didn’t have to guess further.

  Chase and I spent a number of cold evenings on the roof until, of course, he got a motorcycle.

  Then we’d go for long, windy driv
es in order to escape his life at home.

  I don’t want Chase to start tuning up his Kawasaki, maybe taking a spin alone.

  Lord, help me be the wife Chase needs. Help me be the Proverbs 31 wife, one that brings him good, not harm, all his days. Help me love him the way he needs to be loved.

  I say all this because I know that God listens. At least He did when I was in Moscow. And I know God put Chase and me together. And I do want to learn to love Chase the way God wants me to.

  In fact, I’d like to know that kind of love, too. To live Happily Ever After.

  And have a two-story Cape Cod on one acre of Gull Lake.

  And maybe a black, designer SUV, with the latest techno gear.

  And a boy and a girl and a dog named Boo.

  Okay, not all at once!

  I roll over and nudge into Chase’s embrace. He makes a warm and happy noise and puts his arm around me, pulls me tight.

  Maybe God is trying to tell me that, in a fledgling way, I already have all that….

  First thing I do tomorrow on the way home is buy a fire extinguisher.

  Chapter Three

  Liposuction

  Gull Lake is a great place to live and raise a family. Population five thousand, including the summer residents, it’s located about three hours north of Minneapolis smack in the middle of Minnesota. We have one stoplight, two grocery stores, two hardware stores, a smoked-fish shack, a library, a hairdresser, two cafés and one coffee shop—the Java Cup. And we’re surrounded on all sides by resorts. Including Berglund Acres, where I grew up.

  As I drive through town, I’m seeing the groomed streets, bungalows and Victorians lining the sidewalks, their hanging plants on the porch overflowing with impatiens. Children’s bicycles, skateboards and water guns lay strewn in yards; a few have trampolines.