She pulled a soft rose sweater on over her turtleneck and jeans. With a few practiced flicks of her brush and the help of several sturdy pins she twisted her long black hair to the top of her head, then shivered as the tendrils curling along her neck tickled her. A hint of blusher and honey rose lipstick and she was still under the two-hour limit decreed by Greg.
The phone rang several times at the other end of the line. Debbie had almost decided Andy was out when his boyish voice came down the wire. “Andy! It’s so good to hear your voice! How are you?”
“Sis? Hey, is that really you?” he sounded glad to hear her too. “I’m, uh, fine. Just fine.”
“Andy, I heard that hesitation. What gives?”
“I really am fine, just surprised by your call because I’d been thinking about you.”
“It won’t do, Andy. Don’t hold out on me when I’m paying the long-distance charges.”
“OK, Sis, but don’t hit the ceiling.” She heard him take a breath. “I’m thinking of not going back to college this fall.”
“What!”
“I told you not to hit the ceiling. Look, I’ve got a good job here—not great, but a job—which is more than a lot of college graduates have these days. It seems dumb to quit to go back to school when I really don’t know what I want to take. I mean, I’m almost 20 years old, and I don’t know what I really want to do in life. It’ll be an awful waste if I study the wrong stuff.”
“But, Andy, that job’s a dead end. You could be there 20 years and still just be working in the stockroom. What better way is there to find out what you want to do than to study different fields?”
“Yeah, you may be right. I’ll think about it. Say, isn’t that something about ol’ Angie?”
“Yes. It certainly is. I have to go, Andy. Bye.”
Greg seemed to sense her depression almost as soon as she arrived. But he didn’t question her until they were comfortably sitting around big bowls of blackberries with a tray of sharp cheese and crusty French bread. “Want to talk about it? Whatever’s troubling you—”
Not until she heard his words did she realize how very much she did want to talk. She had thought earlier of calling her father, but it seemed unfair to burden him when he was so happy. “Yes. I do. I didn’t realize it was so obvious.” He smiled and waited for her to go on at her own pace. “It’s Andy. I called him just before coming over. He’s thinking of not going back to school. He says he thinks he should just keep on with the job he’s got. Stocking shelves in a discount store. Can you imagine? And he’s brilliant! I got him through every accelerated class that high school offered. Reviewed him for quizzes, proofread his papers, read assignments to him when he was too tired to read himself. All that so he could be a stock clerk?
“I had a perfect schedule worked out for him—for all four years of college. A business and economics major. So he could either get his masters or go into business with Dad when he graduated. And last year he did just fine. What’s the matter with him? How could he so suddenly go off the rails like that?”
“Sounds like you had his life all worked out for him.”
“Of course I did. It was my job to take care of him. I did everything I possibly could.”
“And I’m sure you did it brilliantly.”
“Well, I did my best. Hot breakfasts. Clean jeans, ironed shirts. Regular study hours.”
Greg nodded. “But did you ever ask him what he wanted to do?”
“Of course I did. But he would never say. He wasn’t like Angie. She always stood up to me—told me what she was going to do and that was that. No matter how clearly I showed her she was wrong. And see what’s come of it—having a baby at her age. I had to make Andy’s decisions for him. It was my job.”
“And now he wants to take it on for himself.”
“And make a mess of it. I’m gone for less than two months and look what happens.”
Greg was quiet for a moment. “Did Andy ever talk about what he wanted to do? When he was younger?”
“You mean after the Power Ranger and G.I. Joe stages? Well, when he was in the third or fourth grade he used to talk about being a missionary to South America. Which was pretty surprising, because he hardly knew where South America was at that age.”
“Did he do anything about that?”
Debbie shrugged. “Read adventure books set south of the border. Took a lot of Spanish. But he never talked about it anymore. That’s why I told him to major in business.”
“You told him?”
“Advised him, yes. It was my job to guide him. And after all—missionaries make no money, and it can be awfully dangerous …”
“You always fought his battles for him.”
“Of course.”
“I think this is one he’ll have to battle out for himself. We can help, though.”
“We?”
When he held his hands out across the table Melissa instantly dropped her spoon and put her hand in her daddy’s. “We already prayed, Daddy. Did you forget something?”
Debbie supposed it all helped—talking to Greg, praying for Andy—but she couldn’t get rid of the compulsion inside her that she should do something. Get on the first plane to Boise and sort it all out. What if Andrew and Angela really messed up? What if they didn’t do things right? They had to be the best. It all had to be perfect for them.
“And now for the pièce de résistance.” Greg placed an eclair before each of them. They were large, the pâte à chou shell filled with rich, French pastry cream and the top generously spread with a smooth, milk chocolate icing.
Debbie could think of nothing better to drown her worries with. She took a big bite and savored the delicate flavors while Greg and Melissa waited for her reaction. She made a face. “Terrible!” she reached across the table and grabbed their plates. “I’ll just take these home to dispose of them so you won’t feel obligated to eat them.” Melissa gave a shriek of laugher, and Greg picked up his fork to defend his property.
In a few minutes a thin rim of chocolate around Melissa’s mouth was all that was left as evidence—not even a telltale crumb on anyone’s plate. “OK, I’ll say it.” Debbie grinned. “That was the ultimate.”
“Thought you’d never admit it.” Then his mind made one of those rapid shifts she had seen him do so often. “I keep forgetting to ask you. Did you ever find your compact?”
“Oh!” Debbie’s hands flew to her face. “How could I have forgotten? I meant to call the very next morning. Then I never gave it another thought. Oh, I do hope I’m not too late. Surely the janitor would have found it by now.”
Melissa’s head was drooping almost to the table. “Time to get ready for bed, Punkin. It’s been a full day for you, and you have Sunday School in the morning.”
“You go brush your teeth and put your pajamas on,” Debbie said. “Then I’ll come tell you a story. Would you like to hear Peter Rabbit again?”
Melissa nodded and slid to her feet. Greg began gathering the dishes. “Here, let me.” Debbie jumped up.
A strong, warm hand clasped her shoulder. “Sit, woman. You think I can’t handle this?”
Debbie didn’t even get her mouth open to reply when the glass he had stacked precariously in a bowl toppled to the floor with a crash and splintered. They were still laughing when Melissa, clutching a teddy bear, padded back in. “No bare feet in here.” Debbie scooped her up in her arms. “Your daddy’s demonstrating the caveman method of dishwashing, but he doesn’t seem to have it quite perfected yet.”
“That’s all right, you can laugh now. But I’ll get the bugs worked out. It’ll revolutionize the industry.”
“That’s right,” Debbie replied from the next room. “The dish manufacturing industry.”
When she returned from Melissa’s bedroom, Greg was waiting for her, sitting on one end of the sofa with his long legs stretched out in front of him. She started to take the chair across from him but he stopped her. “Sit over here.”
She moved to th
e end of the sofa. “Here, I said.” He patted the cushion next to him. “What is this standoff bit?”
“I wasn’t intending to stand. You stopped my sitting twice.”
“Debbie, no nonsense now. I’ve been trying to talk to you all day, but we kept getting interrupted.” He put his arm around her.
Nonsense was the farthest thing from her mind as she turned to him, waiting to hear what he wanted to talk about.
“I want to know how you feel. About me.”
She opened her mouth to answer, but no words came out. Her throat closed and her stomach knotted. All she could do was shake her head as she pulled away. He let her go.
“I thought so. It’s Shawn, isn’t it?”
“No. No, not Shawn. Not him.”
“No. Not as a person. I mean it’s what Shawn did to you.”
Her eyes on the floor, her nod was almost imperceptible. “Deborah, if I were a professional counselor it would be highly improper for me to advise you. Fortunately, that’s no longer part of my job, because I very much want to tell you something. And you can think of this as coming from a detached, professional doctor or from the man who loves you. But either way it’s true.”
The man who loves you. The man who— Debbie clapped both hands over her mouth and pushed herself into the corner of the sofa, curling her legs under her. The conflicting urges to throw herself into his arms and to fight and scream tore at her.
“That’s all right. Don’t say anything. Just listen.” His voice was so calming. She focused on that. His voice. Just listen to his voice.
“Debbie, we need to talk about this false shame you’re carrying. It really isn’t your fault that you were raped. You have to understand that so you can forgive yourself. Rape always leaves the victim feeling soiled and worthless. But rape—”
“I wasn’t—” Her muttered words barely cut across his.
“What?”
“I said, I wasn’t raped.” She took a breath, then almost shouted it. “I wasn’t raped!”
Greg sat in silence as the words fell to the floor and splintered.
“I told myself I was. I had to. I tried to believe it. I couldn’t admit even to myself that I had wanted—even asked for Shawn to love me.”
Greg still didn’t say anything. She had to go on. Fill the silence with words. “My mother was dying. My world had fallen apart. We were so close. I had forgotten how close my mother and I were until this time with Melissa. I guess I shut it out because the memories were too painful.”
She took a deep breath to steady herself. Now that she’d started, the words were pushing at each other to get out. All that shameful truth she had kept bottled up inside her for so long. Now it all spilled over. She couldn’t have stopped if she’d tried. “I was desperate for something to hold to. And there was Shawn. He was a good, gentle person. He really cared about me. And he was there; and my mother was leaving me.” She shook her head. “He was so sweet.
“And then I realized what I’d done. It wasn’t at all what I wanted. I started screaming and hitting.” She flailed at the sofa cushions with both hands. Hitting and sobbing. The pins came out of her hair. It fell across her shoulders as she jerked her head back and forth. “No, no. Don’t touch me! Rape. Rape. Rape!” The sobs tore from her throat as she buried her face in her hands.
“But we both knew it wasn’t rape.” Suddenly she looked up. “I did a terrible thing to Shawn, too, didn’t I? A terrible thing. But what can I do? I did a terrible thing, but I can’t undo it.” She lay back against the sofa, drained. Dark straggles of hair clung to her wet forehead.
“No, you can’t undo it. But there are things you can do.”
She looked at him, waiting. She would do anything. Inside she felt like she was in the middle of spring cleaning—dumping all the junk out of her bureau drawers. The top drawer was clean and empty. But there was still that pile of junk on the bed to be sorted and arranged.
“You need forgiveness. Have you asked God to forgive you?”
“Over and over. You don’t know how many times.”
“Then He has. You believe that, don’t you?”
She nodded. She believed it with her head. She didn’t believe it with her heart, because her heart knew she wasn’t worthy of being forgiven. Fortunately, Greg didn’t probe.
“Then you need the forgiveness of the other person you hurt.”
“Shawn?”
“That’s right. Have you ever told him you’re sorry?”
“I never saw him again. We went to different high schools, different churches. He called when my mother died. I never returned his message.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“No. I think his parents still live in Boise. He might be married, but I haven’t heard.” She hunched her shoulders.
“If you could write him a letter, it would do you both a lot of good.”
“Both?”
“Yes. Owning responsibility for what happened is a crucial recovery step. You’ve started by admitting it to me. Now you need to admit it to him. And freeing him from that responsibility will help him with any guilt he may be carrying.”
“If he is married, it could help his marriage?”
“Definitely.”
Greg walked her home without talking, without touching her. She sat long at the kitchen table with her pen in her hand. In the end, there really wasn’t so much to say. She explained as clearly as she could what had happened, both on that night so long ago, and now to bring her to accepting this responsibility. She hoped he could forgive her, and she wished him well. She read it through three times, decided it would have to do, and wrote Shawn Miller on the envelope. She put it inside a larger envelope addressed to her father with a note asking that he forward the letter.
She held it out and looked at it. What had she really said? How did she feel about it? She had done what she had to do. She didn’t really feel much of anything. She set it aside.
There. That was done. An entire turning point of her life dealt with. That drawer wasn’t in perfect order yet, but she had the contents sorted. She sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the Trezadone tablet. After such a long, emotional day she needed it. She doubted there had been a day in the past six years when she had needed it more. And she really couldn’t take having her sleep filled with bleeding, broken, crying dolls. Surely, if she could ever be justified in taking refuge in drugs, it would be tonight.
And yet something held her back. It wasn’t the pill. Doctor Hilde had assured her it was perfectly safe. A very common prescription for sleep disturbances. And yet, after such painfully honest peeling away of her defenses, it seemed like a step backward to use a chemical to blot out her dreams. In the end she took one out of the bottle and left it on her nightstand with a glass of water beside it. Just in case.
She slept until daylight. And wakened with a sense of aloneness and loss. And yet a great awareness of love. She lay for a long time, trying to bring the images back. Like the melody of a half-forgotten song one strains to remember and finds just beyond their grasp, the vision eluded her.
Then she remembered. In a rush it flooded over her. And Debbie did something she hadn’t done since she was a teenager. She grabbed the pen and notepad by her bedside and wrote a poem, just as it came to her, complete as the realization of the dream.
My mother came to me last night.
She stood at the door and held a towel.
“Come in from the rain,
You’ll catch cold.”
She held me in her arms,
My head on her narrow chest.
She was always so thin.
I could even hear her breathe.
I felt her love.
Felt it flow through me,
Tangible and warm.
I relaxed in her arms Like a small girl back home again.
I awoke.
She was gone.
She had been so close,
So very dear.
Why did she co
me back from heaven afar
To hold her daughter in her arms?
Debbie read it again. Where had the words come from? She looked at the pen in her hand. Was that hers?
She was loved and comforted. By her mother. She folded the paper and tucked it in the back of her Bible.
And Greg had said he loved her. Words she had never thought she would hear. But now that she had heard them, she had to face the responsibility. Last night she had accepted the responsibility of Shawn’s having loved her. But what of her mother’s love? Could she take that responsibility? What of Greg’s?
She only knew that she didn’t feel up to facing Greg right then, so she went to a little church in Seaside rather than driving over to Cannon Beach as she knew he and Melissa would be doing. Then, by spending the rest of the day indoors like a mole, she managed to avoid him. Byrl was hibernating too. Not just in the house, but in her room, so that, what with worrying about Andy between times of trying to sort out her own perplexities, this was not one of Debbie’s better days.
And the next day was no better—definitely a leading candidate for the Blue Monday award. Debbie stowed the results of her shopping expedition for Greg’s birthday dinner in her refrigerator as she thought over the situation. What she needed was more perspective—a little distance.
She looked at the stalk of celery in her hand. Yeah, and cooking for him is a great way to achieve distance. Well, Ryland was due back from Salem soon. Maybe he would provide a change of scenery.
Debbie pushed the refrigerator door shut and listened. It seemed that Byrl’s computer was going slower and slower. Finally it quit altogether. After a silence that seemed more oppressive than just a pause to look up a research note, Byrl emerged from her room and headed straight for the coffeepot.
“You look awful.” Debbie surveyed her cousin’s sallow complexion and the dark lines under her eyes.
“Thanks. I’d return the compliment, but at the moment my eyes are too bleary to know.”
It was obvious that all was not well in Ms. Byrl Coffman’s world. But Debbie didn’t know what to say, so she just finished stowing the last of her purchases and sat at the table with a cup of coffee she didn’t really want, waiting for her cousin to talk.
All Things New (Virtuous Heart) Page 12
