Be My Neat-Heart

by Baer, Judy

  “You’ve been awfully faithful, coming here every day, keeping our spirits up. Mom and Dad think you’re the best thing since, as Dad says, ‘sliced bread.’”

  “Your parents are amazing. I know now why you and Molly are so wonderful.”

  “But it’s taking a toll on them. They aren’t young. I wish they would stay home and get more rest. I’ve told them that I’ll be here for Molly.”

  “What about work? You have to go to the office.”

  “I can work on my laptop in Molly’s room.”

  “Jared,” I ventured, feeling my way gingerly along this slippery slope, “what if…”

  His eyes emptied of life.

  “We have to face it, Jared. Molly may not come back to us.”

  “Sammi, there’s something I want to talk to you about.” His voice sounded hollow to my ears. “I don’t want you to be saddled with this. You didn’t buy into this scenario when we were…you know, back at the Oasis. You don’t have to stay….”

  “Is there something wrong with your head, too? What are you talking about?”

  “Sammi, I love you. But it’s becoming clearer and clearer that it might be more loving to let you live without me and this enormous responsibility….”

  “Get a grip, Jared. I’m not running away from this.”

  “I know. You wouldn’t do that. You’d stick with us because you are considerate, caring, courageous and strong….”

  “You’re describing a Girl Scout, Jared, not a woman in love. I want to be here—for you, for Molly, for your parents. I want it.”

  “I can’t let you….”

  “You can’t stop me, either.”

  Jared scraped his fingers through his hair in frustration. “It would be so much better for you if…”

  “If you quit talking nonsense.” Then I remembered the conversation I’d had with Ben. “Jared, you just don’t trust. You don’t trust me, you don’t trust God….”

  “What do you mean, I don’t trust God?”

  “You think that God can’t forgive you…or won’t….” I struggled for what I wanted to say. “No, that’s not it. You think that God shouldn’t forgive you! You don’t trust Him to be God. You’re making Him small by filtering Him through your finite understanding. Don’t you see?”

  I wondered if he even heard me. He was so far into his own thoughts that I was probably like a noisy chickadee, chattering background noise in this depth of despondency.

  “Thank you, Sammi, but we can’t ignore this.”

  “No. But we can get through it. Together. Us. You, me. Together.”

  I was having about as much effect as a ping-pong ball bouncing against a skyscraper—none.

  He took me by the elbow and steered me back toward the hospital. “We’ll talk about this again, Sammi. When you aren’t so emotional.”

  Me? Emotional? It takes one to know one!

  As we walked together, Jared’s hand firmly on my arm, I began to realize that, if Jared thought he was protecting me by pulling out of my life, he would do it.

  I have to get it through his loveable, altruistic, thickheaded skull that the only way to protect me was to bring me closer, not to push me away.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  It was a relief to have multiple appointments today. That kept me from obsessing too much about what I was going to do about Jared and his insistence that I would be better off without him.

  First of all, stubborn and independent woman that I am, I want to decide that for myself and not have him make up my mind for me. Secondly, the man is under a great deal of stress and is currently operating with tunnel vision. Supporting and sustaining his parents, keeping himself together, working at Hamilton and Hamilton and all he is doing for Molly are the equivalent of four full-time jobs. I don’t want to be the fifth but nor do I plan to go away quietly.

  Fortunately, Amelia Vicars was a remarkably effective diversion.

  A slender, timid-appearing woman with pale brown hair, pale gray eyes and wearing a pale yellow dress that resembled an overgrown canvas sack or small pup tent, she greeted me at the door with tepid enthusiasm.

  “Mrs. Vicars? I’m Samantha Smith.”

  “Yes.” Apparently she agreed with me on that one.

  “We have an appointment today, is that correct?”

  “Well, yes.” Worry flitted over her features.

  “Is there a problem?” There must be since I still hadn’t made it past the front door.

  “I’m just not sure you can help me….” Amelia wrung her hands like they were soggy dishcloths. “I’m very disorganized.”

  “Then I’m in the right place. It says in my notes that you want help with your kitchen, is that correct?”

  She stepped away from the door and I walked directly into the room in question.

  The kitchen was a large, lovely room filled with sunshine. A pair of parakeets put up a noisy ruckus in their cage when we entered. There was not a thing wrong with this kitchen except that every counter, every surface, every square inch of space was filled with food. There were cans of soup, vegetables, fruits, coffee, tuna, beans and juice stacked three high. Cereal boxes were piled five and six high. Rice Krispies was the front-runner. I could count seven boxes from where I stood. Pad thai noodles, vinegar, macaroni, ketchup and wasabi peas need room beside jars of pickles, preserves, pimentos, mayonnaise and peanut butter, mounds of cleaning supplies and an entire case of lemon curd.

  “I tend to over-purchase groceries. It’s gotten so I don’t know where to put them. I thought maybe you could help me.”

  “Yes, I see.” The only quick fix for this would be to serve a week’s worth of meals to the men of the United States Army. That might clear it out a bit. “How many people are in your family?”

  “Just my husband and me. We have two grown daughters who live in California.”

  “So this is just for the two of you?” I tiptoed carefully toward the counter. I didn’t want to produce any vibrations that might start an avalanche.

  “It’s a little problem I have. I’m working on it in therapy, but my therapist suggested I call someone like you as well. Can you help me?”

  “How long have you been collecting food, Amelia?”

  “I quit work three years ago and it seems to have gotten out of hand since then.”

  “Uh-huh. Three years. Do you have any idea where the food is that you purchased back then or has it all been used up?”

  “Well, I really couldn’t say.” She wrung her dishrag hands again. “I used some, of course, but I always put the new in front so it got mixed up.” She stared in horror at her own fecund counters as if they were whelping canned goods as we spoke.

  “I suppose I didn’t realize how much I had until I ran out of room.” She paused in self-amazement. “I had no idea canned goods could fill up a bathtub quickly.”

  Okay. Calm down, we don’t need to go there—yet.

  I glanced around the room again and made a quick decision. “Amelia, today I’m going to teach you how to read the expiration dates on canned goods.”

  We spent the next two hours on the floor pulling out cans, reading the expiration dates and either tossing the old food, putting the newer food in boxes for the food shelf and putting “use by” notations on the rest. Visions of botulism were still dancing in my head when I opened the door under the kitchen sink.

  I screamed so loudly as the thing jumped out at me that I think I broke two jars of applesauce and the neighbor’s window.

  “Spider! No… Tumbleweed! No…” I garbled as I scooted backward to get away from whatever was blooming out from beneath the sink. Then I got a whiff of the most foul odor known to kitchens, that of the rotten potato.

  What I had opened the door upon was a basket full of potatoes, each of which had sprouted and grown a Medusa-like head of potato hair. The long wormy tentacles reaching for me were nothing more than potato sprouts. Or, more accurately, potato sprouts on steroids. Then, having produced this mass o
f tentacles, the potatoes had melted into smelly little puddles and begun to give off their wretched, odiferous smell.

  “Oh, dear,” Amelia said behind me. “I’d forgotten all about those.”

  Obviously. And I’d forgotten my fumigation suit.

  This, I thought, as I helped Amelia carry the contents of the entire cupboard on its plastic shelf paper out to the garbage, is why I am going to raise my prices.

  Still, by the time I left with nine boxes of food for the food pantry, Amelia was happily arranging what was left of the food and taking the kitchen organizer’s oath—

  I hereby promise never again to put new cans into my cupboard in front of or on top of old ones. I will make and use a grocery list and check my cupboards before I go to the store rather than after I return home. I will no longer load my shelves until they sag and I will begin to trust that there are stores open 24 hours a day if I get hungry. I will buy only what is on my grocery list and if I am tempted to buy French-cut string beans purely because they are being sold 6 cans for a dollar, I will resist. I have difficulty passing up a good sale, therefore, I will go to the store only when absolutely necessary. And if I do not keep this oath, may all my cakes fall in the middle, my vegetables get mushy, my feet grow and every dessert I bake fail.

  The oath is tough, I know, but, hey, it’s a dirty business. Somebody’s got to lay down the law somewhere.

  As I drove home, I felt a smile bubbling up from inside me. Thank You, Lord, for the opportunity to do what I love. I can’t believe it, but I even love the smelly stuff. The looks of relief on my clients’ faces are so rewarding. Bless Amelia and all her foodstuffs and free her from her compulsion to buy whatever is on sale. You certainly created complex creatures when You created human beings, Lord. The things we can think up! It’s just one more sign of how awesome You really are.

  And Lord, as always, keep Your hand on Molly and her family. If You want Jared and I together, I know You’ll make it happen. Show me Your will.

  Zelda was playing jungle cat again. When I walked in the door, I saw her crouching on the top of my armoire, tail flicking, eyes narrowed, scanning the Serengeti horizon for a juicy wildebeest. I saw disappointment in her eyes that I was not the wildebeest she was craving, but she quickly resolved that I would have to do.

  She came squealing and yowling off the top of the chest in a launch that would have made Evel Knievel drool, and landed on my shoulder. She nearly gave me a whisker burn with her stubbly shoulder and latched her little white teeth on to the shoulder strap of my purse, the closest thing she could get to wildebeest hide.

  “Hi, Zelda, playing again, I see.”

  Wendy, who was already in the kitchen, clanged two pots together. “She’s been on safari ever since I got here. Your plants look like someone took a hedge trimmer to them and there’s not a mouse in the house or she would have scarfed it up for you by now.”

  “I’m glad she entertains herself,” I said, plucking the cat off my shoulder and putting her on the floor.

  “Imelda entertains herself, too. Did you know she can turn on the television?”

  “I taught her.”

  “Then do you know she likes soap operas and Judge Judy? She’s crazy about Wheel of Fortune and can’t stand reruns of Friends or Seinfeld.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know she didn’t like Seinfeld. That must be something new. I usually find her watching Animal Planet.” I threw my mail down on the counter.

  Wendy, wooden spoon in one hand, stared at me. “I’ll never figure out why you want everything so tidy and yet you encourage your wacko pets to do whatever it is they do during the day—and you put up with me and Ben, besides.”

  “Organization is to make life easier, not more difficult. We don’t organize for the thrill of it. We do it so that we can enjoy the people and things we have in our life without having our environment be troublesome.” I walked across the kitchen and gave Wendy a hug. “I’ve got my priorities straight, you silly girl.”

  “And how is Jared doing with his?”

  I told Molly about Jared’s ill grandfather and the scene Geneva had witnessed, the scene where her father passed the torch to her son, the incident she called “the commissioning.”

  “At eight years old, Jared was appointed his sister’s keeper by a man he loved, a man who was dying,” I told Wendy. “That’s pretty heavy stuff for a little kid.

  “Geneva also told me that her mother always used to remind her husband that, ‘If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.’ She said Jared was all ears.”

  “That’s an example of using the Word as a club rather than a beckoning hand,” Wendy commented. “Responsibility and duty were drilled into him early.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. “How would you feel if you believed that you had been ‘commissioned by’ God—and felt you had failed Him? Jared believes he’s failed Molly, his grandfather and even God. He’s forgetting, of course, that we’ve all failed God. Romans 3:23—‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’”

  Suddenly I thought about my favorite disciple, Peter. If you want to talk about a guy with a directive from God who still managed to fail his Lord, there’s one! After that bluster, those good intentions and a somber promise to never deny Christ, what did Peter say when asked if he was one of Jesus’ followers? “I do not know what you are talking about… I do not know the man!”

  Talk about dropping the ball!

  Yet Peter, by God’s grace, picked himself up, dusted himself off and became the rock of the church that Christ promised he would. If God could do that for Peter, Jared’s issue would be a piece of cake for our loving Lord. But how to convince Jared of that? How to unwind the obligation of a lifetime and put it into God’s hands?

  I could think of only one answer. By starting to pray for it myself.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Zelda has a secret life and it involves a mouse.

  No, not that kind of mouse. Either she’s been researching a kitty dating service on the Internet or ordering catnip by the bale and giving parties while I’m not home. What else could explain her new fascination with my computer?

  She’s become remarkably computer-literate. I download photos of Zelda and Imelda and use them as screensavers. First I’d found her sitting on my computer chair watching the slide show. Then I realized that when the screen went dark and the computer tried to “sleep,” she’d bat the mouse with her paw to wake it up again. She sat with Imelda for hours watching their own pictorial history.

  Then, just to give her something new to think about, I added a few photos of strange cats. A Persian, a Siamese and a Russian blue.

  It didn’t go over well. I think they must have been too hairy for her because I came home to find the cord to my mouse chewed through and the screen dark. I should have learned, but I put a few doggie portraits on so that at least Imelda could continue enjoying her hobby. A sheepdog, a pointer and a setter didn’t work well, either. Apparently Imelda doesn’t go for the blue-collar, working-dog class. She decimated the cord from my computer tower to the wall plug.

  It was after that that I realized they’d somehow called up e-Bay. Maybe it was an accident that happened while Zelda was tripping across the keys, but I’ve begun shutting my computer down while I’m at work. It’s a little freaky. Those two are trouble enough without access to the Internet. Next thing you know, they’d figure out how to get into Paypal and have pet toys and rhinestone collars delivered to the house.

  I was brushing Imelda’s teeth when I heard the doorbell ring. I went to open the door with the little rubber nubbin-studded doggie toothbrush on my index finger and was so surprised to see Jared outside the hospital, I nearly poked his eye out with the thing.

  “What are you doing here?” I said, pointing my encased finger at him.

  “I want to talk to you, Sammi. May I come in?” He sounded serious, but that’s a difficul
t frame of mind to retain when my pets are in comic mode.

  Imelda ran to within a foot or two of him and smiled.

  “What’s she baring her teeth at me for? I thought she liked me.”

  “She does. She’s just a canine showing you her clean canines.” I waggled my finger. “We got a new toothbrush at the vet today.”

  He shook his head wearily. “I don’t know what planet you three come from sometimes. What’s the breed of this dog again? A poo-triever?”

  “A labradoodle. And don’t make fun of Imelda. She’s very sensitive.”

  At that moment, Zelda, who was sitting regally in the window, gave a magnificent meow of greeting. Jared took one look at her ears, which looked especially large and translucent in the light, and asked, “Is she waiting for the mother ship to come and take her away?”

  “If you can’t say anything nice about my pets, don’t say anything at all,” I said, smiling. It was so wonderful to have him here. “Coffee?”

  “No. I’ve had my regulation thirty cups of hospital mud already today.”

  “Milk? Antacid? I’ve got fresh chocolate chunk walnut cookies.”

  He looked both pleased and relieved. “Sure.”

  I put the pitcher and the cookies on the table and he ate and drank like a starving man. Finally, sated, he looked up. His eyes were bleary and his five o’clock shadow was going on about 11:00 p.m.

  “You know just what to do to make me happy, don’t you, Sammi?”

  “I’d like to think so.”

  I didn’t expect my comment to bring shots of pain to his eyes.

  “That’s why this hurts so much.”

  I felt a surge of panic in my gut. “What are you talking about?”

  “Sammi, you are the most amazing woman in the world but you have come into my life at the worst possible time. You ought to be courted and romanced. All I’ve been able to do is hope you’ll come by the hospital so I can just see you. You’ve been doing all the giving, and I have been willing to suck you dry just to have you near me. It’s not fair. I’ve been taking you for granted and it’s not right. You deserve so much more.”