Best Friends in the Show Me State

by Jessie Gussman

  Suddenly, the chicken casserole that he was eating tasted like Styrofoam. He set the fork down and handed the container to Marlowe before he reached the end of the row and turned the tractor and planter around.

  “Nooo,” she drew the word out, finally answering his question. “Of course not. There are colleges all over the country where I could go. I just thought St. Louis was the best for me and Kylie. Not too far, but big enough to be what we need.”

  “Well, if it’s the best for Kylie and you, then that’s where you should go.” He knew that with all his heart.

  The heart that all of a sudden hurt with every slow beat.

  Hadn’t he just been thinking maybe he was pushing things too hard? And about how he had rushed into things with Dana, and done exactly what he wanted, and hadn’t waited on God to make it clear exactly what he should do?

  Maybe this was another one of those things that he just wanted so bad he couldn’t see that God was saying no.

  He didn’t want that to be true though. He wanted Marlowe. He loved her, and they were so perfect together.

  He wanted to argue with the Lord right away, but he didn’t want Marlowe to be privy to that argument, which, he suspected, would be more like begging.

  “Just like that?” Her voice held tones of surprise.

  “Yeah.” That was the only word he could get out of his tight throat. The burning on the inside of his chest wanted to erupt out of his mouth. His heart and soul wanted to beg her to change her mind, to stay. But the smaller, rational part of him said it couldn’t be his decision, and it wasn’t right of him to try to guilt her into anything.

  “So you’re okay with that?”

  He couldn’t stop the tractor, but he did look over at her. “I’m okay with whatever is best for you and for Kylie. Even if it’s not what I want.”

  She rubbed the tips of her fingers together and said slowly, “You could come too.”

  Could he? Could he leave the farm? What would he do?

  But he knew there were plenty of jobs for a guy like him. He knew lots of kids who’d grown up on Missouri family farms that had gone bankrupt or sold out and been taken over by larger farms.

  It wasn’t anything new since it seemed like a person needed more and more ground to be able to make a living on a farm anymore.

  So far, he and his brothers had been able to manage by keeping his expenses low, hence the older tractor.

  Lots of kids he’d gone to school with were now salesmen, used cars or farm equipment big and small. He knew several who worked as repairmen, and he’d done enough fixing of his own that he would probably be qualified to work on somebody else’s stuff, or it wouldn’t be hard to learn.

  Yeah, he could do it. He could leave the farm.

  “Is that what you want from me?” He felt like it would change a fundamental part of himself.

  He was a farmer. A Missouri farmer, which meant he was tough and resilient, and he could get knocked down, and he could—no, would—keep getting up. But if she wanted him to be something else...do something else, which would make him be something else, yeah, he thought he could.

  If it meant they’d be together, he’d do it.

  “I can’t ask you to change who you are.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “But I don’t think I can give this up. I’ll never have the opportunity again. It’s completely unexpected that this second chance even came up. I have to follow where it leads, wherever that is.” She waved her arm around, indicating all the area outside. “I mean, I guess I could be giving up what’s between us, but I don’t even know what that is, exactly, or where it might be going.” Her face was pinched, like the thought was painful.

  He didn’t know how to make it easier. It was hard on him, too. His heart felt old and wrinkled. Used.

  He spoke. “You can say marriage. If this,” he waved his arms between them, “leads to marriage. Because that’s where these things often do lead. And I certainly wouldn’t enter into a relationship with any other ideas in my mind. I assumed you wouldn’t either.”

  “You’re right. Marriage. If this leads to marriage, then I’ll be here for the rest of my life, and I’ll never have the opportunity to finish my degree, and go on, and make my way in the world, like I’d wanted to in school.”

  He nodded. “I get it. I know how hard it was for you to leave college and come back and take Kylie. I know it’s a big sacrifice. For a while, there was a lot of grief from losing your mom and sister, but the idea was always there, this wasn’t what you’d asked for, and it wasn’t what you wanted. I guess I just kind of developed the idea over time, because you never seem to be upset or angry or bitter, and it seemed like you’d grown to love this life.”

  Wishful thinking on his part, apparently.

  She was a clerk at the feed store. He supposed there were a lot of people who would say that didn’t amount to much and that she could have been a lot more, could be a lot more still.

  “I thought you’d understand. I wasn’t really expecting you to be overly thrilled about it. And I know the timing is bad. But I didn’t choose the storm or the tree. We both know that was the Lord working things out. He put this opportunity here, the opportunity for me to finish school, and He even provided the money.” She shook her head and looked out the tractor window at the field that he’d almost finished planting. Straight rows. And true. Year after year, the same. He understood that was boring for a lot of people. He hadn’t thought Marlowe was one of them.

  “I just think this might be what God wants me to do.” She shrugged her shoulders and looked at him.

  “I get it.” He looked back out the windshield at the same field. How many times had he planted? Years, decades. Seasons turned, the years flew by, and he was still here, working the ground. Like his ancestors before him. He knew, without a doubt, that this was where God wanted him.

  “As a man, I want to go with you.” He knew he could make a living off the farm, and he wanted more than anything to be with Marlowe. “But I’m positive God wants me to stay here.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  They were quiet for a while, and he went back and forth in the field a few times. She’d ridden with him plenty through the years. This was nothing new. There was more conversation, exchanging some information about Huck and Kylie and their schedules, but it was strained and without the humor and banter that usually marked their interactions.

  For the first time ever, it was almost a relief when she got out of the tractor. Not that he wanted to see her go, just that it was so painful to be with her, knowing that he’d declared his love for her, and her for him, and yet she was still going to leave.

  Chapter 17

  When Marlowe stepped down from the tractor, her heart felt like it weighed more than a bucket of sand, and she wished that there was something she could do to restore the natural comradery that had always been so easy between Clark and her.

  But she supposed this was to be expected, since of course he wasn’t going to be happy with her leaving. The timing was awful as well.

  But it wasn’t really her timing, right?

  She only wished she was as sure as he was about the Lord’s will for her life. It wasn’t something that she’d ever questioned too much.

  College had seemed a natural choice. Then when Kylie needed a mom, that seemed pretty straightforward too. Maybe she just had it too easy in her life. Not that her life had been easy, but it’d been easy to see God’s will. This seemed a little bit more blurry and less black-and-white.

  She had something to drop off for Miss Lynette, which was good, since she didn’t feel like staying in for the night anyway, even though it was almost dark. So she grabbed the auction items from Clark’s house and then drove on into town.

  Arriving at the church, she saw there were lights on in the basement.

  Lynette was probably working overtime to get everything ready, and Marlowe was happy she could help.

  “Oh, Marlowe,
I’m so glad you were able to bring that over tonight,” Lynette said as Marlowe opened the basement door and stepped in.

  Marlowe held out her items. “You’re here working awfully late on this.”

  “Not really. I’m almost done. But I had to school the children, and then I had several hospital visits I wanted to do, and I also had to get the Sunday School lesson ready and some baked goods to take to shut-ins. I just wanted to squeeze this in before I quit for the day.”

  Marlowe had no idea where Lynette found all of her energy, but she managed to do the work of about seven people.

  After raising Kylie for the last five years, Marlowe couldn’t imagine having eight children. One was enough to wear her to a frazzle.

  “Mrs. Hudson was around, and she said that you and Clark were together.” Lynette clapped her hands, her face smiling in excitement, “I just always thought you two would make the most wonderful couple. I’m so excited for you.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Lynette’s face went from smiling and animated to lowered brows, and she put a hand on Marlowe’s arm. “What’s wrong? You don’t sound like a woman in love.”

  Marlowe hadn’t planned on saying anything, but there was just something about Lynette that encouraged her to confide, and she spilled everything. It was a good twenty minutes later when she threw up her hands and said, “I just don’t know what to do. I love Clark, and I want to be with him more than anything. But I just can’t give up this opportunity. It’s crazy to not finish my education and get a good job like I know I can do. I used to be considered kind of intelligent, back in the day.” Life had a way of making her forget she used to be considered someone with potential.

  “Yeah, kids bring you down to the basics, don’t they?” Lynette said almost dryly.

  Marlowe figured if anybody understood, Lynette would. Maybe once upon a time, Lynette had dreams of her own too, but now everything she did was wrapped up in her children and her husband.

  Marlowe looked at her with new eyes. “Doesn’t that bother you? That your whole life is other people?”

  If Lynette had looked surprised, or if she had acted like of course my life is other people, isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?, Marlowe might have had a harder time accepting her answer. But when Lynette looked at her, it was through eyes of understanding.

  “It’s hard to swim against the current, isn’t it?”

  That wasn’t exactly what Marlowe had been expecting her to say, and her forehead wrinkled. “What do you mean?”

  “A hundred years ago, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion, would we? But now, it’s accepted, as a social fact, that a woman is weak if she doesn’t have her own life and her own career and her own job and her own everything.” Lynette’s eyes held compassion, and maybe a little bit of hesitation, as though she knew her words weren’t ones that were popular. “I guess, when I look in the Bible, I don’t see that.”

  “But the Proverbs thirty-one woman. She was a businesswoman, and she worked. She did all kinds of things on her own. That’s all Bible.” Marlowe had heard that teaching over and over growing up.

  Lynette sighed. “I think we might take that a little bit too far. Because it’s pretty clear in Scripture that the Proverbs thirty-one woman was a wife and mother first. She did those other things, true. But her main interest, always and forever, was for her husband and her family. She wasn’t doing those things to have a career of her own. Was she?”

  Marlowe shook her head slowly, thinking about the passage in her head. She didn’t have to think long. Lynette was right. A lot of times, it was easy to take the Bible and twist it to make it say what she wanted it to say, and mean what she wanted it to mean, rather than what it actually said.

  “And it’s as clear as day in all of the passages in the New Testament regarding wives and mothers. There is nowhere that suggests even remotely that what we do in our society today is what should be done.”

  Marlowe nodded. She already knew that. Which was why she always thought of the Proverbs thirty-one woman, because there were no other passages to back her up.

  “You should always look to Scripture, but God has a plan for your life. It might not be what you want, what you think is best for you, but God certainly isn’t going to ask you to do anything that would harm you or not be best for you.”

  “So I was thinking that you thought I should be with Clark, but now I’m not so sure. What do you think? What should I choose?”

  Lynette smiled. A small, sweet smile. “Choose God’s will.” She lifted her hand a little.

  “I was afraid you were going to say that. What do you think God’s will is?”

  “He’s only going to show it to you. He’s certainly not going to tell me what you should do with your life.”

  “I’m asking your advice. If you were me, and outside of whether or not either one is God’s will, which do you recommend that I do?”

  “Does Clark want you to go and get your degree and move to the city?”

  “He doesn’t care. I mean of course he doesn’t want me to go. But he’s okay with it.”

  “Does he love you anyway?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Does he need you to have a degree in order for you to be worthy of his love? Does he need you to be different than what you are?”

  “Of course not. He loves me just like I am. But that’s not really answering the question. I know he loves me. I just don’t know if I should go or if I should stay.”

  “I think,” Lynette said thoughtfully, “I think the confusion comes because what society expects of us is so loud and clear. And also the cases, where a man doesn’t take care of his wife, and she ends up regretting not having a job or an education, are so heartbreaking and newsworthy. But for every case like that, there are thousands more, ten thousand more, where that doesn’t happen and where the woman is satisfied and at peace, and blissfully happy, because she knows that she chose what really mattered. A career is fleeting. It doesn’t last. You can’t take it to heaven with you. Your family? It’s eternal. And I think the devil has us deluded. It’s just one more way he uses to rip families apart. Because when there’s no stable mother, there’s no stable anchor in the home. And that’s what those verses, Proverbs thirty-one, and all the New Testament verses on wives and mothers, are for. The husbands have a place, they provide. The wives have a place, they nurture and keep the home. It’s your kingdom.”

  Marlowe could see that. After all, when she had the choice about whether or not to take Kylie, she hadn’t even needed two seconds to think about it. Because Kylie was a person, her niece, and she knew what she needed to do. People were more important—her niece was more important—than any kind of degree or education. She’d known that.

  “But again,” Lynette said. “I’d make sure that what you choose lines up with what you know the Lord wants for you.”

  Marlowe nodded, pretty sure she understood what Lynette was saying. And knowing that Lynette would only give her advice that lined up with what the Bible said.

  They chatted for a bit more before Marlowe left.

  Chapter 18

  Saturday morning, it was raining, and Clark was in the kitchen when Marlowe came down. The smell of bacon wafted in the air, and her stomach rumbled.

  “Morning, sleepyhead.” Clark turned around and greeted her, but she didn’t think it was her imagination that his smile didn’t reach his eyes. He wasn’t very happy with their conversation yesterday in the tractor, and she couldn’t blame him.

  She’d tossed and turned all night too. It wasn’t like she had forever to make up her mind. She needed to make a decision. She couldn’t expect Clark to wait forever.

  Huck hadn’t even entered into the conversation. But he should be considered as well. Although she knew, with certainty, that if her marrying Clark would help Huck in any way, she’d do it in a heartbeat.

  “Aren’t the kids up yet?” she asked.

  “They’re up, and I told them they c
ould go outside until breakfast was ready.” He grabbed the plate that was sitting on the counter and held it by the skillet. “Which it is. Would you mind running out and telling them to come on in?”

  “Sure.” She hoped her word came out in a happy tone. Because she felt anything but. She knew she’d brought it on herself, but he hadn’t greeted her with a smile or a kiss, and their normal banter was completely gone. It was no less than what she deserved. But it still made her heart ache.

  Five minutes later, the kids were sitting at the table, their hands and faces washed and breakfast steaming on plates in front of them. Clark sat at the head, and she sat on his right. She hadn’t had a mom and a dad growing up in her home, so she wasn’t sure how normal families did it, but she hadn’t wanted to sit at the other end of the table, with the whole thing between Clark and her. She wanted to sit beside him.

  She liked the picture that made better, not that she wanted him to make all of her decisions for her or anything, nothing like that. She was still her own person. But she liked the idea of walking beside someone.

  How many times growing up had she wished she had a father?

  Wasn’t that what made a family?

  And here she provided for two small children, and yet she was thinking about giving that up, taking that away from them, and doing what she thought would make her happy. But deep down, although she’d be hard-pressed to find very many people who agreed with her, she didn’t think she would be more satisfied or happy on her own.

  Not only would her heart be aching to be separated from Clark, but she just didn’t think—no, she knew—God hadn’t made her, nor him, to walk alone.

  That was the clarity she’d been missing last night. But she still wasn’t entirely sure, so she let the chatter of the children go on uninterrupted, and she didn’t say anything. Not yet. But she did feel she was one step closer to making the right decision.

  She started listening again, just in time to hear Huck telling Clark about what he had done with Dana last night.