Just the Beginning (Kendall & Maisly)

fiction

Kendall had it all planned out: apple martinis by candle light at home to break the ice, maybe a little canoodling in the room’s one easy chair. His bitter chocolate colored corduroy sport jacket lay over the arm. His outfit would be complete both for fashion and chivalry in case the night air chilled her bare shoulders. He stood in the doorway to the library wondering when she would emerge. Kendall hoped she would wear the green satin cocktail dress again.

His shoes creaked on the hardwood floorboards as he shifted his weight. Looking back toward the coffee table to check the candle’s flame, his eyes gravitated to one book on the shelf – Rage of Angels – and he was struck how this tiny room stacked madly with books whose borders made a spontaneous order could bring him such comfort. Chaos at its best. Stepping toward the shelf, Kendall ran the flat of his fingertips against the bindings, stirring up dust and remembering these pleasures. A faint scratching noise returned him to the present. His watch hands snuck past 7:30, lurching against the evening’s plans.

Maisly wasn’t dressing. She wasn’t finishing her hairdo. Maisly wasn’t rouging or glossing. Kendall followed the scratching noise, noticing the narrow floorboards chasing past each other’s end down the narrow hallway, to the east wing where the Plainsman couple had been murdered thirty-three years before.

Maisly was sprawled on the floor scraping the remains of peeling finish where cleaning agents had burned through to naked wood. Bloodstains had been bleached too long. Sweat matted her fine, curly hair to her temples and her neck. Dark circles dotted with tears framed her troubled eyes. Small cuts on her fingers bled where the metal file had slipped or caught itself in uneven grooves. Her motion was frantic, panicked, even. Her lips were moving, but no sounds were escaping.

Kendall’s footsteps, though light, bowed tired boards, creaking with each pace. Maisly heard nothing, startling when he gently touched her shoulder. She looked up.
“I’m not ready,” she breathed.

“I know,” he said tenderly. Kendall slipped away without expectation to blow out the candle in the library.

A Door for Anger

motherhood

Sometimes the door is open a crack, and I can actually win an argument with my four-year-old. It is true. The fact that I’ve engaged him in this way at all means I may have already lost. But I believe in relationships, not dictatorships, when it comes to parenting. With this bull-headed, self-assured, emotionally-cognizant child, relating means discussing…at length. The problem is that, too often, parent-child discussions become a wasteland of illogical negotiations, which lead to aggravated tones and Shazaam! negotiations devolve into arguments. Sometimes he slams the door in my face with an accurate accusation against me – sometimes I take it too far.

Once, while I was working at the computer, Jude found the house key that I tie onto my shoelaces when I run. I keep it pinned to the kitchen-wall bulletin board for easy access. Though I didn’t see him pull the pushpin from its cork, I was somewhat conscious of his actions. I keep a third eye trained on his milling about the house. Jude tried the key on several locks – the front doorknob, the patio closet, the deadbolt. Having some success, he tried a new trick: turning the lock on his bedroom door and shutting himself out. Of course, he thought he could simply use the key to open the door. What power. What a sense of control in his surroundings. The key would change everything.

I heard Jude jiggle the handle without the comforting sound of the latch’s release. His door handle has no keyhole. His key held no sway. His power evaporated. Jude’s face paled as he turned toward me, his blonde hair spiked straight up from his forehead, and his eyes testing my gaze for signs of trouble. His mouth twisted to the right and his eyebrows backed away in a tentative, non-verbal, “Uh-oh?”

I stood from my work and grasped Jude’s hand firmly, the pressure being his first scolding. Together we walked from his locked bedroom door, through the hallway to the sliding glass door that leads to the patio. In his small square bedroom, Jude’s bed is pressed against the southeast corner where two windows stretch six feet from the ceiling down to the surface of his child-sized bed. The windows face the patio which hosts a gas grill, plastic green chairs, pots of herbs, a rosebush and irises that have yet to show their bloom. As our feet made contact with the artless mosaic of cinder block bricks, I let go of his hand and touched the outside of the window’s screen. With one touch, I could feel that the window was open. We had a way in.

Working carefully to preserve the fragile frame, I pushed the screen into the shadowed bedroom and onto Jude’s bed. Pressing the once prized key into my palm, Jude moved onto a new thrill: crawling through the window’s open space. That window that dwarfs his three feet, six-inch frame suddenly became a golden gate to a world of imaginary rescues. It became a spy’s escape, a diving board to dreamland. Eyebrows back in place for innocent mischief, Jude was sucked away from his own conviction. I managed to grab his attention long enough to ask him to unlock the door. Order fulfilled, he giggled his way back to the window, darting in and out through the open space, and I walked back around the hallway into the boy-smelly bedroom.

For a few moments, he uncorked the tension of mommy’s work being interrupted with his back-and-forth, in-and-out game; but soon it was time to return the screen to its proper position so that I could return to work. I blew the whistle. Jude darted through the open space onto the patio one last time. From inside the room, standing by knees on his bed, I slid the top of the delicate frame into place, corners flush with corners. Jude asked if he could crawl in one more time. Since the screen was three-fourth’s the way reinserted into its frame, I said no. He charged anyway. Had he been faster, had he forced his way through, he would have cracked the plastic ends off of the corners. Just in time, I reached around the screen, my arm pinched between it and the window’s edge, and pressed firmly on his chest to keep him out.

“You’re not supposed to push me!”

From his heart more than his voice, Jude creates sound waves that push beyond any physical force. Instantly, my temper flared. Nothing gets my nanny goat braying more quickly than when Jude questions my intentions for him. Putting an end to a fun game that I graciously allowed after discovering his foolish mistake should not have bought me hassle from a being who cannot yet be counted on to brush his teeth without assistance. A simple, “Thanks, Mom,” would have been awesome.

I cannot deny that this kid’s nose is finely attuned to the stench of unreasonable anger. I did not push him hard. I did not yell. I did not hurt him in anyway. But my jaw was set. My lungs were expanded with hot irritation. My eyes were narrowed against his. And he knew it.

And there the battle was lost. I could insist, engage the argument, and therefore, play the fool, or I could recognize that he was right. A mommy is not supposed to hurt her child. How I will avoid the wounds that radiate from exasperation, I do not know. Whose toe will be pinched in the crack of that door today?

Close to Good

motherhood

They gather close – all of them in their own way. Garrett is on my mind tonight.

At 2:05 P.M., the school bell rings. Harried, haggard, high-hipped teachers lead their strands of child-sized pearls to the Shellman gate. We parents, mothers mostly, stand around chatting while we wait. Some are anxious to have a word with the teacher. Some are anxious to get home, or to soccer practice, or just away. Others simply live in anxiety; chaos follows them like Pig Pen’s dust cloud.

I stand near the sidewalk and watch as others wait stationed in cliques or in isolation. A nerve-grinding bell rings, and the noise fades up to a canned track of shouts and whistles, whines and rebukes. I watch as if it is a Discovery channel documentary speeding past the normal ticking of time. A map of the movement left by footprints on the asphalt would surely reveal the flurry.

Through this hive of backpacks and saddlebags, I see a face smiling back at me. Garrett always finds me before I have noticed that his class has come through the gate. I might look up just in time to see him tentatively tap Mrs. Ford at the waist. I read his lips as he says, “I see my mom.” She follows the track of his arm, the line of his pointing finger, sees me and releases him with a simple “OK.” Garrett comes running, blue eyes shining bright, smile radiating wide. He embraces me at the hips, turning his face against my abdomen. I hold him by his back and hair.

I always ask, “How was your day?” With grins he answers, “good.” Even if the stories that follow recount misgivings or recess rumbles, he slingshots to me with that same expansive smile, and answers my everyday question with the same pleasant description. Good.

I can’t help but wonder, on the days when there has actually been trouble, if “good” describes how he feels when reunited with me. Pure warmth connects us in that moment. There are other moments when I can’t understand his mumbled diction, days when I can’t read the heartfelt worry that makes him whine. But at 2:05 P.M. from eyeball to cheekbone to hug, I hear his heart. And it is good.

Fannie Dubois, Gone Carter

I’m Fanny Dubois now. Fanny Carter is concretely a person of the past.

I miss my bed the most, our bed, Jack’s and mine. It was the perfect bed. I have slept on firmer matresses, with down comforters and fat pillows. But it is my queen-sized, aging mattress with the hand-me-down headboard that still holds my heart. I miss the large spheres on the posts at the corners; I loved how they fit perfectly in my palm as I walked by. I’d press my palm wholly to the orb and somehow felt more grounded as a result. Over time, I rubbed away the finish with this ritual.

I loved it when the navy blue cotton sheets were clean; they were coolest at bedtime, unhindered by lint and fuzz that collected over time. But when Jack traveled, I preferred the sheets with a week’s worth of sleep on them. Jack’s pillow held his scent. It wasn’t cologne, because he never wore any. It was just the essence of him and his pomade. Actually, when we met, when we were dating, and even when we first married, I didn’t like the smell. But over time, the musk and oil became a comfort to my soul – a “mentholatum” for my stuffy heart – especially when he was gone.

I miss lying next to Jack with our white stitched quilt over us. It was barely wide enough to cover the sides of the mattress when the bed was made, let alone when we were in it. But it’s soft and bumpy texture made me happy. It was light, so we didn’t sweat, but had enough weight to hold us there together. I miss everything about that bed.

Jack died six years ago, and here I lie in a strange hotel bed with a new husband on our wedding night. Lance is wonderful, and I love him. But this bed is not ours, and I don’t yet like how he smells.

Forgiveness vs. Change

More than forgiven, I need to be changed.

It was a summer of regretted tempers. I love my kids; anyone who knows me knows how much I deeply love and cherish my kids. But these days, their childish behaviors and childlike foibles have been like pebbles stacked high, tipping the teeter-totter of my equilibrium. It has gone so far south that I have heard morning prayers for the boys escaping my lips with the tag, “…and help mommy not lose her crackers today” – a new low.

To be fair, it is not unreasonable for my temper to have been challenged. First of all, in addition to the realities of 24/7 summer parenting hours, my husband traveled more than usual in June, July and August. Solo parenting: Approximate weight in stress = fifteen pebbles. Secondly, we have had a string of unfortunate events in our household lately. The boys broke a window in their room while wrestling on the bed – an activity that previously had been prohibited in that location due to its placement next to two windows. Twenty-two pebbles. The boys broke the heavy-duty, three-foot hinge, which secured the lid onto their pine toy box, by jumping on the lid when too many toys prevented its even closure. Forty Pebbles. The boys painted their feet blue with a staining, water-based paint intended for woodworking crafts. To their credit, they were outside when they painted their feet. But then they decided to come in and show me their artistic expression, walking their blue peds all over the linoleum and carpet. We rent. EIGHTY-NINE HUNDRED PEBBLES.

My crackers erupted like a volcano after that last experience. I sought refuge in my walk-in closet, regaining composure and praying for supernatural help. Like many moms, I find myself running to make a quick connection with the Lord, vent my plate of pebbles and expect a mood-altering response of grace that includes unrealistic patience, unending kindness and a nice, steady heart rate. While I might find center for about two minutes, I spew cracker-crumb lava again as soon as the kids, who haven’t sought the same help, repeat their offenses. I need a miracle of lasting change.

In September, Tom Hughes, who is one of the pastors at my church, preached from the gospel of John, using the text that begins the day after Jesus had fed thousands of followers with a miracle multiplication of bread and fish. The crowds were clamoring for more. They embodied a host of desperate needs, and they wanted their cravings to be indulged by the magic man. “Jesus replied, I tell you the truth, you want to be with me because I fed you, not because you understood the miraculous signs. But don’t be so concerned about perishable things like food. Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that the Son of Man can give you” (John 6:26-27).

I have to compartmentalize my theology in order to apply Jesus’ words to my heart. I believe that my God cares about the nitty-gritty details of my daily struggles – that He delights to engage, pacify and intervene. Concurrently, I believe that the nitty-gritty details of my life simply do not matter in light of the greater actions of a God whose personal ultimate sacrifice results in my redemption. One belief without the other creates an opportunity either to take advantage of God’s grace, or on the other hand, to miss the beauty of a relationship with the eternal Immanuel.

More than forgiven, I need to be changed.

I wonder, though, if by retreating to an internal space that includes God and his “gimmies,” I am missing the finer points of eternal life. Forgiveness, redemption and life after death are immeasurably valuable. But if there is not a daily benefit to living for Christ while still on earth, then I am left questioning God’s intention with his creation. For this mom with three young kids, it is the need for change that outweighs my need for forgiveness in the here and now. I don’t want to make the same damaging mistakes over and over and over again. I need an eternally available source of moment-by-moment life. I need eternal life.

More than forgiven, I need to be changed.

Think of it this way: If I yell at my children, I can be forgiven when I ask for it, erasing the marks against me, removing my pebbles from the scale. I go unpunished, but not without consequence. My children bear those scars. And so my cold, inanimate, rock-hard heart screams for an exchange only Jesus can offer. I need a heart of flesh, not a refillable plate of pebbles. That is why I need the miracle maker. Not to wow me, but to transform me. Transformation takes time, attention, grace and application. That was Jesus’ point to the crowd who wanted more alluring charms. He said the signs and wonders are nothing without relationship with the source. Just like ordinary bread, the Bread of Life requires daily consumption to provide balanced nutrition. Gorging in the closet cannot provide what I need. Instead, I need to spend my energy, consciously, regularly and intentionally seeking a God who delights to engage, pacify and intervene, but most of all, a God who delights to feed.

More than forgiven, I need to be changed.

Jessie & Rick

Today Jessie resigned herself to meat pie for dinner. She was facing the fact that gourmet meals, braised, sautéed, poached or otherwise, made no good impression on her young husband. Rick was an oilman who lived in coveralls, grease-stained like his fingernails. He was a meat-and-potatoes-at-the-dinette-table kind of guy. Shepherd pie and King of the Hill of TV. A “Thanks for dinner” and a pinch-on-the-tush sweetheart.

Jessie tried to spruce up the bachelor-pad-gone-coed since their wedding, but there’s not much that can be done to improve a room whose singular piece of art was a neon beer sign. She was young – a woman on the old side of girl with glossy black hair pulled into a ponytail that was backcombed at the crown. Her cheekbones were high and pink with blush like pale roses. Ever since eighth grade, Jessie had worn Cover Girl’s “Petal Silk” because it matched the color of the roses her mother planted to celebrate her conception. Hers was the well-planned mother who owned a flag for every season and holiday, proudly displaying hearts, shamrocks, birthday cakes and snowmen at the appropriate times.

Jessie had grown-up to get married, make a home and start a family. Rick married for warm dinners, clean socks, frequent sex and dead-of-sleep cuddles. As Jessie sat at the kitchen table, she sipped lemonade, planned meals for the week and made out a grocery list. She was distracted by memories of their morning kiss when Rick pulled her close gently securing her body next to his with one strong arm embracing her back and hips. As her eyes focused again on the notepad where she had written a seven-day menu, she sighed and crossed out each entry. Where she had first written “pasta primavera” she scribbled “Hamburger Helper.” “Shrimp and vegetable ka-bobs” became “fish sticks and canned corn.” “Parmesan crusted steak with asparagus and rice” became “meat pies and canned peaches.”

Jessie held her glass of lemonade, now sweaty with condensation, and stared into the wood grains exposed by the wearing table varnish. She added “tin foil pie plate” to her list and headed for Safeway.

Jenny Reason

fiction.

“Jenny Reason, 25.” I was practicing introductions all morning. “Jenny Reason, age 25.” No matter how I phrased it, my name still sounded like “any reason,” like it was the punch line to a dorky pun.

The job fair was starting in ten minutes and I had to decide how I would greet the dozens of employers trolling for graduate students as interns. Why my age needed to be part of it seemed silly to me, but today is my birthday and I’m fighting to own my adulthood.

People hear that I am a graduate student and they assume I’m really smart – a national merit scholar or a high school valedictorian. But that hasn’t been my path. Orphaned at age twelve with no suitable guardians in sight, I was placed in foster care and bounced from house to house like there wasn’t any reason to keep me. At 15 I had had enough and I ran away from drudgery to find my home in terror.

By 21 I found respite in a mentor and a GED program. Made it through state school, and now I’m studying to be a child psychologist.

Today, my birthday is my every reason to break into the field. I smiled at the St. Mary’s Mental Health sign above me and shook a hand.

“Hi. I’m Jennifer.”