I walked through the kitchen door to discover Maggie and Pete at the kitchen table sharing a pizza and a liter of diet soda. Dash and Flash were already at Pete’s side watching the pizza Pete was holding, as if it was a mechanical rabbit at the track.
“You’re home!” I threw out my arms to hug Maggie. “How are you, sweetie?”
She was wearing her favorite T-shirt, one Pete had given her during a previous dustup with her sisters. I Can’t Remember If I’m The Good Sister Or The Evil One. Her cheeks were a hint rounder than they had been when she left, even though she’d been at her mother’s only a few days. Maggie’s angular features were always softened by a couple extra pounds. Frankly, she looked fabulous.
When I get upset, I go for comfort food. Mashed potatoes three times a day is good enough for me. When Maggie is distressed, however, she turns into a garbage disposal, downing everything that comes her way. That also explained the three-meat pizza with extra cheese.
“I am so glad to see you!” I scrunched her cheeks between the palms of my hands. “I’ve missed you.”
“Glad someone has.”
“Hey, what about me?” Pete yelped through a mouthful of pepperoni. “I missed you, too!”
Dash woofed in agreement.
“Not feeling much better, huh?” I grabbed a slice of pizza and joined them at the table.
“I thought I was. Then I walked into the house and saw the cashmere throw on the couch that Randy gave me. I went into the bathroom and what was on the counter? Euphoria. Randy’s favorite perfume. When I picked up my mail, there was a receipt for a pair of tickets I’d ordered so we could see the Birth of Broadway concert. He’s everywhere I turn.”
Pete, being very guylike, volunteered. “I like the Minnesota Orchestra. I’ll go with you, Maggie.”
“I don’t think that’s the problem.” I helped myself to soda. “You’re all wrong for the job.”
“And Randy is all right? Ha!” He waved the pizza so little red pepper flakes scattered across the table.
“Oh, I’ll be okay—someday,” Maggie said gloomily. “My mother keeps saying, there are other fish in the sea.” She stared into the bottom of her half-empty glass of soda. “Sad to say, most of them are carp.”
“Fortunately we don’t have monkfish here.” I’d watched my mother prepare a monkfish once. It was so ugly that I’d dreamed about it living under the kitchen sink for months and refused to eat any seafood except fish sticks.
“Speaking as a very handsome walleye or perhaps a rainbow trout,” Pete interjected, “I can guarantee there are more good fish in the sea than you might imagine. We’re just a little leery of being caught.”
“Terrific. That leaves me with a choice of bottom-feeders, right?”
“Not if you use the right bait.”
Pete meant it playfully, but Maggie’s response was anything but. She burst into tears.
“That’s the whole problem, isn’t it? I’m lousy bait!”
We both stared at her as if she’d caught a fish hook in her brain. “What?”
“There’s something wrong with me—otherwise Randy wouldn’t have left.”
“You’ve broken up with guys, too, you know.”
“Sure. Because there’s something about them I don’t like—they eat with their mouths open, are rude to waitresses or poor tippers…”
“We’re swimming in shallow water here,” Pete muttered, casting the fish metaphor out far too long.
“Why do you want a man who doesn’t want you?” I didn’t mean to be harsh, but Maggie has to get over the idea that if she were prettier, better dressed or more obliging, Randy might have stayed.
“You just don’t get it. You are always the dumper, not the dumpee!” She flounced into her room and slammed the door.
Pete and I stared at each other. Dumper and dumpee? Now what?
Typical Americans that we are, we turned on the television and watched a couple shop for a new home and a frenetic designer try to remake someone’s home in twelve hours. Finally, when our eyes were beginning to glaze over, Pete mumbled, “I’ve got Rollerblades in my car.”
“You’re tired of HGTV?”
“These people are too happy. They’re getting on my nerves.”
“Then let’s make the boys smile instead.”
The boys—Dash and Flash—were downright delirious as Pete and I let them race us down the street and around the walking trails in the park. We must look a sight when we do it—intense, loping dogs pulling their terrified old-enough-to-know-better owners on Rollerblades—a recipe for disaster if there ever was one.
We’ve wiped out a time or two, Dash and I. And once Flash dragged Pete through a break in the sidewalk that left him sprawled on the ground with so much skin scraped off his cheek and arm that he ended up in the E.R. But we still do it. It’s our mild way of living on the edge.
Pete tipped his head toward Maggie’s door before he headed home. “Are you two going to be okay?”
“Of course. Maggie and I are practically sisters. She trusts me to tell her the truth even when she doesn’t want to hear it. That’s part of our deal.”
“I’m glad she has the health-club job coming up soon. That will distract her. She’s really excited about it.”
“Are you shooting it?”
“I am. I haven’t heard anything about it lately so I assume everything is on schedule.”
I felt the pressure lift in my chest. “Good. She needs a distraction.”
“And someone fawning over her,” Pete added grimly.
“She acts like she’s only half a person without a man. When will that girl wake up and smell the coffee?”
Not until tomorrow morning apparently, when the coffeepot’s automatic brewer engages, for when I went to pray with Maggie, I found her sound asleep on her bed. I covered her with a downy comforter, then went to my room to do some serious praying on my own.
“What’s this?” Maggie waved a piece of paper under my nose when I walked into the kitchen the next morning. Her hair was sleep-mussed and sometime in the night she had awakened and changed into a pair of boxer shorts and an oversized T-shirt.
On a napkin I had doodled the word Chrysalis with a downward smiley face.
“Just scribbling. It’s nothing.”
Frank had called yesterday with dual purposes. The first was to convince me that I’d be passing up a great thing if I didn’t take this job with his company. The second was to invite me out to dinner to help me change my mind.
That’s like being invited out by a cannibal for “a little bite to eat.” He’d pressured me just enough to make me uneasy. Fortunately I was already busy.
“Just a job I turned down.”
Her head snapped up sharply. “Oh?”
“Hostess for a reality show, makeovers with a twist.” I summed it up as succinctly as I could.
She nodded absently. “Hostess, huh? Is the pay good?”
She studied herself in the reflection from the toaster, a replica of the kind that had been in my mother’s kitchen when I was growing up. “I suppose I’d better get to Pete’s and find out what he knows about our shoot.” She put her hand on her stomach. “I’m getting fluttery just thinking about it. I am so grateful to have this job to take my mind off things.
“I’m sorry about last night.” Her eyes welled with tears. “You told me the truth and I took it badly. I should be grateful. You are one of the few people in the world I can count on for unvarnished honesty and you’re right. I don’t want a man who doesn’t want me.”
She hugged me before heading for her room. “I’d better get ready. Pete’s probably waiting for me.”
After she’d gone, I lingered at the table so long that Dash lay down across my feet and fell asleep.
Lord, I don’t know what it’s going to take, but please help Maggie start depending on You for her worth and value.
My thoughts whirled with all that had been going on in the past few days.
And give me what I need to be the best tutor and friend I can to little Ben Harmon. What a bright light he is. And help his father, Jack. Ease his pain, as well. Only You know what’s supposed to happen next, but I ask that I be in the center of Your will, no matter what it is. Amen.
Because I had a few hours to waste, I indulged myself in my secret pleasure, shopping.
Not for myself, of course. I’m a clotheshorse who doesn’t care that much for clothes. I love to shop for babies.
I find that little pink dresses with ruffles, soft, cottony blankets and blue-and-white sweatshirts with tiny embroidered baseballs and bats are irresistible. Baby soap is my favorite scent and it’s my other passion to find unique diaper pins and soft washcloths. I buy them by the shopping cartful with only one reservation. They have to be on sale. Cheap. Because I want to buy in quantity. Obscene quantities, actually.
I am a baby-clothes freak and the layette ladies at church love me for it.
This passion started for me as a child not satisfied with the bits of money I put into the offering plate on Sunday. I asked my mother if there was anything a little kid could do to help out at church. I didn’t know how to quilt or cook and was too young to have a job and donate money.
My mother, wise woman that she is, came up with the idea of contributing to the layettes the church ladies were making for new mothers. First she brought home bolts of soft flannel fabric and taught me how to cut blanket-and diaper-sized pieces and zigzag the edges. After I had made stacks of both, she took me to the dollar store and gave me orders to buy as much baby soap and as many diaper pins as I could with the money. Soon I added my own babysitting wages to the pot. By the time I was in high school, I had all my friends shopping with me and our church was sending layettes not to just one missionary hospital but several. In college I was called “The Baby Lady” which took some explaining to the uninitiated—especially guys who wanted to date me.
I still indulge myself in my vision—that every new mother have something new for her baby no matter what her standing in life or country of origin. Pete says I’m changing the world, one mama and baby at a time. There are worse hobbies, I guess.
Anyway, by the time I hit a sale on flannel at the local discount store, stocked up on tiny T-shirts and sleepers at seventy percent off and bought odds and ends of baby yarn to knit a couple sweaters, I was feeling better about everything. So good, in fact, that I stopped at Starbucks for an infusion of caffeine and a chance to read the newspaper uninterrupted.
I’d been home only five minutes when my cell phone rang.
Pete’s strangled voice whispered across the line.
“Get over here, Quinn. Now.”