“Hi, this is Jared. I’m unable to take your call right now. Please leave your number and I’ll return your call as soon as I can.”
I hung up my phone without leaving a message.
“Still not picking up?” Wendy asked. She was snapping fresh beans into a big colander for tonight’s dinner.
“He can’t have it on when he’s in the hospital.”
“And he’s always at the hospital.”
I didn’t respond. Anything I’d say would only sound selfish. I don’t begrudge a minute of the time Jared spends with Molly, but I am getting a little frightened. He’s not been himself. Even Ethan says so.
“What is it, Sammi? What are you not saying?”
I considered saying nothing, but Wendy knows me too well. I might as well spill it now as have her nagging me until she gets it out of me, anyway. “He’s withdrawing from me. I can feel him shrinking away, not just from me but from everyone. He works twelve hours a day, sits at the hospital for seven and sleeps for five. If Ethan and I didn’t go to the hospital, we’d never see him.”
“There’s more to it than that,” Wendy said astutely.
I nodded unhappily. “He’s blaming himself for everything but the high price of oil and the fact that mosquitoes bite. He and Molly have a bond that he thinks he broke by losing his cool with her. And—” I couldn’t suppress the crackle of emotion in my voice “—the longer she remains unconscious, the more he’s afraid…”
“That she won’t wake up?” Leave it to Wendy to tell it like it is.
“It’s been five days since the accident.” I grabbed a handful of beans and started snapping them. If felt good, a way to vent my frustration on something productive. Snap, snap, snap.
“Hey! I thought this was my job. You’re supposed to be peeling potatoes.”
Wendy has been a trouper, coming to my place every evening with a bag of groceries and a new recipe to try for dinner. It’s a helpful distraction and I like to cook, but if this routine goes on much longer, I’m going to look like a very tall, very round pumpkin.
“The other thing,” I said hesitantly, not quite sure how to put it in to words, “he’s become very silent about God.”
Wendy peeked at the water on the stove to see if it was boiling.
“I…I have a feeling Jared isn’t putting his full trust onto God right now.”
“Seems like this would be a great time to be talking to the Big Guy.” Wendy plopped the potatoes I’d peeled into the roiling water.
“Jared’s still withdrawing.”
Wendy put dishes on the eating counter and shooed Zelda off one of the stools. “Scram. Go flash your rhinestones somewhere else.”
Zelda, as if she’d understood, stood up, gave Wendy a dirty look and moved herself to the window seat, where the light hit her just right and her collar sent prisms of color all over the room.
“Drama queen,” Wendy muttered under her breath.
“You’re just jealous because you don’t have jewelry as nice as Zelda’s.” I checked the roast in the oven. It would be done at the same time as the potatoes. At least was one small victory. I clock my meals to the minute so that everything is done at exactly the same time. Ben says he likes me because I’m even more reliable than The Timer. He’s coming to dinner, too, so I wanted to have things progressing like clockwork.
“Why don’t you buy me some nice jewelry?” Wendy groused. “You buy all hers.”
“Okay, next time I go to Norah’s Ark, come with me. We’ll pick out something pretty.”
“I didn’t mean at the pet shop.”
I smiled sweetly at her. “I did.”
The banter didn’t dissuade me from our more serious conversation. “Do you remember Mike Simmons?” I asked. Mike was a fellow Wendy had dated in college.
“Of course I do. He made the best fried green tomatoes and deep fried French toast I’ve ever had. Of course, if he didn’t have a vat of grease to cook his food in he was helpless. Why do you ask?”
“Remember talking with Mike about God, Jesus, forgiveness and salvation?”
“Like talking to a brick wall,” Wendy recalled. “A head hard as stone.”
“But that wasn’t it, was it?”
Wendy paused as she was running cold water over the beans to wash them.
“No. It really wasn’t. But it took a long time for me to figure out what was going on with him.”
She turned off the water, set the beans in the sink to drip, wiped her hands on a dishtowel and sat down on the stool Zelda had vacated. “Mike was the first person I’d ever run into who admitted to me that he thought he wasn’t ‘good enough’ for God. He thought he’d done too much, been too ‘bad’ to face God with it.
“‘I’ve done too much bad stuff,’ he told me. ‘God won’t have anything to do with me. There’s no way He’d forgive me for the things I’ve done.’” Wendy sat back and crossed her arms. “Wow. I’d forgotten about that. Poor Mike really suffered over that notion. It took a long time to convince him otherwise.” She turned to me. “You remember, you were there.”
I did remember, vividly. That’s why I’d brought up his name. Mike had come from a dysfunctional home. He’d practically raised himself and had made some bad choices—drugs, a gang, even criminal activity. He was an angry young man. So angry that when his father died, he refused to attend the funeral.
“God’s not going to forgive me for that,” he once told me. “No way, no how. And nothing you can tell me is going to make me believe that He is.”
We’d sat with that, stuck in the mud, for weeks, months. Mike, sure that God wasn’t big enough to forgive him, didn’t realize that the real problem was that Mike refused to forgive himself.
“Are you saying that you think Jared is in the same place Mike was?”
“Maybe I am.” And I told Wendy the entire story of Molly’s mistakes, Jared’s anger with her, Molly’s plea for him to fire her. Then I told her about Jared’s research on ADD. Knowing that ADD might be partly responsible for Molly’s trouble had made everything happening now seem, if possible, even worse.
“And what does he think he could have done about it?”
“I’m not sure. He says he should have given her more structure and direction, that he should have been more compassionate and recognized what was going on with her.”
“Before or after he walked on water?” Wendy asked, rolling her eyes. “The guy’s not omnipotent. Why is he giving himself such a hard time?”
Before I could say more, the doorbell rang and Imelda leaped off the couch where she’d been camping, woofing wildly. She ran for the door, skidded on the hardwood floor until her nails—brilliant orange, the polish bottle said “sun-kissed”—hooked on a throw rug and sent her sliding sideways to the door, barking liken a banshee. Just as Ben threw open the door, Imelda’s body hit him in the shins and sent him sailing back out into the hall.
I closed my eyes at the sound of the crash and ensuing silence. Then Ben roared, “Get off my chest and quit licking my face!”
He staggered into the kitchen carrying a small sack and looking like he’d just tangled with an octopus. “Here. For you. Later. When you need it.”
I peered into the bag. Godiva chocolate ice cream. For medicinal purposes only. And the heel of a man’s shoe for Imelda.
“Are you all right?” I asked. Wendy was too busy grinning to be a decent hostess.
“Other than my pride, my tibia, fibula and sacrum, yes. Why don’t you let someone besides Imelda answer the door? Like Wendy?”
“Because I can’t bark as loud or slide as well,” Wendy said cheerfully, and held out a plate of cheese, crackers and sliced veggies. “Appetizer?”
After dinner, we retreated to my living room with hot coffee and a plate of, what else? Chocolates.
“That was great, you guys,” Ben said appreciatively as he patted his concave stomach. “Now I won’t have to cook for three more days.”
“What? Is The Timer nonoperational?”
“It is, but I’ve been working on something really cool. Magic tricks.”
“Tricks?” I said. Imelda looked up from her place on the hearth rug.
“Yeah. Want to see one?” Ben stood up and with a flourish, pulled a white hankie out of his pocket, then a blue one tied on the tail of the white, then a red, an orange, a purple, a green…until there was a bolt of hankie fabric strewn across the floor. Then, as Ben’s flourishes and showmanship gained speed, he pulled his pocket inside out and loose change skittered across the floor, too.
“Oops. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“Aren’t you supposed to pull that stuff out of a hat or something?”
“You probably wouldn’t have let me in the house if I’d come wearing a top hat,” Ben pointed out sensibly.
“Imelda might have. She isn’t all that discerning in areas other than shoes.”
“Besides, I’m just practicing. Want to see a quarter come out of your ear?”
“How can I see it if it’s coming out of my ear?”
“Wendy will watch and vouch for it.” Ben picked a quarter off the floor, fumbled a bit behind my ear and announced, “Ta-dah!”
“Yep, that was her ear, all right,” Wendy said. “What’d you do, order a kit from the back of a comic book?”
Ben sat down heavily, as if the tricks had exhausted him. “I decided I need a hobby, and everything else is too messy or takes too much time. I’m already messy enough and have too little time. I can practice this whenever I want. When I get better, I think I’ll add some pyrotechnics….”
One more thing to add to my prayer list.
It was after ten o’clock when Wendy said, “I’d better get going. How does salmon and dilled potatoes sound for tomorrow?”
“Great. Want me to get the groceries?”
“Sure, if you’re going out,” Wendy said as she disappeared in the direction of her car.
“What’s that about?” Ben asked, always interested when food is concerned.
“She’s made me her mission. She comes over every night and we cook dinner together. It’s really nice, if I do say so myself. It keeps me busy and leaves less time on my hands in the evening.”
“Your friend isn’t any better, then?”
“No. And the rest of the family seems to be getting worse.” I filled him in on what Wendy and I had been discussing.
“And Jared doesn’t think his sister should be left alone?”
“He’s hoping that if he keeps talking to her, he’ll somehow pull her back, out of this unconscious state. He doesn’t want anyone to speak harshly around her or say anything that might upset her on the off chance that…”
“I get it. Maybe I could come to the hospital someday and visit with Molly so you could talk to Jared.”
“Ben, that is so sweet, but you don’t even know Molly….” Suddenly I felt very silly. “Of course, she is unconscious.”
“I’m told I have a pleasant voice. I’ll tell her about my research. It will be a thrill a minute for her.” He grinned and planted a kiss on my forehead.
“You are a friend in need and a friend indeed. Thanks. I might take you up on it. I would like to spend some time with Jared.”
“Great, let me know when we’re going. Oh, and by the way,” he said, giving me a big grin, “I really like salmon and dilled potatoes.”