Blue Heart Blessed (17 page)

Dear Harriet,

Okay, so I blew it today when I accused of Ramsey of being selfish. So let’s not even discuss it. I apologized. And I was sincere. I really do regret saying what I did, even if it might be a tiny bit true.

He looked at the roof of The Finland just before dark. I went up there with him. He kind of stared at my two Adirondack chairs for a moment, but then he walked off the square footage, peeked over the limestone rim and inspected the tuck-pointing on the bricks closest to the top. Then he put his hands on his hips and said, “I can do this.”

I don’t know if he meant he can do the roof or he can lay his head to rest at night only a few miles away from the Horn Blower. Either way, it was the same thing as saying Father Laurent can stay. At least for now.

The fact is, Father Laurent doesn’t want to move. This is his home. We should all be bending over backwards to make sure he can stay here. I know I have ulterior motives. I know I could mail a box of little blue hearts to him in Duluth and he could bless them one by one and send them back. But this really isn’t about those little blue hearts. It’s about keeping my world spinning on its new axis. I really don’t want to grapple with changes that will mess with that. Every time I think I’ve got my feet firmly on the ground, it starts to shift and tip. It’s like little gnomes are watching me try to keep my balance and when it looks like I’ve got it, they yank the rug I’m standing on. I need for everything around me to just be still.

Even as I write this, I realize this is probably just how Ramsey feels, like a novice gymnast on a balance beam stretched across hot coals. This afternoon while I was trying to convince him to stay in Minneapolis—and thinking he was just wanting to keep his life trouble-free—it dawned on me that he fears walking the balance beam with Kristen practically watching from the sidelines. He’ll be just minutes away from her, for as long as he and Liam stay here. He might even run into her and the Usurper at the grocery store, or the mall or on a lakeshore path. Maybe he’ll run into them while they’re strolling with their new baby—the one Kristen was carrying when she told Ramsey she was leaving him.

Oh, to have such a thing in common. Rejection.

I wonder if he feels about Kristen the way I feel about Daniel. I don’t actually love Daniel anymore, not like I did. It’s hard to keep loving someone who doesn’t want you. But then to have that person choose someone else? To have them choose your replacement and to see them clearly and deeply in love with that other person? That’s the strongest poison there is. That will kill love.

But it won’t kill the hurt. That you have to murder yourself.

Maybe that should be one of my Rules of Disengagement: Be ready to choose a method of execution. Plan to take an active role in killing the desire within you for things to be back the way they were. You must slay it with your own hands. No one can do it for you. The love you had for that person who rejected you can be stripped away in an almost passive fashion. But the wish that you could rewind the clock, change the course of time, know the moment when they began to love you less so that you could freeze that moment and massage it away, that you have to put to death—you alone. You must show no mercy. If you do not kill it, it will kill you. And you won’t even know that you are dying.

Dear Daisy,

I’m trying to think what your Father Laurent would say to you if you had written these words to him and not me. I think he would say it’s not about killing the hurt as much as it’s about releasing it. You can kill an angry beast that is trapped at your feet or you can lift the pin and let it go. It seems to me if you kill something, then there are remains. What do we usually do with remains? We bury them. And we leave a headstone to mark the spot.

If you set something free—push it away and walk away—
there is nothing left to remind you of its existence except your own memories of having had it. Which, my dear, are not all bad.

I am proud of you for apologizing to Ramsey. But I think we both know you did it not because you shouldn’t have said something so unkind, but because you couldn’t live with knowing you said something Father Laurent would never think you capable of saying and thinking nothing of. Ramsey clearly has an impression of you given to him by Father Laurent. That impression matters to you.

As it should.

Harriet

M
ax, Liam and I decorated the outside of Father Laurent’s room with balloons and streamers in preparation for his homecoming this morning. Rosalina baked a cake—low fat, of course. Mario spruced up the service elevator, painting its walls a soft cloudy blue. And Mom and L’Raine made sure there were no spiders, cobwebs or layers of dust in Reuben’s cozy apartment. When Father Laurent arrived this morning, the whole building turned out to welcome him home. You’d think he was a war hero returning to America after years away. Liam made sure his grandfather knew he’d had a part in helping Max and I decorate the third floor hallway. Ramsey seemed to note this with interest as well.

I am immensely glad today is Saturday and that my fabulous college girls are downstairs manning Something Blue. Neither Mom nor I nor L’Raine wanted to miss seeing Father Laurent come home to where he belongs. The fanfare was appreciated of course, but exhausting. As soon as Father Laurent received our hugs and well-wishes, he went inside his apartment to lie down. Liam and Ramsey left shortly thereafter for Duluth to pick up more belongings and Mom and I promised to look in on Father Laurent until they returned.

It is now late afternoon, Father Laurent is reading the newspaper and I’m attempting to clean out my fridge. I’ve put it off as long as I can because I hate doing it. There are containers at the back that scare me silly. I don’t care that the contents are snug inside sealed, molded plastic. I’m going to throw them all out—plastic containers and all—without even peeking.

Mom knocks at my front door, opens it and pops her head inside. “Daisy?”

“In the kitchen, Mom,” I yell back.

She rounds the corner and looks down on me from the other side of the open fridge door.

“Kellen just called. He’s coming to Minneapolis tonight.”

“That’s nice. Is he coming by?”

“Well, he’d like to.”

“Does that mean he can’t?”

“No, he can, but he was thinking he’d just swing by. He wants to pick you up to go out to eat.”

I toss a little blue container of unknown matter into the trashcan. “Don’t you want to come?”

“Well, he was thinking it would be just you this time.”

“What? A little brother-sister bonding?” I laugh at the thought because Kellen is more like an uncle to me than a brother.

“No. Not really. Laura will be there, too. ”

I look up at her. “Mom, what’s this about?”

“He just… Oh, for Pete’s sake. Daisy, Marshall Mitchell would really like to see you again. He and Kellen have been doing some business together and your name has come up and he wondered if you’d care to see him. He asked Kellen if he thought you’d be open to that.”

He asked Kellen?

“He couldn’t ask
me
?”

“Well, maybe he thought you’d say no.”

“So, asking Kellen is safer because why?”

“I don’t know, Daisy. All I know is Kellen said he’s in Minneapolis this afternoon to take care of some business. And that he and Laura are meeting Marshall later for dinner and he thought you might want to come.”

I stand up and search the countertops for my cell phone. “Where’s he at?”

“I don’t know. I think he’s already here in the metro somewhere.”

I find the phone by the toaster and snatch it up. I punch in Kellen’s speed dial and wait. He picks up on the fourth ring. I can tell by the background noise that he’s in his car.

“What’s all this about, Kellen?”

“C’mon, Daisy. It’s just a harmless double date. He likes you. He wants to see you again.”

“He likes me? He doesn’t even know me!”

“Well, he’d like to get to know you.”

“Why couldn’t he have called me himself?”

“Well, he didn’t want to scare you off.”

I begin to pace the kitchen. Mom has closed the fridge door and is standing there, watching me, rapt. “Scare me off?” I reply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He didn’t want to seem too forward. He could tell you’d been hurt before and he
—”

I don’t even bother to fiddle with the volume of my voice. “What do you mean he could tell I’d been hurt before? What did you tell him?” Mom’s eyes bug out at my verbal explosion.

“Daisy. Calm down. He could tell. You spend any amount of time around a hurting person and you can tell. It’s not that easy to hide hurt from a perceptive person.”

“So Mitchell Maxwell is a perceptive person!” I sound a little like the Wicked Witch of the West.

“Marshall Mitchell. And yes, he’s a very compassionate, perceptive kind of person. I think you’d like him, Daisy.”

I pause for just a moment to calm the demons inside me who want to screech.

“What have you told him, Kellen?” It takes me a moment to say this.

“Daisy—”

“What have you told him?”

“After
he
told me he could tell you were hurting, I did tell him you were engaged recently. And that your fiancé had called it off.”

He can’t see me, but my face floods with color nonetheless. Mom sees it. She looks away. Even she can sense Kellen has said too much.

“Kellen, I can’t believe you did that,” I moan.

“Why? Why not? It’s true.”

“It’s none of his business.”

“Daisy, it’s been, what, a year? When are you going to get over this? You need to start getting out and meeting other people.”

I am almost speechless. Almost.

“I thought you were the one person I didn’t have to worry about measuring up to, Kellen! When Mom tried to fix me up with Marshall that first night, you were on
my
side!”

“There aren’t sides to this, Daisy. And that was before I knew him. He’s a really nice guy.”

“So is our mailman.”

“Daisy.”

I stop my pacing and search my brain for a wisp of common sense.
Harriet, where are you?
I wish I could run up to Father Laurent’s apartment and ask him what I should do. But he just got home. He’s recovering from a heart attack. I can’t do it.

Lord, Lord, tell me I’m not being ridiculous about this. Lord, tell me I’m not being unreasonable.

“Daisy?”

Then from somewhere inside me I hear echoes of what Harriet “wrote” to me last night; that I need to stop looking for ways to kill my hurt and start looking for ways to let it go.

Easier said than done. It’s kind of hard to let go of something that seems to be attached to you with super glue.

“Daisy, are you still there?”

“I’m still here.”

“So will you come?”

“If Marshall really wants to see me, then please tell him to stop by the store sometime and maybe we’ll go get a cup of coffee together. I’m not going to go out with a man I don’t even know, Kellen.”

“It’s just one date, Daisy.”

“Yeah, well, my relationship with Daniel began with just one date.”

“So did mine with Laura and look how happy we are.”

“I’m not coming, Kellen. And not because I’m afraid to. I’m not shopping for a new man to love. And that’s what this would feel like to me. Like a shopping trip. I’m flattered Marshall wants to see me again; surprised, actually. If he really would like to get to know me as a friend, then tell him what I told you.”

Kellen is silent for a moment. “All right. Are you mad at me?”

“I’m getting over it.”

“He doesn’t feel sorry for you, you know.”

“Excuse me?”

“It wouldn’t have been a pity date.”

Oh, that’s comforting.

“No, but it would have been a shopping date,” I tell him. “For both of us. I don’t want to go shopping.”

“So going out for a cup coffee sometime isn’t shopping?”

“It wouldn’t be for me.”

He exhales. “Okay. I’ll tell him.”

“You can still stop by and say hello.”

“You mean just me and Laura.”

“Yes.”

“Okay. We’ll do that.”

“All right.”

“So you’re not mad.”

“I’m not mad.”

We click off and I turn toward Mom as I lay my cell phone back on the counter.

“He meant well,” she says.

So did the men who built the
Titanic
.

Dear Harriet,

I think there’s something seriously wrong with me.

I had the opportunity to go on a date tonight with a man who for some unknown reason is interested in me. And I turned it down.

I felt like I made the right decision. For about twenty minutes. Then I started playing with my self-doubts and found that I instead felt like I had just let go of another opportunity to sell my wedding dress. That’s what assailed me as I climbed the stairs to my boring, empty apartment after Kellen and Laura left to go have dinner with Marshall Mitchell. I felt the way I do every time someone wants to buy my dress and I tell that person it’s not for sale.

I saw Father Laurent this evening just for a moment, but he was with Ramsey and Liam so I couldn’t unload on him and ask for his counsel. I had gone up to the third floor to see if he was alone, to see if I could just borrow a couple seconds of his wisdom. When I saw that the door to his apartment was open and that Ramsey and Liam were bringing in dinner to him, I pretended to be there only to clear the hallway of the streamers and balloons.

Max found me wadding the streamers into a wrinkled mass that refused to stay bunched. He seemed surprised that I was taking them down so soon. Or maybe he was surprised I was frowning as I did it. He asked me if I wanted to go to a Bible study with him at a friend’s house. They were starting a study on Ecclesiastes. It didn’t take me long to decide to go. The idea of studying a book that declares everything is meaningless sounded pretty appealing.

I dropped the downed streamers into a chaotic tumble on the floor just as Ramsey appeared at the open doorway to Father Laurent’s apartment. He saw the crumpled Welcome Home streamers and me and Max and he just blinked and closed the door.

I felt like I had just insulted his father.

It was like icing atop a really bad cake.

Vanities of vanities. All is vanity.

I didn’t get much out of the study, my fault completely, and as we walked home to The Finland Max asked me what I thought of Bettina.

Bettina?

The girl he was sitting next to, of course!

I vaguely remembered the little blonde wisp of a thing with the petite butterfly wrist tattoo. Pretty. Skinny. Charming. I told him she was lovely and he beamed. He spent the rest of our walk home telling me how he met her last week at the study and how smart she is and kind and talented. And that she likes his magic tricks.

I could see it in his eyes, even in the hushed splash of streetlight, that this girl has swept him away. Tugged at his socks.

And all I could think was, is this how you meet the person who will change your life? At a chance meeting at a friend’s house when the furthest thing from your mind is finding your life partner?

I thought of Shelby, who was simply teaching thirteen-year-olds how to dissect frogs when Eric entered her world. And that my mother and L’Raine met my father and my Uncle Warren when all they were looking for was a ride to a choir concert.

I have to admit, Harriet, that concept resonates with me. That’s how you would know it was real, wouldn’t you? When it happened when you weren’t looking. But maybe it just isn’t that way for everybody. Maybe I’m one of those people who is going to have to look.

Shop.

It’s not the way I dreamed it.

Which is why I think something is not quite right with me. Or maybe it’s just my dreams that are flawed.

Dear Daisy,

Being an unmarried Voice of Reason, I can only suppose that there are many ways to meet the person who you will share the rest of your life with. I think Father Laurent would say you will know when it’s “real” when you can no longer see your life independent from that other person; when your greatest desire is to offer love, not collect it. It seems to me how you meet that person doesn’t really figure in.

I wouldn’t say your dreams are flawed. Perhaps they are just too little. You might consider adding this to your Rules of Disengagement: Be ready to adjust the size and shape of your dreams.

By the way, you were wise to clean up those crumpled streamers from the floor when you got home.

It would have been wiser to have just left them up since you had no intention of taking them down until after the weekend.

But what’s done is done.

Harriet