My Stubborn Heart (8 page)

“Okay, so here's what I wonder.” Kate sat beside Matt in his truck as they made their second and final trip from Chapel Bluff to the Salvation Army drop-off location.

When Matt didn't respond she prompted him with, “What's that, Kate?”

“What's that, Kate?” he said.

“Everyone has garage sales on the weekends. And then right afterward everyone does what we're doing and hauls the stuff that didn't sell to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, right?”

“Right.”

“So I wonder what the people who work at the Salvation Army are really thinking when they see this stuff coming.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, they must look at all the trucks stuffed with all these garage sale leftovers and think, ‘You know what, people, thanks—but we'd be a lot better off without all your crap.' ”

There was a beat of silence, and then Matt looked across at her and smiled.

He smiled.
An easy smile, genuine with amusement. Quickly come and gone, and yet it dazzled her completely. It was the first smile she'd ever seen him give anyone.

“I mean,” she said, fumbling for her line of thought, “I mean this is stuff so . . . so
unpalatable
that no one wanted to pay a dollar for it.”

“In some cases no one wanted to pay twenty-five cents for it,” he said.

“Exactly.”

“Something to think about.”

“Something to think about,” she murmured.

“Kind of kills the sense of charity I'd been feeling.”

Kate laughed.

He smiled again, this time straight ahead at the road.

They lapsed into silence, which left Kate time to marvel over those two smiles. She'd made him smile. Twice!

Strange, that amid that proud feeling of accomplishment, she suddenly felt God nudge her to say something to him about his wife.

Terrible idea
, she thought.
I've only just got him smiling!

Go on,
God seemed to be saying.
Bring it up.

It had become more and more difficult for her recently to talk to him and pretend she didn't know anything about the tragedy he'd been through. It reminded her of the elephant jokes she and her dad had told each other when she was little. . . .

How do you know there's an elephant in your refrigerator?

The footprints in the Jell-O.

Well, his past had become the elephant in the room with Kate every time she spoke with him. Big and hard to ignore.

She was too scared to attempt to talk to him about it while looking at him face-to-face. But the two of them were driving along together facing forward with the hum of the engine between them. Talking about it seemed like a possibility. The nudge gradually became an urge. Another few miles passed under the tires until the urge became an almost physical pressure pushing its way up her throat.

Say it,
God insisted.

“I heard about what happened to your wife.” She didn't blurt it out. Still, without preamble or anything else to cushion them, the words sounded impossibly abrupt. They fell like pieces of sharp metal between them, bald and heavy.

Matt's jaw tensed and his fingers tightened on the steering wheel.

She waited, but he didn't say anything. “I wanted you to know that I'm so sorry,” she said.

He didn't respond for a full minute. Kate's chest got tighter and tighter with each painfully awkward second. She was tempted to rush into the void and fill it with words, but she forced herself to wait.

“Who told you?” he finally said.

“Velma and Peg told Gran and me.”

She could guess how much he hated being talked about. “You don't like being discussed,” she stated.

“No. I don't.”

“I know you don't, and I apologize. It wasn't malicious. They asked us if we knew about your past and of course we didn't, so they told us.”

He gave a terse half nod.

Might as well just rip the Band-Aid the rest of the way off. “They also told us about your hockey career.”

“Former hockey career.”

“Right.”

She waited, but apparently he didn't have any more to say on the subject. “Well . . . I can't imagine what you've been though, how hard it's been. I'm here if you ever want to talk about it.”

He angled his head away, put on his blinker, made the last few turns that would take them to the drop-off spot.

Kate's confidence fizzled and sank.

The Salvation Army came into view. Beyond open double doors an attendant waited. “Well,” Matt said quietly as he pulled in, “sorry, buddy, but we're here with our second truckload of crap.”

Kate erupted with laughter.

Matt glanced over at her, eyes shining with subtle humor.

“See?” she said. “I offer a whole new spin on things. Aren't you glad you let me come along?”

“Very glad,” he said sarcastically.

Relief tumbled through her like a yo-yo unfurling. It was okay. He hadn't liked what she'd said about his wife and his hockey. But he'd survived. She'd survived.

They got out of the truck and began unloading.

She'd said what she'd needed to. He knew that she knew. And now they could proceed without elephants.

Chapel Bluff was bearing her makeover well. Like a stately grande dame, she acquiesced to their ministrations. It was as if she recognized them, Kate often thought, as if she put up with them because they were, after all,
family.

Now that they'd gotten rid of all the old clutter, Chapel Bluff's interior had become a mostly blank canvas. Room after room held little or no furniture. The old carpets were gone. In their place, plain hardwood floor awaited refinishing. Walls naked of wallpaper, their surfaces carefully repaired, called out for paint.

Kate and Gran had picked a warm yellow for the kitchen and a buttery cream color for the walls in the rest of the house. When they weren't making slow progress through the dining room, living room, library, and den with rollers and brushes, they were working on trim. Kate wanted the window trim, doorway trim, and baseboards resurfaced so that the patina of the wood showed through again. Which meant grueling work removing layers of paint, grime, and years.

But all of it, every hour Kate put into the house, was worth the effort. Because the grande dame, the lady who'd been treasured by their family for almost two hundred years, was beginning to shine.

“Morty.” Kate gripped the phone and forced herself to break the news. “Velma told me that she might consider a date with you if you change your hair.”

Silence yawned across the phone lines without a single crackle. “My hair?” Morty finally asked, clearly confused.

“Yes.”

“What does she want me to change about my hair?”

“The color. She'd like you to take out the dye.” Kate winced.

“The hair dye?”

“I'm afraid so.”

Another protracted pause and then, “That confounded woman! What does she know about style?”

An outstanding point. Velma had wretched fashion sense, and even more ironically, a head full of dyed hair.

“That woman will be the death of me!” he blustered. “Ordering me around. Free with her opinions. Telling me to take out my hair dye. Just who does she think she is? I've worn my hair this way for fifty years!”

Kate murmured sympathetically.

“My wife loved my hair this way.”

“Um, Morty . . .” He had, after all, appointed her as his dating advisor. “It might not be such a good idea in general to compare Velma to your late wife.”

He harrumphed. She could practically hear him scowling.

“Dye can't even be removed, can it?” he asked. “Isn't that why it's called ‘permanent'?”

“Actually, I did a little checking and it seems it can be removed with the right products. I'd be happy to pick them up for you if you'd like.”

She could hear muffled footsteps. He was pacing.

“Morty?”

“I'm thinking.”

She waited. It touched her, the sound of those footsteps treading back and forth, back and forth. He was considering it, this gruff ex-policeman. Considering the sacrifice of pride, familiarity, and hairstyle for a chance at love.

“I'll do it,” he said at last. “Darn her.”

Wow. She was struck anew by the fact that love held incredible power for change. “How's Thursday afternoon for you? I'll bring the dye remover over to your house and help you apply it.”

“I don't need help with my own hair.”

“Unfortunately, the dye removal process takes two people. But if you'd rather have someone else . . .”

“No. You'll do.” She heard a distinct grinding of teeth before he hung up.

Kate felt a pang of pity. A relationship with Velma guaranteed him a future of teeth grinding. Morty'd go down to the grave with a mouthful of nubs.

Kate walked into the kitchen at dinnertime that night to find Gran and Matt in a heated argument over aprons. She paused in the doorway, watching, as Gran brandished an apron in her ring-encrusted fingers. It was a white canvas number, with a loop for the neck and two dangling ties to secure behind the back. “Matt, I'm telling you that you need to put this on.”

“No way.”

“You're about to use an electric handheld mixer,” Gran gestured to the appliance already plugged in and waiting on the countertop, “and it's going to get messy.”

Matt's hard features took on a defiant cast. “Look, Beverly, I'll cook but I am not going to wear an
apron
.”

“Your sweater is cashmere!”

He shrugged.

“Cashmere!”

“I'd rather throw it away after this,” he motioned toward the apron, “than wear that.”

Gran glared at him as if he'd insulted her.

He returned her glare, not backing down an inch.

“Matthew Jarreau! If I knew your middle name, I'd use it!”

Still nothing. He set his mouth in an endearingly mulish line.

They faced off for several charged seconds before Gran hefted an enormous sigh, shook her head, and went to hang the apron on its peg in the pantry. “Men!”

Matt glanced at Kate.

“No fair of you to start the fun without me,” she said.

He grunted, pushed up the sleeves of his beige sweater, and started washing his hands.

Gran took up her position at the counter, her expression disgruntled. “I didn't think your masculinity could be so easily threatened.”

“You thought wrong.” He dried his hands with a dish towel. “It's David.”

“What is?”

He lifted one eyebrow. “My middle name.”

“Matthew David Jarreau?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, good.” She gave a haughty sniff. “The next time I need to use it, I will.”

One side of his lips twitched upward, and just that quickly, animosity disappeared and contentment hummed through the kitchen as the two of them launched into their cooking lesson.

Kate had dressed in clothes appropriate for treading through the detonation site of a nuclear bomb. She'd tugged on plastic gloves. She'd mixed chemicals like a scientist. And she'd just shoveled an appropriate amount of something called
color remover
onto something called a
tint brush
.

Operation Correct-Morty's-Hair-Dye-Blunder was about to commence.

The object of her charity was sitting on a vinyl chair in the center of his kitchen, eyeing her grumpily.

She wondered if he'd take offense if she snapped on a pair of goggles and a gas mask.

“Is it ready?” he asked.

“Ready.” Kate approached him, centered herself directly behind him, and shellacked the first brushful of goo onto the crown of his head. Whatever unseen “personal space” boundaries they'd had between them evaporated. Discomfort crashed over Kate and she paused momentarily, deeply tempted to pound out the back door at a dead sprint.

Massages
, she reminded herself. Facials. Manicures. Spa pedicures! She dove in grimly with both plastic-covered hands, meticulously raking the goo through his hair.

“So,” Morty said, “how about those Dallas Cowboys?”

Kate laughed. The tension began to deflate. “How about them.”

“They won their preseason games and now they're three and one. They're up against the Eagles, though, on Sunday. . . .”

He continued chatting about football, and Kate continued with the goo and the brush. Like many things in life that made one painfully self-conscious at the outset, like wearing your swimsuit on the first day of summer, time and practice helped one adjust.

When she finished with the solution, he looked like a geriatric rock star with a fetish for hair gel. Some of the black strands stuck directly up, and some lay in matted surrender.

Kate consulted the directions for the hundredth time, then snapped a shower cap onto him.

“What now?” he asked.

“Now it has to process for twenty minutes.”

“What does that mean?”

“We let it sit for twenty minutes. It says that I can use a hair dryer on the shower cap to help it along.”

His eyebrows lowered skeptically.

Kate grinned at the picture he presented. This burly frowning grandfather, his hair glistening under a shower cap.

“Can we at least move into the den so I can watch TV?” he asked.

“Sure. And then we'll need to come back in here to rinse, shampoo it, and put on the—” she consulted the directions again—“processing lotion.”

“Fine.”

She followed him into his den. He settled into an old brown fabric recliner that had a concave back and butt indentions. He'd placed the recliner, without creativity, directly in front of his television. Apparently they still made the this-TV-is-a-piece-of-furniture! televisions, because that's what his was. A TV, surrounded by wood, with a top like a buffet table.

She thought of Peg and William's lovely, tasteful, magazine-worthy home. She thought of Gran's snug ranch-style house in Dallas. She thought of Velma's scruffy house, with its debris-stuffed carport, peeling paint, and six acres of property. They all had homes that suited them. But somehow this two-bedroom condo on the edge of town didn't seem right for Morty.

He kept it neat, but the place was worn and stark, filled with outdated furniture. After a lifetime of police work in this town, children raised, and grandchildren grown, it seemed to Kate that Morty ought to be entitled to more. To a place less lonely.

Kate plugged in her blow-dryer and managed to unfurl it just far enough to reach Morty with the warm air. Morty responded to the noise by turning up the TV volume, so Kate found herself blow-drying Morty's shower cap while the four o'clock local news blared in the background.

Twenty minutes had seldom passed so slowly.

When the time was up, they returned to the kitchen and Morty ducked over the sink. Kate stood on a footstool and leaned over him, rinsing, then shampooing his hair.

The color had faded from inky opaque black to . . . plain dull black.

Kate's hopes sank.

“How's it look?” Morty asked the sink drain.

“Well . . . it didn't change much.” She grabbed the towel and wrapped it around his head.

“What's that you said?” He straightened with two joint pops, dried his hair vigorously, then draped the towel around his shoulders. He looked at her questioningly. “Didn't change much?”

“No, but the directions say we can repeat the process two or three more times today.”

“Let me go look in the mirror.” He disappeared around the corner into the hall bathroom. After a moment he called, “And what if it still doesn't change after two or three more times?”

“Then we'll have to wait a few days and try again. We've got enough product”—Kate's voice and courage were shrinking—“for ten applications,” she finished faintly.

He returned and planted himself back into the vinyl chair. “Confounded Velma.”

She half expected him to launch into a string of curses, but instead he gave a rusty laugh and shook his head. “Let's try it again, then.”

At seven o'clock that night Kate stood above the brown recliner blow-drying Morty's shower cap for the fourth time that day. The television shows had changed each time around. This time he had the volume at max for a cable offering of
The Rockford Files
.

Her mind drifted in circles of bored contemplation. She was thinking how glad she was that she hadn't pursued a degree in cosmetology when something caught her attention. She straightened and stared.

A section of Morty's hair actually looked . . . gray.

Gray!

She checked her watch. Time to shampoo. She shepherded him into the kitchen. He bent over the sink without being asked, well familiar with the routine by now, and she started to wash his hair.

Yes.
It truly was gray. A beautiful gun-metal color, slightly darker near the temples, slightly lighter in a streak over his right eye.

“Morty!” She rinsed the suds out, practically bouncing on the footstool with excitement. “It worked!”

“It did?”

“It did!”

And then, before he'd even had a chance to see it, or form his own opinion about it, he asked, “Do you think Velma will like it?”

“Oh, Morty,” Kate replied. “She better.”