Someday Home (26 page)

And so was Judith. She, too, was in another inflatable being operated by two young men in navy-blue jumpsuits; they were soaking wet and didn't seem to care. They were all headed for shore, where two aid vans were parked. The vans' red lights flashed wildly, promising safety.

Who? What?
This was all too much for her. And the heavy rain was warm.

They bumped into the dock. Strong arms lifted her up and out and onto a gurney, wheeling her into an aid van. She could hear the other aid van out there leaving, its siren growling up the scale.

“Lynn? Wanna come along?” a young man's voice asked.

“Sure!” The doors slapped closed, and this van also began to move.

Grinning, Lynn plopped down on a jump seat across from Judith. “That was sure close!”

“Whhhuhhh…?”

“I pulled into the yard and opened the car door. Homer jumped out, barking like mad, and ran out onto the dock. If he hadn't been barking at you, I would never have seen you two out there. I looked that way just as the canoe turned sideways and broached. Once it was upside down it became just about invisible. So I hopped into the Zodiac and hurried out to get you.”

One of the young men slipped a cone-shaped plastic mask onto Judith's face. “And she called 911 on her way out.”

“In this lake country,” Lynn explained, “the fire department has a pickup truck with a Zodiac just for on-the-water responses. So we had two boats available, theirs and mine.”

“Whhhuhhh…”

The young man was smiling casually, as if he did this sort of thing every day. Maybe he did. “Your core temperature—the temperature of your innards—is dangerously low. We're taking you to the emergency room, where they'll warm you back up safely. You'll be just fine. So will your fishing buddy in the other van.”

Her fishing buddy. For some reason that struck Judith as particularly funny, but she was too cold to laugh.

Angela was safe. But her new fishing equipment, her gift from her children, was now at the bottom of the lake.

Amend that. Angela was safe physically. But would she ever venture out in a canoe again? For that matter, would Judith?

Absolutely not!

A
ngela walked in the library door to be greeted with Mary's “Oh, am I glad you're here! It's a madhouse today, and the shelving is way behind!”

“Good! I like it best when there's plenty to do.” She tossed her lunch sack into the fridge and hustled out to the desk. Behind with reshelving, indeed! Three carts piled high and the drop bin half full.

She had developed a system. She grabbed a cart at random and wheeled it out by the stacks. She set all the books on the cart on end, arranged them more or less numerically or, in the case of fiction, alphabetically. Then she started at one end of the stacks, shelved her way to the other end, and did the fiction around the walls on the way back. She brought the cart back to the desk empty only to find two-foot-high stacks waiting for a cart.

A middle-aged lady with blue hair stepped up to the desk. “I am looking for an inexpensive rental. Can you help? I already bought a paper.”

Their teenaged volunteer on the desk, Chrissa, pointed to Angela. “There's our real estate pro. She'll know.”

Angela smiled at the woman. “There is a hair parlor on the edge of town, the Clip Shop.”

“I saw that. Like the name.”

“That's where I get my hair done. She's good. Also, she knows everything in the whole world about every person, cat, and dog in this town. Go tell her what you need. I'm confident she can give you some excellent leads.”

“Hairdresser! Of course. I never thought of that, and we have a hairdresser like that where I come from, too. Thank you!” She left beaming.

Chrissa laughed. “So real estate pros send clients to the hairdresser's.”

“More than that; sometimes we'd take Bess Walberg's hairdresser along with us on the bus on Sunday afternoon. She knew everything. She helped us sell a couple places that hadn't even been listed yet.” Angela wheeled out the next cart.

“The bus?” Chrissa asked.

Angela started stacking and sorting. “On Sunday afternoons, Realtors go around to scope out all the open houses, see what's there. Our agency had seventeen agents. Rather than seventeen of us trying to find parking, we'd just rent a Crown bus for the day. Stock it for the party afterward, of course. Since I rarely drink, I was the designated driver. We'd go—”

“Wait! What?” Over by the monitor, Mary stared at her. “You drive a bus?” She sounded so intense.

Cautiously, Angela replied, “I have a commercial bus endorsement on my driver's license, yes. Is that bad?”

“It's wonderful!” Mary snatched up the phone and punched a speed dial number, put it to her ear, waited…“Rose? Remember that volunteer I told you about, Angela? She has a commercial endorsement on her license! We have a driver!” Pause. “Yes!” Pause, pause. “Right away!” She good-byed and thumbed the off button.

Chrissa was helping a patron, so Angela went over to Mary and lowered her voice. “What's going on?”

“We have a chance to obtain a used bookmobile out of Duluth, but we have to have a qualified driver before we can apply to get it. On the payroll. That driver would have to go over to Duluth, get checked out on the vehicle, and then bring it here.”

“No problem. A bookmobile is just a glorified bus. Or a shamefully huge motor home. When would this happen?”

“A month or two. The system can't afford to hire a driver separately just for that, so it would have to be someone with library skills.”

“I see. Like when I drove the bus, but I was also one of the Realtors.”

“Exactly! Angela, we want that bookmobile so badly; this Detroit Lakes area has a lot of remote library patrons and some are not computer savvy enough to link into the system. And the children; the bookmobile is so useful in helping children find pleasure in books.”

Angela's whole world brightened.
“On the payroll,”
she said. “Well, I'll gladly help if I can.”

“And since you don't have small children, you could be on the road a lot with no problems. Out to schools during the week and rural areas on weekends. Perfect! I'll put together the paperwork to hire you.”

“Hire you”! Woo!

It took Angela another hour to get the reshelving completely caught up, sprinkled in between with answers to patrons' questions. She stopped by Chrissa. “If you'll handle the desk another half hour, I'll take early lunch, and then I can do the desk over lunchtime.”

The girl nodded. “Works for me.”

She walked to the back room, started a pot of fresh coffee, poured the last of the old pot into her supersize mug, and retrieved her lunch from the fridge.

She sat down at the Formica table and got the Letter out of her purse.

Yesterday at dinner, Lynn had said, “I talked to Pastor Evanson for an hour. I told him about our difficulty with forgiveness. He suggested that we start working on it by writing letters to the people we cannot forgive: your father, Judith; Jack; and I am writing two—one to Paul and one to God.”

“Good luck getting them delivered,” Judith had said.

“Oh, not to send. We use them to organize our thoughts. Write them and eventually destroy them.”

So here sat Angela with the Letter. Because her mind worked best in list mode, it was actually the List. She listed all the negatives Jack had generated one way or another and a separate list of all the positives that had come out of this.

Short list of positives. But look at how weighty each item was! Finding her true self. Finding true friendship in Lynn and Judith, something she'd never had before. Much, much less stress. And there were a few frivolous items, too: getting reacquainted with creative cooking; at last having some time to herself; and most of all to rediscover the real Angela, from weight to personal interests, not the phony, dissatisfying, let's-please-Jack version. None of that would have happened were she still the old Angela.

And as she pondered this, she thought that perhaps she should forgive Jack after all. His motives were selfish, and he obviously didn't feel like honoring his promise made at the wedding altar, but in the end, he had done her great good. Tonight she would write the Letter itself to him, forgiving him; it was a start.

What would be the next step, then? Lynn would have more ideas about that.

She thought for a few moments about that call from Gwynn days ago and how distraught her daughter had been. She reached for a pencil to add to her list. She had been so wounded by Jack's perfidy that she had not paused to think about the effect on Charles and Gwynn. The kids were so torn up. On the other hand, what could she do about it? Jack was the one. Always it came back to that. Jack was the one.

And she was furious with him all over again. He was using the children to get to her. After destroying their world, he was using them, sucking them into the mess.

And then she reminded herself that they were her offspring, but they weren't children, not anymore. They were adults, and they had the power to choose—choose to get sucked in and choose to back off. And yet, she had spent decades raising them; she still had an obligation to them; to herself as their mother, if not them.

So confusing and convoluted and all because Jack…there it was again. Jack.

She studied the Lists, looking for answers that were not there.

Forgiveness. That was the first step. Forgive. She would do that for the children. She even drafted the first paragraph before she put her empty lunch sack in the trash and went back out on the desk.

Chrissa hopped up and headed for the lunchroom. No, the bathroom. Angela took her seat as another patron stepped up to the desk.

Mary appeared an hour later with a fistful of papers. Between checking out books and answering questions, it was five minutes before Angela could see what the papers were.

“All this just to get hired?” Forms. Statements. Tax things. Regulations.
Good grief.
“Should I do this now or take them home and bring them back to you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow is fine. Angela, I'm so glad you can do this!”

“Not as glad as I am to be able to do this for you.” She folded them in half, ran back to the lunchroom, and slipped them into her purse. Then back out to the desk.

A towheaded boy stepped up, so short he could probably rest his chin on the desk. “Mrs. Bishop, I have to find out about fur trapping for Cub Scouts.”

“Fur trapping. There's a computer open over there. Let's go see if we can find you some resources. We'll also check the shelves. I think we can learn a lot about fur trapping.”

She spent less than five minutes showing him search engines. Being young, he grabbed the concept intuitively and cackled with glee. Then they looked up some book titles in the online catalogue and went to the shelves. Crowing “Wow! This is perfect, Mrs. Bishop!” he checked out four books and left.

Mrs. Bishop.
Here was something else to think about. Once the divorce was final, should she keep Bishop or take back her maiden name? How would it affect the kids? She would run it past them both first, that was for sure.

Twenty minutes before closing, she reshelved everything in the carts. She would not leave undone work for the people who opened tomorrow. Then the flurry of checkouts as closing time approached. Finally she could gently shoo out the last of the lingerers.

The cleaning lady, Claire, came in. “Good evening, Angela!”

“Good evening, Claire. How is Doodie?”

“Much better. The incision is healing nicely. And the kids went through the yard very, very carefully, picking up anything he might gulp down. One paper wad blocking his gut was enough.”

“I'm happy to hear it. Have a good evening.”

“You, too.” Claire headed for the janitorial closet and Angela walked out into the night.

And froze. Her mouth dropped open.

Jack.

He stood there smiling. “Angela.”

“What do you want?”

“To talk to you.”

“Talk to my lawyer. That's what she's there for.”

“No! I need to talk to
you
.” He stepped forward quickly and clasped both her hands in his. “I love you, Angela.”

“I love you.”
She tried to think of the last time he'd said that. She couldn't. As far back as she could remember, never had he said that. Could it be that Gwynn was right and he was in fact changed? That he had somehow awakened to what he had lost?

He pressed on. “I saw a little café down the street half a block, a diner, and it's open all night. Let's sit down there and talk. That's all. Just talk.”

She let herself be led down the street, past her car parked at the curb, to the gaudy neon facade of the Stop Inn Diner. Expressing forgiveness face-to-face would be better than writing a letter. Gwynn was right; she should at least talk to him.

And what would she do if he was as changed as Gwynn thought? Could she put the past behind? She was suddenly very uncertain and confused.

And hungry. She had been planning to eat leftovers when she got home, but since they were here…

“What would you like?” Jack pulled the menu off the clip and studied both sides. “How's their meat loaf?”

“Quite good.”

The waitress appeared, pencil in hand.

“The meat loaf, but I don't want the gravy on it. And I want French fries instead of the mashed potatoes.”

Good old Jack; he never simply ordered off the menu, he had to change it, presumably to improve on it. Same as he had done with his wife, Angela realized with a start.

“The Reuben, please.” Angela smiled at her. The child didn't look sixteen and here she was working the late shift.

“Lettuce?”

“Please.”

He watched the waitress leave. “I thought lettuce always came with it.”

Silence.

Long silence.

She said, “My lawyer still hasn't heard anything about the house sale yet. Is there a hang-up?”

He cleared his throat. “My lawyer's working on it. Little snag, nothing serious.”

Long, long silence.

“So, uh, Angela, how have you been doing? The kids say you're getting by okay.”

No, she could not forgive him face-to-face. She would have to work out the Letter, find the appropriate phrasing. His unexpected appearance had sort of unhorsed her. “Doing fine.”

More long silence.

He broke it with, “Your address is a box number now. That's the only one I could find.”

“My lawyer didn't tell you where to find me, did she?”

“No, the kids did.”

Anger boiled up all over again. She must not let it cloud her judgment.

Long, long, awkward silence. Minutes passed.

He leaned forward. “Look. I made a mistake. A big mistake. I'm sorry. But now I want to unmake it. I want you back.”

She tried to arrange her thoughts, marshal an intelligent response. It didn't rise to the surface of her brain where she could articulate it. Good thing she was putting off the forgiveness letter; her brain was tongue-tied. “Well, uh, a decision that big would require a lot of thought.”

He spread his hands. “What's to think about? I admit I made a big mistake. Now let's just start over.”

“It's not that easy, Jack.”

“Of course it is. I've changed. I want to start over. That's pretty simple, right?” He watched her expectantly, waiting for the answer he wanted to hear.

Waiting for the answer he wanted.
Of course. She recognized that for the first time, this expecting the “correct” answer, the one he wanted. And she realized that in the past, she had always provided it, never once thinking about what she might want instead. He let her know what he wanted, and it was up to her to provide it. And she always had.

She watched his face. “Have you ever considered what I might want?”

He shrugged. “We want the same things; we've always wanted the same things. The kids are all upset and getting back together will take care of that. We want that.”