Chapter 1: Poppies and Eternal Purpose
It’s important to acknowledge that Chase was right and if it weren’t for him I might have never found my answers. He likes being right. And, for the most part, he’s consistent in his predictions -- has been for all of the twenty-four years I’ve known him. Like the time we raced down Bloomquist mountain on our Radio Flyers. He sat in his wagon, hands white-gripping the handle and grinned against the sun, a dark shadow of superiority and wisdom. “I’m going to win, and you’re gonna get hurt,” he said.
At seven, and full of tomboyish bravado, I tucked my feet into my red wagon, grabbed the handle and pushed off. The world whished by my ears as we careened down dirt and gravel. My next clear memory is staring into the glaring sunshine from a sprawled position in the ditch. The wagon lay on its side, wheels still spinning. And pain. I remember pain. Blinding, screaming, burning down one side of my leg where I’d left way too much skin on the road.
And then Chase. He stood broad and tall, blocking the sun, blue eyes full of concern. What came next ignited my love/hate feelings for him for the next decade or two. He picked me up, one hand around my waist and said, “Josey, you just don’t know when to quit.”
I took it as a compliment.
I should have paid attention to the gleam in his eyes -- the one that said, “Told you so!” It was the first sign that he would break my heart, and a smart girl would have gathered up her battered wagon and headed for cookies and milk. But what does a seven-year-old know of the shades of love? All I knew is that he ran faster, could eat more than me, and his Tarzan whoop, with that little inflection in his voice, sounded right out of the jungle and left me with tingles.
Most of all, he had the best backyard sandbox on the street. That fact alone made him downright irresistible.
Fast-forward seventeen years. Chase sits down at the linen-clothed table, a scant breeze pushing around that burnished blonde hair, that same knowing gleam in his eyes and says, “You didn’t want him anyway.”
Unfortunately he’s referring to the groom, who is presently dancing with his new bride center stage behind me, a man who has soft gray eyes and a smile that can turn the right girl to oatmeal. My ex-boyfriend, Milton Snodbrecher.
And oh, the bride, wearing lily-of-the-valley in her blonde hair, and a Vera Wang dress off a rack in Minneapolis is my sister, Jasmine. My younger sister.
Isn’t it written somewhere, “nay shall thine youngest sibling marrieth before thine oldest?” Perhaps, the Bible? I’m suddenly feeling a kinship with Leah the morning after, when Jacob realized he’d been hoodwinked.
How could I have believed that Milton might work seven years, let alone seven months, for my love?
Who knew that getting my college boyfriend/jerk a job at our restaurant/lodge in central Minnesota doing the books would slaughter my matrimonial prospects? And here I thought it sounded like a pretty good idea. Especially since I was just down the road dotting I’s and crossing T’s at the Gull Lake Gazette. (A job that Myrtle Shold handled with an eighth grade education for half a millennium, but suddenly demands a Bachelor of Arts in English degree from the local girl who had the nerve to go to college. All for the whopping salary of ten dollars an hour.)
I do get my own attic office facing the lake with the oh-so-picturesque view of the seagulls squatting on the roof and oogling goodies piled near the back entry to Lou’s smoked fish shack. It’s breath-taking, to say the least.
It boils down to this -- while I was rewriting news blurbs from the AP wire and trying to make sense of eighty-three year old Tipsy McKeever’s scrawled recipes, Milton was getting familiar with more than the books at the old Berglund resort. “Bring Milton home and we’ll give him a job at the family business,” (five acres of shore front, general store and five small cabins), said Dad. My summer-after-graduation, wedding-saturated brain thought, Yes. Embraced by the pine and birch, swept fresh by the breeze of Gull Lake, Milton would finally drop to his then-bony knees and declare his love. And we’d all live happily ever after.
Naïve me.
I should interject here that I wasn’t even supposed to be in Gull Lake. My grand life plan included a stint at a New York newspaper, maybe even a tour as an overseas journalist for the Associated Press. Inside this five foot four inch, slightly over-endowed (I did NOT say fat) body lives a hard-muscled, brave and adventurous, tomb-raiding Lara Croft/Mother Theresa blend, itching to toss the seeds of faith as she cracks open diabolical plots to enslave humanity.
In short, I had hoped to make an etching on the spiritual landscape of the world. To follow the Matthew 28 Great Commission (and look good doing it).
Sadly, there isn’t a plethora of enslaving despots in Gull Lake, MN. Except, perhaps, my mother, who somehow talked me into working as head of housekeeping (read: the only maid on staff) on Saturdays. Note to self: Don’t believe it when your mother suggests you come home for a little while until you get your bills paid off and figure out where you want to go next. It’s a ploy. Before you know it you’ll have an account at the local Java Cup, a library card, and a standing order for Jerry’s Friday night pizza special while every available bachelor slinks out of town for greener pastures.
Not that there were many eligibles to begin with. Chase, perhaps, only he doesn’t count.
But I digress. Milton and Jasmine – how did it happen?
While I was bent over the hieroglyphics of the local Dear Ruth column, Jasmine used her formerly unbeknownst charms to wheedle down the road to my man’s heart. No, not that road. His stomach. Out of all the pastries in the Norwegian’s arsenal, lefse, krumkaga, roll kuchen, I especially blame the kringle, that flaky, almond-frosted pastry that calls to a good Norseman’s (or woman’s) heart early Saturday mornings. Good old Jasmine, our junior baker, had the boy eating out of her hands. Literally. I should have seen the writing on the wall – or on his face, rather, when I found him, face flaky and dripping sugar within two days of his arrival.
In Jasmine’s defense, she can’t help it if she can bake like heaven, or that Milton is a true Scandinavian.
He gained thirty pounds in seven months. One-hundred-and thirty the next year by adding my sister to his list of assets. Remember, he’s a bookkeeper. I guess he thought the skinny one with the eager smile and associate degree in Home Economic-Arts was the Berglund who offered the greatest long-term benefits.
The sad thing is that I thought Milton and I made a good couple. We loved reading, and...well, reading. He played a cutthroat game of Boggle, and could occasionally smoke me in Scrabble. Mostly, we studied together at college, which I suppose doesn’t produce the elements of a good spouse, but rather an excellent quizzer – “Who are the three leading poets in seventeenth century America?”
On a saner day I might recognize the peril of bringing such a trait into a marriage. “Name for me the leading ways to unclog a drain. Give me the three causes of apathy in a relationship.”
And, he had the uncanny ability to despoil every romantic climax in a chick flick, i.e., knuckle-cracking during the toll booth proposal in While You Were Sleeping. I had to fight the gut urge to rip out his eyebrows one hair at a time -- a response that surprised me and should have forewarned of darkness yet to come. And what was with his need to circle the parking lot eighteen times before finding the perfect place? I called it Vulture Parking.
He called me uptight.
The breakup wasn’t pretty. And made even uglier by his nearly immediate pursuit of Jasmine. Can anyone say Vulture Parking?
Which brings me to the present when I’m banging my head on the linen-covered tables, arranged expertly by Susie’s Catering on the front yard of the Berglund Acres, thinking, “this is a joke, God, right?” A cool, end-of-May twilight breeze rustles the linen tablecloths and the lily and lilac centerpieces. I’m purposely not watching the happy couple circle the dance floor, and I’m wishing that I wasn’t nursing a glass of lemonade and wearing a dress that made me look like a poppy.
Oh yes, marshmallow me agreed to be the maid of honor. Like my mother said, “Wouldn’t the wedding pictures look nice with our whole family in them?” Hello, did anyone else – Grandma Netta, my brother Buddy, Jasmine the groom-stealer or either of my beaming parents — notice that the groom used to belong to me? That this moment in my life might be slightly painful?
Not. I’ve never been able to outflank my mother. She could teach an online course in practicality. So here I sit, my cleavage pushing out of the princess top (hey, I like Kringle too!), wanting to melt into a poppy puddle, or maybe just make a run for the border, when over to my side of misery slides Chase. I didn’t exactly expect him to show up at the wedding, but when I spied him an hour ago weaving his way through the receiving line, I suddenly felt like God might care, just a little. Despite the poppy dress. And, although I’ve spent most of the last hour hiding in the kitchen, I’m not sad Chase has found me.
That’s his specialty, actually. Chase Me, I called him (not to his face…please!) in high school. Most of the time I meant it in a good way.
“What?” I say in greeting, not able to look at Chase full in the face.
“I saw Jerry.”
Oh, thanks Chase. Could you please bring up every small town mistake I’ve ever made? I shrug, as if this is news but I don’t care, although, yes, I know my senior prom date/successful lawyer is back in town. I still track his movements like a panther, lifting my ears with every mention of his name, my nose to the wind, hoping to catch his scent. He’s arrived for the wedding, good friend of the family that he is. Good thing I don’t have another sister.
Suddenly I feel a little sick.
“You’re looking...what color is that exactly?” I hear him chuckle.
“Get away from me.” I lower my head onto my arm. It’s a beautiful day out, waves from the lake lapping the shore, the smell of summer in the breeze. The sun, of course, is totally on Jasmine’s side. Okay, I admit it! Evil me did walk in the smallest of circles this morning saying, under my breath of course, “Tut tut, it looks like rain.” But Jasmine must be much holier than I, because God heard, and answered her prayers.
Okay, I’m not that mean to really want it to rain. But a little ripple of thunder might have been nice. Just to shake things up.
“You look good,” I say to lessen my bark. I don’t actually look at Chase, but he always looks good, so I’m being honest. Thankfully, Chase alone understands the knife-in-the-gut affair this is. He too is a last fish in the sea. I figure that in our geriatric years, we’ll be hobbling to the local library from North Shore Acres, still trying to race each other down the hill.
I’m thankful for some consistencies in my life. He told me, sophomore year, as he hid out at Berglund Acres during one of his parents’ many skirmishes that he’d pull out his fingernails one-by-one before he even thought about trudging down the aisle.
Yet, here he is, at the scene of the crime to help me through this moment of need. I find a smile.
“It’s not really all that bad, is it?” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “I mean, c’mon GI, the guy has three chins.”
“He didn’t when I was dating him.”
I’m moved by both Chase’s touch – warm, strong hands, and the use of his nickname for me. He couldn’t bear to think of me as a girl when we were seven, so he called me GI Joe. Not that I minded, but I didn’t so much love his later embellishments, Gastro-Intestinal, The Great I, and my least favorite, Gone Insane. But his tone is sweet, and the GI term makes me warm in a way that has nothing to do with the sunny May day.
“And aren’t you glad you know now the price you may have paid?” Chase tucks his finger under my chin, (thankfully I still have only one, despite my Kringle weakness) lifts my gaze off my arm and onto him. Hidey Ho, what happened to the boy next door? Where are the braces? And I distinctly remember acne. Lots of it. He looks, I might add, totally not the anthropologist he says he is – smart and even sexy in his wire-rims, black suit pants and pressed silk shirt…And those eyes – still blue, still friendly, still gleaming...
Sorta makes a girl wanna run for her Radio Flyer and have another go. What do I get if I win?
“You didn’t want him anyway,” he says.
Who? Oh yeah, Milton.
“I didn’t?” I say. Who, exactly did I want?
“No,” he says, chuckling. “You’re better than that.”
“I am?” I moan, not wanting to sound pathetic, but after all, this is the same guy who saw me necking with a boy not my date at senior prom and covered for me. He knows a few secrets. “I don’t feel better.”
“Well you are.” The music changes. Now, the crooning of Roberta Flack. “Tonight, I celebrate my love for you...” Is this necessary? Movement toward the dance floor, laughter. Oh, everybody’s happy. But Chase is staring at me, an odd look in his eyes, and I see our past flash in them.
I’m glimpsing a moment, a rip in the fabric of this horrific day, exposing hope. In fact, my life has suddenly changed tempo. Old promises play in my mind. Chase and I, nine years old, ensconced high in the trees, the sun kissing late autumn leaves. A crisp wind rustles the canopy around me as Chase turns around, hammer in hand. His curls are long, poking out of his homemade knit cap. “Will you marry me?”
“Of course,” I say and glare at him. Slacker. We have a fort to build.
But now, nearly fifteen years later, I realize he’s returned to ask me to dance. To twirl me around the floor in front of my sister, and her husband, saying, Thank you, Bozo, for not realizing what you had and saving her for me. Then he’ll sweep me in his arms and kiss me and…time to cash in the promises.
Wait! This is Chase. My last resort. Didn’t I use those very words two days before graduation under a starlit sky? My friend. My tormentor. My neighbor. The guy who bailed me out of the clink the night I got arrested for skinny-dipping and didn’t laugh.
The last line of defense before I’m lone gal out in the world of singleness.
Kissing Chase would be like kissing the cousin you always had a crush on – daring but just way too creepy. He knows too much. Besides, ever since I got serious with God, there’s been a gulf between Chase and me. The more I try and share with him God’s grace, and the richness of life with a Savior watching my back and setting my course, Chase pulls away and turns me off.
It makes me ache, and pushes me to prayer. Most of all, it puts a stop-sign between us. Not only emotionally but spiritually. I groan to think of Chase not with me in heaven. The thought burns a hole in the center of my chest, and if I could have one thing, it wouldn’t be Chase’s embrace around me. It would be his embrace around Christ.
I smile anyway, touched that Chase is still ‘Chase-Me’, my next-door-neighbor hero.
Then, as I’m grinning at our past, our friendship, his smile fades and he glances away, at...a girl. She’s glaring at us with a possessive look that comes straight from the Isle of Amazon. And, in her strapless dress and buff arms, well, she just might be able to take me.
Especially with me stuffed inside the poppy affair, barely able to take a full breath. I sit back in my chair, and something inside my heart has snapped. Of course, Chase and Buffy the Amazon Queen, the perfect match. Why would I ever think that Mr. Anthropology, I-Travel-The-World, might return home for me?
Shyster. We had a deal.
Then he opens his mouth, and if this day could get worse, he shatters every last Cinderella dream in my ashes to dustbin existence.
“C’mere, Josey. I have a surprise for you. I’d like you to meet my fiancé, Elizabeth.”
Did anyone else hear that howl?
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