A Stranger's Wish (27 page)

Yeah, right.
I watched with a sinking heart and thought of the times he had put his arm around my waist.

When Clarke and the girl reached his car, he opened the passenger door for her and assisted her in. He and she laughed together as she attempted to get the umbrella down and in without getting all wet.

Cute,
I thought sourly.
So cute.

Clarke climbed in his side of the car, and the girl turned to him. She threw her arms around him and kissed him happily on the cheek. Then she reached out and rubbed the side of his face, probably removing lipstick. He reached over and ruffled her hair. They drove away without a backward glance.

Waves of depression washed over me. I had thought—as recently as five minutes ago—that I was in the beginning stages of a most promising romance. Apparently I was the only one who thought so. I had leaped to a conclusion because the man looked at me kindly a few times and indicated to Nelson that he was my boyfriend—though now that I thought about it, he had never actually said those words. Nelson had. Clarke’d just been too polite to embarrass me in front of an obnoxious child.

I obviously was misinterpreting his intentions to fit my wishes rather than reality. A dinner with his aunt and uncle, two hospital taxi runs, a purse snatching, and a ride on a railroad do not make a deathless romance. In reality they didn’t even make a good friendship.

I walked slowly to my car, strangely satisfied that the skies were crying with me. I couldn’t help wondering if Ruth’s ordered life allowed for romantic misjudgments like mine. Had she and Isaiah ever had a misunderstanding of any significance?

Or was I just experiencing the “freedom” I’d been so superior about just a couple of hours earlier?

I began to sing “Greensleeves.”

Alas, my love, you do me wrong

To cast me off discourteously…

17

O
nce I had finally dragged myself to my car, I just sat behind the wheel, staring at the empty parking lot without seeing it. I was more than a little surprised at the intensity of the despair that twisted my heart. I’d known I cared a lot for Clarke, but the aching emptiness inside left no doubt that I had fallen a lot harder than I realized.

I watched rivulets of water slide down the windshield and thought melodramatically that I was watching my life slide away too, quietly, colorlessly, inevitably, disappearing into the gloom.

I remembered his hand cupping my cheek, his arm about my shoulders, his “May you be so lucky” to the lumpy Nelson. He had even bought one of my paintings. I sighed and wearily turned the key. When the engine of my sunshine yellow car turned over like always, I was strangely angered and offended.

“Don’t you realize that we’re broken here?” I whispered. My voice caught on the word “broken.”

The car’s mechanical heart didn’t understand, and the purring continued. I drove to a burger drive-through, where I ordered a cheeseburger and a Coke. When they handed me the food, the smell made me nauseous. I handed it back to the disbelieving boy and drove away without even asking for my money back.

Somehow I made it to Holiday House where, still enveloped in melancholy, I made my way to Mr. Geohagan’s room. I paused just inside his door, blinking against tears.

It took me a minute to realize that Mr. Geohagan was every bit as preoccupied as I was, but where I was drained, weary, and hurt, he was alert, all but sitting at attention as he listened intently to the man standing beside his bed. The man spoke to Mr. Geohagan in clipped, forceful sentences, and I was struck by the visual contrast between the frail old man in the bed and the tall, extremely thin man beside it.

“I’m sure you understand our concern,” the man said.

Mr. Geohagan nodded. “I understand the problem quite clearly, but as far as I’m concerned, you needn’t worry. Remember that something like this can affect me every bit as much as the rest of you.”

“That’s what I keep telling everyone, and I almost believe myself. Almost.” The man rubbed his fingers back and forth across his forehead as if it hurt. “You’re as involved as the rest of us; more, if the truth be known. You wouldn’t do anything to upset things for us. You couldn’t. But you understand why I have to ask.”

“Sure,” Mr. Geohagan said. “And I repeat: Don’t worry about me.”

The men’s eyes locked with unusual intensity, and I felt waves of hidden meaning roll over the room like hurricane surf.

“If you say I needn’t worry, Ev, I won’t,” the visitor said, but I heard reserve and uncertainty in his tone. “Your word has always been trustworthy.”

“And it still is.”

“There’s a lot at stake here.”

“I know exactly what’s at stake,” Mr. Geohagan said, his voice every bit as clipped and urgent as his visitor’s. “And as you said, I have every bit as much riding on this whole thing as you do. You can trust me, Bill.”

The man looked out the window, sighed, and turned back to Mr. Geohagan. “Quite honestly, Ev, they’re worried about you.”

Mr. Geohagan smiled sourly. “They are so thoughtful to be concerned about my health and the staggering costs of my care.”

“Costs? That’s not—” the man began, and then he stopped abruptly. “Costs?”

“Insurance only goes so far.”

The man’s jaw tightened. He gave a brief nod, turned, and strode from the room, his face angry and uncertain. He was no more aware of me than Mr. Geohagan was.

That’s okay, guys. You don’t need to acknowledge me. I feel pretty invisible anyway. Unnoticed. Unappreciated. Unwanted. Unloved.

My mother, strong lady that she was, always became angry at me when the melancholy part of my personality kicked in.

“I don’t care if artists are sensitive and emotional,” she’d say, finger waving in a most choleric way under my nose. “That’s no excuse for letting your feelings run away with you. You always assume the worst. You always know it’s the end of your world.” She’d make an unpleasant noise in the back of her throat. “Kristina, for heaven’s sake, get some backbone!”

Well, Mom, maybe tomorrow. Maybe it won’t hurt as much then.

But I suspected it would. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

When the tall man left the room, Mr. Geohagan had fallen back on his pillows, completely spent, his eyes closed, his breathing raspy and strained. He scared me enough to pull me out of my morose and myopic self-absorption. Suddenly my pain wasn’t the most important thing.

“Mr. Geohagan, are you all right? What can I get for you?” I asked, hurrying forward.

His eyes flew open and I saw fear there, desperation. “My oxygen,” he whispered.

I pushed the buzzer beside his bed and held his hand as we waited for the nurse to come. Holiday House had, so far, been more than I had expected, and the care had been excellent.

“You mustn’t allow that man to upset you so,” I said. “It looked to me like he was trying to bully you.”

“Don’t worry…about it,” he rasped, pausing to breathe after every two or three words. “I upset him…more than…he upsets me.” His lips twisted in what was supposed to be a sly smile. “And…I love it.”

“Why, Mr. Geohagan! I’m surprised at you!” I said it lightly, as though he had made a joke.

“I can be…a pretty tough…old bird…if I need to…be.”

His thin hand went to his chest, and his whole body heaved as he struggled to draw in the air to sustain himself. I found myself taking great gulps, as though that might help him. I felt as I had that day in the emergency room, when I was certain he would die before Harriet returned. This time he was going to die before the nurse came. I pressed the emergency button several more times.

“Kristie, will you…do me a favor?” His hand grasped mine with unexpected strength in spite of the barely audible voice.

“Shh, don’t get agitated.” I patted his shoulder. “Of course I will.” I tried to imagine the terror of gasping, of having lungs so impaired that they no longer could expand and contract enough to provide the necessary oxygen to the body.

“I need…some things from…storage.”

“What do you need and where is it stored?”

“A garage. The key.” He gestured toward the bedside table. “In the top drawer.”

I opened the drawer and took out the familiar key, its mystery now solved. A storage garage, of all things.

A nurse suddenly appeared and I backed out of the way. In a few seconds the oxygen cannula was in place under Mr. Geohagan’s nose, and in a few minutes he was breathing much more easily. While he rested for a bit, I sat and read the
Sunday News
—or tried to. My powers of concentration weren’t working very well.

“Much better now,” he said after about ten minutes, and then he returned immediately to the subject on his mind. “Now this garage. I rented it so I’d have some place to keep the things Doris and I had. When I sold our house, I just couldn’t bring myself to throw my whole life away. I felt dead enough as it was. So I stored it all.”

He paused for a minute to think.

“Bring me everything on the desk,” he whispered. “And everything in the left-hand file drawer.” I listened carefully as he described the garage’s location.

We both fell silent, he to rest, I to feign reading. When I looked up some time later, I found him studying me.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked. His voice, though far from strong, was much firmer.

“Nothing.”

“Ha! Don’t give me that. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you’re a bad liar?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

He nodded. “So what’s his name?”

“What?”

“What’s his name? A hound dog face like yours usually means some man’s been doing some dirty work.”

“How’d you get to be so smart?” I asked.

“Cathleen,” he said. “I learned a lot of painful lessons from her there near the end.”

I nodded. I just bet he did. I was silent a minute, thinking of her extreme response to a failed romance. I knew that no matter how much I hurt, I would always consider her way out no way.

“I don’t know that anyone’s actually been unkind to me,” I finally said. “It just seems that all the castles were as insubstantial as the air they were built on and all the happily-ever-afters were only in my imagination.”

He blinked at me.

“In other words, I read more into things than was there.” I shrugged, hoping my nonchalance hid the heartbreak. “It happens all the time, though not usually to me.”

“Well, any man who’d let you get away must be crazy.”

He was such a
nice
man. “You are very gallant, sir. And while I agree with your assessment of things, I’m still stuck with having to resort to a stiff upper lip and lots of prayer.”

He flicked his hand like he was brushing away something of no value. “I doubt either will do you any good. What you need is another object for your affections.”

Right. At the snap of my fingers another man not only worthy of my time but also interested in me would appear. “I can tell you haven’t tried to date recently. Nice guys are scarcer than hen’s teeth.”

“No nice guys at work? Or where you live?”

“All the men I work with are already spoken for, and I live on an Amish farm, remember? I don’t think I’d be happy married to an Amishman, no matter how nice he was. Culture and stuff.”

“They’re religious like you.”

“They’re religious, but not like me. Not like me at all. It’s works versus grace.”

“Whatever. Where’d you meet your last beau?”

I laughed. “Beau? Nobody’s used that word since the days of Scarlett O’Hara. And I met him at the farm. He’s the one whose car I bled all over the day I got bitten.”

“And you don’t want to resort to another physical ploy to get a new man? If it worked once…”

“This face can only take so many risks.” I felt my dimple/scar. “There has to be a better way.”

“Don’t you have a favorite bar where some decent guys hang out?”

“I’m afraid I’m more a church mouse than a barmaid.”

“Did this man go to church?”

I nodded. “It was one of the many things I liked about him.”

“You can’t trust men who go to church, Kristie.”

“What?”

“I mean it. They’re too honestly stupid.”

I missed his strange logic.

Mr. Geohagan looked exasperated at my lack of understanding. “They don’t lie on their income taxes. They don’t cheat on their wives.”

“This is bad?”

“They don’t speed. No, cut that one. In fact, some of them drive like they’ve got God sitting in the seat beside them. But they don’t take money out of the collection plate. I bet they don’t even take office supplies for personal use. And they don’t know right from wrong.”

I laughed. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit inconsistent? It sounds to me like you’ve listed some very desirable traits except for the last one.”

He shrugged.

“Okay, I’ll bite. Why don’t men who go to church know right from wrong?”

“Because they’re too dumb to know what a wonderful woman you are. That’s why!”

I luxuriated in his kind words. “Doris is a lucky woman.”

He smiled, self-satisfied. “That she is. But I’ll tell you one thing. She never met me at church. Never took me there, either, except the day we got married.” There was a strange pride in his voice.

“And I say that’s your loss.” I kept my voice light.

“My loss?” His voice was suddenly harsh. “Just tell me one thing, Kristie. What’s God ever done for me? And what’s He doing for your broken heart? Don’t you hurt, even though He’s supposed to be loving you?”

I leaned forward and took his hand again. “God never promised to keep us from the problems and pains that everyone in the world has. All He promised to do was see us through the hurt, bear it with us, and reassure us that we aren’t alone. That seems like a lot to me.”

He sniffed. “You suffer from low expectations.”

“Mr. Geohagan!”

“You’ll never convince me that God cares. Never.”

“Even though He gave His Son to die for you?”

“Rumor. Tradition. Lies.”