Clouds (8 page)

“Why didn’t you discuss this with me before talking to our parents and buying a ring and everything? Doesn’t my opinion matter? And what about my dreams? You know how long I’ve wanted to go to flight attendant school. How can you treat that as if it were nothing, and put your dreams and aspirations ahead of mine? Haven’t we always been friends who shared everything with each other? Why did all that change? Suddenly you have to make all the decisions, and you have to have it all figured out, and you don’t even think about consulting me! How can you say you love me? You don’t even respect my opinion enough to ask for it!”

When Shelly stopped to catch her breath, the tears were streaming from her eyes. The boat was in motion, crossing the water, but instead of getting out of the truck and going up on top, the two of them remained fixed in the cab with the windows rolled up tight.

Jonathan jumped in the moment she paused and let loose with his own bottled-up hurt. “Where did you think our relationship was leading? You can’t tell me you never thought about getting married right away. I know you must have. That’s all I’ve thought about for weeks. Months, maybe. I planned everything. Everything! All you had to do was say yes! Why do you have to be so stubborn and insist on having everything your way?”

It was the worst fight the two of them had ever had. If there had been something for Shelly to throw at Jonathan in the cab
of that truck, she would have thrown it. All she had were her words, and she heaved them at him until it seemed there was no breath left inside of her.

The ferry docked. They drove home with the silence hanging like a noose around their necks. One false move and they would be choked. Jonathan parked in front of his house. He turned off the engine and faced Shelly. She let his stormy gaze rain its misery all over her. It didn’t matter. Everything was ruined. She was so mad at Jonathan Charles Renfield she could have slugged him.

His voice came to her across the openness on the bench seat that separated them. It was not a tame voice. “You know I’ll always love you,” he said.

Shelly didn’t answer with words. Instead, she did something she had never expected to do. In one movement she went from her side of the cab to Jonathan’s, and for the first time ever, she initiated a kiss. Not an innocent, gentle kiss like the ones they had strewn like wildflowers through their young love. This was a forceful, angry kiss, as if she were greedy to get back from him the perfect, simple love he had destroyed with his proposal. She kissed him hard.

He put his arms around her and tried to hold her, but Shelly pulled away with all her might. She caught only a glimpse of his face as she kicked open the passenger door and fled, but his look haunted her for months. It was as if she had cut loose his emotional moorings and sent him drifting out to sea without a sail.

What tortured Shelly the most as she sat in the now-tepid bathwater and let her tears cascade down her cheeks, was the shame she felt. She left home two days after that emotionally destructive night because there was an immediate opening at the flight school. She had started fresh in Los Angeles, as if Jonathan had never existed. The only thing that haunted her
was her impulsive, aggressive kiss. Never would she have guessed she had that kind of fire inside her or the audacity to assault her best friend with such a misuse of her passion.

She had asked forgiveness from God a hundred times. She had never asked anything of Jonathan. They hadn’t spoken since.

The only communication she had had with Jonathan in the last five years was a letter he had written her that fall. The return address was Boulder, Colorado. Apparently Humboldt hadn’t worked out. She had read the letter only once, very quickly, then stuffed it back in the envelope and buried it in the bottom of her box of mismatched sheets of stationery. She had never taken it out again, and she had never written to him.

Shelly pulled herself from the tub and placed her dripping wet foot on the fluffy yellow bathroom rug. Drying off quickly and wrapping up in her robe, Shelly went down to the garage and scanned the stack of boxes until she found the one she was looking for. She carried it up to her bedroom. Sitting cross-legged on the rug where the filtered light streamed in, bringing a chorus line of tiny, dancing dust fairies, Shelly tore off the packing tape and opened the box marked “Desk Stuff.”

Chapter Seven
 

T
he old box of mismatched stationery was halfway down on the right side. Shelly pulled it out and dumped its contents onto the floor. The last bit of paper that fluttered out was the envelope from Jonathan.

Shelly slowly ran her finger across his name and return address. She remembered how nervous she had felt the day the letter arrived. She had had some friends over and hoped none of them noticed the way her face flushed when she brought in the mail and saw the letter from Jonathan. Excusing herself from her friends for a moment, Shelly had gone into her bedroom, closed the door, and with shaking fingers, opened the envelope.

Now, on this quiet Seattle afternoon, Shelly once again went through the motions of pulling the single sheet of crisp onion-skin paper from the envelope.

Shelly blinked back the tears and read the poem again that he had so carefully copied at the bottom of the page.

T
HE
P
ARTING

Shelly’s response to reading the poem this time was vastly different from what it had been that evening long ago in her California bedroom. That first time, she had taken great offense at the words. She imagined Jonathan was having the last dig by saying through the long-dead poet that he was done with her and glad it was over. She had read between the lines that if they should ever meet again, he would act as if there had never been any love between them. The deepest sting of his letter had come when he said he considered her his best friend.

That was the day Shelly cut her memories in half and stored them deep in the treasure chest of her heart. The love she had for Jonathan, the innocent, pure, and true first love, went on the bottom of the trunk. It was as if she had pressed it down as flat as she could and loaded the rest of the trunk with the carefree childhood memories of growing up with Jonathan, the memories that carried no remorse. Then, when it became painful to look even at those, Shelly closed the lid and tucked the treasure box far away from her everyday life.

Now she realized that everything had changed when she came home to Seattle less than a week ago. That first day in her room, all the light memories on top had floated out the minute she opened that invisible trunk. Now, only days later, she finally allowed herself to free the very bottom layer. And in her examination of those painful love remembrances came the urge to read the letter for the second time in five years.

From this reading came new understanding. “Now if thou wouldst; when all have given him over; From death to life thou might’st him yet recover,” she read again aloud.

Was he trying to say it still wasn’t too late? Folding the letter and letting it drop to her lap, Shelly looked up at the ceiling and whispered, “Is it possible, God? Was I too stubborn or too hurt to see this before?”

The silent, painted clouds didn’t answer.

“Is Meredith right? Have I pushed people away from me? Has my urge for independence blinded me to others?”

The possibility was too sharply painful for her. She repelled it. All that entered her heart was the clear and life-giving thought that perhaps somewhere Jonathan still waited for her.

It was a fanciful thought, she knew, one that she kept to herself during the next week and a half while she moved into the Tulip Cottage. Right after moving in, she flew two days and stayed over in Denver to sleep between flights. It seemed a subtle torture to be so near Boulder, where Jonathan had lived when he wrote the letter, but not to have the time to drive there. Not that she knew what she would do if she did go there. See the university Jonathan attended? Maybe. Or drive by the address from the letter and picture what window he had looked out of as he wrote to her.

There was always the slightest chance that Jonathan still lived in Boulder. On a whim, Shelly scanned the Denver phone book in her hotel room. No Jonathan Renfield was listed. She called information for Boulder. It had no Renfields listed. Jonathan could be anywhere. He could be in Seattle, for all she knew. The only way to track him down would be to find his parents in the Bahamas and give them a call.

Shelly thought about asking her mom if she had the Renfields’ address on her Christmas list. But Mom would want to know why Shelly asked. Mom wouldn’t come right out and quiz Shelly, but Shelly knew the looks and that those looks would torture her for many months.

Those same looks had tortured her the first time her parents visited her in Pasadena. Shelly had explained very little to them about why she had turned down Jonathan’s proposal. She said she didn’t feel ready to get married, and since she and Jonathan were so close, it had to be an all-or-nothing relationship.
There wasn’t room for a casual friendship. Her parents seemed satisfied with her explanation.

If she brought up Jonathan now, they would definitely want more information. As much as her dad loved Jonathan, he would probably want to help her locate him and push them together again.

Shelly wasn’t ready for that. She wasn’t sure what she was ready for, but whatever it was, she had to think it through carefully. Jonathan could be married, for all she knew. Although she probably would have heard if he were. That kind of news always managed to get to her mom through the congregation.

While flying home from Denver, Shelly had a plane change and layover in San Francisco. She stopped in a bookstore inside the airport and found a book that fed her current interest. It was entitled
A Collection of England’s Best Poetry
. The piece by Michael Drayton was on the first page.

It felt good to land at SeaTac and drive home to the little Tulip Cottage that Indian-summer evening. Shelly and Meredith had made quick work of the move in and had been glad to see how large each of the bedrooms was. They agreed that the third bedroom, located in the loft, should be Meredith’s office. Mom gave them the old patio furniture, which they painted a fresh white and set up on the front porch. Shelly had a unique dining-room table she had made herself from a stumplike slab of wood and a custom-cut circle of glass. Meredith gladly turned her old, pressed-wood table into a potting table, which they set up in the tiny mudroom off the back of the house.

As Shelly’s Firebird rumbled down the short, gravel drive that led to their enchanted cottage, she noticed her parents’ Buick parked out front. It was almost seven on a Thursday evening. Shelly thought maybe Dad had finally come over to help them figure out the electrical wiring in the living room.
The ceiling fan insisted on twirling anytime a switch was flipped on—even the garbage-disposal switch.

Parking her car and pulling her small, black, wheeled bag from the trunk, Shelly entered the house with a cheerful smile.

“Anybody home?” she called out.

Both her parents and Meredith were seated at the table with a steaming bowl of pasta before them.

“You’re home!” Meredith said. “I thought you had a flight.”

“I did. Two of them. I’m back.”

“I never could keep track of your schedule,” Meredith said.

“You really should call,” Mom urged gently.

“Have a seat,” Dad said, getting up and offering Shelly his chair.

“That’s okay. I’ll grab a plate and set myself up over here by Mom. So, what are you guys up to?”

“We were eager to see your new place,” Mom said. “Meredith didn’t know your schedule, so we went ahead and made plans to come on a night that was free for us. We didn’t know when you would be home.”

“Well, here I am!” She sat down and helped herself to the pasta. Shelly had learned long ago the fine art of deflecting her mom’s gentle digs. “What do you think? Pretty cute place, isn’t it?”