HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

PART 2

CHAPTER 7

DREW

FOR GOD HAS NOT GIVEN US A SPIRIT OF FEAR, BUT OF POWER AND OF LOVE AND OF A SOUND MIND. (2 Timothy 1:7)

            “I don’t understand,” I told Nancy as we sat across from each other, in a booth, in Bluebird cafe. “Who are you in love with?”

            She had recently begun waitressing there. When I showed up with a young lady who wanted to discuss Biblical doctrine, Nancy waited on our table. Although there was nothing romantic with Callie, my lunch companion, Nancy had apparently become jealous and deposited the glass of water I had requested onto my lap.

            About a week earlier, Nancy and I had shared a rather passionate kiss. But in the aftermath of the lip lock, Nancy had declared the need for time and space. I figured that was code for ‘thanks but no thanks.’ So as I gazed at her in the Bluebird café that afternoon, I uttered my confusion.

            Her head had been hung as if in shame. But after my question, it popped up and she stated heatedly, “You, you idiot!”

            “Oh, I see.”

            “That’s all you have to say?”

            “What do you want me to say?” I asked stupidly.

            “What do I want you to say? I pour my heart out, and you say what do you want me to say?”

            I almost made the mistake of saying you didn’t exactly pour your heart out. You simply explained dropping water onto my lap as love makes you crazy. Instead, I said, “I love you too, Callie.”

            “Callie! I need to get back to work.”

            She arose hastily, and in a panic I grabbed her hand. “Nancy! I love you, Nancy! You said love makes you crazy, well apparently it makes me stupid. Callie was a slip of the tongue.”

            “No doubt you’d like to have a slip of the tongue with her.”

            “Hardly! We met at her sister’s funeral for Pete’s sake! I don’t even really know her.”

            “By the way you two were talking it seems like you’d like to.”

            “To be honest, our spiritual interests line up better than yours and mine.”

            “Don’t be so sure about that.”

            “What’s that mean?”

            “Never mind,” she said, spinning on her heel and walking away.

            “Nancy,” I said, grabbing her hand again.

            “Drew, I need to get back to work.”

            I let go of her hand. “Why do opposites have to attract?”

            She laughed and it made me feel better. “I’d say it’s because the world is cruel. You’d say it’s because life’s a test.”

            “I suppose so.”

            “Well, I better go,” she said, spun around, and almost ran into her boss who was carrying a plate of food in one hand and a beverage in the other. Carol Snow was around sixty and had white snow hair. “Oh sorry, Carol. I was gonna grab a cart and bus tables.”

            “No you’re not,” Carol said with a sassy smile. “You’re gonna sit and eat some lunch with this fine young man. You saved my bacon today doing the work of two. I think I can handle cleaning up three or four tables.”

            “Oh, Carol, that’s okay. Drew was just about to go,” Nancy said, and then looked at me with what seemed to be a frightened expression. Why? “It’ll only take me about ten minutes or so, and then I’ll eat in back like usual.”

            “Nothing doing,” Carol demanded. Then she whispered into Nancy’s ear. Nancy glanced at me again and her frightened countenance only intensified. Then she shyly looked away.

            What was going on? I was intrigued. It was odd to see feisty and spicey Nancy look rattled. I said, “I’m in no hurry.”

            Nancy looked at me yet again. This time she glared, and her lips were pursed. Now that was the Nancy I knew. It also made me consider saying ‘I have to leave after all.’

            We sat at the same booth as Callie and I. Nancy was having some sort big salad with a baked potato. What was it with females and salads?

            “So talk,” she said as she chewed a mouth of leafy greens.

            “How lady like,” I joked.

            She obstinately stuffed more salad into her mouth, and more muffled than before replied, “You’re the one who wanted to stay.”

            “I want us to friends again,” I told her.

            “We never stopped being friends.”

            “You know as well as I do there has been a rift between us.”

            “There was no rift between us, and you know it. I pushed away,” she said so coldly I felt a chill.

            “Why, Nancy?”

            A fork full of salad hung between the plate and her mouth as she gazed out of the window. She spoke so quietly that I almost didn’t hear her. “You scared me as we got older. I had to go back into counseling because of you.”

            I was stunned! Very carefully I asked, “What did I do? I’d never hurt you.”

            “I know, that’s the odd thing. But the truth is, I shouldn’t say you scared me. It’s more accurate to say you made me scared of myself.”

            “Do you mean like self-harm?”

            “Not in the way you probably think. There are two things that disturb me when it comes to you.”

            “Well, it’s always good to hear you disturb people,” I chuckled.

            It was a relief to see her laugh herself in response. “Not what you probably think.”

            “Please enlighten me,” I said gently. “To be honest, your pushing away from our friendship hurt me deeply.”

            She looked horrified. “I’m truly sorry, Drew. It’s just, well, there are things about me you don’t understand.”

            “I want to understand.”

            She smiled sadly, but her gaze held fondness. “How can you understand me when I don’t even understand myself?”

            “How can any of us understand ourselves?”

            “You do!” she said incredulously.

            “I do?”

            “Yes, you do. That’s one of the things that disturbs me about you. But I don’t want you to think that I think that’s bad. It’s just that you always have this calm sense of peace. Ever since we were little. I’ve always been volatile, moody. I know you will tell me it’s because of your God, but for me that’s unattainable.”

            “I have to disagree. It’s very attainable.”

            She gave me a cold blooded killer stare, as intense as I had ever seen from her, and I’d seen plenty. My return gaze was mild. I loved this broken, feisty, damaged girl. I can still remember seeing her for the first time in school, that cute little ginger haired girl. She was a bit disheveled, a lot scared, but had a look of defiance in her eyes that was like a fence around her.

            After I won her over and got to know her, I came to believe that she and her mother had fled from something. Something terrible. Something that left a little girl picking up shattered pieces of an already broken life. Her mother was a big hearted woman, hard working woman. But she often lost herself in a bottle, trying to escape further from what she and her daughter escaped from.

            She snorted a laugh and looked at the table. “You’re something else. You stand up to bullies. You discover a dead body with an eerie calm, and then a few days later her twin sister wants to get together to find out what makes you tick.”

            “Just to be clear, Callie wanted to discuss the Bible and…”

            “Yeah?” Nancy interrupted, and I detected a hint of jealousy. A side of me like that. Proof I wasn’t perfect. “Then why was she gazing more intently at you than the pages you were pointing at?”

            “How were you doing the work of two people and spying on us at the same time?”

            She shrugged with an air of something between cocky and confident. “Talent I guess. What else were you gonna say when I cut you off?”

            “Just that it’s easy to stand up to bullies when my Irish twin is Jerry.”

            My brother was three inches over six feet, compared to my three inches under. His muscular arms were as big as my thighs. It seems he took after our father, the imminent Arlo Aldo, and I more or less took after our mother, Dr. Penny Aldo DMV.

            “Jerry,” she snorted. Nancy always had mixed feelings about my older brother. They were actually in the same class, with me a year behind. Maybe I was biased, but my brother is a good guy and an honorable one. But Nancy had a distaste for macho guys, and although I didn’t like to think of Jerry as macho, he was all man.

            “You never cared for Jerry just because he’s big and an all-around jock.”

            “Guilty as charged,” she shrugged. “But now that I’m older and wiser, I see clearly I was judgmental and unfair.”

            I had to frown. One of the things I heard most from Nancy during the time she was pushing away from me was us so called religionists being judgmental. This was the first time she made such a declaration about herself in my presence. But I didn’t want to go there, so I asked, “So you’re wiser? Hopefully you don’t mean Bud.”

            “Budweiser, funny,” she responded, but didn’t laugh. “I don’t think so, I don’t want to end up like my mom.”

            “I’m sorry, that was in poor taste.”

            “You’re fine,” she said with a reassuring smile. Then her face turned serious. “I need to cut to the chase. I want what you have. That peace, that joy. But I know you’ll credit your God. But I don’t believe there is a God of love. I can’t. I’ll never get past Him not being there when… when…”

            Nancy stopped talking and I noticed her breathing became rapid.

            “When what, Nancy?” She looked around, paranoid. I took her hand and said. “It’s okay, Nancy.”

            Her face calmed. “You have always comforted me, Drew. Just being in your presence. I can’t believe I pushed you away. I also can’t believe a side of me wants to do it again.”

            “Why, Nancy? I’ve always loved you as a dear friend if anything.”

            “I know. And the feelings are mutual. That’s why I need to tell you…”

            She stopped, so I pressed. “Tell me what?”

            “What happened to me before I came to Iowa when I was eight. But not here. Can I cook you dinner tonight?”

            “Sure.”

            She smiled uneasily. “It will maybe make up for you wetting your pants.”

            “I didn’t wet my pants, you did.”

            She gave a little laugh before her face grew solemn. “I just hope when I reopen what I try to keep securely locked, I don’t wet mine for real.”