Judy Baer - Million Dollar Dilemma

“You and Ben have been like my own father and mother in so many ways. You were there for us when our parents were away, foot soldiers right there in the trenches with us.”

“I never considered raising you two a war, dear. Of course, there were a few skirmishes.”

I winced, hoping she wasn’t thinking of that time Jane and I were so determined to play with the same doll that we pulled it in half. Or that nasty incident with the scissors while we played beauty shop. Of course, that did work out in the long run. Jane still wears her hair in a bob.

I heard a knock and a voice in the background on Mattie’s end of the line. Then she said, “Can I call you back, dear? I’ve got company.”

“Don’t worry about it, Gram. Call me when you aren’t busy.”

Because I certainly won’t be.

It should be the other way around. I should be telling my grandmother how to adjust, not vice versa. She has taken to city life like a duck to water. Mattie turns down invitations from Jane and me because her social life in the assisted living center is so busy. While Mattie is enjoying her social whirl, I already have all my photos in photo albums and my recipes typed nicely and filed in a box. I’m going to alphabetize the spices and the cleaning products next, then refold the bath towels in a new configuration I saw in Good Housekeeping. I’ve even started to iron.

The phone rang again. Twice in a day. A new record. I picked it up without checking the ID, only to hear “Are you ready to come home yet?”

The familiar, proprietary voice set my teeth on edge. “Hello, Ken. How are you?”

“Don’t play games with me, Cassia. I miss you and I know you miss me. You can be here in time for the spaghetti feed before the baseball game tomorrow if you pack tonight. What do you say?”

“I’m fine, thank you. How nice of you to call. Now, if you’ll just excuse me…”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry I jumped into it like that, but you are driving me crazy, darlin.’You don’t belong in Minneapolis. You belong in Simms with me.”

I could just see him, hair the color of ripe wheat buzzed into submission, that intentional three-day stubble of beard that so many men wear these days, pristine white T-shirt with tight sleeves stretching over refined biceps. I could imagine his even white teeth with a wad of gum lodged between the back molars and his practiced sneer, an expression he hoped looked just like Elvis’s. A fine specimen of a man he is, even if Ken thinks so himself.

“You don’t need me in Simms. The game will go on without me.”

“So will the Twin Cities.”

“We’ve discussed this a dozen times….”

“And you never get it quite right. I love you, Cassia. I want you here with me.”

“But I don’t love you. Not like that…”

“Sooner or later you’ll realize that love isn’t about hearing bells and being swept off your feet. Love is about the time you’ve put into the relationship, the history you share.”

But I want bells. I want to be swept off my feet. Besides, this romantic deductive reasoning comes from a man who considers venison, codfish and sauerkraut gourmet foods.

“Then you should love your pickup truck and your dog, Boosters, very much. I know how much time and history you all have together.”

“I can see this wasn’t the right time to call.”

Finally, a glimmer of intuition on his part. I’d practically hit him over the head to make him understand that I wasn’t going to fall in love with him, but Ken refused to take no for an answer. His persistence had made him an unlikely success in the construction world, and the business he based in Simms had flourished across the state. Apparently when something worked once, Ken figured it would work again.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he says, not realizing that there’d really never been anything between us to fix. But we had dated—showed up at the same places within twenty minutes of each other, actually. In Simms that counted for something. “Sooner or later you’ll have to realize that I’m not coming back to Simms to be your wife. I can’t be much clearer than that.”

“Sure, that’s what you think now, but you’ll come around.” Gum snapped loudly in my ear. “Hey! The guys are here. Gotta go. We’re going skeet shooting at the gun club tonight. You hang in there, babe. Love ya. Bye.” And the phone went dead.

My left temple pulsated and the pounding in my head increased. That conversation had been a total waste of time. Ken hadn’t believed—or even heard—a word I’d said. He is so convinced that the city is an immoral and inhospitable place to live—and that Simms is as close to Eden as one can get on earth—that he thinks I’ll wake up sooner or later and scuttle my little self back to paradise. And he’ll be waiting with a told-you-so grin on his face and his latest big showy house, ready to carry me across the threshold.

“I’ll build you anything you want, Cassia,” he’d told me. “You name it—ranch, two-story, Colonial, saltbox, even contemporary. As many bedrooms as you want and a bathroom in every one of them. I’ll put a fireplace in every one, too. You want a pool? Fine. A bowling alley? I’ll see what I can do. I’ll even build a place for your grandma so she can be back in Simms and close to you. Won’t she love that?”

If money or prestige had mattered even a whit to me, it might have been tempting, but grandiose displays of wealth turned my stomach. If Ken had offered to give away some of that money to help others, then maybe…

But he hadn’t. He’s a good man, but it probably wouldn’t occur to him. He looks at the world in terms of dollars per square foot, concrete blocks per basement and the distance between two rafters. That, more than anything, made me sure I could never fully love him. Now I felt more empty and isolated than ever. Mattie was busy, Ken was being obtuse and Jane was doing who-knows-what. And I was all alone.

I built myself up for a great pity party and was planning the exact moment I’d open the Chunky Monkey ice cream in my freezer—should it be before or after I finish the Oreos and the fruit salad? Then a cold, wet nose nudged itself into my palm. Beady black eyes peered at me through a fringe of taffy-colored bangs and a raspy tongue laved my hand.

I knelt and took my dog’s gigantic fluffy head in my hands. “You’re my best buddy, aren’t you, sweetie? I don’t need anybody else when I’ve got you. How about a brushing?”

Unfortunately facing an evening of dog brushing and eating two quarts of Black Persimmon Surprise fruit salad didn’t exactly fill my social calendar.

“The city isn’t that much different from Simms, Winslow. I’ll do exactly what I always did in Simms when I was in the doldrums. Remember how we’d take a plate of Mattie’s cookies to the neighbors and have a visit?” But I didn’t have any homemade cookies. I would have to make do with what I had on hand.

I wondered how Adam Cavanaugh felt about tangelos and persimmons.

I almost lost my nerve when I saw that the door to his apartment was open. I smelled frying bacon and heard the coffeepot gurgling. My cheery idea to be neighborly rapidly withered. After deciding that Cavanaugh was probably the last person who would want to see me, I decided instead to offer my salad to the people who lived on my floor. Unfortunately, no one was home. Adam’s was the only apartment in the building with any signs of life.

Pepto lay in the doorway like a palace guard waiting to attack anyone with designs on the king. I studied him from a distance, gauging my safety. One incisor hung over his bottom lip, and his mauled, droopy ear made him look like the feline version of a marauding pirate.

Still, the door was wide open and I could see Adam hovering over the stove in overlarge gray sweatpants and an equally washed-out red sweatshirt. His dark hair was damp, his feet bare, and if I had to judge by the sound of pans and lids clanging harshly as he flung them about, his mood was foul.