right up front where no one could miss it, was her collection envelope with “Fun Money” printed on the flap. More fun when you’re on the receiving end of it, I imagine. I stared into my now-empty purse.
“Sorry, Winslow, you’ll have to wait one more week for your pedicure.” I glanced at the framed photo on my desk of my enormous, taffy-brown golden retriever/Old English sheepdog as I spent the money I’d been saving for his trip to the grooming parlor. I named him after Winslow Homer, the painter who first used watercolors to paint significant art. Although Homer primarily painted the sea, one canvas, The Rustics, always reminds me of Simms, the place I still call home. Despite his pink, lolling tongue and patient, benevolent expression, Winslow won’t be happy about waiting. He’s almost as vain as Stella, and loves coming home smelling like doggy perfume and having a new kerchief around his massive neck. My ninety-day probation period can’t be over soon enough for me. That’s when I get a raise that will bring me out of poverty level.
Ever since I moved to the twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, I’ve been reeling from sticker shock. In Simms I could buy a great little house with a garden and double-car garage for a third of what I’m paying here for a diminutive, overcrowded second-floor apartment in a sixty-year-old building with as many creaks and groans as the retired ranchers who populate Fannie’s Coffee Shop on Saturday mornings.
As I slipped my five dollars into the envelope and closed the drawer, the phone rang. For me, terminally curious, ignoring it is never an option.
“Parker Bennett Manufacturing. This is Cassia. May I help you?”
“Can you talk?” The voice on the other end of the line was rich, throaty and full-bodied, like French roasted coffee laced with heavy cream.
“It’s five o’clock on Friday afternoon, Jane. You don’t have to whisper. The exodus from here started at three.”
I imagined my perpetually pleasant, five-foot-one-inch sister leaning conspiratorially into the phone, her bobbed hair swinging over her round cheeks and her brown eyes sparkling. I’m the “redheaded stepchild” of my family—everyone else has plank-straight hair that’s a lovely traditional shade of brown, and eyes to match. I, on the other hand, look as if I was sired by Henry VIII of England and birthed by Pippi Long-stocking, with my riot of russet curls and eyes the color of, according to my dad, warm caramel.
Jane is envious of my porcelain skin and oval face. I figure the accursed ginger-colored freckles across the bridge of my nose make us even in the skin department. We both, however, have smiles with teeth straight and even as a mile’s worth of fence posts across the South Dakota prairie.
“I didn’t want your boss to think you took personal calls during working hours. Proverbs 15:3, you know.”
The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good. Jane and I had listened so often to our grandfather’s sermons and pithy homilies that as kids we’d started referring to our own life experiences by book, chapter and verse. Just the mention of Proverbs 12:24 can make me shorten my coffee break and get back to work.
Hard workers will become leaders. But those who are lazy will be slaves.
“Are you taking Grandma home to Simms this weekend, Cassia? I forgot a sweater there on my last trip. I’d like you to pick it up if you go.”
No way. I’d just escaped from Simms, and had no immediate desire to go back. “There’s nothing to do there except to check the basement for mice and kick the furnace. Grandma Mattie isn’t interested in the long trip, and the neighbors are looking after things. I thought we’d wait until Mom and Dad come for a visit.”
Their vacation is months from now.
“What about Ken? Don’t you want to see him?”
Talking to my sister on the phone is very frustrating. I prefer to do it in person so she can see me glaring menacingly at her. Jane’s a busybody, pure and simple. “I’ve said it a dozen times. I’m not seeing Ken anymore.”
“Does he know that?”
“I’ve told him often enough. Of course, I’ve told you a number of times, too, and you keep bringing up the subject.”
“Touchy, touchy. Did I hit a nerve?”
“I only have one nerve left and you’re on it. You know perfectly well that Ken and I were just…convenient. Two single people in a small town. We were invited to the same parties so often that someone decided we were a couple, that’s all.” Unfortunately no one in Simms believed that we were only friends, not even Ken.
“Maybe that’s true for you, but I think Ken has a slightly different perspective.”
“It doesn’t matter. Ken and I are done.”
“Just checking,” Jane said infuriatingly. “I’m glad to hear you’re hanging tough with him. He’d have already marched you down the aisle if he had his way.”
“I know. The story of my life. I never find my Mr. Right, but I have an entire army of Mr. Slightly Wrongs beating on my door. Ken is waiting for me to get lonely in the big city, realize what a ‘good thing’ I’ve got in him and come running back to Simms to marry him.”
“And pigs will fly!” Jane knows full well my attitude about the subject, but feels it’s her sisterly duty to check my emotional temperature once in a while. She never realizes how many times she’s the one responsible for raising it into the danger zone.
“I suppose it wasn’t quite that bad…”
“Hah! Don’t try to pretend with me, Cassia. You only went to Simms because Gramps needed a temporary church secretary. Three months, tops, he told you. If you’d known you’d have to put your master’s degree on hold and quit your job at the preschool to help Grandma care for him for eighteen months, you might not have been quite so willing to help out.”
“No one knew how ill he was, Jane, least of all Gramps. None of us had any idea that Grandma Mattie and I would be taking care of him until he died.”
“Of course not, but I’ll bet if Ken offered you a million dollars, a mansion overlooking the James River and a fleet of servants, you wouldn’t go back now.”
Actually, he had offered me that. I’d just never mentioned it to Jane because I didn’t take him up on his proposal.
“Ben and Mattie needed me, that’s all that’s important. Besides, I’m not much interested in money. You know that. All Winslow and I need is food and shelter.” I glanced at Stella’s desk. And enough money to buy gifts for my coworkers.
“Oh, Cassia. You’d be contented in a tree house if you thought that was what God wanted for you. You’re the least materialistic human being on the planet.”
I propped the phone beneath my chin and removed the clip from my hair. I felt it cascade down my back in ringlets like cooped-up children let out for recess, and ran my fingers through my curls with relief.
“No one in our grandfather’s house dared to be acquisitive. Jane, you and I were the only two children in school who were afraid of our own allowance.”
“Speak for yourself. I, at least, could suppress my guilt and spend mine, guilty as it made me feel. You’d put yours in the offering
