Chill Out, Josey! Read online

  “My brain’s not hostage,” I say. But all at once, I’m remembering the old Josey, the one who wore leather, and attended the Embassy ball, and sang karaoke at the Gray Pony in Moscow. I think the song was, “Stand By Your Man,” if I can remember correctly.

  “H. Focus!” I say, my tone more for myself than H. “I said he wants us to move to Moscow. Not Minneapolis. I did the G.I. Josey thing.” And I might add, I was expecting just a bit more understanding here.

  H hoists herself up on the hood of Chase’s truck, crosses her legs beneath her and pulls out another cigarette.

  “You can’t tell me you’re surprised. You knew this was coming. Chase is a traveler. He always was. You spent enough hours on the back of his motorcycle touring the countryside with him to know that.”

  Oh, that’s what we were doing? I thought I was just hanging on, glad to have a reason to wrap my arms around him.

  “I figured when we got married he’d want to stick around, build a life with me. We were going to buy a house, I’d learn how to make a pot roast, and Chase would earn tenure at the high school…” Even to my ears, those words seem…so Jasmine. H is right…I’m planning Jasmine’s version of Happily Ever After. Maybe it was seeing her holding baby Amelia, but in a flash of insight, I realize I don’t exactly know what Happily Ever After for Chase and I might be. I make a face and H nods.

  “Think about it. Chase has spent his entire life trying to escape Gull Lake. I think the only reason he ever returned was for you—and you ditched town for a former communist country, no less. Chase married the girl who can keep up with him, who isn’t afraid of chasing his dreams with him. What did you expect—that marriage would kill the adventurer inside him?”

  I close my eyes, let the night breeze calm my razed nerves. The last two days have been quietly agonizing, and intellectually demanding, with me dodging Chase every time he brings up the subject. Poor Chase jumps every time I enter the apartment—and it doesn’t help that, now that the jig is up, he’s lounging about in his cutoff sweatpants and muscle shirt, which is like a cluster bomb on my resolve. Our conversations resemble an old married couple with their hearing aids cutting out.

  Him: “So, Jose, about what I said—”

  Me: “Yeah, I’d like tacos tonight, also.”

  Or—

  Him: “We really need to talk about—”

  Me: “Discovery Channel has a special on Mt. Everest tonight.”

  So far I’m winning. But victory has never felt so bitter.

  Hence the last-ditch grab for sanity outside the Hungry Wolf. Remind me not to do this again.

  “Did you think about Chase at all when you married him?” H asks.

  Oh, hardy har har. Of course I did.

  I think.

  Really.

  But the longer H stares at me, the more I realize the truth.

  I thought about what Chase could give to me—strong arms, sweet laughter. Someone to face life with. But really, did I think about the real Chase, or just the Chase I wanted him to be? Did I consider for a moment what could I give him?

  No, not that.

  I love Chase for himself. Which includes the hunter-gatherer, adventurer inside him. But I think I expected Chase to be my knight, and for him to surrender himself in the process.

  But what about me? What am I surrendering?

  Chase Junior, My Denali. A dog named Boo. My dreams.

  But are they really my dreams? Or simply the dreams I think I’m supposed to have?

  “I can’t go to Russia, H.”

  She slides off the car, gives me a hug. “Now that you got the gold ring, what are you going to do about it?”

  H returns inside and I stand there, the car keys jangling in my hand. I blow out a breath and stare at the hazy covering of stars trying to remember if they are brighter over Moscow.

  My parents run a small resort/bakery/convenience store located on Gull Lake. It’s been in the Berglund family for two generations, and Jasmine and Milton are poised to take over the business when my parents decide to sell out and move to Florida. Roughly when they hit their late nineties. Don’t want to hand over the reins too soon.

  Meanwhile, Jasmine and Milton live over the restaurant in a cozy—read: cluttered and painfully small—one-bedroom apartment. Of course, the place continually smells of baked goodies: kringle, Danishes, brioche and Jas’s other concoctions. While I inherited some rare and remote wandering gene, like Bilbo Baggins, my sister got the full array of Berglund genes, including the baker’s thumb.

  I tell myself that this is a good thing. Just think of the damage I’d do to my waistline if I could actually create this stuff at home. I’m thinking this as I cut myself a healthy piece of almond kringle and slide it onto a paper napkin. Jasmine is sitting on the sofa, nursing baby Amelia, a blanket over her shoulder. Outside, it is a gorgeous Labor Day, with the sky a periwinkle blue, nary a cloud to shadow the traditional Berglund picnic Milton and my father are setting up on the grounds.

  “So, how are you and Chase?” Jas asks with a soft smile. “Any baby ideas?”

  My eyes widen as I wipe the flakes from my mouth before I choke. “What? No. Absolutely not.” And it’s kinda freaky that my two best friends have broached this topic in the course of one week.

  My sister quirks an eyebrow.

  Oh, that’s right. Jasmine and Milton were “trying” within a month postnuptials. But, the way things are going between Chase and me, well, I think it might be wise for us to straighten out a few things, like, if we want to live in the same country, before we go down that road.

  I take another bite of kringle. “We aren’t ready for children. We need to figure out…some things.”

  I drove by The House twice this week, by the way. The For Sale sign is still up. Mocking me. And once I even saw a tricycle out in front on the sidewalk. Chase Junior’s tricycle.

  Still, after my talk with H, I’m ready to admit that while my dream fits Jasmine, I’ve never been the stay-in-one-place type of gal. But isn’t that what a couple does when they get married?

  I’m so confused.

  “Like what?” Jasmine asks as she burps baby Amelia. I watch that little downy head tuck into Jasmine’s neck and another wave of longing surges over me. What is wrong with me? Chase and I can’t even agree on a television channel. We certainly aren’t ready to figure out how to raise a child together.

  I dive in. “Chase lost his job at the school.” Saying it obliterates my appetite. A loss, which I suppose is the one and only good byproduct of this entire fiasco. I wrap up the kringle, toss it in the trash. “When the paper reported layoffs at the school, I never thought Chase would be among them—I can’t believe he didn’t tell me.”

  Jas says nothing, but I see concern on her face. I hate the fact that I’m that transparent. Apparently I need to be more like Chase, The Secret-Keeper.

  “More than that, he wants us to move to—” the word stumbles for a moment in my throat, but when it emerges, I feel an odd exhilaration “—Moscow.”

  Jasmine stops midburp. “What?”

  I nod, staring out the window. Below, in the yard, I see Milton and Chase standing with my father. Milton already has a Berglund paunch, and is wearing an apron and barbecue mitts. My father has on his lawn-mowing overalls, complete with the grass stains and grease. And next to them, wearing his baseball hat backward and in a pair of jeans, a white Gull Lake Gulls T-shirt and bare feet, my hero. Is this the sign of things to come? How long before Chase has his own apron, his own shiny barbecue mitts?

  “You can’t go to Moscow, again, Josey,” Jasmine says, cutting through my silence.

  I turn to her, a strange feeling in my gut. I hate it when people tell me what I can’t do.

  “Why not?”

  “Because your life is here. In Gull Lake.”

  Funny, I thought my life was with Chase.

  Occasionally during Jasmine’s pregnancy, I dreamed that I, too, was pregnant. Maybe it was watching her expan
d from her petite size six to roughly the size of an award-winning pumpkin, but I found myself, more than once, in the middle of Gull Lake, standing in my underwear, my stomach so large I resembled an Oompa Loompa. And sadly, the pervading thought wasn’t how did I get this way? But…what would my mother think?

  I suppose the theme of the dream, then, wasn’t the pregnancy so much as the fear that my mother would find out. And that bad things might happen. It’s just that every major change in my life has been met with a full-out block from my mother, who missed her calling as a linebacker for the Vikings. She still has her ways of showing her disapproval, however, like reaching past me to hand the first helping of pot roast to Chase, or Milton. Or conveniently forgetting me when the leftover cinnamon buns are being passed out.

  So maybe it wasn’t pregnancy that made me large in my dream.

  Whatever the case, the dream again finds me, slinking into my subconscious and transports me. Only this time, instead of being surrounded by the Gull Lake Gazette offices, the local Blue Moose Café and the sound of seagulls, I’m barefoot and fat in the middle of Red Square with Lenin’s mausoleum looking shiny and black to the right, and the colorful church of St. Basil’s at the far end. Pigeons coo, their heads bobbing as they scatter at my feet. As I stand there, registering my surroundings, my hands over my ballooned stomach, panic swills through me. And it’s not because I’m pregnant. Or even that my mother might find out. But this panic is new, and choking.

  In my dream, I know Chase is not there. I’m in this by myself.

  I awaken wet and sweaty, my shirt sticking to me like cellophane. My Tasmanian Devil shirt has been in my possession since college, when I first discovered that I wasn’t required to wear Grandma Netta’s frilly polyester nightgowns. Taz and I made it through my four years of late-night papers and occasional lonely Saturday nights, then Taz hung with me during my stint in Moscow, my bedrock reminder of the true Josey Berglund during my ugly forays into leather. When Chase asked me to marry him, I paged briefly through a Victoria’s Secret catalogue—which I had to hide from nearly everyone I knew—only to decide that not only would a black silk teddy on me look as if I’m trying too hard, but that I’d spend a small fortune on something the size of a pocket handkerchief.

  And my Norwegian practicality kicked in and asked the obvious…why bother? In the end, I couldn’t justify the expense. Not if I wanted my two-story Cape, or braces for my two adorable children.

  Which, if Chase gets his way, won’t be happening anyway. I should have purchased their entire summer line.

  I blink to adjust my eyes and relief nearly takes out my breath at the form of Chase’s body breathing next to me. I put a hand on his shoulder, just to affirm the truth. Despite my less-than-enthusiastic response to his grand plans, he’s still here.

  He’s spent the day in Minneapolis, talking with the folks at WorldMar, going through a final interview. That fact that he went there without us agreeing on our final destination tells me: 1. He’s optimistic. 2. He’s desperate 3. He might go without me?

  No. Not that. He did return home, after all. Which means that I’m still in his life, and it’s time we had the Russia discussion. At least with real words instead of disbelieving harrumphs.

  I was in the tub, of course, when he got home. I heard him thumping around the kitchen, doing his typical acts of vandalism. I hid in the tub until pruned-over, then, clad in my Taz armor, I tiptoed out to the kitchen. While he sat with his feet up on the sofa watching Survivorman—a show that probably he should be paying close attention to when I leave him with only a nail clipper in the middle of Siberia—I poured myself a bowl of Lucky Charms and crept back into the bedroom.

  Exhausted, I fell asleep with his side of the bed cold and flat. Chase must have slipped into bed sometime after that.

  Cold and flat. Is this going to be my life? Chase and I agreed to this “till death do us part” clause, which means one of us is going to win this battle over Moscow. But what hits will our marriage take?

  Is this my Happily Ever After?

  I slip out of bed. Outside, the lake is awake, also, and tumbling onto the shore. I pad to the window, wrap my arms around myself, a sickness inside that feels as though something has crawled in my gut to die. Maybe my dreams.

  What if loving Chase isn’t about living my dreams, but rather believing in his?

  Except, Russia? When I’d gone to Russia a year ago, I had great dreams of changing the world. Of having orphanages named after me, biographies written. Maybe a parade. No, not really, but I did hope to change my corner of the world. Instead, I discovered that God planned to change me, and if someone else got saved, well, that was a byproduct. I discovered that maybe God could use a girl like me, even if I didn’t have it all together. That, in fact, He liked me, with my bagel and popcorn addiction, my occasional overtrying. I’d even go so far as to admit that living in Russia made me a better Josey. But now that I’ve healed…well, I’m not sure I’m ready to sound like a kindergartner—or worse—live in a high-rise, subsist on pig fat and potatoes and caviar. Call me strange, but I hate caviar. Little red fish eggs exploding in your mouth? Nearly as bad as eating a snail.

  I can’t go to Russia.

  This isn’t fair, Lord. I rub my hands on my arms, smelling the scent of a storm on the horizon. Hence, probably, why the waves seem to be trying to escape onto land. A welcome breeze drifts into the open window, lifts my hair off my neck. I cut it while in Russia, but it’s grown this past year, past my shoulders. For the first time in my life, I like it.

  Lord, this wasn’t in the plan. I thought we had this settled.

  Chase stirs and I turn, wondering if he senses that I’m not there, beside him. In the darkness, with the moon silvering his outline, he takes my breath away. I’ve been waiting for my Chase-me to finally catch me since I was fighting him for room in his sandbox. And he’s loved me since the day I skinned myself raw trying to beat him in a wagon race down Bloomquist Mountain.

  Once, as we sat on the shores of Gull Lake, feeding the water stones, I asked him why he loved me. He told me that it was because I loved him back. At the time, I wanted a list. Either of the following would have sufficed:

  1. For my brains

  2. For my great curves.

  But as I pondered it, I realized his answer would outlive my brains, the curves. He loves me because I love him.

  The only outstanding question, of course, is, what if I stop loving him? Since that will never happen, I suppose I don’t need an answer. I agreed to love him for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, for better or worse.

  I’m starting to realize that surrendering my Sunday night viewing preferences isn’t exactly the extent of worse.

  Russia.

  Here are my options as I see them:

  1. Inform Chase that he’s temporarily insane, open the want ads and convince him that a job making Blizzards at Dairy Queen is the perfect place to study American culture. Which isn’t so far from the truth.

  2. Call my mother and beg her to take Chase on as a lawn boy/dishwasher/maintenance man at Berglund Acres. I suddenly have a visual of Dad and his coveralls…. Okay, enough said.

  3. Set down ground rules and agree to a short but productive, and very temporary, relocation, with the firm agreement that we return to Gull Lake after a year to reassess—including the option to buy the Cape Cod from Carla.

  But what if my Dream House is sold by the time we return? What if Chase loves Russia, and wants to stay forever?

  What if something happens to my family and I’m stuck three thousand miles across the ocean? What if Chase decides he’s made a mistake and leaves me for a shapely Russian redhead?

  Where do I go for kringle?

  Probably I need some ice cream, or at the very least a bag of popcorn to mull over these options.

  I turn and tiptoe back into the kitchen. Open the refrigerator. My feet are cold against the kitchen linoleum. Bathed in the bright light of the refrigerator, I se
e a bag. From a bagel shop in Minneapolis. A lumpy bag.

  He didn’t, did he? I open it, and inside are a dozen bagels.

  Oh, Chase.

  Me smells a plot. I was in Russia. I can spot KGB.

  Only…it’s working. I close my eyes, and the fridge. Lord, not again.

  For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

  Oh not fair, bringing to mind the verse that sent me to Russia in the first place. Only, I can feel it, the tingling that starts in my spine and spreads throughout my body and should send me running away, screaming. The forewarning that says God’s up to something.

  And I’ll never be the same.

  Tears are welling in my eyes as I head back to the bedroom. The sky is turning the pallor of a Moscow pigeon on the horizon as I slip into bed next to Chase. I wrap my arm around his waist. He stirs and I lean up, whisper into his ear. “It’s only for a year, right?”

  He grunts, rolls over onto his back. I slide into his arms.

  “Promise you won’t leave me for a sexy redhead, alone and pregnant in Red Square?”

  I hear a muffled grunt of confusion. But as he tightens his embrace around me, I know he’s figured things out.

  I love him.

  And we’re going to Russia.

  Chapter Five

  #144

  “You’re doing what?”

  Now, the first couple of times I heard that, from H, then Jas, respectively, that response gave me strength, courage.

  But that same tone, that same question from my mother has me wanting to slink under the table where we were, until a few moments ago, enjoying a perfectly innocent pot roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, homemade rolls, a gelatin salad, and fresh green beans.

  Now I’m not sure I’ll be able to finish my beans.

  Mom turns to my father, as if Chase has spoken Japanese, and says, “Did he say they were moving to Russia?”

  Now, see, this is where I interject and point out to Chase that I was the one who said that breaking the news to my parents over Sunday dinner might not be the best idea. Not only would dessert be in jeopardy, but we have at least three more Sundays before we have to leave, and it’s the one decent meal we get a week. My suggestion was to wait until my aunt Myrtle, the publisher at the paper, called and told my mother I was quitting, and then to dodge mom until the day before our flight. And even then I wasn’t sure if I’d deliver the news in person.