The ring was painfully tight. Bonnie loved the cathedral setting and the round cut of the diamond. It was simply the wrong size. Bonnie tugged and turned it in an attempt to regain circulation. Her fingers were on the bony side, so there wasn’t much to squeeze out of the way to remove the pricey jewelry. “You want it to be snug,” the saleswoman warned, eyeing Bonnie’s fidgeting, “because otherwise, it can fall off.” Fair point, but Bonnie really wanted to try a size or two larger to see whether they were also snug. She gave up and flipped her brown ponytail over her narrow shoulder, figuring the saleslady would retrieve the ring in her own time.
Tim, only a hair taller than Bonnie but at least 25 pounds heavier for his upper body strength, smiled all the way to his playful, blue eyes, reassuring her that they would work it out. She loved how simple things were with Tim, and she smiled back in gratitude. He was so relaxed, the opposite of her Type A personality. She reminded herself to slow down and enjoy life more because of his easy presence.
They were only getting a feel for her taste today and measuring her ring size. He would get the information he needed, or they would try another store. There was no rush leading up to this long engagement. Bonnie and Tim were seniors in high school, not even setting a wedding date yet. But when you were spoken for, you wore a ring no matter how long the engagement would be, Bonnie thought.
After a few more tight-fitting rings of the same size, Tim announced that they needed to go and would certainly come back another day. Bonnie guessed that he was only trying to get away from an unhelpful saleslady, so, while he ushered her into the Jeep his parents gave him after they’d run it into the ground, Bonnie asked, “Where to next?”
Tim apologized, “Sorry to cut it short, but we’ll do it again another day.” So they weren’t going to another jewelry store, Bonnie realized, watching him round the car and belted into the driver’s seat. Tim was his usual sunshiny self, but it appeared that he had been forgetful again. This was the down-side of being so flexible and relaxed about everything, Bonnie was reminded.
“What’s going on today?” Bonnie asked as he turned the key and waited for the engine to warm up. For all his laidback attitude, there was far more drama in all areas of his life, especially with his family, than Bonnie had going on. She could hardly keep up either, but it still annoyed her that Tim couldn’t keep his own life organized. It was demolishing her systems of scheduling and organization, and she really hated that.
“I forgot I needed to do some stuff for my grandmother,” he sighed, stretching as much as the steering wheel allowed. He had been pulling long hours trying to please the picky English teacher who advised the student newspaper, doing his part in student government projects, and opening his season in track and field. Bonnie knew that Tim was struggling to keep his grades up and make everyone happy. He had been so tired, even depressed lately. Bonnie missed his initial excitement for the relationship. He had seemed boundless in his energy, almost manic, but the honeymoon was over, Bonnie thought. Or maybe Tim just needed a break. She hoped the old excitement would come back. Anyway, picking a ring wasn’t the highest priority today.
“This is the same grandmother who thinks I should convert?” she asked with a laugh. Meanwhile, she kept an eye out for traffic, aware that she was distracting Tim as he backed out of the parking space. She took it as her job to be the extra careful one, since she was so Type A.
Tim had shaken his head about his grandmother’s attitude when he first told Bonnie, and it had been an inside joke ever since. Apparently, Grandma didn’t like Catholics. But Bonnie could never leave the Eucharist behind. She wasn’t converting.
It was subtle the way Tim held his breath instead of laughing along this time. Bonnie knew she should be worried, but she wasn’t. Old Father George had advised her to pray, “God, take this man away from me, if we’re not meant to be together,” and that prayer had filled her with peace unshaken by Tim’s reaction. She had pinned that prayer, handwritten on notebook paper, to the corkboard in her room with an Empty Tomb push pin. Easter was coming. She was seeing the prayer answered in this struggle, one way or the other.
“Yeah, she needs help setting up her singing Easter bunny and some other stuff around the house,” he explained, which sounded like the kind of project that Bonnie could help with, even if it was ridiculous. What wrinkled her nose was the feeling that Tim wasn’t thinking of her as a team member.
“Why don’t I come with you?” she asked.
It’s a long drive, and you’ve always got so much to do. Grandma would feel bad to see you working at her house. She felt bad asking me for help, but she’d really feel guilty if you showed up too,” Tim argued.
Maybe Tim just wanted to have the car ride to himself. Sometimes Bonnie liked to clear her head with no one talking at her. She dropped it in part because Tim’s driving prompted her to grab the handle of the passenger door, her whole body tense.
He pushed the gas at exactly the worst moments, sliding the car numerous times on the slick pavement of their small town. Living in the snow belt meant that most teens knew how to drive on the snow and ice, but Tim? Well, Tim constantly complained about how crazy his parents were. Among their faults, Bonnie listed the lack of driving instruction. Bonnie had offered to show him how to drive, and that … had been a mistake despite the fact that Tim admitted he probably needed help. In Bonnie’s mind, he had brought it up, so she had offered. Bonnie couldn’t wrap her head around how she had offended him.
Arriving at Bonnie’s house, he turned into the driveway on a slide, locked the brakes, and came to a stop after a sickening plasticky scrunch. Panicking now, he threw the car into reverse and backed away from Bonnie’s car with a lurch, lucky he managed to stop on his own this time. They jumped out as soon as his car was in park, slipping on the pavement until their boots found purchase on the crunchy grass beyond, and inspected Bonnie’s mangled grille and squashed bumper. The plastic painted in a metallic blue had some new cracks in it, but it was still attached. There was no damage to Tim’s metal bumper, thankfully.
Tim and Bonnie worked together through their bulky gloves to pop the cracked grille and bent bumper back into shape—as shapely as it was going to be with cracks in it. “Why doesn’t your dad clear this driveway?” Tim huffed, putting Bonnie on the defensive.
Taking a deep breath, she reassured Tim, “Don’t worry about it. It’s just the bumper of an old car. It’s fine.” Meanwhile, she internally debated how angry her father would actually be. It was possible that the “Be Patient – Student Driver” bumper sticker was holding together another crack, somewhat hidden beneath it. Bonnie hated that loud decoration, and now, when her car hadn’t been moving, she had needed it for gluing purposes and the reminder to be patient with … Tim’s driving.
Sighing, Bonnie calculated that she had enough savings to repair it out of pocket rather than file a police report and make Tim pay his deductible and deal with higher insurance rates. That would cost less of their money in the long run. Then again, Tim’s pride would prompt him to pay for it, if he knew she was getting it fixed, and Bonnie knew that Tim was strapped trying to pay for a modest ring, modest at her insistence because, again, she thought of it as “our” money. And they didn’t have a lot yet.
“You’ll be at Mass tonight to see me lector?” she asked, feeling vulnerable. She basked in the compliments for “really proclaiming the Word of God,” and she wanted Tim to be proud of her. When his face tightened and he shifted his weight from one work boot to the other, Bonnie had no doubts that she was a lower priority than Tim’s grandmother. That stung a little bit. But it would change after they got married and had children, she reasoned.
“Will you be back tonight to study together?” Bonnie was amazed to realize that she hoped the answer would be negative. It would be a relief to do only her own homework tonight. Tim had needed more and more help with everything lately until he seemed helpless. That wasn’t how he had been when they started dating. Maybe she had enabled bad behavior and changed Tim for the worse. She was certainly rolling past red flags, so she resolved to confront the issues when they both had time to sit down and work it out.
“I’ll probably be too tired,” he answered, confirming Bonnie’s suspicion that his homework would go undone tonight without her intervention, and he no longer valued her interventions. This was painful for many reasons, not the least of which was the fact that Tim might become a burden for life, if he simply chose to live off Bonnie’s hard work. As she played the video forward, she watched herself become frazzled and finally bald from the stress.
She examined the glow of the snow, pristine and relentless as the cold, hard truth, for answers. Maybe she just needed to wait out the rough patch, and Tim would thaw into her fun, lovable, more or less dependable Tim again. Or maybe she was delaying the inevitable breakup with a man so carefree, he didn’t care enough for Bonnie.
“We should pray now before you go,” Bonnie asserted. She rubbed her gloves together, made the sign of the cross, and then extended both arms, knowing that Tim would make her hands warmer than her gloves did.
His eyes skittered away, as though frightened off by the sign of the cross. It reminded Bonnie of the way a possessed character in a horror film had grown restless at the sight of holy objects or prayer. Then he took her hands and whispered, “I really should go now.” His grimace was full of regret, but he was still leaving.
She smiled, and they kissed. But her hands felt cold when she waved goodbye from the icy driveway. He had promised that he would never break up with her, and she had believed him. Why did it feel like he was pulling away?
“He just left,” Bonnie’s father called, voice thick with disbelief. He was wearing slippers with his jeans and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Not dressed for the weather outside, he only poked his head out the door.
“Yeah,” she answered, heart too heavy to care about the car, and then she realized that her father must have heard the accident. “The damage was all to the bumper. It’s just cracked. I didn’t want to make a big deal of it,” she said, deliberately making it her responsibility, so that her father wouldn’t be angry with Tim.
“It’s illegal to leave the scene of an accident without a police report,” he said, stepping back for Bonnie to enter and doff her outerwear. Bonnie could tell he had gotten up from his recliner to say this. “Is he coming back soon to help with the Easter dinners?”
That question hit Bonnie like a cattle prod. She never forgot about commitments! Never! But she and Tim had both forgotten their promise to help package and deliver Easter dinners in preparation for the holiday tomorrow. If Tim hadn’t cut short their shopping trip, she would have missed it herself, and her father would have been so disappointed with her. What was wrong with her? This wasn’t like Bonnie. This wasn’t how she had been raised.
“He had to help his grandmother with something, and she lives far away. I told him just to go, and that I’d work doubly hard to make up for his absence,” she found herself excusing him. She’d been doing that at school with his track and field coach, too. Tim had been too tired for a lot of things lately.
When her father only told Bonnie to be ready soon, nothing in response to Tim’s behavior, Bonnie relaxed muscles that she hadn’t realized were braced. She wasn’t sure why her father hadn’t told her to dump this guy. Maybe Tim was better for her than she realized, and her father could see that. Somehow, that didn’t feel right. Tim was wildly different from her loyal, disciplined father. Bonnie’s dad never failed in his commitments or made excuses, and he certainly wouldn’t leave her to make excuses for him.
Bonnie gobbled down peanut butter on vegetable sticks as fast as she could, still feeling famished after yesterday’s fast for Good Friday, and then packed a snack bag of chips in her backpack, in case she needed it later. Other than that, she was dressed and set to go.
On Bonnie’s arrival at the church basement with her parents, the dinners had already been cooked by a departing first shift of volunteers. Gradually, the second shift volunteers were shooing away the cooks, taking over the carving and ladling, and packing the food into sturdy, microwave safe boxes. Bonnie didn’t know many people by name, but one of her classmates, Luke, was there, tall and only beginning to fill out his limbs with muscle.
Luke had nothing like Tim’s bulk from weightlifting, but Luke did seem to be stuck in second gear. Bonnie shook her head to realize how different that felt from Tim’s carefree demeanor. Wherever Bonnie remembered seeing Luke, he had been focused and working hard, just never frantically so. He wasn’t involved in much at school, since he worked at the furniture store his parents owned in town. He got decent grades at school. He simply wasn’t over-committed like Bonnie and Tim were. Luke was steady.
Bonnie’s parents put on hairnets and took their assignment from the couple in charge. Luke, carving a ham nearby, asked Bonnie to scoop butter into mini containers. She nodded, happy to be given something useful to do, as she wrangled her ponytail inside her hairnet, certain that she looked ridiculous for a good cause. Then she scrubbed in and got to work, distracted by the thought that Tim might complain about the hairnets and orderliness of the kitchen, if he were here.
“It works like a mini ice cream scoop with a switch to release the scoop,” Luke explained, interrupting Bonnie’s thoughts while she acclimated herself to the little station.
“Got it,” she said, and got busy, latex-free disposable gloves bungling her every effort to be neat and tidy. The church only bought one size of gloves, evidently believing that smaller people could make large gloves work. She muttered, “If I ever run something like this, I’m getting a variety of glove sizes,” only halfway aware that she’d said it aloud.
Luke hardly ever spoke, so she was surprised he’d given her directions. He was always at these functions about providing food, she recalled, working hard in the background. This might have been the first time he’d ever spoken to her, though. And she had no idea what his parents looked like because he was an altar server every single week, never sitting with his family. Resolved to learn more about him, she turned to ask a question and was surprised at the grin he wore.
“What?” Bonnie asked.
“OK,” he said, as though making a concession.
“OK, what?”
“OK, we’ll get some other glove sizes next time,” Luke said, still in good humor.
Bonnie’s cheeks burned as she absorbed the nature and expanse of her error. “Those are your parents, running this, aren’t they?” she said, indicating the couple her parents had taken direction from.
“Yes. We’ve run them for years,” he said in another stunning revelation. It wouldn’t be a revelation if Bonnie read the bulletin and saw who the contact person was for the soup kitchen year round, but her parents always picked up a bulletin. Bonnie took highlights from the announcements she read, which always ended in, “See bulletin for details,” something her parents did for her. She really was self-centered, she realized, all caught up in her own things and not paying attention to anyone else. She said a quick prayer of thanks for the divine providence that brought her here, to help provide an Easter feast for others. Her schedule and priorities were a scattered mess, too much like Tim’s. She didn’t like it.
“I should have known that, I’m sorry,” she said. “I was rude. Please forgive me?”
Luke laughed. “Not really. I have to deal with actual rude people when I’m working at my dad’s store,” he said. “So I know the difference. You weren’t rude, just funny.”
“Who gets rude at a furniture store?” she asked.
“You’d be amazed. We had a family come in with hot chocolate, and when one of the kids dropped the hot chocolate while testing out a recliner, the family wanted to get out of buying it.” He shrugged by way of punctuation. His first ham was carved, and now he packed and pushed a box at her, pointing to where one of her butter tubs should go.
Complying, Bonnie commented, “I bet that got heated.” She passed the box down the line that evidently, she and Luke spear-headed. Luke’s parents pointed out where the next delectables were meant to land for people stationed further down the line.
Sending boxes more quickly now, Luke added companionably, “They called me rude and said that people in the business of furniture should have better ways of handling situations like this. It must happen all the time, they said. We nearly got the police involved before they finally relented, and Dad tried to refuse their check. He wanted credit or debit, but they claimed this was all they had. He called their bank before they drove off, and he had me writing down their license plate number, even though they had given a delivery address and paid for delivery. That turned into a separate episode of drama, since they weren’t home at the time agreed upon. I had to call again, rearrange delivery, and only succeeded because I surprised someone at home on the second attempt. In the end, I refused to haul away an old recliner, because I didn’t want to be charged with stealing it. They hadn’t paid for the junk haul, anyway. Selling furniture shouldn’t get that crazy,” he shook his head.
“You did that alone?” Bonnie asked.
“No,” he laughed. “I had another guy from school, Jason Baldwin, helping with the lifting.” Bonnie searched her mental directory of kids at school and remembered Jason Baldwin as a sophomore. Bonnie understood that Luke alone had made those judgment calls. It made her eyebrows do a little jump on their own volition.
Impressed at Luke’s experience and his mild reaction to it, Bonnie took a moment to process before asking, “Are you going to take over the business eventually?” She worried that it was too personal a question for someone she barely knew.
“I don’t think so,” he said, squinting. “I like furniture and helping people be comfortable at home, but,” he paused with a far away look on his face. “I just haven’t found what I’m passionate about yet. I don’t think I want to do furniture forever,” he said.
Observing his economical movements and work ethic, Bonnie suggested, “Maybe you want to open a restaurant.”
“Those are pretty risky,” he said, impressing her with the level of thought he’d put into it. Bonnie put up with so little planning from Tim, excusing him with the theory that he would eventually mature into adulthood with her. Now she wondered whether he was too far behind to ever catch up.
Pulling herself back into the conversation, Bonnie knew that Luke was right. There was a spot in town that changed hands every year or so in another attempt to keep a restaurant open on that corner. The town population could support a pizza place, a hole-in-the-wall fast food location, and a sit-down diner. The other spot in town could never get enough diners and always failed.
Her arms were already tiring from shifting the boxes to her right, and there was a mountain of boxes to go. Luke had only carved the first ham. Other hams had gone into the refrigerator. She didn’t know how long she could last at this, and she was definitely slowing down the line with her scoop for the butter. Luke surprised her by filling a few butter containers for her, getting her ahead of his slab of ham. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he offered, “But I am passionate about food. I think you nailed that.” After another pause, he added, “I wonder how long Mr. Gestwicki wants to keep running the grocery store before he retires.”
Bonnie had no doubt that Luke would ask Mr. Gestwicki that question in a sensitive and thoughtful way. It impressed her again that Tim lacked both the energy and manners that Luke was displaying here in the church basement. Most importantly, however, she wanted to know how she had missed getting to know a fellow Catholic, when religion was proving to be such a point of contention with Tim. She also wondered whether Luke might be more mature than she was.
“You’ll be going to college first, right?” she asked and then regretted her presumption.
“No, you don’t learn how to run a small business in school. Ask Mr. Gestwicki. His degree is in something unrelated like education or something. He took over the grocery store after he burned out on his first career,” Luke explained, very sure of himself.
Bonnie took a chance to suggest, “Sure, but there are some classes that could help you set up the math problems and ask the right questions to keep your business both useful and profitable. There are tax laws and employment regulations. Maybe you don’t need a degree, but the community college would be a great resource for some business-saving information.”
Luke stopped shoving boxes at her for just a few crucial seconds, allowing her to lid a container and drop a scoop in several more. “That’s a fair point,” Luke said finally.
His admission softened Bonnie’s heart in a familiar but forgotten way. She chewed on her lip, scooping butter while struggling to remember the last time she’d felt important and valued and heard. It had been in the early days of dating Tim, when he displayed unsustainable energy. For the past – how long had it been? For some weeks, anyway, Bonnie had been letting go of her observations and suggestions, knowing that Tim was “too tired,” and would plead “not right now,” unless she simply did it herself. They were going through a rougher patch than she had realized.
“Are you ok?” Luke asked. “You got quiet.”
Bonnie smiled, hungry to be seen and asked how she felt. “I was just thinking about something, that’s all.” Pulling out some rusty conversational skills, she found out that Luke’s family ran the food pantry for the church year-round, which incited his passion for food. He would even consider taking a nutrition class at the local community college in preparation for his grocery store. Bonnie knew why it felt dangerous to talk about what Luke wanted to have in his kitchen at home someday when he owned a house. This was some kind of ‘emotional infidelity,’ an offense against Tim, and the guilt settled into her, making her quiet again.
“I didn’t mean to overshare,” Luke apologized, taking in her somber mood.
“No worries,” Bonnie said, shaking her head. But she had a lot to think and pray about and hours of packing and delivering meals with her parents before she would get the opportunity. She made the decision to get to know Luke without straying into such personal things, and she enjoyed his company as a friend, certain that he was becoming that.
Helpers left the church basement with assigned addresses for delivery, so Bonnie and her parents had their route to cover on the way home. Many of the receiving families wanted to hug Bonnie and her father. Her mother stayed behind the wheel. Only one family asked for pickle relish to put on their ham and thought it was absurd that it wasn’t provided as part of the meal. Insulting and angry, they cut themselves off by closing the front door with a bit more force than necessary, then scowled through the window as Bonnie and her parents retreated. Bonnie wondered whether this could be the hot chocolate family. It was a small town, after all. A few deliveries later, and Bonnie was exhausted.
“You’ve been quiet,” Bonnie’s father, always observant, spoke aloud.
“I just have a lot on my mind,” Bonnie said, hoping that her father couldn’t read her thoughts this time, but knowing that he probably could.
Sure enough, he hit the nail on the head. “Be patient with Tim. Everybody makes mistakes.” And he mercifully left it at that.
Bonnie was amazed at her father’s advice. Just a moment before, she’d been certain her father would tell her to break up instead. Even now, she was sure that a whole lot of tension lurked just beneath the surface. It seemed as though her father had decided to put her happiness first. It warmed her heart again… and it highlighted all the more what was missing in her relationship with Tim.
There was barely any time to snarf down a hasty dinner of tuna sandwiches on toast. Then the family of three changed into nicer clothes for the Easter Vigil Mass. Now this was a tough one. Did vibrant colors of Easter belong at this Mass? Or should Bonnie wear darker clothes for the candle-lit beginning of the Mass? The priest would be wearing white, she realized, and she chose a dress printed with mini-flowers on a white cloth that hit mid-calf and had long sleeves. She would have to go bundled in a coat and accessorize the outfit with closed-toe shoes in deference to the slick, snowy streets and sidewalks. But she just couldn’t wear chunky snow boots as lector. She had standards.
Bonnie loved the candles, hushed silence, extra readings, and many “alleluias” of the Easter Vigil. Her reading was Isaiah 54, and she had Tim on her mind when she proclaimed, “The Lord calls you back, like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, a wife married in youth and then cast off,” which was exactly how she felt Tim, not God, had treated her. Tim had loved her once. He had run to her aid as soon as football practice was over just a few months ago to help her change a flat tire. Now, she was no longer a priority. She couldn’t even figure out how to get her tire iron to fit in the trunk again, and Tim was nowhere to be found. (She suspected he had accidentally exchanged his tire iron for hers, which would explain its change in size.)
Instead, Luke was listening to her proclaim the Word of God, sharing her favorite liturgy of the year, and singing off key, if she was picking out the right voice from the assembly. Tim always sang on key … when he came. He had stopped visiting her church long ago, even though she still visited his on occasion. They had once agreed that supporting one another’s faith was important. This didn’t bode well for a happy marriage.
When she reached the line, “great shall be the peace of your children,” Bonnie’s heart was convicted. She had to end her relationship with Tim, and it didn’t matter whether a relationship was possible with Luke. Maybe she would find out on Monday that Luke was seeing someone else. Her children, if she ever had any, would have no peace in a household run by her, while she covered for Tim. And it was surprising how little sadness accompanied that conviction. Praise God for answering the prayer that Father George had taught her.
Bonnie smiled shyly at Luke as she followed her parents to the car that night. Luke responded with a nod, somehow crinkling his eyes without really smiling. She would try to give him reason to smile soon, but she had to cut things off with Tim first.
Was it better to wait until after the holiday, she wondered and quickly decided that no, breakups hurt no matter when you do them. It only adds to the injury if you pretend for a while, and the breakup will still be associated with the holiday anyway. But she and Tim had plans with each of their families tomorrow. It was already too late at night to call. She reasoned that she would have to cancel their plans in the morning and then break up tomorrow evening. Just the thought of hiding this from Tim made her edgy, restless. It felt like lying.
Showered, changed into pajamas, and studying her Bible with a notebook at the ready an hour later, Bonnie knew she should go to bed soon, but she was too unsettled to sleep. She took a chance and fired up her computer to check Tim’s status on ICQ, their usual instant messenger program when they weren’t supposed to be on the phone. His dot was green—available.
Bonnie typed, “Are you there?”
The reply was delayed and appeared frantic with lots of deletes as he typed, “Yes, why are you up?”
“Lots on my mind,” she hedged.
He didn’t ask what was on her mind, so she volunteered, “I haven’t felt like a priority with you for a long time now.” She waited and didn’t receive a response, so she pressed further. “I actually feel kind of used. I know you’re going through a rough time, and I want to help. But I feel like I’ve been doing a lot for you lately, making excuses with your coach, doing your homework and that student government project for you… And then you don’t show up for things important to me like Mass tonight.” It would be unfair, she reasoned, to remind him now about the dinners they had agreed to pack together. She’d forgotten too.
As she waited, her fingers itched to type more, though. Her next line could only be the breakup line. She curled up on her desk chair so that her chin rested on one knee, the other foot still on the floor. She only had to wait a minute or two, softly tapping the foot on the floor like a cat’s tail. She let her eyes close just to rest them – they were burning. Then the ding chimed. She hadn’t realized her stomach was churning until it relaxed with the chime. No matter what Tim said, this had to move forwards toward breaking up. And that was a relief. Bonnie shook her head to clear the revelation, so that she could read the message.
“Hey, wait a second. Where is this coming from? You feel used? I’ve shared so much with you about what I’m going through, what things are like with my crazy family, my back injury and how much sleep I’m missing while I’m in pain, and you come along now to call me a burden?? Thanks a lot! You’ll never know how much courage it took to ask for help. I will never ask for your help again. You don’t have to worry about that. I won’t let you help me.”
Bonnie’s eyebrows raised further with each line, chiming in sentence by sentence. She mentally added the punctuation, but she couldn’t make sense of where the word “burden” had come from. Where had the word “priority” gone? He was her priority, but she was not his. Her poor stomach tightened like she was trying on Scarlett O’Hara’s corset. She set her elbows on the desk and rubbed her temples, willing herself to think this through with maturity. “Guardian angel, any words of advice?” she whispered.
“You won’t let me help you again? That sounds like we’re breaking up. That’s the only way you could ever permanently refuse my help,” she typed, hoping they could agree mutually to a breakup.
“I’m considering it,” he replied. The sting of another broken promise, the promise that he would never consider leaving her, brought tears to Bonnie’s eyes. This had all been such a waste. Her only choice was to cut her losses before they piled up any deeper.
But he was only considering it. Of course he would drag his heels on breaking up just like he dragged them lazily on every other recent activity. Bonnie would have to do this one last thing for him, it seemed, whether he wanted her help or not.
“You are breaking up with me,” she asserted. Bonnie really didn’t want to hurt him, but they had to break up. “That’s the only way you could live your life without my interfering help. You are.”
Maybe that would do it.
“I’m still fighting for us! Maybe you’ve given up, but I’ve been fighting for us. My grandmother told me to think twice about you, because you’re Catholic, and you have no idea what it’s costing me to go against her. Now you’re calling me a BURDEN?” he shot back.
“She’s the one who taught you to pray, read your bible, and be a Christian,” Bonnie explained for him. She wasn’t irritated that Grandma was important to Tim. She was irritated at having to compete with Grandma. She was ready to give up and just lose already.
“Yes,” was all he wrote back.
It seemed impolite yet practical to suggest that Tim marry his grandmother. “OK, it will solve a lot of problems if you find someone your grandmother approves of,” she settled on. “I’m not it, and I’m adding stress to your life. This isn’t working. We’d better go our separate ways.” Bonnie held her breath, waiting for the reply. Tim logged off without writing a thing. Bonnie breathed a sigh of relief. He must have finally agreed with her. They managed without much drama, almost like adults. And when she woke up in the morning, it would be Easter.
Glazing up at the Empty Tomb push pin on her corkboard, she whispered the prayer handwritten on a torn piece of notebook paper, held fast by that pin: “God, take this man away from me, if we’re not meant to be together.” She snorted about the Easter theme of the pin and the timing of God’s response. And she considered taking it down now that the prayer had fulfilled its purpose.
Luke’s face came to mind, though, so she dropped her hand. Shaking her head, she resolved not to fly by so many red flags again. Before considering an engagement, she would insist on being someone’s first priority after God. And she would not be ignoring fun facts he admitted like having only one sane member of his whole family, especially if that relative was set against her. There were a lot more resolutions to be made, but they seemed silly with Luke in mind. He was nothing like any of that.
Reading the prayer again, she realized that she’d written it without mentioning Tim by name. It was easy to leave the prayer pinned, just in case she needed it for a relationship with Luke. Actually, just in case, she started praying it preemptively. The prayer filled her heart with joy and further thoughts about Luke.
Her computer, still humming away from the instant messenger conversation, alerted her of an incoming email. So Tim had signed off ICQ only to continue the conversation a different way. Bonnie guessed he had sent an email in order to slow himself down and maybe her response as well. He was always dragging his heels. Resigning herself to whatever it was, she glanced over it once, twice, and then a third time. But she still couldn’t believe the brief contents.
Tim called her an “apostate” on account of being Catholic, admitting that he had only recently “learned” this about Catholicism. He was “worried” about her salvation, and wanted her to look at the same websites he had “learned” from. No wonder he hadn’t wanted her to reply before thinking about it.
So this was the reason for his stress, depression, absences, failing work ethic, and distance from Bonnie. This might even have been a factor in today’s car wreck. He was hiding things and convinced that his girlfriend was going to hell. Should she look at the websites or just get some sleep? Bonnie’s foot stopped tapping as she considered.
She did click it, and the argument was long. Very long. She observed that it began with interpreting First Corinthians 15, but she could only manage to mark that passage in her Bible for tomorrow. It could wait. Someone mentally and emotionally draining had exited her life, and Jesus was risen. Alleluia. She would pray for Tim and thank God. And she would wrestle with his accusations some other day.
There was a knock at her bedroom door. “Yes?” The door cracked open just enough for Bonnie’s dad to peer in, a worry scrunching his forehead.
“You’re still up,” he said.
“I broke up with Tim,” she announced with a wrinkled nose, not sure how her father would take it.
“How come?” he asked with no heat in the question, only interest.
Bonnie powered down her computer. “A lot of reasons, but I think the real cherry on top came after we broke up. He thinks Catholics are going to hell. Quite a change of mind from when we first met.”
“He’s unstable,” her father confirmed, echoing her own thoughts. “You dodged a bullet.”
“You knew?” And Bonnie observed her father pulling his face back, as if expecting an attack. Maybe the question had been too forceful. “Why didn’t you just say so?”
“You were ring shopping. What would that have done to our relationship? You would have been all the more determined to stay with him,” her father argued.
She considered it. “Maybe. But I think I might have listened. And my car might not have taken a hit today,” she added.
He smiled and tilted his head to one side in concession. “You’ll be better at recognizing the warning signs for yourself now. You deserve better. Only the best for my daughter.” He gave her a smile and asked, “Are you ok?”
“Weirdly, yes,” she said. She really was ok, and there was no accounting for the change in her heart, except that God had answered her prayer.
“OK. Get some sleep, sweetheart. I love you,” he said.
“You too.” And he shut the door with a click. After slipping into bed, Bonnie read her Mass reading from Isaiah one last time before turning off her bedside lamp. “Lord, send Tim’s guardian angel with a prompt to research other possible interpretations of Saint Paul. I don’t need to have Tim back. But please don’t allow him to spread condemnation about his fellow Christians. I don’t want him to have to answer for that when he meets you face to face. Be merciful, and help him to see that we’re all on the same team here.”
Whispering that into the darkness, she left it there and made the sign of the cross with her eyes already closed. Bonnie fell into a deep, restful dream starring Luke, the most dependable teammate Bonnie had ever met, pushing boxes of food at her as a service to others. Steady, solid, hard-working, kind, and everything she wanted on her team. Bonnie woke up Easter morning wanting to see Luke again as soon as possible.
To be continued…
***Dear Reader, if you love Luke and Bonnie, pick up a copy of Collared featuring them as adults. Bonnie becomes the Catholic school principal, and Luke does get his grocery store in the same small town they grew up in, Limekiln, New York.
Stay tuned for future blog posts with more behind the scenes stories about your favorite characters.
As always, thank you for reading! And HAPPY EASTER!!!***
