Everything’s Coming Up Josey Read Online Free

morning.
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    The sun is way too bright this morning as I drag my body out of bed, wrestle a comb through my shellacked hair and somehow stumble out to the family sedan to go to church. Does my dad have to honk, alerting the entire neighborhood to my plight?
    I spend much of the pre-service warm-up—the organ music and chatter—reading the bulletin. I take note that there is a guest speaker today—Message: Building Tomorrows by Professor Monty Beecher from Moscow Bible College, Russia.
    I check him out. Because, well, I’m still single. Way single.
    He’s dressed like a missionary. Brown suede suit coat, dark brown suit pants and a nondescript tie, but he’s got thick blond hair and a tan, which means potential—
    Oh, good grief! He’s a missionary!
    Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m still feeling freshly flogged by the wedding, Chase’s defection and H’s accusations of cowardice, but when the Preacher Beecher says, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do,” it gives me another good jolt. His words feel like a custard-filled Bismarck, gooey and soft on my soul. I’m even willing to call it divine providence.
    So, I sit up in the pew, suddenly awake as I listen to Mr. Missionary outline his English program. “We need teachers,” he says to the audience, and looks at me.
    I can teach. I taught Chase how to sneak into the back entrance of our bakery, right? I taught my sister the books of the Bible song. Once I even taught a kid I barely knew how to tie a bowline knot.
    Hey, he thought it was cool.
    I leave, but I feel butterflies in my stomach. I decide it is courage….
    Not hunger.
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    â€œA missionary?”
    There is way too much panic in my mother’s voice.
    â€œYes. Didn’t you hear the speaker this morning?” I’m scraping gravy into an empty orange juice can, feeling like I have eaten a buffalo instead of a roast, mashed potatoes, rolls, gravy, salad, Jell-O and apple pie. Okay, I admit it—I over-committed! First benefit to moving to Russia? Starvation.
    â€œHoney, you have a job.” My mother squeezes in beside me to throw a wadded handful of napkins away. She, of course, inherited all the thin genes from her Scandinavian father. “Why would you want to throw that all away?”
    It is probably a moot point that the best part of my job is that I get free coffee from the Java Cup. Mom, who still runs Berglund Acres as head cook, who bakes her way to a blue ribbon at the state fair every year, who has published three recipes in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, can’t possibly understand what it means to feel…insignificant.
    I retreat to my room with a piece of wedding cake. I cut it big, too. No need for pleasantries now that the crowd is gone.
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    Dear God:
    Just wondering if this is it. A missionary? Yes, I admit it hit me hard. But that was before lunch and now I’m just thinking that maybe it was just orange juice on an empty stomach. A sugar high.
    Still, the tall, good-looking missionary with rich green eyes said, “I need you.” Okay, he said it to the audience, but I heard it. I can teach English, right? I mean, I know it. I’ve spoken it for nearly twenty-four years. How hard can it be?
    And, while we’re chatting, what’s with the Chase engagement? I know I never voiced it, but I’m saying it now. He’s mine. He asked me first. So, what’s with Buffy? I am not finding this funny.
    It hasn’t escaped me that I’m finding it easier to get over Milton than Chase. How sad it that?
    Maybe Moscow, the other side of the world, is exactly where I should be right now.
    I lay down my pen and tuck my nose into the journal, feeling the smooth pages cool my forehead. Russia? Okay, maybe it was indigestion, initially, but as I roll the word around in my brain, it fills the nooks and