Saving Thomas

by A. L. Moore

  “Look, honey, maybe we should’ve run it by you first, but he sounded like he really needed the work,” Daddy started.

  “Oh, she’ll be fine,” Mama interrupted. “They were kids back then.”

  The fork fell from my hand, hitting the table with a loud clatter. “Who?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. There was only one person who would’ve warranted Daddy missing work.

  “Thomas.” The moment Daddy said his name, I could see Thomas’s face as clear as if he'd magically appeared in the room with us. My mind had stored it to perfection, as good as any camera. That happened when I thought about something a lot, and I’d never thought about anything as much as I'd thought about that boy. “He’s going to be staying with us for a time,” Daddy went on. My mind was years away, basking in the heat of the summer that had robbed me like a thief in the night, stealing the very things that had made up my dreams as a girl. My first stomach fluttering butterflies. My first real kiss. My first love...

  “Did you hear me, Breelynn?” I heard Daddy ask. Katy kicked me under the table bringing me back to the present.

  “Did he…” I trailed off, too embarrassed to ask my original question. He probably wouldn’t have mentioned me if he was trying to get work. “Did he call you?”

  “It was just as surprising to me,” Daddy said, though that was impossible. “His voice was the last one I'd expected to hear on the other end of that line. I barely recognized him.”

  “Did he say anything else?” Katy hedged, taking the question right out of my mouth.

  “Just that he was down on his luck and could use some work,” Daddy said. “I can still call him and retract the offer if it’s going to make you uncomfortable, Breelynn.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mama answered for me. “She was barely fifteen years old back then. We aren’t going to turn down good help because of puppy love.”

  “Breelynn?” Daddy asked again.

  “She’s right,” I said, my chair scraping against the wood floor as I stood, clearing the empty plates and taking them to the sink. “That was a long time ago.”

  I refused to discuss it while Katy and I washed the dishes, despite the meaningful glances she shot my way. I couldn't, not here in front of Mama. Drying my hands and returning the dish towel to the counter, I walked robotically back to my room and fell face first on the bed. My mind raced through years of memories, causing the knot in my stomach to grow stronger, almost to the point of nausea. Time never weakened that feeling, even after I'd promised Mama it had. Katy was the only one who knew I’d never really let Thomas go. How could I, when I never had a chance to say goodbye. It wasn’t like we’d broken up. One day he was just gone.

  “Woah!” Katy said, closing the door behind her. “I didn’t see that one coming. Why are you not freaking out? I would need a bag to breathe in.” The mattress bounced with her weight. “I think I do.”

  “I’m not entirely sure that I’m not,” I admitted into the quilt.

  There were so many unanswered questions. Why had he left? Where had he been? Did he ever think about me? I’d fantasized about him coming back more than I would ever admit. Would he even look the same? I’d been a kid when he’d left. I sure didn't look the same.

  “Katy, do you remember much about being fifteen?”

  “Not really,” she admitted. “I’ve tried to block out the awkward years as much as possible. I was such a spaz back then.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “That was a long time ago.”

  She shook her head knowing better than the lies I was spewing. “So doesn't matter. You and Thomas were different. You were—”

  “We were kids,” I interrupted. “What if I’ve built up this whole fantasy relationship that never really existed in the first place? It’s not like I’ve dated anyone since he left for comparison.”

  “You’re crazy. Thomas loved you.”

  I didn’t need the picture tucked away in my sock drawer to see the gangly, auburn haired boy holding my hand in the Johnson’s backyard. His green eyes stared back at me without it, beautiful and frozen at seventeen. I didn’t know the Thomas who was coming here to work, and I refused to get my hopes up.

  At least, that’s what I told Katy.

  Chapter 2

  Orange and pink balloons danced wildly on the mailbox. I double knotted the strings hoping they’d make it at least another thirty minutes. The way the wind was bending branches, I didn’t see much hope of that. The street was quiet, still. It was the kind of scene where you’d expect to see a tumbleweed blow across the road. I knew it was a precursor to what was to come. Mama always extended invitations to the whole family when a birthday rolled around. We hadn’t had one yet where everyone showed, but Daddy'd warned her that one day it would happen. There were hardly enough places to seat twenty people in our house, let alone fifty.

  The white, two-story farmhouse practically sparkled in the sun. Daddy'd woken me early this morning pressure-washing the front porch. From the outside, it was hard to tell there was a party going on, but just inside the door was a different story. There were cardboard dog’s dressed as clowns pinned around the doorframe to the kitchen, and orange and pink balloons tied to anything and everything. The ceiling was held back by twisted paper garland in orange and pink and a two-foot-tall, multicolored glass clown reflected the sun from the center of the kitchen table. Inside the clown were enough chocolate candies to fill the kitchen sink. They were Jenny’s favorite. I wondered if that would still be the case after Mama popped the head off the clown to get them out.

  It had been a long week, and I was relieved to see the party day arrive. It gave me something else to think about. I’d gone over and over what I would say to Thomas too many times. I was tired of worrying about what to wear or if I should hug him or not. Four years ago, I wouldn’t have thought twice about throwing my arms around him. Now, I likened the thought to wrestling a rattle snake.

  The anxiety had dwindled a little each day he hadn't shown this week. At the beginning of the week, I'd nearly jumped out of my skin every time the gravel had crunched outside. It was better now that I'd made my mind up that he wasn’t coming, convinced myself the conversation with Daddy had been a hallucination. It didn’t matter that Katy remembered it word for word, or that she'd called so much Daddy had turned the ringer off on the phone. It couldn’t possibly be real. It was a reaction to turning nineteen, to graduating high school. It was my mind’s weak attempt to hold on to my childhood. All that was on my mind now was keeping my cousins locked out of my bedroom until the party was over.

  By the time Jenny appeared in her powder blue overhauls, embroidered with a dancing clown on the front chest, the party was in full swing. All of Mama’s sisters had shown up, which meant I had ten cousins running wildly through the house. Mama was the oldest of five girls, making me the oldest kid. Jessie was the closest to my age, at fourteen, but we had little in common. I wasn’t into boy bands, and I had no desire to hash out why she thought my Aunt Lisa was the devil. I wanted to go outside with Daddy. I knew without looking that he was in his chair, tucked beneath a worn ball cap from Super Bowls past. Most of the men who were dragged to these things found their way back there, their voices carrying through the opened kitchen window. I also knew from past experience that if I stepped out the backdoor, their laughter would suddenly stop. I asked once what they talked about. Daddy had laughed and assured me it was nothing worth repeating. I had a feeling it was probably similar to the same gossip going on in the kitchen.

  Mama was busy pulling another pan of smoked sausages wrapped in cheddar dough from the oven, so I helped Jenny make her debut. Everyone fussed over what a big girl she was and how much she looked like her big sister. I smiled in response, even though I didn’t see it. Jenny’s hair hung naturally in blond spiral curls to her shoulders. She looked like a baby doll. Her sweet, angelic face kept her out of trouble too. No one was immune to her charms. The bouncing curls when she crossed the floor, combined with
her big blue eyes, evaded even Mama's spankings.

  Brown eyes didn’t have the same effect.

  I faded into a wall of relatives when I saw Daddy come in the backdoor. If he was coming in, it meant only one thing, cake time. He had his company smile in position, saying hello and hugging all who approached. No one else would've been able to tell how much he hated things like this, that it took effort to walk through his own house. Not that he didn’t love our relatives. He was just much happier on a lake with a tackle box for company, than forcing small talk with people we only saw a few times a year.

  Sure enough, Mama appeared in the doorway, a pink, store bought sheet cake in her hand. It was bright with the flicker of candles and melting quickly in our overcrowded living room. A chorus of Happy Birthday started in several keys around me. I jumped in before the end and watched Jenny spit out the flame. Gross. We’d practiced blowing with her, but she didn’t quite have it yet. No cake for me.

  I followed Mama back to the kitchen and started assembling the circus themed plates on the counter.

  “Breelynn,” Mama said, carving into the thick, gooey icing. “Go see how many people want cake, and don’t just stand there and yell.” She knew me too well. “Go into the room and ask them. Once I get this stuff off,” she said, holding up her sticky, icing covered hands, “I’m not going into it again.” Her fingers already looked like mine had when I’d gone through my clothes-dying stage. All pink and orange swirls.

  Katy and I had worn different tie-dyed shirts to school every day for a month in middle school. It was the same year we'd seen the documentary Woodstock. I nearly synched off my hair in an ironing incident that year, too. I wanted it as straight as Katy’s. Hippies didn’t have wavy hair. Not the cool ones. It’s funny how things change. Anytime Katy and I go anywhere now, a curling iron is usually involved.

  Mama gave me an impatient look as I tried to graciously get out of a conversation with Aunt Lisa. Everyone wanted to know about college since I'd gotten my acceptance letter from Clover U. There just wasn't much to tell. It was a small, private college within driving distance that'd offered a full academic scholarship.

  I pushed back into the noise and squeezed by Uncle Lonnie, who was arguing football with anyone who would listen. He used to irritate me, not for any particular reason other than I knew he irritated Daddy. Now, I just ignored him. I found that acting like an adult required ignoring a lot of people.

  Taking cake orders would've been easier had everyone been in a single file line, but that was never going to happen. I decided to use the front door as a reference point and work my way back toward the kitchen. I worked my way through the rowdy kids and tried to keep track of the numbers in my head. I heard the front door open, but I didn’t turn around. Whoever it was could get their own cake. It was most likely a cousin, letting what little cool air we had left in the vents blow out with the breeze.

  His voice struck me like a bolt of lightning, my mouth freezing mid-sentence as heat spread my chest. I hadn’t heard that voice in years, but I knew it like I knew my own name. For a brief moment, I was fifteen again, running through the old house across the street, searching empty rooms. My body turned on instinct, waiting for the boy who'd starred in all of my adolescent fantasies to step through the door, but a man stood in his place. My jaw dropped as I watched him greet Aunt Lisa. Of course, he would know everyone. He was the only boy I’d ever brought home to one of these shindigs. I still got teased about him. The familiar ache in my stomach, the one that had struck down every butterfly the day he'd left, throbbed like never before. It was irrational to feel it with him standing in front of me, but it hurt to know I'd never see that boy again. In his place was a man I barely recognized.

  His face was familiar in some ways but so different in others. The softness that had made him approachable, and helped words flow effortlessly from my mouth, was gone. It was replaced by a strong jaw, the same no-nonsense stare Daddy had used over the years to keep me inline, and a five o'clock shadow that created a slight air of mystery to him. As he looked toward the kitchen, the same worn cowboy hat he'd always worn clutched in his hand, I noticed his sandy brown hair was a bit darker now, too. Though, it could've been the light. It was longer than he used to wear it, falling across his forehead in places. Where he'd always been taller than me, he now stood over six-foot. One thing that had stood the test of time were the worn jeans and t-shirt that fit his body sinfully perfect. His sense of style hadn’t improved, even if the cowboy boots looked new. It wasn’t the aging that bothered me. I'd done my share of that myself. It was the eyes. His eyes. The eyes that'd haunted my dreams and blocked anyone who'd attempted to get close to me since he'd left. They were different, harder, concealing like the boarded windows of his old house. I ached for the eyes I'd dreaded seeing all week.

  “Thomas,” Daddy waved, his face breaking into an authentic smile as he rounded the couch and crossed the crowded room.

  The sound of his name spoken aloud brought me to my senses enough to remember the task at hand. Though, I couldn't stop myself from glancing over my shoulder as I watched all of the women, even those Mama's age, sneak a glimpse at the cowboy by the door. Most of them turned down the cake. It would've been easier to have just counted the men and kids. I hoped the day never came when I'd turn down cake. Older women were nuts.

  Try as I might to keep my eyes on Mama, who was still busily shoveling cake onto plates, I couldn't help but notice Thomas as we both neared the doorway to the kitchen at the same time. His shoulder brushed mine as he stepped to the side to let me pass and I feared my legs might stop moving. I stalled in the doorframe, biting my lip, waiting on him to acknowledge me, but he didn't. Part of me was glad, because Lord only knew what would come out of my mouth, but there was another part, a quieter, younger part, that crumbled a little. Was I so ordinary that I blended in with the décor? Had he seriously remembered Aunt Lisa and forgotten me?

  Swallowing back the nerves that threatened to choke off my air supply, I rattled off cake orders to Mama. I could feel her all-knowing eyes hitting me with enough power to bulldoze a house, but I wasn't about to make eye contact. We were so not discussing this in front of my entire family. I tried to think positively. Maybe it was a good thing he didn't remember me. I was off to college in less than three short months. There was no need embarrassing myself with a tear-filled reunion only to leave so soon. Confident in this new realization, my hands almost stopped shaking as I tore into a box of plastic forks.

  “Did you see, Breelynn?” Daddy's voice carried over the raucous, drawing my attention away from the tiny, reaching hands that were making it difficult to balance the flimsy paper plates in my hands.

  And Just like that, my life was over. Okay, so maybe that was a tad dramatic, but I wanted it to be. My mouth hung open as Mama nudged me with her elbow and took the plates from my death grip, but like the stubborn coward I was, I pretended not to notice and reached for another pack of plates instead. Unfortunately, Daddy was just as persistent as I was stubborn, and short from a hole opening up and swallowing my body, I wasn't getting out of this.

  “Breelynn,” he bellowed. My knuckles turned white where I gripped the countertop. I'd played this scenario out in my head a hundred times this past week, but nothing could've prepared me for this moment. Not the first day of high school when I hadn't been able to find a seat in the cafeteria or momentarily forgetting my speech in front of the auditorium at graduation. “Come over here and say hello to Thomas."

  Wiping my hands on the dish towel that hung from the stove, I pushed my hair from my flaming skin and hoped the embarrassment wasn’t burning as bright on the outside as it was on the inside. Fat chance. Stepping through the doorway, I found Thomas looking expectantly about the room, his hat held firmly by his side. There were so many cousins running about, he'd clearly not spotted me yet. With a weight in my chest the size of a Buick, I crossed the room and stopped in front of Daddy. Recognition flashed in Thomas's eyes. He leaned bac
k slightly, seeming to blink me into focus. He opened his mouth to speak but seemed to think better of it. The odds of me speaking were slim to none. I could feel eyes on us, especially Daddy's. He stood with his hand firmly on Thomas's shoulder like he was a long-lost son and not the boy who'd broken his daughter's heart into a million pieces. It was clear he had no intentions of giving us a little privacy for our reunion. Somethings never changed. After what felt like forever, Thomas stuck out his hand. “It’s good to see you again,” he said, taking my hand like he would any ole stranger off the street and giving it a firm shake. I couldn't help but stare as his large hand covered mine in an all too familiar way.

  Thomas used to tease me about having dainty girl hands.

  "You, too,” I managed, my eyes still locked on his hand in mine. Out of all the scenarios I'd envisioned, a handshake was not one of them.

  Daddy patted him on the shoulder as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have him in our living room. “How’s it feel to be back, son?”

  “Weird,” Thomas said, with the slight shake of his head as he turned back to Daddy as if I weren’t standing there. Apparently, all of the stress about seeing him had been for nothing.

  Feeling oddly numb, I turned on my heels and went straight out the back door and down the steps. My hair blew wildly behind me as I crossed the yard. I didn’t know what upset me more, the fact that Thomas was different, or that it took me seeing him to realize just how much I’d changed. I wasn’t the awkward, scrawny little girl in that picture either. I didn’t even know her anymore. He might not have packed her away when he'd disappeared, but she'd left with him just the same. The numbness wore off the further I got away from the house, anger taking its place. How could he stand in MY house like nothing had happened? Like he hadn’t left me a broken mess. I was angry at myself for expecting too much, too. What was he supposed to do, beg forgiveness right there in front of Uncle Lonnie and everybody? That was crazy. But a handshake? Is that what I'd been losing sleep over? A five second handshake. I felt like an idiot. A childish idiot, living in a past that no one cared about anymore. I saddled Addy and rode to Katy’s. Of course, she wasn’t home. Today was Saturday. Her family always drove to town on Saturdays. I sat down on the edge of their blistering front porch steps and tried to put myself back together.