Memories Are An Old Man's Toys

by Elayne Tulliani

  By this point, they had talked the entire day away, and Jimmy and the girls were due home shortly. While they were fixing a quick bite to eat, they reassured each other that they would always be there for one another and promised to never keep anything from each other again. Just as they were finishing up and putting the dishes in the sink, Lisa’s phone rang. Jimmy was calling from the parking lot. He noticed Sherry’s car haphazardly parked in the lot and didn’t want to walk in with the girls and interrupt anything. They told him it was fine to come in, but Sherry told Lisa that she was going to head out because she wanted to have a moment with Jimmy outside alone.

  They gave each other the kind of hug you only share with those who truly do hold a place in your heart. They made plans to talk again soon, and Sherry headed out the door. She paused for a moment and looked back at Lisa and said, “You know I love you kid, don’t ever forget that.” Lisa just smiled and gave a slow nod of her head. It was the first time in years that either one of them felt as

  though they ever had a best friend.

  Sherry walked out to the parking lot and saw Jimmy and the girls unloading some items from the trunk of the car. The weather that day was on and off showers, and she pulled her jacket up over her head as she walked towards Jimmy and the girls. It was rather obvious to her that he was stalling. She assumed that he was a little nervous about going into the house. It would make sense that he would be worried about what emotional condition he would find Lisa in.

  When the girls saw Sherry, all three of them ran over and hugged her. She always loved their hugs, and she was thrilled that despite them being grown up they didn’t feel too grown to be excited to see her. She told the girls, “I promise that during my vacation we will plan a day to go shopping and spend the day together. You better get those bags in the house before they get soaked.” The girls gave her another hug and ran into the apartment building.

  As Jimmy walked past her, she put her hand on his shoulder and said, “Jimmy can I talk with you for just a moment?” He wasn’t sure what to expect from her. Although she had always kept out of their business, for the most part, there had been a few occasions when she let him have it for not helping her sister more. Based on that, Sherry understood why he seemed a little uncomfortable when she asked to talk to him. “Jimmy,” she said and then had to stop and search her mind for the words to express how she felt. “I owe you a sincere apology.”

  Jimmy dismissed her, “Don’t worry about it, Sherry.”

  There was no way she was going to let it go at that. She honestly felt horrible for how she had perceived him all these years.

  “All these years I just thought you were a… well, to be honest, a bum. I didn’t bother to look past the surface. All I saw was that you never held a job and it appeared to me that Lisa was carrying the full load.”

  Jimmy said, “Come sit in the car for a minute, so we don’t get soaked, I want to tell you something.” There was sternness in his voice that she was unfamiliar with and she felt as though he may be getting ready to tell her what he thought of her and that it probably wasn’t going to be good. They got into his car.

  “Sherry, do you have any idea why I never stayed employed for more than a month or two?”

  She just shook her head no and started to say “I guess

  I just figured”… Jimmy cut her off.

  “Exactly, you just figured, just like everyone else just figured. Truth is I’ve had some pretty high paying jobs, and I have had to leave every one of them. Let me rephrase that, I chose to leave them. Lisa has been depressed for years and although she always puts on a good front around other people she was desperately struggling inside.

  “She has always found an escape at work, and she does earn good money, but at home, she was a different person. When I was working, and she was home with the girls, I used to come home and the house was dark and she hadn’t even been able to get dressed, she would be sitting in the dark in her pajamas. The girls saw this, and it was starting to affect them. Their school work was suffering, and their attendance was not good. I didn’t want them to pay the price for something that bastard did to Lisa. I decided to be a stay at home dad, so I could be certain that the girls were being taken care of and not being neglected. Don’t get me wrong your sister loves those girls and she tried her hardest, but it was too much for her.

  “With her history, the mere thought of hiring some stranger to care for the girls was out of the question. We talked about it, and we agreed that with her education, her earning potential equaled mine. We also agreed that she always appeared to cope better when she had a job to channel her energy. I chose to allow the people around me, her family in-particular to just “figure” that I was a bum. The alternative was to break my promise to her that I would never tell a soul what she had confided in me.”

  Sherry started to say, “Jimmy,” and he once again interrupted her.

  “No, I’ve kept quiet all this time and now it’s my turn to talk.” Sherry nodded and listened. “Listen, Sherry, believe it or not, I have always liked you, Lisa told me everything you did to take care of her and protect her, and I love you for that. But I am not the bum you think I am. I am a husband and a father, and I’m doing the best I can under the circumstances. You don’t have to like me, that’s your choice but please don’t judge me either. I love your sister and those girls with every beat of my heart, and I will do whatever I have to do to make sure they feel safe. If that meant I had to stay home to cook and clean and get the girls to school and doctor’s appointments and all the rest of the responsibilities, then that’s what I was going to do regardless of what you and the rest of her family thought of me. Now I’ve said what I have to say, and you

  are free to think of me what you will.”

  Sherry sat quietly for a moment longer and then said “Jimmy I am far from perfect and when I am wrong I admit it, and I have been very wrong about you. I don’t expect a simple apology to fix everything, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t accept it anyway but I truly am sorry.”

  Sherry began to get choked up and took a moment to compose herself. “I love Lisa and those girls with all my heart and knowing what I know now about what she went through and what you have done to take care of her makes me feel like a complete ass. I have misjudged you, and I was wrong, please accept my apology.”

  Jimmy looked at her for a moment and said, “I guess the only thing that either of us are guilty of is trying to do our best to protect her,” With that, he leaned over and hugged Sherry.

  Lisa was watching out the window and her mind was spinning at what they must be saying. When she saw Jimmy give Sherry a hug, she was finally able to exhale and a smile came to her face as she began to cry.

  Jimmy walked into the house a few minutes later and went directly over to Lisa. “Everything is going to be okay honey,” he said as he held her and slowly rocked

  back and forth, “Everything is going to be okay.”

  Sherry drove home in a daze. Her emotions swung from one end of the emotional pendulum to the other. From the high she was on the previous day with Billy, to the crash and burn she experienced with Lisa and then the meeting of the minds with Jimmy. She felt completely emotionally and physically drained. She was so thankful that she was on vacation the following week. She wanted so desperately to run straight to Billy and just collapse into his arms, but she knew she needed time to process what she had just learned. She needed the night to turn off her brain and try to gather the courage to break her silence.

  She collapsed on to the couch and immediately fell asleep. She slept straight through until the next morning.

  9

  JOEY AND THE HORSEMAN

  Billy, on the other hand, was up all night trying to complete the last phase of a contract that had a deadline that was rapidly approaching. He was on the brink of submitting a program for a software application that would allow the user to summon help at the push of a button. He was finding it very hard to stay focused as he ke
pt thinking back on the previous day with Sherry. He hoped she didn’t think he was to forward when he kissed her, but his gut told him she was feeling the same way.

  He kept wondering what she was doing and thought about calling her, but he needed to wrap up this contract so he could submit the bill and move on to the next job. He would never have imagined how Sherry had spent her day. By the time he finished his work, the sun was just starting to go down. He managed to hit the submit button just minutes before the corporate office would be shutting down their main system for the night. He had made the deadline with only minutes to spare, but he made it, and that was all that mattered. This sort of last minute work ethic was not the norm for Billy. He usually prided himself on having his work completed and submitted weeks before everyone else.

  All he had left to do for the evening was to run a quick test on his project, and he could call it a night. He pulled out his laptop and rapidly punched in a few quick numbers and codes and then waited. After seeing the screen flash that all systems were operational and there were no viruses or security issues detected he whispered, “Excellent,” and then logged off the system. He put his laptop back in the small safe he had built in the back of his closet and spun the combination lock closed.

  He took a few minutes to straighten up his work area and then walked towards the doorway. He stopped for a moment with his hand on the light switch and looked back at the desk and thought to himself how much of his life his work had consumed. A part of him felt regretful that he never ended up in one of those big office buildings in Boston while his practical side appreciated that he had been fortunate enough to support himself all his life using only the knowledge in his head and the skill in his hands. He clicked the light off and left the room in darkness.

  Billy walked into the living room and clicked on the TV set. He flipped through the channels and settled on an old Clint Eastwood movie called Gran Torino. He had watched it several times before in his life, and it always left him feeling a sense of satisfaction for the good guy. He had always secretly wished that he could be Clint Eastwood for a day or at least the characters he played. He loved that he always portrayed the bad boy but one with a purpose. Clint’s characters always fought for the good even if they had to do bad to reach that goal.

  There were tons of movies out there that had punks and bad guys, but they all seem to portray evil. Clint had a very successful career, and it didn’t matter whether he was playing a gun-slinging cowboy, a rebel cop or like in Gran Torino, a strong-willed man who wanted to be left alone but couldn’t close his eyes to the injustice he was seeing.

  Billy admired that attitude and had on several occasions pictured being able to stand up to all the injustice and leave the bad guys begging for mercy. He sat in darkness while he watched the movie and ate a ham and cheese sandwich. When the movie ended, he reflected for a bit about all of the things that he wished he could change in the world. He was a realist, and he accepted that some things would never change, at least not for the betterment.

  However, he was confident that his project would at the very least put a temporary roadblock between those who used the internet to torment others and those who simply prayed for the tormenting to end.

  Finally, he shook off the work-related thoughts and started to think about Sherry again. He thought about how odd life was at times. Here was this woman he had known his entire life, and yet he felt he was just now getting to know and appreciate her as a person and a woman. He felt so guilty about not being able to share information with her about his project.

  He knew in his heart that it was for the best. If she wasn’t aware, then she wasn’t involved, and if she wasn’t involved, then she couldn’t be held accountable for anything. He cared much too deeply for her to allow her to get dragged into anything.

  The other thing that made him feel rather badly was that he had never shared with her how financially well off he was. He thought about this for quite a bit and tried to look at it from every angle. He had decided that there wasn’t any harm in sharing this information with her. There wasn’t any way that it could come back and bite him in the ass. He decided that when they got together later that week, he would somehow find or create the opportunity to tell her about his true financial state. After all, what he wanted to bring into her life was happiness and to help alleviate any stress she was feeling. What better way to do that he thought then let her know that he was there to help her with no strings attached and that she would never want for anything ever again.

  He felt a little less guilty about withholding the project information from her knowing that he would be sharing this secret with her. He played out the conversation in his head over and over again.

  He wondered what her reaction would be when he tells her that he owned the building he lived in all these years. What would she think when she heard that he was extremely well off financially? He chuckled to himself and thought “She probably won’t even believe me.”

  Sherry had been one of the few people in his life that always accepted him for who he was and didn’t pass judgment. She never asked him for anything other than his time and friendship. Sherry’s friendship and love were more valuable than all of the money he had. He had always believed that true friendship and loyalty were the most valuable riches that anyone could possess. With Sherry in his life, he finally felt like a rich man. With that thought in mind, he was now extremely excited about seeing her later that week.

  He decided it was time to get some rest as he had a busy day ahead of him. He planned on spending the day cleaning out the storage shed that he had rented after his mother passed away. Billy quickly went through his evening routine of washing the few dishes that were in the sink basin and wiping down the table and counter.

  When he had finished, he found himself standing in front of the counter folding the dish towel and trying to mimic the way Sherry had folded the picnic blanket. He matched corner to corner until he had a perfect little square. He spoke out loud, “Get out of my head woman,” truth was he was more than happy to have her rutting around in his head. His mind had been a lonely place for

  too many years, and he was glad to have the company.

  Billy had a difficult time falling asleep that night. His thoughts and feelings were conflicting between scrapping the whole concept for his project that he had spent years working on and how happy he felt when he was with Sherry. For a brief moment, he thought that maybe he was making a mistake spending so much time with her and allowing these foreign feelings to cloud his mind. He knew he was developing deeper feelings for her and if he was going to be honest, he had been in love with her for years. He had always been a practical man and never one to be led by emotions. He now found himself in a position where emotions were causing him to doubt his commitment level for his personal mission.

  He shook it off with the thought that there was still time to change his mind if that’s what he decided to do. For now, he would simply move forward with his project, because he knew the rapid changes in technology would require that he update it on a fairly regular basis. He tried for a moment to step outside of his comfort zone and try to look at this from a different perspective.

  Rather than question if the feeling he had for Sherry interfered with the time he would need to commit to his project, he decided to question if his project might interfere with the time he had available for her. Either way, he decided to just move forward with both and figured that time would sort out the rest. With that final thought, he decided to call it a night.

  When he woke up in the morning he turned on his radio to the usual classical station and one of his favorite melodies was playing, Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. He stood silently in the kitchen with his eyes closed and felt every note as they weaved through his mind. He could feel the love that Beethoven had for music and envisioned his fingers as they stroked the ivories and created such beautiful harmony. Billy slowly swayed his head in time with each keystroke; he so loved classical music.

>   Despite knowing how narrow-minded it sounded, he often wished that classical music was the only music that existed. It was one of the only styles that he felt could run the entire gamut of human emotions. It could be powerful, sad, dark, whimsical or romantic. He didn’t see a need for anything else. After the song stopped playing, he stood for a minute longer and let the notes linger in his head.

  He often stopped what he was doing to indulge in the pleasure of not only hearing but also feeling the music. This was a pleasure he felt no guilt for nor offered any explanation. He noticed a slight difference in the feelings it provoked this morning, usually, when he listened to it, he felt a rather sad, somber emotion sway through him. This time, however, he felt the music bring to life a feeling of romance, and he discovered yet another reason to love the magic of the ivory. He confessed that he could sit for hours and listen to it play over and over and never tire of hearing it.

  These thoughts spun through his mind the entire time he dressed and began the walk to the storage facility. Before he knew it, he had walked all the way down to Beachmont corner and was getting ready to cross the street near Suffolk Downs. As he reached the curb on the far side of the street, he notices a young child peeking through the fence that surrounded the race track. When he got a little closer, he realized it was the same little boy that had passed him on the public stairs a time back.