Keeping Her Love

by Tiger Hill

  “But my girlfriend,” he spat, trying to gaze past the woman towards the dark parking lot. He could catch pockets of Tula standing to the side, talking on her cell phone. “I just need to talk to her. I’m not going to run off on you.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know that. You have to pay before you step outside the building. Company policy.”

  Rhett groaned deeply as he was navigated back towards his table. “Hurry up, then! Here, just take my card. Don’t bother with the check. Hurry, hurry!”

  The hostess rolled her clamshell eyes, grasped the card, and then walked off towards the back in her thick white sneakers. Rhett stared out the tiny round window next to his booth, meanwhile, keeping an eye out for Tula. Three minutes later, after signing off the $23.37 for the meal, his blood pressure had gone down and he was less motivated to chase after his girlfriend. He reflected in that time that it might have been better that he hadn’t caught up with her right away. She was angry, he was angry, and there wasn’t usually much good that came of two angry people conversing about something. In any event, by the time he got outside, there was no one standing outside anymore.

  Someone must have given her a ride close by, or she called a taxi, he thought. He walked towards his Camaro, running a hand through his hair as he sighed. We both just need to calm down. I’m not going to knock on her door when I get to the house tonight. Maybe I could buy her flowers to smooth this whole thing over? It couldn’t hurt.

  He sat in his car for a moment, appreciating the dark and silence. There was a line of trees ahead of him, and behind that, a concrete wall. He watched how the leaves danced in the wind, a streetlamp shining on them.

  She’s upset, and she has a right to be. I wouldn’t want to be talked to like that either, to be honest. But what the hell! I have a right to my own opinions. There’s something going on that I don’t know about, something that I feel like everyone is withholding from me. I need to find out the truth, but I need to do it in as delicate a way as possible. I at least have her mom on my side. At least I think I do. I can’t get away from the family, so I’ve gotta figure everything out. The not knowing is driving me crazy.

  I’ll talk to Max tomorrow and I’ll talk to Tula. Tula first, I suppose, since she gets home before he does. I guess I could talk to Max tonight, but I don’t want to create a scene and make everything worse than it already is. Fine then… Tomorrow. I’ll find out everything. If people want to continue being secretive with me, whether Tula or her brother… Then I have to start making some serious decisions. But I don’t want anything bad to happen. I just need to remember to be calm and collected.

  Calm and collected, calm and collected, calm and collected…

  He took a deep breath and started up the car. Pulling out of the parking lot, he didn’t manage to get far past the first stop light. A great thundering pulled and shook from under the hood before the bundle of bolts simply stalled in the middle of the road. Rhett felt as if his guts liquified and spilled out from the bottom of him as he sat in the driver’s seat. Panicked, he turned the key of the car once more, hoping he could get his precious vehicle going again far enough to the house, only a few miles down the road. Fulfilling his worst nightmare, the car cranked over and over again but never turned over.

  It was relatively empty out that night, but he didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of the road while he figured out what to do with himself. Putting his car into neutral, he got out and pushed from the back until he was situated far enough on the side of the road to figure out what in the world was going on with the Camaro. Pulling the hood up, he didn’t spot anything in particular wrong right away. As soon as he checked the oil level, however, he got his first hint that something was amiss.

  “Man, that smell! What is it?”

  He pulled the stick to just under his noise, taking in the unfamiliar fumes. Thinking on it for a moment, he considered what the smell could be. Loosening the entrance to the oil and leaning over, he took another heavy sniff.

  “Bleach! It’s bleach! Someone put bleach in my car!”

  He was so full of pent-up rage that he didn’t know what to do with himself. He felt like it would have been appropriate to holler, kick at the ground, and curse expletives to God, but what good would that do?

  He stood and stared at his car, the hunk of metal he had spent the better part of his youth repairing with his grandfather. There were so many happy memories associated with the heirloom. In the beginning, he would bring lemonade to his grandfather as the man worked, sitting on a stool and recounting the names of all the parts of the car. When he could accomplish that, his grandfather would lean him over and tell Rhett exactly what he was doing as he did it. Rhett was endlessly fascinated with machinery as a child, and looked forward to going over every weekend to spend time with his granddad. He felt lucky that he had someone who stopped to patiently spend time explaining every little thing about the car. Any question that little Rhett had, his grandfather went into detail explaining the answer. And as he got older, he was the one explaining to his grandfather what he was doing to improve the car and why he was doing it. Until, that is, his grandfather passed away of cancer.

  All those joyful memories, he thought, are being pissed on right now. Someone took that bleach and they urinated all over my happiness.

  He grit his teeth.

  All he could do at the time was call for a tow truck and have it taken to the garage he worked at. His boss would understand, he knew, if he explained what had happened. In the meantime, he knew that he would have to borrow the spare car his mother owned—a dusty 1992 Honda Accord. It was once owned by his good-for-nothing father, left to rot in the driveway after he ran off on them to Vegas. Rhett had repaired it in high school, his second project after refurbishing the Camaro. At the moment, it resided at his mother’s residence on the other side of Davis.

  I should probably have a talk with my mom while I’m over there, he thought. It’s about time I had a heart-to-heart with her. As far as she knows, everything is just dandy in my life right now. The last she heard from me was when I said that I was moving in with Tula’s family.

  He called his mother in the parking lot of his work, sitting on some cement as he explained in vague terms what had happened. She promised to come pick him up right away, and they hung up. Rhett left a text to Tula, figuring that it wouldn’t look good if he didn’t come back home that night without any explanation.

  Car broke down. Gonna crash at my mom’s. Cu later?

  A few moments later, a response: Really? I thought u just repaired it.

  Bleach in the oil.

  After that, no response.

  His mother pulled up after a few minutes. She owned a nearly-new cherry Mazda Miata (quoted as saying that it was, “The perfect car for a woman under 30 and over 50.”), dressed in only a long loosely-strung silk robe. Rhett hopped in, glad to be in the company of someone he knew without a doubt would always be on his side. At least, on his side when it wasn’t blazingly apparent that he was in the wrong.

  “Hey, Mom,” he greeted kissing her on the cheek. She smelled of lavender and fresh oranges.

  “Hey, son,” she responded. “How goes it in paradise?”

  He just let out a sigh. “Don’t ask.”

  She flashed him a smile only a sultry older woman could accomplish, and they were off. His mother had birthed him when she was twenty-seven, having married her louse of an ex-husband only three months before. She was an assistant to an editor at the time, only making a pittance, and had stuck around with Rhett’s father for longer than she would have liked to admit. At the age of fifty-one, she had advanced to becoming a full-fledged editor along with a consultant, becoming more successful than her husband ever hoped to accomplish as a ‘professional poker player.’ In fact, he had come crawling back to her when he heard that she had bought a $700,000 house in the country. She promptly called the police when he showed up on her property, threatening to shoot him with a shotgun for trespassing.

>   Maybe we should have moved in with my mom, Rhett thought. But then he remembered something: Oh, that’s right, Tula’s parents would have never allowed that. It had to be at her place.

  “How are things with you?” Rhett asked, trying to get his mind off of his troubles.

  “Oh, you know me. I always try to keep myself busy. Work, the garden, travel, some new recipe I want to make… you. There’s always something going on with me.”

  “No men?” Rhett mentioned with a playful jab.

  “Hah! You’re the last person I’d think would be pestering me about that. No, son. Men are nothing but trouble, including you. I love you, dear, but when was the last time you called me that didn’t include asking for my help?”

  He swallowed, and when he did, it felt like he was swallowed down battery acid. “Sorry, Mom. I’ll try and be a better son from now on.”

  “Good. Now, you’re going to borrow that Honda? I wanted to blow some bullet holes in it before trashing it, but I remembered that you were the one who restored it, so I kept it around.”

  “Do you try to shoot up all of your remnants of Dad?”

  “God willing. Keep on good behavior, and you won’t be next.”

  He grinned. Why the hell hadn’t he kept up with his mother? It was absolutely refreshing not having to keep up appearances with someone. She certainly didn’t care about maintaining some kind of image. Now that he had a drop of joy inside of him, he felt less apprehensive about spilling all his problems to her. On the car ride home, he tried to explain as much as he could to her, from the beginning—Max’s introduction, the oven, the trip to San Francisco, Tula wedding problems, the events at the beach… He only managed to get through half of the entire story, but it seemed like enough for her to form a solid opinion. Pulling up to the front entrance of her gorgeous Victorian home, she put the car in park and swung the door open. The front of her house was covered in pink roses, and the smell of them was simply wonderful.

  “Well, I don’t like the sounds of it,” she said, heading for the front door.

  She poured him a glass of whiskey on the rocks, and they conversed in the middle of her recently-renovated kitchen. He finished his story, detailing everything he could think of, including what had happened when he went searching through his room.

  “Honestly, son, I think we’re dealing with a run-of-the-mill sociopath,” said stated.

  “Huh?”

  She shook her head, placing her glass down. “I always tried to get you into reading books, but I guess my efforts failed. Maybe if you read a mystery or two in your life, you could spot a culprit when you see him.”

  “Well, I do suspect that Max is up to something.”

  “He is quite obviously up to something. It’s what you’re going to do about it that matters. You stated that the door on the closet door swung closed and that a collection of spiders fell down on you. You also mentioned that you found a key inside of a book. If that’s not a giant sign that he had something to hide, I don’t know what is. He’s an engineer, for crying out loud! He used his knowledge to do all this, and is probably using his knowledge to spy on you in some way.”

  Rhet absorbed the comment like a sponge, realizing that what his mother said was very likely true. “But why would he try to lock me in his closet if he wanted to keep me out?”

  “Reverse psychology is what it sounds like to me. Also, why would you want to go back to a place that you knew would trap you inside with the thing that scares you the most?”

  “What scares me the most is losing Tula.”

  She put on a sympathetic expression and wrapped her arms around him. “Oh, darling. My sweet boy. You’re nothing like your father, simply a treasure. I don’t know whether to tell you to kick the crap out of your girlfriend’s brother or to talk it over calmly with him. He sounds like an immature young fellow. Whatever you do, I think that it needs to happen quickly and decisively. The house could use a bit of male energy since you left four years ago. You know that you could always stay here with Tula, right? I fill this place with my hobbies, like the exercise space and sewing room, but that guest room is always a space you can take. If you love her, perhaps it is best for you both to move into a spare room. I could talk to her parents and give them my reassurance that nothing bad will come to her.”

  “I don’t know,” he stated, taking another swig of whiskey. “Her parents are nice, but strange. Her mom is kind of a stick in the mud, despite being pretty sweet otherwise. One of those religious Baptist types.”

  “Well, it’s your life. I can’t force you to move in with me, however much I would enjoy it. Oh, hello, Hemingway!”

  Up on the table jumped a large Norwegian forest cat. A gentle expression played on his face as he paused to observe both Rhett and his mother. Rhett pet the cat’s head, and Hemingway in turn motioned to dip under Rhett’s hand once again for more pets.

  “I don’t want to create bad blood with her family. Coming here might be the equivalent of running off and eloping in their eyes. Especially after they told me specifically not to leave with her.”

  “Oh, that’s right. You both tried running off and they caught on to that. Hmm. Well, I’ve made my offer. From my approximation, it seems like something awful bad is about to hit the fan. I’m worried that in trying to please everyone and not rock the boat, you’re going to make yourself miserable. Is this how you want to spend the rest of your life, trying to please these people? Because you know what they say—when you marry someone, you’re not just marrying one person. You’re marrying the entire family, too.”

  I guess Tula is lucky, Rhett thought. My mom’s a nice lady to gain as a mother-in-law. She’s there when I need her, is up-front when she has to be, and lets me have my space. My father… Well, we won’t have to worry about him. He’s always been more concerned with himself than anyone else in the world.

  “So what should I do?” Rhett asked. “A lesser man would already be at Tula’s place to ring Max’s neck for what I’m almost certain he did to the engine of my car. I suspect that he also caused damage to the hood that I had originally assumed some neighborhood kids did.”

  “I can’t only tell you what I would do,” said Rhett’s mother, emptying her glass. “I’d go right up to Max and tell him it’s time to have a talk.”

  This is sounding familiar to what Mrs. Florian had recommended earlier today.

  She continued: “I’d invite him out to dinner, keep the mood light, then BAM, hit him with what I’ve been suspecting of him. I told you that you often try too hard to not rock the boat, but in this instance, tread carefully, son. He sounds like he knows exactly what he’s been up to. You know, he seems like one of those people with the emotional fortitude of a fourteen-year-old, but with the mental fortitude of a person much older. You need to speak down to his level, but don’t come off as condescending.”

  He crossed his arms. Hemingway seemed a little disappointed that Rhett had ceased with the pets, so he nestled down at the corner of the table to watch them converse. His fluffy tail rolled back and forth as it hung over.

  “Do you think that I should tell Tula to run off with me if the family disapproves of me?”

  His mother thought on it, brushing a piece of raven-black hair behind her ear. “If you love her, of course. But don’t pull her into something that could damage her relationship with her parents forever. You need to be completely certain that she can handle what you’re asking of her, and that you both aren’t going to break up a year or two from now. I know you’re getting married, but stuff like that happens.”

  “Right. No, I know that I want to be with Tula forever. I mean, her family bothers her, too. But she doesn’t want to be a pariah because of this.”

  “You both need to have a strong conversation about your futures. First, with Max. If it seems like Max isn’t going to fess up to what he did and knock it off, then I think it’s time to talk to Tula again about moving out. If need be, just come home here right away. Tula’s parents
would be upset, but there isn’t much to be done about it. I’m sure they wouldn’t be mad enough to miss out on the wedding, though it’s possible. But even then, they most certainly wouldn’t be able to resist getting over their anger if it meant missing out meeting a couple grandchildren.”

  “Whoa, whoa, time out!” Rhett said, making hand motions. “Who said anything about grandchildren? We have the wedding to pay for, Tula is trying to get her business started…”

  “Jeez, sorry! I didn’t know it was a touchy subject. I’m just saying, their anger might be a passing storm. I’m sure they’d be mature enough to see that you’ve been put in a bad position by their son. And if they can’t see that, they’ll see what they’re missing out on if you both do decide to have kids. Honestly, parents like this aren’t all that uncommon. Your mom is one of the unusual ones. I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t trash my place or endanger me in some way. They can try and take Tula back to their home—I’ll have the shotgun ready.”

  He let out a little laugh and clapped his mother on the back. “I hope that’s not necessary, but thanks for the sentiments, Mom.”

  “It’s not a problem,” his mother responded, placing a warm kiss on his cheek before heading to the sink to deposit her glass. “Your bedroom should be all set for you. I’m going to call it a night, son. See you tomorrow morning?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be around. Goodnight.”

  Tula’s mother traveled upstairs to her room. Rhett stood in the quiet of the kitchen, an old yellow Tiffany light the only thing illuminating the space. He was tempted to pour himself another whiskey, but decided against it, coming to the conclusion that there was no point in it. He pulled up his phone, staring at the text messages he shared with Tula. She was almost certainly asleep, but he decided to send her something to brighten her morning:

  I love you. Always will.