Luke's #1 Rule

by Cynthia Harrison

  “She’s not sleeping, Dad!” Josh laughed.

  “She’s a beauty, though,” Spence said. Bettina smiled. It looked forced. Despite his efforts, she’d seen the beer can. Or tasted whisky on his tongue, or both.

  “Want to play cards?” Josh asked.

  “Time to start dinner. Tacos!” Bettina said.

  “I’m too full for dinner,” Tommy said, his eyes sliding to the empty cookie bag on the coffee table.

  “Me too,” Josh said.

  “Okay, we’ll play some cards, and maybe you’ll be hungry later,” Bettina said.

  “Give me a sec, guys,” Spence said. “Gotta break the seal.” The boys laughed hard whenever he said that. Bettina just shook her head.

  He went up and took a pill. The one for anxiety. His wife was about to yell at him, but she’d yell softly, in their room, after the boys were in bed. He didn’t want to ruin the whole day by being anxious about his nighttime scolding.

  He kept a supply of liquor in his office now, so he drank down the pill with whisky straight from the bottle. Then he went to play cards with his family.

  Poor Spence, he thought, after the tenth card game. The boys were helping Bettina assemble the taco fixings as he sat in front of the evening news, not caring about Syria or space junk. Better not to see them at all than see them leave over and over again. What an ass he’d been. A self-centered whiny ass. He was the parent. He needed to be strong for his boys. Now with the aid of a nice drug cocktail and a whisky kick, he felt okay most days.

  The tacos were good, and the boys went to bed right on time. Now he could get down to it.

  Drinking was the best thing. His sponsor didn’t think so, had ended their relationship, and told Spence to get back in touch when he wanted to get sober. His moderation group had such crazy, arbitrary rules. Only drink every other day. One drink per hour. No more than two drinks. No, he’d done with them. Whisky and music, flat out rock, none of that twangy folk stuff, no rhymers either. He drank, he soared, he smoked, he slept.

  He woke on the sofa when he heard Tommy asking Josh why dad only had one ear bud in. He pulled it out.

  “Morning, boys!” His head might split in two. He slanted his eyes toward the coffee table. Thank God. Clean. They hadn’t seen the remains of his party for one. Good old Bettina. She understood. She’d cleaned up his mess.

  This was the first time he’d done his thing with them here in the house. He’d always reserved it for Sunday, just after they left. It dulled the pain of saying good-bye again. And he’d tried to abstain. Friday night went okay. They’d gone out to one of those restaurants that catered to kids. Anxiety always called for an extra pill to mellow him out. Also, it made him fall asleep almost as soon as they got home.

  He thought he could make it through one more day. But something wicked got hold of him. This was the last time he’d see them for a very long time. They were leaving Michigan for good, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

  “Daddy, you stink!” Tommy giggled.

  Spence tried to smile at his younger son, but his neck couldn’t hold up his head.

  “He hasn’t showered yet,” Josh explained. Spence saw from Josh’s expression that he knew more than Tommy about what had actually happened. “Bettina’s making pancakes, Dad. Better hurry and get cleaned up.”

  Spence tried to stand and immediately felt dizzy, like he might be sick—and then—too late. Last night’s tacos were splashed down his shirt, on the sofa, even the rug.

  “Bettina,” Tommy yelled, alarmed. “Dad’s sick.”

  His wife came out to the living room, took one look at the situation, went back into the kitchen, and came back with a wet cloth. She threw it at his face, and he did a quick mop up as the boys stood rooted in fascinated confusion. Josh’s nose wrinkled again. The smell of burnt pancakes mingled with his vomit.

  “Daddy couldn’t get up! We should take him to the hospital,” Tommy said.

  “No,” Spence managed to rasp, carefully rising from the sofa. “It’s just something I ate is all.”

  “There was an empty whiskey bottle on the table when we got up,” Josh said.

  Bettina called the boys to come eat their pancakes while they were hot.

  So the boys had seen his mess. Beer cans, his pipe, and that damn whiskey. He started to bend down to use the towel on the rug, but lost heart and left it there. He managed to get up the stairs and into the shower, leaving his soiled shirt where he dropped it.

  Then, as he struggled to turn the hot water on, Tommy was at the door. “It’s okay, Daddy. I can help. Maybe you should have a bath instead of a shower?”

  Spence, naked, sat on the toilet lid and let his little boy draw him a bath. He started to cry. A grown man crying in front of his little son.

  Tommy took Spence’s face into his tiny hands. “It’s okay, Daddy. We saved you some pancakes.”

  “Jesus fuck,” Spence said, tears streaming and snot forming under his nose. Still drunk. Had to be. He never swore around his boys.

  Tommy’s eyes popped wide. He slammed his hands over his mouth and ran out of the room.

  Spence got his shaking body into the tub. He let himself sink under, washing away the stink. He managed a half-assed hair and body wash and let the water drain out. He couldn’t find it in him to get out of that empty tub. He hugged his knees, put his head down, and cried.

  Bettina saw him in all his wretchedness. She used to be kinder when he had these days, but these days had grown to every day, and her tolerance and pity were all used up.

  “Get out,” she said.

  At first he thought she meant get out of the house. But she held a towel open, and he gingerly rose from the tub, sniffing back his sobs. She didn’t wrap the towel around him. She shoved it at his belly, and he had to act fast and grab it before it fell. Without another word, she walked out the door. Then she turned around and came back in the room. He still dripped, still held the towel to himself. “You’re disgusting. Your last day with the boys, and you’ll be no use to them.” She grabbed the soiled clothing off the floor.

  ****

  “Bettina, what’s wrong with Daddy?” Tommy wanted to know.

  “Is he mad at us because we’re moving?” Josh had that look of concentration he got when he thought too hard.

  This had to be hard for her, too. She loved these boys as if they were her own. They’d been happy and excited when she got pregnant, and she’d tried her best to shield them from the worst of Spence’s excessive addiction. She finally admitted it to herself. He was an addict. Not a former alcoholic, not a reformed druggie, not a doper in recovery, but the opposite of sober, every damn light lit up like Christmas.

  “No, I think he has the flu.”

  “Well, then, why did he use the bad swear? First he said Jesus, and I thought he was praying but then he said the F word.”

  “Is Dad going to hell?” Josh asked. Bettina wondered if in her fury she had told Spence to go to hell.

  “No, honey,” she said. “Why did you think that?”

  “Because that’s a very bad swear.”

  Okay, maybe she’d hadn’t blown up, at least with words that could be misunderstood by small children. Still, it was awful. She and Spence rarely argued, and never in front of the children. That awful word “enabling” labeled the problem neatly. She’d been afraid to confront him about his relapse. She pretended it wasn’t so bad. At first it wasn’t, but soon he became as out of control as she’d ever seen him.

  “He cried so he knew he shouldn’t have said it,” Tommy reasoned.

  Spence still hadn’t come down after a half hour, and Bettina admitted to herself that he was in his dope den, smoking his pipe. Smoking calmed him, so maybe the day could be salvaged after all. They could lie low, watch a video, play cards.

  When she got up this morning, the boys had been in the family room with a passed-out Spence. They took turns pretending to drink from the bottle of whiskey, passing it back and forth, and la
ughing quietly. Bettina didn’t worry that they’d actually drank any of it. Spence had never met a whiskey bottle he couldn’t empty. She’d smiled at the boys and asked them to help clean up Dad’s mess. It broke her heart to say that. She scooped up the pipe, and they each took a couple of beer cans. Josh kept the whiskey bottle and rinsed it out at the sink before placing it carefully in the recycle bin.

  Chapter Nine

  Chloe, bereft, dangled in the empty space around her. Less than a week after Luke left, her mother too had gone, off to start a new life in Blue Lake. The life Chloe knew seemed irretrievably lost. Like a distant cheerleader, Kristy kept in touch, but whenever Chloe thought about changing her life so drastically, her mood fell flat while her anxiety climbed. Was she doing the right thing? When should she tell the boys?

  Packing their own boxes, Josh brought up the subject. “This is a lot of stuff for vacation, Mom.”

  “While we’re on vacation, the new people will move in, and we’ll go somewhere else.”

  “Where? Are we going to live with Grandma again?” Tommy wanted to know.

  “No, dummy. Grandma’s new house is too small.”

  “Don’t call me dummy! Mommy, he called me dummy!”

  “Josh, Tommy’s right. Don’t call him names. Tommy, Josh is right, we’re not living with Grandma anymore. Well, maybe sometime, when we move to a new place, we’ll have lots of bedrooms, and Grandma can come to stay with us. Would you like that?”

  Tommy nodded his head, but Josh still had questions.

  “Where will we live? Will I still go to my same school?”

  “No, sweetie. You’ll both go to a new school. In Seattle.”

  “Where’s Seattle?”

  “It’s in another state. Where Mommy has a new job.”

  “But I don’t want to leave my friends. Stephen is my best friend. I don’t want to leave him. Or my school. Or my other friends. Emma!”

  “Honey, I’m sorry. But you’ll make new friends.” Chloe knew this would be difficult, but at least nobody cried.

  They continued to pack up the boys’ room. Three piles: one to keep, one to donate, one to throw away. Tommy didn’t want to throw away anything, even a puzzle missing half its pieces. Josh said he didn’t care what they brought; it wouldn’t matter if they couldn’t bring Stephen.

  “What about Daddy?” Josh said it like an accusation.

  “Daddy’s not moving, but you will still see him every summer and at Christmas.”

  “What about weekends?”

  “We have to wait and see.”

  Tommy started to cry. Then Josh. Chloe knew she was supposed to be the strong adult, but as she gathered her precious boys into her arms, she cried, too.

  ****

  Luke pushed the paperwork for his quarterly taxes away and picked up his ringing phone. Another new customer. The population in Blue Lake continued to age, and as they aged, they needed more help in their yards, which was good for business, but also sad.

  He turned off his coffeepot and grabbed his keys from the hook next to the door. He hadn’t thought about Chloe once yet today. Well, unless you counted thinking about not thinking about her. And it was early yet.

  He knew his schedule by heart, but double checked it again because at least that way he wouldn’t be thinking about Chloe. Grrrr. Maybe it was time to break his rule. Maybe when she came up with her boys for vacation, he should ask her out. He bet she cut a fine-ass figure in a bathing suit.

  After work that day, like on every other Friday since the day he turned twenty-one, Luke met his buddies at Fast Eddie’s for a few beers. Eddie kept most of his huge barn of a place, with stage and dance floor areas, partitioned off most of the winter. But during tourist season, every seat filled. When Chloe walked in with Eva, the owner of Blue Heaven, talking and laughing like old friends, she didn’t even notice him in the throngs of people as some clown offered his seat at the bar. She and Eva sat, and Eddie himself gave them each a glass of wine.

  Where were the boys? Where were Josh and Tommy? Funny how that was his first thought. It wasn’t like Chloe to leave them alone on their first night of vacation. He noticed how Chloe’s long legs were already tanned, and how she dressed in raggedly cut-off jeans and a red tank top. She looked good. Fit and healthy and happy. She lifted the wine to her lips and laughed at something Eva said before she drank.

  Eddie set down several take-out bags on the counter, and both opened their wallets at the same time.

  “Hot summer chick with Eva Bryman,” one of his buddies remarked. Finn. He was always hitting on the summer chicks.

  “She’s got two kids,” Luke said. It just sort of slipped out.

  “You know her?”

  “Yeah. That’s the job I took in May downstate.”

  “So you hit that while you were there?”

  “Shut up, Finn. She lives with her kids.”

  “Sorry.”

  Eva and Chloe gathered the bags of food. Luke knew they’d take it back to Blue Heaven. Decision time. Now or never. Break his number one rule or let her go.

  “You don’t mind if I go by the bonfire later and strike up a conversation with her? What’s her name anyway?”

  “Chloe. And no. Why should I mind?” But he did. His plan to woo Chloe had gotten no further than somehow easing into a more personal relationship. Somehow. And even then, he wasn’t sure. He’d made his rule for a reason, and it had saved him from certain trouble a few times in the past.

  But later, after the sun went down and the bonfire at Blue Heaven blazed, Luke drove slowly by the resort. Finn’s car stood out. Eva and Daniel didn’t mind the locals mingling with their guests, and Daniel and Finn were friends.

  Daniel and Eva were good people. Rich people, but not stuck up. He wasn’t rich, but he didn’t do so bad. He could support a family. He pulled into the state park lot next to Blue Heaven and got out of his car. He leaned against his car hood and listened to the bonfire sounds. He thought he heard Tommy ask for another s’more. Then, when Chloe laughed and said yes, he was sure. He loved her laugh.

  Then, when he thought he saw Finn next to Chloe through the trees, he moved closer to Eva and Daniel’s property line. There were no fences, just a dense stand of trees, and he went halfway into them before he hesitated.

  He peered through the darkness, through the bonfire flames, at Chloe. Finn wasn’t sitting next to her at all. She had Tommy on one side of her and Josh on the other. The boys held sticks with marshmallow tips. Chloe put chocolate squares into graham crackers. Finn was on the other side of the fire, his back to Luke. He’d changed his shirt from earlier, but Luke knew his straight blond hair. Finn wore it long, like a surfer dude, even though Lake Huron had no surf. The ladies liked it, Finn always claimed, when the guys razzed him about his hippie hair.

  Luke’s eyes moved back to Chloe’s face, so dreamy in the firelight. He wondered how she was doing. What was happening with the new job, her housing situation? She must live somewhere else by now. Somewhere new. Probably not here in Blue Lake. His mother hadn’t said a word, and neither had Ursula, who had hired him to cut her lawn.

  His heart rose in his chest with a thought. Maybe she didn’t have a new house yet. She could move here. Maybe she’d fall in love with Blue Lake the way her mother had. Maybe she’d fall in love with him. It was hard to see her, even at a distance, without wanting to touch her.

  He’d missed her and the boys more than he thought he would. What good was a rule that didn’t help when you needed it? If she came back here for good, he’d always have her in front of him. If he didn’t act soon, Finn or another of his friends would get her first. She’d marry one of them maybe. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to make his move and make it quick.

  “Mom, did you hear something?” Josh. Always alert. Nothing passed by that kid.

  “No, honey. Where?”

  “There.” Josh pointed to right where he stood, camouflaged by foliage and the night.

  Chloe peered
into the trees through the darkness, but didn’t see anything except shadows and pines. Everywhere she’d looked today, she had hoped to see Luke. But she hadn’t seen him, and it was unlikely he’d be lurking in the trees.

  “Just a critter,” Daniel, Eva’s husband, said.

  Josh accepted that answer. Chloe sighed. He’d been different, sad, since school had ended and he’d realized they were leaving Sterling Pines. When her boy turned his carefully toasted marshmallow toward her, Chloe angled the chocolate filled graham cracker under and above the perfectly toasted marshmallow and pressed down, forming the s’more. When she handed it to Josh, she turned to Tommy to help make his treat. Tommy’s marshmallow was burned on all sides, although he claimed he liked ’em like that.

  Chloe contemplated the full moon and missed Luke so much she wouldn’t have been surprised to see it break. Surely they’d run into each other here. Blue Lake was a small town. His mother worked at Blue Heaven. She’d met Wanda that afternoon. She’d explained the way Blue Heaven worked. The big house had private quarters, but also an office and a second story where the cottagers could gather from eight in the morning until midnight. Wanda would wait until Chloe unlocked the private quarters to come change the sheets and refresh the towels.

  “Just give me the high sign, and I’ll take care of y’all.” Her smile had reminded Chloe of Luke. But neither one of them had mentioned him.

  Eva and Chloe were the last two at the fire, long after the boys, Eva’s husband Daniel, and the other guests had gone to bed. They talked and talked. About their lives, their loves, their careers, their disasters. Eva was from downstate, just like Chloe, but that’s about all their lives had in common. Eva married to a wonderful man, and Chloe divorced a drug-addicted alcoholic.

  “He wasn’t always that way,” Chloe said. Nobody in their right mind marries a man with as many issues as Spence.

  “What happened?” Eva poked the fire with a stick and sparks flew into the sky. She threw another log on, signaling that she wanted details.

  “He lost his job in ’07.”

  “That’s when everything started to go to hell.”