by Shawn Inmon
“I was.”
I heard that weird, ghostly silence like you hear only on a cell phone call. It went on for quite a few seconds. I heard him take a deep breath and let it out. When he spoke again, it sounded like he was crying. I didn’t understand. How had he not known?
“Dawn, I am so sorry. I’m sorry for you, I’m sorry for me, but mostly I’m sorry for our baby. Your parents had said you were pregnant, but I never knew for sure and no one would talk to me about it. I am so sorry I wasn’t strong enough or smart enough to stop that from happening.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean ‘stop that from happening?’”
“I mean, I did everything I could so that we could keep the baby, but no matter what I said, they wouldn’t listen. I told them I wanted to marry you and that we would raise the baby, but they said I ruined your life and you didn’t want to see me ever again. I understood that, but when I said that Terri had offered to pay for all the medical expenses if we could put the baby up for adoption, they still wouldn’t agree. Over and over, they told me I had two options: pay for the abortion or go to jail. I did everything I could to stop it, but I didn’t do enough, and I’m sorry.”
His words crushed me. My heart broke, but I had become good at keeping it together.
“Are you saying you wanted to keep our baby?”
“Yes, of course. That’s what I came to your volleyball game in Morton to tell you. Didn’t you know that?”
“Mom said that the abortion was your idea. That you volunteered to pay for it and that you were glad to be rid of both the baby and me. She said you already had girlfriends in Seattle and that you didn’t want to be stuck with a Mossyrock girl and a baby.”
There was more silence. “Have you believed that all these years?” he asked, so quietly.
“Yes.” My voice grew just as small.
“Oh, Dawn. Oh my God. Then you think… you think that I slept with you, got you pregnant, and then paid for the abortion and disappeared forever.”
“Yes.”
“Dawn, all I can say is… your mom lied to you. When I lost you and we lost our baby, I lost everything good in my life. My life has felt wrong ever since that day. From that moment until now, there has been a hole in my life that nothing could fill.”
Silence stretched out. I was stunned and had no words. I couldn’t make my brain function.
I heard Shawn say, “Shit. Shit. Shit!”
I finally found my voice. “Shawn!”
“…Shi—“My voice cut through his and he grew quiet.
I chose my words with all the calm I could gather. “We need to sit down, face to face, and talk.”
Falling Slowly
When I hung up the phone I could barely think straight. Everything I ever believed had been pulled out from under me. I suppose all parents lie to their kids at some point, for their own good. But why would Mom lie to me about something this huge, something that changed my life for the worse in almost every possible way?
Shawn sounded sincere to the point that it was easy for me to believe that at least he believed what he was saying, but I still wasn’t ready to just accept that my life for the last thirty years had been based on a lie.
Because our schedules wouldn’t match up for a few days, we weren’t able to get together until that Friday. Shawn said he wanted to take me out to dinner. I wasn’t actually scheduled to work that day, but I told him to pick me up at ACS in Tumwater. I felt better knowing I would have friends and support around when I saw him for the first time.
Nervous as I was, I went into work two hours before he was supposed to pick me up. It was a hot day and I wanted to look as good as I possibly could, so I waited until I was there to get dressed, put my makeup on, and straighten my hair. It was a hot, humid day, so I knew if I straightened my hair in the morning it would be frizzy when Shawn arrived.
I was completely ready to go at least a half hour before he was supposed to pick me up. I paced around ACS and listened to everyone make fun of me for being dressed nice with makeup and straight hair. I was starting to get a complex. Did I normally look ugly and frumpy or something?
Finally, I got a text from Shawn saying he was in the parking lot. I took a deep breath, put my sunglasses on, and went outside to see him for the first time in years. When I came out the door, he wasn’t where I expected him to be parked, so I had to hunt for him a little bit. I looked to my left and there he was, leaning up against the front of his car, arms crossed, sunglasses hiding his eyes, and wearing that little crooked smirk I had never forgotten.
I walked toward him. No reaction. I realized with a shock that he didn’t recognize me! My hair was a lot longer than when he saw me at Bill & Bea’s, and it was styled differently.
As I got closer I saw him jump a little bit, like he finally recognized me. He pulled his sunglasses down and peered over them, looking at me appraisingly. He didn’t say anything, but his smile widened a little. He gave me a little hug, but it was like two strangers hugging.
“Let’s go into Seattle for dinner, OK?” he asked.
Since we were in Tumwater, I thought that was a long ways to go to get dinner, but I said, “Fine. Whatever.”
Two minutes later we were on I-5 and heading north. My phone buzzed and I saw it was a text from Sheilah, my best friend in the world that I didn’t give birth to.
“You OK? Is he there yet?”
“Yes. Yes.”
I hit ‘send,’ then thought to add “He’s taking me to Seattle for dinner. If you never hear from me again go looking for him.” I was joking. Mostly.
When I looked at Shawn, I realized he was in mid-sentence and I had completely tuned him out.
“…two CD’s. I thought it would be cool if we could listen to our music on the drive.”
I nodded as if I had been listening or paying attention. He reached down and turned the volume up on the CD that he had put in. I Will Still Love You by Stonebolt was playing. I had really grown to hate that song.
“This is the song you asked me to remember that last time I saw you in 1979. Remember?”
“I remember. I don’t like it.”
“Oh.” He deflated a little bit and hit the “next” button on the CD player. My Angel Baby by Toby Beau started to play. That was a little better.
“So, now that we’re together in one place and talking to each other again, I suppose there are a few things I need to tell you.”
Radar up. Hackles raised.
“Really? Like what?”
“Well, it’s pretty much the last thing on Earth I want to talk with you about, but I need to talk about my marriage. Adinah and I got married eight years ago. I knew it was a mistake almost immediately and I’ve been trying to end it for more than five years now.”
I knew it. Ooohhh, why do I let myself get sucked in by guys that sound so sincere and are really playing me for a fool? I put on my frostiest smile and said, “Have you ever tried saying ‘I want a divorce?’”
“Actually, no. At least not until recently. I finally did last Saturday. It’s hard for me to explain why it took me so long to do it. Even though I knew we shouldn’t have gotten married, I felt guilty about it and could just never work up the oomph to tell her that.”
“I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, Shawn, but I’m not going to be any part of you ending your marriage.”
“Everything to do with ending my marriage started years before you and I started talking again. I told her I didn’t love her years ago. We’d gone to marriage counseling for two years until I think the counselor gave up on us as hopeless, which we were.”
He glanced at me. I gave him nothing. He sighed.
“Dawn, it’s been a long time. We don’t really know each other anymore…”
“That’s right. We don’t. And if you think I am that same scared little fifteen-year-old girl you left behind in Mossyrock thirty years ago, you couldn’t be more wrong.”
“I get that, and thank God. I’ve grow
n up. I’m different too. I would have no interest in talking to a young girl. I want to find out who you are now. I know we’ve been emailing back and forth like crazy, but that doesn’t mean we know each other. You don’t owe me anything. If you want to have dinner and then say goodbye forever, that’s OK.”
I still gave him nothing. We rode in silence except for the soundtrack of our teenage lives playing in the background. Once we got to Seattle I was totally lost, but Shawn drove like he knew exactly where he was.
“This is Capitol Hill. It’s where I used to live with my sister Terri. We lived just a few blocks away, and every Sunday we would walk down here and go to brunch at Charlie’s on Broadway. I thought that would be a good place for us to eat tonight. It’s not the fanciest place, but it’s got good food.”
When we walked inside Charlie’s, I liked it immediately. It had the feel of a place that had been there for a while. The maître d’ took us to a booth in the corner.
As soon as we sat down, a waiter appeared with water and menus. They were efficient in this place. We both took our sunglasses off and got our first good look at what thirty years had done to us. I studied him as he talked, but honestly, I can’t say he was all that familiar. I had read the story he wrote about our meeting at Bill and Bea’s, so I knew he had recognized me just by my laugh, but I couldn’t say the same.
We both ordered fish and chips. Shawn ordered an iced tea, saying, “I never did learn how to drink,” and I ordered a Tequila Sunrise. I had learned how, and felt like I could use the boost. When my drink came, I took a long pull and almost choked. It was so strong I had trouble catching my breath for a second. Maybe I hadn’t learned all that much after all.
Shawn was looking at me so seriously. He said, “I have something else that’s been bugging me a little bit.”
Oh, my God. What else now?
“OK. What?”
“In one of your emails the other day, you said that you had resented me all these years because I was an older guy and I manipulated you into having sex.”
“Right. I had wanted to stay a virgin until I got married.”
“Right, I know. We both did. But…I have a different memory of how that all played out than you do.”
“What do you mean?”
“That one time we were together, on New Year’s Eve, it happened because of you, not because of me.”
I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. I just shook my head, but he went on.
“That day, you called me at my Mom and Dad’s house and asked me if I was a virgin, remember? Then you told me ‘Not for long” or something like that. Then you told me the address of the house to meet you at that night and hung up.”
I had to sit there in silence for a second and absorb that. All of a sudden I couldn’t really remember the circumstances leading up to us sleeping together. Mom had told me for so long that Shawn had manipulated me that I had long since stopped thinking about how it had actually happened. Then, something clicked in my brain. An image of the fifteen-year-old me popped into my brain, standing in my Mom and Dad’s living room, making that exact phone call.
Crap.
“Oh my God. Why hadn’t I remembered that until just now?”
Shawn shrugged. “I don’t know. You were young. We never got to talk to each other again after that night. I’m sure your mom painted the picture she wanted you to believe and then reinforced it every chance she got. I’m just glad you remember it, or I might think I’ve gone crazy.”
It seemed like every few minutes there was some new revelation. I just wanted to take a minute and catch my breath. The ice in my drink had melted enough that I could take a sip without choking. Our food had arrived long ago, but neither one of us had done more than pick at it. I was moving my coleslaw around with my fork when I looked at Shawn. He was holding his fork in such an odd way—more like a child than a man—that it stirred an old, long-forgotten memory. That simple act, holding his fork in a fist, opened the floodgates in my mind.
Everything came back at once. Laughing, talking, holding each other close. The way he always touched my cheek before he kissed me. Warmth. Safety.
I lost my grip on my fork and it clattered onto my plate. Shawn must have been lost in thoughts of his own, because that startled him. He reached for me across the table, touching my hand. “Dawn? Are you all right?”
So many things that had been just out of my reach came into focus.
“You’re my Shawn.”
Shawn was smiling. “Yes. I always have been. You see me now.”
I nodded and realized I had tears running down my face. Shawn reached out again and put his whole hand around mine, engulfing it.
“I had lost you. I had forgotten. I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head, still smiling. “It doesn’t matter now.”
I knew that was right. It didn’t matter. I felt something settle over me that I hadn’t felt in so long I forgot what it felt like. I felt at peace. Sitting there in Charlie’s on Broadway in Seattle, with Shawn holding my hand like we were teenagers again, was exactly where I was supposed to be. I was with exactly who I was supposed to be with, after all these years. It’s hard to explain exactly why or how, but at that exact moment I knew I wasn’t going to let Shawn go. I had quit believing in fairy tales and ‘“happily ever after’ when I was fifteen, but at that moment I felt a certainty I hadn’t felt since that age.
We realized we had been sitting there for three hours, and it was time to leave. We walked back to the car, and I thought Shawn might reach down and hold my hand again, but he didn’t. He did open my car door for me, though, and that was nice.
The ride from Tumwater to Seattle had been awkward and filled with long silences. The ride back felt like we were sitting cross-legged in the side yard again, gossiping about our friends and memories.
By the time we pulled back into the ACS parking lot, it was almost midnight. Dani was waiting for me at home. I had to get up and go to work again early in the morning, but I wasn’t quite ready to let go of this feeling we had stumbled upon.
Shawn pulled alongside my Grand Am in the now-deserted parking lot. He put it in park but left the engine running. He looked nervous. I felt completely calm.
He started babbling a little bit, just as he used to do when we were young.
“Thank you for tonight. Getting to see you and talk to you again is like a dream to me. I’ve thought about you and wondered about you since the day I left your mom and dad’s house thirty years ago. Just talking to you and knowing you again brings me peace. Still, I know you’ve got a lot going on. Dani’s going to be having her baby soon. You’re going to have to find a new place to live. You’ve got your job. I don’t know if there’s room in all that for me, too.”
I stared at him and raised my eyebrows. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“No! No. I just… I don’t want to presume anything. Just because you remember who I am now doesn’t necessarily mean…”
“Yeah, my life has worked out so well without you, hasn’t it? Turn off the car.”
He did. I shifted in my seat and moved closer to him. When he turned back around, our faces were inches apart.
“Dawn. I know there are a lot of things we need to figure out. We have two completely separate lives right now. But, I feel so much for you. I always have. It has never gone away.”
“I know. Me too. I feel it. Everything is moving so fast though. A month ago we hadn’t talked to each other in thirty years. Until a few hours ago, I didn’t know that you were still married. We need to take it slow. Everything will work out just like it’s supposed to. But, for now, everything will have to wait. It’s late.”
He smiled gently and said, “I know.” He got out of the car and came around and opened my door. When I got out, he reached out and took my hand and walked me the few feet to my car. When I started to open my car door he reached out and pulled me toward him. He kissed me, filling me with the most intense feeling of
déjà vu I had ever experienced. For those few seconds, I was back in the yard after our Star Wars date and it was our first kiss all over again. I felt the same explosion of heat and emotion I had then.
“Dawn, I love you.”
He literally clapped his hand over his mouth like he hoped he could catch the words before they escaped. It was too late. He looked at the ground, embarrassed. I touched his chin and lifted his eyes to meet mine.
“Taking it slow, remember?”
He nodded, looked a little guilty, and opened my door for me. I smiled, waved, and headed for home.
Years before, I had learned that tears didn’t solve anything and so I had given up on them. I had frozen the part of me that might have been tempted to ever cry. Now, driving home with the feel of Shawn’s lips still warm on mine, I let them come. There were tears of sadness at everything we had lost, tears of frustration at how easily we had been fooled, and tears of happiness knowing that he had never stopped loving and believing in me.
Beautiful Boy
When I got in to work the next morning, I resolved to keep what had happened with Shawn and me to myself. It all seemed so weird—dating your first boyfriend who you’ve kind of hated for thirty years, and being pretty thrilled about it—that I didn’t want to say anything and have someone rain on my happiness. I must not have done a very good job of hiding it though, because people immediately started to ask me why I was smiling the way I was. Then they started making fun of me, saying they had never actually seen me smile before. I was not amused.
It was like Shawn had forgotten he was a forty-nine-year-old man and had reverted to being a teenager. He wanted to drive from Enumclaw to Tumwater or Chehalis every day. He said that he was glad to make the hour and a half drive just to say hello, but I wouldn’t let him. I had to work the rest of the weekend, but I told him that he could come down and we could have dinner on Monday.
At 5:00 on Monday night he was waiting for me, leaning up against the front of the car, smiling. At least he was consistent.
