The Boots My Mother Gave Me

by Brooklyn James

  A woman joined them, bending down as she scooped Tate up in her arms, kissing him on the cheek. “Don’t ever do that again. You want to put Mommy into an early grave?” she scolded. Jeremiah and I stood to join her. As my eyes found the woman’s face, she looked familiar.

  “Harley! It’s me, Cassidy Isaacs. From high school.”

  “Cassidy,” I spoke aloud, as it finally clicked.

  “How are you doing?” she asked. “What are you doing home? Do you live here now? I thought you lived in New York, or Texas, or somewhere. I can’t keep track of you.”

  “I’m good. I’m just here for a little while. How about yourself? What are you up to these days?” I inquired, as socially expected.

  “This is what I’ve been up to,” she referred to Tate. “We came from lunch, Jeremiah wanted to show Tate that car.” She nodded in Charlene’s direction. I finally had her all fixed up, shiny red topcoat, black racing stripes, and black leather interior. She was hot, absolutely smoking. My once primer gray, homely Charlene matured into a fully functional, sleek, sexy, running machine, sure to make many a young man purr.

  “It looks good, Harley. She’s pretty bitchin’,” Jeremiah said, his hands covering Tate’s ears.

  “Oh, that’s your car? That old gray one you drove senior year?” Cassidy asked. “No wonder you were so nosey about that car.” She swatted Jeremiah lightly. “How did Tate get away from you?”

  “He’s quick. I turned my head for a second and he was gone,” Jeremiah explained.

  “You turned your head for a second, huh? Some things never change.” She smiled. “We better get going. Good seeing you, Harley.”

  “You too.”

  “Bye, Harwey,” Tate said, waving his hand, as Cassidy walked away with him, he looked over her shoulder.

  “See you later, Tate.” I waved.

  Jeremiah lagged behind. “How long you in town for?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I heard your mom left.” He scuffed his shoe in the gravel, intermittently looking from me to the ground. “I figured you’d surface.”

  “Jeremiah, you coming?” Cassidy yelled to him from up the street.

  “In a minute,” he answered, returning to me. He handed me a card with his name on it and an address on the back. “I rent my dad’s place out, so I live in town now,” he explained. “If you need anything...anything, you know where to find me. It’s good seeing you.” The sunlight caught his beautiful browns, accompanied by his long, curly, captivating lashes.

  “You too,” I returned his sentiment, our bodies leaning as far toward one another as humanly possible while standing erect, neither of us committing to a hug.

  He turned and walked away, looking back at me over his shoulder a few times, I watched him fade into the distance. I spun around, heading back to the garage, and there they stood, Ricky, Mark, and Pete, all of them, leaning up against the bay, watching like hawks.

  “You guys are nothing but a bunch of gossips!” I giggled. “Worse than the women down at the beauty salon.”

  “Who needs TV, when we have The Days of Our Lives right here on Main Street?” Ricky bantered.

  “Ha, ha, ha,” I mocked, less than enthused, returning to my work, on the Jeep.

  “Don’t you want to know the scoop?” Mark teased, as they crowded around me. I did want to know the scoop. I wanted to know all of it, every juicy detail, but I wasn’t going to let them know that.

  “Quit taunting her,” Pete said. “There is no scoop. She’s been trying to find a father for that kid ever since she lost her husband, and I believe your boy is her primary target.”

  Oh, thank God! I exclaimed to myself, relieved Jeremiah was not Tate’s father. I couldn’t imagine him the father of anybody’s child, except...Whoa! I almost finished that sentence. “He’s not my boy. He’s a grown man, fully capable of making his own decisions,” I defended. “It doesn’t surprise me he’s following around after her. He did the same thing in high school.”

  “Do I sense some contention in your voice?” Ricky rattled my chain.

  “I believe you do. Sure sounded like contention to me.” Mark smiled delightedly.

  “You guys really shouldn’t say words you can’t spell,” Pete chimed in. We laughed. Much to my surprise, it was nice to be back at Benny’s with the guys. “Get back to work, both of ya,” Pete said. Mark and Ricky obliged.

  “Contention...C-U-N,” Mark started spelling the word.

  “Whoa, you better stop right there. I don’t think you want to finish that one,” Ricky warned. “It starts with C-O-N, anyway. Pete, where’d you find this guy, eh?” I shook my head, smiling, my mind returning to Jeremiah and Cassidy, and our high school prom.

  Our first prom, junior year, Jeremiah took Cassidy. I reluctantly agreed to go at all. I went with Danny, a kid from the neighborhood, one of the guys I played football with. Mom and Kat helped me get ready. I prepared in my bathrobe, curlers in my hair, when Jeremiah called in a panic. He couldn’t get his tie right, his dad wasn’t home, and he had to pick up Cassidy in fifteen minutes. Luckily, I tied Gramps’ tie often as a kid, a special thing we shared. I hopped in the old flatbed Ford and headed down the road.

  “Miah,” I called, walking through the front door.

  “I’m up here.” I made my way to the upstairs bathroom, the one with the claw foot tub. There he was, stuffing himself into a monkey suit. I giggled, and marveled, at his discomfort. He looked so handsome. “I can’t get this top button to close,” he muttered.

  “Well, that’s because your neck’s too big. You’ve been doing too many shoulder shrugs in the weight room,” I dismissed. Going to him, I lined the buttons up, and put the tie on over the shirt without buttoning them. “See, you don’t have to button them. You just put the tie on over it. It looks kind of cool that way, a little more casual.”

  “Where’d you learn that?”

  “Where do you think?”

  “Kit-Kat,” he said knowingly. “Hey, nice rollers,” he commented on my hair, smiling.

  I smiled back, playfully countering by tightening my grip on his tie as I finished.

  “How do you get the knot to look like that? Mine was all twisted.”

  “It’s all about the tighten, and the dimple at the end. Gramps used to say anybody can tie a tie, but it’s how you finish that matters, that extra little touch. You see?” I showed him in the mirror. “Besides, you’re just nervous. You like this girl that much?”

  “Aw, yeah. That looks really good,” he said, checking out the tie. “I guess I am a little nervous. I’ve never been out with her before. She seems a little high maintenance, but she’s gorgeous and a cheerleader.”

  “Okay then, do you have a corsage and a boutonniere? You have to have flowers for girls when you take them out, especially high maintenance ones. You didn’t happen to pick up any jewelry did you?” I grinned at him.

  “I think that’s what Dad left on the kitchen table this morning, something that goes on her wrist, and a thing that matches for my tux. I didn’t know I had to have jewelry for prom.” He looked at me, worried.

  “Miah.” I rolled my eyes and swatted him. “I was joking about the jewelry. Speaking of, what about cufflinks?”

  He dug through his father’s drawer in the dresser beside the sink. “Here, which ones should I wear?”

  “Let’s do the black with gold trim,” I said, placing them inside the buttonholes at his wrist. “I’d think you would be used to dating gorgeous cheerleaders by now. I’ve never seen you date any other kind of girl.”

  “Dad says girls, women, will make me nervous the rest of my life, so I better get used to it.”

  “Just remember to offer her your arm, or put your hand in the small of her back when you’re escorting her, don’t just push through the crowd and leave her walking behind. Girls like it when guys are attentive to them,” I coached. “And if it gets chilly, give her your jacket. Put it around her shoulders nice and gentle. You know, be c
hivalrous.”

  “Do you think Danny will know to do all that stuff?” he asked, grinning.

  “Have you seen our friend Danny? He might be gentle, as an ox! I’ll be lucky to come home with both feet intact after dancing with him.” We laughed.

  “So, what do you think?” He stood before me, simply the cutest thing.

  “You look like a regular Dapper Don, my friend. Very handsome.”

  He pulled me to him, hugging me. “Thanks, Harley-girl.”

  I hugged him quickly, pulling away. “Now, you’re going to wrinkle your tux.” I shooed him out of the bathroom and down the stairs.

  “You save me a dance?” he asked stopping at the front door.

  Later that night at prom, we wound down from dancing to This Is How We Do It by Montell Jordan. Danny took a seat at the table, needing a breather, and Cassidy went to the bathroom to powder her nose for the tenth time. She didn’t dance much, except for the slow songs. The gymnasium was hot as a sauna, and she didn’t want to mess her hair up. I drank a bottle of water by the refreshment table as fast as I could get it down, fanning myself with my hand as Jeremiah approached. I hadn’t seen him all night except from across the room. I got the feeling Cassidy didn’t appreciate our friendship, so I stayed away.

  He gave me the pocket square from his tux, which I used to wipe the dampness off my face and neck. I turned to hand it back to him, realizing I just wiped my nasty sweat all over it, thinking maybe I should throw it away. He took it without a second thought, and crammed it back in his pocket. I guess all those years of sharing each other’s t-shirt tails, to wipe our sweaty faces while playing football, had broken him in.

  “You want to dance?” he asked, as the DJ played Secret Garden by Bruce Springsteen, The Boss, as we affectionately referred to him. I loved that song. I felt like he wrote it about me. Me and every other sixteen-year-old girl, right? I took his hand, following him to the dance floor as the song played. Jeremiah put his arms around my waist, leaving a space between, that space the chaperones, mostly teachers and parents, preferred all patrons of the dance maintain. I put my arms around his shoulders. “You having a good time?”

  “A great time,” I said.

  “I see your feet are still there.” He looked down at my shoes, returning my quiet laughter with his own. “You look really pretty.” He pulled me tighter to him.

  The side of his face rested on mine, as he sang the words of the song, his voice warm and low in my ear. It felt like the room was spinning as my eyes caught the turning of the disco ball in the center of the gymnasium. Jeremiah’s arms around me, his body heat radiating, I felt light and warm, like when the summer sun beams down on you, heating you to your core. My eyes closed momentarily, opening to find Cassidy and Danny standing on the sidelines, watching us.

  Cassidy’s arms folded over her chest in a defiant stance. Danny watched, seemingly unbothered, as he ate a cupcake from the refreshment table. Upon seeing them, I pulled away from Jeremiah, motioning him in their direction. Dancing with me certainly did nothing to ensure his chances with Cassidy.

  “Harley,” the sound of my name jerked my mind back to the present at Benny’s. “We’ve got a rear-end repair coming in, one of our contracts. You up for that?”

  “I might need a little refresher, Pete. It’s been a long time,” I confessed.

  Later that evening at Kat’s, I cleaned up from work. I heard the phone ring while I took a shower. Kat came charging into the bathroom. “That was Mom. We have to get her a plane ticket home.”

  “Home?” I turned the water off.

  “She’s crying. She’s sick to her stomach. She threw up all night. She can’t do this, Harley. We have to go get her, fly her home, something.”

  “Calm down, Kat. Let me get wiped off and I’ll call her back.” I toweled off in record time, threw on a robe, and dialed her number at the resort.

  “Hello,” my mother’s voice shaky.

  “Mom.”

  “Harley, I want to come home. Get me the next flight out of here.”

  “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

  “It’s the altitude. I’ve been sick all night. They said it would take a day or two for my body to adjust.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “No. The girl who lives in the dorm next to me, Molly, she stayed with me all night.”

  “That was sweet of her. What about everybody else? Are they nice?”

  “Oh, yeah, they’re great. Everyone I’ve met so far. I just want to come home.” With home, she cried.

  I sympathized, “Mom, when I left home, the first time, I got so homesick, some nights I thought I wouldn’t make it, sure if I fell asleep the world would collapse by morning. But then, when I got up and the sun rose, I would think, Yeah, I can do this. And every night it got easier, until I wasn’t homesick anymore. I promise it will get easier. You just have to give it a chance.”

  “I’m one of the oldest people here, Harley. Most everybody here is in college. They’re on summer break. I don’t belong here. I want to come home,” she reiterated tearfully.

  “You’re a late bloomer, that’s all. Think of it as your second lease on life.”

  “I’m a late bloomer, all right,” she shot back, self-deprecatingly. “I feel so out of place.”

  “Everybody feels out of place the first time they do anything. You have to settle into it,” I spoke softly.

  “What would you do?”

  “I would stay, at least for a week, or two, give it some time, and then make my decision. I think you’re going to be disappointed if you leave, disappointed in yourself,” I said. “You know how it is. The harder something is, the more rewarding it is to conquer it.”

  “No, I don’t know how that is, because I’ve always taken the easy way out.”

  “There’s no better time to change than the present. You can do this, Mom. Just reverse the situation. If this were me or Kat calling you, what would you tell us?”

  “I would probably tell you not to quit and give it some time.”

  “Exactly! You know what to do. Just take your own advice, Mom.”

  “I guess. I know you’re right. I would feel better if I saw it through. I don’t want to regret going home. I have enough regrets,” she said, her voice growing in strength. “Do you remember that time, in the laundry room, you told me someday you’d be the momma?”

  “I was just thinking about that the other day.” I laughed, and so did she.

  “Well, I guess you’re getting your big moment.”

  “And I never once told you, because I said so, did I?”

  “No. No, you didn’t.”

  Mom made it through her first week and decided to stay. She was trying things she had never done before, even surprising herself with what she could do. She was living. I was so proud of her. More importantly, she was proud of herself for the first time in a long time.

  It’s Not Always About You

  I gave my father a few weeks to process everything before going to see him. Pulling into the driveway of my childhood home, I couldn’t help but wonder why I was there. So often as a teen, I thought it best for all of us never to see Dad again. The only reason I kept coming back was because of Mom. She finally left, and I found myself trying to come to my father’s rescue.

  I apprehensively got out of Charlene and walked to the front porch. The place looked desolate, the lawn so high, as though no one resided here, with the exception of a few snakes quite possibly, slithering around in the grass.

  I stepped to the front door, peeping through the window as I knocked lightly. The living room in total disarray, things scattered about, the couch sat in the middle of the floor. The place was dark, every shade and curtain closed in the middle of the day, a summer day, bright and beautiful. Dad’s head popped up from the couch; he motioned me in. The place reeked of cigarette smoke. Mom would have had a canary.

  “Harley,” he called, as I walked into the living room.

  “Hey, Dad.
I wanted to come by and see how you’re doing,” my voice dropped off as I fully entered the room. He looked like a skid row bum, the hair on his face and head long and scraggly, a far cry from his usual appearance. What the hell was he doing? Mid-afternoon, and he wore his white long johns that appeared not to have been laundered in weeks. The place looked a wreck; he looked a wreck.

  “I can’t believe she did this to me,” he cried without tears. I read somewhere people can cry without tears and express true emotion, especially mentally and emotionally damaged people. I also read some deeply disturbed people don’t truly feel emotions, but they learn how to mimic them, according to societal standards to get what they want, and those people often have difficulty producing real tears. Was my father the former or the latter, damaged or deranged?

  “You did this to yourself, Dad,” I spoke firmly. My father never told the truth about himself. I thought maybe I could tell the truth for him, setting him free by proxy.

  “What did I do to deserve this?”

  “Dad,” I said, agitated. Everybody has to know in the depths of themselves. Even liars have to know the truth, somewhere, don’t they?

  “I know,” he said, followed by another, “I just can’t believe she would do this to me. I need her.”

  “It’s over, Dad. That part of our lives, it’s gone. Mom’s not going to accept it anymore. It’s done.”

  “I wasn’t that way all the time. It wasn’t that bad.”

  “That depends, whose point of view you’re looking through.”

  “She’s my world. I don’t have anything without your mother,” he continued, clutching at his chest.

  “You have us, Kat, Megan, and me. Now you need to pull yourself together and remember you have a granddaughter who thinks you hung the moon. I’ve seen you do it before, Dad. You can be a decent person, a good person. Get rid of all the crap, the alcohol, whatever else you’re holding onto, and get on with your life.”

  “I can’t.” He groaned. “I just can’t.”

  “Do you remember when we were kids, Kat and I, out in the hay field in the summertime, for hours? The sun heating through our clothes, sweat dripping down our faces, we thought we would surely perish. What did you tell us?” He would not answer. “You told us, ‘Suck it up, quit whining, and get back to work.’ You never let us get away with anything. You said you never wanted to hear I can’t in our vocabulary. We never got a cop-out. Why should you?”