by Pamela Morsi
When he invited us to stay for dinner, Mom accepted.
Del called over to the Lelands’ to invite Sierra. When my sister told him that Seth was coming over, her guy friend got included, as well.
It was no elaborate meal. He fired up some charcoal on the backyard grill and we ate hot dogs and hamburgers with salad and sodas.
Seth was a little standoffish at first, but Mom apparently assumed it was shyness rather than being stuck-up that made him that way. She was able to draw him in and before the food was all gone, he was relaxed and joking along with everyone else.
Surprisingly, Mom asked him a lot of questions about the art school, why he went there and what he liked about it.
“In a lot of places,” he told her, “skateboarders are out of the mainstream. We have to live with all the stupid expectations that the jocks get, but nobody really respects us as like real athletes.”
Mom nodded as if she understood.
“At the art school, there aren’t any jocks and everybody is just a little bit out of the ordinary. I’m not saying we don’t have cliques. We do. But I guess we sort of respect each other more than in regular high school.”
Sierra kept looking at Mom hopefully as if she expected her to suddenly announce that Sierra would be attending. That, of course, did not happen.
But what did happen was that Mom and I both got a better idea of what Seth was about. I liked him more and thought Mom maybe felt the same.
After the sun went down and it was cooler, we played a weird game of glow-in-the-dark soccer, girls against the guys. We got trampled. Sierra was the only one on our team who was any good at all. Mom had to sit down after a few minutes and Del joined her on the deck, where he served as referee. But mostly he just seemed to be talking to Mom.
There was something truly wonderful about that night. There was lots of fun, we’d had lots of good food. All of us kids got along and Mom and Del were obviously enjoying each other’s company. I thought that if I just squinted a very little bit, I could almost see what it might be like to live in a normal family. With just an ordinary middle-class mom, dad and kids. I could imagine what our life might have been like if my dad had lived, if that one little change in our chaos equation had just never come to pass.
I have to admit, I liked the vision.
It was late when we finally said our goodbyes.
Seth left first, with Sierra walking him to the end of the block. I figured they were sneaking a kiss or something.
Spence got a phone call from his mother and closeted himself up to take it.
I was gathering up all my stuff. It seemed to have an incredible ability to multiply geometrically. I’d bring one thing over and find I had ten things to bring home.
Del and my mom were standing by the door together.
“Promise me that you’ll at least think about calling Marcy,” he said.
“Why is this so important to you?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “I don’t know exactly,” he said. “But it feels right to me. Just like being with you feels right to me.”
Mom shot a glance in my direction. I pretended I didn’t hear and nonchalantly went around the corner. Then immediately backed up against the wall so I could stay close to the doorway and hear them.
“You’ve been hinting about that all evening,” she said.
“Thank God you finally noticed,” he said. “I was beginning to think I was going to have to make some grand declaration or something.”
“I’m not ready to have any kind of relationship,” she said. “I’m fighting for my life here. I’ve got to concentrate on getting well.”
“Why not give your life something to fight for?” he said. “There’s no reason why we can’t date.”
“Date? Are you blind or crazy? Nobody dates when they have cancer.”
“I don’t think there’s any rule about that,” he said. “And maybe if they don’t, they should. It might be a whole new direction for treatment. I can talk to Wiktor about it.”
“There is nothing to joke about here,” Mom said. “I am sick. I am bald. My mouth is full of sores. My throat hurts so much I can hardly bear to swallow. I throw up virtually every day of my life. And I’m so tired it’s a struggle just to make it from morning doze to afternoon nap. The grim reaper is double-parked in front of the curb, and you want to date?”
“Yeah. How about tomorrow night? I’ll pick you up about seven,” he said. “And call Marcy, so I won’t have to spend the entire evening talking about that.”
Mom was, for once in her life, completely speechless.
SONNY DAYS
26
The first grown-up dinner party that was held in Sonny and Dawn’s new home was to set up Tonya Beale with one of the guys who worked in Sonny’s office.
The menu included braised beef with horseradish sauce, asparagus spears, mixed potatoes, salad and a nice red wine served in long-stemmed crystal.
Sonny wasn’t sure how the setup between the two single people was going, but with the children enjoying the novelty of an overnight with the grandparents, the talk around the table was totally grownup and he was enjoying himself.
“Dawn and Sonny are like family to us,” Tonya told Paul, a tall, well-spoken engineer with a receding hairline. “I don’t know how our family would have gotten through the last few years without them.”
Tonya and her brothers and sisters had become a personal mission for Dawn. The two older girls were both enrolled at UT and commuting into the city. Their brother was in his freshman year at the Air Force Academy. The younger children, all now in high school, were responsible hardworking kids, coping with the tragedy of losing their parents.
Dawn made sure that while the older girls were on campus, the younger Beale children were in class and supervised after school. Because of her own experience of having only herself to count on, she wanted these kids to always feel they could count on her.
“Tonya’s father was a good friend,” Sonny explained, running his hand along his chest. “And he saved my life.”
Sonny rarely talked about the accident and didn’t wish to now. But he felt as if he had to voice that truth from time to time so that no one, including himself, would forget the circumstances.
The talk moved to Paul and his life in Charlotte before attending the university. Then the three of them swapped crazy college stories as Dawn served the dessert.
As the evening wound down, Sonny felt the satisfaction of being a happy man. He had a nice home, two wonderful kids, a promising career, good friends and a wife who was both beautiful to look at as well as generous and kind. And she was turning into a very accomplished hostess.
When they said their goodbyes at the front door, he turned to Dawn and told her so.
“Go to hell!” she said, catching him completely off guard. She stormed out into the kitchen. After a moment, he followed her.
She was angrily clattering the English bone china that she normally treated as if it were spun sugar.
“What’s wrong?”
“What do you think is wrong?” she asked, turning to glare at him.
“I don’t have any idea.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“Dawn, tell me what is wrong.”
“You all think you’re too frigging good for me!” she declared. “You and Paul, just a couple of golden boys. But Tonya would be a waitress now if I hadn’t helped her!”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Tonya might well be a waitress and she is so grateful to you. She loves you. I love you. And I’m pretty sure Paul likes you. He raved about the dinner all evening. What is this all about? Nobody thinks they are too good for you. Did somebody say something?”
His wife stopped, took a breath and then gently set down the stack of plates that she would have slammed on the counter a moment earlier.
“No,” she told him. “Nobody said anything.”
“Then what is all this about.”
“Nothing,” she said.<
br />
Sonny took her hands in his own and drew her nearer. “It’s obviously not nothing,” he said.
He led her away from the kitchen and to the living room couch where they sat down, his arm around her shoulder.
“Tell me,” he insisted.
She resisted, unwilling to voice the bitterness that she was feeling. Finally he dragged it out of her.
“You’re all sitting around talking about college,” she said. “That’s what you talked about all night. The dorms you lived in, the classes you went to, the professors you had.”
Sonny nodded. “It’s the only thing I knew those two had in common,” he told her. “I certainly never meant to exclude you, darling. I’m sorry that you felt like I did.”
“I guess I’m just having a self-esteem crisis,” she said. “It’s like all our friends, everyone we know, they’ve all gone to college or they’re working exciting jobs and I’m still the trashy, unwanted girl that nobody can believe you married.”
“Dawn!”
“Oh, I know that’s not true,” she said. “Intellectually, I know it’s not true, but I still feel it. Even after all these years, sometimes I still feel it.”
“What can I do to make it go away?” he asked.
She shook her head. “You can’t do anything,” she told him. “It’s me. It’s inside of me and I’m the only one who can fix it.”
“Would you like to go to college?” he asked her. “I think the girls could spare you for a few classes.”
“They wouldn’t let me in college,” she said, aghast.
“They who?”
“The people who run the place,” she said. “I dropped out of high school and have a GED. I’d never get accepted.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” he said. “And if they don’t let you in right away, you can take courses at community college until they do.”
“I don’t know.”
“Dawn, if it will help you feel better about yourself, then you should do it,” Sonny said. “And it’s not as if anything you learn is ever time wasted.”
She took a couple more days to be convinced, but ultimately, Dawn Leland decided she was ready to try higher education. The university had a special program for adults returning to school. Dawn signed up for it. And after the very nerve-racking experience of sitting down with a thousand seventeen year olds to take the SAT, Dawn was officially admitted to the University of Tennessee.
Sonny was proud of her. But within weeks of classes starting, Sonny realized his part in her degree program was going to involve more than cheerleading. Dawn took her studies very seriously. And except for the girls, her schoolwork took precedence over everything else. Sonny now came home after a hard day at work to find dirty dishes piled in the sink and no food in the refrigerator.
Clean socks, a pressed shirt, a towel that at least had nothing visible on it became valued commodities. The girls were given a lot more daddy time and Sonny desperately tried to multitask with suggestions like, “Who wants Daddy to give her a ride on the vacuum cleaner?”
The first year went well. Dawn was delighted with college. Sonny and the girls were getting accustomed to the new priorities. They kept thinking that once Dakota started kindergarten, it would all be a lot easier. And for a short time, it was. Then Sonny was promoted to a regional management position.
After the initial cheers of celebration, the couple began to ponder their new set of circumstances.
“I’m going to cut my schedule to one class a semester,” Dawn told him.
“One class?” Sonny was incredulous. “No way. You don’t want to be one of those old ladies who get their mortarboard at age 102.”
They’d built a deck onto the back of the house and were sitting out there supervising the girls playing on their swing set.
“Okay, two classes then,” she said. “But don’t push me for more. You’re going to have all these new responsibilities and you’ll be traveling.”
“Dawn, I see how important your education is to you. And it’s important to me,” he said. “I don’t think of it as some kind of froufrou girl time for a stay-at-home mom. It’s an investment in our future.”
“I know. And I’m not giving it up,” she assured him. “But I think I’ll try a light coursework semester. We don’t know what it’s going to be like yet. Once we figure that out, we’ll know how to manage my classes.”
Dawn’s plan turned out to be a very good one. Sonny’s new job had him on the road more than he was at home. In his former position, he evaluated forestland and estimated logging costs and profits. Now he was actually in the loop to recommend particular sites and harvesting plans.
Sonny had known, of course, that top management did not always go with the projects that looked best on paper. They had discretion to choose whatever they thought best. He knew that other factors went into their decisions. With the new job, he discovered the unpleasantness of some of those other factors.
He complained about it to Dawn.
“It’s a business,” he told her. “I know that and I know that businesses are about money. But, I just didn’t think that it would be quite as…I don’t know…quite as without conscience as it is.”
“It’s a job, Sonny, not a crusade,” Dawn told him. “Do what you’re required to do. Keep your head down and let the decision makers make the decisions. When you become one of the decision makers, then you’ll have a chance to really make a difference.”
His wife’s words sounded like really good advice and he tried to follow it. He put in long hours, turned in quality work and didn’t ask a lot of questions. Some of the plans that were implemented made him proud. He would come home with a kiss for Dawn, enthusiasm for the kids and a mood of contented satisfaction. Other times he privately just shook his head and shared the disappointing details only with his wife.
Sonny had been in his new job not quite a year when a particular incident caught his attention.
A wealthy and influential former politician pushed the company to do a clear-cut in an area not far from his estate. Sonny was mystified as to why that wood and why now. No one would answer his questions directly, but off the record one of his colleagues wised him up.
The TVA was going to put in high-voltage power lines to run near there, actually cutting across the corner of the politician’s land. He didn’t want that, so he was encouraging this clear-cut on the other side of the mountain. That would make it cheaper for the power company to put their lines in there, altering their plan to claim right-of-way through the politician’s property.
Sonny felt a little less than enthusiastic about the company’s compliance in such a personal selfish scheme. But he was truly distressed when he learned that the newly proposed power line route would run right through an impoverished section of a small mill town, putting the modest homes of over two thousand residents literally in the shadow of the giant towers.
“This is not only ridiculous,” Sonny told his boss, “it’s ridiculously unfair. That hillside doesn’t merit a clear-cut. And the TVA’s original plan would spare a lot more trees and affect a lot fewer people. The towers wouldn’t even be in sight of this rich guy’s home.”
The supervisor shook his head. “This may not be good forestry, but it’s good business,” he said. “We may need a favor from this fellow sometime. He’s just the type that a company wants to have on their side. Besides, if he doesn’t get us to do it, some other logging firm will.”
“What about all those people in that little town?” Sonny asked. “Wouldn’t it be good to have them on our side?”
The man shrugged. “You don’t have to worry about them,” he said. “Most of them will never make the connection between our clear-cut this spring and the power lines in their backyard ten years from now.”
That night at home he raved to Dawn.
“It’s just crazy,” he said. “It’s like, if there’s not much chance we’ll be caught, then it’s not wrong. I can’t agree with that. I can’t even go
along.”
“I think you’ll have to, unless you want to get another job,” she told him.
Sonny started looking the next day. There weren’t a lot of firms that were hiring. The industry was in a slump and middle-management executives were being let go. If he was going to move he’d probably have to take a step down the ladder, and find a technical job. He got a couple of interviews, but it was difficult to explain why he wanted to leave the position he had without being disloyal to the company he worked for. He chose to say nothing, which left him open to speculation. He didn’t get any offers.
Over the next year, Sonny continued to do his job. But with a skeptical reluctance that was uncomfortable. Finally, he went to talk to his dad about it. Vern heard him out before voicing his own opinion.
“You’ve got to do what’s right,” his father said. “In the long run, and life is always the long run, behaving ethically is far superior to being successful.”
“But I want to be both,” he said.
Vern shook his head. “Sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t,” he said. “You’ll know, Sonny. I trust you completely to know.”
And he did. The time came and he knew undeniably.
The project was a typical hardwoods harvesting in an area immediately adjacent to one they’d already commenced.
“We can’t do this cut,” he announced to the conference room full of managers, all more senior than himself.
“What do you mean?” his immediate supervisor asked him.
“I mean we can’t do it now,” he said. “We can do it three months from now or six months from now or next year, but we can’t do it now.”
“Now is the best time to do it,” one of the other men suggested. “If we wait we might lose our opportunity.”
