by Lacy Hart
“Oh thank you, Patty, that’s very sweet of you,” I said to her as I tied my hair back into its ponytail.
“No problem, Ms. Ingram,” she said to me with a smile. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“I’ll just have a lemonade Patty, please,” I told her as I watched her scribble it down on her pad.
“Another cosmo for you Ms. Connors?” Patty asked with a smile.
“You bet Patty, thanks for asking,” Mary said as she handed Patty her empty glass. Patty walked away, laughing lightly to herself as she headed towards the bar to place the drink order.
“Lemonade? Really, Sophie? We’re supposed to be out having fun tonight, and you order lemonade to drink. No wonder everyone thinks you’re a spinster.”
Mary sat back and smiled at me.
“Who says I’m a spinster?” I said indignantly.
“More than one person, Sophie. It’s a small town, remember? Word gets around pretty quickly. When is the last time you actually went out on a date? And I mean with someone besides me?”
I had to think hard how to answer that question. It had been long enough where I couldn’t really remember when it was.
“There was that substitute English teacher I went to the poetry reading with,” I said to her proudly.
“Sophie, that guy hasn’t been around here for three years, and you only went out with him that one time. Face it, it has been a long time. It has been too long. I don’t know how you do it. I couldn’t go this long without ever being with a man.”
My face blushed deep red when Mary said it. “Mary! Could you say it a little louder? I don’t think the guys in the kitchen heard you.” I was suddenly feeling very warm, and of course, Patty, who was in earshot, arrived with our drinks, making me blush even more. She handed me my lemonade and Mary her cosmo.
“If you’re looking for a date Ms. Ingram, my dad is single again. I’m sure I could fix you up,” Patty said with a smile.
I groaned audibly and wished the chair I was in would swallow me whole. Seventeen-year-olds were now going to be clued in on my virgin status and looking to set me up with their eligible fathers by lunchtime tomorrow.
“Thanks but no, Patty,” I said to her quietly. “Can we just order dinner, Mary?” I said to Mary through my gritted teeth.
We both quickly ordered The Homestead hamburgers and their fresh-cut french fries, hoping to get Patty to move along quickly. Patty took the order and left, feeling a bit sheepish.
“I’m sorry about that Sophie,” Mary said to me sincerely. “You know I didn’t mean to embarrass you like that. I just worry about you, that’s all.” She held her glass towards me across the table. I reached for my lemonade, smiled at her, and we clinked our glasses together.
We chatted idly for a while, covering all the local gossip as we watched most of the town gather and come and go out of the restaurant. Everyone pretty much dined here, drank here, or got takeout from here, so it was pretty common to see everyone and anyone here, whether you wanted to or not.
Our burgers came out, cooked perfectly, and Mary and I both attacked ours with fervor. We laughed and giggled like high school girls, and for the first time in a long time I was glad she had dragged me out of my shell a bit and out into public.
As we finished our meals, I saw Maggie for the first time tonight as she came out of the kitchen. She had her back to us as she walked backward towards us, and she was clearly talking to someone in front of her, but I couldn’t see who. It was then that I saw it was a girl, not quite as tall as Maggie but close, with long red hair. She looked a lot like many of the girls I see in my eighth-grade class, but I had never seen her around here before. The girl was laughing and smiling at Maggie and talking very animatedly, waving her hands around as she spoke. I saw the girl hand her phone to one of the other servers in the restaurant, and she then placed her arm around Maggie’s waist as the two of them posed for a picture together. The flash from the camera on the phone blinded me briefly, and I blinked hard several times to regain focus. It was then that I got a better look at the girl and saw that she had marvelous emerald green eyes. They were eyes that I had seen once before; eyes that you don’t forget easily.
There was no doubt in my mind – they were his eyes.
6
Travis
It was another restless sleep with fitful dreams. I can never seem to escape the dreams of the fire and losing my friend, but being back home in Canon clearly triggered other things in mind. I could see myself back in this house as a young boy, listening to my mother and father have their usual arguments about how he drank too much, spent too much and fooled around too much and how my father would spit back at my mother in his spiteful, mean tone about how no one else would want her and how he deserved better. I would just stand behind the door when I was eight or nine and just listen, fearful about the violence that could break out at any moment.
My dream then flashed forward to when I was seventeen, and I would occasionally go over to my father’s house to see him. He would be sitting in that chair by the window, sometimes already drunk by early afternoon, sometimes just sitting there lost in his own world. More often than not he never responded to what I would ask, and when he did it was rarely something nice. Even in my dreams, he was just as mean and just as hurtful, and I stood there and took it.
Flash again to college, when I finally got away from Canon and got the chance to be happy. Going around campus, making new friends, meeting new people, and finally getting to be with her, and just her. I could see us in my dream, sitting there outside by the quad, laughing, holding each other and just getting lost in her blue eyes. Just as suddenly as it had started, the dream seemed to end, and she was pulled away from me and was gone. I was reaching for her, trying to pull her back to me, and I saw her slipping away just like everything else has always done in my life to now.
The slam of the screen door on the porch caused me to jump awake on the couch. It took me a few seconds to catch my breath and realize where I was now, and then I saw Abby walk through the door smiling, with my mother following closely behind her. I glanced down at my watch, the one the guys at the fire company gave me while I was recuperating in the hospital, and saw it was nearly 11 PM.
“Hey Dad,” Abby said to me as she bounded over towards me and knelt on the floor to pet Pee Wee, who immediately rolled over onto his belly for her. “You missed a great time at The Homestead. I had a great burger while I was there, and a mountain of fries too.” She licked her lips just at the thought of what she had eaten.
My mother walked over and stood next to where Abby was kneeling. Not much had changed since the last time I had seen her when she came to visit us about six months ago. Her auburn hair had a few more flecks of gray in it, but she looked just as strong as she always had and stood tall as she looked down at me sitting on the couch.
“I brought a burger back for you if you’re hungry, “ she said to me, holding up a white plastic bag from the restaurant.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said to her as I stood up slowly from the couch, shaking the cobwebs from my head and the stiffness in my leg. I gave her a peck on the cheek as I stretched, standing next to her.
“Abby, you need to get to bed,” I said to her. “It’s getting late.”
“Why?” she said to me with a slight whine. “It’s not like I have school tomorrow or anything. I want to hang out for a while.” She sat on the floor, crossing her arms defiantly as she glared at me.
“Come on Abs,” my mother said to her sweetly. “You can have the room next to mine. Your Dad can take his old room. I’ll help you get set up.”
Abby readily went along with my mother’s suggestions, like it was a much better idea than what I had just suggested. Abby stood up and came over and gave me a hug. “Goodnight Dad,” she said to me sweetly as she squeezed me tight.
“Goodnight honey,” I told her as I squeezed her back and gave her a kiss on the top of her head. Abby broke the hug and went over and grabbed h
er bag from the hallway and started up the stairs.
My mother handed me the plastic bag of food. “Why don’t you go in the kitchen and eat. I’ll get her settled and come down in a minute.” She strode toward the stairs and smiled at me as she worked her way up, following Abby.
I took the bag into the kitchen and sat myself down at the small, square wooden table in the kitchen. The kitchen itself did not look that much different from the last time I saw it, or from the years before that. My mom was never much of one for decorating or big furnishings. I think she figured she spent so much time out of the house that there really wasn’t much of a need for fancy stuff at home. She always had just what we needed – nothing less, nothing more.
I opened up the plastic bag and took the white, styrofoam box out. I went over to the fridge to see what there was to drink, which wasn’t much. There was some milk, a half pitcher of iced tea, and another half pitcher of lemonade. Mom always did like her Arnold Palmer. As much as I would have liked to have a cold beer, there wasn’t much of a chance of finding one in here. Mom never drank much outside of the occasional glass of wine, and never kept beer around because Dad always drank it all. Even after she tossed him out, there was never beer here.
As I closed the refrigerator door, Mom walked into the kitchen.
“I would have brought you some beer if I knew you were coming,” she said to me in that tone all mothers seem to have when they are not quite scolding their children.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said to her sincerely. “It was a last-minute decision to come.”
“Well, you do have a cell phone right? I mean even I have a cell phone,” as she took her phone out of the pocket of her black trousers and waved at me, half-mocking me.
“Yes, I do. I’m sorry. I should have called.” I sat down at the table and opened the styrofoam box to start in on my hamburger. Once I started eating, I realized just how hungry I was and ate the hamburger ravenously, eating more than half of it in just a few bites.
“You always had good burgers down there,” I said to Mom as I wiped juice from the burger that I had dripped onto my chin with the back of my hand.
“Oh Travis, use a napkin for heaven’s sake,” she said to me as she grabbed a napkin off the counter and handed it to me. I finished wiping my chin and then my hand with the napkin and smiled at her as I took another bite of burger.
Mom sat down at the table across from me and looked at me seriously.
“Why are you here Travis?” she asked. “You haven’t come to my house in years. I was beginning to think you forgot how to drive to Canon.”
It was the same thing she said every time she came down to see Abby and me.
“That lawyer keeps calling me about Dad,” I said to her as I finished the last of the burger.
“Who? Irv Rogers? What does he want?”
“I don’t know,” I told her as I sat back in the wooden chair, still tasting the last of the burger on my lips. “He said I had papers to sign about Dad’s estate.”
“Estate,” she said with a cough and a laugh. “Your father barely had a pot to piss in, pardon my French.”
It was always funny to hear her swear, even though at times she swore like a truck driver.
“Well he must have had something he didn’t hock or pawn,” I said to her.
“He did,” Mom said as she got up and poured two glasses of iced tea, handing one to me. She sat back down across the table from me. “He had that house.”
I was surprised by what she said. “Dad owned that place? I thought he was just renting it all that time.”
“No,” she said to me with a sigh and then she took a long sip of iced tea. “I bought that house for him when I threw him out. I paid for it outright in cash and bought it from Mr. Watson.”
“Why did you buy him a house?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Because it was the only way I could get him to agree to leave me and sign the divorce papers without him asking for part of the restaurant, and I wasn’t going to let that happen. I worked too hard for that place. So I bought the house, put it in his name and gave him the keys after he signed the papers.”
“How come you never told me about it before?” I asked her.
“I never thought it was important I guess,” she said. “I always figured he would end up selling it for the cash somewhere along the way. I think he held onto it in spite more than anything else. Like it was hurting me because he got something out of me.”
“Well, what I am supposed to do with it?” I asked her. All of a sudden I was a homeowner, whether I liked it or not.
“That’s up to you,” she said. She got up from the table, grabbing my trash and tossed it in the garbage can in the corner. “God only knows what kind of shape it’s in. I don’t know when the last time was that you saw your father, but he rarely left that house before he had that heart attack.”
I felt a tinge of guilt for not seeing him for so long. Even though he was far from a nice guy to Mom or me, he was still my father.
Mom came over and put her hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t feel bad about it honey,” she said as she patted my shoulder in comfort. “We both know how he really was. He doesn’t deserve your guilt or your sympathy. He brought on his own pain by living the way he did. Nothing you could have done would have changed that. Besides, you have more important things to think about. You need to take care of that granddaughter of mine.”
“It becomes more of a challenge with each passing day Mom,” I told her, feeling exasperated.
“It doesn’t get easier as they get older, Travis, trust me. I still worry about you every day.”
“You don’t need to worry about me, Mom. I’m fine. We’re fine.” I said it just as much to reassure myself as I did her.
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop worrying. A young man raising an almost-teenage daughter on his own with no woman in sight. And you’re a firefighter to boot as if there weren’t enough worries. It pretty much keeps me up at night.”
“I think my firefighting days might be over,” I said to her resignedly. “I don’t think there’s much of a chance they would take me back. With my injury I don’t how much good I would be anyway. The department already sent me my retirement papers. I just have to sign them.”
“Oh Travis, I’m sorry.” Mom bent down and hugged me around my neck. “Well, maybe all this is a blessing in disguise. You and Abby can finally get out of that tiny rented place you have and have a house of your own.”
“You mean live back here in Canon? I don’t know Mom. I don’t know if I could do it. There’s too much… too much history here.” The thought of spending my days back here in Canon was scary.
“You can’t just think about yourself, Travis,” she said as she stood back up. “You have to do what’s right for Abby at this point. Sometimes being a parent has to trump the decisions we would make just for ourselves.”
I know she was talking about what she did back when I was a teenager. I am sure she sacrificed all her savings to buy that house for Dad and had to work twice as hard to make up for it over the last fifteen years. She did it so that I could have a better life, a safer life without him around every day.
“I know,” I told her as I stood up from the chair and hugged her tightly. “I promise I’ll consider it after I have a look at the house.”
“Fair enough,” she said to me as we broke our hug. She looked up at me, her eyes a little cloudy with tears. “it’s wonderful to have you here, you know; To have the both of you here. It means a lot to me.”
“Oh don’t go getting all mushy on me, Mom,” I said to her playfully as I moved out of the kitchen and out into the hall to get my bag.
“Do you remember where your room is?” she shouted to me playfully.
“I think I can find it,” I told her as I picked up my bag and moved towards the stairs. “Goodnight Mom,” I told her as I started up the stairs slowly.
My leg ached so
me as I made it to the top of the stairs. I tried to walk down the hall towards the room where Abby was quietly, but the floorboards didn’t cooperate and creaked the entire way. I peered into the room to see Abby scrunched up under the blanket on the bed, already fast asleep. I smiled as I looked in at her, sleeping peacefully, with a hint of a smile on her face. It was nice to see her so happy for a change.
I slowly closed the door and went down to the opposite end of the hall to my old room. I reached in and flipped the light switch, and the room illuminated, revealing to me the room that was pretty much the same as it was the last time I was in it when I was about twenty. The room was plainly decorated, with just a dresser, a small desk and chair and a full-sized bed in the center of the room. Anything that had been on the shelves Mom had long since packed away or tossed out. The bed was made up like Mom was expecting me at any moment, and I placed my bag on the chair for the desk and sat on the bed.
