by B. G. Thomas
Crystal nodded. “Oh yeah,” she said with delight, giggling and waggling her eyebrows. “Two boys kissin’ is hot!”
I reeled back in shock. My stomach had clenched so tight it was hurting. “Kissing? You’ve seen this ‘boy’ kissing other boys?”
“God no, Dad.”
“Then what…?”
She pointed at the computer. “You’ve heard of the Internet.”
“So?”
Once more she rolled her eyes.
It hit me then. She’d been looking up all kinds of stuff I’d never imagined on the Internet. I was a shitty father. It had never occurred to me to monitor what she did on the computer.
“Don’t worry, Dad. I haven’t been going to porn sites.” Crystal sighed dramatically, then reached out and touched my shoulder. “Pop, it’s the way it is. Some people are gay. They can’t help it.” She gave me a sympathetic smile and turned and left the room.
They can’t help it?
Well, she may think—as the typical teenager did—that she knew everything. But about that, she was wrong. They could help it.
Who knew that better than I did?
CHAPTER 2: Getting There
THE DRIVE from Terra’s Gate via Kansas City down to Arkansas was fairly uneventful, but beautiful. The farther we drove—it was about six hours in all—the lovelier the countryside became. It was an amazing day, not too cool and not too hot. Roll-down-your-windows weather versus blast your air conditioner. Perfect.
The sky was a color that usually only appeared in paintings—a dazzling, cloudless, robin’s-egg blue. Even the air was sweet. There was no smell of chemicals or exhaust or gasoline, only the scent of growing things—clear, clean, and full of promise.
Promise? I wondered. Now where had that analogy come from?
I sat up front with Amy, who was driving, and Crystal was in back with Amy’s children—fifteen-year-old Todd, and Robin, who was the same age as my daughter. Like Crystal and so many of Em’s side of the family, Robin had red hair. Given my height, build, and dark eyes and hair, my daughter looked more like one of Amy’s brood than someone related to me. Only Todd looked anything like me, and we weren’t even related by blood.
The two girls chattered like birds (Crystal would be furious with me for saying that), and Todd’s nose was buried in some kind of game, like just about any boy his age.
The two weeks since Amy asked me to go on the trip had gone rather smoothly.
I had dreaded going in to work and asking for the time off. After all, I hadn’t had the new position that long. But Gary, the manager of Horrell & Howes, surprised me with how quickly he agreed. He seemed happy, almost relieved.
“Yes, you can go. You bet you can go!”
He was a big man, although not the way I was. He wasn’t so much tall as… well, round. He reminded me a lot of George from Seinfeld—bald, same glasses—but older… plumper.
“Gary! Are you sure? I mean, we’re gearing up to one of the busiest parts of our year.”
“I’m sure,” he said, leaning forward over his desk.
“But….”
He shook his head. “No buts.”
“But why?”
He looked at me for a long moment and then asked me to close the door.
Nervous, I got up and did as he asked.
“Neil, I’ve been worried about you for a very long time. You’ve been with us for almost three years now, and in the first year, you did nothing but blow me away. Blow a lot of us away. I knew you were meant for more than answering phone calls, even though you were better at it than just about anyone I’ve seen in all my years here.”
He took a deep breath.
“And then….”
I looked away. Don’t say it, I begged him. Problem was, I didn’t say it out loud.
“I only met Emily once. At our Christmas party. She was amazing. She lit up the entire room, you know?”
I knew. She always did that. That’s who she was. I had fallen under her spell a long time ago, and she had been the compass in my life, pointing me always true north.
For a long time, Gary didn’t say anything. Then finally he did. “I hurt for you, Neil. I really do. When she….”
Don’t say it, I thought again. Don’t say “died,” and don’t say any of those fucking stupid words people use. Those euphemisms for death. Passed. Crossed over. Departed. That I had lost her.
“You’re not living anymore, Neil.”
It took everything in me not to lash out at him. But one look from those eyes and I saw the empathy. He wasn’t feeling sorry for me. There was no pity. What I saw was not what I was expecting.
It was pure compassion.
“Forgive me for being an asshole,” he said then, once more surprising me. Although dammit, Gary was a good man. He had come to Emily’s funeral. What boss did that?
“You haven’t taken time off in a long time, my friend,” he said, and somehow his calling me friend felt good instead of fake. “I want you to go. Take as much time as you want. We owe you four weeks. Take it all if you want.”
I sighed.
I saw that he meant it.
I shook my head. “A week is enough,” I told him.
He nodded, and I left that office feeling weirdly… what? Why, almost elated.
I’d thought with summer being a busy time for us, there might be a problem, especially because it hadn’t been a year since my promotion. Instead, I had been given the golden key and practically a company car.
Oh! That promotion….
IT WAS almost funny how that happened.
Yes, my work had gone to shit after Em died, even after Amy pulled me up by my bootstraps. For months, I hadn’t been able to concentrate. Hadn’t been able to help the customers like I should have. I was making mistakes—none that Roxanne, the department supervisor, had to be on my back about (at least not much)—but way too many as far as I was concerned. I’d begun to worry I would get fired. At one point, I was a shoo-in for employee of the month almost every month. Taking calls and working with frustrated, hysterical, even weeping people was something for which I had a knack.
But with Em gone, my heart had gone as well. I had to fight-fight-fight the urge to tell angry, even distressed, customers to fuck off. To say, “You think you’ve got problems? I lost my wife of twenty years. I can hardly get up in the mornings. I cry every time I see our wedding picture hanging in the hall, but I can’t bring myself to take it down.”
Two years. Two years she had been gone. And I had gone with her. I wasn’t living. I had become a good actor. I could smile and nod and make happy. I had even fooled Crystal. Or at least I thought I had. It was hard to tell with a teenager. They were so preoccupied with their own lives and their raging hormones and their belief that they were right and their parents—who had lived at least twice the number of years they had with twice the experience—were wrong.
Not that Crystal was a problem. She didn’t disobey me and had only gotten herself into trouble a couple of times, though not in over a year. Nothing serious. It seemed that she had done what I couldn’t.
Moved on.
Really moved on.
Then Roxanne went on vacation, and to my surprise, Gary asked me to take over her duties while she was gone. I’d done that a bit here and there, a few hours or a day or two, but two weeks?
Shelia, my team lead, wasn’t happy about it, and she did nothing to disguise the fact either. Horrell & Howes was her life. She breathed, lived, and crapped the company. Her very identity was wrapped up in H&H. Me? I took pride in my job. Hell, besides Amy, keeping busy helped me survive. I did a good job, or I wouldn’t get the awards, which mostly consisted of getting my picture on a bulletin board and a couple of movie tickets or twenty-dollar gift cards for a local restaurant. Not exactly a trip to Vegas. But I certainly didn’t consider Horrell & Howes to be my career. To be honest, I’d never considered any job to be more than a job—never my life’s work. To be even more honest, I was one of t
hose who were watching the clock by the end of the day.
But I thought, what the hell, and jumped in. In for a penny, in for a pound, as Em used to say.
I was surprised when, by the third day, I found I was getting into it. There was something about getting off the phone with customers I could no longer sympathize with and instead getting lost in Roxanne’s many duties that made me feel like I had purpose again. I kept seeing little things that could be done to improve operations. I found I wasn’t watching the clock to see when I could go home, but was checking it to make sure I had time to get things done.
My fellow employees were impressed as well. I knew them. Knew their quirks, their interests, their worries. I made allowances, which brightened their attitudes, even though they knew those allowances would only apply for two weeks. To my delight, call volume went up and complaints were down.
On the second Friday, my last, several of my coworkers even asked me to go out for drinks with them after work. And I went! I had a fun time, getting a buzz I hadn’t dared in a long time. Everyone told me how great the last two weeks had been and that they’d be happy to work for me anytime. They said they were sorry I’d be on the phones again the next week.
They were sorry!
The biggest surprise that night—no, the second biggest—happened when I realized one of the ladies, Charleen, had been flirting with me all evening.
“She’s hitting on you pretty heavy,” said this new guy named Sloan.
“Huh?” I’d asked, slack-jawed.
How I’d missed that until we were ready to go, I don’t know. In retrospect, she’d been pretty obvious. We were in the parking lot, and she asked me if I would like to come to her place for dinner sometime. I was startled. She was asking me on a date?
Everything in me rebelled at the idea. I had to tell her I wasn’t ready. I think she understood.
The biggest eye-opener, though, was when I told Crystal. Her reaction was explosive.
“No,” she’d actually yelled. “No way!”
I’d just looked at her, dumbstruck.
“Pop, you just can’t. You can’t. Please. I can’t watch you be with another woman besides Mom. I couldn’t. I don’t want a stepmother. Not ever.”
She’d made me promise.
And truly it wasn’t a hard promise to make. Not really. I couldn’t imagine being with another woman either.
No. Not again.
Em had been special. The one. The only one I could be with like that.
So I never went to dinner with Charleen.
The following week at work was hard, and it was no shock when I was called into Roxanne’s office. It was with dread that I saw both the manager, Gary, and someone from Human Resources there as well.
It seemed Roxanne had accepted a transfer to New York, the very same place she had been for “vacation.” They wanted me to take her job.
I couldn’t believe it.
It was like a ray of sunshine breaking through dark and stormy clouds.
I won’t go into all the smiles and patting of backs and handshakes or the “We’re impressed” comments.
But I will say life began to get a little better. For the first time since I’d been without Em to encourage me, I was doing something. I was doing it on my own. I won’t say I was happy, but gravity seemed a tad less heavy, the air a little easier to breathe.
And to tell the truth, I didn’t mind beating Shelia for the position one bit. Not only because she had been such a bitch to me for two weeks, but because she was a bitch to everyone. It had pissed me off when I’d overheard her saying that it was “typical” that they promoted a man instead of a woman. I wanted to believe—needed to believe—that I had deserved it. She worked hard, yes. I couldn’t deny that. But she really was a mean person—the kind who would have been thrilled to be in charge so she could write people up and look for excuses to fire them instead of encouraging them and helping them be proud of their jobs. Being a call-center rep wasn’t easy. It could be a thankless job even without having to deal with the rude and angry customers who often phoned in.
Shelia was one of those “company people,” and she forgot that people—her fellow workers—were the company. The heart and soul of any company. She would have been a horrible supervisor, and it had nothing to do with her being a woman.
Horrell & Howes was one of those miracle companies. It hadn’t forgotten that their employees counted. That had helped me survive the last two years.
I hadn’t had the position a full year when I asked Gary for the vacation time to go to Black Bear and he said yes. “Hell yes!”
IF THE countryside we traveled through was any indication, Black Bear Guest Ranch might be just what I needed, and I found the closer we got, the lighter my heart felt.
I was actually getting excited.
When we got off Highway 5, we went another ten miles or so on a pleasant dirt road, and then we were there.
We stopped at the entrance to the ranch, and everyone scrambled excitedly out of the car. Apparently, the first tradition was for everyone to get their picture taken in the arms of one of the two huge carved bears standing on either side of the ranch’s gate. Above was the time-honored arched wrought-iron sign with the words Black Bear Guest Ranch. Everyone insisted I take part, and soon I found myself enfolded in the embrace of a rough-hewn bear that towered at least two feet above my head. This elicited applause from all, and Amy declared I was now a part of the Black Bear family.
Before we could leave, another car pulled over and another group of people, cameras in hand, began to assemble themselves around the bears. So this wasn’t only my family’s standard way of beginning the week’s vacation.
We got back in the car for a short jog down a narrow tree-lined road. Then the road opened up, and we were there. The ranch lay spread out before us. There were more buildings than I’d expected, each in the style of a log cabin. We passed two people on horseback, and I marveled at the size of the animals. Not Trojan-horse-sized, no, but seemingly giant all the same. A sign shaped like a bear—what else?—welcomed us, and another told us guest services was right ahead.
Around a slight bend sat a building that was obviously the place. It was big. And like everything else, quite lovely. I was surprised at the number of people gathered either on or near the building’s long front porch. There must have been fifty people standing around and at least twice as many pieces of luggage.
The parking lot was packed, but Amy gave us a whimsical little smile and magically pulled into one of what she called the “rock-star parking spots,” right up front. Somehow there was always a space for Amy.
We got out of the car, and another of the carved bears, even larger than the others, loomed over us. It was an impressive sight.
“Mr. and Mrs. Radcliff” came a cry, and a young blonde girl ran up to us and then froze. “Oh my God,” she said with a gasp.
Amy turned and forced a smile. “Cassie, how are you?” Amy looked at me. “Neil, this is Cassie, one of the wranglers here.”
Then, to the blonde, “Cassie, this is Neil Baxter, Crystal’s father.”
Cassie’s eyes were still wide, and I could see she was horrified, but she put on her best front and held out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Baxter.” She looked like she was probably in her midtwenties. No girl. This was a young lady.
“It’s nice to meet you too, Cassie,” I answered, pretending not to notice her mistake. I felt pretty sorry for her. I had opened my mouth and inserted my foot more than once in my life. I wanted to make her feel better. “I take it this isn’t your first summer here?”
“Oh no.” Her smile broadened slightly. “My sixth.”
“You must like it here,” I said.
“Oh yeah!” She nodded vigorously, her tight curls bobbing around her round little face. “I love it. I’d live here year-round if I could.”
“That’s a recommendation if I ever heard one,” I replied. If everyone was as sweet as this young wom
an, it was one more plus, I thought. I looked for Amy and saw she was opening the hatchback.
“Let me help,” Cassie said and shot to Amy’s side, where I could hear her whisper, “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Radcliff. I feel so bad. I forgot. I—I thought….”
“I know what you thought, dear,” I heard Amy say. “It’s all right.” She hugged the girl. “Now help me with these?”
“Of course!” And together they began to pull our luggage out of the back of the car. Before I could move, Todd jumped in. “Mom! I’m the man of the family now. Let me.”
“Okay, then.” Amy stepped back to let Todd demonstrate his masculinity. Todd had transformed in size and height during the last year, as surely as Owen had seemed to shrivel away. Unlike his mother and sister, he didn’t have red hair. That had done nothing to prevent him from looking like Opie Taylor. But our Opie had metamorphosed into a handsome young man, with a mop of dark hair and even the very beginnings of chest hair—at fifteen! It was so ironic, and sad as well, that Todd changing from boy into man should happen in time for Owen to miss most of it.
A moment later, a pudgy young man raced up with a half-full luggage cart. “Hey, Mrs. Radcliff,” he said excitedly and started to place the bags on it with no other preamble.
Amazing was all I could think. Sure, Amy and her family had been coming here for years, but it was only one week. How many guests must they have in a year? How did they not only remember her among so many people passing through, but even remember her name?
“Leo, isn’t it?” Amy asked, smiling, her eyes lighting up.
And of course they remember her, I thought. Who wouldn’t?
“Yes, um, ma’am,” he said, and blushed. “You remember me?”
Of course she did.
“Of course,” Amy said and introduced us. “Leo, this is Crystal’s father, Neil Baxter. Neil, Leo.”
Leo grinned mightily. “Oh. Hey!” He held out his hand, and when I took it, he gave me an even mightier shake. “Awesome. It’s great to meet you. Crystal is way awesome!”
