Good Buddy

by Dori Ann Dupré

  Molly hugged her back. She was quiet and shy but knew that this woman was her mother’s mother. And she was certain that her grandmother loved her, no matter what happened within her family long ago. Julie would always read her the cards that would come in the mail each birthday and would allow her to keep the small gifts. Molly was allowed to write a Thank You note to her grandparents. But that was it. One gift at her birthday. One gift at Christmas.

  Jed held Molly tightly. He cried. Buddy could see that there was a lot more to Jed McVicar than just being a “Yes Man” for his wife. His heart was broken, and a lifetime of regret was firmly encamped across his face.

  “Molly, I’ve missed you for your whole life,” he whispered through the tears making their way down his cheeks. He had Gabby sit on his lap, like grandfathers do, and bounced her up and down. Gabby giggled. He read her Are You There, Baby Bear? three times, just like Gabby wanted. He sat on the floor with both girls and watched Disney’s Beauty and the Beast for the first time in his life.

  Tammy Jo and Buddy sat in the kitchen holding their respective coffee mugs full of cold coffee, where she proceeded to tell him about the difficult and complicated relationship she had with her daughter, his wife.

  “Julie was a good girl. She never gave me any trouble until she was older, like most teenaged girls give their mothers trouble,” she explained. “You just wait ‘til those girls hit puberty, I tell ya. You just don’t know until it happens to you.” Her hair was blond and routinely professionally manicured. She was about thirty-pounds overweight, but Buddy could see that Julie looked an awful lot like her mother.

  She held her mug in between highly polished mauve colored fingernails. “I loved my daughter, Jonathan. I loved her so much. But I was not going to give my approval of her choices when I did not – in fact – approve. Nowadays, all parents do is give their blessing to their child’s every whim, running here and there for them, going to ridiculous extremes for them, poo-pooing every bad decision they make, bailing them out and excusing everything, enabling their poor behavior. Trying to be their friend when they’re supposed to be their parent. I took a stand. And I kept it.” She breathed in deeply and continued, “I hoped that Julie would come around when she had her own child, maybe see how hard it is to be a mother, maybe be able to put herself in my shoes.”

  Tammy Jo wiped a tear off her right eye socket and quieted her voice into a dulled sadness. “Lots of my friends told me that that’s what happens with daughters who grow up. They start to appreciate their mothers’ sacrifices and the difficult choices they had to make as women. And I think she would’ve gotten there eventually and then would’ve wanted to mend fences with me. But she wasn’t there yet, and she was too stubborn for her own good.” Some more tears streamed down her face, taking a shred of mascara with them. “And now she’s gone,” she uttered through her pain.

  Buddy sighed to himself. Tammy Jo might have felt that she was right…but at what cost? Stubborn is as stubborn does, and she had been just as stubborn as she claimed her daughter to be. It was always interesting to Buddy how people could point out the behavior in others that they hated…but were never able to see the exact same behavior in themselves.

  “Well, I can tell you that no matter what happened between the two of you, she was the most wonderful woman, wife and mother I knew. She was the only woman I’ve ever loved in my entire life.” Buddy wore his suffering on his face but kept his emotions in check. He found that state-of-being Pink Floyd called “comfortably numb.”

  Tammy Jo sighed again. “I hate that we never reconciled, believe me. It bothered me every day that passed by. But when she married that soldier after barely knowing him…and dropped out of college to do it…I was devastated that she’d do that to me. To herself. No wedding, not even an introduction! Everyone back home thought she had gotten herself knocked up!”

  Buddy couldn’t understand women in general, but this kind of thinking pattern was completely out of this world within his own mind. While it isn’t necessarily the smartest thing to do when you’re only twenty years old…to drop out of school to run off to Vegas and marry someone you just met…it certainly wasn’t a reason to stop speaking to your young adult child.

  “But it had nothing to do with you, Mrs. McVicar. She was just a young woman in love.”

  “It was stupid. To marry some lower enlisted soldier who made peanuts for a living and who was gonna go off to fight in wars and maybe die and leave her widowed and all alone. To throw away your future for a weekend infatuation. To act like you’re the star of some poorly-written romance novel.”

  “She didn’t throw away her future. She just did things differently. It didn’t have some perfectly straight path is all. I mean, look at what she did with her life. She was a mother, a well-respected and admired Kindergarten teacher, a regular volunteer at the veteran’s hospital. And she and Gabe, from what she told me, were a happily married couple.”

  “The only good thing about that whole mess is Molly. That man ended up breaking her heart, just like I knew he would.”

  Buddy was perplexed. “But he died. In an accident. He died serving his country. He didn’t go willingly. It could’ve been a random car accident, just like Julie’s. And don’t you think there’s honor in that? Dying in the service of your country? A part of him that Julie loved was the part who sacrificed for something larger than himself.”

  “I’m sorry, Jonathan, but I do not find honor in dying by putting yourself in harm’s way when you have a wife and child. Jumping out of planes is far too risky. If you want to live like that, then fine. But don’t add a wife and child to the mix, knowing that one false move and they’re on their own having to fend for themselves.” Tammy Jo’s voice was quite solidified on this matter. She was not viewing what Gabe Saint did for a living as anything but selfish.

  He admitted to himself that he’d never heard that kind of perspective on our American heroes before; it gave him pause. Buddy lived in a town full of flag-waving, so this was quite a revelation to him. There were Americans, hell – Texans! – who felt this way about married soldiers serving our country.

  Buddy could tell that Tammy Jo was an opinionated, strong-willed and feisty woman who took no shit from anyone. He saw that in Julie as well, but it was done with a certain elegance, humility and grace. Julie had mastered that “strong woman” label but did so in a way that did not make people piss their pants. Tammy Jo obviously scared people. She was a bull in a china shop. She was probably so successful with her real estate business because her clients were too scared to not do everything she said, exactly how she said it. Like everyone else, except for Julie, they got in lock-step with her directives. He sensed that she wasn’t a bad person and had good intentions, but she was a “my way or the highway” kind of person.

  Buddy got take-out Chinese for everyone in the early evening, and the McVicars left to spend the night in their hotel. They made plans to come to see the girls again the next day before they caught a plane back to San Antonio. Since Buddy knew he had to deal with a delicate situation, he convinced his mother and Joe to go home after the funeral and reception and indicated that he’d be in touch after the McVicars left.

  Later that evening, Tammy Jo got out of the shower, changed into a nightgown and watched her husband switch between the news and sports on the hotel cable TV. She decided in that moment that while she may have lost her daughter forever, she was not going to lose her granddaughters. She was not going to go back to Texas without an agreement that these children know their grandparents.

  Transitions

  Loretta spent the day after Julie’s funeral cleaning out the apartment above the barn on Joe’s property. She had so many memories in that small home she had shared with Buddy for so long, and now it was time to allow them to make room for a new young person. Joe decided to rent out the apartment to a young man who was attending Carolina as an undergraduate, and he asked Lorett
a to get it ready for him.

  She packed up the handful of things that were hers, things she never got around to moving into Joe’s house. Buddy’s things were long gone, but as she pulled a box out of the bedroom closet, she came across one of his drawings from art class, something he drew soon after they arrived in Welby many years ago.

  Buddy had been quiet, more than ever, for several months after they fled from Texas and Kenny’s tirades. When they arrived in North Carolina and moved their handful of items into Joe’s apartment back in the Fall of 1975, she enrolled the newly-christened “Jonathan Cordova” (no middle name) into Welby Elementary School. It took him a while to adjust, at least emotionally, to his new life, new name, and new surroundings. He had to give up his father’s name, but she told him that he could still go by “Buddy.” That wouldn’t hurt anyone or give them away in the least, and it allowed the boy to maintain at least one small piece of himself from his past life.

  Buddy was no artist. Most parents “ooh” and “ahh” over their children’s artwork, even when it’s terrible. Even when you can tell that the child has not one lick of talent whatsoever. When Loretta tried to “ooh” and “ahh” over Buddy’s horrible drawing, he looked up at her cockeyed and deadpanned, “Mother, this sucks. I can’t draw. No need to be lying about it. We have to lie enough as it is.” Honest nine-year-old boy strikes again.

  The drawing was what appeared to be a tractor in what appeared to be a field of plowed cornstalks. Probably something he noticed somewhere on his way out to North Carolina. God knows they passed by and through enough fields on that trip across the country. There was a stick figure wearing a hat and another stick figure with long black hair. She was never quite sure what this scene was supposed to be, and maybe she had read into things too much simply because she was a woman. But what she did notice was in the bottom right-hand corner. Buddy wrote the initials “DKJ.” And after that, any drawings she saw or school papers that came home, he scribbled, “Jonathan Cordova” or “JC” instead.

  Maybe he saw that final scene somewhere through the eyes of a boy named Daniel, and then at some point, he accepted that the lens through which he saw his life from that point on would be through the eyes of a new boy named Jonathan.

  After he drew that picture and seemed to have accepted his new identity, Loretta found him standing in the bathroom on a Saturday morning with a pair of scissors held up to his eyes. The sight caught her off-guard.

  “Buddy, what in the world are you doing?” she gently snapped, afraid to scare him and then make him jump and gouge himself in the eye with the scissors.

  He stood still and she could see him slowly closing the blades with a doctor’s precision. “Shhhh. I’m trying not to stab myself in the eye.”

  “Buddy, put those down. What in the heck are you doing to yourself?”

  He pulled the scissors away from his face and informed her, “I’m trimming my eyelashes.”

  Loretta knew that those eyelashes were one thing that made her sweet boy stand out from all the rest. They were his daddy’s eyelashes, a rare gift from the God of Genetics. “Why in the world would you ever cut your eyelashes?”

  He glanced over at her and stated, “Because they belong to some person named Daniel Kaspar Junior.”

  Thankfully, after that one time, Buddy never cut his eyelashes again. But that image of him trimming away that special feature tore her heart in two. She didn’t want him to think that shredding his name meant that he had to shred himself, too.

  Loretta met Julie’s parents for the first time at the wake and was quite impressed with the outgoing and not-at-all shy Tammy Jo McVicar. She tried to put herself in Tammy Jo’s shoes – that of a grieving mother who never got to reconcile with her now-deceased daughter. And she would never be able to make that right. She couldn’t imagine being estranged from her child like that, but the older she got, the more she knew that life was never really that cut and dried or black and white.

  While she understood that Julie did not speak to her parents and they hadn’t seen Molly in several years – and Gabby at all for that matter – she was sure that Julie had her reasons. And that a lot of times, miscommunication or misunderstandings mixed with stubbornness has a way of making some situations worse than they needed to be. All it takes is one person to give the other a break or one person to admit they’re wrong and apologize.

  Tammy Jo had been friendly with her and asked a lot of questions. She asked where she was originally from (New Jersey), where Buddy’s father was (dead), how she met Joe (landlord), how long she lived in North Carolina (a long ass time), had she ever been to Texas (yes). The Texas answer was tricky for her because the truth was that she spent over a decade in Texas. But she needed to keep it strictly Vietnam War-years related. Last thing she needed was having her Texan past exposed, at least any part of a tie to one Kenny Bellinger.

  “I love how hair dressers always have the best hair themselves,” Tammy Jo bubbled out in conversation. “You know how they say that the cobbler’s kids have no shoes? That mentality don’t seem to apply to hairdressers and dentists,” she explained. “Hair dressers have the best hair and dentists have the best teeth, as do their children.”

  “So do plastic surgeons. Did you ever notice how plastic surgeons are not only gorgeous but their wives are too?” Loretta shared her own observation.

  “You’re right. I didn’t think about that one! But yes, yes, you are absolutely right. I know two plastic surgeons and they are both very handsome…too handsome almost. And their wives? Wow. Beautiful women. Flawless.”

  “Well, you have to advertise your work. You can’t be cuttin’ and coloring women’s hair while looking like you go to a men’s barbershop for your own maintenance.”

  Tammy Jo asked a lot of questions about Molly: how Molly was doing in school, how she was so surprised to learn that she was a soccer player, if she ever asked about her grandparents in Texas. She didn’t seem quite as interested in Gabby, which seemed a little odd to Loretta. After all, Gabby was her grandchild too. Gabby was her blood too. Of course, she knew nothing of Gabby until a few days ago.

  Molly was the grandchild she knew she had and, for eleven years, pined for that missing piece of her heart. Loretta tried to empathize but couldn’t. She had no idea what it must’ve felt like to know you have a grandchild out there and be basically barred from her life – just because you were a little difficult or complex or mouthy about your opinions. Maybe Julie had been too hard on her mother.

  If only all of life’s problems could be solved in the mind of a woman as she worked around a house, completing chores. She supposed that most women cleaning and doing laundry on this day that Loretta stripped the queen-sized bed in the bedroom, vacuumed the carpet, made sure the bathroom had a good once-over. She couldn’t remember the last time someone used the bathroom in this place. She wiped down the kitchenette and mopped the floors. She dusted the furniture and tested the TV out, just to be sure it still worked. The young man was moving in the next day, and she wanted it to look as fresh and inviting as it was for her the day she and Buddy moved in. The place had been good to them. More than good to them. That place gave them life again.

  Unsolved in America

  Tammy Jo sat down on her plush beige couch and picked up the remote control to the TV. She was looking forward to an early evening in after a painful two weeks, having to bury her daughter without any resolution to their issues, having to say goodbye to those precious grandchildren who she has never had the opportunity to spend any real time with, and having to be nice and friendly to a bunch of people she did not know at all. She found herself to be surprisingly fond of Jonathan and thought he seemed like a good man, but he was just a low rent criminal defense lawyer working out of his house in an ugly military town that had too many bars and strip joints and pawn shops. She would have had more respect for him as a professional if he was a judge or a prosecutor or worked
in some private firm making real money.

  The fact that his nickname was “Buddy” was also annoying. He didn’t fit the stereotype of a guy with that name. Any “Buddy” she ever knew was big and heavy and sat his ass on a tractor, chewing a toothpick or a pack of Skoal. Buddy was no name for a grown man trying to be taken seriously in a court of law.

  His mother Loretta appeared to be a nice enough lady and that Joe she was with was handsome and charming. Deadly combination when a good rural southern drawl was thrown into the mix.

  But those grandbabies. Those were hers too. And Julie had kept them from her all these years, especially Molly. That was just plain unfair. She had never been abusive or had a pill popping addiction or a drinking problem like so many other mothers out there she knew. She worked hard her whole life and helped provide for her daughter and set a proper example of a modern woman who had it all…because she earned it all. Own your own business, make your own money, demand respect from those around you, and look good all times. Study at good schools, take advantage of your privileges, reach your potential, make your own way, but do so with style. Then when you meet Mr. Right, you can choose him…because you don’t need him. You can marry for love instead of for security. You do not have to submit to anyone or fill some predestined chauvinistic role in life.

  She tried so hard to impart her values to her daughter, and what was her thanks for all her efforts? Tossed aside for some random low life Julie met on a weekend. It was unfathomable. And to keep her from her grandchildren? Now that was cruel and unusual punishment.

  Before she and Jed left North Carolina to go back to Texas, she talked with Jonathan about possibly allowing Molly to come down to their home for Spring Break so they could get to know her. And if that went well, maybe both girls could come visit for a while over the Summer. These were innocent enough requests, and Jonathan agreed to think about it and talk with Molly to see how she felt about the idea.