Constant Pull (2 page)

I paused, remembering the first time I
met him. I hadn’t paid much attention to him, but I remembered his hands. I was home alone. It was a few years ago so I was just about 21. My Grandparents were on vacation. On a cruise. And I,- “when I learned that my parents weren’t-well, when I realized how bad the accident was. I-Kevin was there and grabbed my arm when I fell down. I fell. Like on the ground, I mean.”  I had started speaking out loud again without realizing.

“I was, well I mean his hands were very warm and perfectly dry
. It was humid out so that was odd and-noticeable. His hands felt safe. He offered to drive me home but I wanted to walk. I couldn’t get the image out of my head of my mother’s fancy high heel shoe smashed without her in it. I remembered her deciding which shoes to wear that night. She loved to dress up. I always told her she was nuts for it but on her it was super cute, really. That night she wore a little white sleeveless sundress and white heels with navy blue trim. She grabbed her sunny orange purse because she said it was a nice and unexpected accent color. I mean, seriously who has an orange purse?  I never change my purse. She always bought me different ones, but it’s just too fussy for me. I don’t care if my shoes match
each other
so I’m sure you can imagine that I really don’t care about actually trying to coordinate them with other things. My mom said I was more focused on function like my Dad.” 

I chanced a look at Harry to see if he was still interested or if I’d put the old guy to sleep
. He had a kind smile on his face and was rubbing his thumb on his hand still.

“So, Kevin brought my car back to me
later on. I had just left it there with the keys and all my stuff in it. He came with one of the officers and brought it to me. I was home, but I didn’t answer the door. I didn’t even look to see who was there. Anyway, he left me a note and put the keys in the mailbox.”  I thought for a moment how I had hid in the corner next to the sofa and cried for hours. I managed to tear off the sofa skirt completely by the time my Grampa and Gramma used their key to come in to the house and get me. I kept talking, trying to interrupt my memory of it.

“
So, couple months later, I was working on a job-one of my first jobs, actually.” Now my hand movements were getting bigger and I felt less awful. “Have you ever had the candy-Atomic Fireballs?”  I asked him.

Harry’s eyes got wide and he nodded even bigger this time
. He wrote on paper ‘my granddaughter’.

I laughed
. “Spicy. Yes. Well, I love those. I was refinishing a bar top for a client. I hated the smell of poly back then because I wasn’t used to it. So I’d gotten into the habit of keeping an Atomic Fireball in my mouth. For whatever reason, I learned that I couldn’t smell the varnish quite so bad when I did that. I kept a bag of them in my truck just in case-worked great. Well, in this case it worked a little
too
great. One of the guys working in the house-it was a remodel-well, he nicked the gas line somehow. I had no idea. I’d gotten there before everyone. So, the other crews forgot I was there. So, they didn’t know to get me out and I didn’t smell the leak because of the fireball candy. I had headphones on and didn’t hear all the commotion. So, the cavalry came and Kevin was with them. The owners of the house had one of those stickers on the door to save their cat in case of a fire. They went through the whole house looking for the cat. There I was pouring poly on the bar with my headphones on and big Atomic Fireball bulge in my cheek. I had no idea.”

Harry nodded with a smile.

“Yeah, so I had already felt like I was going to puke from the gas I guess. I was getting ready to take my mask off. When I looked up I saw a couple of guys wearing full face masks who were pretty surprised to see me down there. Big cat, right?”  I laughed, weakly with a half-smile, glancing at Harry.

“So they kind of whisked me upstairs and over to the end of the street on the other
side of the caution tape. They called me an ambulance. All I did was puke in there and get a big headache. I was fine. But, they made me go to the hospital. Kevin called my Grampa for me to tell him I had been taken to the hospital, while I was in the background getting sick. Nice, right?  Hopefully this isn’t too much detail for you. I’m sorry about that.” I thought of my mother whose eyes would water whenever someone mentioned getting sick.

Harry smiled and closed his eyes half way while shaking his head very gently to let me know that my mentioning that I puked didn’t bother him at all.

“OK good. So, I fell asleep at the hospital when they gave me oxygen and Kevin actually stayed the whole time.” I smiled, feeling surprised again as if it just happened. “Oh, and they saved the cat too.”  I said. Harry brought his hands together in a large movement and made a wispy sound for his laugh.

“
It took my Grampa a while to come to where I was. He was up north. I woke up and called him and told him I was completely fine and told him that he didn’t need to come back. But, he still insisted on coming home.”

Harry nodded as if to say ‘
I would’ve done the same thing
’.

“I was starving
when I woke up so Kevin went down and got me a sandwich from the cafeteria. A Monte Cristo if you can believe it. You have to be a little nuts to eat that kind of hospital food, but I did and it was a really good sandwich actually. He waited with me until my Grampa got there. He introduced himself to my Grampa and handed him his phone number on his business card. The next day, Kevin came to the house I was working on-you know-where the gas leak was, to check on me and we just kind of hit it off. He had a girlfriend-I figured that out pretty fast. He was just a regular nice guy. I can say that now, because I know, but back then I was waiting for-you know-the other shoe to drop, or whatever that expression is. It’s been about three years since I first met him and he’s just a true blue nice person. Just when you lose faith and think they don’t exist, you know?”

Harry smiled
broadly. I was very comforted by the tiny wink lines on the sides of his eyes that crinkled up when he smiled. His face was very textured and interesting to look at. He had mellow brown eyes with a noticeable black ring around the brown part. His eyes looked
huge
with his thick lenses. He had crazy untamed gray eyebrows that peeked out above his glasses. I looked away quickly because I’ve been told that I have a tendency to stare at people. I am conscious of it for their sake.

The dimple girl
was back with Harry’s lunch. She pulled out a straw from the pocket of her scrubs. His lunch smelled heavily of rosemary.

“Please don’
t leave.” she said as I stood up. Dimples flared on the P.

“Oh, it’
s fine. I’m sure I’ll be back.”  I said as I made my way to the doorway.

Harry
clapped quickly and quietly to get my attention. I turned to face him. He held his pointer finger in the air to tell me to wait as he scribbled quickly on a scrap of paper and then he held it facing me. It read ‘Any time, OK?’

I smiled
. “Deal.”

M
y phone rang just then. It was Kevin.

“Hey”, I said as I made my way down the hallway.

“Hey, are you up for a movie?

“Um, sure
. I just have to run home and change. Well, wait. What movie?”

Kevin and I had an understanding about movies but I still got worried every now and then
. He was dating someone right now so that usually meant when I got asked to go-she didn’t want to. I hated war movies and Kevin liked them. They were just too much for me to deal with. I would fixate on a single terrible image. It was haunting to me and I wouldn’t put myself through it. So, he never asked. But, he liked war movies because he said he appreciated the honor. Neither of us cared for romantic comedies a ton or horror movies at all. Everything else was in.

“It’s that one we saw the preview for when we saw Second Degree of Damage
. The one with the guy with the huge arms-remember?  A Violent Tendency.

“Ohhhh.
OK, sure I’m in. I just walked to the store so I’ll head home. Should I meet you at your house?”  I hated lying to him. Although I was better at it on the phone than in person.

“Nah, the theater is closer to yours
. I’ll pick you up. Good?” he responded.

“Yeah, that’s fine
. I’ll be home in 20.” I said.

I hung up with Kevin and decided to stop at the convenience store on the way home
. I grabbed us each a Slurpee and headed to my Grampa’s house.

As I walked up the drive, I noticed
Murray’s truck behind mine. His truck was fire engine red and had wood panels on the tailgate. The front grill was chrome and so were the stacks in front of the driver and passenger door. There was a chrome silhouette of a lady on the front grill. Murray was leaning on the front bumper while my Grampa sat on the edge of the deck, both were having a beer.

Murray
was a trim man whose pants were always huge on him. He almost always wore jeans and a baseball hat, but today he wore khakis-no hat. He must be heading out somewhere with his wife. He had a bit of a hunched posture and he was incredibly strong and hardworking-always had a clean shave. He said beards were too itchy. His salt and pepper hair was messy and a little too long. His pant legs were constantly stuck in his socks. It used to drive me crazy. I learned over the last few years that Murray didn’t care in the least and wasn’t about to fix it. He would say that I should be happy that he remembered to
wear
pants. So, now if his pants were stuck in his socks and it was bugging me, I’d just lean over and tug on his pants to fix it myself. He hardly noticed. Always had bigger things on his mind, he would say. He was like a second Grampa to me, and he was also my employer.

“Well
hello, Miss Mel. Thirsty?” He said, nodding to my two Slurpees.

“Hey
Murray, Hi Gramps. Nah, one is for Kevin. He’s heading over. We’re gonna go see a movie in a little bit.”  I looked at my Grampa. His lips were pushed together and he was nodding without making eye contact. I got the feeling they had been talking about me.

“His girlfriend doesn’t want to go?”
Murray asked, interlacing his fingers and wrinkling his forehead in a fake attempt at a curious expression.

“I guess not
. I mean,
I
don’t care if she comes, but he didn’t say that she was. So, I’m guessing she isn’t.”  I didn’t feel like fielding any ‘our generation didn’t have male/female
friend’
questions tonight so I kept walking into the house. No, he wasn’t my boyfriend. No, I didn’t want him to be secretly. Yes, I know he’s dating a girl and yes she knows about me. I internally sighed. My Grampa stopped asking these questions a while ago, but Murray was more persistent.

“Long a
s she knows.” He said, disapprovingly.

“I’m sure she knows.” I said
in a firm tone, closing the screen door behind me a little harder than necessary. I turned to my Grampa through the screen door. “Grampa, I might grab dinner with him too if you’re OK on your own for dinner tonight. I’m not sure what we’re doing so I don’t want you to wait for me-just in case.”  It really didn’t matter because I didn’t cook much so it’s not like he was relying on me for anything other than company.

“No no, I’m fine
. Just give me a holler if you’ll be real late.”  He said, still looking down.

“I will.”
I answered, a little puzzled at his lack of eye contact.

I heard
Murray continue as I walked away from the door wall. “Movie and Dinner sounds like a date to me.”  I ignored him, figuring I was far enough away that he wouldn’t know that I’d heard him anyway.

Kevin
had very flexible working hours. He was finishing up school to be a Mechanical Engineer but I wasn’t sure his heart was in it. He just didn’t get excited about the topic, although it came easily to him. He always seemed to me like he would’ve made a great doctor. He had a lot of compassion and wasn’t easily annoyed by people. He had two jobs on top of school. He worked at his Uncle Pete’s bicycle shop and took care of his parents’ rental homes fixing stuff when the tenants had issues.

After the movie, we ended up at our favorite Coney Island place. The dessert presentation carousel by the cashier reminded me when I was about five and used to beg my parents for the red Jell-O bowl with whipped cream on top. They almost always let me get it.

We found a booth in the corner and ordered
. I always got a loose burger which is ground meat with Coney sauce on top, served in a steamed hot dog bun. Kevin got two coneys with everything. He was almost always wearing a baseball cap and always took it off at restaurants. Today’s ball cap was LSU. He wore a faded Detroit Tigers gray T-shirt and jeans.

“So what’s bugging
you? Out with it.” Kevin said as we sat down, his brown hair squashed where the hat was.

“What.”  It was a question, but it sounded more like a statement when it left
me.

“Something’s up
. So tell me what it is. You didn’t meet someone did you?  Is that it?” he asked, a little mischievousness in his voice.