Memorizing You (9 page)

“You already have a trade that’s making money. Why not just build on that?”

“You mean, mowing lawns?” I’d never thought of it as anything but a school boy’s way of making cash. Not a lifetime profession.

“Why not? Everybody needs their lawns mowed. There’s apartment complexes and office buildings; all kinds of places that would probably pay regularly to have their lawns mowed. You just get more clients, hire more high school guys who want to make extra cash, and build the business up as big as you can.” He looked back up at the moon. “You make your own mulch, sell that service; do shrubbery trimming. There’s all kinds of ways to make money with refrigeratorImy that stuff.”

Looking back now on how easily someone’s words would end up shaping the course of my life, you’d wonder about things like providence. Retiring after forty years of a very successful lawn care business, made these moments shine like fate was a gold lamp lighting the way.

The moon was waning when we carried our sleeping bags back into the tent, turned off the lantern and listened to the sounds of the night. My mind raced with uncoordinated thoughts, lying so close to him. It was exciting and frightening. But I’d not make a fool of myself. I saw what it looked like to be on the other end of someone who doesn’t feel the same way. The image of Rosemary’s face was always there to remind me.

“So what was your first time like?” His voice came from the shadows, backlit by an expiring campfire.

It was odd that he should ask that as I remembered the pained expression of the girl I rejected. “It’s not worth talking about,” I said after a long pause.

“That’s why you were running that first day I saw you, isn’t it? That’s why you were angry.”

I debated whether I wanted to answer it, and then gave in. Maybe I would learn courage from him. “Yeah. I hurt someone I didn’t mean to hurt.”

I heard him shift. His profile disappeared as he turned to look at me. He was in darkness. I couldn’t even see his eyes.

“How?”

I tried to think of some way to answer that question that didn’t make me look worse than I felt I was. “I made someone believe I was interested in them when I wasn’t. I…was using them.”

“Why?”

I didn’t want to explain it refrigeratorImy. I didn’t want to touch the subject at all.

“It’s complicated.”

His sigh was prolonged. “Ah. My most popular answer when my folks ask

me why I’m not dating.”

So many moments passed I thought he’d fallen asleep. I could hear his breathing. The night sounds. The last crackles of the embers in the campfire.

“It’s hard to want to fit in and not be able to,” his voice came barely above a whisper. “They make us feel like it’s easier to lie than be truthful. Easier to hide than be seen. Make us feel like we did something wrong to not be like them. Like we made a conscious choice.”

It seemed I was breaking down inside. It wasn’t out of self-pity, but out of the realization of the helplessness of the situation. My throat was stifling me, but I found a voice. Small as it was. “I didn’t choose it,” I said. “It was just there one day.”

I couldn’t believe I’d made the admission to him. As the words came out of me, I felt anchors fall away. I could breathe again. I could sense coolness in the night air again.

I heard him laugh. “Sort of like Mozart when he could play the piano at seven?”

I could feel the smile curve my lips. “More like Rudolf having a red nose. How the hell did that get there?”

He snickered into his hands. “So true,” he snorted. “They think it’s

like we chose a jacket to wear.”

It was astonishing how much freer I felt having admitted my secretf his arms.

“You have to apologize to your friend,” he told me. “You can’t let her go on thinking it was something she did. She’ll carry that forever.”

I knew he was right. I hoped I got the opportunity to do that. It wasn’t something I wanted to carry with myself either. I lay there listening to his light snoring for an hour. I wanted to absorb every moment of this night. I knew it was special. I wanted to keep it locked away inside me forever just the way it was. When I closed my eyes to sleep, I thought of how he’d glowed like a jewel in the light of the campfire. The way the flames carved him against the darkness. The very shape of his head. The smudges of chocolate and marshmallows on his fingers and lips. How the hair on his legs looked like filaments of gold. When I was certain my heart had painted the canvas in my memory…I fell asleep.

CHAPTER EIGHT

By late July, thanks to the regular infusions of Ryan’s raw egg protein shakes, I’d added another ten pounds of muscle and was filling out. I had meat on my legs, my shoulders were rounding out, and I had a chest that didn’t look like it was flesh stretched over bone. On top of that, I’d acquired a nice tan from the long days of work outside in the summer sun.

One day, after my dad caught me posing in the mirror, he began, jokingly, referring to me as Samson. Having been called skinflint all through my grade-school years, Samson was more than acceptable. My shoulder length hair, now streaked very blond by the sun, completed the picture.

My dad bought an old 1959 Chevy pickup to haul the mowers. I’d bought two more push power motors. He bought a broken-down used rider mower and was working on getting it running. Our first bags of mulch were finished and we were offering them with our services for an extra fifteen dollars. We couldn’t keep our supply up with the demand. So we, the three of us: Dad, Ryan, and myself, built another compost tray at the rear of our yard.

Whether we intended it or not, it turned into a father and son business. My dad was laid off permanently from his job at the end of June. There were no other job openings anywhere in the city or the surrounding towns and suburbs. But it worked out fine. I had a partner with wheels and that meant we could expand even further out.e’ll pay forty dollarsreGm

He wasn’t a man given to much conversation. The most I’d ever heard him talk was at the dinner table when he’d make a few comments about the news, the economy, or politics. The most I knew about him came from my grandmother, his mother, who would tell stories of what a rough and tumble boy he was. He always liked the outdoors; liked to go to the woods and pick persimmons and eat them. She had pictures of him dressed in overalls looking like a farmboy. My mom had told me how she met him when he was twenty and she was nineteen. He rode up on his motorcycle, looking like Marlon Brandon from
The Wild Bunch
, dressed in leather; a bad boy. I couldn’t imagine a quiet man like my dad as a ‘bad boy’. But when my mother told that story, she always had a smile on her face. And I’d seen the black and white pictures taken long before I was born. He did look like a movie star with his black, wavy hair and muscular build. Apparently, I’d inherited none of his attributes and had to earn them myself.

We named it a father and son business and mom hand painted the name on the side of the truck with paint she’d brought from the art shop where she worked. We listed it in the Yellow Pages. My little after school lawn business had become legit, and my dad had a new full-time job. While I was doing the homes nearer the house, he was doing the ones farther out. The income doubled. We saved and bagged all the grass-clippings and added them to the compost trays.

Ryan spent that Fourth of July with my family. Dad did his barbeque ribs. Mom was in charge of the rest. Dad and Ryan played touch football in the backyard. I’d never seen my dad act like a teenager. There was no doubt my friend had won him over. My mom watched them from the kitchen window. I could tell by looking at her she was seeing him with eyes from twenty years ago. They tried to get me to join in. It wasn’t my thing. But I enjoyed watching them. It was good to see my dad have fun. It was great to see my mom smiling like a schoolgirl. Everything Ryan touched seemed to shine brand new.

Dad and Ryan played cards after dinner on the porch. Gin rummy. Mom and I cleaned up. Put food away. Washed dishes. There was a new feeling in the house. I opened a Coke and watched my mom dry dishes. She was humming a tune. It took me a minute to realize that it was Jennifer Juniper from my favorite Donovan album. That tickled me. I didn’t even think she listened to my music when I played it in my room.

Laughter came from the porch. My dad won another hand. I watched him rake a pile of pennies over to his half of the table.

“You’ve made your dad very happy.” Her voice came from behind me and I turned. She was staring away fromImy at the two on the back porch. “He loves helping you with the business.”

“It’s our business, mom.”

“That’s what I mean.”

When darkness fell, dad brought out his surprise. Bottle rockets, firecrackers, and sparklers. Two bagfuls. Enough that we lit up the backyard for a good half hour. It was the most fun I could ever remember having with my dad. Oohs and ahhs and whoops and hollers. It was the night my parents became kids with us. We had Gold Coast Chocolate Ice Cream from Velvet Freeze for dessert.

We sat on my bed as I read
A Separate Peace
to Ryan. He looked sleepy-eyed from all the food and activity. He faded off to sleep on my bed before ten o’clock, clutching my pillow, mouth open like a guppy. I bent close to his face so I could feel his breath on me. It was warm; made me glow inside. My hand hovered above his face, wanting to touch but not wanting to be indiscreet. More than anything, I knew I was glad he was there. I’d never felt so vulnerable and so certain at the same moment.

Lingering above his ear, I whispered, “I think I’m falling for you,” and I knew it was true.

I dreamed wonderful dreams that night. I was the prince who’d found his true love. The slipper fit. There was a happily ever after.

The knocks were barely perceptible. But enough for me to open my eyes, see my mom enter the room carrying a stack of my folded clothes. She looked at me and covered her mouth with a finger and said, “Shhh.” She pointed to the bed behind me.

As I tried to move, I found myself pinned in place. Ryan had wrapped me with an arm and a leg like a blanket. He was breathing into my neck. I looked up at my mom. She smiled.

“Breakfast in half an hour,” she said in a hushed voice as she placed my clothes on the dresser.

She closed the door quietly as she exited.

My mind froze. I had no idea what my mom could be thinking. I knew how it looked. She must have been shocked. But she didn’t look shocked. She’d smiled. She’d looked directly at me in bed with Ryan, and she smiled. The possibilities rolled endlessly through my head. But it always ended with her smile. I felt him stir. His arm pulled tight around me. I felt him press close to me. And then he yawned.

“Mornin’,” he said as he bent me closer into him still.

“Mornin’,” I said back.

He rolled over to stretch. I could still feel his warmth on me.

CHAPTER NINE

“Your dad already took off on a job. He had another referral so he wanted to jump right on it,” Mom explained as Ryan and I sat down for breakfast at the table. “Pancakes sound good to you boys?”

“Sounds great.” Ryan was enthusiastic.

“He had a great time last night. I haven’t seen him like that in years,” she flipped another pancake on top of a stack, and then set them on the table.

“I had a great time,” Ryan said. “Your Mister has a great throwing arm.”

“He was quite an athlete back in the day,” she said, eyes misted with a faraway gaze. If there was anything on her mind, anything that bothered her about what she saw in my room, she said nothing. Her mood was lively, her body language relaxed.

“How are the studies going?” She pourasted great.

“Real good!” he said enthusiastically. “I retake my finals the last week of August just before football practice starts. I think I’m ready. Still have to get through
A Separate Peace
though.” He swallowed another humongous bite of pancake and washed it down with milk. “Dave was reading it last night, but I konked.”

Mom looked at me, eyes bright, knowing. “David practically lived in the library when he was younger. He loves to read. I worried for years that he wouldn’t get out and make friends. It’s nice to be book-smart and all, but you have to get out and live to understand anything.”

Ryan turned his attention to me. “I think Dave’s probably the smartest guy I know. I’m real lucky to have him helping me.”

“I think he’s very lucky to have you as a friend, Ryan.”

I don’t think either one of us expected that. Ryan’s cheeks bloomed like roses.

I had three lawns to do to that day. The day was cloudless, sunny, hot, and humid. I was aware of little of that. My mind was elsewhere. Only when I realized I’d soaked my shirt did I stop to find shade and sip some iced tea from my thermos. I’d worked three hours straight lost in my thoughts. The thoughts being that I woke in the arms of Ryan.

I didn’t know if he had done it intentionally, or it was an instinctive gesture like people who sleep embracing their pillow. I do know that he didn’t seem to be offset by the realization when he awakened. He didn’t pull away or act alarmed. He just looked at me sleepily and said,

“Mornin’.”

My eyes wandered to the top of the trees, to the wires where birds perched, to the infinite blue of the sky. I was remembering the first time I’d seen him. Sitting on the bench across the field. Suddenly noticing him looking at me. The small hand wave I’d first thought was for someone else. The first time he’d noticed me read the fortune aloud. He was more than an object of visual delight. There was something that came from him that made everyone feel comfortable. An easiness that most of us don’t have. If he had a guard up, like most of us do, it was invisible. He came into our house and made us feel like the extra chair had always been meant for him.

I finished my chores and wheeled the mower home. I was hot and exhausted and hungry. I put everything away, went in through the back porch door. Mom was standing in the door to the living room crying into a handkerchief. Not just crying, but sobbing.