The Dating Charade

by Melissa Ferguson

  Kids were playing a game of Mr. Fox on one side of the gym while several teens shot hoops on the other. Beside the stage, a couple of platinum-blond toddlers chased Kennedy in circles around Star and Deidre. One of the children, a toddler boy running madly with one sock on, threw his arms around Kennedy. She giggled with his hands locked behind her neck, turned, and the chase started again in reverse.

  That is, until Star pulled on the sleeve of Deidre’s sweater and gave a furtive glance to three teen girls standing six feet off. They chatted wildly among themselves, shifting from one hip to the other in colorful leggings and matching pairs of furry boots. Cassie hadn’t thought twice when Star put on her worn-out turquoise Chucks this morning. At the Haven, Chucks were the norm, rain or shine. But of course, Star wouldn’t care. She was one of those who led the pack, not followed along blindly in it.

  Listen to her, she was pulling all the proud mom moves already.

  The three girls laughed loudly, and Star turned her face away. When Kennedy ran by again, she snagged her by the dress and set Kennedy on her lap on the ground.

  “Want to play a game?” Cassie read Star’s lips as she watched her pull a wrapper from her jeans. Star rolled it into a ball, then hid it in one of her fists. She knocked both fists together, and Kennedy’s eyes lit up, trying to guess where it was hiding. The two furry-headed blond children stopped, quick to follow in the new game.

  Enough of this. She could stand in the corner watching them all day, smiling as she watched her three soon-to-be daughters be their normal, delightful selves. But then that would scare the poor man off volunteering in the children’s ministry forever, and she was too anxious to get them into her arms anyway.

  Cassie called out to the three of them, her smile as high as her waving arm. “Hey, guys! Time to go!”

  Star’s gaze lifted to Cassie. The wadded ball dropped to the floor as she stood and lifted Kennedy onto her hip. Her hand reached out for Deidre while Kennedy waved goodbye to the toddlers.

  The trio began walking toward Cassie.

  Then, without slowing, they walked right on past her, Star turning at the last moment to knock Cassie’s shoulder, hard, along the way.

  16

  Jett

  Radiator fluid leaked all over the pavement, and all Jett could think was how Drew would’ve loved to be a fireman on this call. He would’ve pressed his hand against the neon-green fluid, probably would’ve licked it when Jett wasn’t looking. Then he would’ve chased all the white-feathered chickens clucking hysterically around the sideways truck leaning against a tree. He would’ve splashed his feet in the freezing-cold brook where a headlight lay submerged, glowing like hidden gold.

  This Norton Creek crash site would’ve been a downright playground.

  Overturned and opened cages littered the mountainous road as he walked past the exposed undercarriage of the vehicle. Even that looked like a gigantic Hot Wheels (Drew really was hacking into his brain these days) with bumper stickers slapped all over the backside of the jacked-up, three-quarter-ton diesel.

  Jett’s eyes skimmed each sticker:

  KEEP HONKING, I’M RELOADING

  DUE TO PRICE INCREASE IN AMMO, DON’T EXPECT A WARNING SHOT

  EAT MORE POSSUM

  Well, with the thirty-six-inch mud tires, he didn’t expect the bumper sticker to say EAT ORGANIC or MY DAUGHTER IS AN HONOR STUDENT AT PI BETA PHI ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.

  This guy was a real piece of work.

  The narrow road was completely blocked off now, turning the wreck into a logistical nightmare as officers scrambled to organize detours. If he had to guess, it’d be an hour yet before the tow truck arrived.

  Jett gripped the jaws-of-life to the crushed door. The frame bent further as he began to pry it open.

  With a loud clip the door yielded to him, and together with Kevin, they pulled it off. Jett reached in, extended a hand. With a truck like this, he was surprised the guy inside hadn’t swung open the door like a rocket and dragged his own body out with his two behemoth biceps.

  But instead of accepting help getting out and onto the unsteady bank, a bony hand swatted his arm.

  “What the [bleep] did you do to my truck!” the man roared. Only it wasn’t a man. It was the squeaky voice of a teen without a filter.

  With arms skinny enough Jett questioned he could even hold a rifle, the boy pulled himself to a standing position. He yanked up the camo pants threatening to fall to his ankles. Pointed to his door.

  “What the [bleepity-bleep-bleep] business do you think you have [bleepity] . . .” The teen raged on while chickens flapped around them in a white-feathered dust cloud.

  Unbelievable. Twenty guys were out here wasting the day on a kid who couldn’t steer his own truck, and this was how he thanked them.

  Teenagers. He didn’t know how Cassie did it.

  They wasted another two hours at the site and finally made their way back to the station, hours late on a meal and starving. Not ten minutes later the alarm rang again.

  As the dispatcher’s voice laid out the details over the speakers, Captain Ferraro dropped his fork. “That’s it. Bentley, when you get back, I want you to make sure those ladies haven’t planted cameras in here.” He pointed up to the corners of the ceiling. “Somehow they always know just when you’re on the clock.”

  “Maybe they’re tracking your phone,” Johnson grunted, his face in a second bowl of Mac’s fire-alarm chili. “I do it on my girls. One of ’em’s twenty-two now, and she’s still not privy to it.” He lifted his gaze with a mischievous smile, a chili bean hanging on to his beard. “But I can tell you one thing. The boyfriend hates me.”

  A few chuckles went around the table before the men returned to their dinners. Captain Ferraro called out as Jett, Sunny, and two others started down the stairs. “You give us so much business, Bentley, I don’t know whether to fire you or promote you.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, sir,” Jett replied, pausing on the stairs.

  The captain fired back, “Don’t.”

  Jett pressed his lips together, followed with a muted nod.

  The seat was still warm when Jett slipped into the driver’s seat. Sunny swung the passenger door of Medic 2–10 shut and switched on the lights. Then, out of nowhere, he raised a bowl of chili to his chin.

  “You know,” Jett said, pulling into the street. “Ferraro will have you on dinner duty for weeks if he catches you eating on the job.”

  “I have to, man. Between calls from your elderly sweethearts and your minions eating all our food, I’m whittling away to nothing. You know how much little man Drew ate yesterday for lunch?” Sunny didn’t wait for a reply. “Three hamburgers. Three. Dakota nibbles on half a chicken nugget while Drew demolishes his cheeseburger like a T-rex on steroids. Then he goes after one of mine, and I have a benevolent moment, thinking, ‘Hey, I’m a good godfather—’”

  “You’re not his godfather.”

  “I’ll steal his fries and let the little guy have a few bites of my one-and-a-half pounder. It’s covered in jalapeño sauce, after all. Best he can do is take a bite and start crying.”

  Jett turned on the blinkers. “And that’s not what a good godfather does.”

  “Sure it is. Anyway, you know what the little terror does?”

  “Godfathers probably don’t call their godsons terrors.”

  “He swallows half of it. In two bites. At one point he rubs jalapeño sauce in his eye and starts to cry, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, good, I’ll get it back now.’ But you know what happens then?” He looks at Jett. “Do you?”

  Jett sighed. “No, Sunny. Please. Tell me. What happens next?”

  “He keeps on crying, tears running down his face, and stuffs the rest of it in his mouth. It was like tears were the fuel that kept him going. I can’t put it into words, man, but it was creepy. Inspiring, but also creepy. Like a rabid squirrel.”

  “So now your godson is a rabid squirrel.”

  “You admit it!”
Sunny pointed and exclaimed, his spoon knocking chili to the floor.

  “I admit nothing,” Jett replied, turning the wheel.

  Airbrakes squealed as Kevin parked the engine at the turn for Skyline Drive. Jett turned, the trip ending with the well-known chassis-trembling, move-at-a-snail’s-pace drive up the rocky gravel.

  As Jett turned off the ignition, sauce dribbled down Sunny’s chin and shirt and dashboard.

  Jett opened the door with an I-told-you-so grin.

  Snow crunched underfoot as they followed the small, female footprints—and one long streak of cane—to the porch. Jett tried knocking the snow off his boots on the thin welcome mat reading Animals Welcome People Tolerated, but with no luck, he kicked lightly against the burgundy frame of the front door. As snow reluctantly gave in and dropped to the ground, he heard Donna Gene call to him. “Well, c’mon in, boys. We haven’t got all day.”

  Sunny and Jett exchanged looks before Jett grabbed the screen handle.

  There, hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room, was a suit. Edie took one long, squinty look at Jett, then took a pin out of her mouth and slid it into the waist of the jacket.

  Donna Gene hobbled a step to the table, leaning on the chair for support. “What’d’ya think, Jetty boy? We’ve been working on it all day.”

  He lingered at the unwelcome mat. Sunny gave him a firm elbow in the back, and Jett stumbled forward.

  “It’s . . . very nice.” In addition to not wanting to be there, he also didn’t want to ask. Whatever reply came out of their mouths he wasn’t going to like. But there it was, the question a mosquito in front of his face, a sting on his neck, then forehead, then arm. He had no choice but to give in and swat it. “What’s it . . . for?”

  “For you, of course. Don’t think we don’t know about Ms. Everson.”

  “Or your little rendezvous on Sunday.” Edie lifted her cane and hit the burgundy jacket. Dust exploded as though the cane had wacked a cupful of dust. “That’s right. We saw you all cozied up in the church parlor.”

  Jett stepped lightly around the coffee table—littered for once in things besides empty cans and chip bags. An open sewing kit, scissors lying on a pile of bridal magazines. A roll of lace, partly unwound until a foot or so dipped onto the matted carpet.

  He lifted his head, sensing the silence. He turned his head to the television, where it stared blankly back.

  The TV was off. Repeat, the TV was off.

  “Well, ladies, I appreciate any . . . designs . . . you might have in all of this. But if you don’t mind, I’d just as soon focus on the emergency you called us in for.” He hesitated, finding it wrong to hope yet hoping all the same. “There is an emergency?”

  “Just missed it.” Edie wrapped a tape measure around his waist. “Donna Gene had one of her dizzy spells.”

  “Is that so?”

  Donna began fanning herself with a magazine, her chest rising beneath the pink bathrobe. “I’d say it was a miracle. Edie pulled me back up with brute strength. What’s his waist, Edie?”

  “Thirty-four inches.” Edie moved the tape measure across his shoulders, which Jett, as politely as he could, started swatting off.

  “Well, in that case, we ought to be going. Lots of work today. Isn’t that right, Sunny?” Jett took a step back, then bumped against Sunny.

  “Oh, I think we have enough time to sit a spell,” Sunny replied with a wicked grin.

  “What about the suit, Jetty boy?” Donna asked.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s the perfect shade for you, isn’t it?” Donna leaned the pant leg toward his side. “Matches your skin tone and everything, I’d say.”

  “Worn at my late husband’s funeral,” Edie clucked. “Suitable for all occasions.”

  Sunny slapped Jett on the back, stopping him from even trying to move away. “Now did you hear that? The lady is offering you custom tailoring on a bona fide vintage suit. That’s not something to take lightly. How about you get up on that coffee table for some proper measurements?”

  Sunny crossed his arms across his chest, blocking the door with a smile as wide as Texas. He was getting back at him for the twins washing Sunny’s toothbrush in the toilet without telling him—well, not telling until they were watching Sunny brush his teeth.

  Jett was going to have to talk his way out of this, but the only thing he could think of was the truth. “The thing is, ladies, I don’t think there’s going to be a wedding anytime soon.”

  “Oh, we know. We’ve already talked it over with Patsy.”

  “Who’s Patsy?”

  Donna frowned. “Why, your sweetheart, honey. You need to sit down? Have something to drink?”

  “No. Thank you.” Jett shook his head. This was getting out of control.

  “Anyway, it should take us a few weeks to get everything sewn up just right.”

  “No. I mean, ever. There may never be a wedding. So you don’t need to worry about making a fuss.”

  Donna started fanning a magazine. “Surely not. There’s not one fault she can find in you.”

  “On the contrary—” Jett slammed his boot on Sunny’s toe and hip-checked him out of the way for the door. “—there are exactly three faults she can find with me. I’m just going to have to figure out how to tell her.”

  “About the children?”

  His hand paused on the handle, a gust of wind pressing against his tension on the door. He turned his head. “You know about the children?”

  Donna Gene paused, then tapped a finger twice to her temple. “Jetty boy, you’d be surprised all the secrets the old lemon holds. That’s why you oughta sit on down and let old Edie and D take a hatchet to your problems.”

  “Maybe some other time, ladies. Okay, then. Bye-bye.” He all but ran back to the truck, purposeful not to turn back as he heard Edie call after him. Sunny followed, snickering all the way.

  In the safety of Medic 2–10, Sunny spoke. “Well, you’re fully justified now. I think you can go check for cameras.”

  Sure, Sunny could laugh it off, Jett thought, but the question remained: how did they know? The twins and TJ had left the house once, maybe twice, in the last two weeks. Jett nodded. “Church. They must’ve seen me walking around with them at church.”

  It had to be. He would just keep telling himself that until he believed it.

  A minute, then two, rolled by in silence.

  “What you said back there about three problems. You still thinking about keeping them?” Sunny asked.

  Jett looked out the window. If anyone knew the harsh reality of his life right now, the day-in, day-out consequences of that question, it was Sunny. “I don’t know. But after I meet with Aunt Neena, I’ll have my answer. One way or another.”

  * * *

  “Drew, pick the macaroni up off the floor.”

  Drew, sitting at the antique-white, farmhouse-style table, shoveled another scoopful of macaroni into his mouth.

  Jett leaned forward from his chair opposite. “Drew. Pick up the macaroni.”

  Several seconds went by. Jett gave a polite smile to his aunt, who smiled politely back.

  Her husband coughed at the head of the table and set his fork down. “This tenderloin is delicious, honey.”

  Aunt Neena, holding TJ awkwardly while his head kept falling forward, tried to pick up her fork for a bite of salad. It slipped off. “I’m so glad you like it.”

  Jett leaned so far forward his white upholstered chair tipped up and his face came within inches of one of several tall candlesticks lighting their dinner of tenderloin, glazed asparagus, and Caesar salad—which had been, it should be noted, the original planned meal for the kids. That was before the twins gave their long, loud, and unending opinions on the matter. And before one of the gold-rimmed china plates shattered on the white shag rug.

  Now they were eating macaroni in Tupperware.

  Jett whispered tersely, pointing to the thrown items. “Drew. Pick. Up. Your. Macaroni.”


  Drew looked up at him while shoveling another handful—literally, as in hand without the spoon—of macaroni into his mouth. “Can’t. I’m a dinosaur. Dinosaurs don’t have hands.”

  Jett’s uncle stifled a smile.

  Jett himself stifled a look that would’ve slid that smile right off his uncle’s face. He set the fork down and stood. “Young man . . .”

  Working with Drew at an agonizing pace to place thirty-three pieces of macaroni back into the Tupperware, Jett resettled in his chair just in time for coffee.

  Aunt Neena, still attempting to hold TJ, settled a quaking cup and saucer before Jett.

  “Honey, let me have him for a minute. I’ve hardly gotten a chance to see him.” Jett’s uncle reached up for TJ, but his wife turned away.

  “You’ll get your chance, too, Ron. This is my time with my great nephew.” She put a protective hand around TJ, whose wide, blue eyes stared at Jett as she settled back into her high-backed, button-tufted chair. Unsteadily, she picked up her cup. “These children have the sweetest smiles.”

  That was false. When Dakota and TJ smiled, it was sweet. When Drew smiled, you got the feeling it was because he’d discovered your weakness.

  “So, Jett, tell us about this new situation of yours.”

  “Sure, I, uh—” Jett pinched his forefinger and thumb together as he picked up the exceedingly small, ornately curved handle of a porcelain Turkish coffee cup with roughly a third the capacity of TJ’s bottle. “Trina showed up at my apartment last week when—” He raised his voice, interrupting himself. “Guys, get off the couch. Stop. Do not throw the pillows.”

  Drew and Dakota paused, both arms loaded with one of the half dozen throw pillows arranged on the white canvas couch. When had his aunt and uncle become so civilized? In his childhood, visits to their home meant watching baseball games while eating corn dogs on a green plaid couch. Everything back then was striped wallpaper and wood paneling.