The Rebound Effect

by Linda Griffin

  “I only have eyes for you,” he said. Aiden couldn’t follow the conversation, and she didn’t try to interpret. Frank took her hand, and the three of them strolled slowly toward the music stage, pausing to look at toys and handicrafts in the booths. Aiden seemed to have taken it for granted that Frank was part of their group. Maybe he simply missed having a man around—if it couldn’t be Brett, Frank would do as a substitute.

  They stood next to the bleachers, and Aiden scrambled ahead, perched on a seat a few rows closer, and watched intently, swinging his legs. In spite of his denial, Teresa could tell Frank liked watching as the young girls twirled and lifted their skirts. It was a very pretty, lively dance, with quick steps and intricate maneuvers. When it was over, they applauded enthusiastically, and she glanced around at the dozens of people who had gathered to watch. It was then that she noticed Brett.

  He had seen Aiden and started toward him and then stopped, hesitating. The boy was still watching the stage, his back to them. Brett approached him, and he stood up, both eager and wary. Brett signed something she didn’t catch, and Aiden pointed toward her. Brett ran his eyes along the rows of bleachers and found her just as Frank turned to see what she was looking at. He took a step forward.

  Brett had seen him too, now, and he walked toward them, his fists clenching and unclenching. She knew him well enough to know it was probably just nerves, but he looked hostile. “Teresa,” he said hoarsely, a little out of breath. He stopped, uncertain, and then managed to say politely, “Hi. How are you?”

  Frank stepped in front of her. “What’s it to you?” he asked. “How’s Lacey?”

  Brett turned red. “Christ!” he said. “I don’t give a damn about Lacey.” He said the name with something like contempt.

  Frank started to speak, and Teresa put an urgent hand on his arm. They were both intelligent, rational men, and she was astonished by this immediate, fierce antagonism between them. She supposed it was sheer sexual jealousy, which she ought to understand, but her own bitterness paled before this testosterone-fueled rage.

  She did not want them to fight, especially not in front of Aiden, who was momentarily distracted by a little girl curtsying on stage. “Let me talk to him for a minute,” she said and gestured to Brett to walk away toward a leather-crafts booth. “Stay with Aiden,” she told Frank firmly.

  She wasn’t sure what she intended to say, but Brett spoke first, angry and out of breath. “Alix told me you went away for the weekend with this guy. You had sex with him?” He was outraged.

  “Keep your voice down,” she said coldly. “It’s none of your business.”

  “Were you trying to get even?”

  “No, I wasn’t trying to get even. I didn’t get even. I’m moving on, and so should you.”

  “I can’t,” he said. He had tears in his eyes—anger, futility, loss?—and it hurt to see him suffering so much. No matter what he had done, she didn’t like hurting him. They had been too close for too long. “I love you,” he said. “I need you to forgive me. And this guy—I don’t like him. He’s not right for you.”

  “You don’t even know him.”

  “What do you see in him? What does he have? Money? Is it money? He makes a lot?”

  “If that’s all you think of me—”

  “What, then? I didn’t think you went for his type.”

  “He’s not a type. He’s a nice guy who treats me right. He can hold his liquor, and he doesn’t cheat.”

  “I don’t cheat!” Brett said furiously. “That’s not who I am, and you know it. It was one time, one damn time, one stupid mistake I’ll regret for the rest of my life! I got fired, and I got drunk, and Lacey was there, and I guess I was—”

  “What?”

  “Looking for…I don’t know…comfort.” He knew it was a weak excuse and couldn’t meet her eyes. He looked away toward the bleachers, where music was now playing

  “You couldn’t get it from me?”

  “I was drunk. I…I wanted it to be more than that with you.”

  “Well, you didn’t make it more. You made it less.”

  “I don’t know what else I can say except I’m sorry. If you give me another chance, I promise I’ll do whatever I can to work things out. We can go to couples therapy, and I’ll…I don’t know, talk to you about the hard stuff…I haven’t had a drink since that night. I’ll go to AA if you want.”

  “I don’t want anything except to be left alone. It’s finished. Get over it.” She walked away and didn’t look back. The dancing had started again, the wonderful weaver’s dance she remembered from the previous year. Frank was standing where they had been before, watching intently. She couldn’t see Aiden in front of him, and when he moved and she had a clear view of the seats beyond him, she still didn’t see Aiden.

  Her heart beat a little faster, but she made herself stay calm and not overreact. She glanced around and touched Frank’s arm. “Where’s Aiden?”

  He looked automatically where she had and then around them. “He was right here, Teresa, I swear. I saw him a second ago.” He was anxious now and took her hand and squeezed it tightly, but in the next second he shifted into macho mode, calm and purposeful. He released her hand. “He can’t have gone far. We’ll find him.” He glanced around again and called, “Aiden!”

  “He can’t hear you,” she reminded him gently. She tried to think rationally, but she was scared shitless—every mother’s nightmare, a lost child. Losing track of him, even for seconds, was the worst thing she could face. In mere seconds children had disappeared forever. She went quickly toward the stage and looked back, taking in the whole crowd. She turned all the way around, searching hard. Frank was looking too. It would have made more sense for them to separate, but he stayed close to her. She took a deep breath. “There’s a public address system,” she said. “We can ask people if they see him.” She couldn’t remember where the Lost and Found was—in one of the buildings near the entrance?

  And then she saw him. He had his back to them, but she couldn’t miss him anywhere. He was hers, a precious little life she valued more than her own. He was only yards from the stage, watching a man demonstrate a silly clown toy. Trying not to cry with relief, Teresa walked up and hugged him from behind. He didn’t even look around. He knew it was her and leaned back against her.

  She looked at Frank. His face was a study—relief, guilt, probably residual anger at Brett. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I barely took my eyes off him. The very first time you trusted me with your son!”

  She let go of Aiden to pat his arm. “It happens.”

  They were both a little shaky from the fright and relief, but Aiden was completely oblivious. He pointed at the clown. “Can I have?” he signed.

  “What?” she asked, deliberately dense.

  He didn’t know the sign or couldn’t think of it. “Clown,” he said, doing very well with the difficult diphthong.

  Teresa hugged him. She glanced at the price on the hanging toys and nodded. She opened her purse, but Frank stepped in to pay for it.

  After that little scare, the rest of the day was pretty lighthearted. They strolled, browsed in booths, and watched more dancing and strolling musicians in costume. Aiden wasn’t quite old enough to disdain the kiddie rides, and Frank kept paying for him to ride until he was dizzy.

  In such a small town, it was inevitable they would encounter people Teresa knew. She introduced Frank, without a qualifier, saying simply, “Frank McAllister,” and sometimes, “He’s new in town.” She was a little self-conscious when she saw people make note of their linked hands and probably wonder what a hot guy like him was doing with her. If they knew Brett, she was also afraid they wouldn’t know what he had done and would think she had dumped him for Frank, or if they did know would judge her indecent haste in moving on.

  Delicious smells wafted toward them from every direction, and when the sun was overhead they sat on wooden benches to eat. Frank told Aiden bratwurst was a German hot dog, and he ate it happil
y with mustard and sauerkraut. “You don’t let him eat hot dogs every day, do you?” Frank asked.

  “Once a week, usually. Today is extra.” She bit into her hot meat and cabbage pie to keep from adding something more defensive. She didn’t much like bachelor Frank questioning her parenting skills, but she supposed he meant it as friendly concern. Aiden was more and more comfortable with him and grilled him about police work in ways that challenged her interpreting skills. She had to spell most of the terminology. She learned a lot too—his job was far more complex and wide-ranging than she had supposed.

  When he told them the story about the drunk who had hit him with a bottle, Aiden admonished him, signing, “Always wear your hard hat.” Teresa translated, using “helmet” for hard hat and finger-spelled the word for Aiden, who gamely sounded out, “Hel-met.” His willingness to use his voice in public was increasing by leaps and bounds. She reflected that the moments when he was missing had made Frank more patient and indulgent with him than he might otherwise have been. He also seemed to have forgotten about the confrontation with Brett. On Aiden’s side, hero worship worked wonders. He even let Frank take him to the men’s room, probably happy not to be treated like a mama’s boy.

  When they had seen everything they wanted to see, they agreed to call it a day and started toward the parking lot. “Want to do something tomorrow?” Frank asked. Instead of translating, she shook her head slightly, and he asked, “Next week?”

  She silently assented. “Aiden? Shall we do something with Frank next week?”

  “What?” he asked eagerly. She supposed he hoped for something like a SWAT operation.

  Frank touched his arm and fingerspelled z-o-o. “Do you like the zoo?”

  “Yes!” Powell City had a very fine zoo, and he had only been once.

  “You learned the manual alphabet?” she asked, surprised and touched.

  “I’m trying,” he said. “I’m afraid that’s all I have today.” As they crossed the street to the parking lot, he commented, “And a good time was had by all.”

  He was holding her hand, and she gave his an answering squeeze. “Yes, it went well,” she agreed.

  They stopped beside the pickup, and Aiden leaned against Teresa. “Is this thing safe?” Frank asked. “You should have—”

  “Don’t even start,” she said.

  “Aren’t children supposed to sit in the back seat?”

  “As if I had one. I don’t have airbags either. Nobody in Cougar enforces those rules anyway. I drive carefully, and we always buckle up.”

  She got Aiden’s attention. “We buckle up, right?”

  He nodded. He was drooping a little, perhaps tired from all the excitement.

  “Take care of your mother,” Frank told him. Aiden squinted up at him, trying to read his lips. When Teresa translated, he stood a little taller and took her hand protectively. Frank backed away, smiling, toward his SUV.

  “Bye,” Aiden called.

  “Bye, Champ.”

  Teresa translated it as “champion.” She didn’t know how to explain in sign language and said aloud, “A nickname.”

  On the way home in the pickup, Aiden leaned against the door. He knew she wasn’t supposed to take her eyes off the road, so he used his voice to comment on the festival. He had the clown toy in a bag clutched tight in his lap. He waited until they got home to say, “I miss Brett.”

  “I know, sweetie. So do I.” Did she? She kissed his forehead and asked, “Do you like Frank?”

  He thought about it, and then he nodded. Before she could take a breath of relief, he signed emphatically, “He not Brett,” and, making an effort, said aloud, “He not—”

  “He’s,” she corrected. Those pesky be verbs!

  “He’s not Brett.”

  “No, I know. But you can be friends with them both.” Over their dead bodies! “You can be friends with Brett even if we don’t see him anymore.” He frowned, puzzled. “You can still like him,” she said.

  “You still like him?”

  Put on the spot, Teresa groped for a wise answer, but the best she could do was, “I don’t know.” She supposed she would eventually get past the hurt enough to remember they had been friends for a long time before they became a couple, and maybe they could be friends again. Maybe when he was past it too and accepted her relationship with Frank. She now had to take it for granted that she would have one.

  ****

  She gave up the idea of returning the cell phones to Frank. What would he do with them? Drive back to the coast to return them? It would be a pointless gesture and invite a charge of ingratitude. She was more comfortable with using hers, although she would never use all its features, and now she tackled Aiden’s.

  She studied the small print of the instruction book and consulted her well-thumbed sign-language dictionary, but in the end, it was all a waste of time. Aiden proudly showed it to Sasha, and in five minutes she had him texting like a pro. “Golly shakes!” she said. “Some phone!”

  “Well, you were right,” Teresa told Frank during what had now become a nightly call. “He and Sasha text each other all the time now, and it is helping his reading, if not his grammar and spelling. As long as some big kid doesn’t beat him up and take it…”

  “Want me to teach him self-defense?”

  “He’s a child!”

  “He’s old enough to learn to block a punch.”

  “Just don’t teach him to hit first.” She sighed. “Sasha teaches him to text. You teach him to defend himself. I’m starting to feel inadequate.”

  “But that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It takes a village. You do all the hard stuff, the daily grind, so you deserve whatever help the rest of us can give you.”

  ****

  Frank joined Teresa and Aiden at the grill on Thursday night. He was drinking beer at the bar and watching the World Series game when they arrived. He ordered hot dogs and macaroni and cheese in solidarity with Aiden, and they compared notes—Frank liked catsup on his hot dog and Aiden mustard, Frank preferred whole wheat buns, Aiden liked his macaroni and cheese a little soupy, and so on. When the conversation moved on to more adult matters, the children started texting each other and giggling. “Is it a good idea to have your six-year-old hang out in a bar so much?” Frank asked.

  “It’s a family restaurant that serves beer, not a bar. We’ve been doing this Thursday night thing for years, and we would both miss it.”

  “It’s a tradition. I get that. But you can always make new ones.” He always said things like that so blithely, as if he couldn’t imagine they would make her uneasy. They did, but everything else counterbalanced the feeling. He was great with Aiden, especially considering his lack of experience with children. He was great with her too, except for making her feel a little crowded at times.

  When they finished eating, he was watching the game again and didn’t try to kiss her in front of Aiden. “I’ll see you both Saturday,” he promised.

  Chapter 13

  The zoo was even more of a success than Oktoberfest, especially from Aiden’s point of view. He was fascinated by all the animals and could have happily spent all day in front of the tiger enclosure if there hadn’t been so much more to see. He had so much energy, running back and forth while Frank and Teresa walked slowly, hand in hand. She felt more comfortable about public displays here, freer, knowing they were unlikely to run into anybody they knew.

  “Does he ever run down?” Frank asked, amused, as Aiden raced back to them for the umpteenth time.

  “Not before dinnertime. Sometimes I wish he could give me an energy transfusion.”

  The boy was so constantly entertained that all they needed to do was keep an eye out to be sure he didn’t disappear in the crowd and try to answer his millions of questions: Why do giraffes have such long necks? How high can a kangaroo jump? Does a warthog have warts? He also undertook to teach Frank some of the appropriate sign language—monkey, lion, peacock, elephant, duck, snake, and so on. “I’ll never r
emember them all,” Frank said. “I don’t know how you do it.”

  Teresa jumped when an elephant trumpeted loudly right next to them. Aiden was facing in the other direction and didn’t react at all. Frank said, “There’s another reason why the cochlear implant should be done as soon as possible. Even if it’s only partially successful, he should be able to hear what’s coming—a car honking, somebody yelling. Just to keep him safe, I’d think you’d want to—”

  “Of course I do,” she said.

  “We’re agreed, then. As soon as we’re married, I’ll have you both put on my insurance, and we can do it right away.”

  “Frank!”

  “What? Oh, sorry, I know I have to do it formally. I’ve been looking at rings.”

  “You have?” The possibility hadn’t occurred to her at all. She had never had one—Gene hadn’t been able to afford it when they married so young.

  “Yes,” he said, maybe a bit sheepish. “Would you prefer to choose one together? I know a lot of women like to have a say, but I kind of wanted to surprise you.”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it. It seems like it’s a little soon,” she suggested tentatively.

  “If we’re sure, why wait?”

  “But are we?”

  “I am. I knew right away. Can you explain to me why you’re holding back? You have doubts about me?”

  “I can’t figure out why a great guy like you is interested in me.”

  “You’re kidding, right? You can’t possibly have self-esteem issues.”

  She shrugged. “I guess it’s just general caution. It’s almost too good to be true. And most people know each other longer first, especially these days. I’ve been burned once. I don’t want another divorce.”

  “No, of course not. How can I reassure you?”

  “Just…slow down a little. Alix mentioned the other day that wanting to rush into a relationship is one of the warning signs of abuse, and I know you wouldn’t want me to think—”

  “Teresa,” he said reproachfully. “You are sacred to me. I would never harm a hair on your head.”