Sheila choked back the fear in her throat that she’d been holding there since she walked out on her life with Darrel what seemed like a lifetime ago. She could not give into it. If she even allowed a drop of it to spill forth, the whole of it would come crashing down on her, and she wouldn’t be able to control her movements, one foot in front of the other until she made her way out of the courtroom. How could it be over? Thirty-five years. Thirty-five Christmases. Thirty-five birthdays. Thirty-five anniversaries. Thirty-five summers and falls and springs and winters. Hundreds of bills. Thousands of meals. Thirty-five years of something that seemed to define her, give her meaning, gone with the pounding of a gavel. She was still a beautiful woman. Anyone sitting in the courtroom could see that, though her naturally red hair was now colored and her body was more shapely than when she was younger. The suit she wore wasn’t designer, but it was tasteful, rich with pastel colors, conforming to her heavier frame in every flattering way possible. She had chosen this suit because she knew how great she looked in it. She knew the way it made her feel. If she had known she would never be able to wear it again after this day, maybe she would have selected something different to wear. But how could she know anything? She was in a place completely foreign to her, a place she never expected to visit. She had to swallow the fear again.
It had been more than a year and a half since she’d decided to leave, but the pain she felt, the pressure on her chest, her heart, was the strongest she’d yet experienced. If only she could run to Darrel just across the courtroom. If only she could look him in the eyes one last time. Maybe this would be the moment where everything would turn around and suddenly they would be back to where they had been thirty-five years ago. Maybe he would look at her beautiful smile and admire the way she had applied the makeup to her face so carefully just for him and appreciate her earrings and the way they gently pulled at her earlobes. If he just smelled her, maybe he would remember those feelings of love that he had for her, that had made him cry for her, yearn for her, beg for her touch like he had years ago. He had longed for her years ago, right?
At some point, it all became a dream—the past, the future. She had found herself living both full of hope but refusing to live in the moment because that was too painful, too real. So she had relinquished herself to living in a dream of what was and what could be at least until she left Squirrel Ridge. For just long enough, she allowed herself to live in the moment so that she could pack up and walk away. It felt like insanity. And when it was all over, and she could go back to living in the past or the future, she tried to convince herself she had made a mistake. Yes, the dream was alive and well, and she could resuscitate it. But she also knew, after thirty-five years, if the dream lived any longer, she would die, and she couldn’t let that happen. So she sat there in the courtroom while the judge divided her and Darrel’s assets and their marriage. What God had made one, the state had now made two again.
Lonnie wasn’t in the courtroom for the divorce, but he was informed the moment it went through via the familial information system he and his sisters had formed over the years, mainly phone messages and emails, sources that were reliable and allowed for news to be circulated without the need for verbal op-eds about such potentially polarizing events. Luckily Lonnie was in the throes of his final semester of school and was determined to use the remaining weeks to create such incredible paintings that some gallery couldn’t help but want to show them. At this point, he didn’t even care if he struggled as an artist as long as he could squeak out a living doing what he loved.
The work he put out caught the attention of an up-and-coming gallery just off the main street of Old Town in Pasadena that went by the name of Box. The curators at Box promised not only to arrange a large show and reception for Lonnie’s work in July, two months after his graduation, but they also contacted two independent magazines that catered to the “artsy” crowd to interview Lonnie and establish a buzz about this event. Lonnie had invited both of his parents to his graduation and the exhibition. Darrel opted out of both, citing no interest in ever visiting California, and Sheila decided to attend only the graduation, so on the night of his big show, Lonnie found himself surrounded not by family but by adoring fans, one of which was a stout, Midwestern guy by the name of Ryan. Lonnie and Ryan had met before at a party in Santa Monica one weekend earlier that winter, but Ryan had seemed uninterested in Lonnie at the time, and having just moved on from Patrick and more recently Paul, Lonnie was content to let Ryan stay that way. However, at the show, Ryan seemed to have had a change of heart, which Lonnie had begun to realize was so often the case when people encountered his art. Initially, those around him simply took him for granted because he didn’t flit about with an air of self-importance but instead appreciated everyone, greeting whomever with a generous smile and a Midwestern friendliness that often caused people to think he was either after something from them or covering up a massive ineptness they should probably steer clear of. Then they encountered his work, and they realized there was more—much more—to him than they ever suspected.
Tonight especially, Lonnie’s talents and depth were center stage with more than half of his paintings already sold by the time the party drifted from the gallery to the ranch home of a well-known Time photographer on the outskirts of Glendale, where the small entourage emptied red wine bottles and burned through a pile of logs that sat next to an open-air fire pit. Within arm’s length of the cracking warmth, Lonnie and Ryan found themselves laughing at stories they shared with one another about growing up gay in the Midwest, though their lives in many ways could not have been more different. Ryan, ten years older than Lonnie, had been raised a jock by his coach father, and he’d been wildly popular in high school, where he’d taken his football team to state four years in a row. When he finished high school, Ryan had then gone on to attend Simpson College on an athletic scholarship before starting work as an assistant to the sports medicine department at USC. Just out of college, Ryan had attempted to follow his true passion of landscape painting and had found success, but it had never been enough for him to rely on as full-time employment, and eventually he’d given up. He was good, though. Just as seeing Lonnie’s work impressed Ryan, Lonnie had actually seen one of Ryan’s paintings, which had been acquired by the Bank of America on Magic Mountain Parkway in Santa Clarita and hung in its lobby.
By three-thirty in the morning, with the firewood running low and the rest of the partygoers gone, Lonnie and Ryan shared their first kiss. Then another and another, and a little tipsy, they crawled into a large bed in one of the empty guest bedrooms, where they stripped each other of their clothes and had uninhibited sex that ended with them falling into deliciously deep sleep, entangled in one another’s arms.
The next morning, neither Lonnie nor Ryan was quite sure what to expect. They kissed and shared a little pillow talk before Ryan asked for Lonnie’s number and Lonnie decided that instead of giving it to him, and the two of them ruining their magical night together by attempting to turn it into something more, he’d simply let Ryan off the hook.
“Look, I just want you to know, it’s completely fine if you don’t call me or anything.” Lonnie ran his fingers over Ryan’s chest and kissed his nipple.
“Do you not want me to call you?” Ryan asked, his sparkling blue eyes exuding charm.
“No, it’s just… I know guys like you.”
“Guys like me? What am I?” Ryan laughed.
“Playboys. You’re a playboy. You don’t want to settle down.”
“Why do you think I’m a playboy?”
Lonnie crawled on top of Ryan and rested his chin on Ryan’s chest, looking at him. “I don’t know. Aren’t you?” Lonnie asked. “I’m just saying, I’ll give you my number, but if you don’t call, I understand.”
“I wanna call,” Ryan said, the glimmer in his eyes almost diminished with hurt at the idea that Lonnie thoroughly thought he was a player. “I don’t do anything half-assed. I’m not gonna go to b
ed with you if I don’t like you, and if I like you, I’m gonna wanna see you again. And I do like you.”
Lonnie smiled. “I like you, too.”
In fact, Lonnie was completely smitten with Ryan. It was odd for him to realize that he’d been with Patrick for almost three years and never once felt the amount of attraction and affection he’d already experienced with Ryan in just one night. Was this what falling in love felt like?
When she was younger, Sheila never understood why Gwen had been so adamant that she and Butch be at the Barnetts’ house for Christmas. Now she understood. There was a shivering coldness, like the slip of freezing air, that enters through the poor insulation at the bottom of a door and chills your bones in an otherwise warm winter house when those closest to you, the ones you gave life to and invested your all in, spent the most important holiday celebration of the year with others. So Sheila did everything she could to coax her children back to her house for the first Christmas after her divorce from Darrel had been finalized. She even promised to give Lonnie and Ryan her bed if Lonnie returned. And after weeks of worry, plans fell into place, and all of her children returned, as promised, allowing Sheila to feel good about herself, being as the two things she had invested her life in were her marriage and her kids, and at least the kids were still going to come through for her. Of course, the thing she hadn’t planned on, and the thing Sheila could not have known would hurt worse than not having them there at all, was that her kids would all visit Darrel on Christmas Eve and leave her alone in her house with just her Christmas music, all the Christmas goodies she’d made, and a few shopping bags of clothes she’d bought for herself as Christmas presents. They were gone for only five hours and forty-seven minutes, but in that seemingly endless period of time she relived a plethora of memories of past Christmas Eves the family had spent together, which always included a “birthday cake for Jesus” and the reading of the Christmas story from Luke 2. Barely able to handle the thought that those days were gone and never to return, she played her favorite Christmas music loud enough to drown out her thoughts, tried on the clothes she’d bought for herself to remind herself she was still worth something, and cried herself to sleep.
It was weird to be back in the McAllisters’ old house with Constance running the kitchen and kissing Darrel on the cheek and handing him a beer—A BEER! Alcohol had always been so off-limits as Lonnie was growing up. Now here his sisters were making margaritas, and his dad was offering him a Bud. Lonnie tried to relay to Ryan what their house had once been like, whether good or bad, whether too conservative for their own good or not, but it was difficult. All the rooms had pretty much been stripped of any personality Lonnie and his sisters had put into them, all the trinkets, ribbons, posters, photographs, and trophies were gone, and they had been filled with new furniture Darrel had bought after Sheila left with the old stuff.
The one thing that hadn’t changed was the land. Despite all the “bush hogging” Darrel had been up to, there were hundreds of acres he still had not touched, and Lonnie took Ryan on a four-wheeler ride to show it to him. Ryan could not have known it, but in many ways, giving him a tour of the hills and hollows around Squirrel Ridge was one of the most intimate pieces of himself that Lonnie could share with another. It was here his life began and in a way ended, attached like a root to this soil, no matter where in the world he might be, sucking up strength from memories of certain oak trees and fence lines and creeks slick with algae.
They reached one of Lonnie’s favorite spots, a secluded pond surrounded by cedar trees that stood out with their deep green hues against the otherwise grey landscape of winter and the black of the leaf-strewn water. Lonnie turned off the four-wheeler and breathed in the stillness for a moment before he turned to Ryan. “How you doing?” Lonnie asked.
“I’m good. A little cold,” Ryan said, his nose indeed red.
“Aren’t you supposed to be used to weather like this? I mean, you’re from Iowa!”
Ryan exaggerated a shiver. “I always stay inside in Iowa, making chili for the family and watching football.”
“I just wanted to show this to you. It’s like my favorite spot in the whole world.”
“Well, it’s very nice,” Ryan smiled. “Now can we go?”
He did understand the gesture Lonnie had extended his way, but it was below freezing outside. Lonnie smiled. “Sure.”
Lonnie turned around to start the four-wheeler back up, then he turned back to Ryan. “And, I… I just want to say that I… I love you.”
Ryan broke into a grin. “Well, I love you, too.”
“No, really. I love you like I’ve never loved anything.” In that moment, Lonnie felt as though he’d never spoken truer words, and tears formed in his eyes.
“I know you do,” Ryan said.
“Do you really love me?”
“Yes. Forever and one day more.”
Forever and one day more. Lonnie couldn’t have asked for anything better.
Darrel suspected that it would be odd to see his son holding hands with another man and whispering sweet nothings into that man’s ears, but the odd thing was that it wasn’t. Watching Lonnie and Ryan together seemed somehow natural, like this was the way things had always been meant to be and only an irrelevant moral code that existed somehow unchecked in his head made him feel like life should be otherwise. He even thought that maybe the reason he was okay with Lonnie’s choice of Ryan was because Ryan was so masculine, but that wasn’t it either. If Darrel liked Ryan, it was because Ryan was a smart, capable guy and seemed like he might be a good fit for Lonnie. A good fit—effeminate, masculine, tall, short, black, white—what really mattered was a good fit like what Darrel now had with Constance. Maybe the gays had it right when he heard them talking on Fox News about “life partners” and such. That’s what it really was—marriage—a partnership, and just as with any partnership, sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn’t. You had to be honest from the get-go, however, put it all out on the table and keep it out there. That’s where he’d gone wrong with Sheila. Somewhere inside, Darrel still couldn’t believe that Sheila had actually gone through with the divorce, and he missed her, the way she smelled, the taste of her breasts, their conversations, holding one another while they watched their kids open Christmas presents just as he was holding Constance now. But what was done was done. And he thought things would truly be better with Constance, that she would be a better fit for him. But the truth was, if things seemed better with Constance, it’s only because after the divorce, he didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of fight left in him or a whole lot of desire to hide anything anymore. So he just didn’t do anything to cause problems between them. He became what would have been a better partner for anyone. He woke up the morning after officially being divorced from Sheila and saw himself in the mirror as he really was, an older man with fewer options and more grey hair than the jet black mane he’d always been known for, and he realized he’d been fighting for a long time for stuff that didn’t really matter. So he gave up. He wished he could’ve done this with Sheila, but even now he knew things between them had simply become too frayed. He’d never be able to stop fighting her, and he doubted she’d ever be able to stop fighting him. Their partnership had devolved into a war that was only going to be won by both sides giving up, retreating, and never looking back. And to make certain it remained that way, Darrel took an extra step.
“Will you marry me?” Darrel asked Constance quietly. All the kids were listening to Lonnie tell a story about his and Ryan’s Memorial Day trip to visit Ryan’s parents in Iowa and the surprise hailstorm that had caught them off guard while they were out pontooning around Saylorville Lake.
Constance laughed, thought Darrel was playing with her. She slapped at his chest playfully.
“I’m not kidding,” Darrel whispered.
Constance looked up at him, gauging the sincerity in his eyes.
The kids all laughed as Ryan interrupted Lonnie’s monolo
gue to insert a couple details of his own.
“Sí,” Constance said, but motioned to her ring finger. “Yo quiero un anillo.”
Daisies Page 15