by JD Ruskin
“You’re a real cowboy?” she asked when she and Micah had finished their session and returned to the wrap-around wooden porch where I was relaxing in a rocking chair watching the boys push each other in the tire swing.
“Not anymore.” I smiled at her, standing up, taking off my hat. In the jeans, peacoat, scarf, sweater, hiking boots, and dress shirt, I didn’t look like one anymore either.
“Micah says you are.”
I arched an eyebrow for her. “Micah says?”
“Okay,” she admitted and grinned at me, small black eyes glinting, “you caught me. Micah draws.”
I nodded.
“Go run,” she told Carolyn’s middle child, and Micah bolted off the porch to where his brothers were. “I’m glad to see the worthless nanny is gone and you’re here.”
I looked at her. “Only for a couple weeks.”
She nodded. “Are you certain?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“Well, because Micah likes you,” she told me. “He feels safe, like you won’t get hurt or leave him.”
“How would you know that?”
“Well—” She smiled at me, sitting down on the porch railing. “—when I asked him to draw something that represented you, he drew a mountain.”
“Because I’m bigger than him.” I smiled.
“I don’t think so.”
“Mountain, huh? Okay.”
“You don’t seem pleased.”
I shrugged. “It’s fine.”
“What’s wrong with being a mountain?”
“It’s so boring.” I chuckled. “I couldn’t be a mustang or a cheetah?”
She laughed softly. “A mountain is very good thing, Mr. Yates. It’s—”
“Weber.”
Her eyes flicked to my face.
“Pardon me, ma’am, but if you would please call me by my given name, I would be much obliged.”
She nodded. “Obliged. I haven’t heard that word in years.”
“I suspect not.” I sighed.
“Well,” she said and took a breath, “Weber, I will tell you that a mountain is precisely what Micah needs right now. His grandmother died in front of him, the nanny just ran away from home, and, to him, in his mind, she took his father with her. He feels abandoned by both of them. Change is not good for him. He needs a foundation.”
“He has his mother.”
“Who is frantically trying to build a quick new life for her and her children and does not have time to sit and hug him… she just doesn’t.”
“But he’s a big boy.”
“He’s six.” She nodded. “Six is not big. Six needs to be loved on very hard.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Well, he has a helluva mother.”
“Agreed, but like I said, she’s doing the best she can to first navigate her own loss and then that of her children. She’s a single parent to three boys who each require her full attention. It is a daunting task that greets her daily.”
I nodded.
“I commend her, but she needs help. Children who don’t get what they need at home—love, rules, responsibility—look elsewhere for it. Kids are in crisis right now, Weber. All of them, not just these; we’re talking thousands without enough support. Two parents are vital, and then, only a start.”
“A man and a woman?” I tested her.
“That’s one of many good combinations,” she told me. “But I like two men, two women, two men and a grandmother, two women and an eccentric uncle, or a mother or father and grandparents just as well. It doesn’t matter to me. And I’m not saying that single parents aren’t astounding—I was one, for goodness sakes—but help, relief of some kind, some form, is needed.”
“Sure. That’s why she’ll get herself a full-time nanny after I leave.”
“Weber, what children all need, across the board, are people who care about them unconditionally and are invested in them. Children need role models, and not just heroes and miracle workers, but simply someone to stop and ask them how their day was, to pack a lunch sometimes, and sing along to the radio in the car.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You need to understand something that you might have missed.”
I waited and noticed, again, how lovely she was. Her little heart-shaped face, almond-shaped black eyes, high cheekbones, and porcelain skin all added to her beauty.
“The day their nanny and their father walked out, you walked in.”
She lost me.
“Close a door; open a window. Do you understand?”
“Not really.”
She tipped her head as she smiled at me. “Even if their father returns—which, from the deterioration of the marriage that I witnessed, I find highly doubtful—his children are scarred by his leaving. If he returned, the trust could, in time, be remade. But now, with his absence, the space between them looms wider and wider. So now we’ve taught children to fear being abandoned, and so as adults they either push people away so as not to be hurt, or hold them too tight and suffocate them.”
“That seems much too simple to me.”
“And maybe it is, maybe this won’t affect them at all. What are your thoughts?”
“I have no idea.”
Quick nod of her head. “I think the lesson of leaving will remain. We all carry what we’ve learned with us, our experiences, and for Tristan and Micah, now they won’t be so free with their hearts.”
I looked across at them, three little boys squealing in delight as they played on the tire swing, faces red with both exertion and the chilly December air. The thought was sobering and sad that what their father did was imprinted on them forever.
“Phillip is young. He might not hold on to his father’s disappearance, but the other two are old enough to wonder, now, who else will go?”
I cleared my throat. “It’ll be me. I’m fixin’ to leave in a couple weeks, right after New Year’s.”
“That won’t work.”
“Pardon?”
“Micah is bonded with you, Weber Yates. He might even talk either to you or about you fairly soon. It’s in his eyes, the excitement, the expectation. He so wanted to tell me about you today. He couldn’t draw fast enough. He wanted to express things, and when I was deliberately obtuse, he was very irritated with me. I think he thought I was smarter.”
Her smile was wicked.
“You tricked him.”
She shrugged. “I have a small window to bring him back from this before he closes off completely. Shocking him, putting him in a situation where someone else could be hurt if he didn’t use his voice—that’s all shit, you understand?”
I laughed at her. “I can’t believe you said shit.”
“Well, this is not a movie on the Lifetime Channel. We have to actually deal with this in real time and with real therapy. He had his voice shocked out of him. It won’t be shocked back. It doesn’t work like that. It will come when it’s ready. But if he can deal with the world without it, what’s to make him want it back?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“But you, my dear man, you he wants to talk about and he wants to talk to. You’re the anomaly, the new piece. He was abandoned, and you appeared. Tristan has the same eyes for you, full of want and hope. Whatever you do, don’t kill it because I’ll have to kill you.”
And she was tiny but really scary at the same time.
“That’s bullshit,” I growled at her. “You don’t get to lay that crap at my door. I ain’t responsible for the psyche—didn’t think I knew that word, didja?—of them three boys.”
She started giggling.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Oh my God.” She was laughing, loud and not ladylike at all. “Who are you? Where did you come from?”
“Before this?” I was confused.
And that was it: she was gone. She was a puddle of tears and snorts and raucous, howling laughter.
“Ma’am, you have lost your mind.”
It was like throwing gasoline on a fire.
I had no idea what set her off, but as she didn’t seem to be returning from the edge of sanity, I called the boys to me so we could go. The woman, doctor, shrink, was insane. Why she had to hug me goodbye, and why I let her, I had no idea.
IT WAS a blur of activity. Tristan and Micah to judo, Pip to music, home for a snack, all three to gymnastics, then Tristan to soccer practice, and Micah to baseball. I was exhausted just from the driving, which fortunately for me was all programmed into the GPS of Carolyn’s SUV that she had left with me that morning. She had taken Cy’s second car, his normal, everyday one, his Lexus, and he had taken the BMW.
“Do you have a license, Weber?” she had asked me tentatively.
I had pulled it out from my wallet and passed it to her.
“Arizona?” She smiled at me.
I nodded.
“Wait, are you kidding me?” she asked when she noticed the expiration date.
“Nope, 2031 is when it expires.” I waggled my eyebrows at her. “And the address is a PO Box of a friend of mine, so I’m good.”
“This is good until 2031?” She could not get over it.
“Yes, ma’am.” I chuckled. “Issued in 2003, ya see that?”
“Ohmygod.” She was indignant. “You won’t even look like that in twenty-eight years. What the hell were they thinking?”
“That they are a highly transient state, and they don’t want fifty million people in line at the damn DMV.”
Her face transformed into a huge smile as she passed me her keys. “Here you go, cowboy. Drive safely, and take care of my boys and the Enterprise, all right?”
Why she was calling her car the same name as the starship that Captain Kirk was in charge of I had no idea until I had to park it.
“Mom says she docks it. She doesn’t park it,” Tristan informed me.
And I looked like every other asshole in the parking lot doing the eleven point turn to try to get out of the parking stall without totaling the Honda Civic beside me. The boys were highly amused, cheered me on, and did the wave when I was done.
I told them all to shut their pieholes.
They all dissolved into throaty kid laughter that it was impossible not to join in on. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to fall as much in love with them as I already was with their uncle.
CAROLYN CALLED, sorry that she was going to be late and worried, from the hesitancy in her tone, that I was going to be mad. I had no inclination to be upset—I was fine. When she got there at seven thirty, everyone was fed, showered, and in their pajamas for the ride home. She took one look at them all sprawled out on the sectional, Pip watching something called Phineas and Ferb, Micah drawing in his sketchpad, and Tristan playing Plants versus Zombies on his Nintendo DS, and burst into tears.
I grabbed her tight and squeezed her until she stopped, ending up with her head on my chest, arms wrapped around my back, and leaning heavily.
The boys were all looking at us, curious as to the trouble.
“Mama’s just tired,” I told them.
One by one they got off the couch: first Pip, then Tristan, and finally Micah. She went to her knees and got a kiss and hug from each one, plus a drawing from Micah.
“Oh, baby, I love it,” she told him, wiping at her eyes with her fingers, pointing at the tree with the tire swing and then me with my huge noggin. “Who’s this?”
“Weber,” he told her and smiled.
She froze.
I flicked her on the back of the head to make her voice work.
“O-oh,” she stammered, “well, it looks just like him.”
He nodded and left us.
Slowly, like she was moving through molasses, she rose and turned to face me. Her eyes were open big, her mouth made her look like a fish, and her color was all wrong, sort of gray.
“Doctor Erin,” I began telling her, “said that he was fixin’ to talk soon, so you should start hearin’ some words sprinkled in with his nods and such.”
She was just staring at me.
“But you shouldn’t make it a big deal or else he’ll be thinkin’ he’s different, and he ain’t. So just, when he talks to you, talk back.”
Her indrawn breath was thready.
“That’s what the doctor said.”
Those eyes of hers, much like her brother’s, never left my face.
“Say yes, I heard you, Weber.”
“Yes, I heard you, Weber.”
I grunted.
“One fucking day,” she said breathlessly.
The swearing was new. “Pardon?”
“They were with you one fucking day, and Micah is feeling so grounded that he wants to start talking again, and all three of them look happy and content like I haven’t seen them in months.”
I shrugged. “I dunno. Apparently, I’m a mountain.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” I grinned at her, giving her a pat on the arm. “Are you hungry? We made stroganoff.”
“I get dinner too?”
I cupped her cheek before walking into the kitchen to get the plate I had made for her out of the refrigerator and put it in the microwave.
“Weber.”
I looked over my shoulder at her.
“You take better care of my boys than my husband did, and you care more about me.”
“That’s real sad,” I assured her. “Maybe the next man you find should be sweet on all y’all. It’s just a thought.”
She swallowed hard. “Tomorrow I’m supposed to go to a Christmas open house at my boss’s house. We’re supposed to bring our children, and some people bring their nannies instead of their spouses. Would you consider going with me?”
“Surely.” I smiled at her. “I’d love to be the nanny.”
“I would love it too. Permanently.”
And hours later as I sat alone on the couch, watching Sports Center but mostly thinking, I wondered what I could and couldn’t do.
I had always made choices based a lot on what other people thought. My mother died and then my father and finally my brother. Those were the people who would have simply accepted whatever I decided to do or be with unconditional love and support, and without them, I had no touchstone, no one I trusted. Except Cyrus.
I had faith in Cy, but he loved the cowboy, the excitement of that life, of me riding off into the sunset and pining for me when I was gone. If I was there, underfoot, how could that work?
What the hell was I going to do?
The key turned in the lock of the front door and he was there, rushing through it, eyes sweeping the room before they fell on me.
“Hey.” I smiled over at him. “How was the party?”
He looked incredible in his tuxedo as he crossed the floor to me, smiling wide, his bottom lip trembling.
“What’s with you?” I asked him as he reached me, leaning down close as I slid my hand up his arm.
“I missed you,” he whispered as his lips met mine.
I lifted so our mouths fit better and eased him down beside me, deepening the kiss, letting my tongue take the tour before tangling with his.
He moaned and tried to shift against me as I pulled back.
“What are—”
“Go change. That tuxedo costs more than what I got in the world, Doctor Benning.”
He rose quickly, striding from the room, and I was left again to wonder what I could really do. What made a man a man? Who got to judge?
When I heard him behind me, I turned and asked if he was hungry.
“Why?” He smiled at me. “Is there actually stroganoff left?”
“No.” I smiled back. “Your sister was hungry. She ate her plate and yours.”
“Nice.” He groaned, walking over to me dressed now in sweats, socks, a T-shirt, and a hoodie. “So you gonna cook for me now?”
“Sure,” I said, starting to get up.
“I’m kidding.” He grinned at me, flopping down, stretched out close, leg
s out in front of him.
“Put your foot up here.”
He didn’t hesitate. He turned, lay down, shoved a pillow behind his head, and got comfortable. Both feet were on my thigh.
As I began rubbing, he purred.
“You sound like you’re gonna come.” I smiled at him.
“Are you kidding?” he whimpered. “Do you know how long it’s been since someone rubbed my feet?”
I chuckled, running my knuckles up under his arch, squeezing his heel firmly, digging my fingers into the ball of his foot. “How long?”
“Since the last time you did it,” he groaned, head back showing off the long, vulnerable line of his throat.
He looked so good at rest, sprawled out, arm flung over his eyes, moaning as I massaged the feet he’d been on all day and all night.
“You love the ‘Desperado’ guy, huh?”
It took him a minute. “What are you talking about?”
“You know that song by the Eagles.”
“I know the song. I just don’t understand the reference.”
What did I mean? “Like a cowboy.”
He moved his arm so he could see me. “You think I only love you because you’re a bull rider?”
“I don’t know.”
He sat up but didn’t pull his foot away, his eyes on mine, staring, and I noticed again, as I always did, how dark and deep they were and the ribbon of gold in them.
“You’re so pretty.” I smiled at him.
He growled at me. “Jesus, Weber, I did not fall in love with a cowboy.”
“But you call me cowboy all the time.”
“It’s a nickname. I’ll change it. God, I had no idea you thought something so stupid.”
I arched an eyebrow for him at the same time I rubbed hard on his left foot, and he jolted in my hands.
“Weber.” He sucked in his breath. “This guy, the guy rubbing my feet, the guy I just got to come home to… that’s the guy I want. He’s the one I love. I didn’t fall in love with a cowboy or a bull rider. I fell in love with you, just you.”
I pushed his left foot away and pulled his right into my lap.
“Fuck,” he moaned and fell back as I laughed at him.
“Man, I had no idea you were such a sucker for a foot rub.”
“Only from you cow… Web.”
“It’s okay.” I sighed, moving my hand up his calf, pushing hard on the knotted muscles. “You can call me cowboy now that I know it don’t mean nothin’,”