Double Trouble

by Deborah Cooke

  Go figure.

  James and Johnny were bent over a bunch of newspaper spread on the counter, the spring sunlight touching both of their heads. Jimmy kept on going to another room and slammed the door behind himself. The others didn’t even look up.

  James and Johnny were wearing jeans and T-shirts, their hair was rumpled and they were both wearing sneakers. James was explaining something to his younger son with a patience my father had never shown, though I couldn’t hear the words, and Johnny nodded periodically. He was more fair than James, his hair tending more towards Marcia’s golden brown than James’ auburn.

  And yes, I wondered for a moment what that long lost baby might have looked like, what color its hair would have been, if it had lived. I try to leave the past behind, but every once in a while, it sneaks up and jumps me from behind.

  They were so utterly engrossed that they didn’t hear me come in, so I had a moment to compose myself. They even ignored Jimmy’s stormy return, which told me a lot about that kid’s recent moods. When James moved, I saw the metal parts all over the newspaper and the blackness of their hands.

  Auto repair. Isn’t that what kitchens were made for? The top of the Dutch door to the yard was open, a waft of something very nasty carrying into the house. Both James and Johnny had grease-covered hands and - like big dogs - were clearly in their element with the muck. I could smell bacon fat.

  I spied the frying pan on the stove and smiled. What’s morning without bacon and eggs?

  “Nobody drop a match,” I declared, pausing in the doorway to survey the very masculine detritus of their lives. “There’s enough testosterone in this place that the whole city will blow.”

  They both jumped in a most satisfactory way, but I was already prowling the room. I felt James watch me and I knew he was smiling that slow smile that made me tingle. I peered at the congealed bacon fat, then touched an empty pizza box with my boot toe.

  “Remind me never to eat in this bistro. You must have roaches the size of my fist.”

  When I dared to look, the back of James’ neck was turning red. “We’re just barely domesticated,” he drawled. “But we’re working on it. Want to offer some tutorials?”

  “Not my style. Sink or swim is what I say. Survival of the fittest and all that.”

  “We’re fixing the motorcycle, Auntie Maralys!” Johnny informed me, looking a lot happier than he had when I saw him last. He was as yet immune to the very adult zing of sexual awareness. “We’re cleaning the carburetor like usual, but the engine is running rough, so Dad said we should figure out why.”

  He held up some grimy bit for my perusal. “Look! One of the pistons is cracked. See? Right there. I saw it first. That’s the problem and we’re fixing it.”

  I moseyed closer, pretending I could make sense of all the nasty little metal bits arrayed on the counter. “Ah, a male bonding moment. Just like a Hallmark card, but dirtier.”

  “There’s not much for it if you want to fix the engine.” James nudged Johnny. “And we’re having fun, right?”

  “Yeah!”

  “You know what we need? Remember that crescent wrench that we left in the garage? I think it would be really good for putting this part back together.”

  “I’ll get it, Dad.” And Johnny was gone, scampering out the door in his haste to help.

  I watched him go, knowing that James was watching me. I had a big stupid lump in my throat, who knew why, and I wasn’t ready to look straight at him yet. I had the funny sense that he’d know what I was thinking and I didn’t want to explore that again. “He looks happier.”

  “Yeah. We’ve been spending some time together.” James shook his head. “I didn’t realize fully what I was missing. It’s good for both of us.”

  “Does he still worry about Marcia?”

  James nodded once. “But she’s started phoning the boys.”

  “Change of heart?”

  He almost smiled. “You could say that.”

  “What did you do?”

  “When she called at your place, I told her that she’d better do some serious thinking. Reminded her that no judge would believe she was much of a concerned mother if she couldn’t even phone her kids and that that would have a serious impact on her ability to secure visitation rights. She phoned them the next night.” He sighed. “Their relief was enormous. It’s easy to forget what active imaginations they have.”

  “I thought you were ready to cut her out completely.”

  “I was.” He looked up at me. “But the truth is that she’s their mother and they have a right to see her and to know her. It’s for their good to have time with both parents, regardless of my feelings on the matter.”

  “Losing your edge?”

  He shot a glance at me. “Trying my damnedest. The man I thought was my father sees everything in black and white, right and wrong. I’m trying to not be so hard on my kids as he was on all of us.”

  “Most of you seem to have turned out all right.”

  “Because we were terrified to defy him. Except Zach, of course. But I think that kind of harsh thinking has affected our relationships. It forces us to make harder choices. I’d like for the boys to not grow up with that burden.”

  “Well, I’ve got to give you credit for trying.” I admired him. And I respected that he put his kids before himself. I stood beside James and inhaled deeply. He smelled of sun and wind and that cologne. My toes were tingling. “You did some serious downscaling here.”

  He nodded, untroubled. “We each picked one thing to keep and sold as much of the rest as possible.”

  “And went for the handyman’s special.”

  He grinned, and looked surprisingly boyish especially after his solemnity. “The price was right. Not much else was right, but the price. Oh, and the location. We’re car-free but it’s close to transit.”

  “It seems big.”

  “But it had been empty for a year and the owners were getting a bit desperate to have something out of it before it rotted into the ground. The raccoons weren’t impressed that they had to move out.”

  “Are you good at fixing house stuff?”

  “Not that I know of, but there’s lots of time to learn.”

  “Oh the confidence of the uninitiated,” I teased and we both grinned. “How’d the math work out?”

  “Not as bad as I feared.” He grimaced. “A job would be a timely addition to the mix, though.”

  “You’re looking.”

  “Of course. Working all those old connections. Something will come up in time.”

  “I thought unemployed people were supposed to have a crisis of confidence.”

  James looked up and smiled, his gaze sweeping over me in open appreciation. “I’m good at what I do, Maralys. Everything else may have gone to hell, but that’s the one constant. And really, a lot of other things seem to be falling into place. I feel good about where I am now and where we’re going.” He flicked a glance at the closed door where Jimmy had retreated. “Mostly.”

  That wasn’t my problem so I steered clear of childraising issues. I gestured to the disassembled engine. “Did you do stuff like this with your dad when you were a kid?”

  He laughed. “That’s a joke, right?”

  “No, actually it wasn’t.”

  James sobered immediately and his gaze flicked to mine. “No, I never did. My father didn’t play with children, roughhouse or help with homework. He had more important things to do with his time.”

  I could tell by how crisply he said the words that he was repeating a refusal he had heard over and over again. “He’s not your dad,” I said quietly because I felt he needed the reminder.

  “Technically.”

  “What about your real father?”

  James looked surprised. “I don’t even know who he was.”

  “I’ll bet your mother does.”

  He shrugged, clearly not interested in pursuing this. “Maybe.”

  I though was intrigued. “Why don’t you as
k her whether he was the kind of man who would teach his son to do something?”

  “I wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings by dredging it up again.”

  “News flash, James - it’s already been dredged up. If I might prompt your memory, that was how you got in this mess. Your mom might even want to talk about it. All anyone’s getting to hear is Robert Coxwell’s side of the story.”

  “Why would I be interested in hunting down a man who didn’t care that I was his son?”

  “Maybe he didn’t know.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t matter.”

  “Maybe it does. Maybe you’ll find that you had something in common with him, something that you don’t have in common with the man who raised you. It’s environment and genetics that determine the outcome, you know. Maybe you’ll find a guy who has a different style of parenting, so you have some other models to use.”

  James considered me for a long moment and the air started to sizzle between us. Then he smiled and shook his head, carefully nesting one engine piece back into another. “And you wonder why I miss you when you’re not around. You’re the broom that sweeps clean, Maralys. You go after all the preconceptions, shake them up and make me look at them again.”

  “Nobody ever thought that was a good thing before.”

  “I think it’s a gift. You’re a creative thinker and you don’t accept that anything is the way it is, just because somebody told you as much. I like that, Maralys.” He leaned closer and my breath caught. “I like you, Maralys.”

  He bent quickly and brushed his lips over mine, once, twice. He pulled back only slightly, his gaze searching mine. “I’ve missed you,” he whispered. “Welcome back.”

  I might have leaned into the next kiss, but James’ parental instincts were on partial alert. He stepped away and turned to the door.

  There was Johnny, one hand on the knob, his expression uncertain. “Dad? Is this it?”

  “It is. Thanks.”

  “Maybe I should go,” I said, but James put his hand on my elbow. It was a proprietary gesture, very masculine, and neither Johnny nor I missed its implication.

  “No, it’s time we had this out in the open.” He smiled and his son relaxed. Johnny came closer to give James the wrench, though he still looked confused. “Thank you. Maybe you could get Jimmy and we’ll have a talk.”

  Johnny nodded and skipped toward the other door. He raised his hand to grab the knob, then James called a warning. The boy looked back and James wiggled his greasy fingers, making a face that a month ago I would have thought him incapable of making.

  Johnny laughed and knocked with his elbow. “Hey, dope, come out. Dad wants to talk to us.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Yes!” James shouted.

  Jimmy came out, his expression mutinous and plopped down at the table. Clearly he had a thousand better things to do. Johnny washed his hands, then slid into a chair, his expression open and curious. James wiped his own hands dry with care, his brow furrowed as he thought. He was probably constructing his argument. Then he sat down opposite me, braced his elbows on the table and tented his fingers together.

  It really is all in the way you present the information. I listened and I learned. I certainly wasn’t going to say anything because there were a lot of ugly little bits to this story and the truth might not be entirely welcome just yet.

  “It’s time we talked about your mom leaving,” James said, his tone temperate. He met one boy’s gaze, then the other’s. “I didn’t do it sooner because I didn’t know what was going to happen. I thought she might change her mind.”

  “Is she coming back?” Johnny was anxious.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Or at least, I don’t think she’s coming back soon. She didn’t say anything about it when she called you guys, did she?”

  Johnny shook his head and looked crestfallen. Jimmy’s expression hardened.

  “So we need to think about Mom not coming back her to live, even if she comes back to Boston.”

  “Is that what’s going to happen?”

  “We’re on our own, guys. What I want you two to understand is that this had nothing to do with you. You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t make Mom so mad that she left.”

  “Did you?” Jimmy asked, accusation in his tone.

  “In a way, but I didn’t do it on purpose.” James glanced at me, silently asking me to bless his version of events. I nodded. He knew the kids better than I did and knew how better to present the sordid facts.

  “A long time ago, I met your mom,” James said, conveniently leaving out the twin thing. “And I really liked her and she seemed to really like me, and we went out more and more, until one day we decided to get married.”

  “And you did.”

  “Yes, we did.” James drew a circle on the table with his fingertip. “But you know, we were pretty young when we got married and I wonder now whether we even knew what we wanted, how we wanted to live, where we wanted to go. We were still figuring out exactly who we were, still becoming who we were going to be. I wonder sometimes whether we got married because we thought that was what we were supposed to do next.

  “I finished school and passed the bar and went to work for your grandfather. I worked a lot because I wanted to succeed. My father always worked a lot, so that was the way I thought it was supposed to be. We didn’t notice it right away, mostly because I worked so much, but your mother and I were changing and growing apart. We had some fights about things, different expectations mostly, but we both thought that married people fought sometimes and didn’t think too much of it.”

  “Then you guys came along,” he smiled at each of them. “And there wasn’t a lot of time to do any thinking about anything other than diapers and toys that could be swallowed and ear infections and ten thousand other things that new parents face on very little sleep.”

  You could have heard the cockroaches breathe in there.

  James cleared his throat. “After you guys were in school and things settled down at home, or so I thought, my job got harder. Your grandfather became a judge, so he left active practice and I had lots of cases to pick up. I worked even more, but we had more money and I thought your mom was happy. Clearly, I was wrong.”

  He frowned and paused for a moment. “I guess the biggest mistake we made was not talking enough, but we had both come from homes where people didn’t talk a lot. Our parents just kept their mouths shut and kept on going, whether they were happy or not. I want to try and change that in this house. Kind of make a new beginning here.”

  He gave them each a hard look. “I want you both to talk to me about things, even when it doesn’t seem as if there’s time. Okay?”

  They both nodded, though Jimmy was a lot slower.

  “I know it’s hard right now and there have been a lot of changes in our lives. But I want you to try to respect your mother’s decision to make her life be the way she wanted it to be. It can’t have been easy for her to leave, especially to leave you guys, but she made a hard choice. She’s probably hoping that making a sacrifice like this will give her the chance to really be happy, and that’s a pretty noble thing.”

  I thought it was pretty noble of him to give my selfish sister so much credit, but I knew what he was doing. Like it or lump it, she was the boys’ mom and they’d be seeing her again. I appreciated that James was taking the high road in an effort to minimize the emotional scarring on his sons’ lives. It wasn’t an easy choice and I hoped like hell that it worked.

  “Wasn’t she happy with us?”

  “She wasn’t happy with me, Johnny.” James squeezed his son’s hand. “I’m partly to blame for that. I’m trying to do better at talking about things and having more time at home and letting people know what I think and feel. It’s a big change for all of us, but I hope you two know how much I love you both.”

  “What about Auntie Maralys?” Johnny asked.

  “Well, your aunt and I had a big fight years ago and we were really
mad at each other for a long time. But I don’t think that we’re mad at each other any more.” James looked at me and I shook my head. He held my gaze. “I like your Auntie Maralys, and now that we’re not fighting, I think she’s decided that she likes me. She might be around a bit more than before.”

  That was about as much commitment as I could take without leaping in to correct him, and it did give me a little glow of pleasure that James understood me that well. Maybe he did get it that Marcia and I were different - she’s always been a fan of guarantees until Doomsday, everything in triplicate, signed sealed and delivered. I like my options open.

  The boys looked between the two of us and I wished like heck that I could have kept from blushing.

  “Do you wish you hadn’t married Mom?” Jimmy asked.

  James thought about it for a minute. “No, no I don’t. If I hadn’t married your mom and lived with her for those years, I wouldn’t have learned the things I had from her. I wouldn’t be the person that I am today and I certainly wouldn’t have had the successes I’ve had without her help. I don’t regret it, not just because I can’t change it, but because it’s part of who I am.”

  James studied his sons. “And if I hadn’t married your mom, then you two wouldn’t be here.” He leaned on his elbows and his voice turned hoarse, his gaze suspiciously bright as he looked at his kids. “And that’s something I can’t even imagine. I think maybe that everything that happened between your mom and I was just so you two could come into the world. Into my world.”

  Awwwwww, time for a big family hug. Wipe away that tear. We’re all reconciled around the kitchen table, just like nature intended.

  Or maybe not.

  * * *

  Subject: argh!

  Dear Aunt Mary -

  My friend has all the best stuff and she’s so lucky! She’s got a great guy and a fab apartment and makes gobs of $ at her kewl job. Even tho I love her to bits, I’m starting to hate her too.

  :-(

  Should I dump her?

  Green-eyed Girl

  –-