by Howe, Violet
She left, and I turned to Carmen. “I think I need a steak. And a stiff drink.”
Wednesday, September 24th
Hell may have come close to freezing over tonight.
We went out to dinner with Jeffrey.
It seems like I should write that in all caps or something. Or highlight it on the page as a monumental event.
Cabe had called him back last week after my somewhat gentle nudging. Turns out Jeffrey was going to be in town for a conference this week and wanted to meet up with Cabe. Have a conversation one-on-one, man-to-man.
Much to my surprise, Cabe agreed to go. He surprised me even further by insisting I come along.
“But he said man-to-man,” I argued. “That didn’t include me.”
“We’re a package deal,” Cabe said. “If he wants to talk to me, you’re coming with me.”
“I don’t know, babe. I don’t mind coming, and if you really want me to, of course I will. But I feel like it’s intruding. Like I’m tagging along without an invite. He might not like it.”
Cabe glanced up at me and made a sound of annoyance in his throat. “I don’t care if he likes it or not. You keep me calm. You keep me grounded. If I’m going to sit and listen to whatever this man has to say, I need you there smiling at me and reminding me how much this doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of life.”
I nodded and agreed to go.
I’m still reeling from my first sight of Jeffrey. We met him at a little place on International over by the convention center. We were walking toward the restaurant hand-in-hand, and suddenly I saw Cabe sitting at a table in front of me. It was the weirdest freakin’ sensation. He was right beside me, holding my hand and taking his long, easy strides, but there he was, sitting right in front of me.
The same chiseled jawbones. The same full lower lip and straight nose. The thin arching eyebrows above the clearest blue eyes. The muscular neck atop the broad shoulders.
His hair was different. Short. Clipped close to his head on the sides with just a bit of a wave on top. Enough of a wave to suggest that if he allowed it to grow, it would easily twist itself into the loose shaggy curls of the gorgeous man next to me. Cabe’s was lighter, the ends bleached out by his continuous exposure to surf and sun. But the base color was the same.
They could be twins.
Hell, they basically were. Born six months apart. Different moms, but obviously both inherited the stronger genes Gerry carried. Bastard. The least the universe could have done was let the boys look like their mothers. Less of a tie to the man who had created them both.
You could cut the tension at the table with a dull knife. Jeffrey stood when he saw us, and if he was surprised or displeased at seeing me there, he didn’t let on in the least.
Cabe shook his hand stiffly, and then introduced me.
“Jeffrey, this is my fiancée, Tyler. Tyler, this is Jeffrey.”
I smiled and shook his hand. They were the same height, and to stand there between the two of them was surreal. Being closer allowed me to see the subtle differences, though. Each man carried himself a little differently. Cabe’s stance a bit more relaxed, a bit laid-back even though he was tense in this situation. Jeffrey stood tall and more rigid, his shoulders pulled back and his demeanor more professional. All business.
Their voices were similar, but Jeffrey’s northern accent made it easy to distinguish between the two.
“Allow me to extend my congratulations on your upcoming marriage. Have you set a date?” Jeffrey directed the question to me as we waited for a waitress to come.
“Thank you. November 22nd.”
“Coming up soon,” he said with a smile. I couldn’t stop staring at him. It was so weird. Like alternate universe type stuff. Like I was talking to someone I knew so well yet someone I didn’t know at all.
He looked up at me and then immediately back down at the menu. He glanced up a couple more times, so I guess my staring fixation was obvious.
“I’m sorry,” I said with a nervous laugh. “The resemblance is just unbelievable. I don’t mean to stare.”
Jeffrey looked to Cabe and back at me. “I guess we do look somewhat alike.”
Cabe scoffed and gulped his water.
“You said you had some things you needed to discuss,” he said, obviously eager to get the whole thing over with and struggling to keep his irritation under control.
“Okay. Let’s get right to it. I wanted to let you know that I had no idea your sister hadn’t told you we would be there that night.”
I noticed that he said “your” sister and wondered if he considered Galen or Cabe as his siblings.
Cabe shrugged and looked away, feigning disinterest.
“I wouldn’t have done that,” Jeffrey said. “It’s disrespectful, and I have no desire to disrespect you in any way.”
“Not your fault,” Cabe said with a cold glance at Jeffrey. “That was on Galen.”
“It was disappointing, though, because I’d wanted to meet you for so long. A lifetime it seems.”
“Meet me? Why?” I could feel Cabe’s body tense as he asked, and I knew he was wary of engaging in the conversation.
“The phantom brother. I learned about you when I was ten. Gerry and my mom were arguing one night when they thought I was in bed. He’d just come back from another one of his trips, and she was giving him hell for missing Julie’s recital. My Little League games. The day-to-day stuff. She asked if he’d been with his other family. With his other children. I didn’t know what she meant, but it certainly piqued my interest.”
The waitress came and took our orders, an inopportune interruption. I wanted to tell her to go away and come back later, but Jeffrey easily transitioned from the bitter recollections of youth to ordering a pork tenderloin and polenta without so much as blinking an eye. He struck me as a man accustomed to hiding his emotions. A far cry from my passionate, outspoken, full-feeling fiancé.
He picked right back up as soon as she walked away.
“There’s another one. Another family. Not sure if you knew that. I didn’t, and neither did my mother until Julie tracked them down. She’s been quite the sleuth since Galen first contacted her. The two of them can’t seem to talk of anything else.”
Cabe sat silent, but I had to speak. “Wait, what? Another family? You mean, like, your dad left your mom and married someone else?”
“Oh no. That’s not his style. Gerry’s still married to my mother. But Cabe and I have two more sisters who live in Phoenix.”
“They’re not my sisters,” Cabe said in a voice that made it clear to me he was close to losing his calm facade.
I grabbed his leg under the table, leaving my hand on his thigh as a physical symbol of support and solidarity.
Jeffrey raised his eyebrows at Cabe’s remark but then directed his attention back to me. “They’re both still in high school. One seventeen, one fifteen.”
I nodded and tried to wrap my head around a man who would father three different sets of children, all while married to the same woman. Which then led me to try and wrap my head around why on earth Jeffrey’s mother was still married to him. But I didn’t think it appropriate to ask.
“I couldn’t forget what I’d heard that night. It lived in my brain like a worm. Every time he left again, I pictured him with the other family. Everything he missed in my life, every time he let me down, I imagined he was with you. The other son. The one he loved and wanted to be with.”
Cabe snarled a scoffing groan and tossed back what was left of his beer as the waitress served our food and refilled our drinks. Jeffrey waited until she was gone to continue.
“I guess I was wrong, huh? Galen said Gerry left you guys before she was even born and she never saw him again until she was sixteen. So I don’t know where he was, but he wasn’t with me, and he wasn’t with you.”
I watched Cabe’s reaction to the new perspective. I thought it was pretty mind-blowing. I mean, here Cabe had thought his whole life that Jeffrey had a full-time fully-
engaged dad—the dad he didn’t get—and at the same time, Jeffrey spent his whole life with the same resentment directed at Cabe.
Cabe didn’t react, though. Not outwardly. He maintained a cool gaze at Jeffrey, but he didn’t say a word in response. He hadn’t touched his food, which was a dead giveaway to me of how upset he was, but to anyone who didn’t know him—like Jeffrey—they’d probably never know how dangerously close he was to standing up and walking away altogether.
Jeffrey rubbed his hand across the back of his neck.
“So look. I get it, man. I really do. Probably more than you realize. I understand you don’t want anything to do with Gerry, and I understand you wanting to pretend we don’t exist. I tried the same thing for years. I spent my whole life hating you. Resenting you. Blaming you. But here’s what I realized when your sister called my sister and dropped the bomb on her. Our anger is displaced. We’re directing it at the wrong person when we focus it on each other. We both got screwed over by the same asshole. Who just happened to create us both.”
Jeffrey cleared his throat, and I could tell it wasn’t as easy for him to speak as he made it appear. My heart went out to him, this man who looked so much like the love of my life and carried so much of the same heartache. I squeezed Cabe’s thigh again and willed him to say something. Anything. But he just sat and looked beyond Jeffrey at the building in the distance.
“If you want me to walk away and never contact you again, I’ll honor that request and respect your wishes. But I believe we have more in common than just our good looks.” Jeffrey smiled as he said it, but Cabe didn’t react to the humor. “I think we’ve both spent too much time and too much energy on Gerry Tucker and his failure as father. If we keep hating each other, it does nothing but perpetuate that negativity.” He spread his hands as if to show he had nothing to hide. “I haven’t done anything to you, and you haven’t done anything to me. We have no reason for bad blood between us. We had no choice in our DNA, and we had no choice with how our childhood played out. But we can choose the men we want to be, and we can choose our future.”
Cabe swallowed hard and I wondered if Jeffrey heard it from across the table.
“What does that mean? What do you want?” Cabe asked. I detected emotion in his voice, but he looked calm as could be on the surface.
Jeffrey shrugged and tilted his head to the side, so eerily similar to Cabe that I found myself staring again. “I’d like to get to know you. I feel like you’ve been in my life for years, but I have no idea who you are. What you’re like. I guess I’m asking if we could be…friends? I don’t know. I’m not sure how this works under these circumstances, but I’m willing to try if you are.”
“What, like hang out and shit?”
Jeffrey chuckled, the tone of it deeper than Cabe’s. Harder.
“Let’s start with some conversations and go from there. Take it as it comes. No sense forcing anything.”
Cabe nodded and turned to me, his eyes questioning. I slid my hand inside his and smiled, hoping it was the response he needed.
We finished our meal in stilted conversation. Sometimes it came easily, but then a topic would be raised or a question would be asked that would spark the tension simmering underneath the surface. It would take them a few minutes to recover and talk freely again. I’d try to fill in the blanks with neutrality in those moments, and by the time we’d finished dessert and stood to go, I think the two of them had forged enough to begin.
Jeffrey extended his hand to Cabe for a goodbye, and Cabe shocked us both by taking his brother’s hand and pulling him in for an awkward, stiff, guy hug. The one where they’re shaking hands in the middle but clap backs as they lean toward each other at a safe distance.
On impulse, I stood on tiptoes and hugged Jeffrey goodbye. His resemblance to Cabe and his shared heartbreak tugged at my emotions and I felt a connection to him. He hugged me back and gave me a grateful smile.
Cabe was silent on the way home, and I let him be. Both of us were processing all that happened. All that had been said.
We walked Deacon in silence and didn’t talk as we got ready for bed. But once the lights were out and I lay intertwined in his arms and legs, he spoke.
“Thanks for coming tonight. It meant a lot to me having you there.”
“Sure, baby. I’ll always be there for you when you need me.” I kissed his chest beneath me and snuggled in closer. “How you doing with all this?”
“Pretty much feeling like my whole life was a lie and nothing is what I thought it was.”
I raised up and propped my chin on his chest, searching his eyes in the dim light.
“That’s not true. Your mom. Galen. Your grandparents. Your life is exactly as it was before tonight. You just have more information and a new perspective.”
“I hated him, Ty. Hated him. This invisible kid I never knew. I don’t want to like him. I don’t want to be friends with him. Hang out with him or discuss our common pasts. But at the same time, he’s right. He’s done nothing to me. He’s not the one I should be angry with.”
I laid my head back on his chest and fought the shivers he was causing with his fingers lightly tracing circles on my back. “Just take it as it comes, Cabe. Don’t rush it. You don’t have to be best friends or talk to him every day, but it could probably help you both put the past behind you to get to know each other and dispel the image you’ve carried in your heads.”
“How ‘bout Gerry having a third family?” Cabe yawned deeply, his chest expanding beneath me as his mouth opened wide and dug his chin into my head. “How crazy is that? I wonder if that’s it. If there’s only the six of us. What if there’s more?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Gerry doesn’t even know. But if anything, this just reaffirms my opinion that you’re better off without him in your life.”
Cabe kissed the top of my head and stopped talking, his breathing steadily becoming deeper. I had more questions I wanted to ask him, but they could wait.
Monday, September 29th
It rained all weekend, which never makes for easy weddings or happy brides. Never have I ever met a bride who woke up and said, “It’s pouring out? Awesome. That’s exactly what I wanted for my wedding day.”
The rain is not only inconvenient, but it adds an extra layer of tension to the goal of making everyone happy. The negative energy emanating from every single guest and family member is contagious, and it puts us on edge for the whole weekend. Especially since there’s not a damned thing we can do about the rain.
I woke up this morning stopped up and sneezing with a sore throat, the result of spending all weekend in and out of rain and air conditioning, combined with being stressed out over multiple weddings, including my own.
After a quick stop by the pharmacy to buy cold meds, I dragged my tired ass into the office, but I had zero motivation to talk to any clients or crunch any budget numbers. So Mel and I sat side by side and searched the internet for bridesmaid dresses and emailed my sisters pics of the ones we liked. I told them to find dresses they were happy with and could afford and as long as they were the same aubergine shade, the styles didn’t matter. I didn’t care for the matchy-matchy dresses, and I knew it would be simpler for each of them to choose an acceptable price point and buy their own.
Carrie responded back with a pic she’d found of a winter wedding with white faux fur stoles, and she said she’d look into purchasing the material and seeing what she could make with it. Tanya called this afternoon to tell me she was emailing a picture of the dress she found, and we talked about what color to do for Erin and putting Eric in a gray suit to match Cabe and the boys. Which she evidently passed on to Mama, who called me tonight all in a tizzy just as we were finishing dinner.
“Brad says the men are wearing gray suits. I thought this was an evening wedding.”
“It is.”
“Then they need to wear black.”
I’d expected this conversation, just not so soon.
“They don’t
have to wear black, Mama. We’re not having a formal wedding.”
“Well, I beg your pardon. I thought it was a formal wedding. What are we having? A picnic?”
Cabe reached across the table and took my hand. We’d talked about me staying calm the next time she called. Not letting her get to me. Perhaps the dose of cold medicine I’d just taken would help.
“Mom, it’s not formal. You might say semi-formal, but not formal.”
“I’m not expecting them to sport tuxes, but they need to wear black. It’s an evening wedding.”
I moved from the table to the couch as Cabe cleared the dishes. “It’s a dark gray suit. It’s perfectly acceptable.”
“I’ve never heard of such. They need to wear black.”
“Well, they’re not. They’re wearing gray.”
“Hmmph. Alright then. Sharon at the church said Tanya called asking about linens. I could have told you what linens they had.”
“You’re already doing a lot. Tanya asked how she could help so I told her to call.”
“We’ve got those yellow linens.”
“I don’t want the stupid yellow linens, Mother.”
“You better bite your own tongue, because you’re about to bite off more than you chew, missy. I’ll drive to Orlando tonight if I need to. Don’t get too big for your britches.”
I laid back on the couch and put a pillow over my eyes. “I’m sorry, Mama. I’m coming down with something. I don’t feel good.”
“Are you running a fever? Have you taken anything?”
“I haven’t taken my temperature but I’ve been drinking cold medicine all day.”
“Vick’s. You need Vick’s Vapor Rub. Smear it all over your chest and under your lip, and then smear it on your feet. You remember me doing this when you were a kid, don’t ya? You’ll feel better in the morning. You got Vick’s?”
“No. I’ll see if Cabe can get me some.” He looked up and raised his eyebrows in question. “Vick’s Vapor Rub.” He nodded and gave me a thumbs up.