Tree Climbing For Beginners

by Joyia Marie

  “Nope, me and one of my sisters look like my dad and my other two sisters look like my mom. Wow, your friend is Raphael. But he’s not just a hairdresser, he’s an artist according to my sister who worships the ground he doesn’t walk on.”

  “Is that a gay joke?” Helen asked with a raised brow.

  Aiden ran the comment back then laughed. “Not hardly. I have no problem with gay people as long as they know I’m not and respect that. No, I was referring to the way my sister thinks Raphael walks on water.”

  “He is pretty awesome as a hairdresser and a friend. You should let him do you sometime,” Helen said with a smile as she flicked the ends of Aiden’s hair.

  “No thank you. For the price of one of Raphael’s haircuts, I can get mine cut five times at Procuts,” Aiden said firmly.

  “Man, that is funny. That’s where I found Raphael back in the day,” Helen said. “Well, what about your sister? Seems like if you want to spend your money, you should keep it in the family.”

  “Shelia had a ‘vision’ for my hair that she won’t describe. She keeps telling me to trust her. Not a chance. I remember what she used to do with her dolls. If I want to be bald, I’ll do it myself,” Aiden said when Helen started laughing.

  “I understand, but I will say in your sister’s defense, she wouldn’t be working for Raphael if she wasn’t an artist in her own right. Just something to think about. So, anyway, what was this big confession of yours?” Helen asked brightly.

  “Confession?” Aiden asked to buy time. At the time, it seemed like a good idea, but now coming out of the art closet seemed risky. What if she wanted to see his work, which would be the next natural step? He wasn’t ready for that, not with her.

  “Okay,” he said after taking a deep breath. “I’m a painter. I paint. Okay, I paint like your grandmother. Okay, not like your grandmother, not even close, but I do paint.”

  Helen looked at him for a long moment, then smiled. “Cool.”

  Aiden waited, but Helen seemed to have said all she intended to on the subject. “Do you have any questions?” he asked finally, when she didn’t say anything else.

  “Nope,” Helen said, snuggling contentedly back in her seat.

  Aiden didn’t know what to do with that. In the past when he mentioned he painted, the questions were unrestrained. What do you paint? Have you sold anything? Can I see them? Can you paint me? Aiden shook his head in memory. All that was the reason he stopped telling women about his art.

  “Okay, why not?” he asked when again she seemed content with a one word answer. She said she was attracted to him, which usually meant interested in him, but she wasn’t acting very interested.

  Helen looked at him with a calm smile. “Aiden, I have been around creative people my whole life. My mother and my grandmother are just the tip of the iceberg. Therefore, of all people I get the creative process. I am ready to hear what you want to tell me or not. I won’t ask questions about your work, your process or anything unless I get the feeling that’s what you want. I didn’t get that feeling so I’m just happy you decided to share that with me. The rest will come in time, or it won’t. Forcing it won’t help.”

  Aiden looked at her and flashed back to eighth grade. Helen Dudley was the coolest girl he had ever met. He felt a relieved smile come on his face. This is what he wanted when he told people about his art. Calm acceptance and let him set the pace.

  “So do you want to see it?” he said shyly, aware he was giving her a final test.

  “Nope, not tonight,” Helen said smoothly

  He felt a final tension fall away. Coolest. Girl. Ever. He thought blissfully. Suddenly he wanted her to see it. He realized how contrary, that was but he didn’t care. He wanted Helen to know him on this level.

  “If I want you to see it?” he said coaxingly.

  “Aiden, this I know. I don’t know you very well or your art at all but I do know you’re not ready for me or anyone else to see it and that’s cool. Art doesn’t exist for admiration, sometimes the creation is enough. I don’t know which category you fall into but I do know you’re not ready to share your art.”

  “What makes you say that?” he asked belligerently. Just his luck the first woman he wanted to share his ‘work’ with in years and she didn’t want to see it.

  “I looked at your walls. You don’t even display your art for you to enjoy. That’s what tells me you’re not ready to show it,” Helen said, seeming to take no offense at his belligerence.

  Aiden uncrossed his arms and sat there dumbstruck. He knew exactly why he didn’t have his art on his walls. His sister used his loft as a demo of her work, she brought clients by from time to time to see it, and he wasn’t comfortable having strangers looking at his work.

  However, it was more than that, he poured a lot of himself into his art, and he wasn’t comfortable looking that deeply into himself all the time. It was easier to keep it all up in his studio where he decided when he would see it. Helen was right. If he wasn’t ready to look at his art, then he wasn’t ready to show his art.

  “Thanks for dinner,” Helen said, getting up slowly. “It was fun, but I need to get back to the motel. I need to do my own work.”

  “Oh wait, I wanted to show you what was going on in your loft,” Aiden said not wanting the evening to end.

  “Aiden, I saw what they are doing in my loft. The big plastic filled holes were a bit of a clue. Call me chicken, but it’s hard to envision how you’re going to put my loft back together. After tonight I won’t be back until you are much further along,” Helen said with a smile.

  “Oh come on, you big chicken. It’s fine and I have some ideas I need to show you,” Aiden said as he got up and pulled Helen out the door and to the door of her loft. He unlocked the door and pushed her in before she could lodge another protest.

  “Oh yes, Aiden this is much better than I imagined Helen said sarcastically, her eyes looking at the huge holes in her walls. She walked through quickly and although the rubble was gone, the place was far from pristine. She fastidiously picked her way back downstairs and back to the main level. She walked over to where her desk was set up and looked around intently.

  “Lose something?” Aiden asked curiously, unrolling his revised plans on a board across two sawhorses.

  “Not sure yet. I’m missing a jump drive and I hoped it was here,” Helen said as she carefully examined the area where her desk was.

  “Oh, I found that the other day,” Aiden said helpfully before turning to the door. “I hung it up here for you to find it,” he said in confusion as he stared at the empty nail.

  What the hell, he wondered. He knew he hung that jump drive there, but he couldn’t think of the last time he noticed it. But who would have taken it? There was workers in and out for the last three days, but he trusted his people implicitly.

  They knew that all kinds of stuff showed up during a remodel and to turn in anything they find. He had had workers turn in cash and jewelry so why would someone take a stupid jump drive. You got them as giveaways now.

  “ I don’t know what happened to it,” Aiden admitted.

  Helen’s face paled, then she rallied. “Oh, it’s no big deal. I still have a couple of places to look,” she babbled.

  “I’m sorry, I’ll ask my guys. Maybe one of them took it to the office to turn in. Was it something important?” he asked, not liking the panic he could see in Helen’s eyes.

  What could be on that jump drive? Then he remembered, she’s a writer, it’s probably her work. He cursed and wished he had stuck the jump drive in his pocket to give it to her himself.

  “It’s fine, it’s just a copy anyway,” she said calmly but her trembling hands made a liar out of her. “I had a laptop crash a couple of years ago, so I made a habit of keeping a copy of my work on an external hard drive.”

  “ I’ll try to find it for you anyway,” Aiden promised, really not liking the look on Helen’s face.

  “Like I said, it’s just a copy,” Helen sai
d ready to change the subject. “Why don’t you show me your ideas?”

  Aiden went along with her, as it was clear she didn’t want to talk about the missing jump drive anymore. He quickly ran thought his ideas, which Helen approved absently, and then she left after thanking him again for dinner. She barely waited for him to fix her a to-go box. Aiden kept a stack, then as he was always sending food home with someone.

  He was watching Helen pull out so he saw when she dropped the unconcerned mask. Her face looked worried, far more worried than a copy of her work would account for. What is on that jump drive he wondered again as he closed the door.

  Aiden quickly cleaned up the kitchen; a little disturbed his evening with Helen was over and on a sour note. He was loading the dishwasher when that blond from the other day popped into his head. The last time he could remember seeing that jump drive was before her visit, but he couldn’t swear it was gone when she left.

  He meant to mention her visit to Helen especially as she was at the soccer game with the tall skinny man. Aiden shook his head as he finished the kitchen. Yet another thing he had meant to ask her about that got lost the second he looked into her dark eyes. He would love to get a rundown of the players, especially whose kids those were.

  Helen had left with them and the other man, but the relationships wasn’t clear. The kids had the coloring of the tall skinny man who was screaming Helen’s name when she was over talking to him. He was hard pressed to envision Helen with such a non-descript man.

  Aiden felt ashamed of his uncharitable thoughts. His mother ingrained not judging a book by its cover into his brain and here he was doing that exact thing. Then he forgave himself. If that was Helen’s soon to be ex, not only was he non-descript, he was stupid. If he had a woman like Helen he’d never let her go.

  Aiden made a mental note to tell Helen about the blonde’s visit. Since she was all over the tall skinny man who might be Helen’s soon to be ex, then she might not be Helen’s friend as he assumed. He thought it was a bit strange she didn’t know Helen had vacated her loft, if she was a friend. He forgot about it after she left and he was rushing around to get to his niece’s game on time.

  After he finished the kitchen, Aiden walked around shutting off lights, his thoughts on Helen. Even after hours in her company, he still had as many questions as ever. More, in fact, he thought with a laugh.

  Aiden undressed and fell into bed for another restless night. He did get one question answered, he comforted himself with that. She likes me, he thought, ignoring his Sally Fields at the Oscars moment.

  He drifted off with a smile on his face as he remembered that kiss. The kiss that would have to hold him for at least three months. He ignored the questions still floating. Helen was as open as a book and if he played his cards right, he’d find out everything in time. Like, what was on that jump drive?

  Chapter Forty: Harold

  Harold paced his bedroom and stared at his cell phone sitting on the nightstand next to his divorce papers. He was trying to figure out whether or not to call Helen. He had promised Jillian he would talk to her to make sure she was really, really sure she wouldn’t come home. Harold thought the call was a waste of time. The woman he saw Saturday looked really, really sure.

  Harold found himself slightly surprised by Jillian’s attitude. He was also surprised just how much he was enjoying spending the night alone after his night with Jillian. His planned night of sex with Jillian was short-changed by her need to ‘talk’. He frowned, he couldn’t remember her needing to talk so much before.

  Jillian post-Helen was different from Jillian pre-Helen. Post-Helen Jillian was demanding. He had the weird feeling he was seeing the real Jillian after all these months and he wasn’t sure he liked the real Jillian. Where was the Jillian, who looked at him as if he made the sun rise? Post-Helen Jillian looked at him as if he was too stupid to come in out of the rain.

  “Harold,” she said Saturday night in that breathy voice that he used to find alluring and now found slightly grating, “it’s not that I don’t like your kids. , I like your kids. They’re part of you. It’s just I really wanted some time for just us. Helen had you to herself for two whole years before she had the twins. Is it too much to ask for the same?”

  Harold had to admit it wasn’t, but he wasn’t sure what Jillian thought he could do about it. He looked at the papers from the divorce attorney on the nightstand and Helen wasn’t asking for anything he could use as leverage to get her to take the kids. She didn’t want the house, money, or anything. He also noted she was fast tracking the divorce according to his lawyer Bret Chandler.

  “You need to hop right on this,” his lawyer advised. “Right now, she’s pissed and so she doesn’t want anything. However, give her some time and she might decide to take everything you own and she could get it since she’s filing with adultery as her reason. Even today, the courts frown on men who cheat.”

  Harold was a little disappointed in Helen for using adultery as a reason for their divorce. Okay, that might have been true, but he hadn’t expected her to drag their dirty laundry out in public. Texas was a no-fault state and she could have used the old standard of non-compatibility as he had intended to when he filed. Helen had beaten him to the punch so the fact Harold was a cheater was out there for all the world to see.

  Harold was also a little leery of taking Bret Chandler’s advice. He knew Bret was his mother’s nephew, but Bret had never impressed Harold as being the sharpest knife in the judicial drawer. He also remembered Bret had gotten his head stuck between the stair railings at the Peterson’s house on a visit one summer. Now every time he saw Bret, he saw that fat towhead wedged between two railings on his parent’s staircase.

  However, when Harold had mentioned in passing to his father that maybe he needed a divorce attorney, his father had looked at him as if he was an idiot. Harold had slunk away and made himself content with Bret’s legal services. After all, as his father said, any idiot could handle a straightforward divorce. Harold’s idiot was to be Bret Chandler.

  Harold found himself strangely reluctant to sign the divorce papers. Was he doing the right thing? Did he really want to marry Jillian? What kind of mother would she make to the twins when she didn’t want them any more than Helen did? At least Helen had a biological connection to them, but Jillian didn’t even have that.

  Harold flopped down on his bed and allowed the thought that was bugging him all day. Should he try to get back with Helen? Jillian wasn’t who he thought she was down to her hair color. If he was going to be married to a woman, he’d rather it was a woman who loved his kids. He knew Helen did, even if she had a strange way of showing it.

  He refused to consider his change of heart had anything to do with Helen’s changed looks. He wasn’t that shallow. The fact she looked like the woman he had fallen in love with all those years ago wasn’t a factor but it didn’t hurt. Why on earth had he encouraged her to grow her hair out when it was obvious she looked much better, much younger with short hair?

  Harold thought about the two women. Okay, Jillian had turned his head for a minute, but now he could turn it back. It would make the kids happy, his parents happy, and him happy. He wasn’t sure about Helen but she was happy with him before so he was hopeful.

  He also refused to consider the tall copper-skinned man, he had seen Helen talking to. He wished he knew who that was. It couldn’t be a lover, not this quick. Or could it, he wondered darkly.

  When he came back from getting the kids’ suitcase, which was sitting in his trunk just like Helen said, he wanted to march over to the pair and demand to know who that man was. However, the muscular man looked like he could pound Harold into the ground like a tent peg so Harold contented himself with screaming Helen’s name until she came back.

  Maybe the reason Helen was so ready to leave him and the kids was she was having an affair of her own. The thought made his blood boil. Here he was taking the heat for being the cheater and maybe Helen was cheating as well. With a
man who was taller, more muscular, and younger than Harold was.

  He left Jillian Sunday afternoon determined to straighten things out. He staked out the living room to catch Helen when she dropped off the kids. He went to the bathroom one time and missed her. He came back in time to see the kids walking in the front door and Helen’s car pulling away.

  He tried to call Helen on her cell to have her come back, but it went to voice mail. He asked the kids about the loft determined to go there today during lunch. It couldn’t be too far from the factory. The warehouse district was centralized. The kids or Tonya rather informed him that they didn’t go to the loft, Helen was at a motel while she had the loft redone.

  The news hit him like a fist in the gut. Until then he hoped she’d get over her snit and come home, but it sounded like she was settling in to her loft. Then when he got the divorce paper, he felt like he was punched again.

  He wondered briefly how she was paying for all this. He didn’t recall any of her books doing that well, but then again, she was living on his dime while she banked her money. He was beginning to see his father’s point about not giving the wives too much freedom.

  That thought led to the thought that maybe Helen had planned this. Maybe that’s why she kept the loft and that car. She quietly banked her money and waiting for the perfect moment to leave. This theory fell apart when he remembered he had instigated this.

  Actually Jillian instigated this. Harold hoped the engagement ring would quiet her incessant demands he leave Helen. All it seemed to do was turn up the flame of her determination. Harold went along with it because he found it flattering that a 22 year old was so enamored of him as to want to be his wife.

  Harold shook his head and looked at his phone again. He wanted to call, but wasn’t sure what he could say he hadn’t already said. He wished he had never started this. He should have just stood firm until the twins were out of school. He was mad at himself, which meant he had plenty of company since everyone else was mad at him too.