by David Hicks
She’s staring at me now, and I’m looking at the road. I try to see myself the way she must see me, as a man who has never fully committed, a man who is acting like his ex-girlfriend, thinking that being a couple means two strong independent selves co-inhabiting the world one of them has created.
Then I try to see myself the way my kids see me now: as a Treat Dad.
The way my favorite professor, my second father, probably sees me, as a young man who abandoned him when he needed me most.
The way a big-eyed woman I dated briefly sees me, as a guy who was afraid of realismo mágico.
The way my old friend Peter sees me, as a great guy who made terrible decisions.
The way my ex-girlfriend Casey sees me, as someone who couldn’t match her strength with his own, and therefore blamed her for his own decisions.
The way Sydney and Amita see me, as someone who didn’t have the balls to pursue them out of respect for their boyfriends.
The way my mother and sister see me, as a misguided romantic.
None of them has seen me the way I see myself, as a nice man who tries his best to make everyone happy and is constantly put upon and taken for granted.
When I do this, when I pull back my vision as if I’m in center field, watching the entire game take place before my eyes, I see a man who still can’t hit the curveball. A man who still hasn’t truly loved. A man who constantly feels sorry for himself and blames others for his misfortunes. A man who has screwed up every relationship he’s had because he’s been afraid to engage, to invest, to expose himself, to admit to his flaws, doubts, and mistakes and embrace the other person’s shortcomings and idiosyncrasies. A man who does mean petty things to the people he loves, in mean petty ways—subtly, not openly.
The worst kind of warfare.
It’s not very attractive, let me tell you.
But seeing myself like this—it’s a start.
I reach out for Louise’s hand, and I’m terrified she won’t take it. But she does, and then she puts her other hand on top of mine. She’s right: you don’t create a picture and wait for someone to step into it. You create a new picture together. And then—look—as soon as you decide to do that, you’re already creating it; you’re already in it.
*
When we get to Binghamton, we exit the highway, make the two left turns, turn right onto the road parallel to the Susquehanna (there’s a more direct route, but seeing the river relaxes me, and I want to show it to Louise), then make another right, drive about a mile (past two houses, a cornfield, and a vineyard), and pull into Rachel’s driveway.
I put the car in park and stare out the windshield. Typically, when I pick up the kids, I don’t see Rachel. Typically, I leave her a voicemail to tell her when I’ll be arriving, and she has the kids waiting on the porch, bags packed. They may be a little embarrassed, or cold, but they don’t care, as long as they get to come to Daddy’s House in the Woods.
But this time, there’s a crowd out there: Rachel, her parents, her boyfriend Sam, her brother, and the kids. All sitting out on the porch.
Louise stiffens. I practically guaranteed her she wouldn’t have to see Rachel.
“I’ll just wait in the car,” she says.
But Rachel comes out to the driveway to greet us, so Louise exits the car, stands straight, and puts out her hand. Only Rachel keeps coming. She marches right up to Louise and plants a kiss on her cheek, pats her shoulders. “Good to finally meet you,” she says. “The kids say such nice things. That cake was delicious!”
Then she turns to me. “Hey there, Hawk.” She gives me a quick hug.
On the porch, Janey grins. Nathan widens his eyes.
I put my arm around Louise as we follow Rachel to the porch. “What’d you put in that cake?” I say.
I kiss the kids, introduce Louise to everyone, peck Rachel’s mom on the cheek, hug her dad (and realize how much I miss him), and half-hug her brother, which triggers some awkward laughter. I shake hands with Sam, and we smile like we’re in some kind of secret club. I mean, we practically wink. He’s divorced too, with two grown kids, and according to Nathan, he’s been telling Rachel to stop harassing me when I have them for the weekend, to let the children enjoy their time with their father. I like Sam. Sam’s been a good addition to the family.
I grab the kids’ bags and gesture for them to get in the car, but Rachel says, “Oh wait,” and rushes inside. She comes out with a Tupperware container of chocolate-chip cookies and hands them to Louise. “Here,” she says. “Jane and I made them together. You better take them with you or else I’ll eat ’em all and get fat.” She laughs, and everyone else laughs too.
I don’t trust it, of course. It’s all a show, some kind of weird competition. But I’m going with it. I thank Rachel for the cookies and tell the kids to kiss their mother goodbye.
On our way back, everyone is quiet for a while, but then Nathan suggests we play the Animal Guessing Game. We go a few rounds, all of us winning at least once except for Louise. Then in the last round, with Nathan in charge, after nineteen questions, Louise has the last guess—“Is it a fox?”—and Nathan shouts out that she’s right, she’s the winner, even though she can’t be: foxes aren’t bigger than hound dogs, which was one of the first clues. I look back at Nathan and he grins wickedly. Then he leans forward, taps Louise’s arm, and hands her a watermelon-flavored Jolly Rancher.
Janey is looking out the window, the warm breeze blowing back her hair.
“You guys want to go for a swim when we get home?” I ask.
“Yes!” Nathan says, but Janey shakes her head.
“We shouldn’t,” she says. “We’ll disturb the ducks.”
“No we won’t, they like it!” Nathan says. He taps me on the shoulder. “Are you coming?”
“Absolutely,” I say. “In fact, let’s all get naked and jump in the creek.”
“Ew,” Janey says.
“Are you coming too, Louise?” Nathan asks. He’s half-talking, half-screaming.
Louise smirks, then tucks her head between the window and the seat and looks back at Janey. “Janey, dear,” she says, “while these two heathens are flapping around like goons in the cold water, why don’t we go to the art center and make a picture poem for your father?”
The art center is the garage, and a “picture poem” is one of Janey’s favorite things to make. They get out the paint set Louise bought for her, find a piece of scrap wood, paint it, and then, when the paint is dry, paste a piece of colored paper with one of Janey’s original poems on it. The ones she’s made so far are hanging in the Contemplation of Life Room.
“I’ll make you both a picture poem,” Janey says.
“You mean each,” I say, “or both?”
“Both,” she says. “One for you and one for her.”
“Then each,” I say.
“No, both. But none for Nathan,” she says.
“Oh, like I care,” Nathan says. “Like I’m devastated. Like I’m dying to have one of your stupid picture poems.”
“Nathan,” Louise says, before I can open my mouth. “Your sister’s picture poems are gorgeous.”
“Yeah,” Janey says. “Gorgeous.”
“Maybe we can think of a goofy one to make for your brother,” Louise tells her.
Nathan sticks his tongue out to Janey, and Janey sticks hers out to him. Then she leans up and whispers to Louise. “With monkeys,” she says.
We drive in silence after that. I keep checking to make sure Nathan isn’t hitting Janey. He has this move where he swipes his fist sideways on the seat, thinking I can’t see it—but I always hear Janey cry, “Ow!”
“Hey Dad,” Janey says out of nowhere, “why don’t we ever go to Grandma’s?”
I look out at the trees, thinking of my mother’s house in White Plains. “I don’t know,” I say. But I do know. Thus f
ar, I have not been able to add my mother into the very full bucket I’ve been carrying around. The bucket would be too heavy and I’d have to set it down. But to Janey and Nathan, my mother is not a weight. Not a chain-smoking grouch. Not an embittered woman who can’t believe I ditched my career as a professor to become “a common gardener.” My children’s grandma, as they know her, is light as a feather. She’s the person who gives them candy and takes them to the Olive Garden for mozzarella sticks. She’s the person who calls them beautiful and precious, her little angels. She’s the person who gives them a ridiculous amount of presents at Christmas, as if trying to make up for holidays lost.
“I’ll give her a call,” I say.
“And Auntie Anna Banana too,” Nathan says.
“And Marianna and Robbie,” says Janey.
“Okay,” I say, shooting Louise a glance. “Okay. How about next weekend?” And they smile and nod. Louise looks at me as if she’s seeing a different person in the driver’s seat, one that she might come to respect.
I look out at the road, at a lake we are passing, at the swans floating in the middle, and I picture my mother as she was before my father died: pretty, with blonde hair and cheekbones. She is at my bedside, I am sick with something, and she is rubbing my chest with Vic’s Vaporub. She smells vaguely of cigarette smoke and the perfume she wore the night before, when she went out to dinner with my father. This is the only time I ever feel her hands on me, when I’m sick. I close my eyes, feeling her palm on my chest, listening to her humming an old song.
“Dad, do Grandpa’s whistle,” Nathan says. I look at him in the rearview mirror and I try to whistle, the two chirps, but my throat closes up and it doesn’t come out. And then I’m lost.
I will always wonder why he didn’t come to my game that day. I will always assume he was disappointed in the way I swung a bat. I will always wish I had fought through his defenses and hugged him as fiercely as I wanted to. I will always wish he could have seen my beautiful children, that he could sit on the couch between them and watch an old Western with them, or take a ride with all of us, right now, to get some fresh ice cream at Manning’s dairy farm. I will always want to see his soft green eyes one last time. But all that, it just binds me up into knots. I can’t keep doing it.
“Dad, do the whistle!” Nathan says, but Louise shoots him a look and he slumps back. She puts her hand on my cheek and swipes a tear with her thumb.
I blow out a big breath and smile when Janey, who constantly stares out the window, sees the “Welcome to Pennsylvania” sign and shouts it out; she gets a grape Jolly Rancher, which she holds up like an Olympic medal. And when we make the turn at Nicholson and the kids catch sight of the concrete bridge, they both cry out, “I see the bridge! I see the bridge!” But this time they turn it into a manic song, to the same tune as the song from the annoying movie we watched at Judy Lee’s:
I see the bridge, I see the bridge, I see the Pennsylvania Bridge,
I see it here, I see it there, I see the bridge, it’s everywhere!
I turn onto Tom’s Lane, keeping an eye out for turkey and deer, as they sing it over and over in their leprechaun voices, knowing I hate it, cracking each other up. Louise even joins in for a chorus, just to mess with me. And I imagine my father watching us somehow.
I scowl at their singing and aim at the ruts in the dirt road hard, to bounce them up off their seats, and they all shriek with each bump and tell me to stop.
But I’m only pretending to be annoyed. I’ve never heard a more beautiful song in my life.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Diamond Dash,” the first chapter of this book, was accepted (in essay form) by Stephanie G’Schwind at Colorado Review way back in 2003—my first-ever publication. Since then I’ve published many more stories, some of which appear as chapters of this book, and I’ve received a great deal of help from my friends along the way.
My dear wife, best friend, and finest editor, Cynthia Kolanowski, has read each chapter more than once, and more than once has provided astute commentary that has improved the book. Without her help, it would still be a book, but not an especially good book; and without her love I would still be a man, but not an especially good man.
Other readers are so numerous that I’m afraid to name them here for fear of leaving out one or two, especially since fifteen years have passed since I started this book. But since the members of my Boulder writing group edited most of these stories, I’d like to single out Arsen Kashkashian, Colin Tracy, Norah Charles, and Jody Reale for their advice and friendship. Jim Seitz, Sydney Argenta, Dan Vaccaro, Kate Jordan, Steve Edwards, Marcelle Heath, Charles D’Ambrosio, Alyssa Finer, Shara Johnson, Yu Yang, Dawn Dennison, Laura MacAlister Brown, Michael Karson, Beth Davis, and Katy Craig provided suggestions for individual stories; the Jentel Arts Foundation and Brush Creek Arts Foundation, both in Wyoming, provided peaceful and beautiful environments in which to compose, revise, and organize them; and Paul Matthew Carr of Webworkz Digital Strategies provided a beautiful website (david-hicks.com) on which I could feature them.
And where would I be without my writing buddies? My love and gratitude go out to Jacqueline Kharouf, Rachel Byrne, Olivia Tracy, Amanda Avallone, Rich Cadwallader, Jill Talbot, Janna Goodwin, and Stephanie Vessely—and a special thanks to Sophfronia Scott, whose dedication and spirit have been motivating me to keep at it, through thick and thin, for years now.
Hugs to Lauree Ostrofsky (of simplyleap.com), who helped me to own my identity as a writer; my agent, Victoria Skurnick of the Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency, for her advocacy and affection; my editor and publisher, Caleb Seeling, for believing in my book, for making it better through his edits, and for designing such a beautiful cover.
And finally, hugs and kisses to my children, Stephen and Caitlin, for co-authoring two of the stories in this book, and for unwittingly helping to co-author the story of my life—which, thanks mainly to them and Cynthia, seems to be building towards a happy ending. May it, like the final chapter of this book, be just a tad too long.
David Hicks grew up in Harrison, NY and is a professor of English at Regis University in Denver, where he co-directs the Mile-High MFA program. He and his wife Cynthia enjoy hiking with their dog Rosie and meeting his children Stephen and Caitlin for big breakfasts at Cozy Cottage, Jelly, and Sassafras. David has published many stories in such fine journals as Glimmer Train, Colorado Review, Saranac Review, and South Dakota Review. WHITE PLAINS is his first novel.