by M. Leighton
I feel a gasp stick in my chest. “What do you mean he ‘sort of’ got a date?”
“They’re saying within the next couple of days. I have no idea what the date is contingent upon.”
“Well why didn’t Trick ask?”
“Jenna! He doesn’t think like you do. He’s a guy. Remember?” She sighs.
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m just so curious.”
“I know,” she says, her tone quiet. Somber.
I pause, debating the wisdom of asking my next question. I’ve asked it a couple of times before and the answer always upsets me. But still, I can’t seem to help myself from holding onto hope.
At least for a little while longer.
“Did he ask about me?”
There’s a pause.
“No.”
Although, yes, there’s a stabbing pain through my heart, I also get irritated. How the hell can he just move on like that?
“So he hasn’t mentioned me, not one time, since y’all have been back?” Static crackles on the line between us. And my heart drops through the floorboards of my bedroom. “Tell me, Cami. I need to know. I’m driving myself crazy, and if something has happened, I need to know.”
“Nothing has happened…” she says vaguely.
“Then what was said?”
“The second time I went to see him, he said he didn’t want to talk about you, not to bring you up.”
“But why?” I ask, my voice small even to my own ears.
“He said he was tired of hearing about it.”
I can hear the pain in Cami’s words. She hates to tell me something so hurtful, but I cornered her by asking juuuust the right question. Otherwise, she’d never have told me, never have hurt me with this.
But I needed to know. As much as it hurts, I needed to know.
I look down at my hand, shaking where it rests on my thigh. The air around me feels thick and unbreathable. My head throbs with the need to scream. Or cry. Or come apart.
I clear my throat then take a deep breath, refusing to let my best friend see how deeply wounded I am. She’s seen enough, heard enough. I won’t continue to do this to her.
“Well, in that case, I guess I have some phone calls to make.”
“Jenna, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what… I really thought…”
“Don’t be sorry. We both hoped. And we were both wrong. Turns out neither of us know Rusty very well.”
“Wh-what are you going to do?” she asks carefully.
“I’m calling human resources at those two places I’ve been putting off. If they’ve still got openings, I’m going to set up an interview again. Only this time, I’m going. There’s nothing holding me here. Nothing and no one.”
And, for the first time since I met Rusty, I feel that’s absolutely, one hundred percent true.
“Why don’t you come over tonight? I’ll rent some movies and we can hang out. Or we could go to Lucky’s. Whatever you want to do.”
I smile. Even though I’m hiding it from her, Cami knows me well enough to know I’m dying on the inside. And, no doubt, she’s worried about me.
“Nah. I’ll leave you two newlyweds to your perverted sexcapades. I think I’ll stay here with Daddy. I need to spend some quality time with him since I won’t be here much longer.”
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”
She sounds a little hurt by my choice.
“Because you know as well as I do that he won’t be visiting me when I move, like you will. The man refuses to leave home.”
“Yeah, what’s up with that? What’s so fabulous about staying in Greenfield all the time?”
“Well, it’s not really Greenfield, it’s this house. It’s where he spent time with Mom. I don’t think he’ll ever love another place as much as he loves this one.”
Cami sighs. “That’s so sweet.”
“I know. Unless it ruins your life.”
“Yeah, love can go either way. If you let it.”
“I guess so. I suppose sometimes you just have to cut your losses.”
“Sometimes you do,” she agrees.
The question is: How?
CHAPTER TWENTY- Rusty
I glance up at the clock on the wall. It’s after seven in the evening. “What are you still doing around here?” I ask Mom when she wanders in. Normally, she visits me several times throughout the day and then goes home to do stuff around the house around six or so.
She doesn’t answer me right away. She just walks toward me, arms crossed over her chest, and sits on the edge of my bed. She looks like she’s deep in thought.
“Did I ever tell you that your father came back after he left that last time?”
I feel like shaking my head to clear it. Talk about out of the blue!
“What? What are you talking about?”
She looks off into the distance, a wistful smile on her face. “Your father had big dreams. And he was a very determined man. Stubborn. A lot like you. He thought there was more to life than small town living.”
I grit my teeth. It aggravates me to think of him, to think of what he did to Mom, to us, much less talk about it. “I know. He was an asshole. You deserved better.”
“You’d get so excited when he’d come home. You were on cloud nine, right up until he left again. Then you’d be depressed for days. Sometimes you wouldn’t eat. I’d get letters from your teachers. It was a cycle. It was hard on you.”
“But once he left for good, we did just fine without him.”
“You’re right. We did. But he came back once, once that you didn’t know about.”
I shrug. “So? What’s one more time?”
“He asked me if we’d go with him. He’d gotten a job with a country singer, on the road crew. Unloading equipment from the trucks. He just knew it would be his big break. And he wanted us to come with him.”
I’m not sure how I feel about this new information, but I’m confused as to why she’s telling me this now. “Obviously you told him no, right?”
“Right. I told him no. I knew nothing would make you happier than to have both of us together, but he wasn’t thinking about you like he should’ve. He wasn’t thinking like a parent. What about school? What about stability? You can’t raise a child on the road, as a hired hand for a country singer.”
“So he left us for his big dream. I already knew that, Mom, even if I didn’t know he came back that last time.”
“Yes, the end result was the same. But you know, I could’ve asked him to stay. And he would’ve. And things would’ve gone on like they always had. But I still loved him, and I wanted him to be happy. I knew he could never be happy around here. And I knew you needed more than sporadic visits or life on the road. So I made the only choice I felt like I could. I told him to stay away. I told him to go chase his dreams, to find what happiness he could out there, but I told him to forget about us. I knew you’d never have a chance to heal if he kept coming in and out of your life.”
Even though I understand why she did what she did, I’m not certain I can see why she kept it from me all this time. She let me think he abandoned us because he loved his dreams more than he loved us. In a way, that was true. But he would’ve kept coming around if she hadn’t told him not to. And I’m just not sure how I feel about it now, how I feel about him. And her.
“Mom, why are you telling me this now?” I ask, my tone rife with frustration.
“Because I could always see how it hurt you when he would come and then go, but I never saw how much it hurt you that he left and never came back. But I’m seeing it now. And I don’t want you to live your life based on a single event when you don’t have all the information.”
I don’t even know what to say to that. I want to ask her what the hell she’s talking about or if she’s been taking someone else’s meds. But I don’t. Because the more I think about it, the more I think I know what she’s trying to say. And the more I think she’s trying to help me not lose someone I’ll regret losing
for the rest of my life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE- Jenna
A loud bark at my right ear provides me with a very rude awakening. After spending a nearly sleepless night tossing and turning, agonizing over the situation with Rusty, I’m not entirely surprised when I roll over to look at the clock and see that it’s almost noon.
Einstein, my eerily intelligent, solid white Labradoodle, barks again, throwing his muddy paws up on the side of the bed and scratching at me with his blunt claws.
“Einstein, no!” I chastise.
He stares me down for several seconds, panting heavily. Finally, he slides his feet off the bed then turns and trots to my closet. He brings back one tennis shoe, drops it on the floor beside the bed and barks again.
“It’s too early to walk,” I tell him, flopping back down on my pillow. I hear his toenails on the hardwoods and a few seconds later the thonk of another shoe hitting the floor. Another bark. “Einstein, I said no!”
Another scrape from a big paw has me up and out of the bed. Angrily, I grab his collar and tow him toward the door. That’s when I hear the sound of a loud engine pulling up in front of the house.
I stop and listen. Einstein is absolutely still as he watches me. He’s a very smart dog and this behavior isn’t like him. A little thread of alarm snakes its way down my spine.
I hear the engine shut off. Then a door slam. Then another. And then someone is shouting, “He’s in orchard. This way.” The voice is heavily accented and unfamiliar, making me think it’s one of the pickers.
But if someone is hurt out in the orchard, why is a picker at the house doing the talking rather than my father?
Apprehension brings me fully awake. I reason to myself that it’s probably because Daddy is still in the orchard. He’s not the type of person to leave someone who’s hurt. He’d send someone else for help. He probably called 911 from his cell phone and then told one of the pickers to go wait for the paramedics to arrive.
Jumping out of bed and rushing to the window, I pull back the pale pink sheer curtain and peek through the slats of my blinds.
There’s an ambulance in my driveway. I catch the departure of a dark-haired guy, dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt (obviously the picker) leading two uniform-clad emergency workers through the gate and into the orchard. Something is obviously very wrong; they’re wasting no time as they disappear into the trees, carrying the supply-laden stretcher between them.
Again, Einstein barks at me, urging me toward the door. His persistence is making me more nervous than anything, so I hurry downstairs to the kitchen and grab the walkie talkie from the counter. It stays in the same spot at all times. Everyone knows never to move it.
I press the button and speak into it. “Daddy? Is everything okay?”
I hear a crackle of static followed by silence. I wait several seconds for a response. When I get none, I call again. “Cris Theopolis, what’s your twenty?”
Using truck driver speak always, always, always makes me laugh. It always has, since I was a little girl.
Always.
Except for today. Today it’s not funny. And the reason is because my father always, always, always answers right away.
Always.
Except for today.
Like I’ve swallowed a lump of lead, the pit of my stomach feels heavy with dread. Something is terribly wrong. I can feel it like cold breath on the nape of my neck. The skin on my arms pebbles with chills.
“Daddy?” I call again. I know there’s anxiety in my voice and that I probably don’t sound very much like myself. It’s hard to speak past the fingers of fear that are squeezing my throat.
Finally another crackle of static is followed by a voice, but it’s not my father’s. “Who this?” the man asks, his English broken.
Fear erupts into terror. “This is Jenna Theopolis. My father owns this property. I need to speak with him please.”
“The men just now get here. They take him to hospital. Can’t talk right now.”
The line goes dead again.
And panic sets in.
I’m alone. I have little information and a nearly unbearable weight on my chest. And my father is out in the orchard. Somewhere. Hurt.
My heart is hammering against my ribs, threatening to break them into tiny pieces if I don’t find out what’s going on. Taking the stairs two at a time, I race to my room and throw on some clothes. Less than five minutes later, I grab the walkie that never moves and I hit the front door, fully dressed and ready to scour every inch of the orchard for my father if need be.
Something tells me I should wait, that going out isn’t the best thing to do, but I ignore that voice. I’m not a “wait” kind of person; I’m an “act” kind of person. For better or worse, to make a move or to move on, I act. And now, I’m acting. I’m going in search of my father.
Einstein and I stop at the fence. I squat and grab his face in my hands, looking directly into his somber, intelligent brown eyes. “Take me to Daddy, Einstein. Take me to him.”
With a bark, Einie takes off running East. I’m hot on his heels, oblivious to the tears streaming down my face and the ache in my legs as I dodge trunks and branches to pursue the dog as he runs through the trees rather than up the lanes between them.
Another bark and Einstein abruptly cuts left down a row. I hurry to catch him. When I step out into the opening, I see a picker leading the two paramedics toward me, back in the direction of the house. Between the emergency workers is the stretcher. Atop it is my father.
“Daddy!” I yell, my voice cracking with emotion.
Three pairs of eyes are watching me as I race toward them. My father doesn’t move.
When I reach them, they don’t stop. They are walking briskly. They don’t even slow down long enough to let me talk to my father.
I walk alongside the stretcher. My dad is lying prone, covered in a white sheet and strapped in so that he can’t move or fall off. An oxygen mask is covering the lower part of his face, a face that’s unusually ashen. His eyes are closed and, when I reach out to touch the top of the arm closest to me, the lids don’t even flicker.
“Daddy?” He doesn’t respond. His eyelashes don’t flutter. He doesn’t turn his head. He doesn’t move a muscle.
Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!
“What happened?” I ask in general, speaking to anyone who will answer me.
One of the EMTs answers. I can tell by his kind expression that he’s trying to be gentle, which upsets me all the more. What is he hiding?
“We can’t be sure, ma’am, but considering what this man has said, it sounds like he fell off a ladder and hit his head. We won’t know anything for sure until we get him to the hospital. He’s been unresponsive up to this point.”
The picker falls back to walk closer to me. “He fall off ladder. Doesn’t wake up. We call emergency.”
In my head, I can picture it. The first pick of the season is done by my father. It’s something he and my mother apparently used to do together, every single year without fail. And they always used the same ladder, the ladder that had been used by my mother’s family for generations. That damn rickety, old, wooden ladder.
That ladder, that ritual meant the world to them. And it might have cost me mine.
Einstein leads us back to the gate. I don’t leave my father’s side as they carry him to the ambulance. With a flick, the paramedics lower the legs on the stretcher to let it rest on the pavement while they open the doors to the back.
No one looks at me. No one says a word. I’m terrified.
In shock, I wait while the paramedics collapse the stretcher legs and push my father into the empty rear compartment of the squad. One EMT climbs in behind him.
“You’re welcome to ride along, if you’re comfortable going now. If you’d rather drive, that’s fine, but we need to leave now. Right now,” he says emphatically.
I process very little of what he’s saying. “My keys,” I say, dazedly. I know I need to go get them.
I turn on shaky legs to run into the house and get my purse. When I re-emerge, the ambulance is just pulling out. I climb into my car to follow.
My legs feel numb where they dangle below me. My foot feels leaden where it presses on the gas pedal. My hands feel frozen where they grip the steering wheel. Nothing seems to be working right. My thoughts are jumbled and dark, foreboding. Ominous.
In the back of my mind, I keep thinking there must be some mistake. Or that I’m still dreaming, that this can’t be happening. That my father can’t be hurt badly, that he must not have heard me calling his name. Surely he didn’t or he would’ve opened his eyes.
But he was so still. So very, very still.
My mind churns, mixing and remixing my emotions into a thick paste that rational thought can’t penetrate. But one feeling lurks behind all the rest, like a still, black backdrop. It’s the horrific, bone-deep, gut-wrenching certainty that something is so wrong that my life will never be the same again.
Never.
********
At the hospital, the dreaded hospital again, I follow the signs that say EMERGENCY all the way up to two wide, wooden doors that read AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Still confused by what the morning has held for me, I stare blankly at the sign until constructive thought can get a foothold.
With a muted click, the doors swing open and two nurses emerge. They smile at me as though my father isn’t in a room back there, possibly slipping away from this world, taking with him the only anchor I have left.
As they continue past me, I slip through the doors, unnoticed. I make my way slowly through the labyrinth of identical halls with identical smells and identical workers, my eyes constantly searching for the familiar face of my father.