Luke's #1 Rule

by Cynthia Harrison

  She called the police, but they were inclined to wait and see. They knew his name. He’d had a drunk and disorderly. A DUI. Sure, they’d keep an eye out, but Detroit was in bankruptcy, or hadn’t she heard?

  Bettina wanted to reach out and hold the woman’s hand, her voice trembled so. “He came home minus two fingers. He’d fallen asleep in a crack house, and rats ate them while he was in a heroin stupor.”

  Bettina shivered. Spence wasn’t as bad as all that. He had never had a DUI or got arrested for being drunk and obnoxious. Of course, he mostly stayed home these days. Maybe she was in denial. Her head pounded. She tried to listen to the guy in front talk about depersonalizing the situation. Really? Your husband has his fingers gnawed off by rats, and you don’t take it personally?

  She wrote down the word “depersonalize” anyway. But the image of those bloody fingers would not leave her brain, so she didn’t catch how exactly you were supposed to depersonalize. The meeting broke up and she went out to her car.

  She saw the lady who’d sat next to her and told the awful story.

  “You are so brave,” Bettina said.

  “I’m a work in progress.” The woman smiled. “I’m Suzy.” She held out her hand.

  “I’m Bettina.”

  “I hope you’ll be back.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Listen, you want to grab a cup of coffee?” Suzy checked Bettina’s belly. “Decaf?”

  Bettina battled inside. She didn’t talk about Spence’s problems to anyone except Chloe. Maybe that wasn’t healthy, seeing as how his ex-wife would not be exactly impartial.

  “Okay. Maybe some juice.”

  “Meet me at the family restaurant, the one of the next corner south of here?”

  “Yep. I know the one. See you there.” Bettina had never actually been in this restaurant, because it did not serve alcohol, and when Spence began his moderation program, he always liked his beer with dinner out. She wished she would have made up an excuse not to meet Suzy. She just wanted to go home. No, not really. She didn’t want to go home. She just didn’t want to talk to anyone. Lonely but also uninclined to share. It was messing with her head. And the baby. She took one hand from the steering wheel and patted her tummy.

  After they got a booth, Bettina found it easier to talk than she could have predicted. “So, five kids?”

  “Yep.”

  “How does that make them feel, their dad’s fingers?”

  Suzy’s face blanked as she searched for the right words. “We didn’t tell them the truth. We said he got hurt on the job and was in the hospital for a few days.”

  “Oh. Is that one of the tactics that guy talked about tonight? Detaching?”

  “No. I suck at all of the techniques. I’m keeping my kids in a toxic environment, and I’m lying to them. I’m enabling, and I’m teaching them denial. And how to lie.” Suzy’s nose wrinkled and her eyes stole skyward; Bettina’s face did the same thing when she tried to hold back tears.

  “Have you been coming to these meetings long?”

  “Two years. Ever since he hurt his back and got hooked on pain pills.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Suzy shook her head. A small smile crossed her face and disappeared. “Thanks. We’re in this together.”

  “So the finger thing. That didn’t make him stop?”

  “Hell no, it’s the shiny new excuse for why he can’t stop. He feels so sorry for himself he shoots up at home now.” Suzy seemed surprised by the venom in her voice. She sighed. “Sorry. I am just so fed up. But my oldest kid is ten. I have nowhere to turn, no one will want a woman with five kids, not her own sister, or her brother, not even her mother.

  “Listen, hon, I wanted to give you some advice. Off the books.”

  Bettina did not want advice from someone who would stay with a man who continued drugging after being eaten by rats, but she listened anyway. What should she do, get up and walk out? Say, “this is where I draw the line”?

  “This one your first?” Suzy nodded her head toward Bettina’s belly.

  “Uh-huh. Two stepsons. Sweet boys. Mom has full custody.”

  “That’s a blessing.”

  Bettina wondered if that was true. Spence had gotten worse since he’d given up his rights to the kids. Or possibly she was in denial again, or making excuses for him, just like Suzy did for staying with her husband.

  Suzy leaned in close so nobody could hear her. “Get out.”

  At first Bettina misunderstood and thought she’d upset Suzy. She thought Suzy told her to leave the booth before her herbal tea even came. Just then the waitress brought the tea. Suzy had a huge Diet Coke and a jelly donut. It looked really good, but Bettina knew she’d have indigestion and heartburn all night if she had one.

  The waitress left, and Suzy bit into her donut with gusto. She chewed and talked at the same time. “Get out while you can, hon. One kid? That’s a snap. You work?”

  Bettina nodded.

  “Well, there you go. Got a mother who will watch the little one?”

  “My folks live in Arizona. Retired. My husband was supposed to watch the baby. He wasn’t this bad when I first got pregnant. I thought he’d get better, but he’s just gotten worse.”

  “Hell, honey, will they take you in, in Arizona?”

  “Probably.” Bettina, proud of her independence and her work, didn’t want a repeat of Chloe’s life. Back home to mommy.

  Bettina finished her tea, and Suzy sucked down her Diet Coke. She held up her plastic cup for the server to refill. “I’ve got to go. I’m dead on my feet.” Blame the pregnancy. Lie. A white lie. A kind lie. She and Suzy would never be friends, and she was never going to go back to that meeting again. Those weren’t her people. She didn’t really have any people, but no people seemed better than these people, who were just as stuck as her.

  Suzy nodded. “See you next week?”

  Bettina nodded as she hefted her bulk from the booth. Head down, eyes into her purse, she found and set out a couple of dollar bills for her tea. She didn’t want to look at Suzy and lie.

  She got in her car and headed home, thinking a thousand things at once. Depersonalize. How to do that? Don’t take Spence’s dangerous antics personally? As in, they are not my fault? She knew that. Okay, don’t be hurt by his failure as a husband and father. Hmm. Easy to say “don’t be hurt” but harder to do. She pulled in her driveway, having no idea how she’d gotten there. Didn’t matter. She went inside, checked the bedroom. Nothing had changed. Spence lay naked, his hair plastered to his head, snoring. She decided to sleep on one of the boys’ beds. She’d picked up some literature at the meeting that she hoped would shed some light on those terms detach, depersonalize, set boundaries. She was so tired, but labeling herself the biggest loser in the world kept her awake. She set boundaries every day at work. She didn’t take hurtful remarks personally, she detached and kept working. So why couldn’t those same tactics work at home?

  ****

  Luke answered his cell, glancing at the caller ID first.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Luke! You cannot let her go downtown alone with those boys tomorrow!”

  “What?” He knew what his mother meant. The Tigers’ game. He just needed time to think of a way to get her off his back.

  “They call Detroit the Murder City.”

  “That was years ago.”

  “Well, they still have crime: drugs, shootings, gangs.”

  “Not in that part of town. They’ll be perfectly safe.”

  “But you love baseball. You’ve always wanted to see a game.”

  Luke let his mother talk, lying out on his bed to stretch his muscles. He could tell it would be a long conversation, but eventually, she’d wind down. The only person who hadn’t tried to talk him into going to the game was Chloe.

  “Honey,” his mom said, “I know Abby hurt you horribly when she took Bella away, but let’s face it, at your age, the only available women are going to likely already
have a child or two.”

  That wasn’t true. He’d only had to invoke his rule a time or two. Then he realized if he dated women ten or so years younger than himself, none of them had kids. They didn’t have a lot of ambition or personality, either, most of the time, beyond buying the newest designer purse or finding a better job, anywhere but in Michigan. Or finding a husband who already had a job. He hadn’t met anyone since Abby who he’d even remotely felt like he could marry. Marry. For God’s sake, why had that word popped into his head? A chill ran up his spine.

  As his mother chatted on, he listened to the noises from upstairs settle down. He’d bet the kids were in bed. They’d been as excited as if it were Christmas tomorrow, despite their dad bailing on them. They seemed to take the blow in stride. Ursula had mentioned that Chloe’s ex wasn’t always reliable when it came to seeing his boys. How could a guy with a family like Chloe, Tommy, and Josh just dump them? It didn’t make any sense.

  “Chloe hates sports,” his mother said. “She’s doing this for the boys, but it’s just not her thing. She practices yoga and likes to run.”

  Luke wondered how anyone could dislike team sports. Most of the women he went out with loved the games. Loved going to sports bars and eating nachos and drinking beer and cheering when the Wings scored a goal or the Pistons sank a basket or the Tigers hit a home run. Hell, they cheered when somebody made it to first base.

  “Luke?”

  His mind had wandered.

  “Sorry. I’m tired. The boys and I started on the deck today.”

  His mother said something he couldn’t hear to someone else in the room. She must have put her hand over the phone, because the voices were muffled.

  “Okay, honey, well, it’s your decision,” his mother said.

  That surprised him. He figured she’d rattle on for another half hour of persuasion. But no. She handed the phone to his dad. Dad asked about the job, where he was with it, when he’d be getting back to Blue Lake. He asked his dad about his latest project, rebuilding an old chopper motorcycle.

  The end. Conversation over and good night. Luke flipped from his right side to his left. He rearranged his pillows. His dad hadn’t mentioned a word about the Tigers’ game. Probably he didn’t know Luke had been offered a free ticket. He and his dad always watched the games together. Even after he’d moved out to live with Abby and then in his own house, he still stopped in on game days, or his dad came over to his place.

  They’d always talked about going to a game. Driving down to the city, only a couple of hours away. Maybe getting a room for the night so they could drink as much beer as they wanted and not worry. Somehow, they’d never done that.

  He flipped over onto his back and stared at the ceiling. He really wanted to go to that game, damn it. He had no doubt that Chloe could take perfectly good care of herself and her sons. He knew they’d be safe. She was a big girl. She didn’t need him to protect her. Neither did the boys. They were good boys, but they already had a father. A crappy one, but still.

  He gave up on the idea of going to sleep, got up to pee. Then he sat down and checked his list. Finish up the deck. Two, maybe three, days. Then, lay the sod in one day and plant the shrubs in one more and he’d be out of here late next week.

  It wouldn’t be so difficult to miss a day of work. Even if things went wrong, which they sometimes did, he’d still be home by next Sunday, at the latest. The chance of a lifetime. Seats in right field. Close to the action. Directly in the line of his favorite player, number thirty, Dan “the hit man” Dobbs. His dad liked the new hot-shot pitcher. Well, didn’t everyone? But something about Dan Dobbs, some kind of heart, made Luke root for the ball player who came up on the mean streets of Detroit to play for his home team. He wondered if Tommy and Josh had favorite players. He’d bet on Wade Straight for Tommy and Leon Ruiz for Josh. Could he really let the boys go to the game with a woman who didn’t understand or enjoy the sport?

  He listened for noises upstairs but heard only silence. So he went up and grabbed a Coke out of the fridge. Came back down to his lair. He wondered if the boys collected baseball cards. That had been a passion of his as a kid. His mother had given them to him a year or so ago along with a box of his childhood things. Yearbooks, stuffed toys, action figures, even an old comic book. He’d trashed everything but the baseball cards, which he kept in special plastic sleeves all tucked into cardboard boxes made specifically to hold collections.

  He bet they sold a lot of memorabilia down at the ball park. He could get that stuff online if he wanted it, but seeing it, actually looking at the stuff, would be so much better. He needed a new ball cap. He could get his dad a shirt from the stadium. Father’s Day would be here before you knew it. He got his tablet and searched Comerica Park for the heck of it. Checked tomorrow’s lineup. Dobbs was batting second.

  He heard a noise upstairs. The fridge opened. A pop can top popped. Steps coming toward his stairs.

  “Luke? You up?”

  “Yeah.”

  She started down the steps, her long legs coming into view first. She had awesome legs. Her shorts gave him the full effect. “Can’t sleep?”

  “I never go to bed until midnight,” he said.

  He had been shocked to see the time by the digital clock of his open tablet. 11:30. It seemed way later to him until she came down, working like a double shot of espresso on his energy level. She sat next to him on the old sofa. She could have sat in the desk chair, but she didn’t. She sat next to him. He liked having her there. That was the problem, in a nutshell. Remember your rule, he warned himself.

  Her eyes checked out the open page on his tablet, then widened in surprise.

  “I’m just so pissed at that asshole,” she said, turning away from the tablet. “Bettina had heartburn! So he drops them on you without a thought and cancels tomorrow’s plans, too.” She took a breath, filling her lungs and letting it whoosh out. This caused interesting things to happen beneath her T-shirt. “Thanks, by the way, for keeping an eye on them.”

  “No problem. They’re good boys.”

  She nodded.

  “I know you can take care of yourself,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  He liked the way her eyes scrunched up when she got confused. “My mom. She called, wanting me to escort you and the boys to the game because it’s big, bad Detroit.”

  Chloe laughed. “The Mom Plot continues.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not in on it.”

  “I didn’t think you were.”

  “Those two have no scruples when it comes to fixing us up. I mean, they figured we’d be alone in the house together all weekend.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Nowhere important. I just didn’t feel like being manipulated by a senior citizen who’s read way too many romance novels. They’ll get the picture soon enough. I mean, see, already, their latest plot is falling apart. They thought we’d be alone all weekend, and we won’t be. You’ll be here alone, and the boys and I will be downtown all day. The game won’t get over until six or seven. If they’re still hungry after all the hot dogs and ice cream, we’ll go out to dinner. I will keep them out of your hair. They’ll be too tired and excited to bother you.”

  “They don’t bother me,” he said. She still didn’t seem convinced, so he took a deep breath and admitted, “I lived with someone a few years ago. She didn’t want to get married because it would mess up her alimony. She had a little girl. I helped raise her. When we split up, she wouldn’t let me see her daughter.”

  “Wow. How long did you live with them?”

  Luke hoped Chloe understood him better now. It had been difficult for him to tell that story. “Three years.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yeah. So I kind of choke when I see kids.”

  “You mean when you meet single moms?”

  “That too.”

  “What was your mother thinking?”

  “She was thinking I need
ed to get over myself.”

  They both laughed, and she rose and walked toward the steps.

  “I wouldn’t mind going to the game with you tomorrow.”

  She stopped on her way up the stairs and turned around.

  Luke wondered if he’d said that right. Why so hard to figure out the proper words? “What I mean is, I love the Tigers and I’d kill for seats like those. Plotting mothers aside, there’s nothing that says we can’t be friends.”

  “We can do that.” She had a tiny ghost of a smile on her lips, but he couldn’t tell if it reached her eyes because she turned away again and went up the stairs.

  Only after he stretched out in bed did he realize the moms had scored a point after all. He was taking a day off, which meant he’d be staying a day longer than he’d planned. And call it whatever, this was a date with Chloe and her sons. He could almost smell the hot dogs and beer.

  Chapter Six

  Chloe contemplated the contents of her closet. Luke might be cute, but he was not for her. A guy like Luke—who didn’t know a good thing when he had it within reach, a guy who let his past hold him back, a guy who thought backward, not forward—a guy like that she could feel empathy for, even be friends with, but as for anything else, no. If he was too afraid of getting hurt to even try, he didn’t deserve her. Or her kids. And they were, it went without saying, a package deal.

  The move to Seattle would just complicate things more. Sure, people worked out long-distance relationships all the time. Luke didn’t seem like the kind of guy to go for that, either. Just a small-town guy content in his little rural world.

  So while the boys might be thrilled with Luke joining them at the game, to Chloe, well, she didn’t know exactly. And how did one dress for baseball games anyway? Delicious spring-like weather, sunny with a nice breeze. Sneakers and jeans and maybe a three-quarter sleeve T-shirt. Or should she wear short sleeves and bring a jacket? She stared into her open closet door and tried to close down the longing in her heart. For a husband. And a father for her boys. She wondered how many men felt the way Luke did about single moms. Probably lots.