Jaguar

by M. L. Hamilton

  He smiled. “What if we go for hamburgers?”

  “We have to wait for the boys,” said Amanda. “The boys aren’t through yet.”

  Pam rose to her feet, picking up the bag. “That’s okay. They’ll be done soon and we can go for hamburgers.” She slung the bag over her shoulder and took her daughter’s hand, then took Sophia’s as well. “We’ll just go change.” She pointed to the deep end where Stephanie had said her boys were. “Keep an eye out for them.” She led the little girls away.

  Jaguar clasped his hands between his knees and gave Stephanie a half-smile. She smiled back.

  “Don’t give up,” she said. “Half the battle is just being here. That’s all. Just show up and you’ll see.”

  Jaguar wasn’t sure about that, but who was he to say? He’d never been a father before and he’d sort of blown past the usual introductory lessons of sleepless nights and major milestones like talking and walking. He knew he had a steep learning curve ahead of him, but if showing up was all that he had to do, well, he could do that.

  CHAPTER 12

  For the next two weeks, Jaguar went to every swim lesson. A few times Pam even let him and Hakim bring home all four kids when she had an appointment. Sophia still wouldn’t talk to him, no more than a few monosyllables, but she came right to him, expecting him to wrap her in her towel. He’d even learned to show up with snacks. Stephanie told him he was doing a good job.

  Today, he’d had Hakim drive him to the toy store. Amanda and Sophia were graduating from the beginning swim class and swim lessons were ending for the summer. He wanted to get them something to commemorate the occasion, but he wasn’t sure what.

  The previous week, he’d bought a Mercedes SUV like he’d promised Hakim and he couldn’t deny he loved the car. It was big enough to haul all four kids around. He’d never thought of himself as an SUV sort of guy, but it had been the most practical choice. Pam’s boys, Jasper and Evan, had exclaimed in delight when he took them for pizza the other day. He still struggled with the booster seat, but Amanda never failed to instruct him on its proper placement.

  Standing in the middle of the toy store, he felt overwhelmed. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in one. He was in sensory overload with the sights and sounds all around him. If a toy didn’t have a flashing light or a siren of some kind, he felt sure it didn’t occupy shelf space here.

  Hakim gave him an anxious look. “Do you have any idea what you want to get?”

  “It should probably not flash or shriek, or Pam may ban me forever. What about something soft?”

  “The boys aren’t going to want something soft,” said Hakim, shaking his head. “They’re going to want noise and flash.”

  Jaguar blew out air. This was so not in his wheelhouse. “Guns are probably out, right?”

  “Right.” Hakim looked around. “What about a basketball hoop? I liked basketball when I was their age, or football.”

  “I hated sports when I was there age. Plus, Pam has them doing tennis.”

  “Badminton net?”

  Jaguar’s gaze had landed on something across the store. “Nope,” he said, pointing. “That.”

  Hakim frowned. “That? We can’t fit that into the Benz.”

  Jaguar wandered over to the wooden structure set up in the middle of the store. It had swings and a slide and a tree-house structure built on top of it. It was perfect. It was the sort of thing he would have loved as a child.

  Hakim walked around it, giving it a critical look. “I’m telling you, this ain’t fitting in the Benz.”

  “We’ll have it delivered.”

  “Who’s gonna put it together?”

  Jaguar considered that. “Me.”

  “You know how to build shit?”

  “No, but I know a guy.”

  “You know a guy? I hope I’m not the guy, ‘cause I don’t know how to build shit.”

  Jaguar laughed, delighted at the thought of giving Pam’s kids an outdoor wonderland. Every kid should have a fort. His fondest memories were playing guitar in his own secret hiding place in his parents’ backyard.

  “You sure about this?” asked Hakim. “What if Pam doesn’t want something like this in her backyard?”

  “Then I’ll bribe her with some wine. Besides, it’ll give the kids a place to play and give her some downtime but still be able to keep an eye on them. She’ll love it.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said Hakim.

  He knew he was. He could just see the four kids climbing all over this thing with Amanda and Sophia hosting tea parties in the little fort. Yep, he was getting this and he was building it himself.

  * * *

  Pam was waiting for them when he arrived at her house. Jasper and Evan scrambled out of the SUV and Amanda danced over to her mother, throwing her arms around her. Jaguar unbuckled Sophia and lifted her down, then removed both booster seats. Hakim met him on the sidewalk and took the booster seats from him.

  “Hello, Hakim,” said Pam.

  “Hello, Ms. Rosen. You want me to put these in the car?”

  “Sure. It’s unlocked.”

  Shouldering the swim bag, Jaguar shut the car door. As he and Sophia moved toward the house, he was surprised when the little girl slipped her hand into his. His eyes shot to Pam’s face and she smiled at him. He couldn’t believe how his heart swelled at the simple gesture.

  Pam stroked Sophia’s wet hair. “How were lessons?”

  Amanda jumped up and down in front of Jaguar. “Show her our certificates,” she said. “Show her.”

  Jaguar wished Sophia was as animated as her cousin, but he didn’t want to push her. The little girl had lost her mother not that long ago. He crouched down and set the bag on the ground in front of him, then he opened the side panel and pulled out the certificates. Amanda snatched them from his hand, holding them out to her mother.

  “See, Mama.”

  Pam took them and inspected both. “That’s excellent. Why don’t you and Sophia go put them on the refrigerator?”

  “Come on, Sophia,” called Amanda, racing toward the house.

  Sophia let go of his hand, then she started walking up the walkway after her cousin. Jaguar watched her feeling troubled. Did five year olds go to see a counselor when they suffered a major loss?

  “She’s so different from Amanda,” he said.

  “She misses her mother, Jaguar,” said Pam.

  “Does she talk about her? She never talks to me. I get one syllable, if I’m lucky.”

  “She talks about her a lot at night when I tuck her in.” She glanced back at the house, but the door had shut behind the little girl. “It’s gonna take time. Be patient.”

  As Hakim passed them, going back to the SUV, he gave Jaguar a significant look. Jaguar knew he was worried about how Pam was going to react to the jungle gym. He nodded at the driver, then rubbed his forearm with his other hand.

  “So, I was wondering if you would like to come over to my dad’s house for dinner next weekend. Bring the kids. He’d like to meet Sophia, but I don’t want to make it strange for her.”

  She considered that. “How about you come here? It’ll be easier with all the kids. Then maybe we can meet at the park in the gated community for a picnic the next weekend. I’m sure your dad’s house isn’t kid proof.”

  “Well, actually, that brings up another point,” he said, shifting weight. “I bought a jungle gym.”

  Pam blinked at him. “You what?”

  “I bought a jungle gym for your backyard.”

  “You bought a jungle gym? For my backyard?”

  “Yeah. Hakim thought you might not like it, so it’s totally my fault, but…”

  “Jaguar, I told you I don’t need your money.”

  “This is for the kids. For completing swim lessons. Look, it’ll let you have some downtime too. They can play in the yard, where you can see them, but they don’t have to be running all over the house.”

  “Jaguar…”

  “Ple
ase, Pam. Please let me do this for them. I had a fort when I was a kid and it meant the world to me, to have some place to go when I needed to get away.”

  She considered. “It would be nice to have some place outside for them to go.”

  “It’s supposed to arrive in a few days. I’ll come over and build it.”

  “You’ll build it? You?”

  He gave a self-deprecating shrug. “Okay. I’m gonna pull in a ringer, but I’ll help.”

  “I don’t want it falling down on them.”

  “Right. It won’t. I promise. I’ll get someone to help me. I can do it when Pops and I come for dinner. In fact, I’ll bring dinner.”

  “You’re gonna make dinner and build a jungle gym?”

  He gave her a sheepish look. “I’m going to buy dinner and I’m going to bring someone to supervise the jungle gym, but…”

  She laughed.

  He ducked his head, smiling. “I’m trying, Pam. I really am. You’re looking at a guy with absolutely no practical skills.”

  She touched his arm. “You’re right. You’re trying and that means a lot. We’ll see you next weekend.”

  He released his held breath as she turned and walked back toward the house. He started to shift toward the SUV, but a motion caught his eye. Sophia was standing in the window, watching him. He lifted a hand and waved at her.

  A moment later, she waved back.

  Such a simple gesture, such a minor advancement, but Jaguar felt like he’d just been given the moon. He chuckled and waved more enthusiastically, then he jogged to the SUV and slid into the backseat.

  “She said yes!” he said, punctuating it with a jab of his index finger. “She said yes!”

  Hakim’s dark eyes met his in the rearview mirror. “It’s a jungle gym, man, not a marriage proposal and do you even know which end of the hammer to use?”

  “The one with the hitty part,” he said and they both laughed as Hakim pulled away from the curb.

  * * *

  Arriving back at the house, he found the driveway filled with a metal dumpster. He stared at it through the windshield, blinking in surprise. His father hadn’t said anything about getting a dumpster.

  “You better figure out which end is up on that hammer and quick. Papa Jarvis is reconstructing,” said Hakim wryly.

  “See you tomorrow,” said Jaguar, distracted.

  He climbed out of the SUV and watched Hakim pull away. A moment later, his father appeared out of the house, carrying an armload of stuff that he huffed into the dumpster with a clang. He wiped his hands together and looked at his son.

  “What’s going on?” asked Jaguar.

  “I told you I wanted to clean out the craft room, so we can make a bedroom for Sophia.”

  “Yeah, but was a dumpster really necessary?”

  He fixed his hands on his hips. “You might as well know,” said Henry seriously. “Your mother was something of a closet hoarder.”

  “A closet hoarder?”

  “Have you opened the door to the craft room since you’ve been home?”

  “No.”

  “Go look.”

  Jaguar frowned in concern and headed up the walkway into the house. He turned left into the hallway and walked past his room to the room at the end. Pushing open the door, he banged it into something. He peered around the door and his eyes widened. Boxes had been stacked up behind it, filled with holiday decorations. He eased into the room, staying on the path his father had cleared through all the mess. He’d known about the Christmas trees and the garden gnomes. He’d seen them when he moved his parents into this house, but in the years since then, she’d added to the collection.

  She had lights and ornaments and wreaths and garland and plastic bunnies. There were skeletons and baskets and colored plastic eggs. Boxes of colored plastic eggs. He opened a storage container and lifted out an egg carton, opening it. Chalk eggs had been arranged in the egg holders, never used, never taken out of the display. As he opened a few more boxes, he marked that most of them had never been opened – they lay in their original packaging, untouched.

  In another corner of the room were cardboard boxes, neatly labeled in his mother’s hand, some filled with newspapers, others with phone books, and still more with old magazines. He turned a complete circle. Along another wall were shelves holding the gnomes, many in their original boxes, interspersed with Christmas trees.

  He sat down on a stack of boxes and stared, his hands hanging by his sides. How had he missed this? How had he not known something was wrong with her?

  Henry came into the room, watching him for a moment.

  Jaguar looked up at his father.

  “This is madness,” he said.

  Henry nodded. “I know.” He looked around. “I hated it when she’d come in with this stuff. She’d get her friends to take her to the store and she’d try to sneak it in. Or she did at first. Then she didn’t try to sneak it anymore.”

  “Her friends didn’t realize that this was wrong?” He held out his hands. “It’s a fire hazard, Pops.”

  “They weren’t entirely responsible. I took her to buy a lot of it. It made her happy and I would have done…” His voice choked off and he cleared it. “I would have done anything to make her happy. She’d spend hours in here before things got so bad, just going around counting her stuff. It seemed to calm the anxiety and I wasn’t going to take that away from her.”

  Jaguar motioned to the boxes of holiday decorations. “Some of that stuff might be usable. We might be able to give it to the Good Will or something.”

  “I already called them.”

  Jaguar looked at the gnomes. His mother had collected an entire village of gnomes over the years and they were all ugly. “Were they interested in gnomes?”

  Henry sighed. “They said they were gnomed out, son.”

  A startled laugh choked out of Jaguar. He’d so seldom heard his father make a joke of any kind. “What are we going to do with them all? Who’s going to take them?”

  “No one. The gnomes are mine.”

  Jaguar’s brows rose as Henry walked over to the collection and picked up two of them. “Grab a couple and come on.”

  Jaguar did as his father commanded and picked two of the ugliest from the shelves, then he followed Henry to the front of the house. Henry positioned himself at the edge of the porch, leaning against the wooden railing where he could just see a corner of the dumpster in the driveway. He hefted a gnome in his hand.

  “The trick is to get it as far into the dumpster as you can. If it doesn’t shatter, you lose.”

  Jaguar’s eyes grew wide. “I’ll bet the neighbors aren’t happy about the dumpster, Pops. They definitely aren’t going to want to hear a gnome smashing.”

  Henry continued to heft the gnome, eyeing the trajectory between him and his target. “I got a little carte blanche left. Recent widower and all. Come on, I didn’t take you for a chicken.” Then he launched a gnome. It went sailing into the dumpster, shattering on impact.

  Both Jaguar and Henry whooped, then Henry sent his second after the first. Jaguar followed him, the sound of shattering plaster echoing through the neighborhood. They both laughed and went to get more.

  After they’d decimated a good portion of the gnome village, Jaguar looked out over the yard. “You sure about getting rid of all this stuff?”

  Henry leaned against the porch railing. “It’s just stuff, son,” he said. “Sophia needs a room.”

  Jaguar studied his father. For the first time, he realized how hard it must have been on him to watch his mother deteriorate the way she had. Henry had taken care of her by himself for years, years when Jaguar was roaming all over the country. He leaned on the railing beside his father, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t realize how bad it was.”

  Henry looked at him, studying him a moment without speaking. “It wasn’t your problem.”

  “Yeah it was, but I was too selfish to see it. I could have he
lped you more.”

  Henry shrugged. “I didn’t mind.” He shook his head in memory, his eyes going distant. “My God, she was a great woman in her day. You should have heard her play the violin. Like you died and went to heaven.”

  Jaguar smiled at him.

  Henry’s face sobered. “That shouldn’t have happened to a woman like her,” he said.

  Jaguar looked down. He didn’t know how to answer that. They stood in the gathering darkness, side by side, thinking about the woman who had brought them together. Finally Jaguar stirred.

  “Pam wants us to come to dinner next weekend.”

  Henry glanced over at him. “Really? I’ll get to meet Sophia?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  Jaguar rubbed his thumb over his bicep. “You know anything about building jungle gyms?”

  “Jungle gyms?”

  Jaguar gave him a wry look. “Hakim says I should probably learn which side of the hammer is the hitty part.”

  Henry’s expression grew more skeptical. “The hitty part?” He shook his head. “Damn devil’s music,” he said without any heat. “I knew it was gonna rot your brain.”

  Then they both laughed.

  * * *

  Jaguar’s phone rang. His father looked over from his recliner, watching him as he fished it out of his pocket. Henry reached for the remote, pausing the movie they’d been watching, an old black and white western that Henry assured him was amazing.

  Looking at the display, Jaguar realized this conversation might be a bit longer than he’d initially thought. He thumbed it on and held it to his ear. He should probably go into another room for privacy, but he just didn’t feel like moving right now.

  “Hey, Desmond,” he said.

  “If it isn’t the prodigal son,” said the manager, laughing. Jaguar didn’t think it was funny. Hifler clearly didn’t remember that his mother had just died a few weeks before.