by J. C. Gatlin
“But what about the baseball player?”
“He’s going to be on the road all the time. I can’t live like that.”
“You’re incorrigible. This is exactly why Addison is stalking you,” Kim said. “I don’t want to hear anymore about Gunz Gonzales and his sixteen inch, er, guns.”
“They’re nineteen inch, but whatever.” Mallory corrected her as she turned off Main and came to a four way stop. “Look, so we’re almost there. You’re walking into the garage looking like all that and a bag chips, all the mechanics are drooling, Ross can’t believe his eyes… then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what are you going to say to the slug when you see him?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” She was lying though. It’s actually all she had thought about for the last five weeks. She chewed her bottom lip, considering the question.
She’d doubted herself since the night he left. That night five weeks ago when Ross pulled his Camero to the side of the road and she stormed out, slamming the car door. It would be the last time she’d see him.
The last time she'd ever see him.
* * * * * * *
They were both in high school when they first met. He was a senior; she a sophomore. They had separate classes and separate friends, until one fateful night when they were both in separate cars headed west across the Courtney Campbell Causeway over Tampa Bay.
It was Saturday evening, and Ross was riding shotgun in a silver gray Lincoln Town Car. It belonged to his best friend’s mother, but they had it for the night. The stereo was cranked up, windows down. When a red convertible --- top down, two hot girls in the front seat, three in the back --- pulled up alongside them on the bridge, Ross’ buddy honked.
Ross leaned over his buddy to yell to the girls from the driver’s side window. They honked back and laughed. One blew kisses, and Ross’ buddy grinned and lewdly flashed his tongue. Ross followed that with yelling again out the driver’s side window. “Where you headed?”
The girls couldn’t hear him over the rush of the wind as they sped along the bridge. He yelled again. But it was no use.
His buddy pushed him off him and nudged him back to his side of the car. He almost lost control of the steering wheel, and the town car drifted into the girl’s path. They blared the horn and girls erupted into squeals and giggles. Ross leaned over his buddy again and yelled for them to follow. That’s when his eyes made contact with the dark haired girl in the back seat.
Her eyes locked with his, and she smiled back at him.
Ross yelled something to her, just as his buddy threw his left arm out the window motioning to the car-load of girls to follow. With both their heads turned, eyes firmly planted on the red convertible, they were oblivious to the traffic ahead. It had stopped on the bridge, and the Lincoln Town Car slammed into the back bumper of the car in front of them.
Metal bolted with a loud thud and the impact threw both Ross and his buddy forward into the steering wheel. It was a minor accident, but the rear-ended driver leapt out of his car with his pants ablaze, ready to tie into the boys.
The girls in the convertible laughed and continued down the bridge. Except for Kim.
She demanded that they pull over. She was worried about the cute guys in the other car and wanted to make sure they were alright. So they pulled over to the narrow shoulder on the bridge, and Kim got out of the car.
Walking back to the accident, she found Ross and his buddy. Steam was boiling out of the radiator, as well as the ears of the driver with the dented back bumper. Kim approached them and Ross introduced himself.
He smiled at her, and she smiled back.
They were speaking casually in the school hallways between classes at first; she would wait for him after shop class and he would walk her home. By the semester’s end, he gave her his class ring. She looped a gold chain through it and wore it proudly around her neck to signify that they were now dating, officially.
Kim brought Ross home to meet her parents, and her father took an immediate dislike to him. “He’s going to break your heart,” Kim’s father predicted. “He’s a grease monkey and there’s no future with a grease monkey.”
Kim laughed and ignored her father’s warning. “We’re just dating,” she said. “I’m not marrying the guy.”
But her father’s prediction came true, and Ross broke her heart – for the first time -- during their prom night. She had planned to give him her virginity in a beautiful hotel suite with rose petals on the bed; he wanted to go bar hopping with his buddies. She vowed never to speak to him again, ripped the necklace from her throat and flung his class ring at him. They were now over, officially.
Kim cried to her friends and to her parents. But when she didn’t receive the support she was looking for, she called her Grampa. He listened to her carry-on over the phone for a solid hour, then calmly told her, “Life won’t get any easier, darling. But you’ll get a hell of a lot stronger.”
A few weeks passed and Ross reconciled with Kim just in time for graduation. This time, he didn’t give her the class ring. Instead, he gave her a Doberman pincer puppy and told her he loved her and wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. He wrote her a beautiful love letter, a poem really. And, it took Kim’s breath away. She named the puppy Zeus and took both boys into her arms.
“I can’t believe you could write such beautiful poetry,” she gushed. “It’s so unlike you.”
“You make me a better man,” he said, kissing her. It was all the explanation she needed.
Their first summer after high school, that first summer as adults, was the best time of her life. They had fun. They made love. And they made plans for the future. But the end of summer brought devastating news: a routine X-ray showed a suspicious shadow on her mother’s left breast.
It was nothing, Kim was told. The doctors were being overly cautious. And the way her mother worked out, took care of herself and ate properly, it had to be nothing. It certainly couldn’t be cancer…
But it was cancer. And her mother grew seriously ill.
Kimberly and her father focused on her mother's health and comfort. It consumed Kim’s attention and Ross couldn’t handle it. He moved on to another girl with more time on her hands and less drama in her life. Kim didn’t care. She didn’t have time to care. She wasn’t going to let cancer take her mother…
But it did, in the space of a few months.
Nor did it stop there. As the disease ate her mother from the inside out, it also ate away at her father’s soul. He was no longer the headstrong family man who built furniture and bird houses in the garage, loved the Florida Gators, pre-dawn fishing trips and his wife and daughter.
When the agent for the insurance company came knocking on their door, her father refused to speak with him. He didn't want to talk about final benefits and told the man to get out of his house.
The agent was understandably surprised, and he left the check on the kitchen table. It sat there long after the man left, and for days until Kim couldn't stand it any longer.
She pleaded with her father to get help and dragged him to grief counseling. Together, they talked to a patient, understanding psychiatrist named Natalie, who was a widow herself. She had the brightest blue eyes Kim had ever seen.
“Your mother's in a better place,” Natalie told them. But it offered little comfort to her father.
His heart withered when mother died, leaving an angry, brooding shadow of the man that was. Like his mood, he now sought the dark. All the blinds remained shut, the doors locked and their home became a silent and dusty memorial. Her father found every photograph of her mother that was ever taken, and he taped them to the walls. He stayed up all night watching their wedding and vacation videos. And when he finally lost his job, the fridge sat empty until the electric company eventually turned off the power.
Still, the insurance check sat on the kitchen table, untouched.
Kim met with
the grief counselor again, alone, and confided in Natalie all the details of her father's downward spiral.
“You need time to mourn and heal,” Natalie told her. “You can't do that and take care of your father at the same time.”
“What are you suggesting?” Kim leaned forward in the plush chair across from the psychiatrist.
“Get away for a few days.” Natalie's bright eyes enlarged like saucers. “Do you have family you could visit for a while? You know, to relieve the stress?”
Kim nodded, thinking of her Grampa.
After ensuring the cupboards were stocked with cans of tuna and tomato soup, and her father was as comfortable as possible, Kim left their dark home to stay with her grandfather. He was heartbroken as well, and mourning the loss of his daughter. Kim knew that. But she also knew that he wasn’t about to let her see it.
Sitting her down, he smiled at her and offered, “Life won’t get any easier, darling. But you’ll get a hell of a lot stronger.”
When Kim returned home a few weeks later, she found that the power had been restored, the refrigerator was full again and the bathrooms clean. The darkness had lifted. Not just within the house, but within her father too.
Even the insurance check that had been collecting dust on the kitchen table for the last few weeks had finally disappeared.
Kim was elated and thankful for the change. Her father was a new man. And to celebrate, he took her to dinner.
With Natalie.
“The shrink?” Kim couldn't believe it.
“She's a widow,” he answered. “And she's surprisingly good for me.”
Natalie made dinners and would set the table in the formal dining room. She used Mother’s good china. She reorganized the kitchen and redecorated the family room. All her mother’s knickknacks gradually disappeared, one by one. Mother could never convince her Dad to join the health club, but somehow, Natalie did. And then grocery shopping together. Then salsa dancing. A friend spotted them together late one night at the Danceteria and told Kim all about it. Every little disgusting detail.
And it didn't end there.
Kim came home one afternoon to find their framed family portrait that hung proudly over the fireplace mantle was replaced with a water color painting.
“That portrait is over ten years old,” Natalie shot back. “You all have Eighties hair.”
Kim didn’t care. The water color painting came down and the framed family portrait went back up. But it was a futile attempt to hold onto the past, and Kim knew that. And, she knew there was no stopping the inevitable.
“We’re getting married,” her father told her, in the formal dining room, over a dinner served by Natalie on her mother’s good china. “Your mother would want me to be happy.”
Happy? Yes. Replacing her with their trusted shrink? Moving into her home and into her bed with her husband before her corpse was even cold and buried? No.
Kim was inconsolable. Until that day, she had wondered how she would ever go away to college and leave her home and her father. Now she counted down the days till she would pack-up and leave.
Once she did, she didn’t look back.
The day after the wedding, Kim moved into the cozy townhome with her Grampa. He needed help with chores around the house, and needed someone to take care of him ever since Nanna passed. He paid for her to take some classes at Stillwater University.
Life was good here. She made friends with a crazy redhead named Mallory, who lived in the townhome next door. And Zeus loved to terrorize the little Pekingese that lived in the townhome across the parking lot. She also enjoyed the University; she could walk there from the townhome. In fact, she could walk almost anywhere in town – to the grocery store, to the bookstore, to the downtown restaurants. That was one of the things that she loved most about charming Stillwater. She was happy here. And even though she missed her mother and thought about her often, she felt like she was putting her life back together and moving on. Still she was lonely, and she missed Ross.
That’s why, one fall afternoon while she studied in the library, Kim was so surprised to find another poem slipped inside her school books. Again, it was beautifully written.
“Oh, Love rips the heart in pieces,
When distance fills the empty creases
Of time
And days become long stretches
Of pain and wretches
Of torment
When our love ceases.”
Kim promptly stood up in the quiet library with a noisy, boisterous rumble and ran to the large windows. Gazing outside, she looked down on the campus to find Ross standing there on the grass. He was waiting for her with flowers in hand.
She rushed out the library, bolting down the stone steps to the lower level and rushed to the doors. Then collecting herself, she calmly stepped outside and approached him. She suppressed a smile to coldly acknowledge him.
“I made a terrible mistake,” he pleaded. “Can you ever forgive me?”
Of course, she said silently in her head. Out loud, she wanted to make him suffer a little. “We shouldn’t even be talking,” she told him, hitting him on the shoulder. “After what you did, I can never forgive you.”
But she did, and that led to passionate make-up sex in the dark, empty auditorium. The four o’clock Dramatic Arts Class interrupted them, but they snuck out undetected.
Ross moved to the small college town to be with her. She introduced him to her grandfather and to Mallory. Zeus was happy to see him again. He found a job downtown at Eddy’s garage and even enrolled in a couple of classes at the University.
Kim and Ross dated again, like they were recapturing that magical summer. Everything was going great, until one fateful night when they couldn’t agree on a restaurant. He wanted pizza. She wanted Italian. They both wanted to end the relationship for good.
Kim raged home, furious, vowing to never speak to him again. But when she reached the dark townhome, she knew immediately something was wrong. Zeus was upset and barking. And Grampa was lying on the linoleum floor in the kitchen, unconscious.
It was bad. Really bad. She asked the landlord to help and they rushed him to the hospital. Doctors said that her grandfather had suffered a stroke. He would need round the clock care, and would have to live in a nursing home. Kim was distraught over the news.
She watched over him at the hospital. Both the doctors and nurses urged her to go home and to get some rest, but she refused to leave her grandfather’s side.
“I want to be there if he wakes up,” she insisted. “We’re all the family we have left.”
And she watched diligently over him until he was safely moved out of ICU into his own room and was awake again. But even then, she still spent hours and hours at the hospital. One night, she dozed off in the chair beside his hospital bed. When she woke, she found a note in her lap.
“You are the strongest, most loving woman I have ever met. You inspire me,” was all it said. She knew immediately who wrote it, and who had slipped it into the room while she slept.
When she made it back home, alone, she had never been more thankful to see Ross there, waiting for her.
“I heard about what happened,” he said. He kissed her, consoled her, and told her everything would be okay. The next day, he moved into the townhome with her.
Still, Ross was constantly up and down about their relationship. He left her, saying that the only way to keep her was to leave her - because he felt he needed to work on his temper, or he'd push her too far and lose her forever. That same night he changed his mind and asked her to take him back.
She did.
And they moved forward, together. Kim visited her grandfather every day in the old folks home and kept her grades up at the University. Ross worked at the garage downtown, and together they made a life for themselves, the kind Kim had always dreamed of – minus the fabulous career and penthouse apartment. Until one day, they were driving to the Dollar Store downtown.
“You know, there's actua
lly not a lot of stuff really priced at a dollar there,” Kim mentioned.
“Not possible,” he said. “Everything's a dollar. That's why they're called dollar stores.”
“Not true,” Kim insisted. “It's all a marketing ploy to get more people into the store.”
“Then they couldn't legally call it a Dollar Store,” he shot back, still trying to convince her. The fight escalated and Kim didn’t speak to him for three weeks.
Once again, he left her a note professing his love and asking her to meet him at Greico’s Italian Restaurant for dinner. There, he told her that she was “The One” and he couldn't let her walk away.
“I just don’t believe the sudden change in heart,” she said to him across the table, her eyes flickering in the candle light.
“It’s not a change of heart,” he said to her. “I’ve always felt this way, but I was scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“Change,” he said a little too quickly, then scrambled to explain himself. “Scared of growing up. Of the next step. Of the responsibility.”
Kim’s eyes watered, fearing that once again they had reached the impassable crossroads. “Growing up and taking on the responsibility is inevitable,” she said. “It’s going to happen to us whether we’re prepared for it or not. Whether we want to accept it or not.
She told him she didn't want to get hurt, and he assured her he didn't want to hurt her and that she was the love of his life. That’s when he got down on one knee and removed a ring from his shirt pocket.
Kim screamed, surprised and delighted, as he slipped it on her finger. It was an elegant Solitaire diamond ring with a thin, two-toned band, and it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She accepted and then everyone in the restaurant applauded.
She couldn’t wait to show Mallory.
Mallory of course invited them to a fancy dinner to celebrate. Addison made reservations at the most-exclusive country club in the county. Mallory was beside herself.