“I, uh, heard you were at the concert last night. I wish I would have gotten to say hello.”
“Great concert,” she said. “You looked…busy.”
So she had seen me. And she most certainly had the wrong idea.
“About that,” I said, speeding up my words. “You probably saw me with a woman and I wanted to call and let you know that she’s not someone I’m dating.”
“You hold hands with every woman you meet?” Abigail asked, accusation ringing in her voice.
Ouch. I wasn’t going to get away with much when it came to being around this woman. And though I didn’t like having to explain myself, the other side of me liked that she challenged me and stood up for herself.
“Not every woman,” I said, chuckling nervously. “Look, I don’t have long now, but let me take you out to dinner this week and explain everything.”
There was a silence on the line as I crossed my fingers and hoped I had gotten enough information across to peak her interest in at least hearing more over dinner.
Abigail sighed. “Okay…but it better be good.”
“It is,” I reassured. “Trust me, it is.”
We set a date for Tuesday evening and I told her we could email back and forth about an exact time and place. It would give me an excuse to be in contact with her between now and then and keep tabs on how she might be feeling about my coming explanation.
“And Jared?” she said as we were about to hang up.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for calling.”
“Of course,” I said, touched that her voice had changed from accusatory to sincere.
“It’s just that,” she stumbled, now the one who sounded as if she was explaining something. “Guys don’t usually call when they say they will. So…thanks.”
“You’re most welcome,” I replied, hanging up the phone and promising myself that I would always do what I said I would do when it came to Abigail.
A few short minutes later, I was back in my car driving to Chloe’s small apartment in Summerfield. I had a smile on my face as I thought about Abigail and how anxious I was to see her again.
There was something hard and guarded about her but after the few conversations we had had, I could tell there was also something soft and vulnerable in her. Both were sides I could see myself falling in love with in time and I was excited about the possibility.
As I neared the Summerfield Apartments, my smile faded from my face. Before I could look forward to a possible future with Abigail Witherspoon, I had to take care of some business with Chloe and I wasn’t at all excited about that. I had always had trouble with confrontation and it was more like me to run the other direction than to confront a situation head on.
But I was a man and I had to do the right thing. I had never had any issues with dating in the past so I wasn’t experienced in breaking up with someone. As the thought crossed my mind, I automatically felt silly. I wasn’t breaking up with Chloe. We weren’t even really dating. I just needed to ensure that she didn’t get the wrong idea about where I stood in her life. It wasn’t a break up…just an explanation. She might not even want to date me anyways. She might have a boyfriend, or even a husband for all I knew!
I walked up the three flights of stairs to get to apartment 3G, wondering how she climbed those stairs with Ian and all of the groceries she had had in her cart at the store. She was certainly a magnificent woman, I’d give her that. I respected her dedication to her son and the love that so obviously lay between them.
I lightly knocked on her thin door so I wouldn’t wake Ian if he were in bed. He seemed a bit too old for regular naps, but Chloe had said he got tired easily. Maybe even a trip to the store was enough to wear him out for the day.
The door swung open moments later and Chloe stood before me in a plain white, button down shirt and khaki Capri’s. Her feet were bare and her hair was braided down her back.
“Come in,” she said pleasantly, a light smile on her face.
I stepped inside the small apartment and glanced around. “Is Ian asleep?”
Chloe nodded. “He better be. I told him that he couldn’t come back out of his room until he lay in bed for 30 minutes. He was so excited about your visit but he really needs his rest. I heard him in there singing train songs a few minutes ago but he’s quiet now.”
“He’s a sweet little boy.”
Chloe’s eyes glistened with motherly pride, “He’s my whole world.”
As she said those words, I instantly forgot the statements I had prepared in my own house to say to her. Instead, all I could do was wonder why she didn’t want him to have the surgery that he needed so badly if he was indeed her whole world. Before I could get myself back on track with what I needed to say, I blurted out what I had wondered for so many days.
“Why won’t he have the surgery?” I asked, watching as Chloe’s face clouded with sadness.
“Come in and make yourself at home,” she said, gesturing to the small couch that sat close to the kitchen table where we had exchanged insurance information and phone numbers the day of our accident.
I sat on the couch and she slowly lowered herself into the faded chair beside it.
“It’s not that I don’t want him to have it,” she said. “I do. More than anything. It’s just that…surgeries are expensive. You see where we live,” she gestured to the room around us. “We just can’t afford it.”
“What about insurance?” I asked, glad that I was finally getting to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Ian.
“We had insurance,” she said. “But once Greg took off he lost his job and we lost our coverage.”
I caught the name Greg and decided to go back to that issue later. “What about your job? You said Cal took good care of you at the diner. Didn’t he give you insurance?”
“Cal is great. Wonderful, really,” Chloe said, wiping the palms of her hands on her Capri’s. “He gave me a job when I didn’t think I was even going to be able to afford food for Ian, much less health care. And we do have insurance through the diner, yes, but Ian’s condition is preexisting. No insurance company will touch a claim like that. The only hope we had was with Greg’s insurance and it was gone shortly after we found out a second surgery was necessary.”
I saw my opening. “Greg?” I asked, simply stating the name like a question.
“My husband,” Chloe supplied. “Well, I guess he’s still my husband, but,” she looked down at her feet. “Legally, at least.”
I waited for her to explain more if she felt comfortable doing so.
“Greg is bipolar. It’s something I’ve known since early in our relationship. He does really well when he’s on the right medications but the second he forgets to take a pill or simply decides he’s better off without them…well…things get bad.”
“Bad how?” I asked, trying to prepare myself for a story of abuse or harsh treatment.
“He disappears. Sometimes he’s gone for a couple of days, other times a week or more.”
“And this time?” I asked. “How long has it been?”
“A year,” Chloe said. “We moved. I got a job. I’m not even sure he would be able to find us now if he wanted to.”
For some reason, something about her story did not ring completely true, but I was in no place to push my questioning any farther than I already had.
“And do you? Do you want him to find you?”
Chloe shrugged. “I’m not sure how it would help. He left us when we needed him the most. When Ian needed him the most. There’s really not much hope left now. We’re happy on our own. I kind of want Ian all to myself until…” Chloe trailed off, unable to finish her sentence, but I knew what she meant. She meant she wanted Ian to herself for the rest of his life, however long that might be.
We sat in silence for a few beats while I soaked in her sad story. It finally made sense. It wasn’t that Chloe didn’t want her son to have the surgery. In fact, she did. Desperately. It was simply that she could not
afford for him to have it. It would be any mother’s nightmare. There her son was, right before her eyes, withering away. And she knew what was wrong and yet there was nothing she could do to fix it.
“How much is the surgery?” I asked, breaking the silence in the room.
“With the surgeon fees, the long hospital stay, the rehabilitation…it would probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of $40,000-50,000.”
I sighed. Fixing Chloe’s car had been one thing, but tens of thousands of dollars was quite another. I was single and I didn’t have many things to spend my money on, but even I didn’t have that kind of cash.
As I ran the scenario through my head, an idea began to form. An idea that as it shifted around in the air before me, started to look more and more plausible. “What if I said I might be able to get that money for you?” I asked, not wanting to get her hopes up too high. A lot of things would have to fall into place for it to happen.
Chloe waved me off. “You’ve done too much already,” she said. “Did you not notice that beauty of a car in the parking lot?”
As Chloe discretely wiped the tear from beneath her eye, I vowed that I was not going to be pushed off just because she had too much pride. I was going to go forward with my idea and see where it led.
Before I could say any more or ask anything else, I felt a small finger poke me in the side of the face.
“Music man,” the tiny voice said.
“Ian!” I said, swiveling so I could look the child in the eye. “Did you have a nice rest?”
“The potty is a zero,” Ian said, ignoring my question.
“Well,” I said, pondering the idea, “You’re right, I guess it is shaped like a zero!”
Chloe laughed from her chair. “It’s his new thing. He likes to point out the shapes of everything. I don’t know how many times octagons have stopped him in his tracks.”
“You like shapes, huh?” I said addressing Ian again.
He shook his head vigorously. “And trains,” he said as he climbed the side of the couch and landed in my lap, a move I wish I could still do at my age.
“Sorry,” he said, climbing to the other side of the couch and reaching between the cushions, from which he extracted a colorful plastic train. “See?”
“I do see!” I replied, having a great time finally conversing with the child that had so captivated me at first sight. He was delightful and at the moment, he didn’t even seem sick. “What do you call that train?” I asked, expecting a name.
Ian shrugged. “You know…choo choo!”
I laughed and Chloe rolled her eyes.
The afternoon flew by and I couldn’t believe how nice it was to talk with Ian and play trains with him once he extracted another engine from beneath the cushion I had been sitting upon.
I finally excused myself just before dinner. I didn’t want to impose and I didn’t want Chloe to go to any trouble. I also didn’t want to eat any of her food, knowing her situation.
“Thanks for stopping by,” she said at the door. She had forced Ian to lie down on the couch and watch Mickey Mouse cartoons for a few minutes to calm himself. “It’s nice to see Ian relate to someone other than me. I’m kind of selfish with him.”
“I can see why. He’s a great kid,” I replied, glancing over her shoulder to catch a last look at his blonde hair on the couch. “I meant what I said, you know,” I said. “About the money. I have an idea.”
“You’re sweet,” Chloe said, taking a step further and reaching for my hand. “Really, Jared. You’re very sweet. Thank you for being so kind to us.”
I took that as a good sign. She hadn’t told me to forget about it a second time. She didn’t want me to give up on my idea, though she didn’t exactly know what it was.
I didn’t realize that I hadn’t told her about Abigail or my blossoming relationship with her until she stood on her tiptoes, much as she had the night at the concert, and lightly placed her lips on mine.
I jerked back slightly, a look of surprise on my face. “I’m sorry,” Chloe said immediately, dropping my hand and looking back over her shoulder at Ian, who was deep into his cartoon. “I shouldn’t have done that. I know this is an awkward situation. What with Greg and all. But I can’t help the way I feel about you.”
I blinked at Chloe. What she said would have been so perfect had she not said it in a way that sounded as if she were reading it from a script. I wasn’t sure what to say but as I looked down at her, her eyelashes downcast and staring a hole in the ground, I finally thought of her as beautiful, despite my best intentions to turn her away.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I found myself tossing and turning all night with the vision of two women in my head. It was not a problem I had ever had before and I was quite certain I did not want to wrestle with the issue much longer. I had been so sure that Abigail was the one I would choose. But then Chloe had told me she had feelings for me and she had looked at me in just that certain tender way.
I did my best to turn my mind off, but in reality, once it got going on Chloe, it automatically turned over to Ian and then I knew I was doomed. I had an idea and I couldn’t get rid of it. The fact that it was the middle of the night and I really needed rest, not to mention the fact that there was nothing I could do on the idea until the next day didn’t seem to matter.
I found myself pacing back and forth in my kitchen, almost willing Evan to appear. After one lap past the fridge, I glanced at the empty chair that he normally occupied. Even though he had never really told me what I should do, I knew his presence would at least make me feel at peace. Maybe then I could get some sleep. Apparently Evan liked to surprise me, though, because he did not appear that night, even after an hour of pacing and hoping.
I fell into bed with exhaustion just 30 minutes before my alarm went off, at which time I trudged back to the kitchen and turned the coffee maker on, attempting to add water and beans with my eyes half shut. I didn’t want to be awake, but since I was, all I wanted was for half of the day to be over so the station manager would be in and I could finally get my idea out of my head and into the air, in front of someone who could actually make it happen.
I turned the shower on cold and let the chill wash over me as my body woke up limb by limb. The first slug of black coffee helped more and I felt my eyes opening wider and wider. I would make it through the morning show. I always did. Time was the only thing between me and the idea that had kept me tossing and turning all night long.
The morning show went seamlessly and I was able to act as I always did, like the guy without a care in the world who wanted to have a good time and entertain as many people as possible.
The second the show was over, I trudged into the station manager’s office without knocking and cleared my throat.
Tom Schwab had been the manager for as long as I had been at the station and he was good at what he did. He was not good, however, at typing. He sat at his desk, attacking his computer, one key at a time. If I hadn’t been looking right at him, I would have thought he was stabbing it violently with a pen. Every time I saw him type, I had a new appreciation for his emails. They must have taken him a year to type out.
“Got a second?” I said, after I realized he did not hear my entrance or my throat clearing over his keyboard violations.
“Jared!” Tom said, looking glad to have a reason to end his fight with the keyboard. “Any time! Come in!”
Tom had a jovial way about him, but he could also be very serious and to the point. I knew I would be able to read his thoughts based on his body language alone and I hoped I could fine-tune the idea as I put it into words so that he would appreciate what I had come up with so far.
“I wanted to run something past you,” I said, sitting on the edge of the uncomfortable chair that sat haphazardly in front of Tom’s desk. “An idea I have for the station. Sort of a…promotion, you could say.”
“Let’s hear it,” Tom said, direct and to the point.
“It’s sort of a fundrai
ser type thing,” I began and I noticed the sparkle in Tom’s eyes brighten a bit. The station did several big fundraisers over the years. We called them promo drives. They weren’t my favorite part of the job, but I endured them because they only came up a couple of times a year. We would raise money for the local homeless shelter or we would gather donations to build wells in Africa or some other noble cause. The problem I had with them was that the station also made money from the promo drives. In Tom’s view, it was a mutually beneficial event. The organization would get publicity and funds and the station would be seen as charitable while also making money. I always felt the station should do the promo drives for free with the simple knowledge that it was doing a good thing. But in the end, it wasn’t the way the business worked.
Seeing Tom’s eyes light up meant that I had him on the hook, but I had also misled him a bit and I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression. “I met this mom recently,” I said, “and her son needs surgery.”
“A heart strings story,” Tom said as he nodded, the sparkle in his eye still there, but his body leaned back in his chair, not quite as engaged.
“For sure,” I said, acknowledging the fact that if we put Chloe’s story on the air, it would certainly tug at the heartstrings of any listener who happened to tune in that day.
“Anyways, her family can’t afford the surgery and I thought some version of a promo drive to benefit them would really help.”
I could see the spark in Tom’s eyes fade as what I was saying was starting to sink in. He quickly realized the station would not make money from the event since the single mom in question was not an organization with power to buy ad space.
“You mean, give away air time to raise money for this woman?” he asked, giving me the benefit of the doubt.
I knew I had to come up with something fast or I would lose him. He needed to somehow differentiate this fundraiser with the others. In the normal promo drives, we would simply go on the air, tell stories, make pleas for the cause at hand, and take phone calls. During the normal promo drives, we would also make money ourselves. This had to come off as a whole different event or Tom was going to turn it down flat.
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