The Accident at 13th and Jefferson - Book 1 Only

by Brenda Carlton

  Chapter 1.11

  A couple of weeks after Josh was injured Tom made a decision. Over an amazing table of grilled bluefish and fresh tomatoes, mozzarella and basil and a small mountain of corn on the cob, ah the joys of summer, at Elaine’s house because it was her turn to make dinner, Tom shocked everyone by saying, “I want to go to the Philadelphia Zoo.”

  “The zoo? Why?” said Josh. “Besides I don’t think I could do it on crutches yet.”

  “I mean just me and Elaine. Not you kids,” said Tom. “Will you go to the zoo with me Elaine?”

  Elaine was as surprised as Josh was. “Have you ever been there before?” she asked Tom.

  “No,” said Tom. “Never have.”

  “What are you up to now?” said Max. “Are you making up for your lost childhood or something?”

  “I didn’t have a lost childhood. Just a different idea about wasting money on luxuries childhood.”

  “Education of all sorts is not a luxury,” said Elaine.

  “I know that. I didn’t raise me. We’re getting way off the point here,” said Tom. “Will you go to the zoo with me or not?”

  “Yes,” said Elaine. “I’ll go with you. It sounds like fun. I’ve never been there without chaperoning a bunch of kids.”

  “Can you take off work on Saturday?”

  “Josie can cover for me.”

  Josh said, “I wish we could go too.”

  “Maybe next time,” said Tom. And then he wouldn’t talk about it anymore.

  Tom and Elaine arrived inside the zoo around noon on a breezy partly cloudy but very hot day. Inside the main entrance several groups of excited children made lots of noise and one little girl nearly ran Tom over while he was examining the map, trying to get oriented. “Where do you want to go first? Do you have anything in particular that you really want to see the most?” Elaine asked him. Since he’d never been here before, she was willing to let his curiosity be their guide.

  Tom pointed to a feature on his zoo map. “See this thing called Bird Lake?” he said. “I really want to go there.” Some of the noisiest kids moved away and there was a moment of relative peace. Elaine was bemused. Of all the creatures he’d never seen in person before, he was the most interested in birds? There were plenty of them at home, granted not the more exotic ones. But still, little ones and the bigger ones like the vultures and the hawks and the herons, and the occasional sighting of a river eagle.

  “OK,” she said. “If that’s what you want. So why the sudden interest in animals, anyway?”

  Tom put on an exaggerated show of being offended. “I’m NOT just some grease monkey like you think,” he said. His face indicated that he was only playing. “I can have other interests.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with real work, only with a narrow mind.”

  He seemed to be pleased with that answer.

  “Can we see the gorillas,” Elaine asked. “I always wanted to spend more time with them.”

  “By all means,” said Tom with a bow. “The lady must see whatever she pleases.”

  At the gorilla exhibit, Elaine was content to stand quietly and watch for a long time. The gorillas outdoors were sitting around not doing much of anything. It was very hot after all. Inside there was a mother nursing a young baby. Elaine wished she could hold it. There was also an old male silverback sitting on the supersized stair arrangement examining an inner tube. Some youngsters kept trying to take it from him and he kept swatting them away. “Not too different from our kids, are they?” she asked Tom at one point.

  “No. Not really,” he said. Elaine looked at Tom from time to time to see if he was getting bored, but he seemed to be OK. “What do you find so fascinating,” he asked after a while.

  “They seem so almost human, but then also not human at the same time.”

  “I know this sounds dumb,” said Tom, “But I’m mostly surprised that they are real and not something that some movie person dreamed up.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Elaine. “Really.”

  “Are you ready to go to the Bird Lake yet?” Tom asked. He wasn’t pushing. He was being remarkably patient.

  “OK,” she said. “I’ve gotten my fill.”

  They walked the long way around the primate exhibit to see the orangutans and the chimps on their way out. They passed the large cats, but only observed them briefly and then they arrived at the lake. Tom walked halfway around the large lake studying the waterfowl. Elaine wanted to give him the same opportunity to immerse himself that he’d given her, so she didn’t talk for a while. She had the impression, though, that he wasn’t all that immersed. He seemed to have something else on his mind.

  He stopped at a bench that seemed to be what he’d really been looking for and asked with a questioning nod of his head if this was a satisfactory place to sit. They watched for a while. Presently Elaine asked, “Do you think the Canadian geese are part of the exhibit or are they just using the water as they’re passing through?”

  “I think they’re just passing through,” he said. “But I really like the swans, don’t you?”

  “They’re beautiful,” she said. The conversation died again.

  Finally he said, “Elaine, I brought you here to ask you something.”

  She didn’t see it coming. She should have, but she just didn’t.

  Tom slid off the bench, got down on one knee, pulled a jewelry box out of his pocket and opened it to reveal an acceptable diamond ring. Elaine was totally shocked. A young couple stopped about ten yards away to watch.

  “This is the real one, Elaine,” he said. “I’m not kidding around. Will you marry me?”

  He looked up into her eyes with more of his soul exposed that he had ever shown anyone, including Bonnie. Tom was intolerably nervous waiting for her response. In all of his imaginings about what she might say, he’d never imagined the real response.

  “Bonnie was my best friend,” she said.

  “I know,” Tom said, still on his knee, and afraid that this was not going to end well.

  “She was your wife,” she said, leaning forward. “It doesn’t seem right.”

  “I still miss her. I always will,” said Tom. He did not try to talk her out of her feelings, although he no longer remembered who had taught him that idea. It was now a part of him.

  He felt clumsy having this conversation on one knee, but he was afraid that if he got up he’d be giving up, so he stayed. The young couple moved away. When Elaine didn’t seem to be inclined to say anything-she was still a bit shocked, he supposed- he said, “Until death do us part has happened. I never expected that, at least not until we were about eighty years old. But it happened anyway.”

  Elaine said, with the most curious expression on her face, “Right. Until death do us part? Right, then.”

  Tom could see something happening inside her. He waited to see where her line of thought was going and felt a strong emotion. Love.

  “Does that apply to friends too?” she asked.

  Tom smiled gently. “I suppose,” he said. “Although I don’t think friendships have to be registered at the county courthouse.”

  “Not yet. Don’t start giving the government any ideas,” Elaine said with a smile. She was out of her trance.

  “Yes,” she said next. “I accept your proposal.”

  “Really?” Tom asked astonished.

  “Yes, really,” she said.

  “Thank God. My knee is killing me,” he said getting up gingerly.

  Tom put the ring on Elaine’s finger and then they kissed deeply on the bench, with Tom rubbing his knee at the same time, hoping she didn’t notice. He heard a loud meaningful cough behind them from someone who didn’t approve. He turned to grin at the person, who turned out to be three grandmotherly ladies. “We just got engaged, right here,” he told them.

  One of the ladies said, “Mazel Tov.” They all we
re smiling. Another lady, not to be outdone, said, “Together may you comb your great-grandchildren’s hair.”

  “Thank you. Thank you very much,” said Tom in his best John Wayne imitation.

  “He’s a keeper, honey,” said the third lady to Elaine.

  As Tom and Elaine were walking back toward the entrance arm in arm, with a bit of smooching now and then, pausing to observe anything that interested either of them with no plan at all, Elaine asked, “So how did you figure out that you had to do it by water? That was perfect.”

  Tom said, “Your friends at work clued me in. I did good didn’t I?”

  “Not bad. Not bad at all,” said Elaine. After a few more exhibits, the clinical discussions of the mating patterns of animals were getting to be more than either of them could bear. So they found a motel on the way home.

  Tom and Elaine decided to marry in November, thinking it wise to wait until at least a couple of months after the second anniversary of Bonnie’s death, which was also Josh’s sixteenth birthday. There was a spirited debate about which house to live in. Elaine had spent fifteen years on the gardens at hers and it would be like losing a child for her to give them up. The boys were in favor of Tom’s house because of the pool. Tom really didn’t care. A compromise was eventually reached. Tom and Josh would move into Elaine’s house and they would get a family membership at the YMCA and promise to take the boys frequently to swim in the outdoor pool in the summertime.

  Then there was the subject of money. Tom was astounded to discover just how profitable the garden center was. That income, combined with the money Elaine got from Wells until Max was eighteen, was more than enough to allow Tom to reconsider his options. Since the garden center was the big money maker, they discussed Tom quitting his job and helping Elaine manage it. She offered to make him a full partner. Elaine was getting tired of being completely responsible for it herself. Tom was leery because he didn’t know much about plants or about business. He could learn but he was finally forced to admit that he didn’t want that much responsibility.

  “Well, then, what do you want?” she asked. It was a fair question, but it threw him into a spin. He’d never thought about what he wanted. It was always a question of what he could do to keep the wolves away from the door.

  He tried to talk it over with the guys at work.

  “What would you do for a living if you weren’t doing this?” he asked Ray one day, right in the middle of offloading a pallet of drywall.

  “I was going to be an accountant,” Ray said. “I drank my way to failing my first year of college and here I am.”

  “An accountant?” said Tom. “I can’t picture that. Why an accountant?”

  “I like numbers. Pretty good at it too. All accountants aren’t pussies you know. I had an Uncle George who was one, and he was six feet four with hands like hams. Made good money.”

  “I don’t think I’d like accounting,” Tom said.

  “Don’t suppose,” said Ray.

  Jack said, “I wasn’t going to be anything. I just kind of took anything that came my way.”

  “So,” Tom asked him, “What would you do now if you could do whatever you wanted?”

  “Wow, that’s weird to think about,” he said. “Let’s see. I’d be a fisherman. I love to be out on the water. No dust.”

  “How about you?” Tom asked Frank. “What would you do if you didn’t have to do this anymore?”

  “I want to do this. Seriously. I never wanted to sit at a desk, or have anything to do with a big company and bazillions of different bosses. I want to look at something at the end of the day that wasn’t there when I started.”

  “That’s cool,” said Tom.

  “So what’s the deal?” said Ray. “Are you having a midlife crisis?”

  “No. I’m getting married in a couple of months. She’s got money. I could make a change if I wanted to.”

  “So what do you want to do?”

  “That’s what Elaine keeps asking me. I don’t know.”

  “Be an investment counselor,” said Jack. “I have a brother-in-law that does that and he makes big bucks.”

  “I don’t need big bucks. I’m just wondering if there is something I’d really like doing,” said Tom

  “Then give me the bucks you don’t need,” said Jack. “I need them.”

  Frank said, “How about selling something? You’re good at schmoozing people. And you can wear nice clothes.”

  “Naw,” said Tom. “It’s too high pressure. And I don’t like telling people they have to buy something if they don’t really need it, or can’t really afford it.”

  Much to Tom’s embarrassment the guys all laughed at that. “Since when have you gotten so virtuous?” said Ray.

  Tom decided to spit something out, just to see how it sounded coming out of his mouth. “I’m kinda thinking that what I really want to be is a teacher. Maybe elementary school. Little kids are so trusting. Everyone in the grown-up world is out for number one.”

  “Are you going to wear a skirt?” asked Frank, and they all laughed.

  “There are lots of male elementary teachers,” protested Tom.

  “That woman has turned you into a wimp already,” said Ray. “You’re out of your mind.”

  That night, Tom told Elaine that he knew what he wanted to do.

  “Good,” she said. They were sitting out on her patio, with tiki torches burning, and fourteen different kinds of white flowers that Tom could not identify, although Elaine was determined to teach him, all glowing in the sunset. She planned early in the spring for summer evenings such as this one. Tom didn’t know how he’d gotten so lucky. Josh was out of his cast, but still using crutches. He and Max were playing chess on a rug by the stone steps from the patio into the yard.

  “What do you want to do?” asked Elaine, when he didn’t go on.

  Tom took a sip of wine and said, “I want to teach elementary school.”

  “Really?” said Elaine. “Have I told you today that I love you? That’s fabulous.”

  Josh and Max looked at each other, and looked at Tom and, for once, decided that silence was appropriate. Maybe they were just growing up.