I try to play it cool the rest of the drive to Coalton, but the thought of this other guy keeps rattling around in my head. I’ve never felt real jealousy before, never cared if a woman I’d slept with or dated briefly found someone else or was just using me for sex or attention or branding on social media. It didn’t matter because I didn’t love any of them, not even Theresa Carmichael who I’d made the mistake of confiding in. But what I’m feeling for Alli feels like love, the words I love you not having been said yet because I don’t want to scare her away.
“How long since you’ve been home?” Alli asks me as we take the exit for the highway that will bring us north through the Cascade Mountains and eventually to Coalton.
“Two years,” I say, grateful I won’t have to actually drive into Mountainside, that I’ll only have to meet my brother and dad in Wenatchee.
“That’s a long time.” She doesn’t ask whether or not my relationship with my family is shaky, but it’s inferred. “It’s so beautiful this time of year, the way the trees start to turn color, how sometimes there’s snow on the ground by Halloween, especially up in Mountainside.”
I think about that, my memory taking me back to a time before anything really bad happened in my life, a good memory I’m glad to return to. “I was a mummy for Halloween when I was seven,” I tell her, grateful for something good to think about.
“Really?” She laughs, her earlier tension easing and replaced with excitement. “Are there pictures of this? I mean, I don’t think I ever saw a really good mummy on Halloween, too hard to do, at least for kids.”
“My mom made sure I was the exception,” I say with pride. “She ripped up white sheets and sewed the sections onto my pants and a turtleneck and one of my winter hats. She painted my face white and drew in lines to make it look like bandages. I was being a cocky little shit about it too. I knew how good it looked, better than my big brother’s zombie football costume, which was just his uniform from school and fake blood coming out the sides of his mouth. I’m sure there’s a picture of it somewhere.”
“Wow, I’d love to see it! I bet you got tons of candy too, huh?”
“You’d think so, but it snowed that Halloween—I think something like two feet. We barely hit a dozen houses before my parents said it was too dangerous to stay out.”
“Oh no.” She sounds so disappointed, and that’s exactly how I felt until my mom made it better.
“It wasn’t so bad,” I say. “My mom made up for it when we got home, making hot chocolate and popcorn, and I got to stay up late watching Halloween cartoons. It was pretty awesome.”
“Your mom sounds very awesome. You were lucky to have her.”
I was.
“I wish I had her longer,” I tell Alli, every day after her death feeling like one giant void that swallowed me up, a void I still felt stuck in until the day Alli poked her head into Sheila’s office.
“Of course you do, and I wish that for you too. There’s nothing that can replace a mom like that.” She squeezes my thigh and allows some silence to follow, not awkward silence, just time to put our thoughts back together, to pull out from the past and back to the present.
And it’s the present I have to hold onto when we cross the county line, Coalton and Mountainside getting closer. For all the reverence you’re meant to have for the place you grew up in, I have none, not since my mother died, not since everyone that should have looked out for a kid like me turned and looked the other way.
Maybe Alli feels the same in some ways, but I can feel her buzz with excitement when we drive into Coalton. No visitor could deny the quaintness of this place—it’s how the town that once depended on coal production stays alive, now serving tourists and travelers that are unable to pass up the downtown that has bright colored buildings filled with antique shops and cafes, hills and mountains surrounding its four or so thousand people.
“You’re excited to be back—I can tell,” I say.
She shrugs. “It’s only been a month, but there are things I really miss, and things I don’t if I’m being honest.”
“You miss your parents I’m sure.” She talks about them a lot, and it’s obvious to me that she loves them, even if she needed a break.
“I do, but I wouldn’t trade the Seattle experience—I wouldn’t trade you—for almost anything.”
God, she makes me feel good. And before she can direct me to the exact location of her parents’ house, I pull into the parking lot of a grocery store and park my SUV toward the back and underneath a big tree on its way to turning the color of rust.
“You need to load up on snacks or something?” she asks, her expression bemused.
“No. I just needed to kiss you before I lose my chance.” I lean over to her, my lips meeting hers, one of my hands sliding up her neck and into her thick hair, the other at her smooth side. Within seconds, I’m hard, as hard as I’ve been the other times I’ve been lucky enough to kiss her. I know this is as far as it will go for now, but it’s worth the discomfort of suddenly tightened jeans to feel her lips against mine.
Eventually, she eases back from me, catches her breath and smiles. “So you didn’t want to make out in front of my parents’ place, huh?”
“Couldn’t get you in trouble, but I do want to meet them. I know you have your reservations, but just think about it while I’m gone, okay?”
She nods in agreement, her brown eyes bright. “Of course.”
I’m early for my dad’s appointment. As I sit in the Land Rover and wait for my brother to text back or to catch them arriving in the parking lot, I wish I were back with Alli, even if it meant being closer to Mountainside than I’d have liked. When I dropped her off in front of her parents’ house—a green and white two story with planter boxes outside all of the windows—she asked me to drive off once she got out, but I couldn’t do that. I at least waited until what must have been her mother came to the door as Alli walked toward it.
I wonder what they’re talking about now, if she’s told them about me or if they haven’t given her a chance, going on and on about Wyatt’s brother instead.
Before jealousy can overwhelm me, there’s a tap on my window that startles me nearly shitless.
“Jesus!” I’m shaking my head as Keith stands outside laughing.
“Got you good, little bro,” he tells me when I step out of my SUV. I haven’t seen him in two years, but he’s acting like it’s only been a few days.
“Where’s Dad?” I ask, looking toward the empty pickup I bought Keith a few years back.
“I dropped him off right in front so he wouldn’t have to walk far. You didn’t see me?”
I shake my head. “Had my mind on other things.”
“How’s the rotator cuff?” He makes a show of slamming his hand against my back before stopping just in time and laughing. “You still going to be out all season?”
“Appears to be the case.” In between volunteering, being present for the games, practices and tape viewings, I’ve continued my therapy, though not with that pretty redhead I’d done a good job of offending. Six months from the day of my injury until full healing is still the timeline I’m being given, which makes playing this year impossible.
“Well, that sucks. So you think any more about Thanksgiving then?”
I hadn’t enjoyed a real family Thanksgiving since my mom died. My dad made some lame attempts a few times, but it was never the same. Mom used to be up at dawn cooking and making the entire house smell amazing, and then Aunt Angela would come over around noon with her husband, Uncle Harrison, and both sets of my grandparents would show up a little later. Us men—even when I was six or seven, I liked to think of myself as a man—would do our part setting the table before gathering in the family room and watching football.
“I don’t know. I still have to think about it.”
“You could meet Billy’s girlfriend. She’s pregnant, you know.”
“I didn’t,” I say of my little brother. “Didn’t even know he had a
girlfriend.”
“Well, he does. He’d be here today, but the poor kid couldn’t get out of work. Anyway, I’ve got myself a girlfriend too. She’s a librarian if you can believe it. Been almost six months, which is kind of a record for me.”
“I’m glad for you, Keith,” I say, truly meaning it. For all of my brother’s faults, he’s a good son and probably makes a decent boyfriend. “Should we go in? I’ll need to head right back after the appointment.”
“Oh, right,” Keith says, waving me forward, closer to the clinic, not seeming to take any offense at me rushing things along.
The neurology clinic in Wenatchee is nice, modern and staffed well. I’d offered more than once to pay for the best neurologist in Seattle—in all of the Pacific Northwest actually—but Dad had been stubborn, said he didn’t need to leave Central Washington to get good care.
And so here we are.
Dad’s already in an exam room, and one of the nurses guides us back to him. She gives me a double take, but she doesn’t ask if I’m really the Hunter Lawrence or request an autograph or a selfie like some people do. It’s nice to be left alone sometimes, to be treated like any other normal guy.
But I’m not normal, and as I approach the room, hear my dad talking in a shaky voice to whomever is in there with him, I can’t avoid thinking back to his part in making me feel that way.
“Your sons are here, Mr. Lawrence,” the nurse says after tapping on the door and being invited in. She steps just inside and waves us into the small room before quickly slipping back out and closing the door behind her.
“Please have a seat,” the other man in the room says, a man I presume to be Dr. Gerard, my dad’s neurologist. He’s friendly, wearing a white doctor’s coat with a stethoscope around his neck. He looks young for a doctor, but he’s still likely got at least ten years on me, maybe even fifteen.
I don’t even really look at my dad until I’m sitting in a chair just to the side of him. He’s gaunt and so much more frail looking than the last time I’d seen him. While he still has a thick head of graying dark blond hair, his beard is thin and scraggly, in need of a shave. I can’t help but to think that the outside of him finally matches what his insides had become after my mother died, weak and broken, forgetting he had three sons who needed him.
“Good to see you again, Keith,” Dr. Gerard says, shaking my brother’s hand. “And you’re Hunter, yes?” he asks, extending his hand to me next.
I give him a firm shake. “Yes, that’s right. Good to finally meet you.”
He thankfully says nothing about my role as quarterback for the Seahawks and gets right down to business. “As Keith already knows, and perhaps you do too, your father has been in my care for five years now. I’ll be doing a more thorough exam of him in a few minutes, but I wanted to take the time to answer any questions you may have about his deterioration and what to expect.”
“Deterioration?” It’s easy to see my father has gone downhill, but I’ve been dealing with him being sick since a few years after my mom died. It was actually my grandmother who told us Dad had Parkinson’s—early onset—that the tremors he was having weren’t because of his drinking but because of a neurological disorder he had no control over.
Since then, he’d go in to see a neurologist every now and again, his symptoms slowly getting worse but never to a point I’d been called in to have a serious discussion with a neurologist about it.
“Your father has done remarkably well fighting this disease,” Dr. Gerard says. “It’s rare to see it in individuals before the age of—”
“I know all that stuff,” I break in, not wanting to be rude, but wanting to get to the point. “What’s really going on?”
Keith lowers his head, and my dad finally looks me in the eyes.
“I’m not long for this world,” Dad says in a voice that is weak and shakes so much that it sounds like he’s on a rattling train. “This goddamn thing has gotten out of control.”
“But what about the medications?” I ask, sitting up in my seat, my heart beating faster and my stomach twisting. I might not have seen my dad in a long time, might have a hard time saying more than a few words to him, but I still fucking care whether he lives or dies.
“Those come with their own side effects,” Dr. Gerard fills in when Dad crosses his arms over his chest and shakes his head. “And their efficacy does decrease over time.”
“Tell him about the dementia,” Dad croaks out as his body trembles. “That’s a real walk in the park.”
“Yes, that’s also something we’re currently dealing with. Your father is having lapses in memory. His caregiver keeps a log, which I find most helpful. It’s just another sign of deterioration.”
“Fucking sucks,” Keith says under his breath.
“My goal today is to paint an honest picture for all of you. I talked at length with your father six weeks ago when he was here, and that’s all he wants, to know where he stands and for his family to know it as well.”
Nice. Real nice. I turn to Keith and shake my head, even if he doesn’t look me in the eyes when I do it. I’d come to this appointment thinking it would be uneventful, that in coming I’d prove that I still care about my father even if we’ll probably never deal with the mounds of shit between us. But what I walk into instead is something akin to an ambush. I’m pretty much being told my father is in the process of dying, and I have no fucking clue how to deal with it.
“He didn’t know you were this sick,” Keith says to Dad, pointing his thumb at me.
“That’s because he thinks he’s too good for us,” Dad manages to get out, his voice shaking with every syllable. “Big city football player, and he can’t be bothered to visit more than once every few years.”
“I’m not sure this is the tone I wanted to set for this meeting,” Dr. Gerard tells Dad.
“I see you more than I see my own son,” Dad tells the doctor. “Damn shame. I lose my wife, my sister-in-law, then my parents and my in-laws, and my middle son might as well be dead for all the times he manages to darken my door.”
I remain quiet, but I’m inwardly fuming. Keith doesn’t say a word, just squirms in his chair uncomfortably.
“Perhaps I could refer you all to a family therapist? It wouldn’t hurt considering—”
“Thank you, but no,” I say with authority. “I think my father and I can behave ourselves for the next ten minutes or so if you’d like to explain his condition to me. Isn’t that why you wanted me here, Dad?”
He’s quiet now, but I can tell he’s pissed. It doesn’t matter how many things I’ve bought him over the years or how much money I’ve given him. Somehow, he still finds a way to blame me for what’s wrong in his life, the son who made problems for him, the son who left town and didn’t look back.
Dr. Gerard takes the ensuing silence as an okay to continue. He spends the next twenty minutes telling Keith and I that there is no way to gauge exact life expectancy, but he’s fairly comfortable in saying he doesn’t see my dad living beyond one or two years at the very most.
One or two years, and my father could be dead.
It shouldn’t be a blow considering how many people I’ve already lost in my family or how fucked up my relationship is with my father, but it still hits me right in the gut. In one or two years, my dad won’t even have reached his sixty-fifth birthday, a hell of a lot longer than my mother or aunt saw, but it still doesn’t seem like enough. I continue listening, but when Dr. Gerard is done, I want to cry the way I did after I sat with Logan at the hospital. I hadn’t cried with anyone watching in what seemed like forever until I’d felt comfortable enough to do it in front of Alli. I should feel that way with my brother and my dad, able to show my emotions, but I don’t, and so I bottle them up instead.
I thank the doctor, get up, tell my dad goodbye and then let Keith know I’ll wait for him outside. My dad doesn’t try to stop me, doesn’t even say a word.
It’s another half an hour before Keith comes out into th
e crisp, autumn air, the sun reason enough for me to be sitting on a bench in front of the clinic instead of in my SUV.
“He’s just finishing up in there,” Keith says, sitting down next to me on the bench and sighing. “Sorry about that. I figured you wouldn’t come if you knew it was going be that heavy.”
I’d had time to calm down in the half hour I’d been outside. “You’re right—I wouldn’t have, or at least I wouldn’t have wanted to. But I needed to hear what his neurologist said, from him, not second hand from you.”
Keith lets out a short laugh. “And when have I ever lied to you, little brother?”
“Plenty of times,” I say, doing my best to push a grin onto my face. “You know how complicated shit is with Dad, ever since Mom died.”
My brother doesn’t say anything to that, stays silent for half a minute or so before he asks, “You think you might go up and see her? Her grave, I mean, her and Aunt Angela.”
The pit of my stomach churns at the reminder they’ve been in the ground for twenty years now. I pay for the cemetery they’re buried in to lay fresh flowers on their graves every week, but I haven’t been there myself in two years.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” is all I tell Keith.
“Yeah… okay. Well, I was out there last weekend with Madison—that’s my girlfriend’s name. Anyhow, those flowers you have them put out are really nice. Even Madison said so. Sometimes I think that’s what keeps the florist down on Main in business.” He laughs, but it’s an uncomfortable laugh. “Uncle Harrison came by a few weeks ago too. He was asking about having Aunt Angela moved. With him living out in Boise now, he says it’s too hard to visit her.”
“He wants to dig her up?” The only thing that ever brought me comfort as a child in knowing my mom was buried in the ground beneath us was that she had Aunt Angela next to her, that she wasn’t alone.
“I think we talked him out of it, but he’s divorced now, probably thinking back to how Aunt Angela was the one for him, how that lady he married after she died was just a substitute.”
The Ground Beneath (You and Me Book 1) Page 11