Chapter 3

A whole day in town by myself. Lena’s graduation in in a couple of days. I had appropriate clothes for attending that function. No, I didn’t need a suit. This is a high school graduation in the Deep South. I had a short-sleeved business shirt that I intended on wearing without a tie. The light blue shirt and slacks would put me in the upper quintile of the audience. Had I worn a tie, I’d be a one percenter. Ah, well...

Today, Lena’s in school, her last day before graduation. We have plans for dinner and a movie this evening.

“Date!” she says, laughing.

“Friends spending time with each other,” I countered, almost in self-defense. I was trying hard NOT to think of it that way. Age. Me at forty, Lena at eighteen. Personality. Me, set in my ways, Lena, bright, looking into the future. Okay, Jay, you’re just being helpful. It’s okay to like the girl.

Really like the girl.

But know you’re looking at ephemera, subject to be as long-lived as the rainbow colors of a soap bubble on a summer zephyr. I knew that a big part of it was purely altruistic, helping a bright young person who might really benefit from a bit of a boost. She helped Dad, therefore I will help her.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that.

I wandered around town, driving past the old school, the old haunts, marveling at the growth of the suburbs as people left the old neighborhoods. I sighed at that thought. Dad’s house, the house I grew up in, is in one of those older neighborhoods. In a decade it will ... Well, I can drive through some neighborhoods that are a decade or two ahead of Dad’s place in the timeline. I can see how far down those places have slid. Sad. Circle of life, though.

Nearing the end of the school day I’d managed to sink myself into a black, deep funk and I only partially understood why. I retreated to my hotel room. I was supposed to pick Lena up at five-thirty. At two I was in the room, lying in my bed, earbuds in my ears. That didn’t work, either. I got up to drive around a bit more.

At four the phone rang. Lena.

“Hi, Lena. What’s up?” I was hoping desperately that she wasn’t calling to cancel the evening.

“Not much. Uh, would you mind picking me up right now?”

“Something wrong?” There was a sort of note in her voice.

“No, not really. Just wanna sort of get away from here.”

“I’m on the way,” I said.

“Where are you? Hotel?”

“No. I’m just driving around. I need to change if I’m gonna pick you up, though...”

“Change later. Pick me up now.” She sounded uncharacteristically urgent.

“Oooo-kay, then. Five minutes out.”

“I’ll be waiting in the driveway.”

“Something wrong?” I asked again.

“Talk to you later,” she said.

I drove on, mulling the mysterious content of the conversation.

Nothing. Drive. Listen. My iPhone is bluetoothed to the truck’s sound system and I’m running my ‘All Mozart, all the time’ playlist. I navigate down familiar streets, spot Lena at the end of her drive, carrying a shopping bag in one hand. I stop on the street and let her climb in.

“Okay, what’s wrong?”

“Oh, Mom and I had a little spat,” she said.

“You sounded stressed.”

“I am. I graduate Thursday. Mom’s, well, she’s ... I don’t know WHY she’s so anxious to get me to move out. I mean, it’s just recently. Before you said anything about me getting a job up there, she was okay...”

“What’s your dad say?”

“Dad’s just Dad. He doesn’t say much. And he’s certainly not gonna contradict Mom.”

“You don’t think this has something to do with your sister’s hospital stay?” Lena’s little sister had gone in the hospital with a ruptured appendix, the result of a bit too much time spent on home remedies.

“Ughhhh! I know. But why am I a target?”

“Stressed out. People get stressed, they don’t follow logical thought patterns.”

“She said that she thought you and I had a thing going.”

“Uh ... What’d you say?”

“I told her that you were perfectly honorable and even if I DID have a thing going with YOU, then she should be proud that I made good choices.”

“You didn’t say that!” I blurted.

“I certainly did. We don’t have a thing going, but whatever ... Jay, I’m a good girl. Always have been. I go to church with my family every time we go. I even go by myself sometimes. It’s a beautiful Sunday morning walk. But I believe that stuff. I believe YOU when you say I get my own room and we’re perfectly platonic. But Mom wants to think...”

“Your mom is trying in her own mind to make up for having you leave home by telling herself that you really should be going, for any reason ... If you’re a BAD girl, it’s easier on her.”

“I’m NOT a bad girl, Jay,” she reaffirmed.

“I know that, Lena. Dad never said that. And if I thought you were, you wouldn’t be sitting in this truck. So what’s in the bag?”

“That dress you liked last night. I thought I’d wear it again. You don’t mind, do you? I don’t have much of a wardrobe.”

“You can if you want, but where are you gonna change?”

“Same place you are going to change. Your room.”

“Huh?!?” I blurted.

“We’ll go to the hotel, and when it’s time to go, one of us will use the bathroom to change. Privacy.”

“If you say so,” I replied. I regarded the creature next to me. She still had that rounded face and upturned nose that made her so ridiculously cute when she was a kid. Now she had a blush on her cheeks, accenting those pale blue eyes.

“What are you listening to?” she said, turning the volume back up on the sound system.

“Mozart.”

“Good stuff. I listen to everything, you know, but come on, you can’t beat this. What is that?”

“THE clarinet concerto.”

“Yeah, see, that’s what I like. He’s supposed to be doing a clarinet concerto, and the whole orchestra gets to feel like it’s important. Listen carefully to that flute line coming up.”

“How do you know this?”

“Music appreciation in high school. Most of the class was jocks who needed passing grades to play sports. I actually appreciated the music.” She smiled. “You must like this. It’s on YOUR stereo.”

We got to the hotel, went to the room.

“What TV channels can you get?” she asked.

I handed her the list. “Watch whatever...”

“What do YOU watch?”

“I put something on that doesn’t have a lot of yelling, then I read while it’s on.”

“Sounds kind of bland.”

“I’m by myself most of the time, and it works for me.”

“Are we going to fight over the TV?” she asked.

“Nope. If it gets too bad, I’ll get another one. I have one in my bedroom and one in the living room at the apartment.”

“You watch TV in bed?”

“Yeah ... It’s my way of easing off into sleep – put something mindless on, set the sleep timer, and doze off.”

By this time she’d kicked her shoes off and was rearranging pillows on one of the beds. She stretched out, turned on the TV. “We have an hour. Relax.”

I got out of my own shoes and assumed a comfortable position on the other bed. She turned, regarded me with a bemused look.

“Well, you didn’t assault me.”

“Who’d assault his best friend?”

“You keep saying that, Jay. I’m gonna start believing it.”

“Not hard to believe,” I said.

“How’s this?” she asked, waving the TV remote in the direction of the screen. I saw a crocodile with a menu in mind in an African river.

“That’s good,” I said.

“Like you said, Kinda mindless.” Snicker. “The crocodile wins this one...”

“Yeah, they do get repetitive,” I said.

“So you think we can do this?”

“Dinner and a movie?”

“No, silly. Coexist in the same apartment for months and not kill each other.”

“I think so. You know how to do housework. We share that. We’ll work in the same place, share a ride, unless you decide you want your own car and your own place.”

“Maybe later,” she said. “I think staying with you is a good way to get myself stabilized. I mean, it’s some risk – IF I can learn the job, and IF I can stand doing the job.”

We’d talked a bit about what her work would be. It would be a terror to me, I admitted, but it’s pretty good conditions and for somebody just starting out, it’s good money.

“You’ll do just fine,” I said. “Your biggest risk will be a pulled muscle from loading the printer. Those rolls of paper are big.”

“I really get excited thinking about it, Jay. But won’t I interfere with your life? I mean, living with me, isn’t that gonna cut into your dating prospects?”

“I don’t look at my situation there as providing dating prospects, my dear. Town girls that might be interested in us transient construction types aren’t usually candidates for extended relationship[s.”

“You’ve looked?”

“I’ve observed. There’s a difference.”

“What about other women you work with?”

“One is well advised not to fish off the company pier,” I said. “There’s a bit of that going on, but it’s usually short-lived and serial for both parties involved. I would prefer a prospective mate NOT have been in bed with most of the other guys on the job.”

“I couldn’t do that,” she sighed. “I see it in school. Girls and guys who’re just plain promiscuous. I couldn’t.”

“Good. I think you’re a pretty neat girl. Dad talked about you. He worried, you know. Said you were pretty and he was afraid you were naïve.”

“I’m not naïve,” she said. “I just have standards, and the guy who might meet those standards, it is highly unlikely that he will demonstrate them well in high school. Your dad was nice to me. I’m glad he cared.”

“He watched you dating.”

“I didn’t ‘date’ date. I went out with groups of friends, male and female,” she stated. “Besides, how much did you talk to your dad about me?”

“Dad talked about things that made him happy – his garden was one of them. You were another. And we’ve had this conversation before.”

“And you, like, paid attention? When your dad mentioned me?”

“Always paid attention when I got back here to spend time with Dad.”

“Yeah, I miss ‘im. I know you do, too, but I really do, you know. You remind me of him in a lot of ways.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Your expressions. Your eyes. I can see a lot of his looks in you.” She rolled onto her side facing me across the gap between the beds. “See?!? I pay attention, too.”

The thing is, she didn’t know how a simple move like that bored itself into my mind. Here’s this female person who is totally oblivious as to how she could just lay there in a monochrome T-shirt and jeans and make bells ring in my head.

Lena’s turn:

Eighteen years old, school, at least the high school part, is over, and Mom and Dad are broke. All those factors leave Angelina Crosby, that would be me, with few options in life.

My next door neighbor, a fine old man, a friend, and honestly a benefactor, passed away before Christmas. Mister Harris was the kindly grandfather missing from my life. I’d known him since we moved in next door to him. Three or four days a week I visited him that last few years, taking care of his light housekeeping, helping him keep his independence. He paid me with money, but that paled in comparison to the payment I received from him in conversation, stories, wisdom, just being around a good person.

I am the one who found him dead one day. Mister Harris loved his garden and worked in it daily. He had a little stool he took with him as he worked. He’d work until he got tired, he’d sit on his stool and rest, then get up, move it a bit, work some more. I helped him many a day. He loved it. Everybody in the neighborhood benefited from gifts of fresh produce.

I had expected to walk into his house, find him enjoying his afternoon coffee, that day. I didn’t. I called. I looked in every room of the house, calling his name. No answer. Then I went out into the back yard. There he was lying in one of the neat rows between turnips and cabbage just beginning to head up. He was already cold when I got to him.

I lost a friend. I spent a lot of time the next few days with Jay, Mister Harris’s son. I don’t know – we seemed to connect. He’s single – divorced. Works as an engineer, out of town on some construction project or another. Mister Harris was proud of Jay.

I’d known Jay since I was five. He was already an adult, but I sort of watched him come and go as I grew up. Now, here we are. I lost my own brother a bit before Mister Harris died. It was easy to talk with Jay about my loss and his loss and our loss.

I think that acquaintance became friendship in the aftermath of his loss. Before he left, we’d agreed to stay in touch – emails, phone calls, that sort of thing. I really think he was thinking he’s being nice to a friend of his dad, helping a kid who could use help, just being a friend.

My final year of high school. Mister Harris’s funeral sort of punched the fun out of the Christmas break. The last few months of the year. I’m not worried about graduating. The classes aren’t really hard. People, though, can be quite disappointing.