Chapter 13: Trust, Mistrust and Bonding?

Monday June 27

I wasn’t feeling too charitable towards my younger sibling when I crawled out of bed. He snores!

“Wakey, wakey!”

{groan}

“Get up! It’s a gorgeous day!” I said as I bounced on the side of Phil’s bed.

“Go away,” he said, as he tried to shove me off the side of his bed.

“We have the breakfast surprise,” I whispered conspiringly.

“Okay ... okay, give me a minute,” Phil groaned.

I was an evil genius. I was finally going to get my brother and dad for all the times they’d stolen my favorite doughnut, Boston Cream. It had a chocolate frosting and a creamy vanilla-flavored custard filling. It is the perfect doughnut, in my humble opinion.

The evil men in my family knew it was the superior doughnut and that I would do just about anything to have one. Since Greg had moved out, I only had to contend with my dad stealing them. When we got doughnuts, Mom would make sure to get one for each of us. She limited it to one each because she knew we would each eat a dozen of them if she bought that many. Having just one made it a special treat.

I think she secretly liked to watch us fight over them. The last time we had them, Dad had shown his childish side: he’d licked both doughnuts and then ate them in front of me.

Today I would get my revenge, with Phil’s help.

I’d brought him in on the fun so he wouldn’t think we just picked on him. He was the youngest, so I thought it only fair he make up for the years he wasn’t around in which I caught the abuse as the youngest. It was sort of a passing of the torch that had been delayed too many years.

We came out to find Dad and Uncle John sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee.

“I thought I saw Phil bought doughnuts,” Dad observed.

“I hid them because I knew you’d get all the good ones before anyone else had a chance,” I said, with a sense of self-righteousness.

Uncle John and Dad looked at each other and little smirks touched their faces. Greg and Paul came out of their room.

“What’s for breakfast?” Greg asked.

“Phil got doughnuts, but David hid them,” Dad announced.

I went to my secret hiding place and pulled them out. I put them over the refrigerator in the cabinet. Everyone knew that was where I hid things, especially cookies because my mom was too short to get them from there. I had a sneaking suspicion that either Dad got them down for her or she used a chair because there always seemed to be some missing.

“I had Phil get six Boston Creams so we would each get one,” I announced, to make it clear that Dad and Greg only got one.

Phil got napkins and I had him make a big show of each of us getting one.

“Hey, look! Is that a bear?” Uncle John said as he pointed out the big picture window.

Phil and I jumped up to go look.

“I don’t see it,” I said, using all my acting skills.

Phil and I turned around to see Greg and Dad had stolen our doughnuts.

“Hey!” Phil complained.

They made a big show of licking them.

“You two are just not right,” I complained.

The four of them must have worked it out beforehand because they all took a huge bite out of their doughnuts at the same time. The look of pure joy on their faces slowly changed to ones of concern. Phil was terrible at pranks because he gave it away when he began to giggle. They all spit out their bites.

“What the hell did you put in them?” Greg asked.

“Mayonnaise. I called ahead and had them specially made. I told the baker we were from down south and it was a special treat. It worked, I got him to make them just for you,” I said with a big smile.

I high-fived Phil. It felt good to finally turn the tables on my tormentors.

“This doesn’t bode well,” Uncle John said seriously. “When did we become the target of pranks?”

“I kept warning everyone. Someday, David would get even,” Greg noted.

“They had something different, so I thought we might try them,” Phil said as he got out another box of doughnuts. “Maple-bacon doughnuts.”

They had maple icing and bacon crumbles on top. We all agreed that it sounded weird, but Phil had picked out a winner. Only in Canada would they think of such a combination.

It was decided that we would go three to a boat. Paul said he should be in the same boat I was. I wasn’t quite sure what he would protect me from on the water, but I wasn’t about to point that out. Uncle John went with us.

The lake was massive. The area was called the Trout Lake Conservation Reserve and was a protected area in the Red Lake District. On the west coast of the lake was a Provincial Nature Preserve. The man that ran the resort told us that Trout Lake was a deep cold-water lake with a maximum depth of 150 feet. There were several types of fish: walleye, northern pike, lake trout, lake whitefish, white sucker, red sucker and ling.

Over 500 islands dotted the lake and, according to the map, it joined up with a chain of other lakes and rivers.

I wanted to catch a few walleyes for eating. Northern pike was my second choice, for the sport. It turned out Paul was something of an expert. His family had regularly gone fishing in Canada as a family vacation while he was growing up. He pointed to a protected bay with a weed bed.

“Let’s have some fun and go after Northern Gators, or that’s what my dad calls them. All fish are predators, but pike are in a league of their own. It will only take a few casts before you find if there are any around. They’ll hit just about anything, but I’d suggest we try a couple of different lures and figure out what they want. We can then all switch to that,” Paul suggested.

Devin had sent us everything we needed, including two different rods for each of us. Paul had us use the heavier of the two and showed us how to tie on a twelve-inch steel wire leader. Pike could bite through the fishing line without any trouble, so the wire leaders were pretty much required. Uncle John was given a spoon lure.

“Start by steadily and slowly reeling, just fast enough to keep the spoon wobbling. If that doesn’t produce, try a flutter retrieve. You do that by using a jigging motion as you reel,” Paul advised.

I was given a white spinner lure. I stood up and he pointed to what looked like a small log on the edge of the weed bed.

“Cast past that point, and when you get close, I want you to pause for a three count and then begin to reel in,” he advised.

Paul picked a big spinner for himself. On the first cast, Uncle John got a big hit and his pole bent like he had a monster on it. While he fought it, Paul gave him tips.

“Keep your rod tip up, don’t let it drop or it’ll give him enough slack to either shake off or snap the line. Let him tire out a little before you try to muscle him.”

When he got it near the boat, I could see it was a big fish.

“David, grab the net. If it were less than ten pounds, we could just grab him behind the head, but he’s too big. Let me take the lure out of his mouth so you can see how it’s done,” Paul said.

Uncle John fought the fish for a few minutes before he could get him close enough that I could dip the net in front of him and scoop the fish into the boat. Northern pike have a slimy, almost mucus-like coating. I got him out of the net and handed him to Uncle John. Paul used a jaw spreader and needle-nose pliers to get the lure out of the fish’s mouth. I grabbed the camera and took Uncle John’s picture. Paul weighed it and it came in at sixteen pounds.

That set the tone for the morning. Paul would work us into a likely spot, we would each catch three or four fish and then move on. Paul had the biggest at twenty-two pounds, but we were consistently catching six- to twelve-pounders.

We decided to go in for lunch and found that Dad had beaten us back. We hadn’t been able to contact Dad’s group, because there was no cell service. Nor, for that matter, was there Internet service. It actually was kind of nice that we could be so out of touch with the rest of the world this week.

The resort office had a satellite phone you could use if you had to, but not being able to use our phones or have any Internet access was one of the big reasons Dad and Uncle John had picked this lake.

The resort also provided a free shore lunch. All you had to do was provide the fish and they would fry it up for you. Paul went with Phil and Greg to show them how to clean the walleye they’d caught.

Talk about a perfect lunch. Freshly caught fish served with fried potatoes and onions. Of course, if you had this for any length of time, your arteries would clog up, but dump stuff into hot oil and get it crispy ... yum.

I even joined everyone in drinking a beer.

The wind picked up, so we took the afternoon off to kick back and relax, or that was what they told me. I think the others needed to sleep off their hangovers. I’d downloaded some e-books before leaving home, so I went out on the deck that overlooked the lake and read. There was movement inside; it was Uncle John. It looked like his nap was over.

I’d started to get antsy with the questions I had from last night, so I went to talk to him.

“Got a few minutes?”

“I wondered how long it was going to take you,” he said as he smiled up at me.

He followed me back out to the deck and sat beside me.

“I’ve been thinking about the circles of trust, and you said that family was normally in the first circle, the one you trusted the most, but then again they may not be. I can see that, and for the most part, I agree that my family will be in my closest circle. What I was wondering was does that trust have to be for everything, or is it situational?” I asked.

He got a smile on his face that was both thoughtful and sad. Somehow, I knew not to ask about it. So instead, I told him about Mom’s blind spot with Tami, and how it affected me and how I felt about it. I also talked about when he wouldn’t keep Angie’s deliberately getting pregnant to himself, and the fallout from that revelation to the rest of the family. I had a real problem with trust, even with my own family, and I realized it bothered me a lot more than I’d ever consciously thought.

When I finished, Uncle John smiled gently.

“I’m not going to get into that situation specifically right now but let me give you a few more factors to consider while you’re thinking,” he said.

“First, everyone—everyone—finds at some point in time that people they trusted have let them down or betrayed them. Each time that happens, they’ll start to doubt their friends, and they will even start to doubt themselves.

“You can’t go through life that way. When it happens, you have to recognize that they’re human, and they’ll make mistakes. When it happens, take a deep breath and decide if it was a mistake or if it was done deliberately to harm you. That’s when you have to evaluate what happened, learn from it, change your evaluation of the other person a bit, and move on.

“But you can’t wall yourself off. We’re social beings, and you know better than most that you can do anything, but you can’t do it by yourself. One of your most admirable traits is that you’ve always known how to get coaching or help from others when you needed it, while not losing yourself in the shuffle. Keep doing that.

“Looking at it from the perspective of circles of trust, this isn’t about one size fits all. With anybody, there may be hot buttons or blind spots where the trust isn’t as deep, or may not even be there at all. That’s normal, and you won’t share your deepest thoughts with someone about those facets of your life, even if you trust them with everything else.

“There also are some things you might not like to have happen, but that those you trust will do for the greater good. For example, you can trust that if your mom, or your dad, or I, think it’s in the best interests of the family as a whole to share something, even if it’s been told to them with an expectation of privacy, we will. We won’t do it lightly, but we will always be guided by the thought of what’s best for everyone in the family.

“I want you to view this as a framework for your guidance. It’s not something rigid. There will always be small exceptions or cautions when you apply the perspective you get from it. The number of circles you use, and what you call them, is up to you. Just make the concept a useful tool for yourself and try to keep it simple so the thoughts don’t overwhelm you,” he explained.

I’d been looking at the circles as an all-or-nothing proposition and was having a hard time figuring out where people fell into them. My mom had my back and I felt comfortable telling her anything, except when it came to Tami. I even understood that Uncle John would support my dad if there was ever an issue between Dad and me because I would do the same for Greg. That didn’t mean that Uncle John or my mom should be moved into another circle. I just had to be aware of what I trusted them with, which was almost everything.

I looked at him and nodded, and then he smiled.

“I think they’ve slept long enough. Let’s get everyone up and go fishing,” Uncle John said.

It turned out it really was too windy and most of the people at the fish camp had stopped fishing for the day. The clubhouse had pool tables and was set up for the evening meals. I challenged my brothers to a game of pool while everyone else found a table to kick back and relax at.

I was whipping my brothers’ butts while Dad and Uncle John had gotten up to talk to other anglers spread out around the room. That was when a girl’s voice had us all turning our heads.

“I can do this, Uncle Ethan, just give me another chance.”

“GD nitwit. It was good someone saw us or we could have been stuck out there overnight,” Uncle Ethan said as he walked off, leaving the girl at the door.

The poor girl looked like she was in middle school, a slim wisp who seemed better suited for a stroll in New York than for fishing. Her uncle was a completely different animal. He looked like he worked with his hands, outdoors. I shook my head when I saw the cigarette dangling from his lips. I could tell that she might cry.

“Here’s your chance. Go talk to her,” Greg encouraged Phil.

“I bet she’s a virgin, too,” I said with a straight face.

Phil’s face went bright red and he said an unkind word about my parentage and stormed off. Greg and I smiled at each other. The girl was still standing in the doorway, not sure what to do.

“Hey, you, come here,” I said.

She looked at me and realized that I was talking to her. She ducked her head and came to me.

“Our stupid brother bailed on playing pool with us. Do you think you could take his place?” I asked.

“I’ve never played,” she admitted.

“You can’t be any worse than Phil. We’ll teach you,” Greg said.

“I’m David and this is my brother Greg,” I said as an introduction.

“Madison,” she said, and then her eyes got big. “You’re a movie star.”

Greg loved it because Madison would stare at me the whole time we played pool. To distract her, I tried to get her to tell us why her uncle was mad at her.

“Uncle Ethan had to take me on his fishing vacation because I got into trouble at home,” she admitted.

“What did you do?” Greg asked.

“I got stuck in a tree,” she mumbled.

Greg and I looked at each other and then back at her.

“I think we need a little more detail than ‘I got stuck in a tree,’” Greg said.

She put her head in her hands and I thought she might start crying again. Then she looked at us and shook her head.

“I live with my mom and grandma. Grandma has pretty much raised me since my dad disappeared when I was seven and Mom had to go back to work. Grandma is ... different. She hears voices and is very Catholic and she sometimes scares me. When she gets too bad, I go live with my aunt and uncle for a while until she’s better.

“Jimmy Howard lives down the block and is older. My best friend Kayla lives next door to him and told me that he, uh ... can be seen before going to bed. She watches him through her bedroom window. I asked if I could come over, but my grandma had said something nasty to her mom, so I wasn’t allowed. They have a big oak tree in their yard, so I decided I would watch him from there,” she said, and then stopped.

Greg and I looked at each other again.

“I think you’re leaving out the good parts,” I prodded.

She blushed.

“Come on, spill it,” Greg said with a big smile.

“Okay. I guess I’ll never see you two after I leave,” she said, and then took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Jimmy got undressed and got into bed. I was getting ready to leave, but he got out his tablet ... and ... uh ... you know...”

“Spanked his monkey,” Greg offered.

She gave us a nervous giggle.

“It would’ve been fine, but I screamed when I saw it. I’ve only seen little ones. He was huge,” she said with big eyes. “That was when he saw me.”

“And...” Greg prodded.

“I sort of almost fell out of the tree. I would have, except my foot got caught and I was hanging upside down and yelling because it hurt. Next I knew, the whole neighborhood was gathered around the tree, and they could see my panties,” she said, and stopped again.

I could see how that would attract a crowd.

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“Someone called the fire department and my grandma was down below screaming at me to cover up. She was the one that made me wear skirts. I had bigger things to worry about than whether the neighbors could see my underwear. When the firemen got me unhooked, I begged them to take me with them because I knew my grandma was in one of her moods.

“My aunt and uncle came and got me. My uncle had planned this trip, so I had to go with him because I wasn’t allowed to be left alone,” she finished.

“Because you were peeping?” Greg asked.

“I don’t think I like your brother,” she said to me as she pouted.

“That’s okay. I don’t like him much most of the time, but he can grow on you,” I shared.

“Why is your uncle mad at you?” Greg asked.

“I accidentally let my line out while we were coming back and it got tangled in the prop. We had to get towed back and they had to take the prop off to get the line out,” she admitted.

We should never have gotten Madison talking. The good news was she was funny, but by the time we went back to our cabin to eat dinner I was worn out from listening to her. I was also glad to leave because she stared at me the whole time, to the amusement of everyone there, including her uncle.

We sat around the fire in the main room of our cabin so Uncle John could continue our ‘lessons.’ He repeated the thoughts he’d shared with me this afternoon, and then continued.

“Now that I’ve talked about these circles in generalities, I need to add a few more minor nuances. The first one is trust relationships aren’t static. People can move from one circle to another from your perspective, sometimes instantaneously, based on something they’ve done or said, or something they’ve refrained from doing. That’s not necessarily good or bad; it just is.

“You will also find you trust some people implicitly in some areas, but not others. You may trust someone implicitly with everything except one subject, due to their own experience or perspective. That’s okay, but you do have to factor it into how you interact with that person in specific situations.

“A third point to always keep in mind is that trust requires some sort of action. It’s an active verb. You can’t earn trust by words alone, and you can’t give trust purely based on words. If you do, you’re basically not being responsible to yourself,” Uncle John explained.

Then Uncle John held up his clipboard and pointed to the bottom half of the sheet.

“Now, we’re going to talk about the bottom half. This is the area that can get dicey.

“This set of circles represents people whom you believe are not good for you or who you mistrust for whatever reason.

“At the center of that circle is anyone you mistrust completely. Stated another way, these are the people out to cause you harm. Sadly, some people will have enemies who fall into that category,” Uncle John said, and he looked at me.

“I’ll bet you can think of people you seriously mistrust off the top of your head,” he said.

I gave a snort at that. As soon as he said it, I’d thought of Cal, Mike Herndon, Brandon, and Tommy Cox. Then I also thought of Baby Dick, Brad Hope, and the two feminazis. I already had a rather large list for someone my age.

“In the next circle out from the center is another group of people. These are people who don’t necessarily have any malice towards you, but if something hurts you but helps them, they’re all for it, and they’re indifferent to any harm it causes you. These people seem nice enough, but you can count on them to throw you under a bus at the drop of a hat if they decide it’s best for them to do so.”

This one I had to think about. The Ford Models people certainly fit this category. At one point, I thought my movie agent, Ari, would fit in this circle. Now, I wasn’t so sure; the jury was still out on him.

“David, do you remember why you don’t have to put a lid on a bucket of crabs?” Uncle John asked.

“Yeah, it’s because if one crab looks like it’s going to succeed in climbing out, the others will pull it back down.

“When you told me about the crab bucket, I looked it up on the Internet to see if you were telling me a story since I didn’t have a bucket of crabs lying around. They call it ‘crab mentality’: ‘if I can’t have it, neither can you.’

“Uncle John warned me that when I made changes to my life to make it better, there would be friends that would try to talk me out of it. When I was in middle school, I started to date Jan Duke, who was the head cheerleader at the time. My best friends all told me that I shouldn’t because I was reaching too far,” I said.

“You dated Yuri’s girlfriend?” Phil asked.

“For like three minutes, but that’s not the point. The point is that if I’d listened, I might have been happier a few weeks later when she broke up with me, but in the long run, it would have held me back. Uncle John gave me the confidence not to listen to all the people that tell me I can’t do something. What it showed me was they weren’t really trying to hold me back because of me, they were holding me back because of them. They didn’t want me to change, because they liked me the way I was. The sad part was that, at the time, they were my best friends, so I ‘knew’ they had my best interests at heart.

“A better example would be the friends I had in middle school who did drugs and drank. After Lily almost died, I went to Uncle John’s farm for the summer. I made a choice that I wasn’t going to drink or do drugs anymore. I’d bet you if I asked any of them if I’d be better off not drinking or doing drugs, they would’ve told me to keep drinking and getting high, that there was nothing to worry about. I no longer hang out with any of them because they think I’m too straight.

“Uncle John explained that people might not accept that I would be making changes in my life. They would try to pull me back to the way I was before. If I still did drugs and drank, I would have that set of friends still.

“Well, I don’t have friends like that anymore. I’ve tried to surround myself with people that want me to succeed,” I finished.

“Exactly,” Uncle John said. “You finally became aware of that. Your awareness helped you make better decisions as to who you wanted to have in your life, and you didn’t let their opinions influence the decisions you make any more.”

I nodded, thinking that in a lot of ways this also described my relationships with Alan and Tami. Tami was more open to how I’d changed. Still, there were times when she said the right words, but her actions told me she didn’t really want me ‘growing up.’

“In the outermost of that second set of circles are people who give you a bad vibe,” Uncle John said, pointing at the paper. “For David’s purposes, they may wind up being what he sees as potential users; people who want to get to know David for the sole purpose of getting something out of him, or out of the relationship, whether that harms David or not. I know David’s already run into that kind of situation.”