Chapter 5: Meeting the Love of Our Lives

Betts became more aloof as she moved out of junior high and started high school. In some ways, it was a relief. I’m sure Brian still suffered from her tantrums, but they both kept it out of my sight. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. Brian wasn’t growing much, but he was maturing. And it seemed that he had friends. The party invitation he’d had at the end of fifth grade seemed to be more than a passing thing. I didn’t hesitate to give him permission to go to the sixth grade year-end party. Nor did I think twice about it when he asked if we could pick up Cassie Clinton.

We knew the Clintons, though not well. He’d moved into the old Eberhardt place about six years before and built a small grass airstrip. He was an avid small aircraft pilot. The airstrip wasn’t really open to the public, though occasionally other planes landed there. All the neighbors had been invited to tour the little airstrip one Sunday afternoon and I found John and Bea to be gracious people. I wasn’t as enthused about his minister and John seemed to think that everyone should abide by his particular set of religious dogma. As long as you ignored that aspect, they were fine people but we never really became closer.

“Young man, you don’t wait in the car for a girl, even if you are just giving her a ride. You always pick up a girl at the door and walk her back to her door. No matter what. Get out and go to the door. Cassie’s parents are conservative and will want to know you are a gentleman.” Perhaps I was a little harsh with my son, but I’d seen some of the boys that Betts liked to hang out with and my son was not, by God, going to be like them. If that was who Betts wanted to date, she’d be gone to college before she ever went out. I scowled again at Brian when he reached for the front door and he jerked back to open the back door for Cassie then slide in beside her.

Everyone knew we were just offering a ride and this wasn’t a date between two twelve-year-olds but I noticed Cassie didn’t slide all the way over. Kids seemed to grow up so much faster these days. But when did I first know I was in love with Hayden? First grade? We’d had our ups and downs, but there was never a doubt in my mind that Hayden would be my forever man.

I stopped to visit a few minutes with Amanda Lenox and just check to see if she needed any help. I wasn’t very experienced with giving parties and assumed parents were all as frazzled as I would be. Amanda smiled and said she made her daughter organize everything and aside from making food, she and Paul had little to do. She led me to the back door and I saw about twenty kids—a little overbalanced on the girl side, but several boys as well. Paul was at the grill and the kids were wolfing down food as only newly-minted seventh-graders could. That was when I saw something that made my heart jump to my throat.

My little boy. Brian and Cassie were holding hands as they ate chips and drank their soft drinks. My mouth went dry and my first instinct was to rush out and break them apart immediately.

Like any mother who does her children’s laundry, I knew Brian had discovered the pleasure of self-pleasure. Just this week, after finding a crusty sock stuck to a pair of his underwear, I’d rummaged around in Betts’ room until I found the old book I’d given her at puberty. I’d left it on his bed with a box of tissues, never thinking that Betts might have been reading it one-handed.

But seeing the reality of my son holding a girl’s hand and being so completely relaxed with her, laughing and even joking with their friends, threw me for a loop. I excused myself from Amanda and hurried home.

“Was he being impolite or pushy?” Hayden asked as we cuddled in bed that night and I told him what I’d observed.

“No. He looked like a perfect gentleman and attentive boyfriend. But Hayden, he’s too young!”

“Did he look guilty after the party? Like he was trying to hide something?”

“No,” I moaned. “They got in the back seat and didn’t even try to hide the fact they were still holding hands. And the Clintons are picking him up for church tomorrow morning. But Hayden, he’s too young!” I repeated.

“Now that worries me more than his holding hands,” Hayden laughed. “I don’t suppose they teach anything immoral over there, but I hope he doesn’t become a Bible-thumping evangelical. That could make the next few years miserable.”

“Hayden...”

“When did I first tell you I was going to marry you?”

“What? Uh ... No. You didn’t tell me first. I told you.”

“And?”

“Seventh grade.”

“Just because Brian is little, we think of him being much younger than he is. Twelve? Thirteen? Boys start noticing girls and as long as they aren’t behaving inappropriately, I don’t think we should interfere. I’ll just make sure that occasionally we have a conversation about proper behavior.”

I just sighed. He’s just too old for his age.

Getting Brian through seventh grade and Betts through her junior year in high school wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. Betts seemed to have tamed her wild side a bit and I overheard her telling Doreen in no uncertain terms that she planned to be a virgin on her wedding night. As long as that wasn’t tomorrow, I was fine with it.

We were playing cards with Dennis and Abby Hopkins one night when they mentioned the expanded circle of friends the boys had in junior high. I’d just assumed that things were about the same in junior high as they’d been in elementary school but failed to take into account kids from three different elementary schools fed into the junior-senior high.

“Well, we’ve always tried to teach the boys not to be prejudiced but they’d really never had a chance to interact with anyone of another race. We live in such a white bread neighborhood!” Dennis said. “Farmers.”

“I volunteered at the school when one of the cooks got that awful flu. What I saw in the cafeteria told me they’d taken the lessons to heart. The boys were with a group of about twenty or twenty-five in the middle of the cafeteria. It was a fully mixed crew of boys and girls and of black and white. Some of those boys have gotten really big. They are much taller than Geoff and tower over Brian,” Abby said.

“And they all get along together? You know I always worry about Brian being forced into things because he’s so much smaller than the others. He’s barely five feet tall.”

“From what Geoff told us, Brian organized it all. He invited the black kids to their table and several of them work together in study hall. Geoff says it’s mostly so they can borrow Brian’s notes from class,” Dennis laughed. “Brains wins over brawn.”

If only that were always the case. It had been a year since the bigger boys pushed Brian off his bike and stole his collection money. Hayden and I debated the issue all that night. I was ready to have him quit the paper route. And all through the incident, Brian refused to accuse the boys, holding that it was a dog that ran him off the road.

Some of the neighborhood women occasionally bake an extra casserole or batch of cookies to share with our neighbor, Mr. Henderson. That poor old man is a hundred years old and almost completely deaf. It’s nothing official or organized, but I saw my mother take him a casserole a few times and I just started doing it as well. I stopped by with a casserole not long after Brian’s incident with the dogs and he told me all about chasing away the boys who had pushed Brian in the ditch and robbed him.

We gave Brian a defense. It was an old remedy that we never considered was cruel or inhumane. Back in the day, there were always dogs getting hit because they were chasing cars. The accepted method of training them was to drive by and when they gave chase, spray them with ammonia. The dogs found the mist from a squirt gun to be unpleasant and soon stopped chasing cars. We figured it would work the same way on people and gave Brian a squirt gun filled with ammonia. We never heard another word about it.

Until two large boys attacked Jessica at school. Brian heard the ruckus and moved into action. He squirted both boys in the eyes with ammonia.

I didn’t even know he was still carrying it! It had been over a year since the bicycle incident and there was certainly no reason for him to carry the squirt gun in the winter. I’d seen it lying on a shelf in his room when I gathered his laundry. Because the school had a no-weapons rule in effect with severe penalties, Brian had switched to a small plastic bottle for his ammonia. We discovered that he never went anywhere without it.

He saved Jessica. The boys were both partially blind. If only Brian’s big friends had been with him in that hallway. We had a long talk with Brian, encouraging him to find ways other than violence to solve conflicts, but my son was still small and bullies were bullies.

Things seemed to change between Brian and Betts after that. We never talked about his role in saving Jessica, but Betts treated Brian more respectfully. I think it had more to do with Betts truly discovering her sexuality and being scared out of her wits by it. Or perhaps it was Brian discovering her sexuality that scared her. I was never quite sure what had passed between those two, but despite still being a bitch at times, there was almost a truce between the two. I’d have to pay attention to that.