Chapter 20: Babygate

Monday October 24
I opened the back door and found Precious waiting for us. She seemed to glare at Duke, and he gave her a wide berth as he moved around her and then hurried off to do his business. She got up and pushed her way past me to go up the stairs to my apartment. For some reason, I decided that it wouldn’t be worth it to try to stop her. I didn’t feel like bleeding this morning.

Doc Grog had told me that I could start walking and working with the training staff to stretch and exercise this week. The plan was for me to get past the pain I felt. Today Duke and I were going for a walk. I showed Duke his leash, and he ran over and sat. He knew this meant he would get off the property, so he was on his best behavior. I think my hound missed our morning runs.

I brought my Bo staff; having had the bright idea I could use it to exercise. I quickly figured out that twisting it was not in the cards. By the time I’d gotten a couple of blocks, I was glad I’d brought it, though, because it made an excellent walking stick. I had a bad feeling that if I didn’t get better quickly, I might not be ready for the game on Friday. That made me determined to keep going, even though I felt like hell.

I thought about all that had happened over the weekend. Something Uncle John had taught me was that I was responsible for my own happiness. Some of the stuff he told me had a new-age feel to it that didn’t appeal to the teenager in me. He’d said that it was up to me to decide how something affected me. What bothered me the most wasn’t the discovery that I had three more children by two different mothers. Though that was a game-changer, without a doubt. What troubled me was how Brook had effectively bailed on me.

I’d been thinking in terms of the two of us against the world. Brook and I were a good fit, and I cared about her more than I wanted to admit at this very moment. My first impulse was that I had to fix this. The problem was there was nothing I could fix right now. I wasn’t even sure if the three new babies were mine yet. I wanted to come up with some brilliant plan that would put Brook’s mind at ease and make it okay for her to put up with my drama.

Uncle John would have teased me because he’d taught me about people’s success strategies. People had different ways to get others to accept and like them. Some were the teacher’s pet, others the class clown, and so on. For guys, it was easy to fall into the role of the one who figured out what was wrong and then solved it. We thought it made us indispensable.

The flip side of being in charge of your own happiness was that you had to accept that you didn’t have control over anyone else’s. You can’t make someone love you. If Brook didn’t want to go out with me, then there was nothing I could do about it. I know that sounds like a defeatist approach, but I think what my uncle tried to teach me was that if I was in control of my happiness, then I shouldn’t have to rely on Brook, and our relationship, to create my well-being. The pitfall of depending on Brook to make me happy was that if I tied my happiness to her actions, then my emotions would be in constant flux. There was a saying that fits here: you had to like yourself before you could like others.

When Uncle John had explained it to me, I thought he was crazy and told him so. I’ve always been a romantic at heart and felt that to be happy, I would need someone in my life. I pointed to how happy my parents were. He’s laughed at my idealism many times, and every time, he said that I would understand once I gained some life experience. I hated it when he did stuff like that. What he did, though, was give me the bread crumbs to follow, a path to figure it out when I needed to. It might not have made sense then, but I started to see what he had tried to tell me.

Part of being in control of your happiness was deciding how to react to something when it happened. Uncle John had given me a real-life example. We’d gone to town and come back to find that the back window of his truck had been busted out. We found a rock in the passenger seat. I was pissed; I couldn’t believe anyone would do something like that. He didn’t seem fazed, so I asked him about it. He told me that he felt it was a waste of energy to go postal and discover the evildoer and exact justice. I hated when he used my words against me. He said he had insurance and would get the window fixed. At the time, I couldn’t believe his attitude.

This morning I had a choice to make. I could decide whether my life was going to be ruined by Brook’s declaration that she needed to think about continuing our relationship or not.

Knowing that it was my choice was empowering. It removed that twisty feeling I’d had in my gut that made me feel like I wasn’t in control. Being who I was, that wasn’t good. For me, it was like Tami knowing I had a secret and wouldn’t tell her. I had a take-charge personality that would slowly self-destruct if I thought I wasn’t in charge.

The other key teaching that Uncle John had imparted to me that applied to this situation was the concept of making people wrong. It was natural to want to be right. Anyone who disagrees with you is wrong. It would be too easy for me to start building the case that Brook was wrong in how she was handling this. Believe me, I’d railed against her on the car ride home last night. It was because of that I hadn’t gone to her and tried to work things out. In the light of day, that was probably for the best.

My dad had taught me that you praise in public and chastise in private. He took it a step further and said that one of the hardest lessons he’d learned was that when something goes wrong, it mattered how you handled it. He said you could go on the defensive and point out what everyone else had done for the problem to occur, or you could forget about all that, for now, and fix it.

He had put what my uncle had told me into a business example. It was every bit as valid in my personal life. Was I going to point out how Brook was wrong and how we could make everything right if she would just work with me on this? That only reminded me of how quickly I could travel down that rabbit hole and spend days tearing myself up about what Brook had done wrong.

I had to answer two questions honestly. The first was, was it worth all the energy? The second was, how would Brook react to my approach? The second was probably the easier one to riddle out. No one, especially a teenage girl, ever wants to hear that they’re wrong. If anyone doesn’t believe that, all they have to do is to tell a girl exactly that. I would bet that if I took that path, it was much more likely that she would dump me when I made a jerk of myself.

The first question’s answer was equally easy. If my biggest problem was that I didn’t have enough time to do what Brook wanted to do, when was I going to find time to worry about this? Don’t get me wrong, Brook was worth whatever it took to keep her in my life, and if I knew what she wanted, I would move heaven and earth to make it happen. What I didn’t need to do was obsess about the outcome right now. I had to dial it back and show her that I would support whatever decision she made. In the grand scheme of things, this would be merely a blip in my life a couple of years from now. I would ultimately be okay even if she decided to leave me. I’d been single before, and I would bet big money I would be single in the future.

When Duke and I made it back to our block, I still hadn’t figured out what I was going to do. My only certainty was that, no matter what, I wanted her to be my friend. With that in mind, I could start to formulate how I wanted this to work out in the end.

I let Duke in the house to go get his morning loving. I found Precious sprawled out on my pillow, sound asleep. That poor cat was about to pop. My best guess was that we would be seeing a litter of kittens by this time next week.

I went and took my shower and felt better than I had in the last couple of days. As for my other big issue, having three more children, I knew that nothing there would be resolved quickly. All I could do was remember that whatever happened, the children were what mattered. If they were mine, I would do whatever was needed to help them. Even if they weren’t, I was sure I would get involved.

When I got out of the shower, I checked my phone and saw there was a text from Tami. She wanted to video chat before school. I sent her one back, and we were soon online.

“I think we need to play ‘Tell Me A Secret,’” Tami said.

I rolled my eyes. We played this every once in a while, if one of us needed a safe way to talk to the other. We’d first played this game when Tami found out her father had another family and didn’t want her in his life.

“I suppose you want me to go first?”

“Yes, please.”

“I want to go to Ohio State for college even though they might not take both Tim and Wolf,” I admitted.

Oh, my God! Tami Glade had been struck dumb. I wasn’t sure if she was okay until I saw her blink a couple of times.

“You’d do that?” she asked in disbelief.

“Would you come with me?” I asked.

“I, ah, honestly don’t know,” she said, and then gathered her wits. “I thought everyone was going to the same place.”

“We are. They could walk-on,” I said, and the corner of my mouth twitched.

Tami caught it and then sighed.

“We need to talk about this,” she said with serious worry in her voice. “I know that you’ll end up somewhere that the three of you can play ball together, but it might be time to think about what’s best for you.”

“So, what’s your secret?” I asked.

“I’m not done talking about yours,” Tami protested and then glared at me. “And the one you told me has nothing to do with what we really need to talk about.”

I made my one-eyebrow move and pointed at the clock on my wall.

“My driver will be here any minute, and I need to get going,” I protested.

“Okay, okay. My dad wants to introduce me to his family,” she blurted.

“Whoa, seriously?”

“I know, right?”

I heard a car horn.

“I gotta go. I think we have plenty to talk about. How about we do that before we go to bed?” I suggested.

“Yeah,” Tami agreed. “You’re telling me about your love children and Brook.”

I disconnected and grabbed Precious. I didn’t need the cat in my apartment all day.

I set Precious down, and she darted back into my apartment. Fricking cat! I sent a text to Brit to let her know what had happened. I jumped in the back of the SUV and saw that Cassidy was my driver today.

“Are we picking up Brook?” she asked.

“I don’t see why not.”

Cassidy quickly sent a text, and we drove to Brook’s house. I was surprised when Brook was waiting outside for us. She handed me a lunch bag when she got in.

“Your mom called mine and told her that you hadn’t eaten this morning. She said you were talking to Tami,” Brook said, obviously fishing for information.

I didn’t even bother to worry about how my mom knew Tami would call me this morning. That ship had sailed, and I begrudgingly accepted that my mom liked Tami more than she should. I opened the bag, and inside was a ham, egg, and cheese sandwich on a croissant.

“Dang, I need to skip breakfast more often,” I said, and showed Cassidy.

Brook pulled another one out of her backpack and handed it over the seat to her best friend. She was buttering her up in case Cassidy had to pick sides in the divorce. Feeding her food like this wasn’t fair.

Brook looked at me, expecting me to talk. I took a big bite of the sandwich and raised my eyebrows.

“You’re such a dick sometimes,” Brook said.

“Be nice,” Cassidy warned.

“We could take the long way to school today. I bet I can get us out of first period without a problem,” I suggested, waggling my eyebrows.

I could tell Brook wanted to be mad at me but was losing that battle.

“David!” Cassidy warned.

“Let’s lose the peacemaker and have angry make-up sex,” I tried.

“We might not make it to school before lunchtime,” Brook teased.

“I have a quiz this morning,” Cassidy complained.

Brook and I both laughed at that one. Cassidy wasn’t the most diligent of students; she got solid ‘B’s without even trying. Our little ninja couldn’t care less about missing a quiz.

When we pulled up to school, Cassidy got out of the car to give us a moment.

“I still haven’t decided what I want to do,” Brook said.

“That’s fine. I’m not going to push you one way or the other. I’ll be here when you figure it out, and if you want to talk ... well, we can do that too.”

Brook jumped out of the car and ran inside. This choosing to not let this situation bother me wasn’t as easy as my uncle had made it sound.

Dare was at my side on our way to math class. It was clear he wanted to tell me something. I’d blocked him from texting me, so his only choices were to either write it down or actually talk to me. As we found our desks, I remembered I wanted to finish up the classroom training for flying. I got my phone out and sent a text to Caryn to get it set up. Dare’s eyes got big, and I looked up to see Ms. Lowden standing next to me. I glanced over at Dare and gave him the stink eye. The little shit could have warned me.

“Morning,” I said and gave my teacher my best innocent look.

“What did I say about phones in my class?”

“That we had to turn them off for quizzes and tests,” I ventured.

“Nice, try again.”

“That I’m on the verge of getting detention again.”

“Turn it off,” she ordered.

As she made her way to the front of the room, I used my Jedi mind powers to tell Dare that he was dead to me. The expression on his face told me I had finally figured out how to do it. I would have to try it on my mom when I got home. Maybe I could finally get the motorcycle I knew I had to have.

At lunch, I was in line, waiting my turn for whatever the mystery meat was today, when Jill Lacier touched my arm.

“I need to talk to you. Can you join me so we can talk alone?”

“Yeah, sure. Let me get my lunch, and I’ll be over,” I said, and then turned to the lunch lady. “I’m guessing SPAM.”

“Close. SPAM is too expensive, but it is ham loaf,” she shared and then leaned forward. “I would get the sack lunch. It’s pastrami on rye.”

She didn’t have to tell me twice. I grabbed two of them and soon found Jill at a table, all alone. I glanced around and saw Phil watching us with a strange expression. I don’t think his girlfriend had told him that she and I were having a talk. I almost went to my old table when Brook gave me a half-lidded look that didn’t bode well for me. I figured I’d better talk to Jill and then go make nice.

“April told me that if I ever got the chance, I should date you.”

Mr. Happy almost wrenched control of the body from the big brain. He reasoned that Brook and I were ‘on a break,’ so it would be okay. While I formulated my response, Zoe sat down.

“She would just use you and go back to your brother once she was done,” Zoe offered her opinion.

“I was here first. Take a hike,” Jill said to Zoe.

“You poor innocent thing. Do you know what a shit-storm you would cause if you went out with him? Scurry back to your boyfriend before he figures out what a little cheater you are.”

Jill must have realized the giant hole in her plan because she did exactly that. I would have to talk to her later to make sure that we had our stories straight. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt Phil. In the long run, it might be better to let him know that his girlfriend wasn’t as faithful as he thought.

“Thanks,” I said to Zoe once Jill had left.

“Word on the street is that Brook kicked you to the curb.”

“Where did you hear that?” I asked.

“Halle.”

Oh, shit! Peggy had called her. I glanced up, and Destiny was headed our way.

“Oh, crud,” I said under my breath and held up my hand before Destiny could sit down. “I’ll pick you up Saturday night at six-thirty.”

I saw Brook stand up, which brought an inner smile. She did still care. Destiny was smart enough to know that she should make a strategic retreat after she’d gotten what she wanted.

“I think Brook was nuts to offer you up as a prize,” Zoe said, shaking her head. Then she changed the subject. “Show me the pictures of your kids.”

It turned out that talking to Zoe was precisely what I needed. She had always been able to put me at ease, and I felt some inner calm start to seep in. I spent the rest of lunch telling her about my discovery over the weekend. I was in such a good mood that I even let her have half of my second sandwich. Zoe was a good person, and I was glad that she was still a friend.

The rest of the day went well. In Photography, we worked on campaign posters for Duke. Ms. Saunders had been happy with me using his campaign as my class project, and let the work continue but now with the rest of the class involved. The other students weren’t the most creative bunch in terms of copy, but they could make everything look good. After class, it was finally time to meet with the training staff.

I found Coaches Hope, Mason, and Rector talking to Mr. Hasting and Doc Grog. Becky and Jill came in when I arrived. Jeff Delahey and his camera crew slipped in. I could tell that Doc Grog wasn’t happy to see them.

“Looks like everyone’s here,” I said, and then addressed the elephant in the room. “I’m fine with Jeff and his crew filming this. If we need to take this offline, we can kick him out.”

“I might suggest that we not have them in here for this. I know I would never have allowed this when I was in the NFL. I don’t want to mess up your scholarships or give information to opponents. The last thing we need is them targeting you,” Coach Mason suggested.

“How about this? You let us film David getting checked and the discussion as to if and when he’ll play. I will guarantee that anything about his specific injuries never makes the air,” Jeff suggested.

“What do you think, Coach?” I asked Coach Mason.

“Do you trust him?”

I shrugged.

“Jeff has never given me a reason not to take him at his word, but I’m not as sure about his network.”

“Then I think any serious discussions are done off-camera. Agreed?” Coach Hope interjected.

Everyone agreed to the compromise. Jeff’s documentary was important to Lincoln because it was a welcome addition to the process of making us a magnet for the better players who might want to transfer, and not only in football.

The documentary also highlighted the coaches. I think everyone knew that Coach Rector would be on to bigger and better things next year. Coach Hope had said he planned to stay here because he didn’t want to coach college ball. Coach Mason was done after this season, so he didn’t care one way or the other, as far as his personal interest was concerned. He was one of my staunchest supporters, and I relied on him to give me advice.

I looked at Coach Mason, and he nodded.

Doc Grog had me strip down to my shorts. I was still bruised up and down my right side, and you could see some of the bruises had started to turn yellow as they healed. I think I earned an Academy Award when I didn’t flinch as Doc dug his fingers into my ribs and hip.

“If he can’t practice, he can’t play,” Coach Hope proclaimed.

“If you make sure he doesn’t get hit, I will clear him for non-contact practice, at least,” Doc Grog said.

“You have what you need?” Coach Mason asked Jeff.

“I’m good, thanks,” Jeff said and left.

“How is he really?” Coach Hope asked.

“He put on a good act, but he’s still hurting. I have some tricks up my sleeve that can get him on the field, but you can’t push him yet. He’s still healing. I would say you have him throw some today and we see how he is tomorrow. I doubt he’ll be ready for Friday, but in a pinch, he might be able to play a quarter,” Doc Grog declared.

I knew that I wouldn’t be able to talk my way onto the field. Coach Mason would put his foot down if he thought I might risk further injury. To be honest, it was comforting to know that you had someone in your corner who’d stand up for you that way, even if you tried to talk them out of it.

When the coaches were satisfied, they left to get ready for today. The training staff closed all the doors and gathered around me.

“We’re going to try a couple of approaches to help you manage the pain. Do you think that the pills you’re taking will allow you to throw today?” Doc asked.

“No. They do help me get through the day and sleep. They don’t help if I move wrong or try to do anything too strenuous,” I admitted.

“I’m not interested in upping the dosage right now. What I’d like to do is give you a local anesthetic. At State, we use novocaine to great success. It will numb you up but not mentally impair you,” he told me and then turned to Mr. Hasting. “If this works, I’ll leave you with a supply for the week. Keep me apprised of how he does. If you need me to come back, let me know. I’ll make sure I’m here on Friday and check him before we make a decision as to whether he can play or not.”

He demonstrated how he wanted them to jab me with a needle. They had me wait about ten minutes and then checked me. I wish they’d done this a couple of weeks ago. I felt great.

At practice, we did a quick film session and then went out in shorts and t-shirts. I think everyone wanted to see me throw a football. It felt like I’d never been hurt. Coach Mason didn’t allow me to rip it or throw deep, but I could make all the passes.

Then we ran sprints for conditioning. It felt good just to run. I worked up a good sweat, and then they sent me to the showers.

After practice, Dare finally got brave enough to tell me what he wanted.

“Can I tag along with you for a while? My mom has a department meeting tonight.”

“I’m going to be in my flight-school class. I’m not doing anything exciting,” I warned him.

He nodded that he would be okay. I had Cassidy take us to the little Mexican place that had burritos as big as your head. She and Dare decided they would split one. I bought an extra one for Roy Tyro, my flight instructor.

Brook had decided to do her own thing tonight. I’d figured she’d want to get in some flight time, but apparently, I was mistaken. We’d talked about Cassidy learning to fly and had paid for her time in the simulators to see if she liked it or not.

“Do you want to take the class with me?” I asked her.

“I talked to my dad, and I can’t afford it.”

“I didn’t ask if you could afford it. I asked if you wanted to take the class,” I said.

“You and Brook can’t just pay for everything,” she complained.

I barked out a laugh.

“As if! When was the last time you ever paid for anything when I was around?” I teased her.

I laughed when she threatened to stop the car. She sounded just like my mom. When she settled down, I called Fritz and told him it might be helpful if she knew how to fly. He agreed to do it through his company. Of course, that meant I would get the pass-through for the expense. In the end, it was a better idea, tax-wise.

I introduced Roy to Dare and asked if Roy had anything for Dare to do while we were in class. Roy sent him off to do something, and we got started. The food was a hit with Roy. He said that if I kept it up, he wouldn’t charge me extra for the class time. He’d put this class together just for Cassidy and me.

When class was over, Roy walked us out back where we found Dare and several of Roy’s employees flying drones. I about fell over when I realized Dare was animated and talking a mile a minute. I’d finally found something the kid loved. I was a little jealous that he’d been doing this while I was stuck listening to Roy jabber on. It appeared that Dare had had a much better time.

“We’re getting prepared to teach a drone class. You have to have a license to fly them for commercial purposes, so we purchased a couple of different models to see what would work best. They’ve been testing them out tonight,” Roy explained.

Dare guided a drone with four props toward us.

“David, you should buy this one.”

I suddenly knew what my parents felt like when Greg or I would find something we had to have that made no sense. I decided to use an oldie but goodie.

“I need to think about it.”

“We can probably make you a deal on one of them,” Roy said, playing dumb.

Dare tried to play it cool, but I could see him literally quivering, he was so excited.

“We’ll talk about it later,” I proclaimed, officially becoming my parents.

“Brook would buy it for him,” Cassidy offered.

She giggled when I gave her ‘the look.’

“Go put it up. We need to go.”

Did I really say that? Even Roy gave me a funny look at that one. Everyone knew that if there was fun to be had, I was usually the first one in. Tonight, though, I had about fifty things I needed to do before bedtime. I sent Cassidy with Dare to land the drone and take care of it while I asked Roy how much they were. Let’s just say that they didn’t plan to give them away.

Dare sulked for all of about two minutes before he couldn’t hold it in any longer and told us all about flying the drones. He’d tried them all and felt the last one was superior. Both Cassidy and I sat quietly as we listened to him say more words than all he’d ever spoken combined since I met him. When we let him out of the car and turned him loose on his mom, I felt like I’d just filled him up on cookies and Kool-Aid to give him a sugar buzz. I was sure she wouldn’t want to dump him on me the next time she needed someone to watch him.

We had several cars parked at our house, forcing us to park on the street. I walked in, and Kyle and Mac ran to me. Each of them wrapped a leg and sat on my shoe. I’d made the mistake of walking like Frankenstein’s monster and letting them catch a ride. Now I was forever stuck with it, not that I minded. Nate reached up, so I bent down to pick him up.

“Baby crying,” Mac told me.

Grandma Dawson handed me Carol, who didn’t want anything to do with me. I knew that girls were trouble.

“Hey,” I barked, and blew in her face.

She stiffened up and I thought for sure we were in for major hysterics. She blinked three times and then laid her head on my chest.

“He fix,” Kyle said, and then began to giggle when I walked them into the kitchen.

I saw Ms. Dixon and Tom Dole at the kitchen table with my grandma, Dad, and Ian. They were drinking coffee, and it appeared that they’d all had cherry cheesecake. Angie and Scarlet came in and took Nate and Carol from me.

“You two leave your uncle alone,” Angie scolded Mac and Kyle. “Go play with your dad.”

“Have a seat. We have news,” Dad told me.

Cassidy had followed me in, so she went to the living room and grabbed a couple of the kitchen chairs that had been stolen for people to sit on there. She came back with Brook, Caryn, and my mom. Brook sat on my leg like old times.

“We were able to get in front of the judge this afternoon. I wish they would have let us videotape it because it would have been a keeper,” Ms. Dixon said.

I could tell that I was about to hear some good news.

“Mr. Fox made his case that Duke wasn’t qualified to run for mayor. I think he wanted to change the focus from the signatures when he saw we planned to challenge his. Granted, the judge could see the common sense in his argument, but the only qualification to run is that you live within the city limits. I think he might have ruled in favor of Mr. Fox if the idiot hadn’t made an ass out of himself by basically calling the judge stupid if he didn’t deny Duke’s candidacy.

“Up to that point, the judge was prepared to think about it overnight and come back tomorrow. You could see he wasn’t happy with Mr. Fox and decided to go ahead and rule in favor of Duke,” Ms. Dixon said.

“He’s on the ballot?” I asked.

Everyone was nodding and had big grins. It felt like we’d pulled a huge prank.

“Yep, and then it got better. We challenged Mr. Fox’s signatures. As I told you, it was rumored that he didn’t officially have enough. The judge asked the Supervisor of Elections what her findings were. She confirmed that Mr. Fox was short signatures and recommended that he be removed from the ballot,” Ms. Dixon said.

“And... ?” I asked impatiently.

“Duke is running essentially unopposed,” Grandma Dawson revealed, ignoring our felonious incumbent. “You missed the congratulatory call from Governor Higgins only a minute ago. He asked if Duke would endorse him. I told him we would have to get back to him.”

I gave her a confused look.

“You can’t just say ‘yes.’ We need to get something out of this,” Ian explained.

I would never understand politics. Then I smiled.

“The Cubs just made the World Series. Their first game is tomorrow in Cleveland. Do you think we can get tickets like last year?” I asked.

“I think he’s starting to figure it out,” Grandma Dawson said.

“Wait, I know one of the owners,” I remembered. “I need to find his info and give him a call.”