Chapter 10

I woke up to the sound of laughter. I’d fallen asleep with Atlas Shrugged and Mom was home with Miss Veronica. I knew it was late but they were both obviously wide awake.

“You up, Jack?” Mom hollered.

“Library,” I answered with the least enthusiasm known to man.

“We could use a little help,” Veronica said, sticking her head into the library. “Oh. He was asleep, I think,” she said quietly to Mom.

“I’m up, now,” I said, although I didn’t feel like it. Mom stuck her head in.

“We could use some help with the Christmas tree.”

“What time is it? Tonight?” I looked at the clock. It was nearly midnight.

“We bought stuff. We bought ormanents and we want to hang them up so I got a tree. It’s on the car.”

“Ormanents?”

“That’s right and we want to hang them.”

“Please tell me you haven’t driven all the way from Myrtle Beach like that,” I said.

“Yes. No. Whatever do you mean?” It was hopeless. They were both drunk, or at least tipsy. I didn’t know the different degrees of drunkenness. I didn’t have much experience seeing drunk people.

“Alright. Where’s it going?”

“In here. Right here,” she said pointing to a spot, practically in the middle of the library. I was pretty sure the spot was totally arbitrary since we’d never put a tree there before.

Fine. “Alright. Let me check it out and see what I can do.”

I walked out the front door, expecting to see the car parked near the front steps. Nope. I went to the garage and there it was, taking up two spaces at an angle. Nice parking job, Mom. The tree was tied from the top to the front bumper and the bottom to the back bumper. It was easily ten feet tall, maybe more. I untied the beast and managed to roll it to the edge of the car but getting it down and then up the steps was going to take a second person.

I saw a garden cart in the corner and rolled it to the side of the car, then shoved the tree off the roof and onto the cart. With a little jostling, I managed to center it, but it was heavy. The poor little cart had disappeared underneath it. There was no way I could get it up the steps and into the house by myself. It dragged but I rolled the cart to the bottom of the front steps. I couldn’t believe it. Mom was drunk. Veronica wasn’t far behind and there I was with a ten-foot tree. I ran up the steps and stuck my head inside.

“I could use a bit of help. This is a four-person job but it will take three motivated people,” I said and got silence in return.

I went inside to find Mom asleep in my chair and Veronica in the kitchen.

“Want some eggnog?” She offered.

“Is that what you two have been drinking?”

“It is what we have been drinking most recently. Want some?” she asked, offering me her glass. I shook my head. “It’s good. And only once a year. I think it’s the rum that makes it so good. Shhh.”

Great. “It doesn’t look like the two of you are going to be decorating much tonight. Mom is out and you...”

“Can hold my liquor, unlike your mother, bless her heart.”

“Would you like to try to help me bring the tree inside? I can’t do it by myself.”

“If you had some eggnog, you could. Okay. I’ll help,” she said, taking a huge gulp of eggnog. “Lead on, d’Artagnan.”

Thirty minutes later, after much huffing and puffing, the tree was inside and generally upright on a stand I got from the attic. But it wasn’t in the library. We put it in the great room with its much higher ceiling. I went outside to put the cart back and when I returned, Veronica was standing in the doorway underneath mistletoe she had hung at an awkward angle. This was not how I had envisioned the evening ending.

“C’mere, you stud. It’s mittleso.”

“Mittleso. Yes. I see that. Mom picked you up, didn’t she? Your car’s not here, right?”

“No. Yes. I’m right here. This is mittleso also known as obligate hemisomething. Obligate means you must come and kiss me.”

Veronica had looked pretty hot before but she didn’t look so good when she was shitfaced. That was the word I’d been looking for. Shitfaced. “I must help Mom to her room. You can sleep here tonight and we’ll worry about getting you home in the morning.”

“I can do that,” she said, taking another stiff drink of eggnog.

Looking at the color of liquid in her glass, I thought it must be mostly rum with a bit of eggnog. Mom was asleep and snoring softly. It sounding like a cat purring. I thought about leaving her there but decided against it. With encouragement from Veronica, I walked her into her bedroom, pulled her shoes off and lay her down, then covered her with a blanket. Veronica stood there looking at me with a question on her face.

“We have several guest bedrooms,” I said. “They each have a bathroom with a toiletry kit in it and you’re welcome to take your choice. Would you like me to show you to one?”

“Yes, please. I’d like you to take me to bed,” she said, and stumbled. Great. I could smell the alcohol on her breath from arm’s length. Not appealing.

I showed her to the guestroom next to Mom’s, pointed out a few things and left before she could grab me, something quite possibly on her mind. She wasn’t attractive drunk but I knew she was still sober enough and would likely be happy to take my virginity. I left her sitting on the edge of the bed and quietly closed the door. Yikes.

Saturday morning, I woke up with Franklin staring down at me. “What?” I mumbled.

“Get up and get dressed. Time to move.”

“Where are we going? What time is it?”

“Airport. Eight.”

“Why are we going to the airport?”

“Wake up, Jack. Sally leaves today.”

“I know, but she said she didn’t want me to go to the airport. Doesn’t want to cry at the airport.”

“That’s because she’s not expecting flowers. Trust me on this. Get dressed and let’s go. Last chance.”

“You sure?”

“Positive. Let’s go. Ten minutes.”

I was a little groggy from the night before but I pulled it together. I threw on some clothes, brushed and gargled and was out the door in record time. I didn’t think about it until later but I didn’t see Mom or Veronica. They were probably still asleep, or unconscious. Franklin drove us to Charleston International, a little three gate airport that probably got the international designation because someone flew in from Puerto Rico once. We parked in short term parking, I grabbed the oversized bouquet, Franklin brought and we went toward departures, gate two.

“You don’t have to make a speech or anything. Just let her know you’re thinking about her. She’ll have flowers with her on the plane. It’s a big deal, especially when you’re a girl, and especially when you’re fourteen and leaving the love of your life behind.”

“I’m trusting you on this.”

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

“She could get on a plane to Nashville and I never see her again.”

“So, you’re not risking much, are you?”

I had said I wouldn’t go to the airport and meant it. Sally was right to think it would be tougher there. But now that we were nearing the gate, and I had a huge bouquet with me, I was anxious to see her one more time. We worked our way to the gate and found them waiting for a boarding call. Sally and her mom were sitting and Mr. Hinkleman was standing behind them. Sally was reading the same Ayn Rand book I was. Franklin pulled up short and I crossed to them as the boarding call was made. I stood next to her dad without saying anything. I didn’t really want to see him at all. I tapped her on the shoulder from behind.

“Would you take these to Nashville, please? It’s where they belong.”

“You weren’t supposed to come. They’re beautiful,” she said and inhaled deeply. Her smile told me Franklin was right. Passengers were boarding and they called her boarding group. She stood and wrapped her arms around me in a fierce hug. “I hate you,” she whispered in my ear.

“I hate you too. Call me and tell me all about it.”

“Tomorrow night,” she said. “I think it’s a different time zone, but I’ll call. Love you.”

“Love you too. I hope you love Nashville. I hope it’s great.”

She hugged me one last time, we kissed briefly and that was it.

I thought about saying something to her mom or dad but nothing came to mind. That’s not true but I didn’t think ‘fuck you’ was an appropriate way to say goodbye to her dad. I didn’t say anything. That way I didn’t have anything to regret.

I sat at the gate and watched. I couldn’t see in the windows and I doubted anyone in the plane could see me. The plane pushed back and then taxied. I lost sight of it for a couple of minutes and then watched it taxi into position and then takeoff. Gone. I waited a couple more minutes, just in case it had to come back and then walked over to Franklin. Mr. Hinkleman had already left. That was good, I thought.

“Batting cage?” he asked.

“Batting cage.”

Christmas break was long and boring and the only thing really appealing about it was the opportunity to sleep. I knew sleep was just an escape so I forced myself to face things. What I faced was life without Sally. She was gone and I had never realized how many hours per week I’d spent with her. As it turns out, it was a lot. We talked on the phone at least once a day and sometimes two or three times. She loved her new house and neighborhood and got registered for school. She told me she hadn’t watched the Leonard Duran fight because her dad would enjoy doing that with her and she didn’t want that. It had happened before she left Charleston and I hadn’t even thought about it.

They went touring the city as a family and went to The Grand Ole Opry House together to see musicians I’d never heard of. It seemed to her that the transition might not be as tough as it was from Porter-Gaud to St. Johns, except that she was so far away from me. That seemed weird to me but I hoped it was true. She complained that it was a long way from Wappoo Cut. The Cumberland River ran through town and there was a park with a boat launch not far from her house. She said it was pointless to hope for dolphins to show up but they had diving birds. Mr. Hinkleman promised her they would get a boat once they got settled in and that made her happy. She said things were still awkward between her and her dad and she thought they probably always would be. I hoped not but figured it would take time.

I don’t think either of us really knew how to deal with it beyond sharing our news with each other. I didn’t want to make her sad and she didn’t want to make me sad. We didn’t talk about emotions. What was the point? Several times we just listened to each other’s silence. It was the best way to share our grief. My life returned to normal, only without Sally, so it wasn’t really that normal. Normal would have meant Sally was there to share stuff with. Suddenly, all that time I’d been spending with her was open and I didn’t know what to do with it. I would have given anything to ride down the street to kiss her again. I put pictures of her and us together all around my bedroom mirror. In every one of them she had a smile that made my heart ache to see it in person again. After one day, I took them down. I had to. The constant reminder that her dad had ruined our lives was just too painful. I had to fill my time or go crazy.

The pool at Porter was open every weekday morning and I swam a lot. Coach gave me pointers and encouragement and told me to work on my freestyle as much as my butterfly. There was a chalk board in the locker room with the four fastest times for each event. The day before Christmas, I watched Coach put my name and time on the board. I had the fourth fastest one hundred butterfly for the year. On the last day of the break, he added it for fifty and one hundred freestyle which was a huge surprise to me but it seemed that he’d sort of been expecting it. Fourth fastest was nice but you needed to be in the top two to compete.

At home, I worked the heavy bag a lot, building up my stamina so that I could go ten, three-minute rounds, dealing out at least one hundred punches per round. I vented a lot and took a lot of satisfaction in how hard I could hit and how fast. I started to work on getting power into my jab. Sugar Ray Leonard had used his jab a lot in his second fight with Roberto Duran. I wanted my jab to be good enough to make someone say ‘no mas’, just like Duran had. The bag was Mr. Hinkleman. He would have said no mas.

Mom and I continued to work out but we didn’t have the same conversations as before. Sally wasn’t there to share them. The first couple of days of the break, she’d tried to cheer me up but gave up on it so we were pretty business-like. I was pretty focused and she seemed to try to match my intensity. We both increased the number of sets we did. I set personal bests on almost every lift. I’d had a great leg day a month earlier and hadn’t been able to duplicate my squat, but other than that, I was up. I even ran my longest distance ever, making ten miles in a little over an hour. I hadn’t worn a watch so I had to guess that I’d run it at a seven minute per mile pace. Whatever it was, it was long. I finished Atlas Shrugged and then The Fountain Head, then went on to read Catch 22, which I found both funny and sad at the same time, and had started on A Clockwork Orange when the break was up. I’m a pretty fast reader and I can stay focused for hours but those were long books and that was a lot of reading, even for me. Plus, the invented dialogue in A Clockwork Orange slowed me down. None of them did much to cheer me up. Mom brought me a stack of books that she thought would do just that. They were untouched in a stack on my dresser. I didn’t want to be cheered up.

Franklin taught me investing, kind of as a follow up to budgeting. I asked a lot of questions and we spent two Saturdays on the various methods. By the time he was done, I thought I understood stocks, bonds, mutual funds, futures, real estate, and precious metals. At least I understood the concepts, but I also knew there was a lot I didn’t know. There was a lot Franklin didn’t know, either. I started playing with investing by writing down fictional transactions to see how they did, checking on them in the newspaper every day. After several catastrophes and a few successes, I decided to take his advice and leave that to the professionals. Franklin had a lot of his money in index funds and he explained why the simple method could be the best. I didn’t worry about it anymore. It was my least favorite lesson because it was all about making money. The desire to make more money took Ronnie from Mom, and then it took Sally from me. It made me sad and angry.

One night, we had a fire going and the thought crossed my mind to get my cash envelope out of my dresser and throw it in. If money could fuck up your life that much, I thought I’d rather not have any. Then, I realized it was stupid and wouldn’t solve anything but I had thought about it. Franklin had said that money was a tool, just like a hammer, a Bobcat or a gun. Becoming obsessed with any of them was bad. That made a lot of sense. I decided that when the time came, I would use Franklin’s financial advisor and not worry about it.

When school finally started up again, I felt like I was far ahead of any other freshman and many sophomores, juniors and even some seniors. I was bigger and stronger than most sophomores, had read more than anyone I knew, except maybe Sally, had money in the bank and a lot of confidence. I also had developed a plan.

I would continue to swim, focusing on my butterfly. I was third fastest on the team behind two seniors. No one else was even close. I was pretty fast in freestyle too but that wasn’t my focus. Franklin and I both felt confident in my ability to play competitive baseball. We began working on fielding. I had a good enough arm to throw from shallow right field to home plate on the fly. If I couldn’t compete at the varsity level by the time I was a sophomore, I’d drop baseball and switch my focus. Academically, I planned on talking to a guidance counselor to set myself up to graduate in three years. I’d been fast tracked since third grade, always in the most advanced classes. I didn’t really think I’d go to the same college as Sally but I wanted the option. We’d talked a lot but didn’t want to give each other a false hope either. We were trying to be realistic but this was all new territory and we didn’t know what it meant. She kept telling me it was okay to date someone else. Of course, I told her the same.

I had always enjoyed school and learning and I knew I wanted to go to college and I had a rough idea about what I wanted to do but couldn’t put a name on it. I wanted to do for others what Franklin had done for me. Franklin was pretty happy that he’d had such an impact on me and he helped me look into programs like Outward Bound and teen mentoring programs. I considered becoming a clinical therapist or something as basic as a school guidance counselor. The other thing Franklin said might be good was to become a coach. Regardless of which path I followed, it seemed obvious that courses in speaking and psychology would be helpful. If I was going to be a coach, there were probably better sports than swimming and baseball to have an impact but I wasn’t sure because I hadn’t been on other teams. I called The University of Nashville and they sent me a catalog in the mail. They had a bunch of different degree programs that might work, but I thought a lot of colleges would, too. The thought that Sally would return to the Lowcountry to go to college was really appealing to both of us. We started requesting catalogs from colleges all over the country just so we could understand the options.

Part of my plan was to try to find someone doing professionally what I thought I wanted to do. Franklin and I figured my school guidance counselor would be as good of a place to start as any. He said it would be a bit of an ego boost to my counselor and they would probably be extra motivated to help me. That was the plan. By the time the break was over, I wasn’t just ready for school to start. I needed school to start. I needed some rest.

Monday morning, I stuck my head into my guidance counselor’s office and asked for an appointment. There was a slot during my Latin class. Since I hated Latin with a passion, I wasn’t heartbroken. I went to lunch and grabbed my old seat, alone and apart from anyone else. I didn’t think too many people at Porter knew that Sally had moved. It didn’t matter. I tried to drown out all the noise and concentrate on my lunch and A Clockwork Orange. The strange vocabulary of the novel slowed me down but it also made it extra interesting. Lunch was half over when Kim sat down across from me.

“Hey.”

“Hey, Kim,” I said putting my book down. “Good break?”

“I guess. We had family in from Montana. I think they were just trying to escape the snow. How about you?”

“It was okay.”

“You don’t seem like it was okay. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Wait. Is it that obvious?”

“From across the room. I’m used to seeing you take the lunch break to be alone but today is different. You look like your puppy got run over or something.”

“That’s it. My puppy got run over.” How could she figure that out by watching me read? Why was she watching me read?

“C’mon. Friends, right? What’s really wrong?”

I thought about telling her but hadn’t thought through how she might respond to that. I gave her a once over for the twentieth time. She really was pretty. Pretty superficial, Jack, I thought. But there’s nothing wrong with being pretty if there’s more to her than that, and there was.

“Let me stew for a while, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll give you all the room you need,” she said as she started to get up.

“Kim,” I said and put my hand on hers. “I’m not much company for anyone right now but there’s no one I’d rather talk to than you ... or my brother ... or his girlfriend. At any rate, it’s just me.”

“I get it. You know where to find me.” I nodded and she left.

She looked pretty good going away. Part of me wanted to chase her down and ask her out and another part of me desperately didn’t. Somehow, Sally’s leaving wasn’t the end of Sally and me. But dating someone else would be like throwing in the towel. As attractive as Kim was, I wasn’t ready to do that. I tried to start reading but my mind wouldn’t let go of what Kim revealed. It was obvious that something was going on with me at least to her and she was paying enough attention to me at lunch to notice.

I met with Mrs. Augustine, my guidance counselor, and she provided a couple of career options that were consistent with my goals. She said I would probably enjoy being a therapist more than a psychiatrist but that I should work toward psychiatrist. She explained that a psychiatrist was a medical doctor that could prescribe medication and the course of study was longer and more difficult. She said if I changed my mind after a couple of years of college, I could easily switch from psychiatrist to therapist without losing much, if anything, but if I started out working toward a degree as a therapist and changed my mind, I might have considerable catching up to do. It made sense to me. She also said I should not become a school guidance counselor. When I asked why not, she said that her time with me was the most rewarding she’d had all year, and she didn’t get to impact lives the way she’d hoped. Or if she did, she never found out about it. It was pretty sad that she thought that. Then we worked on a schedule that could allow me to graduate in three years. It looked pretty doable but swimming or baseball might take a hit. I would have the following summer to decide unless I wanted to get a head start and take summer school classes.

That night, Sally called and we talked about school. Mostly, she talked about her life and I asked questions and listened. She had made a lot of friends quickly and I wasn’t surprised by that. She seemed happy with her school and especially with orchestra. She said that in Charleston, music could be a part of your life but in Nashville, music was your life. Some of the seniors she’d met had already played background on albums, mostly country, and with mostly lesser-known artists. The point was, their names were on the liner notes and that was huge. Another of her observations was on the popularity of different instruments. In Nashville, if you didn’t play piano or guitar, you were sort of a second-class citizen. On the other hand, if you played an unusual instrument, you might have a better chance to play backup for someone. The people she knew who’d played background didn’t play piano or guitar.

She said she would have to get caught up on the latest country music but that would be easy. The Nashville radio had several stations devoted to the genre. While Charleston only had one. There was simply a different focus and she liked it. I was happy for her. She said she was certain her honky-tonk tunes would be well received by her friends. At the end of the call, she thanked me for the gift and the second set of batteries which she was happily using while thinking of me. We hung up and I realized I had been negligent in meeting my obligations.

It was dark but I had a light on my bike. Mom was occupied so I rode over to Bad Kitty. Cheryl was working and so were a couple of other people. It was busy. When I stuck my head in the door, she saw me almost immediately and announced she was taking a break, then came out to greet me.

“You can’t come in. At least not while the owner is here. How’d it go?”

“So well. Everything you said worked.” I gave her a few of the details, while she smiled from ear to ear.

“If that was your goodbye date, she will never forget you. I wouldn’t. Sheesh. Are you still talking to her?” I nodded. “Okay, here’s the sucky part for her, she won’t find another teenager to treat her like you did for a while. Maybe ever. Guys get greedy. The good news for you is, if you want my opinion, if you keep your next girlfriend happy, she’ll keep you happy. And you already know how to do that. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah. And you don’t think most guys know that.”

“No. Not at fourteen. Hell, not at eighteen. But she can do for them what I did for you. Teach them. I think a lot of girls are afraid to. You know. They’re afraid to tell the guy what to do because they think he won’t or he’ll feel insulted or embarrassed or something.”

“If getting told what you want hurts a guy’s feelings, then you probably have the wrong guy, right?”

“Jack, with an attitude like that, I would take you to bed in a skinny minute. I’d probably end up in jail, but mmm ... I don’t know. Might be worth it. You need to go before I say something I regret,” she said with a very nice smile.

“Now, you’re being silly.”

“Good sex starts with a good attitude. Now scoot.”

“I’m really enjoying the conversation. Do I have to?” I said, pretending to whine the way a little kid would.

She looked back at the door and pushed me into the shadows. “Just one. Make it a good one,” she said and we kissed.

Kissing Cheryl was like kissing lightning. I was trying to kiss back as good as she was kissing me but she had a lot more practice. I must have been doing something right because she reached down and moved my hand from her hip, straight to second base. She had gloriously nice tits and I squeezed one gently, trying to circle where I thought her nipple was. I couldn’t tell because of her clothing but I must have been close because she moaned. I circled it with my hands. She moaned again and pushed back.

“God, I bet you’d be an enthusiastic lay. And you’re still a virgin?” she asked and I nodded. “Stay away and don’t ever come back,” she said but I knew she was joking.

She went to the door and looked back and blew me a kiss before going inside. Man, could she kiss. And did I mention she had glorious tits? I rode home and somewhere along the way; I realized her glorious tits were probably just a tiny bit larger than Kim’s but not by much.

When I got home, I was mildly chewed out for riding in the dark. In my defense, I had a headlight. I was careful and all of that but Mom was still ticked off. I wasn’t quite sure what was going on but then Veronica came around the corner from the kitchen and I guessed they had been talking about something that got Mom wound up. Mom went back in the kitchen and Veronica sort of snuck out to talk to me.

“Hey Jack,” she started. “I wanted to talk to you about what happened a couple of weeks ago but haven’t had a chance.”

“What happened a couple of weeks ago?”

She looked at me as though she thought I was kidding her. “You know what happened better than I do.”

“Maybe you could help me figure it out. The last time I saw you was the night you and Mom brought a Christmas tree home so you could hang up ormanents,” I said, intentionally mispronouncing the word like my drunk mother had.

“That’s it. Well ... I don’t really remember too much of what happened once we got here. And, if I said or did something that I shouldn’t have...” I raised my eyebrows in a sort of question. “You and I ... we didn’t ... nothing happened, right?”

She had seemed sober enough to remember but I was wrong. She had been too drunk to remember. Think quick, I thought.

“I certainly didn’t tell anyone.”

She looked mortified. She really didn’t remember.

“Did we? No. Please tell me...”

“No, Miss Veronica. We really didn’t. You don’t remember though?”

She looked so relieved, and I thought she might be upset with me for messing with her. “No. I don’t remember. I just know that you and I wrestled a tree inside and then it got pretty fuzzy. I know I was teasing you and I was afraid it got out of hand. But I honestly don’t remember.”

“No, Miss Veronica, nothing happened. Nothing much, at any rate,” I said and started to leave. She put her hand on my shoulder.

“What does nothing much mean?” I just smiled. “You brat! You are enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Kind of.”

She gave me a weird smile and I excused myself because I didn’t know what else to do. It had been a while since I’d hugged or kissed Sally. I thought about that as I walked to my room. I’d made out with Sally, talked with Karen and then Cheryl and even kissed Cheryl and learned a lot. Cheryl was older than me and sexy. Miss Veronica seemed like she would do something with me and she was way older but still pretty sexy, unless she was drunk. There might have been other freshmen who had the experience I had. Maybe they did but they didn’t talk about it either.

My dick was half hard and I had to do something about it. I went to my room and into the bathroom and started stroking slowly. My mind flew from Cheryl, to Veronica and then to Kim. When I got close, though, I saw Sally and came remembering how she sounded. Other women could live in my imagination but Sally was real. In my mind, I could hear Sally. I could smell Sally. I could taste Sally. My memories of Sally overcame the six-hundred-mile separation.

I hit the sack and lay there thinking. Franklin had said, “The first chance you have to fuck a woman, don’t. Make love to her and if you can’t do that, don’t.” I couldn’t do that with Cheryl or Veronica. I knew that, even though it would probably be a lot of fun. I might be able to do that with Kim but since Sally left, I hadn’t even considered anyone else. Unfortunately, Kim was out of my league. Maybe she didn’t think so but she was. I tried to think through the available candidates at Porter but every time I did, my mind wouldn’t stick to anyone but Sally or Kim. Kim sure was good looking. I thought if I tried to date her, she might but only until she found some college freshman or something. Who needs the heartbreak? Not me. Not again.