At breakfast the next morning, Briar laid out his plan, and of course the way he told it to Pat invited some grief for him.
“We bought this house for the three of us to live in yesterday.”
“Really? Without even letting me see it? Well, those things have brief escape clauses in the contract, so I’ll just come out with you for a look-see today, and then we’ll decide whether we’re all going to live there or not.”
“Well, no, we’re not going to do that.”
“Why not?”
He hesitated, and I knew him well enough by now to know he was deciding the best way to say what he was thinking. When he spoke, it wasn’t with the baiting voice he used to start arguments with Pat. He spoke very seriously.
“The thing is, if you saw it now, you might not like it. It’s a bit, well, shabby, I guess, and I know what women are like. You’d take a look, wrinkle up your nose, and your mind would be made up for forever and a day, and there’d be no changing it, even if we tore down what was there and replaced it with the Taj Mahal. So what we’re going to do, Dustin and I, we’re going to work on it a little so your first impression will be, ‘Oh, wow, I get to live here? Lucky me!’ ”
Even with his seriousness, Pat wasn’t having it. “If you think I’m going along with that, your head is as full of crap as the rest of you! Going to work on it a little, huh? That means redoing some of it. Let’s say, just to be choosing one example, the kitchen, maybe?”
Briar leaned back a little, away from the table, away from Pat, and smiled. “Now that’s certainly one possibility. You have to remember, it’ll be my kitchen so it won’t matter a hell of a lot what we decide to do in there. I might let you in to boil an egg sometime, but only one, and that’ll be that.”
His serious voice had changed, saying that. He was playing with her now.
Pat moved on. “And the master-bedroom suite? You’re just going to maybe cover it with dark-chestnut paneling, put in a purple shag carpet, add some tassels to the curtains, and then say, ‘Here you go, honey, all ready for you.’ Is that what you’re planning, Mr. Wisdom?”
“Well, yeah, Dustin and I’ll be making all that kind of decisions. Someone has to do it, and as we’ll be doing all the work, we’ll be making all the decisions. Besides which, what’s wrong with purple? I like purple.”
“You and Dustin, huh? Trying to share the blame, huh? Well, that doesn’t cut it, mister. I’m coming out and looking at this place. I’m not one of those fancy, frilly, fragile, flighty women you see on daytime TV. I can look at a place and tell if it has possibilities without getting my panties in an uproar if I happen to see a garter snake slithering off into the bushes or a mountain lion looking down at me from an overhanging branch. And if this place does have possibilities, then I want to be included in the planning. If I’m going to live there, buster, I need to have some input. Kapeesh?”
Briar looked over at me and opened his mouth, but I raised my hands to stop him. “I heard someone once on TV. They said something about hell having no fury like a woman scorned. Maybe this is what they were referring to. If you want to hear a suggestion—” I stopped a moment to let that sink in; he’d been trying to get me to opine about things; maybe he’d regret it now “—I think maybe this is one time you should listen. Just my opinion, which you seem to want to hear even when you’ve made up your own mind. But, she has a very valid point.”
He wrinkled his eyebrows at me. “You noticed that?”
I laughed. “Well, maybe.”
So anyway, Pat drove out with us, taking her own car because she had to work later. Briar loaded all sorts of things in both cars. I was helping carry the tools he pointed out to me and didn’t even see what else he was loading. I did see the sleeping bags and air mattresses. I thought about that, then gathered up some books I’d found in Briar’s apartment that I wanted to read and looked at the TV set. It was an old, portable one. It hadn’t been turned on since I’d been there. This was the longest period in my life that I’d gone without watching any TV. I picked it up and carried it out to the car, too.
There was stuff all over the ground, and Briar was packing it into the cars, trying to be as organized as possible so he could get it all in. It was going to be a struggle, and when he was about done, he told me to get in so he could put some stuff on my lap.
He was done soon after that and we headed out. I looked back, wondering how long it would be before we returned. There, sitting all alone, was the TV set.
“Stop!” I yelled.
Briar looked over at me.
“You forgot the TV. We’ll need it at night. There won’t be anything else to do.”
Briar didn’t slow down. He did glance at me again with his large, soft eyes. Eyes I’d occasionally seen looking very hard. Not now. “Dustin, this is the very beginning of the phase you’re going to go through hating me. You and I are going to be spending a lot of time together, and most of it will be working time. Hard. Besides that, we’re going to be doing something else.”
He stopped talking, so I asked, “What else?”
“We’re going to get you in shape. Harden you up. Lose a little softness, add a little muscle. You’re certainly not fat, but you’re not fit, either. By the end of the summer, you will be. And it won’t be easy or and it won’t be fun, and you won’t like it one bit. You especially won’t like me for making you do it. That’ll all change, and you’ll be happy at the end, I hope. But the first part will be bad, maybe even awful. Please, please remember this. I’m doing this for you, not for me. For you. I don’t think anyone’s ever committed themselves to doing something just for you before. Well, I’m doing that now.”
I didn’t like the sound of this. Sure, my life had been hard with teasing and belittling and occasional hitting, and I’d spent a lot of time wishing I was stronger and could take care of myself with bullies, but I’d never believed any of it was possible. It was just a dream, like a little boy wishing he could fly.
I’d spent a great deal of time alone, and I’d become adjusted to it. I didn’t have a lot of people telling me what to do all day long. I wasn’t sure how I’d handle this. I was pretty sure I didn’t want it to happen. That the end wouldn’t be worth the means.
I turned to him. “What does that have to do with a TV set?”
“Dustin, I want you to be someone you aren’t now. A better person, physically and mentally. I don’t want you to be someone who spends a lot of time letting the TV set fill your hours. You read, and that’s great. You can do all the reading you want when we have downtime. But, part of what we’re going to be doing is weaning you off TV and videos and computer games and porno websites and that sort of thing.”
“But that’s how I relax. That’s the only pleasure I have.”
“Not for the next few months. If after that, you want to return to the way you were, you can. I’m going to give you a head start on a new way to live. It’ll be up to you to embrace it or reject it. But you can’t make an informed decision without knowing what the other possibility feels like. So, like it or not, you’re going to give this as good a shot as you can before that decision comes due.”
We rode the rest of the way to the house in silence. I still liked him. Hating him hadn’t even started to appear over the horizon, and I doubted it would. But I sure didn’t like the sound of what I was hearing. I wasn’t good at any of the jobs that would be required in fixing up the house so I’d expected to just try some things, then relax while he did the bulk of the work. Somehow, just relaxing didn’t sound like part of the summer he had planned for me.
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I’m not proud of it, but by the time we arrived, I’d worked myself into a grandmother of a sulk. What was all this about wanting me to express my opinion and about him listening to it? Huh? Where was my decision regarding all this? Who was listening to me this time?
Briar looked at me when we stopped, but I didn’t turn to look back at him. I just sat there, my arms firmly crossed over my chest, and stared out the front window.
Briar got out and waited for Pat to get out of her car. When she did, Briar said something to her, and the two of them walked toward the house together.
They stood talking. Then he led her around and she was looking at things and making remarks and he was nodding or discussing things, and it was as if they’d forgotten I even existed.
Eventually, after they’d been inside for a while, they came out. Briar came over to the car, opened my door and said, “Let’s get all this stuff unloaded. We need to empty Pat’s car first because she has to get back. Just set everything on the ground. We can sort it out and move it inside later.” He left the door open and stepped over to Pat’s car and began work.
I knew I was being childish, knew it, but I wanted to just sit there, to make my point. I wasn’t exactly sure what my point was, other than I was being told what to do, not being included in discussions about it, and I didn’t like that. That seemed a legitimate position to me.
I also knew that by making Briar do everything, I was in a way letting Pat down, and she hadn’t done anything against me at all.
Finally, I got out and went to the other side of her car from where Briar was working and started taking things out. Pat came up to me and said, very softly, “Thanks, Dustin.” That was all, but it made me feel much, much better, and maybe a little ashamed. Like I was included again. Part of something. And shouldn’t have been sulking like a five-year-old.
When she was gone, after a long kiss with Briar that made me feel funny, Briar looked at me and said, “We can either take all this stuff inside, then have to move it around a lot as we work, or we can leave it outside to maybe get rained on or eaten by that squirrel we saw. What do you think?”
Damn. He was good, I had to grant him that. He was forcing me to converse with him. To just walk away would not just be rude, it would be petulant; it would be a baby throwing a hissy fit. I had more pride than that. So I had to answer, but I didn’t have to be talkative. I could let him know I was pissed with body language and being short with him. I should have been consulted about all this!
“We should stack it on the front porch and put the food in the kitchen.”
Briar seemed to think about that, then nodded. “Sounds good to me. Let’s get to it, then.” If he’d noticed I was being short, he didn’t let on.
But we did as I’d suggested. He’d taken most of the stuff from the apartment to the car. Now he was working at my speed. So, every box he carried, he waited till I’d carried one. It went much slower, and I was beat by the time we were done. I sat down in one of the porch chairs, sagging from exhaustion.
He got a bottle of water out of one of the boxes and handed it to me. “We have an awful lot to do, so rest for about five minutes, then we’ll get after it. While you’re resting, I’ll fill you in on how this will work.
“Every day, we’ll get up early and go jogging. We’ll start with two miles. I know, I know, that’s hardly enough to break a sweat, but I’m older than you and need to get my legs under me before we stretch it out. We’ll run two miles for a couple, three or four days before it isn’t killing me, then step it up.”
I started to say something, but he raised his hand. “When we get back from the jog, I’ll fix breakfast. After eating, we’ll look at what we want to accomplish on the house that day, talk about it, maybe lay out some tools to get ready. Then, with all the food digested, we begin the weight work.”
“The weight work?”
“Yeah, some of those boxes contain weights. I didn’t bring much because with weights, repetitions are more important than bulk poundage. But I have a setup for doing bench presses, too, and I’ll show you how to do those and other stuff as well. We won’t get very complicated for a month or so, not until your body can handle it.”
“Weights? I don’t want to lift weights! Actually, I don’t want to jog, either.”
“Of course you don’t. Look, I’m not going to spend all summer arguing about it or listening to you complain about it or watching you sulk. I’ll only say this one more time, and that’s it. After that, any bitching about this from you, I’ll just not respond. I’m sorry for what your father did, and to tell the truth, your mother, too. You had bad parents, and the fact that you’ve stayed as mentally healthy as you have with decent values is a testament to your strength and innate character. But you only know how to live as you’ve lived so far. It’s all you know, so you can’t make much of a decision about anything else. I’m going to change your perspective this summer. At the end, you’ll be able to tell me what you want out of life, and you’ll be in a position to work toward that goal. That’ll all be entirely up to you. This summer won’t be. This summer, I’m the boss. I can’t get you to that place where you’ll be independent and self-sufficient without putting you through some things you won’t like.
“Believe me when I tell you this, Dustin: I can be just as stubborn as you, and no matter what, we’re going to do this my way, because I know my way works. So I’m not going to apologize for hurting your feelings, and I’m not going to keep explaining myself, and you’re either going to try this, give it an honest shot, or it’ll be the unhappiest few months of your life. Remember, this is for your benefit, not mine.”
After saying that, he didn’t wait for a reply from me. He just got up and walked inside.