Travis’s dad was still in rehab. Travis was living with us and every week would visit him at the facility where he was being treated. What would happen when his dad got out, no one knew. In the meantime, we had Travis. I liked having him there. So did Pat. He was an optimistic kid with a sunny disposition, and he made everyone laugh.
Pat had graduated with her degree in Library Science and had accepted a job at a law firm in town doing research for them. I told her it was a step up from mixing drinks and slopping beer for a living; she winked and told she’d met interesting people doing that; I think she was trying to tell me something. For the most part she could do her new job as well from home as in their law offices because she did most of her work on the computer. So she was home when Dust and Travis came home from school. I liked that. They were still boys; they both still needed adult supervision and the security of knowing someone would be there for them when they came home every day.
» » »
Christmas was fast approaching. I was out with Dust and Travis finding a tree.
“I’ve never done this before,” Dust said.
“You certainly had a tree for Christmas,” I said.
“Oh, sure, we had one. My father had it brought in already decorated by a professional. Then I was told not to touch it. We never had any presents under it; it was only for show when he had guests or a party. When I was younger, they just gave me a few gifts at the breakfast table on Christmas. But what I meant was, I never went out looking for a tree.”
The three of us wandered around the tree lot, looking them over.
“I found a nice one,” Travis said, coming back to join us. He liked going off on his own. Dust liked staying with me.
“Let’s go look at it,” I said, and we followed him. The tree he liked was beautiful. It was full, well-shaped and tall—12-feet tall, to be specific.
“Uh, that won’t fit in the house, Trav. We have eight-foot ceilings.”
“Oh.” Trav wasn’t disappointed. Very few things disappointed him. He simply took off looking for another one. He accepted life as it was.
Dust found one he liked after walking around it a couple of times, then checking out two others, then thinking about it, then returning to the first one, then deciding. He’d gotten better about deciding. Still took some thought doing it, though. Still didn’t want to make a mistake. But he could pull the trigger on a lot of things now where he couldn’t before. He decided on a tree, and I bought it. We all decorated it together. Pat had made cocoa and had a CD of Christmas music playing softly in the background. The look on the boys’ faces as they hung ornaments and when we turned on the lights was incredible. Had I ever been that young?
After the boys said good night, I again was on the couch with Pat. We cuddled a little, I kissed her, and then got ready to say the strangest words that would ever come out of my mouth: marry me?
She preempted me, however. It was easy for me to forget how smart and insightful she was. She proved it again at that point, almost reading my mind. “You have the strangest look on your face. Makes me think of a five-year-old about to steal a cookie that he’s been warned not to take. Sort of desire mixed with fear, with a little bit of bravado thrown in for good measure.”
“Well . . . ” I started, but she forestalled me.
“You know, this is very nice. Sitting here with you, the boys together in their rooms or room, Christmas coming—it all feels right. It feels like a beginning. It feels, well, like we could start something right now. Just so you know, I’m talking about our relationship. I think you know I love you. I don’t say it much because it makes you uncomfortable, and you don’t say it at all—other than when you said you might be falling in love with me when you were trying to get me into your bed by pretending we needed to live together so we could help Dust.”
“That wasn’t—”
“Shhh,” she said. “But, I’ve always thought that a relationship needs good communication to work. Otherwise, things get bottled up and worried over, and we get the wrong impression of lots of stuff. That can lead to all sorts of problems. So if you want this to work as much as I do, I think we have to work on communicating.”
“We do communicate,” I said, feeling an unaccustomed nervousness.
“Not enough. For instance, we joke a lot but rarely talk seriously. I don’t know anything about your background, and I want to. We could begin there. Tell me about your mother and father.”
“I can do that,” I said. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t add that but it was true.
“Go ahead,” she said, and pulled out of my arms. She stayed on the couch with me but gave me some room.
“I didn’t have a mother. Well, of course I did, but she died when I was very young. I have no memories of her. My dad raised me. He was a good man but emotionally distant. He didn’t talk much, but he showed me by example how to be a man. I was in awe of him, and I followed his lead as most kids do.
“He didn’t have a college education but read books all the time, soaking up knowledge. He let me know that learning was what made us human—not by telling me that but by showing me. And by telling me I’d be going to college and by knowing the answer to every question I had. He was amazing that way. When you were a kid, did you ever ask anyone to explain why a refrigerator is cold inside? Or to explain the infield-fly rule? Or what you should do if you found a $100 bill lying in the hallway at school when no one else was around? What was the right thing to do, and why was it right? A kid will ask all sorts of questions and often not get answers or ones that make little sense to him. I asked questions and he answered them right off the top of his head and did so in a way I could understand. To me, he seemed to know everything. I found out other men didn’t know everything. This made me admire him even more, and know he was special.”
“So you admired him. Did you love him?”
“Well, sure. But as I said, he wasn’t an emotional man himself, and I modeled my behavior on his, and so I tried to act like he did.”
“And he never told you he loved you?”
“No; why should he? He knew I knew.”
She shook her head. “So you had a happy childhood?”
“Happy? I don’t know if it was happy. It was what it was. I spent a lot of time with my father when I was young. He didn’t get along well with most people. He was very independent and knew how to do things better than other people. He hated to be told what to do. So he ended up not working for anyone but himself. He made money by buying rundown houses, fixing them up and selling them for enough that we always had enough to live on. From the time I was eight, I was helping him. He showed me how to do everything.”
“Ah, now why does that sound familiar! So, was he hard on you? Impatient? Demanding?” Pat looked like she’d figured something out.
“Nope, that’s totally not what he did. He answered all my questions when I was growing up with great patience. He did the same thing with the houses. He didn’t force me to do anything. But I watched and just did what any kid does—I wanted to help with the work, so I started doing it. He explained things to me, taught me how, but with patience. That was probably difficult for him because he was a perfectionist. He wanted everything to be done just so and the finished project to be as good as it possibly could be. The project was the challenge. Having a kid do part of the work had to have been hard for him, but he never let on. What he did do was demand that my work be good work, and it had to be done over if it wasn’t. But there was nothing mean about it; it was just the way it should be. If it wasn’t perfect, I wanted to do it over.”
She was nodding. “I’m glad we’re doing this. I see in you a lot of what you saw in him. That’s why when I nag at you about the way you’re doing something, you just blow me off and don’t change a thing. You’re sure your way is the best.”
I didn’t say anything to that. We had a fire burning in the fireplace. The lights in the room were dim, and the glow from the flames was playing across her cheek. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Had I ever noticed that before? I couldn’t remember. My brain seemed a bit fogged.
“There are a couple more things that I’ve wondered about. You don’t seem to take many things seriously. You joke about a lot of things and want to challenge everything, just like an adolescent. Challenge other people, of course, and yourself, too. I think that may be because you’re testing yourself against your father’s perfectionism. It has to be difficult being raised by someone who’ll only accept perfection. What were you like as a teenager?”
“Pretty much like I am now, I guess. I grew tall early and had a good friend who was into weights and wanted to play football. I lifted with him and then went out for football with him. I guess because of my size, I wasn’t ever bullied, but I saw other people who were, and it made me angry. So I started stepping in.”
“So you felt a need to rescue people even back then?”
“Rescue people?”
“I haven’t known you all that long, but in that short time, you’ve rescued Cynthia and Dust and Travis and maybe even Travis’s father. Yeah, you rescue people.”
“Some people need help, and I can do that. Why shouldn’t I?”
She smiled at me, then leaned forward and kissed me but pulled away when I tried to put my arms around her. “Not yet,” she said. “So in high school, you saw the world was unfair and didn’t like it.”
“I didn’t like the unfairness or the bullying. I didn’t like unfairness in anything. Now that you’re making me think about it, that might have something to do with perfection, too. In a perfect world, things would be fair. I couldn’t do much about things not being fair, but I could stop bullies from doing things to weaker kids when I was around.”
“That allowed you to challenge yourself, too, didn’t it? Stopping bullies. Sometimes having to face down two or three at a time, I imagine?”
I nodded.
“I understand you a little better now. So even back then, you were proving yourself. To yourself. It had to be hard, growing up always trying to be perfect for your father.”
This conversation might have been pleasing her, but it was doing nothing but make me uncomfortable. I decided to distract her. “I think I have something perfect right here,” I said and leaned over and kissed her. This time she didn’t pull away. What I’d been thinking of asking her, earlier, wasn’t important right then. She was as eager as I was. What we did was look for and find some perfection for both of us right there on that couch. It was a good thing the boys didn’t decide to sneak into the kitchen for a midnight snack.
» » »
Pat took the boys to the mall the next day and did her own Christmas shopping while they did theirs.
I was way too manly to worry about Christmas presents, but then I thought about all the Christmases Dust had spent getting little or nothing, about how that had to have felt, and about what it had told him about how unimportant he was. So I might have overdone it a little. One thing I got him was a new .22. One made for competitive shooting. The sheriff’s department had finally returned his old one, but he’d never touched it again. I liked that he thought about things and was sensitive about what mattered to him.
That night, the boys were in their rooms wrapping their gifts in private. We’d told them to stay out of the kitchen, and Pat and I were wrapping the gifts we’d bought for them. Well, Pat was wrapping and I was advising. I didn’t wrap presents. Do any men?
I watched her, a cup of cocoa in my hand. The boys each had taken a cup with them, too.
“You should use a little less paper.” I told her. “You cut too much every time and then have to trim it. You want me to show you how?” I asked.
She grinned. “Yeah, then you can show me how to do the laundry, too. About time you began pulling your weight around here.”
I heard the boys giggling off in their room. And, just then, everything in my world felt right.
“Marry me?” I asked. My heart did a sort of flip-flop in my chest.
She was fastening a bow to a gift she’d just wrapped a ribbon around. She looked into my eyes, a twinkle in hers. No sign of the shock I expected to see at all. “Can I think about it?” she asked, grinning.
She saw my face change, saw the disappointment that caused and stood up and wrapped her arms around me. “I’m kidding. I shouldn’t have right then. Of course I’ll marry you.”
The flip-flopping subsided as quickly as it had started and was replaced by a warm glow that seemed to grow and grow. I started to let out a whoop, but didn’t. I didn’t want the boys rushing in here. There were too many presents still waiting to be wrapped, and I didn’t want to ruin the suspense they were feeling about what they were getting, or the surprise they’d enjoy when they opened things. So, barely containing my excitement, I helped her finish the wrapping, cutting the perfect size sheet of wrapping paper for each remaining gift. I’d wrap them, she’d dress them up a little with bows or stickers, and she write out which boy each one was for. Then we took them all into the living room and placed them under the decorated tree.
When everything was wrapped and labeled, Pat and I kissed again, standing in front of the tree, and then… then I whooped!
It was loud enough because Dust showed up almost instantly, Travis trailing behind. “What was that all about?” he asked.
Pat said, “Briar just asked me to marry him. He wouldn’t give me any time to think it over, though, so I had to say yes.”
I saw a smile a mile wide form on Dust’s face. Then he was rushing over to us. First he hugged Pat, then threw himself into my arms and hugged me, too.
“And Christmas isn’t even for three days yet,” he said, beaming.
» » »
It was Christmas Eve. Dust and I were sitting on the rock, looking out over the cliff at the city. It was nighttime, and all the Christmas lights colored the vista. When I squinted, it all looked like a huge rainbow.
“Awesome!” said Dust.
“I didn’t want to give up this place,” I told him, meaning this meadow, this view, this rock. “It’s kind of special, and we can’t let something bad that happened here ruin it.”
He was quiet for a moment, looking out over the city. Then he said, “Something good happened, too.”
“Yeah, you saved my life.”
“And I found I could trust myself to do what needed to be done and not screw it up. That was the good part. Well, along with saving your life, I guess.”
I grinned at him, and he grinned back. Then I got up and walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down.
“You like to challenge yourself, don’t you?” he asked. “There really isn’t much you can’t do.”
“You’re getting more and more like that, too,” I said.
“Well, maybe. Thanks to you.”
I walked away from the edge and joined him again on the rock. I turned to him and looked him in the eyes. He looked back. He didn’t drop his eyes any longer or turn away when people looked at him. “I love you, Dust.” There, I’d said it. I really had!.
Dust was giving me a sarcastic look like only teenagers can, and then it relaxed into a genuine, happy smile. “I know,” he said.
The End