Terry lived in a part of town I hadn’t visited yet. As I entered his neighborhood, I saw mostly older homes standing on well-kept yards. Mature trees grew in many of them, providing ample, much-needed shade and a feeling of permanence to the community. We were having another warm, sunny day––that was certainly one huge difference between here and Ohio, where if it didn’t rain at least twice a week in the summer and fall something was out of whack with the weather––and the sounds of children outside at play and their clutter of tricycles, bikes, toys and accessories could be heard and seen in many of the yards. This was a cheerful, welcoming neighborhood, one giving you the sense that everything would always be all right here.
I turned off Marion Street, rode up Lawson Meadows Road as Terry had instructed, and eventually came to a large white church set well back from the street. The lawn had a prominent message board announcing the upcoming sermon and a few other church-related activities. At the bottom it stated, Senior Minister: M. Brandon Kauffman, D.D. The sermon was going to be “Serving God Through Serving Humanity”. I couldn't help but compare that in my mind to the last sermon I could remember listed for delivery by Reverend Ellison: “Let Not Our Sins Condemn Us To Hell Forever”. The message board was set near the street and the lawn behind it had a scattering of flower beds and small, neatly tended bushes. A wide walk led from the sidewalk to the large front doors of the church. The setting looked inviting, even though I didn’t see anyone there, or any cars in the lot.
Terry had said his house was the one just past the church. There was a small parking lot along one edge of the church property and a large, tall hedge of oleanders divided the parking lot and the rest of the church property from the adjoining property.
Terry’s house also sat back from the street, though not as far as the church. It had several large trees growing in the front lawn that shaded the front of the house. Bushes fronted the house itself, which was a compact, two-story red-brick dwelling that looked well-cared-for and homey.
I rode up to the house, then wasn’t sure what to do with my bike. Everything was so neat and tidy that it somehow seemed wrong to just leave my bicycle lying on the lawn or by the porch steps. I decided to take it to the back. I rode down the driveway to the rear of the house and saw Terry’s bike leaning against the garage. I put mine up against his, then looked around.
Almost immediately, the back door of the house opened and Terry stepped out, his usual smile on his face. I walked over to him.
“Looks like you found us all right. Come on in and meet my parents.”
We walked into the house, entering through the back door into the kitchen, which overlooked the back yard. Two adults were sitting at a table in a breakfast nook. Terry took me to them and introduced us all.
Terry’s mother was well dressed and made up very properly. She seemed friendly, but very dignified and a little reserved. She didn’t seem to display the warm and consuming motherliness that had so struck me with John’s mother. I wondered if being married to a minister had anything to do with that.
Terry’s father was a tall man with a slender build, salt and pepper hair, a friendly face and a deep, resonant voice. He shook my hand when we were introduced and seemed genuinely happy to meet me. He put me at ease very quickly. I recognized some of Terry in him and realized where Terry’s good looks and easy manner came from.
Terry told them we’d be upstairs until John got there, and then he took me to his room. He had a large bedroom in the upstairs rear of the house. There was a double bed, sports pictures on the walls, a TV and computer. I didn’t see any video games and wondered if his religion had anything to do with that. Knowing Terry, I doubted it. More likely, he simply didn’t have time for them.
After showing me around, he invited me to sit, and we did, both of us on his bed.
“You look a lot better today. You really looked wiped out when I left you last night. I felt a little guilty, making you tell me all that. I’m glad you did, but I’m sorry it was so rough for you. I’ve also thought about it all, and have a bunch of questions, but they’re just nosy questions, and I don’t think I’ll ask them. At least not right away.” He smiled at me, and I thought he might have been teasing.
“What did John say, what did you tell him about me running away? Was he upset?”
“John’s John. You’ve got to get to know him better. He’s a little sarcastic about things, and his first response to almost anything is sort of a humorous one. He’s really funny, but if you don’t know him well, you probably wouldn’t notice the humor, or you’d misinterpret it. That’s why some people don’t like him much—they haven’t taken the trouble to understand him.”
“Yeah, but that didn’t answer my question.”
“Let me finish. Damn, but you’re eager this morning! As I was saying,” he said, emphasizing the last word and looking at me challengingly, daring me to interrupt again, “his first reaction is almost always sarcastic, and this time, he didn’t do that. He just listened, and when I was done, just said he guessed he’d talk to you on Monday.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Just that something personal upset you, you got a little panicky all of a sudden and needed to get home. That when I got there you were already feeling better and were a little embarrassed by what you’d done.”
“Didn’t he ask what had bothered me?”
Terry just looked at me for a second. Then he said, “John knows me as well as I know him.”
That didn’t seem much of an answer, but then I realized it was. He was telling me he didn’t reveal people’s personal business to other people, and John knew it.
“He doesn’t know I’m going to be here, does he?”
“Nope. How do you want to handle it? I mean, just you being here is no big deal, and we’ll eat when he arrives. But, after that, what? You want to be alone with him? You want me there? What do you want to do?”
I hadn’t worked out the logistics yet. All I knew when I got up this morning was that I needed to talk to John. Now, I needed to figure out the best way to do that. Well, I didn’t want Terry there. As much help as he’d been, this was my mess to fix; it had to be just John and me.
“I think I need to talk to him alone. What’s the best way to do that?”
Terry thought about that. “I guess it depends on what you want. You can make it sort of accidental that you ended up alone together, or you could be up front and just tell him you need to talk privately. You seem to like to make things more difficult than they have to be.”
I realized that was true. I guess I wasn’t as carefree about this business of telling someone about me as I’d thought. I might have figured it out intellectually and been okay with it on that level. Emotionally, that was something else again.
“I think you’re right, Terry. I’ve just got to do it. Stop beating around the bush. I’m nervous about how he’ll react, but I’ve already thought through that, and I just have to do it. I want to be his friend, I really want him to like me, and if I can’t be honest with him, I can’t really be much of a friend.”
“OK, after lunch, just tell John you want to talk privately, just the two of you, then ask if you can push him down to Boynton. That’s an elementary school a couple of blocks from here and they have a playground with grass around it. There shouldn’t be many people there then. It’ll be a good place to go to talk.”
I decided to do that. While I was deciding, the doorbell rang. John.
Terry and I went downstairs and Terry opened the door. John was standing, and again it startled me. My mental picture of him always included his chair.
Terry met him with his big smile and invited him in. He started in, then saw me and suddenly stopped. He paused for a very brief moment, then quickly looked around, then said to Terry in a stage whisper, “Hey, I’ve got the door blocked, you guard the stairs and we have him trapped.”
I broke out laughing. If I’d been feeling some tension, meeting him, and I guess I had, he’d certainly broken it. Now, I couldn’t stop laughing. Thinking about it, that really was funny.
“I invited Tim for lunch too, you don’t mind I take it?” Terry asked him.
“Of course not. Besides, it’ll give me a chance to see an old apology put to use. It’ll be great.”
Terry looked at me with a question in his eyes, and I looked back at him just as dumbly. Finally Terry asked him, “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on, Terry, think about it.”
“John, what are you talking about?” This time Terry put some heat in his voice.
“Well,” said John, giving in, “if Tim’s going to eat with us, we’ll get to see someone eat and run.”
He said it, then stared at me. I groaned. Terry made to hit him in the shoulder, but pulled his punch and just tapped him. “That was weak,” he said.
“How many of these do we have to put up with?” I asked. “Maybe I can go wait in the garage or something till you’re done?”
“What would be the fun of that? I wouldn’t get to see you squirm.”
“I guess I didn’t realize you were a sadist. You didn’t strike me as the kinky type.”
“Hey guys, let’s go eat. It’s probably ready, and I think we need a change of subject anyway.” Terry looked just a little bit uncomfortable. I thought maybe he was thinking of the shape I’d been in the night before. Maybe he didn’t think I was up for too much teasing.
It was also hard to read John. I didn’t really know how much was good-natured teasing and how much was letting off steam. He made sarcastic comments, and then didn’t break a smile. Doing that put a subtle challenge in most everything he said. It was easy to feel defensive with him, but I didn’t know for sure that I needed to be. In any case, I hated being on the defensive. It wasn’t a good place for me and I resisted being in that position as much as possible.
We walked into the dining room, where the table had been set for three. There were three kinds of salads, a plate of sandwiches, and a bowl of fruit cocktail that looked like it was put together from fresh fruit rather than dumped out of a can. Glasses of iced tea stood at each place.
“Sit wherever you like, Tim,” Terry told me. I chose a place to the side of the head of the table, Terry sat at the head and John was left with sitting across from me. We began passing bowls and plates and pretty quickly each of us had a plate full of food.
No one said anything right away. I felt a little uncomfortable, mostly because the recent banter with John, in retrospect, seemed to have had an edge to it. John’s manner of talking usually didn’t bother me, but now I was uncertain. Was he mad at me? He didn’t go out of his way to let anyone know exactly what he meant. I guess he felt it was your job to interpret him; he had no need to compromise his behavior for anyone. I hadn’t had a problem knowing where he was coming from when I was with him before, but I did now. I guess I was feeling guilty.
Terry took a bite, then looked at both of us. John would look down at his plate, then look up at me, stare for a few seconds, then look down again. He kept repeating this. When I’d meet his eyes, he’d meet mine, then eventually look down. Terry saw this, then finally sighed. “OK guys, this isn’t working. John, what’s the matter?”
“Is something the matter?”
“Cut the crap, John. You’re making Tim very uncomfortable, and I’m not sure he’s up to it. If you’ve got a problem, let’s talk about it. If you don’t, then whatever you’re doing right now is silly and childish and isn’t working, so cut it out.”
“Hey, screw you! I don’t need you running my life. If Tim has a problem with me, he can talk. You can talk, can’t you?” he said, turning his attention to me.
I have to admit it. I suddenly felt really tense, really upset, and even worse, what I really felt like was getting up, getting on my bike and going home. As much as I wanted to get things smoothed out with John, this antagonism, this passive aggression, if that’s what it was, was having an effect on me. It was making me want to pull into a shell. To hide. I didn’t know why, I’m not usually like that, but that’s the effect it was having. It was all I could do to not get up and leave. I was about 10 seconds away from doing that. Was that what John wanted? To make me run again? Why would he want that? Had I pissed him off yesterday and he was getting back at me?
Then it was like a light went on. I suddenly realized I hadn’t had a chance to apologize for yesterday. That had been my first thought getting out of bed, that I had to apologize to John, and with the way the conversation had gone when he’d arrived at Terry’s house and unexpectedly found me there, I’d never done it. Maybe that was John’s problem: he still had no idea why I’d run. I hadn’t said anything about it and maybe he thought I was just brushing it all under the rug. Maybe the more he thought that, the more pissed he was getting.
I also remembered my early-morning promise to myself. It seemed so simple at the time, promising myself I wouldn’t run away from him the next time we met, and here I was, about to do it again. I was pretty sure the third time wouldn’t be a charm for our relationship.
I looked into his eyes. He was staring intently at me, his face expressionless, his question hanging in the air between us. “John, I just realized, I never apologized for running out on you yesterday. I am sorry I did that. I need to explain it to you. I hope you’ll let me do that. I want to do it after lunch, and we need to do it privately. I’ve told Terry that I wanted to talk to just you and he said we should go for a walk, to a school nearby. I hope you’re not so pissed at me that you won’t let me tell you why I ran. Can we do that?”
John kept staring at me, then said, “Most people can’t figure me out very well. I guess I hide what I’m thinking and feeling. But you guessed I was really pissed. I’m impressed. But I was more pissed you were blowing it off than for your running. You’ve now apologized for that and want to explain, so sure, I’m up for that. And I apologize if I upset you just now. Sometimes when I get pissed I go a little too far. I guess that’s what I’ve been doing. I’m sorry.”
I didn’t reply, just smiled at him. In a couple seconds, he smiled back. Damn, that boy could smile!
The rest of the lunch was much easier. The tension was all gone and the chatter among the three of us was light and funny. Terry made sure it didn’t get either too sharp or too ribald. I was starting to see why John complained he was like a mother hen.
After lunch, after we’d taken all the dishes into the kitchen and put the food away and the dishes in the dishwasher, we thanked Mrs. Kauffman for the wonderful lunch, then Terry told us to take off, and he’d be at home when we got back.
We stepped out onto the porch, and I saw John’s chair down on the cement walk that led to the sidewalk. We walked down the steps and John sat down. I began pushing him out to the sidewalk. As I pushed, my stomach began to fill with butterflies. I might be intellectually ready for this but, emotionally, it mattered too much how John responded to what I had to tell him. The truth was, the more I anticipated what was coming next, the more I realized I was scared shitless.