Page 15

“T his is how we used to be,” my dad said. He looked across the couch at me. “Just the two of us.”

The game had ended a while ago, but we were still immersed in it. We had Herb and Buzz on the radio for the post-, post-game show, and I was busy scrolling on my phone to check for any additional information about Tyler. I was interested in rest of the Woodsmen, too, but mostly Tyler. Generally, totally Tyler. He’d played well and his ankle looked ok to me, although it still made me concerned.

But at the end of the game, as snow had fallen and covered the field, the camera had shown him and some other guys on the sideline. I’d watched him put his gloved fingers briefly to his lips and then move them away, and I knew what that was. He’d blown me a kiss and any anxiety I felt about his injury got swamped by other feelings, very strong ones. I’d put my own fingers to my lips, then dropped them into my lap before my dad had seen.

“Do you wish it was still like this, Daddy? Just the two of us?” I asked.

He thought for a moment, his eyes on the radio. “I think we needed a change,” he answered. “I certainly did. I didn’t realized how much I was holding you back until Gail said it.”

“What? You are not! What did she say to you?”

“She was polite, as always,” he told me. “She mentioned that you needed to spread your wings but you were afraid to, because you didn’t want to leave me.”

“I’ll never leave you,” I promised.

“Yes, you will,” he said. “I want you to. I want you to go to law school, if that’s what you want for yourself.”

“I do,” I admitted. “I interviewed for a better job and I heard this afternoon that they want to hire me. It would be better for us, more money and a more regular schedule.”

“What do you want?” he asked me.

I told him the truth. “I want to finish undergrad and keep going to law school. It’s so selfish…”

“That’s what you should do,” he said, nodding. “That’s what I want for you. I want you to be with Tyler, too, if he makes you happy.”

“He really does.”

“Then you don’t have to sneak around,” my father said. “You don’t have to push your car in and out of the driveway so you don’t wake me, and you don’t have to make up excuses to see him. I’m going to be busier because Gail and I are going to take care of baby Balderston when Iva goes back to work.” He looked pained. “Baby Balderston.”

“She has to pick something else.”

“It can’t come soon enough,” he agreed. “You can drop me at her new house sometimes but there’s a van service that I looked into and I can also use that. Iva wants to pay me and I’ll accept a little to make her feel better, and that will help pay for my rides if I need to take cars.”

“You’ve been working all this out?”

He nodded. “I spent a lot of time in this house, not wanting to live life. But I…” He stopped, and swallowed.

“Dad?Daddy?”I looked at him.“Daddy!”

His mouth opened and closed. Then he picked up his hand and reached out for me.

I was dialing 911 before I knew what was happening, but as I spoke to the operator, he told me to stop. “I’m all right,” he said, his voice hoarse. “It’s nothing.”

I shook my head. “She says they can send—”

“No, no,” he ordered. “No, I’m ok.”

He did look better, but as I hung up, I was unconvinced. “I want to take you to the doctor tomorrow,” I stated. “Whatever is happening, you should get checked.” And it told me a lot that he didn’t argue with that, but just nodded as if he agreed. That night, I crept over and opened the door to his room so that I could listen to him breathe, and I knew that I wouldn’t get much sleep. Instead, I watched radar images on my phone of a swirling storm over Utah, one that had delivered more snow to the Salt Lake City area than they’d seen this early in the season in over twenty years. Herb and Buzz reported that they were stuck for the night and wouldn’t be coming home to Michigan, and pretty soon, I heard the same thing from Tyler.

“We’re going to try to get out tomorrow,” he wrote. “You may be reading this, but you may be asleep due to grandma hours.”

I had no trust in airplanes, contraptions which fascinated me but only from afar as I drove by the airport. I’d never personally been in one but they seemed less than sturdy for the weather conditions that Herb and Buzz were describing. “Don’t come if it’s dangerous,” I wrote back.

“Are you worried about me?”

“Yes.” I was, and I was also worried about my dad. “I wish you were here already. I miss you.”

“I’ll be home soon.”

Then he’d had to go, because they were all having dinner together as a team. It would be a great chance for him to expand his friend group, but I wanted to keep writing to him. I wanted to tell him about my father, for one thing, and about how I’d decided to keep going in school. I wanted to tell him a few other important facts, but those could wait until I saw him in person.

The next morning, I heard from Tyler that he still didn’t have a definite departure time, but they hoped to be home in the afternoon. I also managed to get an appointment with my dad’s doctor, and I insisted that he come with me to the condo complex. Miss Gail was getting ready to leave for her scheduled trip to Georgia, but Iva and baby Balderston would be there. His help in an emergency was questionable, but his cuteness was undeniable.

“Call me if there’s anything,” I told Iva before I returned to the office, and she said she would. Miss Gail got worried about leaving but we all said that she had to go, and that we were looking forward to having her home soon.

I was in the trailer by myself, writing emails and answering calls, when the walkie talkie on my desk beeped. “Oren?” I asked into it. “Did you do that on purpose?” I hadn’t seen him around this morning but the walkie talkie had already been gone when my dad and I arrived. I’d locked the door to the trailer, but he had a master key. So I kept a pair of scissors close at hand and I kept my phone close, too.

The radio beeped again and maybe it was a trick, but I wanted to figure this out. I put on my coat before I left because it was chilly this morning, cold enough that Miss Gail had donned a down wrapper that went past her knees and had a hood. My coat was just wool, but it was fine for me as I went to walk around the complex to find him. “Oren?” I called, and I remembered Tyler saying that our maintenance man might already have known that he was in trouble with the police. He might have been mad—

Hands yanked me off the path, too quickly for me to reach into my pocket to grab the scissors I’d brought, and just as quickly, a heavy palm covered my mouth. “Shh,” he said. I did not “shh” and I fought, too, which made him shake me like a dog did to a toy. Oren was stronger than I realized. He pulled me back between the buildings and stopped at a window, one of the weird ones that these condos had that looked out into nothing. But even as I fought, I saw something through it. In the bedroom behind the glass, I spotted someone who shouldn’t have been there.

Cody. Cody, my tormentor from high school, was inside that condo. And he was opening drawers in a bureau and digging his hands around inside them, like he was looking for something.

I stopped fighting against Oren’s grip as I stared. This wasn’t Cody’s water delivery day and it wasn’t one of the units where he brought his bottles. And anyway, he shouldn’t have been inside any of these places, let alone rifling through someone’s stuff. Oren let go of me to take out his phone, and I watched him get a picture. Then he walked back toward the pathway.

I followed him. “What’s going on?” I asked. I rubbed my mouth with my coat sleeve, wiping away the grime from his palm.

“Your boyfriend is a thief.”

I had heard Oren speak before, but only once or twice, and it surprised me to hear him answer with words now. “Cody’s not my boyfriend,” I told him, which was really beside the point. “What’s going on?” I repeated, but a lot louder.

“He gets in by pushing the button under the lock and jiggling the handle,” Oren said, and that was my trick! “I’ve seen him do it.”

The locks at our complex were the same as the water heaters and the insulation in the walls: old and substandard. “He’s coming here and stealing?” I said. I couldn’t really believe it.

But Oren nodded. “I always saw his van around the corner when I took smoke breaks. Why was he in the area so much, that was what I wanted to know. I followed him and I told my mom.”

“Your mom?” I echoed. “Why would she care?”

She cared, it turned out, because she was the boss two above Iva in the main office, the one who had called me to talk about the police. She was the reason that our maintenance man had never been fired, no matter how many days of work he’d missed or how much he messed up.

“My mother got me the job here after the snowblower went missing, to keep an eye on you and the other girl,” he explained.

“On Iva and me? You guys thought that we stole equipment?”

He nodded. “And I needed a job,” he continued. “I got fired from my last one.”

That was the least shocking thing I’d heard from him yet. “So you were…a spy at this complex?”

He nodded again. “I have a hard time holding down anything steady because of my skiurophilia. I don’t touch them, I only watch and enjoy myself,” he clarified.

I had no idea what he was talking about but I was pretty sure it was something awful, and I actually didn’t want to know. “And the police are aware of all this?”

“They know a little about the skiurophilia,” he answered. “We were going to call about the thefts when my mom got back from Utah, but he’s in there taking shit. So I called today. They’re coming.”

And then he left, walking off as I asked another question and then said, “Oren!” There was no way that I was going back to the office alone with all this happening, not even with my scissors for protection. Now that I knew that Cody was aware of the lock trick, I also knew how he’d gotten in while I’d napped on the floor—and he could again, whenever he wanted. I ran to Tyler’s condo instead.

“Damn,” Iva breathed after I told her, my dad, baby Balderston, and Oisín, the mollusk expert with whom they were video chatting when I burst in. “Damn!”

“He’s in there right now?” my dad asked. “Your old boyfriend is stealing from the residents?” He wasn’t aware of all my problems with Cody, but he knew we’d broken up and how much I hated the guy.

“What did the maintenance man say was his trouble with employment?” Oisín asked from Iva’s phone. “Repeat that term, please.” I did, as best as I could remember it, and he said that he thought he got it.“‘Skiouros’ is the Greek word for squirrels, and ‘philia’ relates to love. When used in this context, it would be an abnormal love.”

“I don’t want my baby to hear this,” Iva said, and I didn’t want to hear it, myself.

But thankfully, the police were knocking because they had just arrested Cody, and they wanted to talk to us, too. And it turned out that Oren had a warrant and also drugs in his pocket, as well as a sixteen-inch knife stuck in his belt, under his coat. He was in the back of a different squad car.

“This is too much,” my dad said. “Kasia.”

I looked over at him from where I sat at Tyler’s kitchen island with an officer that I’d recognized as a guy who had gone to my high school, a few years ahead of me. “Dad, are you ok?” I asked, but he just stared. “Sweet Jesus!” I was running to catch him as he fell from the couch, but I didn’t make it and he tumbled to the floor. “Daddy! He’s having a stroke. Help!”

Tobin Whitaker, the police officer, was already using his radio to summon that and then he knelt down to loosen my dad’s collar. “Try to stay calm,” he said, and he meant me. Baby Balderston had started screaming and Iva tried to calm him, too. “He’s breathing,” Tobin announced.

“Daddy, wake up,” I said. “Please, open your eyes! Please!”

EMS got there quickly and put him on a gurney, and we followed it down the path to the ambulance in the parking lot. Iva was telling me that it would be ok and that I had to calm down to drive. “You can’t get in a wreck, Kasia! That won’t help!” she repeated over baby Balderston’s wails.

“Here, he’s cold,” I said, and gave her my coat to cover him. “Iva…” My voice broke.

“Your dad will be ok. He’s already waking up! Don’t worry,” she told me, as if that had ever worked on anyone, including her. “We’ll come in my car and meet you there.”

“What? No, there are too many sick people in the hospital. Don’t bring baby Balderston.”

“I have to name him,” she said, grimacing. “I don’t want you to be by yourself.”

I told her to stay put, and that I’d let her know how my dad was. Then the ambulance was leaving and I tried to make myself stop shaking enough to unlock my car, get in, and drive without hitting light posts or anything else, especially not people or other cars. Wierze w Boga …

I thought that the staff at the desk were the same women who might have been there when I came with Iva—except Tyler had been here, too. I looked at the other expressions of misery and worry surrounding me in this waiting room and I wished he were here now. I tried to text him but my fingers kept sliding to the wrong letters because they still shook so much.

“I’m in the ER,” I sent, after fixing all the words, and then I added, “With my dad,” in the next message so he would understand who was in trouble. “I think he had another stroke. I think he’s going to die.”

I stopped because my sob had sounded way too loud, even in here where there was a constant hum of voices and machines, and at a higher volume than that, there was someone yelling that it hurt and please make it stop. I glanced around but luckily, I hadn’t disturbed anyone, so I rubbed my neck and looked at my phone again.

“I tried to train myself out of falling to pieces and behaving this way when someone’s sick,” I told Tyler. “I tried to make myself stop being useless. I can’t stand the feeling of being so helpless here.” I watched the screen, but there was no reply.

I did hear from Iva. Miss Gail was in the air already, on her way to Detroit. As far as my friend could tell, the Woodsmen plane had finally taken off, too, but she wasn’t sure where they were. She and baby Balderston were going to do one more diaper change and then they were coming.

“No, don’t,” I told her firmly. “Repeat that to Miss Gail so she doesn’t turn around and fly north again. I already wrote to her that it’s going to be fine.” But then I wrote to Tyler, too, and it didn’t sound fine at all. “My dad turned so grey and it was just like when I found him after the first stroke. He had been on our kitchen floor all day, dying, and I can’t even be in the house without picturing him and the toast that he’d dropped on the floor. It was jelly-side down. Doesn’t that always happen? Why does that always happen? I could hear myself screaming his name and I think I did that again today.”

The doors opened and another gurney came in with a crashing sound that made my head snap up to look, which made my hand fly back to my neck. Another poor patient had arrived. I hoped people had come with him or her, a big group so that they could be together. It was better that way.

“I’m so glad I have people now,” I wrote to Tyler. “I’m so glad that Iva and I are friends and she has baby Balderston. I’m glad I have your mom because I like her so much. I’ve been thinking that maybe my mom would have been the same way, if she were still here. She’d want to do my hair and talk about things, and she’d worry about the choices I was making. Your mom likes me too, I’m pretty sure, but maybe one day she might love me?”

I sent that and looked at the doors through which they had rolled my dad. There was no sign yet of anyone coming out to tell me anything, that he was ok, or…he had to be ok.

“You said that you loved me. You wrote it in my book and even if you didn’t quite mean it in the way I hoped, I’m happy that it’s there. Maybe you were thinking of loving me as good friend, or maybe it was because of sex? You could have felt emotional about that. I think you would say that you don’t get emotional, but I know you do. You feel a lot of stuff, a lot more than you want to admit.”

I nodded and sent that, but I had more to tell him. “Even if you’re not with me right now, you’re here, in my world. I’m so glad and I’m so lucky. I’ll always look at that page in my book and remember how we spent the night together—not the whole night, but the part when we were together was perfect. It wasn’t only how you set the record straight about my sexual organs being in working order, either. Although that was wonderful.” I repeated, in capital letters, “WONDERFUL.”

There was no answer but it was ok. I kept writing.

“I’m not sure exactly when I knew, but I’ve realized how much I love you. I love you, not just like friendship and not because we slept together. I love you.” I sent it, and wiped under my eyes. “You know how Matthews is always looking for you on the field?” Tyler was now the primary option in the quarterback’s progression, how the QB read the offense and defense to find a route for the ball to travel. “I started to feel like that’s life, too. Like there are so many ways to go, and we have to choose the one that will carry us the farthest and in the best direction. You’re that for me, Tyler.”

“Family of Jerry Decker?” a voice asked, and I jerked to my feet.

Not too much later, texts started to flood my phone right back. Miss Gail had landed in Detroit and had already rented a car to return, because driving would get her here faster than another plane. I said no, she did not have to do that. Iva was saying that she would be careful with Baby Balderston but they couldn’t sit in the condo while I was alone and needed them, and they were coming, too. I also told her no, absolutely not. But Tyler…he said he had landed and was on the way, and I said to please, please come.

“I’m driving fast,” he wrote. “Very fast.”

Then he did arrive, walking into the room where my dad rested on the hospital bed and I sat rubbing my neck in the chair wedged in the corner next to that. He looked from me to my father and his face was so worried that I almost started to cry. Again.

“Jerry, how are you doing?” he asked, and at the same time, he held open his arms. I stood up and walked over, tripping on something under the bed, and fell right into him.

“I’m ok,” my dad answered, his voice hoarse. “I was pretty dehydrated and they’re watching my blood pressure. I’m going to have to stay the night.”

“But it wasn’t another stroke,” Tyler confirmed. He was holding me tightly to his chest. “What about you, Kasia? How are you doing?”

“I’m good,” I answered. I pulled away and nodded, because this behavior would upset my father and he didn’t need that. “I was worried, but I’m ok now.”

He put his palm on my cheek, cupping my face and tilting my head so I would look up at him. “You scared me to death. When we landed and I saw everything you wrote, I tried to make them stop the plane on the runway so I could climb the fence to get to my car. I never ran faster.”

“Even faster than on your prom night? I’m sorry I made you worried.”

“Kasia, fuck,” he said, and hugged me again. “Like you wouldn’t have done the same thing for me.”

I would have, and this time, I let myself lean against him and stay there, because it was such a relief.

“I’m glad we set up those appointments in Detroit,” he told my dad, and now his hand was on my neck and his fingers were rubbing the part that was hurting again. When Oren had shaken me so hard this morning, he must have jarred it a little. I hadn’t told Tyler any of that, but Iva must have, because he started asking questions about the arrests.

I shook my head. “Let’s not talk about it now,” I said, glancing toward my dad. Instead, I took the chair again and Tyler stood next to me, just being there. Thank goodness, he was there.

But soon, I had to make him leave. “Visiting hours are almost over,” I whispered.“I need to go home and get him clothes for tomorrow, and I’ll sleep there.” My dad was already asleep, but his blood pressure had stabilized and things seemed more positive.

“I’ll come,” Tyler said quietly.

“No,” I answered. “No, you have practice tomorrow and you can’t sleep on my bed.” I didn’t think he’d want to be in my dad’s, either, not with the painting of my mother staring at him. “I’m fine by myself.” I gently touched my dad’s foot, and then Tyler and I walked out together. Free of the hospital, I took a breath of cold air and it caught, like another sob.

“Come here,” he told me. He hugged me again there in the parking lot, and he took off his coat and put it around me. It fit about the same as mine had on baby Balderston earlier this afternoon outside of the ambulance. “Kasia, are you crying? How are you going to drive?”

“I won’t hit anything. I’ll go as slow as you do,” I promised.

He looked at me for a moment and then shook his head. “You leave your car here. If you really want to go back to your place, I’ll drive you.”

I was too tired to argue. I went with him to the condo complex but I stayed in the car when he went to his unit, because I was also too tired to make the short walk on the pathway. When the cargo door slammed, though, I picked up my head. “Remember when you got hurt and you couldn’t walk to your house, so you parked in the flowerbed?” I asked when he got back into his seat. “Remember when those guys hurt you? Who were they, again?”

“No, I’m not telling you that. Did you fall asleep while I was gone, that fast?”

“I think so,” I answered. I definitely fell asleep on the way to my house, but I jerked awake during the trip, too. “I’m so glad he’s ok. I’m so worried, still,” I said out loud, and Tyler said that he knew.

He made the dinner I had already prepped, much more efficiently and with a better result than I would have gotten, but I wasn’t very hungry. “I clean up, and then I think I’ll pull out the bed,” I said. I was yawning a lot as I spoke.

But Tyler did those things, and then he went to his car. “I got something,” he said when he returned, and put a thick, fluffy white blanket over the top of my covers. “I bought it after we stayed at the inn. I thought, if we’re going to be sleeping here, then we should be more comfortable.”

“We’re going to be sleeping here?” I repeated.

“We are, because I’m not sneaking anymore. Go brush your teeth.”

We did that together and then climbed onto the fluffy thing, which was apparently made of feathers and was the same as lying on a cloud. “Sweet Jesus,” I muttered.

“Not perfect, but better,” he agreed. The bed frame squawked. “Still loud.”

“Are you really going to be sleeping here?” I asked.

“Temporarily. I was thinking a lot last night when I was stuck in the hotel, and more on the flight home. And then, after I read your messages, that firmed up all my plans.”

“What plans?”

Before he answered, he pulled me over to him. “This ok on your neck?”

It seemed like his chest would have been uncomfortable to rest on, since it was so hard. “It’s better than anything,” I said.

He rubbed the sore spot anyway. “This house isn’t big enough for the three of us. Do you think your dad would be ok to move? We could get something with a separate apartment for him, no stairs. Or we could put in ramps.”

“Why would my dad and I move?”

“I just told you,” he said. “Maybe you’re too tired to discuss it.”

“No, I really want to understand,” I answered. “The three of us are going to live together?”

“I bought stupid Dominic’s house,” Tyler told me, and I was even more lost. Maybe I really was too tired but I tried again.

“What?” I asked.

“I bought his house so that he would have trackable money, which we’ll be watching,” he answered. “He’ll have to start paying Iva. I got her a lawyer, too, a tough one. Like how you’ll be.”

“I do want to go to law school,” I said. “I decided that I don’t want to quit undergrad.”

“No, I don’t want you to, either. So you’ll go to school, my mom and your dad will take care of baby Balderston…fuck, he needs a name.”

“And where will we live?”

“Together,” he stated firmly. “Iva’s old place will be a little small, but I don’t want to stay in that condo complex. We could live at her house for a while as we look for something bigger. It’ll be the three of us, you, me, and your dad, as long as he wants that.”

“He would, but you don’t want—”

“I want you, Kasia. I don’t love you because of sex, or like a friend. You’re my best friend, but that’s not all. I love you, and I need us together. But not on this bed, because something metal is poking my ass even with the new mattress cover. We’ll live together and we’ll get married sometime, when you want to. If you want to have a baby, I bet your dad would like it. I would. I want to have a family with you, and you don’t have to worry that I’ll be like my own father.”

“I already know that. I already know that I want those things, too.”

“Good,” he sighed, and he sounded extremely relieved. Then there was a short silence. “I wanted to tell you something, too. The reason I don’t like the water is because when I was a little kid, my dad threw me off a dock. I couldn’t swim but he kept yelling at me to jump, jump, jump!” His voice got loud, but then quieted again. “He was tired of me crying and saying no, so he picked me up and tossed me out into the lake.”

“Sweet Jesus! That’s so dangerous!”

“Yeah. I nearly drowned but two older boys who happened to be fishing there pulled me out. My father had thought I needed to learn and he wanted me to toughen up, too. I remember him yelling at all of us, telling them to mind their own business and telling me that I was a little bitch. I was still coughing and crying, because I’d thought I was going to die.”

“Tyler, you don’t ever have to go in the water, ok? Except for bathing.”

“No, I want to try it next summer, like you said. You’d come, right?”

“Definitely,” I answered. “Absolutely.”

“Yeah, I thought so. That’s why I told you,” he said. “I’ve always been afraid of a whole lot of shit. I don’t look like I should be, but I am. Then I met you, and, uh, this sounds dumb.” He cleared his throat. “I felt like I wanted to jump. I wanted to try something risky because there you were. You were worth it, any risk would have been worth it to have you.”

Falling in love was a big risk. “I’ll jump with you,” I said. “We’re in it together.”

“Are you too tired to kiss me?”

No, and it was wonderful. The first time we’d been together, I’d felt like I was aflame or something, like I was in a frenzy to have him. Now I loved the gentle sweetness of how he touched me, how carefully he stroked my body, how his weight felt as he lay over me, and how we were connected.

“Scream,” he told me, and I did when I came, and then I gasped as I felt him surging into me. We could do that, I thought, and make a baby. Someday, not too far away.

Tyler looked down at me and smiled. “I love you,” he said.

I touched his hair, his cheeks, and his lips. I loved those parts of him but I loved the other parts even more, the ones that weren’t physical. “I love how you drove me home and made dinner,” I said. “I love how you bought a house to help Iva and baby Balderson. She has to name him.”

He nodded and kissed me.

“I love how you set up appointments for my dad, and how you want him to live with us. At least, you’re acting like you don’t mind that we come as a package.”

“I don’t mind it. If that package includes you, then I’m winning.”

“I love that you told me how you were scared,” I said. “I mean, this is really big. Loving people so much could end up…”

“It could end up just perfect,” Tyler said. “You’re the poker player. What do you bet?”

I was all in.