Page 57 of Wanting What’s Wrong

Seven

Cade

“ S hhh . Mom must have gone to bed. Guess we took too long.” I slip my fingers into Lennie’s and pull her through the living room, her face still flushed from our barn workout.

“There’s a note.” She reaches over to the coffee table and picks up a piece of paper with my mom’s writing in blue sharpie.

I’m tired, see you in the morning, but take Lennie to the Dairy Freeze tonight! They have a new flavor, chocolate cherry and it’s TO DIE FOR! Have a fun evening, go to town, leave an old woman to rest. XO Mom

“Chocolate Cherry.” Lennie bobs her eyebrows. “I could use some of that.”

“Let’s go.”

Lennie skips out the front door and we make our way to town as the last of the sunset slips down through the orange and pink streaks across the horizon.

The Dairy Freeze has been around since before I was born.

It’s a local hangout on Main Street. It was an abandoned old red barn before Mr. and Mrs. Snyder fixed it up and put a wooden-shaped ice cream cone on top.

As soon as we pull in, I’m already on everyone’s radar.

A big black Yukon with blacked-out windows is not an everyday sight in Brooklyn, Michigan.

I hop out, then go get Lennie. The stares and whispers start.

A few people recognize me, there’s some tentative waves which I return.

That’s the usual drill when I come home, but they still think of me as the motorcycle-riding son of the local mechanic, not Cade Jamison, billionaire by sheer determination and an inability to take no for an answer.

I order a chocolate cherry twist cone with rainbow sprinkles for Lennie and check my phone, knowing the storm is still brewing whether I’m paying attention or not.

Sure enough, Davis has three 911 texts, and I ignore a slew of others. I shove my phone back in my pocket, refusing to let anything ruin this night. Tomorrow will come, and it’s watching Lennie eat her ice cream cone that is the most important thing in my life right now.

I walk her down Beech Street as the breeze cools, the scent of a small-town swirling around, and we end up in front of my old high school.

“That’s where I cut my teeth back in the day. Got my first tattoo over there at Micky’s bike shop.” I nod to my left, where the old sign still hangs on the smaller cinderblock building, but Lennie’s eyes are pinned to George Washington High.

“Really? This is your high school? It’s so small!”

“Small town, small high school.”

“I hated high school.”

“I know. Wasn’t I the one that let you drop out and finish with the tutors?”

She nods. “Yes, but sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to, you know, go to prom and graduate with a class. But, yes, thank you for taking me out. Even with missing prom. I don’t care.”

“I missed prom too.”

“Really, why? You must have been popular.”

I shrug, looking at the overgrown trees and the darkened windows of the school.

“No one I wanted to take.”

“I wish I could have gone to prom with you. Age difference would have made that prohibitive, though. But, you could have chaperoned. That’s what all the fathers do.”

“Smart ass.”

We walk as she finishes her cone, peppering me with questions and I’ve talked more with her in the last twenty-four hours than I have to anyone probably in a year or more.

I suck the last of the ice cream from her sticky fingers then weave my fingers with hers as we pass the old cinderblock building a few doors down from the school.

“That was my father’s garage.” I point as Lennie follows my gaze. “Doesn’t look anything like it used to except for the four basic walls.”

“It’s a storage building now?”

I nod as a hint of nostalgia twists my heart thinking of the hours I spent there not only with my dad, but after he passed away working on cars and listening to mix tapes and the local rock station.

“I re-built my first engine there with my dad when I was sixteen for a 1976 Lincoln Town Car. That thing was a boat. Maybe got four miles to the gallon. I fixed up Dad’s old Harley with him that year too. Then my own. He taught me a lot. Not just about cars.”

She nibbles her lip with a soft smile. “You look happy.”

I stare at the building, her hand in mine, thinking of how many times I smashed my thumb building that engine then nod. “I am. I’m fucking happy Lennie-bird. Here, with you. I think I forgot what happy was for a long time. I wasn’t miserable, just…sort of nothing. Until you.”

She squeezes my fingers as we start walking again. A squirrel skitters across the sidewalk up a huge oak tree as Lennie looks back at the building and asks, “Do you miss it?”

“What’s that?”

“Working on cars and motorcycles. I meant you looked happy when you were talking about working on that big Lincoln and your motorcycles.”

I think of that and realize, I’ve put so many of the pleasures of life in storage for too long and it’s time to unpack.

“Yeah, I guess I do. I didn’t think about it until now. Until you. There’s so much I want to do with you baby.”

She crinkles up her nose on a smirk.

“And, not just hammer fuck you like a blow up doll. But, yeah, re-build a carburetor and watch Monday night football. Watch bad ‘80’s movies with you.”

She does a little dance skip as she starts to recite her favorites, “Pretty in Pink then St. Elmo’s Fire, then Weird Science!” she sighs, “It was the golden age of adolescent angst and humor. High art.”

I chuckle and pull her next to me as the evening cools and we make our way back down Main Street to the SUV. “If you say so baby.”

It’s nearly eleven o’clock when we are back at the house, slipping into my room together as she giggles about my rock posters and cowboy wallpaper.

“You ever bring a girl in here?” She asks and I see the green streak of jealousy in her eyes.

“No. You’re the first. But you need to remember to be quiet tonight because I’m going to fuck that pussy of yours straight through these Star Wars sheets.”

Lennie’s in the bathroom when I go to the kitchen and see my mom drinking her coffee with a sly grin.

“Don’t you hide that girl in the shadows, young man.”

I give her a look, pouring my coffee as my pulse speeds. “What?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Son. You can’t lie to me. She deserves the light, not the darkness. She’s been through enough. I don’t care who you were to her, I see who you are to her now. You need to be a man and make it right. I don’t care what people say, I care if you do what’s right.”

“How do you always know?”

She smiles. “Just do. It’s a mom thing.”

“Yeah, but I promised her mom, I never told you, but—”

“You didn’t love Lilith. I knew that. It was all for show.

But this…” She points to the hallway. “This is real. So you may have promised something, but some promises are broken for the right reasons, Son. You make her feel like a queen. A princess. Like the most important person in the world to you. Everything else? Who cares.”

“Prom,” I say as the thought hitting me like a brick to the forehead. “She said she never had a prom. She loves that movie, Pretty in Pink with that pink dress and the guy in the Rolls. Like the one I had. Lost it in the fire…”

“Yes, the fire.” She smiles on a shrug. She’s never once complained, accused, or pointed a finger at me for what happened. “But do it. Yes, get a Rolls or a limo or whatever, figure out how to make it a night to remember. Take her out and let the world see.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“My legs don’t work, but my ears are fine. And these walls are thin. I’m happy for you, Son, but I don’t really want to hear all that. Lennie kept it quiet, but you? You gave it away, Cade.”