Chapter 5
Ann had sandwiches set out for us on the deck.
“Um, could we…” I started. I looked back toward the piano room with its small coffee table. There would barely be enough room for our plates. “Do you think we could eat inside, near the piano?”
Ann and Keri stared at me. It was a gorgeous day, and the deck was shaded from the sun. I could hear birds singing off in the distance. It really was a nice place to sit and catch up.
“My allergies…” I said, letting the words make the explanation.
Ann nodded. “Of course,” she said, gathering the food and bringing everything inside.
Keri narrowed her eyes at me. “Allergies, huh?”
I shrugged and sniffed, as though my nose were clogged.
In the piano room, I stuffed myself between Keri and Ann on the couch. We were elbow to elbow eating our sandwiches. Keri caught Ann up on her job and apartment in a town about an hour away, close to the city, while I scanned the room to see if there was anything significant. Why would the lunch need to be in the piano room? Was Ann the designer of this scheme and a terrific actor, or was she clueless?
Tom, Ann's husband, came down the steps and poked his head into the room. “I thought I heard company,” he said, smiling.
I stood and shook his hand, then followed him into the kitchen to grab a beer while Keri and Ann talked.
“Ten years, huh?” Tom said, handing me a bottle and unscrewing the cap on his own.
“It doesn't feel like it's been that long, but I guess a lot has changed,” I said. I leaned against the counter and sipped the beer.
“Yeah, I saw your car,” Tom said. “I bet that's a nice ride.”
“You want to try it out?” I said.
“Yeah,” Tom said.
We peeked in once more to let Ann and Keri know we were taking the car for a spin around the block and we'd be back.
I tossed Tom the keys and he savored the feel of the leather seats, the purr of the engine revving, before he even pressed his foot against the accelerator.
While he navigated the winding, hilly circle of our neighborhood, I pulled the note of tasks out of my pocket.
“Hey,” I said to Tom. “Do you know anything about this list? I was thinking Ann might be behind it. I've been getting these tasks since I was a teenager.”
He glanced at the note in my hand with the three weekend objectives. “I've never seen Ann write a list like that,” Tom said. “But you never know. She's full of surprises. She still surprises me even though we've been together for, oh gosh, almost twenty years now.”
When we passed my house, I gazed at the yard, the meticulously groomed flower beds, the porch with its idle rocking chair. I thought about my first task that morning: breakfast with dad, and I felt bad about how we'd left it, but I said what I needed to say. I'd said what I'd been waiting to say for years, without knowing exactly how the words would tumble out. I was mad - mad at him and at Jim and at the world. But the hardest thing, the worst thing, was that I was also mad at my mom. They all made the decision to not tell me that she was sick. They all kept that secret from me. And I was mad at all of them.
I folded the note and put it back in my pocket.
We came around a curve and made our second trip through the neighborhood.
“Twenty years together,” I said. I remembered when I first felt met Tom, and I definitely didn't feel like I'd aged enough for that memory to be two decades old. “Wow.”
We drove by the cluster of evergreen trees at the edge of my property. “And that's where it all began,” I said, grinning at Tom.
“Oh yes,” Tom said. “The infamous kiss by the trees. The truth has become legend, I suppose.”
“Ann loves that story,” I said.
“Everyone does,” Tom said. He revved the engine and we shot down the straightaway. “But I've heard we're not the only couple that took advantage of the cover of those trees.”
I coughed to cover up my surprise. I didn't think anyone knew about that. “Well that was a long time ago,” I said. “I wouldn't remember anything about that.”
“Oh sure, sure,” Tom said, slowing the car down for the last curve. “Maybe you'll remember something about it when you get to the last item on that list of yours.”
He brought the Corvette into the driveway.
“Thanks for letting me drive,” Tom said, handing me the keys. “It was exhilarating.”
Inside, Ann and Keri had finished their sandwiches and were in the kitchen, cleaning up from our lunch.
I dropped Keri off at home and told her I’d pick her up for dinner at about 6, and then we could go to the reunion together. Her eyebrows furrowed.
“You mean, we’d drive over in your car?” Her eyes swept down the length of the Corvette.
“Too flashy?” I said.
She blushed. “Sorry, no, it’s fine and thanks for driving. I just … you know that commercial where the guy is going to his high school reunion, and his entire life kind of sucks, so he rents a nice car? I’d just kind of feel like that.” She looked sick as she said the words.
“Your life doesn’t suck,” I pointed out. I shrugged. “I’m just offering to drive. I wasn’t planning on leading a parade into the parking lot of the reunion.”
“I know. I’m a jerk. Sorry,” Keri said. She slammed the car door shut. “I’ll be ready at six. Thanks again for driving. Really.”
I watched her until she was in the house, front door closed. Yes, Tom was right. Fourteen years ago, after we’d helped Ann get ready for her wedding day, Keri and I had stopped outside the cluster of trees outside my house and had our first and only kiss. We were walking back to our houses to go to the ceremony with our families, and we’d stopped for a second to talk by the trees, hidden from view from every window of every house on our street. Keri wore a dark blue dress and I was in my old, itchy suit. She wore glasses then, and her hair, which was usually twisted into a long, thick braid, hung loose for once. She was talking about Jimmy Paige, a kid we graduated with, and how he sat behind her in biology and would tug on her braid all class period long. I remember being a little surprised, because the Keri Free I knew would turn around and slug him. But maybe that’s when we both started to change – at fourteen, there in front of our houses. Keri didn’t punch boys anymore and she let them tug her hair, and I heard about it and got mad, but would never do anything about it because Jimmy Paige was twice my size and captain of the JV lacrosse team. So Jimmy Paige would continue to pull her braid, day after day, in biology class. Of course—and I knew this at the time—him tugging her hair may have annoyed her, but he did it because he liked her, like when I used to run up to her in kindergarten and tag her with cooties. So that’s what it was: Jimmy Paige was doing the same thing I did, only ten years later, and Keri was telling me about it while we stood in the shade of the trees.
“He just yanks on my hair and Mr. Thompson already doesn’t like me, so I can’t even move or make a sound or else I’d get in trouble,” Keri had said to me back then.
“Jimmy Paige is an imbecile,” I’d said, even then realizing the hypocrisy of my statement.
“I think he wants me to turn around,” she’d said. “I think he wants to talk to me.”
And that’s what did it. That’s what made me kiss her, because she was figuring it out. She was figuring all of us imbeciles out, and I didn’t want her to. So I just leaned over and grabbed her arm and kissed her. She stared at me.
“So do you think I should?” she’d finally said.
I stared back at her, wondering if I’d imagined the kiss. “Huh?”
“Do you think I should just keep ignoring him?”
I shook my head and held out my hands. “Sure, or no. I don’t care.” And I’d walked away then.
After that, we did our own things. She mostly hung around her marching band friends, and I hung around the football team.
But I always hated Jimmy Paige.
I found m
y dad inside the house, watching television in his recliner. When he heard me enter the room, he sat up and turned off the TV.
“Sammy, come sit down for a second,” he said. In his lap was a binder. “I want to go over some things with you.”