9. Griffin
9
GRIFFIN
M y frustration over Jack fades away the second I open the front door to Carmen’s house.
“Daddy!” Annabelle’s and June’s voices echo in the hallway as they barrel toward me. Their small bodies move with such exaggerated movement that it convinces me their bones are made of bouncy balls.
“Angels.” I scoop them into a hug, each arm wrapping around a daughter. I know my days of doing this are numbered. Each time I see them, they look more like burgeoning teenagers.
June breaks from the hug first and tugs at my sleeve with utmost urgency, her eyes going so wide they take over her face.
“We built the ice castle!” she says. “It’s so cool!”
Annabelle, her quiet second in command, nods along. June grabs my hand—I remember when her fingers could only curl around my thumb—and drags me to the living room.
In the kitchen, Carmen makes quesadillas on the stove. She waves to me.
The girls plunk me down on the floor. They’ve arranged pillows and blankets into a droopy structure that only they’re small enough to crawl into.
“This is the ice castle!” June exclaims. “Annabelle created it with her hands.”
Annabelle does a spell, complete with sound effects. She then joins her sister inside. The pillows wobble as she shimmies through the opening.
“Annabelle, careful!” June warns.
“That’s a nice ice castle, better than the one in the movie,” I say.
“It’s really big in here,” June says through another opening made from arranging the throw pillows to form a window. “There’re almost too many rooms.”
“How many bedrooms?” I ask.
“Seven.”
“Wow. Lotta bedrooms.” I whistle. “Have many people do you have living there?”
“It’s just me and June,” Annabelle says, getting a word in edgewise with her sister, not always an easy task. “But one of the bedrooms is for our pet reindeer, George.”
“His room is at the other end of the castle because he chain smokes,” June tells me. “We’re trying to get him to quit.”
Kids’ imaginations are the most creative things in the world. It’s like one big game of Mad Libs.
“One of the bedrooms was turned into a pool,” Annabelle says. “A pool with a waterfall.”
I’m about to ask how a pool and waterfall in an ice castle don’t turn to ice themselves, but I don’t want to ruin the fun.
“We caught George smoking a cigarette in the pool.” Annabelle shakes her head. “We really want him to quit.”
“I told George I don’t want any smoking in my house.” Carmen squats down next to me. “I’m going to have another talk with him.”
She kisses me hello on the cheek. From the outside, we look like the perfect family. Too bad Carmen and I are both gay. Now that our secrets are both out, our relationship post-divorce is much better than when we were married.
“Time for dinner,” she says.
“But I want to stay in the ice castle,” June says, her voice immediately going to a whine. “Can we eat in here? We have three dining rooms!”
“Three? Impressive,” Carmen says. “But will the hot cheese melt the ice castle, though?”
The girls trade a look of panic. I suppose some logic is welcome here.
A few minutes later, we’re sitting at the kitchen table digging into delicious, mouthwatering quesadillas. Carmen was the cook in our marriage, spoiling me with yummy Mexican cuisine. She says cooking is a way of reconnecting with her mother, who passed when she was a teenager. My meals usually come out dry and oversalted. The girls love staying with me because they know they’re getting McDonald’s for at least one meal.
“So guess what? Dad joined a hockey team,” I say.
The girls are unfazed, but Carmen looks up from her meal. “You did?”
“Yeah. Some of the guys from high school put together a team for an amateur adult league.”
“That’s great. I forgot you used to play.” Carmen and I met in our thirties. Her brother used to work at the airport with me. Deep down, we were both scared of coming out and unknowingly used each other as beards. Eventually, Carmen got tired of playing heterosexual and came out to me when June was three months old. It was an especially exhausting month; both girls weren’t sleeping well, and the tiredness acted like a truth serum. She said I was gay, too, but that I wasn’t admitting it to myself. The bold statement plus sleep deprivation led me to look in the mirror and have that honest conversation with myself. I was gay.
“Huh,” Carmen says, contemplating my new activity. The only thing I told her about my time playing was that I lost my eye. Hockey Griffin is a totally different Griffin from the one she knows.
“Maybe you can come to a game,” I say to the girls.
“Is hockey scary?” Annabelle asks.
“What if you get hurt again?” Fear casts a shadow over June’s face. “What if you lose your other eye?”
“I didn’t lose my eye. It’s still here. It just likes to sleep a lot, like a cat.”
The girls nod, but they don’t seem as convinced. The energy plummets at the table, making my heart tighten.
“This is a non-checking league, which means all the players are nice to each other.” I take an exaggerated bite of my quesadilla. It gets laughs from them.
“Nic er . But there’re still fights, probably some cursing, too,” Carmen says.
“I think the girls have heard most of those words.”
“Doesn’t mean they need to hear it from their dad.”
“I’ll be on my best behavior. You can bring the swear jar with you.”
There are kids that go to hockey games all the time. I went when I was younger than June. The girls could see me in my hockey jersey, slicing through the ice and scoring a goal. Seeing them in the stands, getting to experience that with them, makes my heart fizz with excitement.
“We’ll see,” Carmen says. She isn’t a fan of sports. Never wanted to watch a game with me. I think that drove the wedge in our marriage more than our predilection for the same sex. “More importantly, we have some birthdays coming up.”
She was always a master at changing the subject. That was how our marriage survived for as long as it did.
Annabelle and June are two years apart, almost exactly to the day. Carmen went into labor at Annabelle’s second birthday party. June may be younger, but she’s the leader of their pack.
“Two special girls will be turning nine and seven in style,” Carmen says. “At the Hadley Tea House.”
“We’re having it at the Hadley Tea House?” Annabelle asks in high-pitched delirium. June’s jaw openly falls to the table.
The girls scream with glee. I wince to block out the noise. My heart goes out to all dogs on the block.
“What’s the Hadley Tea House?” I ask.
“It’s this old-fashioned high tea room. A few girls in their classes have had parties there. It’s really cute.”
“Isabella H. AND Isabella J. had their parties there,” Annabelle informs me. “Isabella H.’s was better, but don’t tell Isabella J.”
I pretend to zip my mouth shut.
A tug of regret pulls at me for only learning about their party plans now. I won’t deny that Carmen’s been more hands on with their day-to-day lives. She’s up on what’s going on at school. She keeps track of their doctor’s appointments. She probably can tell the difference between Isabella H. and Isabella J. I’m by no means an absentee dad, but I should be doing more.
“What if I built you an ice castle for your birthday?” I blurt out.
“What? Are you serious?” June asks. The pure excitement comes off her body in waves.
“Yep. Not real ice, of course. But I want to build you girls your own ice castle in the backyard. It could be a treehouse.” We have a huge oak tree in the yard with thick drooping branches.
“Are you serious?” June yells, clutching her heart. She and Annabelle trade a look and scream some more.
“Anything for my girls.”
Carmen raises a concerned eyebrow at me, wondering if I’m serious. I have to be. It’s already out there. I’ve never built a treehouse, but I’ve put together airplane machinery.
How hard could it be?
* * *
The next day, Hank comes with me to start getting supplies for the ice castle treehouse. He helps me devise some rough blueprints and a list of what I’ll need. He worked in construction before becoming a plumber, which he prefers because it’s mostly indoors.
Hank has us go a little out of the way to a home improvement store that he says has the best selection of wood and better pricing.
“That’s a lot of purple,” I comment as we pull into the Ferguson’s parking lot. I pass this store on the highway all the time. Its big, purple logo is a visual marker that my exit is coming up.
Hank gets out of the car and pulls a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “We’ll start in lumber, then we can move onto brackets and whatever tools you’re missing.”
“Thanks for helping me with this. I don’t exactly know what I’m doing.” The sun is especially bright to match the extra windiness of this March afternoon. “I’ve built things before, but never a treehouse.”
“Happy to help. I built one for my son when he was little. It had a slide and a zipline, but he only used it as another place to read books,” Hank says with a touch of confusion. “And not comic books. Actual books. I found him reading A Brief History of Time when he was eleven. For fun. ” Hanks laughs to himself and smiles warmly at the memory. “I don’t know how I wound up with a brainiac son. Genetics are weird.”
“It sounds like you got a good one there, Hank.”
“Don’t I know it.” He grabs a shopping cart.
The automatic doors part as we approach. The cavernous, warehouse feel of home improvement stores can be overwhelming. Sometimes, I feel like I walk a mile just to find a screwdriver.
“Land ho!” Hank yells out, pointing to the opposite end of the store. I try to shush him but have quickly learned that Hank Rush can’t be shushed.
Hank steers the cart past mowers and power tools and appliances, and it seems like we’ve barely traversed the store.
“Now, are you thinking plywood, or do you want something more durable like some kind of cedar? Hear me out: western cedar. Shit!” Hank stops his cart short, barely avoiding a collision with a Ferguson’s employee. Ask Me Anything: Ted , reads his name tag. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay.” the man says through gritted teeth. I can tell he wants to say something else but doesn’t want to get fired.
He looks up, and time seems to stop. Stop and rewind. Something about his face strikes a familiar chord, and as my brain scurries to put the pieces together, the employee seems to be doing the same.
That scowl. I remember it on the ice. It’s wrinkled and weathered, but eyes don’t age.
“It’s you,” the employee says, gritting his teeth even more. “Griffin fucking Harper. Nice eye patch.”
“Thanks to you,” I mutter back, my hands instinctively curling into fists. “You know, you never apologized for blinding me in one eye.”
“You slammed into me. You fucked up my shoulder. Fucked up everything.”
“Likewise.” Even after all these years, I still want nothing more than to put my fist through his face. It’s been years, but nothing’s changed at all. This asshole didn’t apologize, didn’t even acknowledge what he did when he jammed his stick into my eye in a wildly illegal move. The epitome of gross misconduct.
It’s because of him that I missed my shot at the pros, that I let down my mom, my friends, my coach, and forfeited my potential. All because he wanted to take down South Rock’s top player by any means necessary.
“Fuck you,” I spit out, white hot hatred pounding in my ears. “You’re still a piece of shit.”
He turns a shade of deep red I didn’t think possible on a person. He’s fighting every urge not to throw a punch. I dare you. I fucking dare you.
“I don’t think Ferguson’s has what you’re looking for. I recommend Home Depot.”
“Fine.” I walk away, Hank following behind me. He’s white as a ghost, as if he just witnessed a bad car accident.
“Home Depot has a great selection, too,” Hank says. He pushes the shopping cart into the row of unused ones. The automatic doors part for us. “Was that the guy…”
“Yeah.” I feel my eye patch, my rage subsiding with each step away from the store. How is it fair that one random stranger can have so much control over the direction of my life?
I unlock my truck. Hank slides into the passenger seat.
“Fucking Ted,” Hank says with visible disgust. “I’m going to send in a complaint to Ferguson’s corporate. I wish I’d gotten his last name.”
And then the realization slams into me like his hockey stick all those years ago.
“Gross.” The name sends a shiver as it leaves my lips. “His last name is Gross.”