Chapter 20
All the warm fuzzies Amy had felt yesterday morning, all the little fantasies of a different sort of life, had been obliterated by today.
From the pool party to her vomiting on the boat, her reality had crashed back in with ferocity.
Since when did she suffer from motion sickness?
And why did she have to discover it today of all days?
The Lakeview Café was a renovated lake cottage and had been decorated for a country Christmas, the windows painted with snowy scenes.
There were pine-cone wreaths in the windows, and a pair of antlers over an old fireplace had been decorated with Christmas lights and tinsel.
A vintage Coca-Cola box was painted with Santa drinking from a bottle of Coke, and the gifts under the Christmas tree in the window had been wrapped in burlap.
The waitstaff all wore Santa hats, and unlike at the lake house, the music here had more of a country bent. A man was singing about how he intended to leave a beer for Santa as Amy washed up in the restroom with the concrete sink and hardwood floors.
When she felt as returned to normal as she could hope to get with a flimsy soap dispenser, she joined Harrison at their table. The waitress appeared after a moment. “What can I get you to drink?”
“Water, please,” Amy said. She dared not test her stomach on a drink.
Harrison asked for tap beer.
“You got it.” The waitress handed them two long, laminated menus.
“Are you okay?” Harrison asked.
“Yep.” Amy forced a smile. “I mean, other than the permanent stain of humiliation in my cheeks.”
“And I thought that was blush.”
They looked over the menu, commenting on the chicken-fried steak, the burgers, the green-chili enchiladas. Amy decided on soup now that she knew her stomach would betray her without any notice. Harrison opted for the burger.
The waitress returned with drinks, took their order, and left.
Now that she and Harrison were alone, Amy would have liked nothing better than to check in with how he felt about everything. Or would feel, had the Bossy Posse not shown up when it had. And then she’d topped off her spectacularly invasive family by vomiting.
Maybe it was best she not say anything at all.
“Hey,” he said. “Was I imagining things today? Or are you painting the Posse in the pool?”
She laughed self-consciously. It had seemed such a bizarre scene this morning that she couldn’t resist. So far she’d painted the four elderly ladies in their float rings from the perspective of a bird, their faces obscured by the red hats.
She’d even painted mounds of snow on the deck and put a Christmas tree in the corner, which she planned to decorate with parrots and turtledoves. “It’s just an idea.”
He grinned. “I love it. So the painting is going well, I take it?”
She looked at him with surprise. “It has not been great, actually.”
“Really?” He frowned. Then he suddenly planted his arms on the table and leaned forward. “Is it me? Tell me, because I will—”
“It’s not you,” she said quickly. “It’s one hundred percent me.
And that is not a cliché. The thing is, I don’t know what I am doing.
I mean, I know how to paint…But I can’t figure out my point of view.
I can’t decide if I want to lean into overt commercialism or paint to the beat of my own drummer. ”
“Oh.” He leaned back. “That sounds like it requires a lot of thought.”
“Yeah. I’m just…” She didn’t know how to explain that she couldn’t find her artistic point of view on a deadline. “It’s complicated. I want whatever I paint to be authentic, you know?”
“Sure.”
“But I’m not sure what would do well at a contest is super authentic to me.” This was not something she could explain, even to herself. “What about you? Any progress?”
“Some. My knee is better. I have to hand it to Hillary.”
“She’s good, huh?”
He nodded. “She is.”
Amy tried not to picture Hillary on the lake taxi.
She probably would have been having the time of her life.
She might have even jumped in the water to help fix the engine or whatever it was that happened.
She seemed that sort of competent, capable woman.
And she didn’t seem the type of woman to get sick. Ever.
“But the rest of it?” Harrison continued. “I don’t know. I haven’t made much progress in my thinking. In fact, I haven’t made any progress.”
“What do you mean? You can’t decide which tournament to play next?”
He chuckled. “No. I can’t decide if I want to keep playing tournaments or retire or…what.”
“Would you really retire?” she asked. “Everyone wants to retire when they are working. But you wouldn’t really retire, would you?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “I’m trying to figure some things out. I feel like…like golf isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
Amy blinked, surprised by his admission. “What?”
“I know,” he said with a rueful smile. “I guess you could say I’m at a crossroads. Continue doing what I’ve been doing all my life? Or forge a new path?”
“Wow. I’m having the same thoughts. Like, what am I doing here?” Amy said. “Why is life so hard at this stage?”
“Because we know too much?” Harrison pondered. “Decisions have more consequences?”
“Yes,” she said. “But then again, sometimes I feel like I don’t know anything at all.
Maybe it’s that I get too fearful. Like, I know how wrong things can go.
I catastrophize. I’ve lost that optimism I had thirty years ago.
I always thought I knew what I wanted, and that if I wanted it, I would have it.
But nothing turned out the way I expected it would.
I think it’s made me fearful of trying again. ”
“What didn’t turn out?” he asked curiously.
“Life in general,” Amy said. “The twenty-something me thought I’d be married forever, and I’m not.
I thought I’d be an artist, but I’m an HR director.
I thought I would have a more global lifestyle,” she added, and laughed at her own naivete.
“But I never even left the area. I live with two teen boys and a brother who is trying to find himself. I go to work, I come home, I avoid Mr. Carlisle next door who is always complaining about the state of my yard—which does need to be raked, by the way. My me time is mostly spent at the grocery store and I still haven’t gotten the stairs on the back deck fixed.
All that to say, I am not who I thought I was going to be. ”
“Who is?” Harrison asked with a shrug.
“Well…you.”
He laughed. “Not exactly.”
“Come on. You wanted to be a professional golfer, and voila, you are.”
“Yeah, but I sacrificed a lot for that.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Everyone sacrifices for what they want. But the real question is, are you okay with who you are now? Things didn’t work out like you planned, but they worked out. Some would argue that they worked out in the way they were meant to work out.”
“That’s true,” she said, thinking about her family.
“Sometimes I’m perfectly okay with how my life turned out.
I love my kids and my family. But sometimes I’m not.
I may be a mom and approaching the crest of the hill of life, but I still have aspirations.
I still want to live for me. My aspirations have changed with time.
Like…living out of a van and roughing it just so I could travel and paint seemed so cool and important back then.
Today? I’d rather have a bed, room service, and spa treatments. And then paint.”
He chuckled. “Same. And I never had the desire to live in a van and rough it.”
“Never?”
“Not van life. But there was a time, in college, when I ate and breathed golf and did a lot of couch surfing. I didn’t care where I was playing if I could play.
But that’s changed over time. I don’t want to waste time on an easy course.
Or drive too far away from a major airport.
Or stay in a cheap roadside motel. And the older I get, the harder it is to change what I will live with.
Especially when my knee hurts all the time.
Especially when there never seems to be a moment to breathe. ”
“Exactly my point. Minus the knee.” She smiled. So did he. They got each other. It was a feeling like nothing else when you connected with a person below the surface level. It was life-affirming. It was happiness.
“You may not be living the artist life, but you have a good family.”
“I do. I really do,” she said, nodding. “Maybe I just need to set some boundaries so I don’t feel like I’m everyone’s doormat.”
“You’re not a doormat. You’re someone they all need. From my vantage point, being taken advantage of by family is better than never being considered at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, that I’m an only child and have a distant relationship with my parents. It’s based on where I am during the year and where they’d like to vacation. I’ll see them for a couple of hours, and that’s it.”
“Oh.” Amy couldn’t imagine seeing her kids only a few times a year for a couple of hours. She suppressed the urge to shudder.
“I’m not blaming them,” he hastened to add. “I did it to myself. When I got my first PGA card, I was on the road constantly and never available. My mother tried to get me home, but I didn’t make it very often. Then…she stopped asking.”
“I’m so sorry.” As much as her mother drove her nuts, she wouldn’t know how to live without her presence in her life.
He shrugged a little. “I wouldn’t trade the experiences I’ve had, but if I knew then what I know now, I would hope I’d have done things differently.”
“How so?” she asked curiously.
“I would have settled down along the way. I did for a time, but it didn’t last. Because I couldn’t let go of the need to go and play golf. And she…well, eventually she got tired of waiting for me.”
Amy found that tidbit very interesting. She wondered what it would be like to be in a relationship with him. She wasn’t famous for waiting, either.
“And it’s a little late for it now.” He picked up his beer, took a long draw of it.