Lukas #2
“You may not believe it now that I’m an old man, but even though I loved your grandma and loved spending time with her, I still wanted to hang out with my buddies.
I still wanted to go drink beer on an old dirt road and race tractors and do all kinds of stupid stuff.
She wanted to settle down and get married and have babies.
I was a nineteen-year-old punk kid, and I let my friends’ opinions wear on me. ”
I shuffle backward, needing to sit on the front step to listen to his story.
“One day, I told her we were moving too fast, and that I needed time to think.” He turns to me. “Knowing your grandma, do you think she got upset?”
I can’t imagine my grandma ever yelling at someone. Never once in my life have I seen her raise her voice. She has a calm coolness to her tone, one that lets you know when she’s serious without yelling or using curse words.
“I told her that I wanted some freedom, that I wanted to hang out with my friends, that I was too young to settle down, and you know what she said to me?”
I shake my head back-and-forth, lost at this moment.
“Well, you know your grandma. She cried, yeah, but very calmly said that it was fine. It was my choice to do what I wanted, but I needed to know that she wasn’t going to wait around for me to have my fun first and then come back to her.”
“So, what did you do?”
He pulls a cotton handkerchief from his back pocket, using it to wipe his nose and the back of his head before neatly folding it again. “I did what any young, dumb boy would do. I ended it. And it was the worst six days of my life.”
I laugh at that. “You guys broke up for only six days? Is that really a breakup?”
His lips twitch with a smile. “Felt like it to me. On day five, I heard that she had a date with this other guy in town, and it made me sick to my stomach. Even when I was ending it, when she told me that she wasn’t going to wait around, I knew at that moment, I was making the wrong choice.
But I was too stubborn, too bull-headed, too worried about what my friends would say to change my mind. ”
I understand what he means. Even the times where I had Mags on the phone and I was being a dick, I knew I needed to stop. Knew that she didn’t deserve it. Knew that I would end up saying or doing something I regretted, but I ignored it all, even though it made me sick.
“On day five,” he continues, “when I heard she was going on a date. I parked my car on Main Street and watched her walk into the diner with another man.”
“Did you follow them in?” I can’t imagine my grandpa would be that type of man. One that would follow his date into a restaurant and cause a scene.
“Nope. Your grandma is the type of woman that needs more than just words. She needs action. She needed me to follow through if I really meant it. I had made her feel like my friends were more important, that I wanted to keep her a secret, like she didn’t matter to me.
Instead, I stole some of my daddy’s paint, and I climbed the water tower and wrote out ‘Warren Loves LuAnne.’”
I burst out laughing, slapping a hand over my face at the thought of that. “No, you didn’t!”
He sticks his tongue in his cheek to try to fight the laughter. “I’m not proud of that, Lukas. It’s not something I’d ever want my kids or grandkids or great-grandkids to ever do, but it worked.”
“She saw it?”
“Well, word got around, and I sat up there, waiting for daylight, hoping that when she went through town, she’d see it. But the cops caught me first and threw me in jail. You wanna guess what your great-grandpa said?”
I never got to meet my great-grandpa. He had a sudden heart attack in his sixties and passed away, but I hear he was a lot like Grasyon. A man of few words, but a man who means what he says. A man that doesn’t tolerate ignorance or bullshit. “Did he bail you out of jail?”
“The police officer called him, and he said he’d bail me out once I sat there overnight. Said I must have needed some quiet time to think if I was stupid enough to do something like that.”
“Well, it must have worked, though, right? I mean, you and Gram have been together for so long.”
“Well, word got around town that I was arrested, and when I was released from jail early the next morning, she was standing in the parking lot waiting for me. I took her into my arms and told her that if she gave me another chance, I’d make sure that she knew how much she mattered to me.
And I’d like to think I’ve held strong to that promise, Lukas. ”
He finally turns away from the sunset, looking down at me on the stoop.
“Even in the best relationships, people will make mistakes, whether those mistakes are from pure ignorance or anger or stupidity. But when you love someone, when you’re determined to hold onto them so tightly, you need to be able to move past those mistakes.
You’ve never stopped loving Magnolia, I can see that clear as day, and I think if you keep persisting, if you do what I did and show her that you mean it, that you don’t want to live without her, I think she’ll start to come around. ”
“So, you’re saying I should go to Paris and paint the Eiffel Tower?” I tease, and his responding grin is worth it.
“I’d do the same thing my daddy did and make you spend twenty-four hours in jail.
Magnolia doesn’t strike me as the grand gesture type of girl.
She doesn’t need crazy dramatics to get her back, because I think she wants someone strong and steady, someone who proves a little every day that they’re in it for the long haul, someone who has his mind, right?
” He turns to look me in the eye. “Someone who knows they have demons, but is done giving into them.”
I nod at his words. Pops and I have never directly talked about what I was like when I came home.
I don’t know if it was my paranoia, but when I still lived at the farmhouse with everyone, it felt like he was watching my every move.
Counting beer bottles in the garbage even when I tried to hide them.
He’d watch my steps a second longer than everyone else did, trying to catch my eye to make sure I was okay to drive.
When I moved out of the farmhouse and into my own apartment in town, I’d come to work some mornings still messed up from the night before.
He’d take pause, watching me, and I don’t think I could have stomached it if he ever confronted me.
I’m ashamed enough as it is. They all know what my self-destruction led to.
They know that my siblings came to my rescue.
They all saw the bandage I wore to cover the damage to my fist.
“I’m done with them,” I promise, both to him and myself, that there’s no more giving into them.
He claps once sternly and rests a hand on my shoulder, using the balance to stand.
He takes the few steps down, seeming to head back to the UTV, but right before he reaches it, he stops, turning back to look at the farmhouse.
“That’s what Magnolia needs to see, what she needs to know.
Remind her why she fell in love with you in the first place.
And once you have her back, son, don’t ever let her go. ”