Chapter 6 #3
It was important for Everett to consider something that I had been thinking about, too. “Do you really want to have that little boy live with you?” I asked. “Before, when I talked about all the responsibilities that you’d have to take on, you seemed scared.”
“I wasn’t scared.” He closed his eyes, leaned back against the pillow, and repeated that. “I wasn’t scared at all, not at all, none. Why would I have been?”
“Because it’s a huge thing,” I said. “A huge, all-encompassing, love-devouring—“
“Devouring? Come on,” he chided. “A lot of guys on the Woodsmen have kids and it’s no big deal. Even some of the Juniors do, and they handle it fine. I would, too.”
“And you’re only doing this because you think it’s the best thing for that boy.”
He opened his eyes. “Are you trying to imply that there’s another reason?”
“I just wonder,” I said. “I wonder if you really are trying to hold on to Eris. Maybe she’s trying to hold on to you, too.
Why else would she bother to send videos?
I’m sure she had to do a lot of editing and it would be easier for her just to forget about your existence, rather than bother with all that. ”
“She can’t forget me. We’re in the middle of a court case.” He blinked. “I didn’t mean it like that, like I’m trying to keep myself in her life. I’m not, I’m really not. It came out wrong.”
Now I was probably making the face that another first grader had adopted when I’d insisted to her that air, the stuff we breathed, was real but invisible.
“I used to believe in invisible stuff but not anymore,” she’d replied.
“I grew out of that like how I can’t wear my gold shoes with the bows because my feet got too long. ”
“Eris sends that shit to punish me, not to cling to me. She’s done but she wants me to see what I’m missing, and she’s angry that I don’t rise to the bait,” he stated. “I’m fighting for custody of her son because she doesn’t give two fucks about him and it’s a terrible way for a kid to grow up.”
“You didn’t notice that when you were dating? Although, you said that you didn’t date for very long before you got married and she brought you, her new husband that she hardly knew, into her son’s life.”
I watched as a hot flush moved up over his face, nearly reaching his high cheekbones. “You’ve summed it up. We both acted like idiots.”
“I was thinking of it from a teacher’s perspective,” I said primly.
“I’m worried about that child. We might see a student acting up in class if there are things going on at home, like the sudden appearance of a new father and then the same guy disappearing just as fast. But maybe her son was already having problems, if his mom is as bad as you keep saying that she is. You know the situation, but I don’t.”
“She is that bad,” he told me. “But he’s really a great kid.
His nanny told me about him. He had friends in preschool and he knew all his letters and that kind of stuff.
The nanny knew because she went to the meetings and she was the one the teachers talked to.
She lives there and she’s with him every day, but Eris is mostly gone filming or playing around. ”
I suddenly thought of my mom and wondered what she might be doing, if she was actually in Virginia and playing around there. “I don’t really get that.”
“The need to work or the urge to have fun?”
“I totally get the need to work,” I told him.
“I’m going to be in huge trouble if I can’t find a teaching job for the fall.
The part I don’t understand is how you could just leave your kid.
Although, you did tell me that she only had him to use as an accessory.
” I watched him rub his forehead and decided that this was another topic that we didn’t need to hash out at the moment.
“Want to take something for your headache?”
He said yes and then he wanted to sleep some more, and the hours kind of slid away with Everett dozing on and off, and with me watching him.
I wasn’t used to sitting around like this, but eventually I did have to go to work at Jannie’s and he was awake to talk about it.
“Will you be all right?” I asked. I had been reading about head injuries while he was asleep, and I looked carefully at his pupils as I waited for his answer.
They seemed ok, and so did he. “I can come back after my shift.”
“I’m fine. You’ve been hanging around here all day, wasting your time. I don’t need anyone.”
I didn’t really like to leave him, though. “You told the trainer that you could ask a friend to stay with you. Can you do that now?”
“Sure, I’ll do it.” Then he ordered up a rideshare to take me all the way back out to the Woodsmen practice facility so that I could get my little car.
Once, when I was in third grade, I’d been invited to a birthday party—this was a few years before I’d started playing my instrument and had met people in the band, so I hadn’t had any friends at that point.
Going to the party had been a big deal, especially since they’d had a bounce house and both cake and ice cream.
But despite those draws, I hadn’t enjoyed it.
I’d been by myself as the other girls had played together.
Then it had ended but my mom had forgotten to come and get me.
I had been the last guest there as the birthday girl had gone into her room and closed the door, while her mom and dad had cleaned up the chairs and tables and picked up popped balloons.
They had been ok about the mix-up at first, but I’d felt ridiculous and awkward.
I felt exactly the same way now as I waited for the car.
Everett had seemed grateful that I’d driven him and that I’d made the sandwich, and he wasn’t saying anything like, “Why don’t you wait on the porch?
” That was what I’d heard at that birthday party fifteen years before, when the family had finally gotten really tired of me and I’d been exiled like a leper.
But he probably wanted me to go and I got more and more anxious as the car didn’t arrive.
“I’ll wait outside,” I suggested.
“No, that’s ok.” He peered through the window next to the door and then checked his phone. “It should be here by now.”
I had the urge to apologize, except I had come here to help him. Hadn’t I? I hadn’t been thinking of this as an opportunity to further our relationship and anyway, we had already delineated that: we were friends.
He checked his phone again and frowned. “I was supposed to leave tomorrow morning. I’ll probably have to change it now.”
“Leave?”
“For Arizona. The Junior Woodsmen season ended a few hours ago and I’m done. I don’t care if they keep the crap I left in my locker. The mice will probably get at it.” He looked repulsed.
I didn’t know much about rodents (besides what I’d recently learned at the motel where I worked and also the one where I lived), but I did know that they were attracted to smells.
And he used a deliciously aromatic shampoo.
I had first noticed that when we’d driven to pick up Willow at that bar weeks ago, and I’d noticed again today when I’d bent close to make sure that he was still breathing.
I found it very compelling and I bet that mice would, too, if he stored any in that locker.
I sniffed but couldn’t catch the scent of it now, and we both looked out the window. Then my thoughts shifted, as they usually did, to worry. What if he took a turn for the worse when I wasn’t here? “Did you really ask someone to come over?” I asked.
“I really did.”
“Who?”
He smiled. “Do you need to talk to her and confirm?”
Her. No, I didn’t, and at that point, my ride finally showed up. “I hope you’re ok,” I said. “You seem to be, but head stuff is always scary.” I thought of the first time I’d seen my sister in her hospital bed. “It’s very scary.”
“Yeah, but I’m fine.” He walked me out into the driveway, but then stopped with his hand on the car’s door handle. “Are you still living in that motel or did you find a new place yet?”
“I’ll figure it out.” An issue now was that I might not have been able to return to that motel for the night.
I’d written to Willow to apologize for leaving the game, but she wasn’t answering me and she had the only key to our room.
That wasn’t even my biggest concern, though.
Everett was departing for Arizona and wouldn’t be back until the Woodsmen training camp started, and that felt very far away.
His next words reinforced that. “Maybe I’ll see you this summer.”
“Yes,” I answered. “That would be good. Really good.”
“Sure.” He opened the door but I still stood next to the car, unwilling to get in.
“You guys ready?” the driver asked. She had turned around and was staring at Everett. “You look familiar.” She also glanced at the big house with the beautiful lake views. “Do you play football?”
“Not for the Woodsmen,” he answered, but then lowered his voice and spoke only to me. “Not yet. Bye, Zoey.”
“Bye.” I hesitated for another split second before I got in, and the car took off. When I turned around to watch him through the back window, he was already going into the house.
“He’s cute,” the driver said. “Is that your boyfriend?”
“No. He’s a friend,” I told her. I wondered if I’d see him again when he came back here, if he would still need that. Probably not—it seemed like once people went away, they found it easy to forget you. Or maybe it was just me.
I leaned back against the seat and tried to imagine my new life in my new apartment, the one in the nice building downtown with the heated garage. I would have a party with so many friends, so many fun people, and my boyfriend would come…
But I couldn’t get lost in the daydream like I usually did. When I closed my eyes, I only thought of Everett. My friend, Everett.