Chapter 3 #2
“My new work shirt.” For some reason, that set me off again crying, and I pulled up the sweatshirt sleeve from my waist to hide my face.
“Emily, Jesus, it’s all right,” Luke said, reaching over and awkwardly patting my knee.
“I’m ok,” I gasped. “I’m ok. Just a little tired.” I told myself to calm down. I had this.
He made a noise like an angry dog growling. “You shouldn’t be pushing an old bike seven miles home in the dark.”
“Luke, do you remember Loretta?”
“Of course, I remember her.”
“Remember how she didn’t like the dark? Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“I’m just so worried about her.”
His hand came over again and gently patted my knee. “You need some sleep,” he told me.
I leaned my head back again, and it was all too soon when he slowed to turn into Nana’s driveway. “We’re here,” he said softly. “Are you all right to walk in?”
“Yes. I’m fine,” I said, trying to find my bearings. “I’m fine, just a little tired.” First I had to get out of the car. “Thank you. Thank you for coming to get me.”
“No problem,” he said as I opened the door. I turned to him as the interior lights came on. His face looked tired too, and worried. “Goodnight.”
∞
Charlie had been dead asleep on the coach when I came in, and I left him there with a note asking him to please let me sleep in.
After getting up two hours later than normal and having a nice warmish shower—I had to check on the water heater—I was feeling more human.
I made a good breakfast for us all, trying not to think about the fact that I was using the last of the eggs, and I even got Cassie to come and sit on the back porch for a while wrapped up in one of Nana’s old quilts.
Charlie and I played board games and then decided to watch TV.
I felt a strong urge to cuddle him. When the TV wouldn’t come on, I managed to only minorly freak out when I realized that the basic cable service we had for $19.
99 a month on a poor people special (that afforded us about three channels) had been turned off due to delinquency of payment.
Charlie and I had an interesting time fashioning an antenna out of a wire hanger for Nana’s ancient TV to try to get a clear picture of something.
Mike had taken the flat screen when he left for the greener pastures downstate.
We still had the DVD player, and DVDs were free at the library. Plus I had left the cable service in Mike’s name, so I hoped this dinged his credit score. From me to you, Mike!
And then I got the best news ever via a call from Martha in the afternoon.
Her cousin was still looking at the car, but she talked to her husband Carl, and he was ok with loaning me his brother’s old Ford Bronco while the brother was wintering in Florida (snowbird).
They drove it over, and Charlie and I served Martha and Carl some tea while Frankie looked around the moon garden.
All together, it was a good Sunday. The only thing that kept niggling at me was that I owed Luke, big time. I didn’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t come along and driven me home. I had found my bike parked against the back step, with the entire wheel missing. How had that happened?
I didn’t have any way to reach him to say thank you for picking me up. I didn’t remember if I had said it to him the night before. I had a nebulous memory of talking to him about Loretta, but that couldn’t have been right.
After I got Charlie to go to bed, I made his lunch for the next day, then gave the kitchen and main bathroom a good scrub down.
Cleaning was usually pretty much a Zen state for me.
Growing up I had helped Loretta clean houses, and I had taught myself to detach from the reality of scrubbing out a toilet and exist entirely in my mind.
I had thought through a lot of the problems I mentally brought home from the lab with a sponge in one hand and cleanser in the other.
But this evening my mind was jumping from one thing to the next. Cassie’s appointment with the oncologist. Luke. A swim parka for Charlie. Luke. Fixing the El D. Luke. New plants for the garden. Luke. Luke.
Luke. Luke. Luke.
∞
The next morning I drove Charlie to school in the faded blue Bronco (which started like a charm!) He sat whining in the back seat—mornings were not his thing.
“I’m too tired to go to school.”
“Close your eyes for a while. We have a ways to drive.” I slurped more coffee from my U of M travel mug. Nectar of the gods.
“I hate Mondays.”
That made me laugh. “What’s wrong with Mondays, sweet pea?”
“We have science first thing in the morning. I hate science.”
It was like a dagger to my heart. Hate science? Nooooooooo…
“What’s wrong with science?”
“Miss Lehrer is so boring. And her voice drives me nuts.”
That I could understand. The woman sounded like she had sucked a lungful of helium every time she spoke. It was as if Minnie Mouse had morphed into was a science teacher, and she worked at Whitaker Elementary. At the parent teacher conference, I had thought she was punking me at first.
More importantly, she obviously didn’t know what she was talking about, a lot of the time.
I had asked her about her curriculum, and it was clear to me that she was going to be doing a lot of reading the night before she taught a lesson.
But even that would have been ok if she had shown any interest in the topic.
Last year she had been the library assistant, and I definitely felt that proximity had been a major factor in her hiring.
“Science is cool, dude! Think of all the books we get from the library. And the experiments we do at home. That’s all science.”
“Yeah, but school science isn’t as fun as home science.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“Macdara goes to Red Pine School,” he told me. “She likes it a lot. She likes science there.”
Red Pine was a private school. Where the annual tuition was more than I had ever grossed annually. And it was a little ironic that Whitaker Elementary was no longer good enough for actual Whitakers.
Luke was an actual Whitaker. No! I was determined to put him out of my head.
If I hadn’t been so tired from all that had gone on in the past few days, I would have thought about him for much longer than the hour I wasted on him while trying to go to sleep the night before.
Hour or two. But no more wasting time dreaming about Luke Whitaker.
“Well, I’m sure Red Pine is a nice school for Macdara,” I said. “Do you have your equipment bag? Did you pack your suit in your duffel?”
“Em, you asked me that like five times already! Yes!” But I noticed that he snuck a peek in his duffel to make sure that he had really put his swimsuit in there. We had been down that road before.
“I just don’t want you to have to swim naked, pal. Can you imagine? The girls would riot if they saw your cute little buns.”
“Aunt Emily!” But he started to giggle, and forgot about his dumb science teacher for the moment.
I was off to the NGS, still sucking down my coffee, and not thinking about Luke Whitaker at all.
I opened up on Monday mornings and as the only grocery store in town, we were usually busy.
Well, we were the only grocery store besides Art’s Market, but no one in their right mind would go to Art’s where once a woman had found a rat in carton of oatmeal.
Several years ago now, but still. Busy was good, because it kept me from worrying about everything, and it kept me from thinking about Luke. Luke. Luke.
The NGS was not a scanner, self-checkout kind of place.
It was not even a moving conveyor belt for the food kind of place.
I rang up each item, talked to the customers, and took a short break when Martha came in at ten.
She had just dropped Frankie off at his Monday outing at the Whitaker Community Center.
They had some great programs for adults with special needs. Luke was a Whitaker. Luke. Darn it!
I was so busy not thinking about him, I nearly missed that the actual man himself was in my line.
The only line, because the other one never had a cashier and the register actually didn’t work anymore.
Oh, sweet Mary. But I played it cool, and did not at all wonder if I still had any lip gloss left on from when I applied during my break.
“Hi,” he said, sliding a pack of gum to me.
“Hi.” I smiled at him, then grabbed the gum. “Is this it?”
“Uh, yes. But I have something for you outside.”
Martha had been hovering about an inch away since she had seen Luke Whitaker in the checkout line. “I’ll take over, honey,” she told me. “Go ahead outside with Luke.”
“Thanks, Martha.” I swear that every eye in the place followed us out.
He walked to the back of his car, and popped the back door to pull out a bike wheel. “Here you go. It’s hard to ride on just one.”
Mutely I took the wheel. “How did you end up with this?”
“Your old tire was flat, so I brought it home to patch it. But it was in pretty bad shape, so I got you a new one.”
“You did? For me?” To say I was flabbergasted would have been an understatement.
“Wow, thank you. Thank you!” I hugged the wheel to my chest. It was so nice of him!
A new tire! “And thank you for the ride home the other night. I think I was pretty incoherent and I don’t remember if I told you that. ”
“You did. It wasn’t a problem, I was glad to do it. How did you get here this morning?”
“Martha loaned me her Bronco.” I gestured at the blue truck.
We stood in silence for a moment, looking at each other. “How much do I owe you for the tire?” I finally asked him.
“What?” He looked confused, then a little offended. “Nothing. Don’t be silly.”
“No, I can pay you—”
“Emily, please. I can spot you a bike tire.”
We looked at each other again. “Anyway,” he continued, “I wanted to let you know that I had taken the wheel home with me, but I didn’t have your number.” He pulled out his phone and looked at me, waiting.