Chapter 10 #2
I waited to hear back from Shane but didn’t, not right away.
He was scouting down in the Detroit area right now, and I figured that he was probably busy watching guys or talking to coaches.
I worked on filling out more applications for jobs, positions all over the country, and then I went to do my shift at the one that I already had.
I didn’t really enjoy waitressing but it was a relief to be in a restaurant where I didn’t have to worry about everything all the time.
I did my job and no one else’s, and I didn’t think about problems in the kitchen, with inventory, with the roof falling, or other disasters.
It was easy enough but not what I was looking for long-term, so when I returned to Shane’s duplex, I went for a run and worked on more applications.
After a while, it got late and I realized that I still hadn’t received an answer from him. He was busy and it sometimes took him a while, but he always got back to me. I wrote again.
“Everything ok?”
This time he did respond: “Having an off day.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.
He did, because he called. “Hi,” he said, and I could hear it in his voice. Whatever had happened, it was bad.
“Hi,” I answered. “What’s going on? Is it something about the Woodsmen?”
“No, I had an appointment with an eye doctor down here. A specialist.”
“Oh.” I paused, giving him a chance to explain, but he didn’t. “Did you get tough news?”
He had. The tests they’d done showed that his peripheral vision had decreased again, faster than anyone had expected. “It shouldn’t have narrowed so quickly,” he told me. “I’ve been doing everything right, with diet and protecting my eyes. Why did this happen?”
“Did the doctor have any idea?”
“No. She said that it progresses differently for everyone, even people within the same family. There’s nothing that anyone can do.”
I tried to come up with the right thing to say, phrases that were hopeful or uplifting. Those words wouldn’t come.
“You don’t have to comfort me,” he said. “It’s ok.”
It wasn’t. “Have you talked to your family?” I had seen how much they were in contact with him. They called a lot and I knew that they texted a lot, too, all of them. They would have wanted to hear about this.
“No. They’ll get worried,” he explained. “My mom will want to come stay and there’s nothing that anyone can do.”
“When will you be home?”
“Tomorrow. I’ll be home tomorrow.” He sighed but he had sounded relieved when he’d said the words. “I can still drive. The doctor said that it’s not guaranteed to keep getting worse so quickly. Nothing will reverse the damage but it doesn’t have to continue at this pace.”
“That’s great!” Oh, I’d sounded way too hearty. “That’s great,” I said tepidly, which wasn’t enough emotion. I tried yet again, using repetition this time: “Great, really great.”
“Yeah. Great.”
Now we’d said that word way too many times. “I’ll be glad to see—”
“Molly, I’m sorry. My boss is calling. Bye.”
“Bye,” I said quickly, but I might have been speaking into the void.
Then I was very upset, extremely so. I ate a popsicle for dinner, one sweetened with juice and containing chunks of real fruit, and it was so unsatisfying.
I thought about Shane, alone and losing his vision faster than he’d expected, in some hotel room that he couldn’t even leave because now it was dark and he didn’t feel safe walking around.
I thought about my brother, too. I had been prepared to scoff and deny Avonlea’s criticisms of how we’d dealt with Max, but maybe he should have had the chance to step in as our cook…
maybe? If I asked my mom now, she would probably say yes because there weren’t many other options.
She had been texting me a lot about the issues of trying to off-load the restaurant.
First, not too many people would want a decaying building in the middle of nowhere that was filled with out-of-date equipment, but more importantly, she didn’t really own it and therefore couldn’t really sell it.
Unlike our former family home, which my dad had put in her name, the restaurant was solely his.
All the talk about the business belonging to all of us had been a lie.
Walter’s had come down through his side and yes, she was his wife—but without legal interventions, she couldn’t sell his property.
One of those legal interventions was divorce.
The last time I’d spoken to her, I had urged her to think about that.
Seriously think about that. It didn’t seem as if she’d cared for the idea, since she hadn’t responded to me since.
But I didn’t think that she was actually prepared to be single—not because she acted like a child (as Morgan did), but because she had never really been on her own.
My parents had gotten married when they were both eighteen and she had moved into that family house with him and his parents, and they’d been there together up until my dad had flown the coop.
All of that information spun around in my mind, but most of my thoughts were filled with worry about Shane.
That night, I had strange dreams where I walked through shadowy tunnels with the sides closing in on me, and I woke up cranky and uninspired by the day.
It certainly didn’t help that it was pouring rain and dark outside…
Oh, damn. It was dark outside!
“Where are you? You’re driving, right? Or are you flying?” I texted him.
There was no immediate answer. I wished I could see his location but he’d never suggested sharing them and I wasn’t like my sneaky sister, who had secretly monitored where I was going without my knowledge.
Maybe I would start talking to her again to find out how she’d done that because maybe he needed some eyes on him, since his own…
I got dressed and worked on cleaning up the house, because that was one thing I was very serious about.
I never wanted him to think, “Good golly, I exchanged one set of disgusting roommates for another.” Since he was very neat himself and since neither of us owned very much, it was easy enough and I found it soothing.
I didn’t have any shifts today, which was a problem for someone trying to earn as much as possible.
I was working on getting a second job, a temporary one, while I searched for a full-time, permanent position.
When the apartment was very neat and totally scrubbed, it gave me time to sit and stress.
When was the last time that I wasn’t worried about something?
I thought back to when I was a kid and I recalled problems, even back then.
There had been a field trip fund for my class and my mom had fretted about paying into that, since Max had been doing travel ball and it was so expensive.
Plus, the school had just recommended therapy for my sister, and that was going to be another cost. We’d had a discussion about everything as a family (I remembered not understanding when they had talked about Morgan’s anxiety).
My brother had said that she was fine and that I didn’t need to go on all those field trips, and my dad had growled that his tax dollars should have covered it already.
I had been sick to my stomach for the whole time.
The front door opened and I snapped out of the problems of the past and into the problems of the present—except that Shane didn’t seem to be too troubled. He smiled and looked around. “Did you clean in here again? I think the walls are actually reflecting now.”
“I may have gone overboard. I had a lot of energy.”
“I feel the same way this morning. Remember how you were talking about how people in this area like to do outdoors stuff, but you don’t?”
“Did I say that?” I asked. It was true.
“Let’s go on a hike. It’s Saturday and we should take a day off,” he told me. He swung his bag off his shoulder but then let it hover above the floor. “I hate to drop this here. It’s sparkling.”
“That’s ok, you can put it down. Are you sure you want to go out?”
“Sure, I’m sure. Why wouldn’t I?”
Well, due to the terrible news he’d received the day before? It had been enough to throw me for a serious loop and I couldn’t imagine how bad it must have been for him to hear. Should I have said that, though?
“Um, let me put on…” I thought. Was a hike through the woods a good idea for him, someone who might not have been able to see the approach of dangerous animals, snakes on the ground, or falling boulders?
“You’ll need shoes,” he volunteered.
First, I went into my little bedroom and put on a good bra and socks, and I also pulled my hair back into a ponytail.
Then I filled a water bottle in the kitchen, because it seemed like a good idea.
“I do some outdoors things now,” I noted as I tied my shoes and he dropped our stuff into a little pack.
“I went running yesterday. It was more of a fast walk, to be honest.”
“I wasn’t trying to criticize,” he said, which I already knew. He didn’t do things like that. “I meant that now that it’s warmer weather, we can do more outside.”
The days were a lot longer, too. Northern summer sunlight lasted forever, which was good. But he needed to wear his sunglasses and a hat, which I checked to make sure he had in that pack.
“Are you sure you don’t want to eat first?” I suggested as we walked out into that sunlight.
“Probably afterwards. I don’t really want to be stuck in a seat anymore.”
But we did get into my car and headed to the spot that he had picked and researched, because his phone was cued up with directions.
It was beautiful, through woods that got deeper and little darker as we continued to drive to the trailhead.
I glanced over but he didn’t seem disturbed.
I would just have to watch him carefully in case he was having a hard time.
It turned out that I was the one being watched, though. “I can walk just fine,” I said as I caught myself on a tree to prevent a fall into a nearby bush. “This ground is shakier.”