Memorizing You (10 page)

Terror bells went off inside me. “Mom, what is it?”

She held up her hand indicating she couldn’t talk, and then fell into the handkerchief again.

I ran to her side. That was when I saw Ryan seated on the sofa in the living room. His hand covering his eyes. A book open in his lap.

My mom touched my shoulder, looked at me with stained eyes. “Ryan’s been reading
A Separate Peace
to me,” she said between sobs.

“Wha…what?” I was confused. I looked to Ryan on the sofa. He held up the book, and then I could see he’d been crying too.

“God, I love that book!” she said, moving past me to the kitchen. She touched my shoulder as she went by.

I’m sure I stood there with the classic dumfounded look. I glanced toward the kitchen, then back at Ryan. “What’s this all about?”

“I wanted to show you I could do this,” he replied. There were red splotches by his eyes, but he still managed a flustered grin. “I didn’t know it was gonna be a ball-bustin’ cry-fest though.”

Mom was still blubbering in the kitche bodybuilderImyn. She tried to hide by moving pots and pans, but I could still hear it.

“Well, groovy,” I said. “Good for you.”

He stood and handed me the book. “My dad bought me some weights and a bench so I could start getting ready for practice.” He looked past me so I wouldn’t see his streaked eyes. “I thought if we could get caught up on studies, we could do some training together in the spare time. You said you wanted to gain some mass. And I train better with a partner.”

“I’m making cookies,” mom called out from the kitchen, before we heard her burst into a fresh set of sobs.

CHAPTER TEN

Sitting on my back porch at twilight, sipping on a bottle of Dr. Pepper, I could hear my dad tinkering in the garage on the old rider mower trying to get it to run. It’d been a month-long project so far. He’d scoured auto shops for used parts and was gradually piecing the mechanical puzzle together. The sounds from the garage were one part hammering, one part cursing.

Half an hour into the racket, it went silent. Then the whine of a motor trying to turn over. More curses. More grinding of gears trying to work. And then the rumble of a motor running and a very loud, exuberant, “Woo-hoo!”

I sat up straight and looked toward the garage. The screen door opened and my mom walked out.

“Is that sound what I think it is?” she asked.

A moment later the mower emerged from the light of the garage with my dad riding it. As he made his way into the dark yard, he waved his arm triumphantly. My mom clapped and I hollered. He’d conquered the monster. We had a riding mower. He made circles in the yard like they were victory laps. Afterward, he sat on the porch to celebrate with me. Mom brought him a Bud; I drank a Teem. No caffeine before bedtime.

His hands were covered with grease and he smelled of a day’s sweat, but my dad was beaming. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders. I never remembered him doing that before. It was both odd and exhilarating.

“How ‘bout that?” he asked.

“Pretty groovy, Dad,” I agreed.

“That it is.” He looked at me over his beer. “Pretty damned groovy for

sure!”

He’d parked the mower at the foot of the stairs where we sat. We both stared at it like it was a work of art. It was old and battered, but it was a working part of a dad and son’s business now.

“Your buddy, Ryan, has turned out to be pretty good for you, hasn’t he?” The question came out of the blue. But I knew he liked Ryan. Both of them did. It was conspicuous.

“He’s a good guy,” I said. “I’m going to start working out with weights with him.”

He looked at me, mildly surprised. “Really? Very good. You are gonna end up being a Samson.”

“I really don’t know what I’m going to end up being.” I didn’t mean for it to sound that glum, but it just came out that way.

He picked up on it immediately. “What’s bugging ya, son?”

I’d been thinking about it ever since Ryan asked me to start training with him; helping him get prepared for his next season of football. His goal was to get that scholarship to college. But get it or not, he was still going to college and would probably take up horticulture like he wanted. I’d heard other guys in school already talking about becoming lawyers and surgeons, accountants. Everybody was doing something to end up as something. I explained that as best as I could to donImy my dad. That I knew it wasn’t his fault that I couldn’t go to college. It was just the way it is. But it was also that everyone had a point of focus for their lives. I had none.

“I’m just a lawnmower man,” I finished, feeling frustrated and incapable of doing anything about it.

He stepped down to the mower and sat on it, thinking about what I’d just said. He finished his beer and sat the empty can on top of the engine cover. “I never told you about how, before I met your mom, I was in the Navy. In the Korean War, in fact. Did most of my duty on the USS Valley Forge.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I was a handsome devil then.”

“I saw grandma’s pictures of you,” I said.

“Oh, the guys back then put it in my head that I had the looks to be an actor. That I looked like Bob Mitchum. And all I had to do after the War was get myself out to Hollywood and be discovered like Lana Turner.”

He saw my blank look at the names he mentioned.

“Big stars, take my word,” he shook his head. “Anyway, after I met your mom and we got married, we moved out to Hollywood for a year. She ever tell you about that?”

She hadn’t. This was all news to me. New and fascinating.

“We got a small apartment in Hollywood. She took up a job waiting tables in a diner. I got a job repairing motorbikes while waiting for someone to discover me. I went to auditions. I stood at the gates of the studios, hoping the executives would drive by and see me and think I was the next big thing.”

I was genuinely impressed. This was a history of my father I had never heard. “Wow.”

“After a year, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. I was just another face in a very large crowd of people who had the same dream.” His fingers drummed the steering wheel. “We moved back here and I got a job doing what I knew how to do. Fix cars. And then we had you.” live a life like this? everyou

“Does it bother you that you didn’t become a famous actor? That you didn’t get a break?”

“It’s only human to think about the ‘what might have beens’. But it doesn’t change what really is. And if we get lost in things that aren’t, we lose sight of what’s right in front of us.”

He stepped off the mower and sat on the stair just below me and looked up at me. “It’s like something my mom once said to me. It’s like packing for a picnic, and you spend time making some great stuff. You make some deviled eggs, some coleslaw. A turkey sandwich and a ham sandwich. You pack it up and head to the park for a picnic. Except when you open the basket you see you forgot to pack the ham sandwich you were looking forward to. Now you have all these wonderful things to eat as well, but all you can think about is how much you wanted the ham sandwich. So the whole picnic you miss out on how good all the things are you do have because all you can think about is the ham sandwich that’s missing.”

I shook my head. I thought I knew what he was trying to tell me.

“David, there aren’t any guarantees in life. Not for your friends who want to be all of sorts of things. Not for you.” He patted my knee. “The only thing we can do every single day we wake up is try to do the things that we can do the best; enjoy the things we get, and pay attention to when and why we’re happy. I didn’t know what I really wanted until I held you in my arms. In that minute, the very first minute they brought you to me wrapped in that blanket, I knew my little dream about myself was nothing in comparison.”

His words touched me. He was right. It wasn’t worth my time to sit and think about things I had no control over. It only made me miserable.

“You have a friend who’s changed your life as much as you’ve changed his,” he reminded me. “You’ve got stronger. He’s got smarter. Because of those two things, the two of us have a business when I should be out of work.”

“Pretty good stuff,” I said.

He rose and walked past me, patting my back. “Yeah. Pretty good stuff.”

*

I’d never used weights before; had no clue how to do them properly. But I could tell the set-up Ryan’s dad had installed in their basement was pretty incredible. It took up the whole space behind the washer and dryer. They had a restroom and shower in a corner to the left of it. His dad meant for Ryan to take this training stuff seriously.

“I’m out of my element here,” I told him honestly.

“Ryan’s a pro at this stuff,” his father’s voice came from the stairs.

“He’ll show you the ropes. You just got to do me one favor?”

I looked at him, baffled. “What?”

“Motivate him like a Marine drill sergeant. Push him. Don’t let him stop. To be the best, he’s got to push the limits. To be successful, you got to keep going when others stop.” His eyes drilled in mine. “You can do that for me; can’t you, David?”

I looked at Ryan who rolled his eyes.

“Sure. I guess so.”

“Good. Carry on.”

With that, he turned and retreated back up the stairs.

Ryan was putting weights on the long bar suspended on a rack above the bench. “It’s like having the worst stage parent in the world. Except for football.”

“I can see that.”

“Ready to get started?” he asked, pulling his shirt over his head and off. He tossed it on top of the bench. live a life like this? everyou

I tried not stare. My impulse was to stare. I dropped my eyes instead and walked to the bench as he began explaining to me what we were doing. Not a half hour into it, I was quivering, feeling weak and wet from head to toe. He looked invigorated, almost manic. Like a second wind had kicked in.

He’d shown me how to work my chest and shoulders; how different body parts would be done on different rotations. But even though we hadn’t done everything, I was spent. He caught on to that when I sat on the bench and he saw my arms shaking. I was certain he was going to laugh at me.

“Good job!” he said, bumping me good-naturedly as he walked past to replace a weight on the rack.

“That’s as tough as crap,” I told him.

“You’ll build up to it. That’s how the muscle adapts. Gets stronger. Bigger.”

I laughed. “You get stronger by making yourself feel as weak as a baby. I get it.”

He walked over to the dryer and picked up two towels. “The bad news is you’re gonna be sore as hell tomorrow.”

“Oh great. What’s the good news?” I asked.

He threw me a towel. “You get to shower with me.”

My heart squeezed into my throat. Like a full-force body blow. I felt the blood leave my face. There was a definite sense of anticipatory dread…or excitement. They intertwined so close I couldn’t tell them apart. Where did fear begin and excitement take over? I saw his shorts and underwear drop to the floor. I heard the shower turn on, but I couldn’t look up. I certainly couldn’t move.

“Come on. Water’s fine,” he called to me. “And I don’t bite.” said after a long pause.

I couldn’t have taken off my shoes and socks any more slowly. I looked up. His back was to me. The shower had no door. Just three walls of tile. He stood in the steam. He looked like a stag standing in the rain. He was so beautiful it hurt me to look.

Pulling off my shirt became an arduous task. Slipping out of my shorts and underwear disembodied me. I marched forward in fog. Naked. The water was on me. Warm. I knew he was inches from me. I closed my eyes. I stood motionless in the spray of water.

He grasped my hand and pulled it toward him. I felt him place the bar of soap in it. “You can open your eyes. I’m not Medusa,” he said.

I opened my eyes. Stared at the tile ahead of me. “Sorry. I’m not comfortable doing this.”

“You’re not comfortable being yourself?”

“This isn’t me.”

“This is completely you, David.”

The muscle in my chest thudded in my ears as he gripped me, swiveled me to face him.

“Just look me in the eyes and relax,” he instructed in a firm voice, placing both hands on my shoulders. I felt like I quaked beneath their pressure.

As I gazed into the blue eyes, my breathing went haywire. I hyperventilated. “I’m not feeling…”

“Relax,” he persisted in a steadying voice. “You’ll be fine. Breathe in and out slowly.”

I did as he said, but was wholly aware of his hands still on me. “Okay.”ou can’t dream in the light, if you can’t live in it.”I my

“Most people are uncomfortable to be naked in front of others. You’re exposed. You’re vulnerable when you take off your clothes. Clothes are our disguise, our armor, the way we hide. “

I stared, spellbound by his mouth as he spoke. The water ran from the corners of his lips to his strong chin.

“We wear clothes to pretend to be something other than what we are. Executives wear suits to look important; movie stars wear gowns to try to seem greater than the average man. But underneath all of the costumes, we’re all the same.”

I calmed as he spoke. I watched the water stream down the sides of his face. It beaded in the bristles of his blond hair.

“I think the whole world should be naked, so no one could try to pretend to be something other than they are.” A curl to the corner of his mouth. “I think it would be harder to lie to others and to yourself if the world were naked. They taught us it was nasty, but it’s the way we’re born. How can natural be nasty? How can we think it’s something to cover up?”

He touched my cheek with his thumb. “Look at me, David. Look at all of me.”

Hesitantly, my eyes roamed downward. The thick, sinewy neck. The broad, muscular chest. The narrowing rib cage tapering into the small waist. The navel that looked like a crescent moon. The triangle of golden pubes. My eyes took all of him in with a sense of wonderment. I’d always speculated. I’d certainly fantasized. And now, I saw all of him for real. He was glorious. The moment of his revelation was spectacular for me.

“It’s not that difficult, is it?”