Our Heart (28 page)

I held the thick-wooden frame in my hands, flipped it, and gazed at the small, shiny key mounted at the bottom center. Grandpa had made sure it would not fall off by using staples to firmly fasten it to the frame. I was disappointed and cursed out loud. It was not a key that would fit the padlock downstairs. I had no idea what it was for. I’m sure it had a purpose, but for now it only deepened the mystery. The frustration only lasted a moment, as intuition dawned brightly in my brain. I now knew in my heart where the key to the padlock downstairs was. I took down the picture of Allison and me. There on the back, also fastened with staples, was the padlock key I’d been searching for. I took both picture frames to the kitchen and lay them on the counter. Opening the junk drawer by the sink, I withdrew a small flat-head screwdriver. I used the tip to wedge between the staples and the key, working the head of the screwdriver from side to side, until the all the staples were loosened. After further rummaging around in the drawer, I found a pair of pliers and used them to pull the loosened staples free from the picture frames. I tossed both the screwdriver and pliers back into the drawer and threw the staples in the garbage. I pocketed the freed keys and returned the pictures to their respective places on the wall.

I stepped back from the wall and gave it a thorough going over to see if I could differentiate anything that might give me away. It all looked as it had before. I gently straightened the picture of Allison and me, causing another wave of emotion to seep through me. I missed her, and the reality of today made it hurt all the more. Sometimes, the lives we live are just shells of what we once had when the insides are no longer there. Allison used to be my insides, and I let them leak out and drain away until only the residue was left. It would have been better if she had completely evaporated, rather than leave me with the stinging memories of what might have been. What I saw in the picture were two people completely in love with each other. I saw all the good we once shared, and in our faces were the expectations of a life together.

I had to look away. I had been selfish and should have been a stronger person. It was too late now. The life I once had, but which I chose to give up, would haunt me until I died. There comes a time when the mistakes of our youth are no longer just mistakes, but are instead building blocks of adulthood. Even though I had let Allison slip away, she had taught me more about being an adult than she would ever get the chance to understand. She may not have known it, and even without her in my life, I had learned from her what it really took to love someone. She would be the standard to which all others would be held. Unfortunately, with her the bar had been set extremely high. I would always love her; it was just that simple.
I stopped short of opening the door to the basement, another memory of Allison washed over me.

Chapter 16

The summer of nineteen ninety-eight was all that any young man could ask for…freedom, love, and the last year of high school just around the corner. In sports, it was one last time to be on top and leave my mark behind for others to remember. By the time football practice started in August, Allison and I were rarely out of one another’s sight or reach. The very first day of practice, I nearly didn’t go, but Matt dragged me out of bed at five forty-five. I could tell my priorities and all I held important had changed in the blink of an eye or, in my case, the bat of an eye. I made it through the first week without giving much effort on my part. I was more concerned about practice being over and spending the rest of the day with Allison. The funny thing was that, while I wasn’t putting in great effort, I was playing some of the best football of my life. Halfway into the second week, I began to look forward to practice as much as I did being with Allison. One day after practice, when I stopped at her house, she wasn’t there waiting for me. Her mom let me know she had gone to the mall with Dani and Melissa and wouldn’t be home until after the late movie.

I wasn’t sure how to take this new feeling welling up inside of me. She wasn’t here and I was. She didn’t tell me that she had plans, but I would have graciously understood. I now had nothing to do for the rest of the night. We’d been almost inseparable since the picnic to the old oak tree. I didn’t take being left alone very well, letting resentment plague me. I planned on having a serious talk with her about it when she got home. I walked next door and plopped down on the porch swing. Grandma was sitting in her chair and had been studying my face the whole way over from the Dittmer’s front porch to ours. She could tell that it was more than just the August heat that had caused my face to be flushed. Grandma could love you no matter how angry or messed up you were; she could always find a way to make the day a little better or, in many cases, proffer her immense wisdom to those who would listen. As I pushed the porch swing back and forth, stretching the chains until they gave a mighty metallic groan, I could see Grandma gearing up for one of her talks.

She didn’t disappoint me either. Looking over her reading glasses, she asked, “Having some troubles you care to discuss?” What could I say? I was mad and Grandma could see it all over my face. I let it all out and Grandma Sarah never said a word during the whole time I confessed my feelings. When I was done and became quiet, she looked over at me but still didn’t say anything.

Finally, after what seemed like hours of silence, she said, “I think you need an ice tea,” and rose from her chair and slipped through the front door into the house.

I sat there, stunned. I was expecting a lecture or, at minimum, a bunch of questions from her. I became extremely nervous waiting for her to come back. It must have been bad to make her feel the need to get up and leave. I reran the conversation over in my mind, trying to pinpoint what it was that I might have said. Listening in my mind to what I had been saying, one word kept popping up more than any other: me, me, me. Suddenly, I felt horrible about my behavior and wanted to do something to make it up to Allison. I could see so clearly, now, how the last week had turned into being all about football, all the time. Every conversation with Allison had been about football; no wonder she had gone to the mall with her friends; she needed a break.

I remembered something my mother had told me when I first started playing sports. I was involved in lots of things, and my homework had started to slip. She said, “Be where it is you should be in both mind and body. Sometimes you lose sight of the importance of what’s in front of you when you let the distractions take over.”

My mind had been on football, even when the body had been with Allison. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d been treating her until Grandma, in her wise ways, helped me to see what I’d been doing. From now on, I would separate the two most important parts of my life and give Allison my total and full attention when I was with her.

Grandma came back out the door with two glasses of ice tea. She walked over and handed me one. She still didn’t say a word to me. She sat back down in her chair and picked up the magazine she’d been reading. She turned her attention to it and entirely away from me. I sat and swung on the swing, now pushing it much gentler than before. I even thought I caught a glimpse of a wry smile spreading across Grandma’s face; it was gone just as quickly as it had appeared. I enjoyed the coldness of the ice tea and let my thoughts focus on Allison. I was hoping she might get home sooner than later, like her mom had said. If I was lucky, there wouldn’t be a late movie she wanted to see. I really needed to apologize to her. I now had a better understanding of how she’d probably been feeling this past week. Sitting here on the swing, I seriously contemplated giving up football. It would be a small sacrifice for the chance to spend all of my time with Allison. I knew that I couldn’t, with so many friends and teammates counting on me, but I silently vowed to make Allison my number one priority from now on.

I finished my drink and got up from the swing, going inside the house. As the door was closing behind me, I swear I heard my grandma chuckling. I don’t know how she did it, but she had done it again. She always knew the right way to help me work through my problems. This time, she had done it without ever saying a word; I looked down into the empty iced tea glass and shook my head, amazed yet again.

The rest of the evening seemed to drag on and on. I tried to patiently wait for Allison to return home from the mall. Her mom had said they were going to go to a late show, which meant she wouldn’t be home till well after eleven. I found no interest in studying the football playbook, which was supposed to be memorized by the end of the week. I fidgeted on the couch, watching TV with Grandpa, until he told me to go outside and shake the ants out of my pants. Outside seemed like the right choice, so I headed out back where I could keep and eye and ear out for Allison arriving home. I was going to be dead tired at practice tomorrow, but I needed to tell Allison how sorry I was for the last week and hopefully get back on her good side.

I went to my favorite spot, the old swing in the backyard. It was tied high in the tree and, in it, I would forget about the world for a while. As I swung back and forth, higher and higher, the wind raced across my face. Every swoosh of the swing, every creak of the branches, drained away the tension and expanded the smile on my face. There are some things from our childhood that we never outgrow; the swing would be one of those things for me. I wasn’t the only one who liked to swing in it. I would catch my mom in this same swing every once in a while, and always with a secret little smile on her face. I don’t know if it was childhood memories or the swing genetics, which my mom and I shared, but either way I was drawn to the old swing. All I know is the wonderful feeling and comfort I received every time the swing raced back and forth through the air. As I pushed the swing to its highest points, the old tree gave the familiar groans I was so used to. It felt great to take my mind off football. I let my inner thoughts turn to my mom and I wished she could still be here to help guide me with Allison. I knew in my heart she was watching and would approve of her…and I hoped, of me. I couldn’t think about Mom without picturing Dad in happier times. I missed the father that he used to be.

My father had been gone from Cedar Junction for over a year. It would be three years this next January when Mom had been killed in a car accident. I went from happy family to just me. I pushed the swing higher. I already knew that I was going to be the starting quarterback. The coach had told me after practice today. Not being able to share my big news right away with Allison
was part of what had made me angry earlier. Mom would have been proud and Dad would have insisted we go grab the football and play catch in the backyard. It hurt knowing I couldn’t share my accomplishments with either one of them.

It’s strange how sometimes you start down one road in your mind and suddenly find yourself going a different direction. In my case, feelings had gone from football, to Allison, to Mom and Dad, back to football, but only in how it fit with everything else. Right now, I missed being a family more than ever. I was going to be a senior, the starting varsity quarterback, and I was falling in love with the girl next door. I should be bursting with joy, but I felt sadness instead. I wasn’t shortchanging Grandma Sarah or Grandpa Jake; they were beyond great, but they were not my parents. You only have one set of parents and my grandparents could never replace the love I once knew when I was part of a family. I couldn’t stop my mind from drifting back in time to the night my mom died in the car accident.

On a clear, but cold night, January twenty-third, nineteen ninety-six at ten twenty-two p.m. a truck driven by Ralph Erwin ran a stop sign at Wilson road. Shooting across county highway B61, he never saw my mom’s car going south, away from town. It was reported as an unfortunate accident. My mother never had a chance to alter her path or even attempt to avoid the collision. She ran head first into the passenger side of Mr. Erwin’s Dodge pickup. The accident report said that she perished at the scene before the ambulance could arrive. That isn’t the same as dying instantly. Mr. Erwin was lucky or maybe not so lucky. He had several broken bones, which healed, but he never recovered on the inside. In a small town, the looks can be merciless and the most hated look of all came when he looked in the mirror.

There are always two sides to the story. It would have been easy to hate Ralph Erwin, but I couldn’t. It would have been better to have him be a drunk, but he wasn’t. He was in a hurry to get home, no excuse for poor judgment. Why he was in a hurry? His wife had called to tell him that their daughter was home from college and she had brought her fiancée, whom Ralph had never met, home to meet the family. Ralph and my mom were good individuals and both of them ended up dying that night. For Ralph the pain of death would last a lifetime.

I was spending the night at Matt’s, when my Grandpa showed up to get me. Matt, Nick, and I were downstairs in their family room, playing poker, when Grandpa came down the stairs. I knew it was him even before I could see all of him, by the shoes he wore. He liked to wear an old blue pair of boat shoes around the house. I’d never seen anyone else in town with a pair like them. Grandpa would wear them all year long, winter or summer it didn’t matter. The only thing he changed were the socks he wore with them.

As I swung in the backyard, I could remember with such clarity the feeling I had that night as Grandpa Jake made his way down the steps to come and get me. He moved down the stairs cautiously, like he expected one of the steps to give way and needed to test each one to make sure it would hold his weight. He didn’t look directly at me, as he cleared the ceiling; instead, he looked at the wall facing the bottom of the steps. In his left hand he held on to his old grey fedora hat. His right hand slid slowly down the handrail and I could see it bow slightly as he used it to steady himself.