Seventy-Two Hours (7 page)

“It’s important to us to have our parents’
blessings, sir,” Chris replied as he continued pleading his case to my father.

My father looked away and said, “I’ll give
you my blessing, but I don’t have to be happy about it. Not yet. You’ve
really disappointed me, Christopher. Both of you have.”

He stormed off and I jumped when the sound of
the heavy oak front door slammed shut. No one spoke and I felt as if someone
had punched me in the stomach. All I could do was stand there. My father said
the one word that could do the most damage to me. He said I’d disappointed
him. In all my life, he’d never said anything remotely close to that. Chris
knew how upset I was and he attempted to console me. I pushed him away with a
simple head shake and did what I had to do. I went after my father.

He was right where I knew he’d be. In the
garage and staring at his 1923 Ford T-bucket roadster. His latest restoration project
and labor of love. He had on his Sloan Equipment ball cap and a Pall Mall
hanging from his bottom lip. Donald Sloan had rust colored hair and he’d
passed it on to his two children. The hair color also came with a stubborn
streak a mile long. That streak may have diluted some in the next generation
of the gene pool, but not by much.

“Daddy,” I called to him.

“Not now, Jennifer.” He didn’t even glance
my way.

“Then when?”

He grabbed his cigarette, tossed it to the
floor, and mashed it. “How could you and Chris do this to your futures?”

“I love him, Daddy, with all my heart.”

“You think I don’t know that? The two of you
have been inseparable for almost six years. I thought you had more sense to
you. Commonsense to set your priorities.”

“You don’t care that we’re getting married?”

“Course not. Chris told me back at Christmas
time he planned on proposing to you come Valentine’s Day. Asked me for my
blessing back then and I gave it to him. Son of a bitch told me it would be a
long engagement so you could finish school.”

“He didn’t know about the baby,” I reasoned
as I took in the information he gave me. “We want to do the right thing and
this is what’s right for us.”

“I truly hope so, June Bug,” he called me by
my old nickname. I was born in June and crawled at an early age.

“I don’t like bringing you disappointment.”

He finally looked at me and said, “I’m
sorry. I shouldn’t have said something so harsh. Being caught off guard is no
excuse.”

I could tell he would come around in time.
Changing the subject seemed to be the best option for us. I noticed he had
finished painting the body of his car. Instead of the gray primer it had been
two weeks earlier, it was now candy apple red. We talked about the engine he
would be putting into it; a Chevy 350 bore .030 times over with a 4:11 rear.
For the first time since we talked, he smiled as he discussed his car. He
would definitely come around.

Present Day

I performed a thorough search of my bedroom,
deemed it “bat free,” and closed the window. My book kept me company and
helped me avoid Chris for the remainder of the morning. When I reached the
ending, I sat it down while at a complete loss on what to do with myself until
it was time to go to bed. Being stuck like this was torture.

I pulled out my phone and texted Hudson to
see how New York was going. He answered quickly with a picture message. He
and his friends were at Yankees Stadium waiting for the game to start. They
looked happy and maybe, just maybe, a little drunk even though most of them
were under age. I was his age once. When there was a will, there was a way.
The caption under the photo said, “At game. Doing fine. Go Yankees!”

That ate up three minutes. So I texted
Clinton next. Instead of a text, he called me. I was ecstatic.

“Are you having fun?” I asked.

“Thank God we’re in a motor home because
grandpa has to take a piss all the time,” he stated in his usual style of
lingo. Crude.

“Yes, well, other than the bathroom breaks,
are you enjoying yourself?”

“We’re heading for an RV park in North
Carolina. I guess we’re staying there for the night and then driving through
to the Outer Banks tomorrow. They’re tired. It sucks cuz we’re almost there.”

“Grandpa and Grandma are in their late sixties,
sweetie, so please pull your weight and be helpful.”

I had no trouble hearing his loud sigh over
the phone thanks to pristine digital technology. I could even envision the eye
roll he performed. “Yes, mother.”

“I’m not lecturing you. Just reminding you.”

“What are you up to?”

“Your father and I are at Seneca Lake for the
weekend.”

“Cool. You going boating with the Palmers?”

“No. We aren’t staying with them. I think
you’re father rented this cottage or something,” I replied realizing how
strange my answer sounded.

“Just the two of you?”

“Carson’s camping at Jamie’s and you know
where Hudson is.”

“Yea, the dickhead sent me a pic of himself
standing outside of the stadium. He was flipping me off.”

“You’re brother isn’t a dickhead,” I scolded
thinking he sounded more like Tony Soprano than a pending high school
sophomore.

“Okay, the prick then.”

It wasn’t worth arguing with him. “Call me
when you get to the Outer Banks.”

“I told them I could drive and we’d be there
tonight.”

“You can’t drive out of state on a learner’s
permit and besides, that gas-guzzling behemoth isn’t easy to drive.”

“That’s only if I get caught or run something
over.”

“In that case, you’d have bigger things to
worry about when you got home to me.”

He chuckled at my statement as only Clinton
could. “I’m just joking, Mom.”

“I’d better let you go,” I told my son when I
heard his grandparents “gently” discussing something in the background.

Now that they were both retired, Conrad and
Marti were together all the time. It left them with a lot of opportunity for
such discussions.

Clinton and I said our goodbyes and then I
found myself with nothing to do again. I couldn’t stand it. I felt like a
caged animal. My identity was Jennifer Gardner; mother, teacher, and wife.
The boys were almost grown. In three short years, Clinton would be finished
with high school and maybe on his way to college—or working on a chain gang, if
he didn’t get himself straightened out. Carson would be away at college and
Hudson would be settled into his career. School was fine. School was my
sanctuary. But summer vacation left me with nothing to do. Nowhere to go.
And the wife part, well, that wasn’t really anything, was it? I had a husband who
was never home. When he was, he was occupied. I missed having a best friend.
A partner. A lover. Someone that recognized when something was wrong with
me. Someone that didn’t let me face the unknown on my own.

Maybe I was being selfish, but I wanted that
again. I deserved to have it again. I was 42 years old. On a good day, I
could still fit into size six jeans. On a bad day, it was a comfortable size
eight. I exercised regularly and kept up with my appearance. Men still flirted
with me from time to time and I’d been told on several occasions I was
attractive. I didn’t always see myself that way. No. When I looked into the
mirror, I saw the crow’s feet by my eyes, the patch of gray roots where my hair
parted when it was time for my hairdresser to do a touch-up, and breasts that had
settled somewhere south of where they’d started. But even though they were
less firm, I was happy just to have them. Looks aside, I had plenty to offer
on an intellectual level as well. I knew I was a worthy companion. For
someone.

Steve Graves was 47. He’d been married once
a long time ago. It ended after nine years. His ex-wife left not long after
they found out he was infertile. She wanted children, he couldn’t give then to
her, and she didn’t want to adopt. He never remarried and considered himself
quite the confirmed bachelor or so he told us at school, often bragging about
his “conquests” and the single life.

However, I saw through his charade and called
him on it when we were in Philadelphia. The two of us had left our teacher
colleagues behind in the hotel bar where they were partying it up and walked
back to our rooms together. When I told him of my suspicions, he gave me a
shrug and a tight smile before explaining to me how creating an active social
life saved him from the blind dates everyone seemed hell bent on setting him up
on. Being single, people assumed he was lonely and unhappy. He wasn’t either
of those, but no one ever believed him. His fictional bragging had taken care
of that problem. He winked at me before saying he wasn’t a complete celibate though
either.

We talked outside of the door to my room. It
was all rather innocent. And then our conversation turned more serious. I
invited him inside where the two of us poured our hearts out over a bottle of
merlot we ordered from room service. It was amazing how easily we could talk to
each other about incredibly personal things. Things about my marriage I’d
never told anyone else. Steve listened, commiserated, and confessed to me how
his wife had made him feel like half a man when she left. Sometime around 3AM,
I welcomed him into my hotel bed.

The next morning was awkward for us, having
breakfast in the hotel restaurant with the others and trying to act as if
nothing had happened between us. Our sleeping together was one secret neither
of us wanted getting out. Something like that would spread like wildfire
throughout the school. Teachers could be terrible gossips. Steve and I parted
ways with the understanding it was a one-time thing. That happened two more times.

Gathering my clothes and toiletries for a
late shower, I went into the small bathroom. I washed my hair, shaved, and
rinsed off the vanilla scented shower gel Hudson had given me for Christmas.
As I dressed in a pair of shorts and a tank top, I considered working on Chris
again about going home. Surely he had realized his plan was failing.

When I found him, he wasn’t on his computer
as I’d expected. He was sitting in the arm chair I’d used the evening before
and was staring outside with the earbuds of his MP3 player at his ears. Even
from that angle, I could tell he’d been crying. The tears were gone, but his
eyes were still red and puffy and he looked almost trance-like and so caught up
in his thoughts. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen him cry. It had
been years.

“Chris,” I murmured on a troubled sigh.
“Look at what we’re doing to each other.”

He seemed embarrassed when he noticed me. He
pulled out the headphones and piled everything together in a jumble of wires on
the end table. He held out his hand to me. I walked up and stood next to his
sitting form. After a moment’s hesitation, I took his hand. He squeezed it
gently before looking at it as his thumb stroked the palm with feather-light
circles.

“Can we please go home?”

“I didn’t want to take this home with us. I
thought we’d settle it all this weekend, but I guess I’m wrong and it’s too
late,” he said softly.

“We screwed up, Chris. Both of us. It
should have never gone this far, but it did and there’s no going back.”

“I just…I didn’t see it. I didn’t see my
absence as a problem. I was able to give one-hundred-ten percent at work these
past few years because you were at home keeping everything going. I knew you
got frustrated with me. But never this.” He paused. “And, you’re right. I
am mad at you. Livid actually. All I can think about is how easily you broke
our marriage vows.”

I tried to pull my hand away, but he wasn’t
going to give it up. “It wasn’t
easy
. Don’t
ever
suggest that.
There’s nothing easy about any of this.”

“I think it was easy especially when you
consider the fact you never came to me and told me how unhappy you were. You
never gave me a chance to work our problems out,” he said calmly. “So, sure, I’ll
suggest it.”

He had a point. I wasn’t going to admit it
though.

His telltale eyes made me think of something
from our past. “Do you think we would have eventually gotten married if
circumstances hadn’t pushed us into it?”

“I don’t know. I’d like to think so.”

“I think so, too,” I admitted.

“What do we do now?”

I sat down on the wooden arm of his chair and
at an angle so I was facing him. “I guess we’ll need to tell the boys,” and as
I said it, my voice broke because I was a mom, first and foremost, and what
Chris and I were doing was going to affect them no matter how old they were.

“I’ll stay at Mom and Dad’s until I can find
an apartment.”

“Are you sure? It’s your house, too. It’ll
just be Clinton and me with Hudson and Carson away at school.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The boys come home
enough on the weekends. You’ll need the house.”