Smoky Mountain Dreams (2 page)

“Christopher, I really wish you’d get a cell phone, darlin’.
I can’t reach you when I need you. Gran’s birthday’s tomorrow. Your sister’s
agreed to be at our house with the kids by four o’clock. Can you pick up Granny
from the nursing home and make it by then? Bless us, there’re so many people to
coordinate now that Jackie’s married Joe. We gotta take into account his
children’s mother’s plans too. It’s so complicated.”

“And so okay, because it’s so heterosexual,” Christopher
muttered, getting a bowl out for the chili as he listened.

“Let me know if you can’t get Gran, because we’ll have to
make other arrangements. Oh—and…Christopher, honey, if there’s someone you’re
seeing it’s probably best if they don’t come, okay? Bob and I…well, we love you
and…you know how much we look forward to seeing you. I know you wouldn’t want
anything to ruin Gran’s party. And please, darlin’, get a cell phone.”

Christopher grabbed a pack of saltine crackers from the cupboard,
tucked them under his arm, and cracked open a bottle of water from the pantry.
As he laid the food on the coffee table, his mother’s message weighed on him.
Glancing around his little house, which had seemed so cozy and warm when he
first walked in, he now felt the emptiness of the old walls. It was nothing
more than a hollow bachelor pad carved from his Gran’s old home.

He put on a vinyl album of Knuckles O’Toole to let the
honky-tonk piano fill the space with the verve and life his mother’s message
had sucked from the room.
Bob and I love you.
Christopher
snorted. Sometimes he wondered what his teen years would have been like if his
father hadn’t had an affair that led to them all attending Christ Light in a
desperate bid to “save the family” through a strict adherence to religious
faith.

Of course it hadn’t worked out like they’d planned. Shortly
after they joined, his father splintered off to start another family with a
woman he’d met at church. A year later, his mother got remarried to Bob Jenkins,
the church’s very own asshole preacher of hellfire and damnation. Christopher
dreaded seeing Bob, but he’d suck it up for Gran.

He leaned back against his soft sofa, kicked his feet up
onto the coffee table, and broke crackers into his chili with determination. He
would
grab his satisfaction back from the jaws of
shame. His mother and her hateful husband didn’t deserve to have power over
him.

And yet as he ate, his attention slid over the thick brown
curtains he kept closed over the south-facing windows and landed on the giant
pin board by the fireplace. It was a mish-mash of mementos from his life:
pictures of Jackie and Gran at the top of the Gatlinburg Sky Lift, Christmas
1997 when he got his first guitar, him in a tux with his arm around Gran at Jackie’s
wedding to Joe the year before, and several fliers from shows he’d played in
Nashville once upon a time. There was also a slew of prior years’ Christmas
cards.

He ate his chili slowly as he gazed on the grinning faces of
his step-niece and step-nephews, his cousins’ happy families, and all the
pretty little families of his co-workers. They smiled beside homey-looking
Christmas trees or posed in white clothes on gorgeous beaches. He’d bought his
cards in a pack of twenty at Hallmark.

He put down the chili and rubbed his face. It wasn’t the
whole heteronormative package he wanted, but he just wanted
someone
to hold and be held by. He wanted a man who would
willingly brave a Ryder-Jenkins family event with him even if it got
Christopher disowned. He wanted a guy to introduce to Gran before she died, so
she’d know he was happy. So she’d see she’d been right to support him against
his parents’ wishes for all these years.

He wanted someone strong, with green eyes, or blue, or
brown, or hazel. He didn’t care. But if wishes counted for anything, he’d love
a man with a dark afternoon-shadow to scratch along Christopher’s neck when
they kissed. And he wanted arguments, and complications, and shared vacations,
and shared bills.

When you’re happy, that’s when the flies’ll
start to buzz, Christopher. They’ll smell your honey.

He rolled his eyes and wondered if he’d ever stop hearing
Gran in his head, always trying to show him some kind of light. He hoped not,
because once she was gone from the earthly plane, he’d still need her with him
to keep him sane.

“Honey, huh?” he asked out loud. “I’m not so sure the kind
of men I’m interested in are looking for that.”

It was stupid how much his mother’s message missed its mark.
She’d wanted to needle him with a reminder that what he was and who he wanted
was wrong. Instead, it just made him long for the man she imagined he might
already be with. The man who was everything he’d sworn so many times he wasn’t
going to fixate on anymore. The truth was the right guy wasn’t out there. Or if
he was, he was probably in Canada, or Argentina, or China. Christopher wasn’t
leaving Tennessee any time soon, so it was time to face reality.

“It’s time to get a cat,” he said to himself, and that made
him laugh. He knew just what Gran would say to that too.

You don’t find a cat, Christopher—a cat
finds you.

As far as he could tell, not even a cat was looking for him.

The ragtime piano rhythm didn’t go so well with his mood. He
got up and changed the record to an old Waylon Jennings standby. He’d first
heard it before his parents’ divorce, and it always took him back to that time
when he hadn’t known how life could tear a person apart. As Waylon crooned, he
opened the curtains on one side of the living room letting in the glow of
sunset bouncing off the mountains. Then he moved to the southern windows and
opened them too.

Down the slope, through the tangle of trees, he saw a fuzzy
red light. Only as it blinked off did he realize it was the neon sign at the
back of Jesse Birch’s Jewelry Studio. Turning back to his sofa and chili,
Christopher settled in for another night alone.

J
ESSE
PULLED INTO HIS IN-LAWS’
driveway and parked in front of their gray-blue
clapboard house at six minutes past seven. Searching through the keys on his
ring for the right one, he let himself inside. It wasn’t a huge house, but it
was the place in the world that felt most like home to him. Aside from the
occasional trinket or one of Nova’s new clay creations, not much had changed
here since the first time he’d visited when he was fifteen. Hard to believe
that was seventeen years ago now. The thirty-year-old furniture, the family
pictures on the wall, and the sense of peace that seemed to radiate from the
ceiling down to the floorboards were all the same as they ever were.

The smells of spaghetti and garlic bread filled the air, and
his stomach growled. He hadn’t intended to skip lunch, but he’d been so
absorbed in the delicate braiding he’d added to the wedding band he was
crafting that he’d lost all sense of time. He’d also started with the flowers
on the bride’s ring, adding the tiny diamonds and amethysts. He’d planned to do
just one, but he’d completed the set before he’d realized it.

“Dad, you’re late,” Brigid said coldly as he entered his
in-laws’ kitchen.

He crossed the rough-hewn wood floor to stroke his hand over
her glossy, deep brown hair. It was the color of his own and the texture of her
mother’s. She twisted away from him and glared, her dark eyes flashing. “Do you
even have an excuse?” she asked tartly, her lips trembling and her expression
so like Marcy’s when she was angry.

For an instant Jesse saw her without his eyes being clouded
by the memories of the baby he’d held in his arms. The clarity showed him how
she’d sprung up in the last year, growing tall with coltish legs and gangly
arms. Her nose and mouth no longer looked like they fit on her face. He couldn’t
believe she was twelve already, though he barely remembered what life was like
without her and Will in it.

“I know, Brigid. I’m sorry,” he said. “I lost track of time.
I’m truly sorry.”

Brigid didn’t seem impressed with his apology and he couldn’t
blame her.

 “Hey, Dad,” Will said, his mouth full of spaghetti. “I got
a C on the math test!”

“Great!” Jesse answered.

It
was
great. At nine, Will was
good at a lot of things, but school wasn’t one of them. As far as Jesse could
tell, Will was most gifted at, well, being Will. Jesse wasn’t sure what kind of
career that would translate into when he grew up, but he didn’t worry too much
about it. Will cared about people and knew how to get people to open up to him.
He’d be just fine.

He tried to see his son with the same unexpected distance he’d
experienced with Brigid but couldn’t achieve it. Will was still rounded at the
edges. Messy with light brown hair, twinkling hazel eyes, and the air of barely
restrained rowdiness. Marcy always said Will looked like Jesse’s long-dead
grandmother. But when Jesse looked at the kid, he just saw someone he loved
more than breathing.

“What have you been up to today?” he asked, noting that Will’s
Steelers shirt was mostly clean except for a smear of dirt along his shoulder.

“School. Football with FJ at his house. Grandma picked me
up. Now spaghetti!”

“Sounds like a good day.”

Will nodded and shoved more noodles in his mouth, happy and
laid-back as ever.

“A last-minute customer?” Nova asked, motioning for him to
have a seat. She wiped her mouth with a napkin and smiled up at him. He always
loved his mother-in-law’s twinkling brown eyes—not only because they’d been
passed on to Marcy and then to Brigid, but because they always left him feeling
warm and accepted.

Jesse just shrugged and smiled in return as he pulled out
the wooden chair next to Brigid. Normally, he’d have happily told Nova about
the design he was working on, but he didn’t feel like explaining that there was
something about this particular couple and these particular rings that brought
back memories of an April day twelve years ago.

The dogwoods had been in full bloom, white like the silky
dress Marcy wore when she’d walked around the bend on the mountain trail they’d
picked for the wedding only one month before. Chosen while still in Italy,
staring at the pee-stick with the bright blue plus sign that declared Marcy’s
missing period was in fact the herald of a new life.

That day, surrounded by their families, with the trees
leaning in low and lacy around him, he’d felt like Marcy
and
the mountains were marrying him. It’d been the perfect fresh start. A new
beginning for a new life together. It seemed so long ago and just yesterday all
at once.

“Aren’t you hungry, son?” Tim asked. His hair was plaited in
a long gray-blond braid down the front of his tie-dyed shirt, and he’d pushed
his glasses on top of his head. “Grab a plate now. Share a meal.”

Share a meal.

Jesse smiled. “I remember the first time you offered that.”

“I do too.” Tim smiled fondly and winked at him. “You were
just a scrawny kid back then.”

“That I was.” Jesse grabbed some spaghetti as Will started
talking about the super-human pass his friend FJ, short for Frankie-Jones, had
thrown earlier in the day.

“It had to be a whole hundred yards!” he declared. “No,
three hundred!”

Frankie-Jones’s entire backyard wasn’t more than thirty
yards at most, if Jesse remembered correctly.

“That’s some pass,” Tim said, with a twinkle.

“Seriously, Grandpa, I thought it was gonna go down in the
gully and another ball would be a goner.”

Jesse smiled as his father-in-law reminded Will not to go in
the gullies after balls.

“They’re steeper than they look. Besides, this time of year
the bears are out fattening up on the mast crop. Don’t need to provide them
with something tastier to eat.” Tim reached out and tousled Will’s hair. “We
can get a new ball, but we can’t get a new Will.”

Will’s eyes lit up with interest at the mention of bears,
and Jesse sighed, fairly sure he’d have to remind the kid all over again about
the very real danger of attempting interaction with the beasts.

Nova chose that moment to ask Brigid about her friend
Charity. “We haven’t heard much about her lately. How is she doing?”

Brigid shrugged. “She’s busy. We don’t see each other much
anymore.”

Nova frowned and caught Jesse’s eye. He felt a small burr of
frustration snatch at his heart. Obviously he was supposed to know about this
and, as usual, he’d missed something important when it came to his daughter.
The truth was that though he loved Brigid more than he could say, he just didn’t
understand her very well. She was nothing like Marcy and not a thing like him
either. Worse, for the most part girls had always been a mystery to him, and
not one he’d ever intended to try to unravel.

“What’s Charity busy with?” he asked.