Part IV: Chapter 11 / Brian

5/4/13

Louisville

The first person I told was Nick. Just ask him.

We were standing by the railing in one of the Millionaire Row boxes at Churchill Downs. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone to the Kentucky Derby, but to the rich people in this box, my name had been associated with it for years. This box and the two next to it had belonged forever to one of the muckety-mucks at Kosair Children’s Hospital, a guy who’d been there the whole 30-plus years since I’d been treated there, and every year, he threw a small but, as I understood it, absurdly lucrative fundraiser for my heart foundation. This was the first year in forever that I’d actually been able to attend.

Naturally, because apparently I’m secretly a teenage girl, I’d had to call in some social backup. So Nick was standing next to me, wistfully contemplating the infield, where, I had to assume, a bunch of drunk 25-year-old douchebags in Vineyard Vines and Derby hats were busy puking up mint juleps.

“Don’t act like you miss it,” I teased him, taking a long drink from my frosty silver cup. Secretly, I wished I had one of the giant plastic tumblers they could buy down there. The silver cup might have been classier, but I was close to losing the feeling in my fingers.

Lindie walked up to us, wearing a bright orange sundress with a little white blazer over it. It clashed beautifully with Nick’s light blue seersucker jacket – Dumb and Dumber at the Derby, he’d told me with a shitty grin as I’d put on my navy blazer and pink tie this morning. Her straw hat was as big around as a truck tire and overloaded with tiger lilies. She was holding a plastic tumbler, and I eyed it enviously.

“Where’d you get that?” Nick pecked her on the cheek and peered down into her cup, which I had to imagine held about four mint juleps. I thought I saw him glance balefully down at his bottle of water.

Lindie grinned. “I bought it off someone in line for the bathroom. I was tired of my hand being cold.” She looked around. “Where’s my little partner in crime?”

I waved a hand toward the indoor viewing area. “Last I saw her, she was actually doing work. Schmoozing a donor. You could try it.”

Nick grinned. “Nah, we’d rather take advantage of your generosity and chill.”

“Well, I’ll go find her.” Lindie squeezed Nick’s arm, took a long drink of her mint julep and walked away, waggling her fingers at me.

I turned back to the track, watching as they continued to groom it. We still had another 10 or 15 minutes until they sang “My Old Kentucky Home” and brought the horses out. It all made my heart swell a little, God help me. It was a great day to be a Kentuckian.

Nick was still watching Lindie walk away. He was smiling warmly, and I was glad to see him happy.

“You two make a good match,” I said to him. “Not even I could still bring myself to do the Dumb and Dumber thing.”

“She’s awesome.” Nick turned back to the track. He elbowed me. “Being in love ain’t so bad. I should have listened to you a long time ago.”

I couldn’t stop a smile from spreading across my own face. “Being in love is the best.”

A jockey jogged across the track. The UK band was starting to set up on a grassy knoll across from us.

Nick took a long drink from his bottle of water. “And you guys are, y’know, doing OK?”

I shrugged, still smiling. “As good as it gets.” True to my word, we’d wrapped the album in mid-February. I’d flown home the night before Valentine’s Day, and by that weekend, Meg had been more or less moved in. I’d been home pretty much ever since. I had Baylee every couple of weekends, and the three of us had become something like a family. The schoolhouse apartment, the long weeks and months apart, our big fight – these were all just memories, some better than others. She still wasn’t the easiest person to love some days, but hell, neither was I. Somehow, we’d managed to grow back together, stronger than ever.

So strong, in fact, that the future was no longer abstract. Not to me.

“I’m, uh…” My mouth went dry. What I was about to say to Nick, I hadn’t said out loud to anyone yet. Well, other than the guy at Tiffany’s down in Nashville. He didn’t count.

I took a fortifying drink of my mint julep and swallowed hard. The words came out in a rush. “ImgonnaaskMegtomarryme.”

Nick’s eyebrows launched into space. “You’re gonna what?”

I blew out a long sigh. Somehow, even saying it made my heart speed up. “I’m gonna ask Meg to marry me,” I repeated, more slowly. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and pressed my thumb to the home button until my thumbprint lit up the screen. Since buying the ring, I’d had this thing locked down like Fort Knox.

“Well, shit, dude.” Nick clapped me on the shoulder and started laughing. “Can’t say I didn’t see that coming a mile away.”

I found a picture of the ring in its box and stared down at it. Three stones, for the roller coaster of our past, this hard-won peace and joy of our present, and the excitement of our future. The platinum setting was low, so it wouldn’t get caught in her hair or slow down her work, but it was plenty sparkly, with a halo around each big stone. I suspected it was probably a little more ostentatious than what she’d had in mind, not that I had any idea, but she was my girl, and she deserved a ring that sparkled like she did.

Nick craned his head to look down at the screen. “Damn, dude. You did good.”

I grinned down at the picture. I couldn’t wait to see it on her finger. I couldn’t wait to make her mine for always.

“So when you gonna do it?” Nick went on, taking another long drink of water.

I watched a puffy white cloud drift overhead, shading us from the bright sun. “She’s gonna come to Hawaii with me. I think I’ll do it then.”

We were shooting a video for “Make Believe” on Maui at the beginning of July. I didn’t know how I’d make it that long – the three weeks since I’d bought the ring had felt like three years – but she deserved as much romance as I could give her. She deserved the world on a platter.

Nick grinned and bumped his hips against the railing to punctuate his next words. “You’re gonna get so. Much. Pussy.”

I grinned. He wasn’t wrong, but… “Is that all you think about?”

Nick made a face. “Come on, you got me all wrong. I think about Halo and bacon, too.”

I clinked my cup against his bottle of water. “I won’t argue on the bacon.”

We were silent for a moment. Finally, Nick said, “Dude, I’m happy for you.” He clapped me on the shoulder again. “You know how I feel about her. She’s a bad-ass.”

He drained his water bottle. “Besides, I’ve never seen you this happy.” He looked over at me. “Really, dude. I don’t remember you ever even looking at She Who Must Not Be Named the way you look at her.” I felt my smile slip a little, but he went on. “Seriously, when you were with her, you were all like—” his voice dropped into an ominous robot’s – “’There is no Brian, there is only Zuul.’” His voice returned to normal. “I always felt like, if that was what being in love was like, then fuck that.”

He twisted the cap on his water bottle around and around. “But you guys are two real people, and you’ve stayed two real people. You just…I dunno, you just fit. Like you mashed all your shit together and made something out of it. It gives me hope.”

So help me God, there was actually a lump in my throat. I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t dare look Nick in the eye, so I just reached up and thumped his back awkwardly.

“Aw, am I interrupting bromance time?” came a female voice from behind me.

I turned around to see Meg standing there, arms crossed. Every time I’d seen her today, I’d done a double-take. She gave me shit about going out incognito sometimes, but she was unrecognizable. She was wearing heels, her hair was straight for the first time I could remember, and she was wearing huge sunglasses under her wide-brimmed black and white hat, which had hot pink flowers in the band that matched the hot pink lipstick that had rubbed off on the rim of her silver cup. She was also wearing the little black dress she’d worn to A.J.’s wedding. I remembered it well. I remembered pretty much ripping it off her after the wedding, and I had to stifle a dirty smirk at the memory.

I leaned over and kissed her cheek, trying to avoid getting that pink shit on my mouth. I was sure it wouldn’t look so great on me. “How, uh, how long have you been standing there?” I said, too brightly.

She grinned. “Long enough to hear one of you call your son’s mom Voldemort.”

I pointed at Nick. “That’s on him this time.”

“Don’t get me involved in this.” Nick grinned and walked away.

I placed my hand on Meg’s back, playing with the ruffle at her waist. “How’s it going?”

Meg leaned her elbows on the railing where Nick had been standing. She tipped her mint julep all the way back into her mouth and smiled up at me. It was infectious, and I could see my own smile reflected in her shades.

“I have no idea how many of these I’ve drank, someone talked me into putting 50 bucks on Woody Creek to show, and some other old dude told me he’d donate an extra couple of Gs if I let him touch my butt,” she recounted. Her grin widened, and now it was more than a little bit shitty. “Oh, and Cheryl was looking for you. She wants you to lead the box in singing the Kentucky song in a minute. I might’ve told her you’d be glad to do it.”

I couldn’t stop staring at her. She was crazy, and she was mine.

She waved a hand in front of my eyes. “You in there?”

I slipped my hand around her waist and pulled her closer. “You’re somethin’ else, Meg.” It took all my energy to swallow the rest of my words, saving them for another day.

5/27/13

Cincinnati

“Buy me some peanuts and Craaaaaaaacker Jack, IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII don’t care if I ever get back!”

“Cracker Jack’s gross, Dad,” Baylee informed me as an aside.

I had to agree. Who thought eating Cracker Jack at the ballgame was a good substitute for a hot dog? Or a beer, for that matter?

“Let me root, root, root for the Reeeeeeeeeeeeds,” we resumed shouting. “If they don’t win, it’s a shaaaaaaaaaaaaame. For it’s—” I looked down at Baylee, and we threw one, two, three fingers in unison – “one, two, three strikes you’re out at the oooooooold baaaaaaaaaaaall gaaaaaaaaaame!”

The stadium erupted in cheers, and a rambling melody began on the organ. I stretched my arms over my head and, through the bright sun, squinted out at the field, where a new pitcher was jogging out of the away bullpen.

I tapped Baylee on the shoulder. “Better write that down. The Braves have a new pitcher.”

“Ooh! Thanks.” Baylee dropped back down into his seat and retrieved his scorecard from the ground.

I didn’t sit back down, but surveyed the field again. We were on the first base line, almost close enough to touch the grass, and Baylee had caught a foul ball a couple of innings ago. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken him down to a Reds game. It felt like forever since it had worked out.

I glanced down at him as he scrawled on his scorecard in his painstaking little kid cursive. I was grateful for the father-son day. Among other reasons, I’d had to butter him up somehow.

His mom had taken it surprisingly well. I’d pulled her aside at the old familiar gas station on Friday, when I’d met her to pick Baylee up for the weekend. He’d been in the bathroom, and we’d huddled in the salty snack aisle.

“I need to tell you something before you hear it from Baylee,” I’d said, dropping my voice.

Leighanne had raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I appreciate that,” she’d said, her voice laced with passive-aggressive sarcasm. “I sure loved it when he came home and told me Meg had moved in.”

I had clenched one fist behind my back, cracking the knuckle at the base of my thumb, struggling to keep my face even. She’d always been really unpleasant when she was the least bit unhappy with me – in that sense, I supposed she had something in common with Meg – but she’d taken enough from me without also getting the privilege of pissing me off.

“Y’know, I’m telling you this as a courtesy,” I had said through my teeth, focusing on the bag of nacho cheese pretzel Combos next to her elbow so I wouldn’t have to see the smugness in her eyes at her own cheap shot.

Leighanne had sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry,” she’d muttered, in a tone a lot like how a teenager sounds when they’ve been caught. “What is it?”

I’d taken a deep breath and said, more to the bag of Combos than to her, “I’m gonna propose to Meg. Soon. And I’m gonna tell Baylee this weekend. I don’t need you to be OK with it, but I’d like it if you’d put a good face on for him.”

She’d been dead silent for a moment, and I had finally looked at her. It was such a weird mix of emotions whenever I did. She was my son’s mother, and part of me would always love her for giving me him. I didn’t really hate her anymore, either. Hating her had been exhausting. But there was no totally forgetting all the old hurts, and being amicable and doing the co-parenting thing still took every ounce of my mental strength sometimes.

Then Leighanne had surprised me, and maybe herself, by swiftly reaching out and hugging me.

“OK,” she’d said, somewhat warmly. “OK. You go and do that. Be happy.”

So now, here Baylee and I were, in the waning minutes of our weekend together, and I still hadn’t told him.

He seemed to like Meg fine and vice versa. It wasn’t like she wasn’t there all the time now when he was. And it always surprised me what a happy, resilient kid he was. I’d done plenty to screw up his childhood, but he’d just swallowed it and moved on. Maybe he’d make my life hell in a few years, but maybe he was going to do that anyway.

Still, I had no idea how he’d react. To him, maybe I was closing the book on his mom, once and for all.

I finally sat down next to Baylee, who was doodling a rocket ship in the margins of his scorecard. The Braves pitcher was still warming up. I couldn’t remember ever being this nervous around my own son.

“Hey, buddy,” I said, tapping his shoulder again. “Can I tell you something before they start playing again?”

He looked up at me. His eyes were shaded by a Reds cap that had been mine when I was his age. His curly blond hair stuck out from under it, in every direction. It was like looking in a blurry little mirror.

“What is it, Dad?” he said.

A lump suddenly appeared in my throat. I cleared my throat and tried to speak clearly, so there was no mistaking me. He was my son. Why should he make me so nervous?

”I’m going to ask Meg to be my wife,” I said slowly.

Baylee studied me for a long moment, his face unreadable. He looked out at the field again. I took a deep breath. The first Reds hitter was walking up, swinging a couple bats in wide circles to warm up, waiting for the pitch of the inning. He’d had a big, ugly strikeout a few innings ago, and here came the moment that could change his day or his career. I could relate.

“Is that OK?” I finally said.

Baylee didn’t say anything, but I could see a smile starting in his cheeks and spreading across his face. He finally looked back at me, and he was grinning from ear to ear. His eyes under the old baseball cap were wise far beyond his years.

“Yeah, Dad,” he said. His smile seemed to permeate every inch of him. “That’s OK.”

He turned his head back to the field. The Reds’ batter swung at the ball, connecting with a satisfying crack that we could hear from our seats. It soared over the grass. The Braves’ right fielder leapt in the air, his arm straining, but the ball missed him by a mile.

Everyone but me jumped to their feet. Half a second later, the place erupted. I just sat in my seat, grinning. Home run.

“Good talk, kiddo,” I said, barely audible over the cheers.

6/6/13

Quincy, Illinois

The hills turned to strip malls, the strip malls to old houses. I sat in the back of a cab that smelled like every cheap pine tree air freshener at every dollar store on Earth. The gray upholstery was threadbare, and classic rock drifted from the radio.

I was in a town I’d only heard about, in a state I hadn’t visited in years, heading to an address I’d only seen in the corner of a piece of mail. I was a wreck.

We turned down one residential street, then another. The cab parked in front of a brick bungalow with a sloped front, like a little gingerbread house. There was a tattered Cardinals flag waving next to the front door, a neat row of yellow flowers along the front walk. More importantly, there was a blue Impala in the driveway, with an Illinois plate that read FULLER 4. That was good. Its owner was working weekends now, I’d heard, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t run errands or something, and I didn’t know if I could handle sitting here waiting for her to come back.

I fished out a 20 and handed it to the driver before getting out. I was empty-handed. I’d come in on a mid-morning flight through St. Louis, on a plane only slightly bigger than a can of Dr. Pepper, and I was leaving again in four hours. I hoped that was enough time to plead my case. If this went badly, well, I’d seen a couple of places where I could sit and nurse my defeat over a cup of diner coffee, one of God’s little gifts.

I walked slowly up the front path as the cab rumbled away. This old house, Meg had said more than once, had been home for 25 years. I’d never been here. I’d certainly never imagined coming here without her. But this was the only thing that made sense.

I pressed the doorbell, releasing it slowly. Inside, I could hear a deliberate diiiiiiiiing-dong, then footsteps. The moment of reckoning was upon me. I took a deep breath to calm my pounding heart, shifting from one foot to the other.

The front door opened. Connie stood before me, wearing jeans and a pink YMCA T-shirt. She cocked her head, and through the screen door, I could see surprise, pleasure and skepticism at war on her face.

“Brian,” she said in a confused tone. “Hi.” She was still frowning in puzzlement as she opened the door and hugged me in greeting.

“Hi, Miz Fuller.” My voice sounded strangled, even to me. “Can I come in?”

She nodded and walked inside. I followed her through a small living room with an arched doorway, an overstuffed leather couch and a flat-screen TV flanked by two large, framed pictures, one a distinctly ‘80s-looking couple posing for a bridal portrait in a park, the other a big-haired teenage girl with a metal smile and MAGGIE 1998 in script across the bottom right corner. I would have recognized the women in the pictures anywhere. One of them, I hoped, was about to give me her blessing to marry the other.

Connie was standing in the wood-paneled kitchen, busy at the fridge. “Want some iced tea?” she said.

“Sure.” I sat down tentatively at the round table as she poured tea into two brown glasses and sat across from me, pushing one toward me.

Connie looked down into her glass of iced tea. She smiled, but it didn’t seem to reach her eyes. “This isn’t a social call, is it, Brian?”

I shook my head wordlessly.

“I gotta tell you,” she continued, still talking to her glass of tea, “if you’d shown up here five or six months ago, this conversation would be going very differently.”

Connie looked up. Her smile was pleasant enough, but her eyes were as cold and flat as the tundra. “I don’t care who you are, where you’re from, what you did…”

My eyes were bugged halfway out of my head. My future mother-in-law was threatening me with my own lyrics.

“…if you ever again pull shit like you did at New Year’s, I will kill you myself,” she finished cheerfully. Her smile vanished. “Contrary to popular belief, Maggie – Meg,” she corrected herself, “does not get being a nice person from me.”

If Meg was a nice person, I thought, her mother must be absolutely deadly under the cute-little-mom façade.

“Yes, ma’am.” My voice came out in a squeak, as if she’d just stepped on my balls. She sort of had.

Her shoulders deflated a little. She wrapped her hands around her glass. “I’d say you’re lucky my husband isn’t here, but you aren’t, really. He was just a big bear. A good ol’ boy. He’d have taken a bullet to keep my girl from being sad, but he’d have understood you aren’t perfect.” She stared into her tea. “He was probably a better person than me.”

Connie got up and inclined her head toward the hallway, wordlessly asking me to follow her. I got up and did as she asked, sipping my tea as I walked. She opened a door, and I was looking at my girlfriend’s high school bedroom, untouched, shrine-like, with its tie-dyed bedspread and an old softball trophy in the corner – and a big Backstreet Boys poster still hanging on the wall above her desk, faded from the sun. My own face made bedroom eyes at me from 15 years in the past. It was a little bit terrifying. The message was clear.

Connie leaned against the doorframe and took a long drink of her tea, contemplating the room her only child had long ago left. “You are literally the man of her dreams, Brian,” she said. Her voice shook a little. “And you’re a good man. And no one’s ever made her as happy as you do.”

She looked down into her tea again. “Marriage is hard, kiddo. I wasn’t much good at it the first time around. It’s the best kind of work there is, but it’s work.”

Then she looked up at me, and her eyes were cold again. “So don’t fuck it up,” she said sharply.

I wondered if this was being castrated felt like. “Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled.

She straightened up and smiled at me again, her threats a memory. “Now… Did you have something you wanted to ask me?”

My heartbeat was crazy and erratic and hamster-fast. I white-knuckled my glass of tea to keep from dropping it. She was right; I needed not to fuck this up. I’d come all this way, and this was the last person I had to convince. Well, the second-to-last person.

I took a deep breath, looked down into her gray eyes, so much like the eyes I loved, and tried to make every word count. “Connie, may I marry your daughter?”

Connie grinned up at me. “Brian, I thought you’d never ask.” She set down her tea on Meg’s old dresser, stretched up on her toes and hugged me for a long moment. When she let go, she held on to my elbows. “And yes. You can marry my daughter.”

The breath rushed out of me in a long sigh. I felt like pumping my fist in victory. I’d cleared the last hurdle. Well, the last hurdle before my own nerves, anyway. But a big hurdle anyway.

She picked up her glass, turned and started walking back down the hall. When I caught up with her in the living room, she was stepping into a pair of black flip-flops.

“There’s something else I need to show you,” she said. She took another long drink of tea before setting her glass down on a table next to the door. I did the same. “We’re going for a ride.”

The day was sunny and clear. We drove down past rows of little postwar houses, past a tiny college campus with a picturesque chapel. The houses grew older and a little shabbier as Connie piloted the Impala down long, tree-lined streets. Country music was playing softly on the stereo, an old Rascal Flatts album I vaguely recognized.

“I know why she didn’t, but I wish Maggie had come with you,” she said. “She’d give you the whole tour. Downtown. The record store. The riverfront. Her old high school. The house where we lived when she was really little. Maybe even take you down to Hannibal to see the Mark Twain stuff.” I heard the smile in Connie’s voice as I watched the houses pass. “She acts like she doesn’t have much use for this place, but there’s still a piece of her heart here.”

I didn’t say anything. As we passed a huge grocery store, Connie flipped on her blinker. A cemetery gate came into view. Her voice quieted. “But she’d bring you here for sure, and so am I.”

I suddenly knew exactly what we were doing. My heart dropped into my stomach. My mind flashed back to the night Meg had told me about her awesome stepfather, about his horrible death. Of course. Of course I’d have to come see him while I was here, under the circumstances.

The car wove through the sunny graveyard. We pulled over maybe halfway back. Connie got out and inclined her head toward a tree, maybe 20 feet from the car. I followed her on rubbery legs.

The gravestone was shaded by a fat, leafy tree. It was simple, copper-colored, etched with FULLER and the words “Love leaves a memory no one can steal.” On one side, CONNIE MARIE, 1959-. On the other side, JEFFREY JAMES, 1952-2007. A bouquet of red silk carnations stuck out of the ground.

Connie bent down and pulled a few weeds from the base of the stone. “Hi, darlin’,” she said. Her voice was steady and pleasant; she was undoubtedly used to these visits. “Boy, these weeds are growing faster than I can come get them.”

I folded my hands in front of me, fidgeted, then thrust them into the pockets of my plaid shorts. I couldn’t speak.

“It’s a nice day for a drive today,” Connie went on. She fluffed the flowers, pulling a dead spider off one fake petal. “You’d have really liked it. You’d be out there in your truck with the windows down, blasting your music, singing some crazy old song and playing air guitar when you were supposed to be watching the road.”

She straightened up and stared down at the stone for a long moment. “I’ve got someone else with me today,” she said finally. “I’ve told you so much about him, and now I brought him here to see you.” Now, only now, did her voice waver a little. “Our girl sure is in love, Jeff.”

She pressed her fingers to her lips, then touched the top of the tombstone. She cleared her throat, patted my shoulder and walked back to the car. I squatted down on my haunches, studying the etching in the stone. I didn’t quite know what to say.

“Hi, Jeff. I’m Brian.” I cleared my throat, and the words came to me, unbidden. “I guess you’ve heard a bit about me. I’ve sure heard a lot about you. I wish I could meet you in person, but this’ll have to do, huh?”

A couple of puffy white clouds began to meander across the sky. “I think you might be the best man Meg’s ever known,” I went on, slowly. “I’m not sure I can do any better. But I want to try every day. She deserves the best. She seems to be OK with being stuck with me, though.”

I took a deep breath. “I love your daughter, Jeff. Your stepdaughter,” I corrected myself, “but I guess she was pretty much your daughter. You were pretty much her dad. The thing is, I love your daughter like I never thought I could love anyone again. She found me at my worst, and she fixed me. She brought me back to life. I know God sent her to me. I don’t think I could live without her now. And all I want to do, every day that I have left here, is make her happy.”

I reached out a tentative hand, running my fingers over the stone. “I want to marry your daughter. I know you aren’t here to answer me, but your wife brought me here to tell you, and I…” I swallowed hard. “I guess we just thought you should know.”

Silence settled over the graveyard, broken only by a sniffle over my shoulder that I could barely hear. I didn’t know what I was waiting for. I patted the tombstone again, awkwardly, and stood up. “Good talk.”

As I got to my feet, the leaves overhead began to rustle. A warm breeze washed over the cemetery. Out on the street, a car passed, and the wind carried a few piano notes, guitar strums and drumbeats of tough old rock over to where we stood. It was the kind of song you sang behind the wheel, playing air guitar instead of watching the road. Jane, Jane, Jaaaane... I turned to Connie, who had a hand over her mouth, though her eyes were smiling behind it.

Peace surrounded me. I had my answer, my blessing.

I looked back down at the tombstone. “Good talk, sir,” I repeated, a smile spreading across my face.