I woke up with the smell of rain making me smile
Rain makes the earth clean and bright and green
It washes away your troubles and cares,
Like a river on the day you were baptized.
Then I started drowning
The mud was pulling me down
I couldn’t breathe and there was nothing to hold onto
Everywhere I looked there was mud, laughing, pulling, taunting
I wonder if that’s how Hell feels
Knowing you can’t go back, you can’t go forward, all it MUD
And you just keep sinking deeper
How can something so cleansing be so hard to move through?
The rain is like my mind
If it blends with clean things it makes them cleaner
But if it’s dirty, you can’t escape
6/9/95
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Painting of Love
I begged , “Paint me a picture of love”, and he said
Love isn’t flowers or “Roses are Red”
With love the painting is never complete
The picture will change with each person you meet
Sometimes it’s a seashore where peace is the theme
Or sometimes a tempest with passionate screams
Other times dark and depressing and sad
Because you have lost something you had
The colors you use will depend on the way
You feel about love that particular day
I smiled and I thanked him for all his advice
Then filled up with hope, I rolled the dice
I let in a love that wasn’t complete
And started a painting no one could beat
-Rebekah B Jackson-
5/05
Love isn’t flowers or “Roses are Red”
With love the painting is never complete
The picture will change with each person you meet
Sometimes it’s a seashore where peace is the theme
Or sometimes a tempest with passionate screams
Other times dark and depressing and sad
Because you have lost something you had
The colors you use will depend on the way
You feel about love that particular day
I smiled and I thanked him for all his advice
Then filled up with hope, I rolled the dice
I let in a love that wasn’t complete
And started a painting no one could beat
-Rebekah B Jackson-
5/05
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Tara, Misu & Their Just Desserts (Ch. 7)
“If only one of us had been more honest with Anne back then and told her what Everett was going through, maybe a lot of heartache could have been prevented,” thought Tara. “I am so glad Anne doesn’t blame me for keeping his secret. She understands that not even Everett was really sure how he felt.”
She checked on the baby to make sure she was still asleep, and sat down to look over the CISS test that she had put aside several weeks before. “So what does the Lord have in store for me?” she wondered. “With my luck, the test will say I am supposed to be a scientist or something else I hate. Please, please let it be something I like.” Then as she turned page after page, she started to realize that she had wasted the eight dollars she paid. The only two things that even registered above 50% were “Religious Studies” and “Writing”. “Oh great!” she thought. “I am supposed to support my kids by sending short stories to the Ensign or something? Maybe I should write an article about how the college tricks you into taking these tests.” She laughed, but felt like crying. She had never been sure what she wanted to do with her life, but lately she felt a strong need to find out. She had fought depression most of her life, and nothing had really mattered to her until now. It had been a long time coming, but she thought she was finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now she just wanted to have something to do once she got out. Hiding out at home and living on welfare just wasn’t as comfortable as it used to be. She needed to really live life now that she had found one. She knew she still had a long way to go, and she would always have the same past that had put her into the depression in the first place, but she was determined to choose what happened to her as much as possible, and make the best possible choices for herself instead of letting other people choose for her. “I never knew until this moment how much I wanted to move on with my life and accomplish something. Now I am still lost about what I am supposed to do. This really sucks!” she thought, as she put the test results in her filing cabinet with all the personality tests and psych evaluations that she had taken over the years.
Just as she was getting ready to have a full-blown pity party, the phone rang.
“Hello,” she said as cheerfully as she could, while wishing whoever it was on the other line had called some other time. When she recognized Dan’s voice, she really wished she had just let the phone ring. He was saying, “ . . . so I thought if you could drop the kids off, I could take them up to my dad’s with me. He never gets to see them and I would really like to see them too.”
Tara was thinking, “Not a chance! I wouldn’t leave the kids alone with you under any circumstance, especially not at your dad’s,” but she found herself saying, “I guess I can drop them off, but can you bring them home? I have to do some shopping in town in the next couple of hours, so I can drop them off, but once I get home, I really don’t want to go back into town.”
“Forget it! Obviously you are still holding a grudge about my plans to send your friend back to jail. I’m not going to play these games. If you don’t want me to have a relationship with my children, just tell me. Don’t keep coming up with excuses to keep them from me. One of these days you are going to look around and realize your kids are gone, and you are going to wish you had been nicer to me. I have been keeping track of every time you leave them behind so you can go play around in Boise or Salt Lake, and every time you got back later than you said you would, and every time you have refused to let me see my kids, so if you think you are going to look like the good guy when we start fighting for custody, you are wrong.”
Tara tried to cut in and fight back, but he just talked right over her.
“ I have a stable home with two built in babysitters, and my mother has been supporting these kids every month since Shalimar was born. That is more than you can say. You are a single mother living off welfare and my child support, with a history of mental problems. Don’t think for a minute that I won’t bring up your mental instability if I decide to take you to court. What about the fact that you married a child molester? What court is going to like that? Patrick told me that you knew about Glen’s past even before you started to date him. I can’t believe you even let him near our son, much less married the guy. You screwed up, babe! I could be your best friend, but if you want me for an enemy, go right ahead. I know too much about you, and I will do whatever it takes to see my kids. I didn’t want to take them away from you. I just wanted us to be a family and work things out. You got yourself into this mess. Good luck getting out.”
With that, he slammed the phone down, and Tara was left staring at the dead receiver. Then she walked to her desk, and pulled out a tablet to write a letter to Dan. She knew she would never have the guts to send it, because the last thing she wanted to do was make him more mad, but she felt the need to explain herself to him.
“Yeah, Dan. I do have a mental problem. I have fought depression most of my life. But did you ever make things easier for me? Was I supposed to feel better about myself the time you told me you only married me for the sex? How about the day I found out I was pregnant with the son you can’t live without now? You accused me of having an affair, and even suggested I “get rid of him”. I have struggled with not being good enough for anyone or anything my whole life, and one of the people who claimed to love me goes back and forth between sucking up to me and trying to hurt me in every way possible. Do you realize that you just said that all you want is to be a family, and work things out, when a moment before you were saying I didn’t deserve to have my kids, and you were going to take them away? How messed up is that? I am not the only one who is “mental”. I can’t believe you would bring up me not having a job! I do substitute teaching at least once a month. That is one day a month more than you work! You support the kids? You mean your mom supports them. The signature on the checks sure isn’t yours. I know your mom and step dad love the kids, but they certainly don’t want to raise them. I doubt they even know about your plans, because your step dad would probably kick your butt into next week if he knew you were threatening me. He always loved me more, anyway.” She laughed at herself and felt a little foolish for writing that, but she went on. “As far as Glen goes, it is none of your business, but he didn’t molest a child. He was eighteen and he had a fifteen-year-old girlfriend whose parents didn’t like him. They caught the two of them making out in her bedroom one night and filed statutory rape charges. He knew it was wrong to go that far with her in the first place, but I see it as two teenagers whom both knew what they were doing and not something to go to jail over. It messed up his life. He didn’t ever finish high school and has to register as a sex offender over a consensual act. He was never a threat to our son, and I would even trust him with our daughter if I was still married to him. I left him because I was having a hard time being a wife and mother after so many people died that year. He treated me better than you ever did, and he loved Patrick, and wanted to be a father to him, unlike you. Patrick loved him too. He was his daddy when you were too busy running from the law to drop a birthday card in the mail or call him. You deserted your son and didn’t care if he was dead or alive for seven years. You were running from the law to avoid going to jail for breaking into washing machines and cash machines. So yeah, that is one reason I’m not bending over to kiss your butt right now. I am mad that you felt the need to trick me into inviting you to my New Year’s party just so you could have my friend arrested. I am not saying it was okay for him to be hiding out to avoid jail either, but at least his warrant was only for failure to appear. He wasn’t hurting anyone or taking anything from anyone. If you want to blow up at me for not wanting to pick up the kids after you get to take them for the day, there is nothing I can do about that, but I have let you have them every time you have asked unless I honestly had other plans that included them. I would never purposely keep them from you. I can’t believe you would threaten to take them from me. You won’t even take the baby overnight because it would be too much trouble, but you think you want her permanently? I don’t know if you really mean to take them, but I won’t keep my mouth shut about the things you have done and said to me either. I won’t bring your dirty little secrets into a custody battle, but I will tell the judge about the time you threatened my life, and the time you told me to “get rid of” Patrick, and the seven years that you were hiding out in Nevada and didn’t care enough about your son to keep in contact with him. Now you suddenly know how to be a dad? Now you are such a good parent? You don’t want to watch the kids while I “go play in Boise or Salt Lake”? Then don’t take them. I can leave them with my family. They don’t count the seconds that I am late. Speaking of that, I went to Boise so my friend Anne could take her state boards, and I go to Salt Lake to visit her in the hospital while she recovers from her stroke. Talk about a party! I sit in a little room listening to the constant beep of all the machines that are hooked to her, and try to have a conversation with her that makes sense. Don’t get me wrong, I love her and would do just about anything for her, but it is not fun. I would take the kids with me if I was doing anything they would enjoy, but you really would have a case for bad parenting on my part if I made them go sit in her room with me. I am not going to give in this time. I am not going to apologize or beg you or go out of my way to make you happy anymore. I am just going to do the best I can do, and if some court out there says it isn’t good enough, I guess I will lose my kids, but until then, if you want to see them, you have to meet me halfway. Emotionally and physically. I am not going to let you decide what I am allowed to do or say or feel anymore. You lost that right when we got divorced, but I was still letting you be in charge out of fear of retribution. No more. I am in charge of myself now, and until or unless you take away my rights to the kids, I am in charge of them too, so back off and leave me alone!” Tara read it, first laughing, then crying, then ripping it up and throwing it away. She was still too afraid of him to say any of those things to him yet. She just thanked her Heavenly Father for the beautiful children sleeping in their beds and begged him not to let Dan take them away.
As she was drifting off to sleep that night, she thought about how good it felt to express her feelings on paper, even if she never sent it to Dan. “Maybe I could write a book about divorce . . . a comedy . . . ,” she thought, as sleep overtook her.
.....................................................................................
As she sat in her counselor’s office the following Monday, he was excited about the book idea. “You have nothing to lose, Tara. Even if it never gets published, it would help you to get your ideas and feelings down on paper. You could even fit the Religious Studies in by mentioning you married outside your religion and how that affected the marriage too.”
“At this point, I feel like I married outside my species. I am so mad at him!”, she cried. “After the phone call, and the letter I tore up, I sat down and wrote up a visitation schedule so he could have the kids on a specific day at a specific time. I gave it to him last night, and he just tore it up and told me he should be able to see his kids any time he wants, and “doesn’t have to ask my permission.” I admit I was doing it mostly so he couldn’t tell everyone I was keeping the kids from him, but I could have just gone to court and done it that way. I was trying to give him a chance to make any changes he wanted before we made it legal. Now I feel like he doesn’t even care if he sees them. If he had them, I would do whatever I could to see them.” She burst into tears, and grabbed a tissue to blow her nose.
Her counselor let her calm down a little then asked, “I know that hurts, but doesn’t this make things a little easier? Now the ball is in your court, and you have done your part, so you can do whatever you want now. I suggest you give him some minimal visitation through the courts so he has a chance to show what kind of parent he wants to be. If he shows up, your kids get to have a relationship with their dad. If he doesn’t, you have a legal document to show them you weren’t the one keeping them apart. You are in a good situation now. You have the power. Don’t give it back to him, whatever you do. Do whatever you think is right for your children, and leave his feelings and rights out of it. He is a grownup. He can fight for his own rights.”
Tara knew he was right, but she was still a little scared to “make waves” with Dan. She had learned from experience that you were either his friend or his enemy, and she didn’t want him for an enemy. “Jeff, I wish I had the courage to really tell him all the things I wrote last week,” she told her counselor. “When my babysitter’s son used to terrorize me with knives and guns, threatening my life, I would hide in the closet, listening for him, always waiting for the moment he would find me and kill me. The waiting was the worst part. I finally got the courage . . . no actually it was more like I gave up . . . to just say ‘Go ahead and shoot me if you want, but I am not going to run, and I’m not going to hide anymore. Stop right now, and either leave me alone from now on, or kill me right now, because I am tired of running.’ I was just a child then, and I stood up to him.”
“Did it work? Did he leave you alone?”, Jeff asked, pleased to hear her talk about something she had kept deep inside all this time.
“Not completely, at first,” she replied. “He put down the gun, and walked away, but I had to ‘not run’ a couple of times before he stopped chasing me. He knocked me down on the driveway the first time I didn’t back down, and the second time, he threw a rock at me, but he missed and then just walked away. I still see him sometimes, and he seems to have his temper under control now. I heard a rumor that he went to jail for beating up his sister-in-law over an argument at Thanksgiving dinner, got counseling, got on some medication, and became a whole new person.”
“How did you feel the first time you stood up to him? When he pushed you down, did you wish you had run away?”
Tara was startled by her own response. “Absolutely not! I didn’t regret it then, and looking back now, I think I was almost disappointed that all he did was push me down. I almost wanted him to do something that would justify all the times I ran. When all he could do was push me, I wondered why I had been so afraid of him before. I felt kinda foolish.”
Jeff smiled, making it obvious that he expected her to say exactly that. “So what is the worst Dan could do? Do you think he would really “kill you” by taking your kids or taking away the child support, or would he just throw a few rocks of insults and threats, missing you completely?”
Tara laughed at his way of putting things and said, “I know you want me to say ‘You’re right! I am going to stand up to him today!’, but I am still too afraid.” When Jeff smiled at her in a way that made her feel like she was copping out, she added, “At least I wrote the letter. That took a lot of guts, even if I just tore it up.” When he still didn’t look convinced, she laughed and said, “I did give him the visitation schedule. I was scared, but I did it, and look what happened. He tore it up and got madder.”
“Rocks, just rocks,” he replied with an even bigger smile on his face.
“These rocks hurt,” she said, dropping her head so he wouldn’t see the tears building behind her lashes. She knew he was right, and he was just trying to joke with her, but she could still remember her son crying himself to sleep when Dan would say he was coming to see him, then never showed up. She was hoping she wouldn’t have to explain his broken promises to his daughter, too. When he had rejected the schedule she drew up, she felt like he was rejecting his kids. “I just want the kids to be happy, and I’m not sure fighting with him is what is best for them.”
“You don’t have to fight with him, Tara. Just don’t run or hide anymore. What’s best for your children is for you to be the best you can be, and let Dan be the kind of father he is going to be, even if it means he is a lousy one. Your children deserve the chance to find out for themselves, without you covering for him or making excuses. They deserve a mother who is not afraid of what might happen. I don’t know Dan as well as you do, I know, but he sounds like a hot air balloon to me. Why don’t you just set him free to float away and hope for a strong wind?”
Tara laughed again, and noticing she was already ten minutes past her scheduled time, got up to leave. “I will try to hold my ground next time,” she promised, then turned back to joke, “but only because you are making me.”
Jeff tried to look mad as he shook his finger at her, but she heard him laughing as the door closed behind her.
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When Tara woke up on Sunday morning, she went through the list of reasons she should go to church, but none of them could compete with her need to sleep or her feelings of being an outsider in a family ward. She had gradually gotten more and more inactive since her divorce from Glen, but had stopped completely after Shalimar was born.
.....................................................................................
“I haven’t heard from you in ages, Gills. How is single life working for you?”, Bella teased. “I am so glad I found Tony two years ago. I don’t envy you at all, being on the single scene again. I remember the dances full of rejects who always seemed to smell like they bathed in my father’s cologne.”
Tara laughed at this, and thought of how many times she had left the dances feeling more lonely than when she had arrived.
Bella went on complaining, “I remember how I hated sitting between the perfect family with 10 kids on one side and the newlyweds holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes on the other side of me.”
Again Tara broke in to say, “That is even worse after you have been married and divorced. You just know they are going to go home and have a fight over the fact that he was doing a crossword puzzle on his electronic organizer in Sunday School or she forgot to turn on the crock pot before they left, but in front of the ward, they are all perfect and lovey-dovey. I would curse the decision to take away our singles branch and stick us in the family wards again, then feel guilty about not having the faith to understand it.”
Bella said, “Exactly! I remember sitting in Relief Society, hearing the lessons about the blessings of the Priesthood in the home, or even worse the blessings of children, and I would end up in the bathroom crying my eyes out, or end up going home early. Did you know I even asked them not to send visiting teachers to my home any more because I felt like I was so different from the “real women” in the ward? They all had husbands and kids and knew how to bake bread, keep their house clean, have dinner on the table by six, volunteer on the PTA, research their genealogy, bake a casserole for the new mother in the ward or the sister in the nursing home, while keeping their hair, nails and clothes all looking perfect. I could barely get out of bed some days because there didn’t seem to be anything to get up for.”
Tara’s eyes were filling with tears, and she was thinking, “Finally someone who really understands what it is like to be single and LDS.”
As if Bella could read her mind, she said, “I just read an article by an inactive member in your area called something like ‘Single and LDS: A Sin or a Curse?’. I don’t remember all of it, but I do remember it was a piece that really brought back memories. The author said, ‘Being single and LDS is like being biracial. You aren’t completely black or completely white, so you don’t really fit in anywhere. A single person in a family-oriented religion feels much the same way. The married members of the ward either pity or fear them, and other singles avoid them out of fear of being lumped together. If a married sister with six children is sharing a bench with a single male, most people think nothing of it, but put that same male on the bench next to a single female, and everyone has them married by the end of sacrament meeting'.” Bella stopped to tell one of her triplets to get down off the entertainment center, then went on. “She said, 'Growing up in an LDS family, you are taught to follow a basic plan toward the Celestial Kingdom. First you get blessed, then comes baptism and confirmation. If you are male, you go on to hold the priesthood and strive for the Eagle, and if you are female, you work on your ‘Personal Progress’ and strive to get the coveted Young Womanhood Award. Then the young men go on a mission while the young women start praying for a husband. If she hasn’t found one by the time she is twenty-one, she will go on a mission too, at exactly the moment the men her age are coming off their missions. As each person gets married, and sealed in the temple, they start planning the beginning of their own little cycle with the new generation. After the children are grown, if the couple can still stand to be in the same room with each other, they will go on a mission together'.”
Tara’s thoughts broke in as she thought about the fights her parents used to have when she was a teenager, and how it had taken them a long time to figure out that her father had a chemical imbalance that made him have mood swings. Her mother didn’t know how to cope with his ups and downs, so she had become a workaholic. They were still married after all these years, but their whole life seemed to be centered around their children, and they seemed to have nothing left for each other. For a split second she wondered if all the right steps her parents took were really enough to guarantee a place in heaven, or if there was something they were missing. They were going to church, attending the temple, paying their tithing, and all the other things Tara could think of that is required, but somewhere along the line, her parents seemed to fall out of love.
She came back to reality to hear Bella saying, “ . . . 'if you don’t follow the plan in some way, choosing either not to get married right away, or just not able to find “the right one”, you somehow upset the whole chain of events, falling into some kind of strange alternate universe where you do all the things you have been taught to do, such as paying tithing, attending all your meetings, even attending the temple on a regular basis, but you just aren’t quite “good enough” without the spouse and children. You may even be happy with your life the way it is, taking pleasure in the day to day living and being grateful for the blessings you do have until you sit through a meeting that is all about the role of the Husband, or the joy of Motherhood, and you realize you aren’t supposed to be happy as a single LDS person. You are supposed to want an eternal mate, a houseful of children, and a degree in Child Development from Ricks College'.”
Tara laughed, then got serious. “I can see a lot of myself in that article, and have even had some of the same thoughts, but I think she is a little bit harsh. I mean, I don’t think she would feel that way if she really had a testimony. Don’t get me wrong, I have had some Church leaders who I felt were, shall I say 'not in tune with the spirit', like when Bishop Dunn told me I couldn’t get any help with food because I wouldn’t go to Dan for help first…”
With a sharp intake of breath, Bella exclaimed, “What?! I don‘t think you told me about that one.”
“Remember? It was right after Dan had broken into my house for the umpteenth time, and I had been going without child support from him for over 10 years, and he had threatened to hurt me in some way at least a couple of times, but my bishop wanted me to go ask him if he would give me some money for food. I was kind of confused and upset that he would ask me to do that, and I had a lot of late-night conversations with both God and the devil about that one. I think the Bishop thought that since we were close enough for me to get pregnant with Shalimar, we must be close enough for me to ask for money. I never was totally honest with him about how I really got pregnant with her.”
“Tara, I can’t imagine what it must be like to be in your position, but even if you had been in love with Dan when Shali was born, I don’t think it is fair for your Bishop to ask you to go to him for help after all he has put you through. It just seems like sending the sheep into the wolves den.”
“Or Daniel into the Lion’s Den”, Tara replied. “I just have to believe that it was a trial of my faith, and not let his actions drive me away. That is what I was trying to say. The person who wrote that article has probably been hurt by some of the same things I have been hurt by. It IS hard to be a single mother in a family-oriented church. Some of the very things that make it hard are the things that make it true. I wouldn’t want to belong to a church that didn’t believe that family is the most important thing, that children should have both parents, and that families exist beyond death. I want that for myself and my children. I think that is why it’s so hard for me to sit between the Molly Mormon families who don’t know how lucky they are. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I am not supposed to be happy as a single person, or that I am committing some kind of sin. It just means that I am not living the life I truly want to live. If I am not happy, it isn’t because the Church is pressuring me to be a certain way, it is because they have given me hope for a better way, and I just haven’t been able to find it yet.
“I haven’t ever really struggled with my testimony, but I sure got mad when I found out what Dom’s bishop did to him”, Bella said. “I am not sure I ever told you about that. I almost told you about it when you called me about that high school friend of yours, but I knew you had enough to worry about at the time, and I didn’t want to scare you.”
Tara asked, “Are you talking about the deprogramming they did?”
“Yes. If that’s what you want to call it. I don’t want to sound critical of the whole idea, Gills. I understand the idea behind it. I believe that we are not meant to have a sexual relationship with anyone outside of marriage, and Dom will never be able to get married to Coop’, so by the standards I live by, they are sinning. I understand that. I am not trying to excuse them or what they do behind closed doors. I just know that they love each other the same way I love Tony, and I know it isn’t something Dom or Cooper chose. I have talked to my Bishop and many other Church leaders about this over the years, and they all have told me that Dom is not sinning by having those feelings. His only sin is acting on them.”
“So, being gay is not a sin?” Tara asked. “When Everett left Anne, he explained that he had always thought he was gay, but his bishop told him if he just got married and had children, he could stop those feelings, and basically live happily ever after. When he couldn’t control those feelings, and Anne got so sick, he felt like it was kind of a punishment from God or something”.
“That’s kinda what I am trying to say about Dom’s Bishop”. Bella went on, “He kept trying to convince Dom that just being attracted to other men was a sin in itself, and that if he would just date women or even get married, he would stop “feeling gay”. He even convinced him to take some kind of hormones or something. Dom kept trying to tell his Bishop that he had prayed about it and didn’t want to drag some girl into his “mess” when he knew without a doubt that he would never be attracted to her. The Bishop finally just disfellowshipped him. Dom hasn’t been back to church since. I don’t really blame him, but I want to see my brother on the other side, and it is hard for me sometimes to understand why God would let this happen to him. I have to believe it will all work out in the end, but there are days when it seems impossible.”
“I know what you mean Bella. Anne and her boys were sealed to Everett, and if we are to believe what we are taught, he has broken that seal by living with his boyfriend, but his boys still love him, and should have the right to be with him in heaven. I am just saying, if he were to stop acting on those feelings. He just thinks, and has been told, that just having those feelings means he is going to hell, so he figures, ‘why not commit the crime if I have to do the time’, as he is fond of saying.”
All their talk about church and testimonies made Tara realize that she was being a hypocrite, so she told Bella goodbye, and rushed to get ready for church.
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Sister Boston, and her daughter Zoe were sitting alone in one of the side benches, so Tara, Patrick, and Shalimar slipped in next to them just as the Priest was kneeling to offer the Sacrament prayer on the bread. Zoe was a couple of years older than Patrick, but they lived in the same apartment complex, so they played together often. It was sometimes hard for Zoe to make friends because she had been in a fire when she was a baby, and been burned over a large part of her body. Not only did she not look like other kids her age, but she walked a little slower, and kind of breathed “funny”. It was as if she was always sucking air through a straw.
When they had first moved into the apartment complex, a petition had gone around, asking that they not be allowed to move in. Tara asked the woman with the petition why she would want to ban an innocent little girl and her mother from the premises, and was told that Zoe’s father had been the one to set the blaze when she was a baby, and he had tried to kill her and her mother several times since, often putting the people around them in danger. She wanted to make sure her family wouldn’t be in the crossfire if he showed up in their neighborhood. Tara had refused to sign, and knowing that 13 of the 30 tenants had signed before the petition got to her, she went out of her way to befriend Clair and her daughter. She wanted to make sure they knew not everyone wanted them gone.
Now, sitting next to Zoe, Tara couldn’t help thinking how beautiful she was. She was scarred, for sure, but she had the most beautiful aqua-blue eyes, and you could just see her soul shining out from within. Her mother had allowed her to get her ears pierced just a few weeks before, and she was wearing little frogs that had CTR dangling from their hands. The dress she wore was long sleeved and she wore thick tights to hide her scars, but she looked like she had just stepped out of the Gap.
As Tara held the sacrament tray for Zoe, she took the bread with her left hand, then took the tray with her left hand to pass it on to her mother. A woman sitting behind them leaned up to whisper in Tara’s ear, “It is more proper to use your right hand when taking the sacrament. You might want to let her know that”.
Tara turned to whisper, “She has no fingers on her right hand, but I will be sure to let her know”. She felt a little bit guilty about how she said it, but it really upset her sometimes how people judged situations without really looking at the reasons behind them. If the lady had just taken the time to really look at Zoe, she would have realized that Zoe only used her left hand because she had to.
Then by the end of Sacrament Meeting, she had another thought, “That woman was looking at Zoe closely enough to notice that she was using her left hand, but didn’t notice the scars. Maybe I should be grateful that the lady only saw a teenage girl using her left hand, and not a badly burned girl who needs pity. Maybe I shouldn‘t be so quick to ‘judge the situation‘ either.”
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Tara had just gotten the baby fed, and put the lunch dishes in the sink, when she realized the light was blinking on her answering machine.
“This is Landon...Umm, I think we have only met once, and you probably don’t even know who I am, but Everett gave me your number…and umm, well I know this is a terrible thing to hear on a machine, but I didn’t want to keep calling if it was the wrong number, cuz he said your last name was Benson, and this machine said I had reached the Feltz family, but I think your last name used to be Feltz, right, so I am pretty sure this is the right number, but if this isn’t Tara, you can disregard this message…BEEP”
Tara was getting a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as the next message started, “Sorry, this is Landon again. Anne had another setback, and they don’t know if she is going to make it this time. Most of the family is already on their way to the hospital, but we were here in Guam, visiting my family, so Everett is trying to get a flight out for him and the boys, and asked me to call you. Samuel was frantic about it. He wouldn’t get in the car until I promised to call you. Please call back as soon as you get this message so I can let Samuel know that we reached you. My parent’s number is 671-093-9653. I am sorry I had to tell you this way….BEEP”
Tara started to tremble as she dialed the numbers. She couldn’t imagine life without Anne in it. They had been through so much together. Anne helped her get over Roland, then she helped Anne get over Everett, then Anne was the one who came in the middle of the night to help Tara move into the Battered Women’s Shelter when she left Dan. She was also there to pick up the pieces when Tara divorced Jake. It had only been a couple of years since Anne’s 2nd husband had died, and Tara was there, first with her belly “out to there” at the funeral, then with newborn Shalimar, to give Anne something to focus on other than how empty her house was. (Everett had gained full custody of the boys because he convinced the court her health was too fragile, and it was unhealthy for the boys to live in that environment)
When Landon answered, she thanked him for calling and told him to let Everett and the boys know she hoped to be at the hospital by the next morning. Then she started calling around, trying to find anyone who could watch Patrick, and possibly Shalimar, so she could go say goodbye to her friend. Her first call was to Dan. She always dreaded asking him, but if she didn’t give him the first chance to have the kids, he accused her of keeping the kids from him, so she tried to calm her nerves, and dialed.
“She will probably be dead by the time you get there anyway! I can’t believe you are wasting the gas to go clear down to Salt Lake, and expecting me to watch the kids for you! My mom doesn’t pay child support just so you can go traipsing around the country whenever you feel like it! Besides, what am I supposed to do if Patrick has homework? Or what if the baby runs out of diapers? Are you going to bring the whole package? Cuz I am not going to go out and buy more. Plus, my mom shouldn’t have to feed them while they are here. She already paid for my share of their support, so you will need to bring food for them while they are here. That is IF I decide to let them stay. I will let you know in the morning.”
Tara got off the phone and just burst into tears. Patrick came rushing over to see what was wrong, but she just told him she was upset because Anne was really sick, and she might be dying. She didn’t want to tell him what his father said. She calmed down enough to call the hospital, but the only information they would give her was that Anne was in the ICU and that she was stable. She called her sister B.C. as a back up babysitter, sat on the couch, and almost immediately fell asleep.
She checked on the baby to make sure she was still asleep, and sat down to look over the CISS test that she had put aside several weeks before. “So what does the Lord have in store for me?” she wondered. “With my luck, the test will say I am supposed to be a scientist or something else I hate. Please, please let it be something I like.” Then as she turned page after page, she started to realize that she had wasted the eight dollars she paid. The only two things that even registered above 50% were “Religious Studies” and “Writing”. “Oh great!” she thought. “I am supposed to support my kids by sending short stories to the Ensign or something? Maybe I should write an article about how the college tricks you into taking these tests.” She laughed, but felt like crying. She had never been sure what she wanted to do with her life, but lately she felt a strong need to find out. She had fought depression most of her life, and nothing had really mattered to her until now. It had been a long time coming, but she thought she was finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now she just wanted to have something to do once she got out. Hiding out at home and living on welfare just wasn’t as comfortable as it used to be. She needed to really live life now that she had found one. She knew she still had a long way to go, and she would always have the same past that had put her into the depression in the first place, but she was determined to choose what happened to her as much as possible, and make the best possible choices for herself instead of letting other people choose for her. “I never knew until this moment how much I wanted to move on with my life and accomplish something. Now I am still lost about what I am supposed to do. This really sucks!” she thought, as she put the test results in her filing cabinet with all the personality tests and psych evaluations that she had taken over the years.
Just as she was getting ready to have a full-blown pity party, the phone rang.
“Hello,” she said as cheerfully as she could, while wishing whoever it was on the other line had called some other time. When she recognized Dan’s voice, she really wished she had just let the phone ring. He was saying, “ . . . so I thought if you could drop the kids off, I could take them up to my dad’s with me. He never gets to see them and I would really like to see them too.”
Tara was thinking, “Not a chance! I wouldn’t leave the kids alone with you under any circumstance, especially not at your dad’s,” but she found herself saying, “I guess I can drop them off, but can you bring them home? I have to do some shopping in town in the next couple of hours, so I can drop them off, but once I get home, I really don’t want to go back into town.”
“Forget it! Obviously you are still holding a grudge about my plans to send your friend back to jail. I’m not going to play these games. If you don’t want me to have a relationship with my children, just tell me. Don’t keep coming up with excuses to keep them from me. One of these days you are going to look around and realize your kids are gone, and you are going to wish you had been nicer to me. I have been keeping track of every time you leave them behind so you can go play around in Boise or Salt Lake, and every time you got back later than you said you would, and every time you have refused to let me see my kids, so if you think you are going to look like the good guy when we start fighting for custody, you are wrong.”
Tara tried to cut in and fight back, but he just talked right over her.
“ I have a stable home with two built in babysitters, and my mother has been supporting these kids every month since Shalimar was born. That is more than you can say. You are a single mother living off welfare and my child support, with a history of mental problems. Don’t think for a minute that I won’t bring up your mental instability if I decide to take you to court. What about the fact that you married a child molester? What court is going to like that? Patrick told me that you knew about Glen’s past even before you started to date him. I can’t believe you even let him near our son, much less married the guy. You screwed up, babe! I could be your best friend, but if you want me for an enemy, go right ahead. I know too much about you, and I will do whatever it takes to see my kids. I didn’t want to take them away from you. I just wanted us to be a family and work things out. You got yourself into this mess. Good luck getting out.”
With that, he slammed the phone down, and Tara was left staring at the dead receiver. Then she walked to her desk, and pulled out a tablet to write a letter to Dan. She knew she would never have the guts to send it, because the last thing she wanted to do was make him more mad, but she felt the need to explain herself to him.
“Yeah, Dan. I do have a mental problem. I have fought depression most of my life. But did you ever make things easier for me? Was I supposed to feel better about myself the time you told me you only married me for the sex? How about the day I found out I was pregnant with the son you can’t live without now? You accused me of having an affair, and even suggested I “get rid of him”. I have struggled with not being good enough for anyone or anything my whole life, and one of the people who claimed to love me goes back and forth between sucking up to me and trying to hurt me in every way possible. Do you realize that you just said that all you want is to be a family, and work things out, when a moment before you were saying I didn’t deserve to have my kids, and you were going to take them away? How messed up is that? I am not the only one who is “mental”. I can’t believe you would bring up me not having a job! I do substitute teaching at least once a month. That is one day a month more than you work! You support the kids? You mean your mom supports them. The signature on the checks sure isn’t yours. I know your mom and step dad love the kids, but they certainly don’t want to raise them. I doubt they even know about your plans, because your step dad would probably kick your butt into next week if he knew you were threatening me. He always loved me more, anyway.” She laughed at herself and felt a little foolish for writing that, but she went on. “As far as Glen goes, it is none of your business, but he didn’t molest a child. He was eighteen and he had a fifteen-year-old girlfriend whose parents didn’t like him. They caught the two of them making out in her bedroom one night and filed statutory rape charges. He knew it was wrong to go that far with her in the first place, but I see it as two teenagers whom both knew what they were doing and not something to go to jail over. It messed up his life. He didn’t ever finish high school and has to register as a sex offender over a consensual act. He was never a threat to our son, and I would even trust him with our daughter if I was still married to him. I left him because I was having a hard time being a wife and mother after so many people died that year. He treated me better than you ever did, and he loved Patrick, and wanted to be a father to him, unlike you. Patrick loved him too. He was his daddy when you were too busy running from the law to drop a birthday card in the mail or call him. You deserted your son and didn’t care if he was dead or alive for seven years. You were running from the law to avoid going to jail for breaking into washing machines and cash machines. So yeah, that is one reason I’m not bending over to kiss your butt right now. I am mad that you felt the need to trick me into inviting you to my New Year’s party just so you could have my friend arrested. I am not saying it was okay for him to be hiding out to avoid jail either, but at least his warrant was only for failure to appear. He wasn’t hurting anyone or taking anything from anyone. If you want to blow up at me for not wanting to pick up the kids after you get to take them for the day, there is nothing I can do about that, but I have let you have them every time you have asked unless I honestly had other plans that included them. I would never purposely keep them from you. I can’t believe you would threaten to take them from me. You won’t even take the baby overnight because it would be too much trouble, but you think you want her permanently? I don’t know if you really mean to take them, but I won’t keep my mouth shut about the things you have done and said to me either. I won’t bring your dirty little secrets into a custody battle, but I will tell the judge about the time you threatened my life, and the time you told me to “get rid of” Patrick, and the seven years that you were hiding out in Nevada and didn’t care enough about your son to keep in contact with him. Now you suddenly know how to be a dad? Now you are such a good parent? You don’t want to watch the kids while I “go play in Boise or Salt Lake”? Then don’t take them. I can leave them with my family. They don’t count the seconds that I am late. Speaking of that, I went to Boise so my friend Anne could take her state boards, and I go to Salt Lake to visit her in the hospital while she recovers from her stroke. Talk about a party! I sit in a little room listening to the constant beep of all the machines that are hooked to her, and try to have a conversation with her that makes sense. Don’t get me wrong, I love her and would do just about anything for her, but it is not fun. I would take the kids with me if I was doing anything they would enjoy, but you really would have a case for bad parenting on my part if I made them go sit in her room with me. I am not going to give in this time. I am not going to apologize or beg you or go out of my way to make you happy anymore. I am just going to do the best I can do, and if some court out there says it isn’t good enough, I guess I will lose my kids, but until then, if you want to see them, you have to meet me halfway. Emotionally and physically. I am not going to let you decide what I am allowed to do or say or feel anymore. You lost that right when we got divorced, but I was still letting you be in charge out of fear of retribution. No more. I am in charge of myself now, and until or unless you take away my rights to the kids, I am in charge of them too, so back off and leave me alone!” Tara read it, first laughing, then crying, then ripping it up and throwing it away. She was still too afraid of him to say any of those things to him yet. She just thanked her Heavenly Father for the beautiful children sleeping in their beds and begged him not to let Dan take them away.
As she was drifting off to sleep that night, she thought about how good it felt to express her feelings on paper, even if she never sent it to Dan. “Maybe I could write a book about divorce . . . a comedy . . . ,” she thought, as sleep overtook her.
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As she sat in her counselor’s office the following Monday, he was excited about the book idea. “You have nothing to lose, Tara. Even if it never gets published, it would help you to get your ideas and feelings down on paper. You could even fit the Religious Studies in by mentioning you married outside your religion and how that affected the marriage too.”
“At this point, I feel like I married outside my species. I am so mad at him!”, she cried. “After the phone call, and the letter I tore up, I sat down and wrote up a visitation schedule so he could have the kids on a specific day at a specific time. I gave it to him last night, and he just tore it up and told me he should be able to see his kids any time he wants, and “doesn’t have to ask my permission.” I admit I was doing it mostly so he couldn’t tell everyone I was keeping the kids from him, but I could have just gone to court and done it that way. I was trying to give him a chance to make any changes he wanted before we made it legal. Now I feel like he doesn’t even care if he sees them. If he had them, I would do whatever I could to see them.” She burst into tears, and grabbed a tissue to blow her nose.
Her counselor let her calm down a little then asked, “I know that hurts, but doesn’t this make things a little easier? Now the ball is in your court, and you have done your part, so you can do whatever you want now. I suggest you give him some minimal visitation through the courts so he has a chance to show what kind of parent he wants to be. If he shows up, your kids get to have a relationship with their dad. If he doesn’t, you have a legal document to show them you weren’t the one keeping them apart. You are in a good situation now. You have the power. Don’t give it back to him, whatever you do. Do whatever you think is right for your children, and leave his feelings and rights out of it. He is a grownup. He can fight for his own rights.”
Tara knew he was right, but she was still a little scared to “make waves” with Dan. She had learned from experience that you were either his friend or his enemy, and she didn’t want him for an enemy. “Jeff, I wish I had the courage to really tell him all the things I wrote last week,” she told her counselor. “When my babysitter’s son used to terrorize me with knives and guns, threatening my life, I would hide in the closet, listening for him, always waiting for the moment he would find me and kill me. The waiting was the worst part. I finally got the courage . . . no actually it was more like I gave up . . . to just say ‘Go ahead and shoot me if you want, but I am not going to run, and I’m not going to hide anymore. Stop right now, and either leave me alone from now on, or kill me right now, because I am tired of running.’ I was just a child then, and I stood up to him.”
“Did it work? Did he leave you alone?”, Jeff asked, pleased to hear her talk about something she had kept deep inside all this time.
“Not completely, at first,” she replied. “He put down the gun, and walked away, but I had to ‘not run’ a couple of times before he stopped chasing me. He knocked me down on the driveway the first time I didn’t back down, and the second time, he threw a rock at me, but he missed and then just walked away. I still see him sometimes, and he seems to have his temper under control now. I heard a rumor that he went to jail for beating up his sister-in-law over an argument at Thanksgiving dinner, got counseling, got on some medication, and became a whole new person.”
“How did you feel the first time you stood up to him? When he pushed you down, did you wish you had run away?”
Tara was startled by her own response. “Absolutely not! I didn’t regret it then, and looking back now, I think I was almost disappointed that all he did was push me down. I almost wanted him to do something that would justify all the times I ran. When all he could do was push me, I wondered why I had been so afraid of him before. I felt kinda foolish.”
Jeff smiled, making it obvious that he expected her to say exactly that. “So what is the worst Dan could do? Do you think he would really “kill you” by taking your kids or taking away the child support, or would he just throw a few rocks of insults and threats, missing you completely?”
Tara laughed at his way of putting things and said, “I know you want me to say ‘You’re right! I am going to stand up to him today!’, but I am still too afraid.” When Jeff smiled at her in a way that made her feel like she was copping out, she added, “At least I wrote the letter. That took a lot of guts, even if I just tore it up.” When he still didn’t look convinced, she laughed and said, “I did give him the visitation schedule. I was scared, but I did it, and look what happened. He tore it up and got madder.”
“Rocks, just rocks,” he replied with an even bigger smile on his face.
“These rocks hurt,” she said, dropping her head so he wouldn’t see the tears building behind her lashes. She knew he was right, and he was just trying to joke with her, but she could still remember her son crying himself to sleep when Dan would say he was coming to see him, then never showed up. She was hoping she wouldn’t have to explain his broken promises to his daughter, too. When he had rejected the schedule she drew up, she felt like he was rejecting his kids. “I just want the kids to be happy, and I’m not sure fighting with him is what is best for them.”
“You don’t have to fight with him, Tara. Just don’t run or hide anymore. What’s best for your children is for you to be the best you can be, and let Dan be the kind of father he is going to be, even if it means he is a lousy one. Your children deserve the chance to find out for themselves, without you covering for him or making excuses. They deserve a mother who is not afraid of what might happen. I don’t know Dan as well as you do, I know, but he sounds like a hot air balloon to me. Why don’t you just set him free to float away and hope for a strong wind?”
Tara laughed again, and noticing she was already ten minutes past her scheduled time, got up to leave. “I will try to hold my ground next time,” she promised, then turned back to joke, “but only because you are making me.”
Jeff tried to look mad as he shook his finger at her, but she heard him laughing as the door closed behind her.
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When Tara woke up on Sunday morning, she went through the list of reasons she should go to church, but none of them could compete with her need to sleep or her feelings of being an outsider in a family ward. She had gradually gotten more and more inactive since her divorce from Glen, but had stopped completely after Shalimar was born.
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“I haven’t heard from you in ages, Gills. How is single life working for you?”, Bella teased. “I am so glad I found Tony two years ago. I don’t envy you at all, being on the single scene again. I remember the dances full of rejects who always seemed to smell like they bathed in my father’s cologne.”
Tara laughed at this, and thought of how many times she had left the dances feeling more lonely than when she had arrived.
Bella went on complaining, “I remember how I hated sitting between the perfect family with 10 kids on one side and the newlyweds holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes on the other side of me.”
Again Tara broke in to say, “That is even worse after you have been married and divorced. You just know they are going to go home and have a fight over the fact that he was doing a crossword puzzle on his electronic organizer in Sunday School or she forgot to turn on the crock pot before they left, but in front of the ward, they are all perfect and lovey-dovey. I would curse the decision to take away our singles branch and stick us in the family wards again, then feel guilty about not having the faith to understand it.”
Bella said, “Exactly! I remember sitting in Relief Society, hearing the lessons about the blessings of the Priesthood in the home, or even worse the blessings of children, and I would end up in the bathroom crying my eyes out, or end up going home early. Did you know I even asked them not to send visiting teachers to my home any more because I felt like I was so different from the “real women” in the ward? They all had husbands and kids and knew how to bake bread, keep their house clean, have dinner on the table by six, volunteer on the PTA, research their genealogy, bake a casserole for the new mother in the ward or the sister in the nursing home, while keeping their hair, nails and clothes all looking perfect. I could barely get out of bed some days because there didn’t seem to be anything to get up for.”
Tara’s eyes were filling with tears, and she was thinking, “Finally someone who really understands what it is like to be single and LDS.”
As if Bella could read her mind, she said, “I just read an article by an inactive member in your area called something like ‘Single and LDS: A Sin or a Curse?’. I don’t remember all of it, but I do remember it was a piece that really brought back memories. The author said, ‘Being single and LDS is like being biracial. You aren’t completely black or completely white, so you don’t really fit in anywhere. A single person in a family-oriented religion feels much the same way. The married members of the ward either pity or fear them, and other singles avoid them out of fear of being lumped together. If a married sister with six children is sharing a bench with a single male, most people think nothing of it, but put that same male on the bench next to a single female, and everyone has them married by the end of sacrament meeting'.” Bella stopped to tell one of her triplets to get down off the entertainment center, then went on. “She said, 'Growing up in an LDS family, you are taught to follow a basic plan toward the Celestial Kingdom. First you get blessed, then comes baptism and confirmation. If you are male, you go on to hold the priesthood and strive for the Eagle, and if you are female, you work on your ‘Personal Progress’ and strive to get the coveted Young Womanhood Award. Then the young men go on a mission while the young women start praying for a husband. If she hasn’t found one by the time she is twenty-one, she will go on a mission too, at exactly the moment the men her age are coming off their missions. As each person gets married, and sealed in the temple, they start planning the beginning of their own little cycle with the new generation. After the children are grown, if the couple can still stand to be in the same room with each other, they will go on a mission together'.”
Tara’s thoughts broke in as she thought about the fights her parents used to have when she was a teenager, and how it had taken them a long time to figure out that her father had a chemical imbalance that made him have mood swings. Her mother didn’t know how to cope with his ups and downs, so she had become a workaholic. They were still married after all these years, but their whole life seemed to be centered around their children, and they seemed to have nothing left for each other. For a split second she wondered if all the right steps her parents took were really enough to guarantee a place in heaven, or if there was something they were missing. They were going to church, attending the temple, paying their tithing, and all the other things Tara could think of that is required, but somewhere along the line, her parents seemed to fall out of love.
She came back to reality to hear Bella saying, “ . . . 'if you don’t follow the plan in some way, choosing either not to get married right away, or just not able to find “the right one”, you somehow upset the whole chain of events, falling into some kind of strange alternate universe where you do all the things you have been taught to do, such as paying tithing, attending all your meetings, even attending the temple on a regular basis, but you just aren’t quite “good enough” without the spouse and children. You may even be happy with your life the way it is, taking pleasure in the day to day living and being grateful for the blessings you do have until you sit through a meeting that is all about the role of the Husband, or the joy of Motherhood, and you realize you aren’t supposed to be happy as a single LDS person. You are supposed to want an eternal mate, a houseful of children, and a degree in Child Development from Ricks College'.”
Tara laughed, then got serious. “I can see a lot of myself in that article, and have even had some of the same thoughts, but I think she is a little bit harsh. I mean, I don’t think she would feel that way if she really had a testimony. Don’t get me wrong, I have had some Church leaders who I felt were, shall I say 'not in tune with the spirit', like when Bishop Dunn told me I couldn’t get any help with food because I wouldn’t go to Dan for help first…”
With a sharp intake of breath, Bella exclaimed, “What?! I don‘t think you told me about that one.”
“Remember? It was right after Dan had broken into my house for the umpteenth time, and I had been going without child support from him for over 10 years, and he had threatened to hurt me in some way at least a couple of times, but my bishop wanted me to go ask him if he would give me some money for food. I was kind of confused and upset that he would ask me to do that, and I had a lot of late-night conversations with both God and the devil about that one. I think the Bishop thought that since we were close enough for me to get pregnant with Shalimar, we must be close enough for me to ask for money. I never was totally honest with him about how I really got pregnant with her.”
“Tara, I can’t imagine what it must be like to be in your position, but even if you had been in love with Dan when Shali was born, I don’t think it is fair for your Bishop to ask you to go to him for help after all he has put you through. It just seems like sending the sheep into the wolves den.”
“Or Daniel into the Lion’s Den”, Tara replied. “I just have to believe that it was a trial of my faith, and not let his actions drive me away. That is what I was trying to say. The person who wrote that article has probably been hurt by some of the same things I have been hurt by. It IS hard to be a single mother in a family-oriented church. Some of the very things that make it hard are the things that make it true. I wouldn’t want to belong to a church that didn’t believe that family is the most important thing, that children should have both parents, and that families exist beyond death. I want that for myself and my children. I think that is why it’s so hard for me to sit between the Molly Mormon families who don’t know how lucky they are. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I am not supposed to be happy as a single person, or that I am committing some kind of sin. It just means that I am not living the life I truly want to live. If I am not happy, it isn’t because the Church is pressuring me to be a certain way, it is because they have given me hope for a better way, and I just haven’t been able to find it yet.
“I haven’t ever really struggled with my testimony, but I sure got mad when I found out what Dom’s bishop did to him”, Bella said. “I am not sure I ever told you about that. I almost told you about it when you called me about that high school friend of yours, but I knew you had enough to worry about at the time, and I didn’t want to scare you.”
Tara asked, “Are you talking about the deprogramming they did?”
“Yes. If that’s what you want to call it. I don’t want to sound critical of the whole idea, Gills. I understand the idea behind it. I believe that we are not meant to have a sexual relationship with anyone outside of marriage, and Dom will never be able to get married to Coop’, so by the standards I live by, they are sinning. I understand that. I am not trying to excuse them or what they do behind closed doors. I just know that they love each other the same way I love Tony, and I know it isn’t something Dom or Cooper chose. I have talked to my Bishop and many other Church leaders about this over the years, and they all have told me that Dom is not sinning by having those feelings. His only sin is acting on them.”
“So, being gay is not a sin?” Tara asked. “When Everett left Anne, he explained that he had always thought he was gay, but his bishop told him if he just got married and had children, he could stop those feelings, and basically live happily ever after. When he couldn’t control those feelings, and Anne got so sick, he felt like it was kind of a punishment from God or something”.
“That’s kinda what I am trying to say about Dom’s Bishop”. Bella went on, “He kept trying to convince Dom that just being attracted to other men was a sin in itself, and that if he would just date women or even get married, he would stop “feeling gay”. He even convinced him to take some kind of hormones or something. Dom kept trying to tell his Bishop that he had prayed about it and didn’t want to drag some girl into his “mess” when he knew without a doubt that he would never be attracted to her. The Bishop finally just disfellowshipped him. Dom hasn’t been back to church since. I don’t really blame him, but I want to see my brother on the other side, and it is hard for me sometimes to understand why God would let this happen to him. I have to believe it will all work out in the end, but there are days when it seems impossible.”
“I know what you mean Bella. Anne and her boys were sealed to Everett, and if we are to believe what we are taught, he has broken that seal by living with his boyfriend, but his boys still love him, and should have the right to be with him in heaven. I am just saying, if he were to stop acting on those feelings. He just thinks, and has been told, that just having those feelings means he is going to hell, so he figures, ‘why not commit the crime if I have to do the time’, as he is fond of saying.”
All their talk about church and testimonies made Tara realize that she was being a hypocrite, so she told Bella goodbye, and rushed to get ready for church.
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Sister Boston, and her daughter Zoe were sitting alone in one of the side benches, so Tara, Patrick, and Shalimar slipped in next to them just as the Priest was kneeling to offer the Sacrament prayer on the bread. Zoe was a couple of years older than Patrick, but they lived in the same apartment complex, so they played together often. It was sometimes hard for Zoe to make friends because she had been in a fire when she was a baby, and been burned over a large part of her body. Not only did she not look like other kids her age, but she walked a little slower, and kind of breathed “funny”. It was as if she was always sucking air through a straw.
When they had first moved into the apartment complex, a petition had gone around, asking that they not be allowed to move in. Tara asked the woman with the petition why she would want to ban an innocent little girl and her mother from the premises, and was told that Zoe’s father had been the one to set the blaze when she was a baby, and he had tried to kill her and her mother several times since, often putting the people around them in danger. She wanted to make sure her family wouldn’t be in the crossfire if he showed up in their neighborhood. Tara had refused to sign, and knowing that 13 of the 30 tenants had signed before the petition got to her, she went out of her way to befriend Clair and her daughter. She wanted to make sure they knew not everyone wanted them gone.
Now, sitting next to Zoe, Tara couldn’t help thinking how beautiful she was. She was scarred, for sure, but she had the most beautiful aqua-blue eyes, and you could just see her soul shining out from within. Her mother had allowed her to get her ears pierced just a few weeks before, and she was wearing little frogs that had CTR dangling from their hands. The dress she wore was long sleeved and she wore thick tights to hide her scars, but she looked like she had just stepped out of the Gap.
As Tara held the sacrament tray for Zoe, she took the bread with her left hand, then took the tray with her left hand to pass it on to her mother. A woman sitting behind them leaned up to whisper in Tara’s ear, “It is more proper to use your right hand when taking the sacrament. You might want to let her know that”.
Tara turned to whisper, “She has no fingers on her right hand, but I will be sure to let her know”. She felt a little bit guilty about how she said it, but it really upset her sometimes how people judged situations without really looking at the reasons behind them. If the lady had just taken the time to really look at Zoe, she would have realized that Zoe only used her left hand because she had to.
Then by the end of Sacrament Meeting, she had another thought, “That woman was looking at Zoe closely enough to notice that she was using her left hand, but didn’t notice the scars. Maybe I should be grateful that the lady only saw a teenage girl using her left hand, and not a badly burned girl who needs pity. Maybe I shouldn‘t be so quick to ‘judge the situation‘ either.”
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Tara had just gotten the baby fed, and put the lunch dishes in the sink, when she realized the light was blinking on her answering machine.
“This is Landon...Umm, I think we have only met once, and you probably don’t even know who I am, but Everett gave me your number…and umm, well I know this is a terrible thing to hear on a machine, but I didn’t want to keep calling if it was the wrong number, cuz he said your last name was Benson, and this machine said I had reached the Feltz family, but I think your last name used to be Feltz, right, so I am pretty sure this is the right number, but if this isn’t Tara, you can disregard this message…BEEP”
Tara was getting a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as the next message started, “Sorry, this is Landon again. Anne had another setback, and they don’t know if she is going to make it this time. Most of the family is already on their way to the hospital, but we were here in Guam, visiting my family, so Everett is trying to get a flight out for him and the boys, and asked me to call you. Samuel was frantic about it. He wouldn’t get in the car until I promised to call you. Please call back as soon as you get this message so I can let Samuel know that we reached you. My parent’s number is 671-093-9653. I am sorry I had to tell you this way….BEEP”
Tara started to tremble as she dialed the numbers. She couldn’t imagine life without Anne in it. They had been through so much together. Anne helped her get over Roland, then she helped Anne get over Everett, then Anne was the one who came in the middle of the night to help Tara move into the Battered Women’s Shelter when she left Dan. She was also there to pick up the pieces when Tara divorced Jake. It had only been a couple of years since Anne’s 2nd husband had died, and Tara was there, first with her belly “out to there” at the funeral, then with newborn Shalimar, to give Anne something to focus on other than how empty her house was. (Everett had gained full custody of the boys because he convinced the court her health was too fragile, and it was unhealthy for the boys to live in that environment)
When Landon answered, she thanked him for calling and told him to let Everett and the boys know she hoped to be at the hospital by the next morning. Then she started calling around, trying to find anyone who could watch Patrick, and possibly Shalimar, so she could go say goodbye to her friend. Her first call was to Dan. She always dreaded asking him, but if she didn’t give him the first chance to have the kids, he accused her of keeping the kids from him, so she tried to calm her nerves, and dialed.
“She will probably be dead by the time you get there anyway! I can’t believe you are wasting the gas to go clear down to Salt Lake, and expecting me to watch the kids for you! My mom doesn’t pay child support just so you can go traipsing around the country whenever you feel like it! Besides, what am I supposed to do if Patrick has homework? Or what if the baby runs out of diapers? Are you going to bring the whole package? Cuz I am not going to go out and buy more. Plus, my mom shouldn’t have to feed them while they are here. She already paid for my share of their support, so you will need to bring food for them while they are here. That is IF I decide to let them stay. I will let you know in the morning.”
Tara got off the phone and just burst into tears. Patrick came rushing over to see what was wrong, but she just told him she was upset because Anne was really sick, and she might be dying. She didn’t want to tell him what his father said. She calmed down enough to call the hospital, but the only information they would give her was that Anne was in the ICU and that she was stable. She called her sister B.C. as a back up babysitter, sat on the couch, and almost immediately fell asleep.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Tara, Misu & Their Just Desserts (Ch. 6)
Everett approached her as she was leaving her locker. He was wearing a new, multicolored sweater vest, and his penny loafers had the same three colors on them. She thought to herself that he had a lot of style sense. He reminded her of her friend Dominick Dean. He always had a new pair of shoes and matched perfectly, too. She smiled at him as he asked, “How were your holidays? You went to Salt Lake with Anne didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I had a lot of fun with her family,” she said, thinking of Allen. “Once I got home, it wasn’t so great, though. My mom and dad are fighting like cats and dogs lately, and it got so bad this morning that the word ‘divorce’ actually came up.”
Everett put his arm around her, and asked if she wanted to go sit on the bench down the hall and talk. “I have something I want to talk to you about, too.”
Tara went around the corner to tell Beth she was going to stay at school for a little while longer, then joined Everett on the bench.
“So what’s up?” she asked.
“No you go first. I need to get up the courage to tell you what I am going through.”
Tara got nervous about what he had to say, but she started telling him what had been going on with her family during the holidays.
“You know John Angelo?” When Everett nodded, she went on. “My dad has been helping his dad remodel their house, and sometimes he doesn’t come home. Even when he comes home, he has been acting all secretive, and he’s either on top of the world or down in the dumps all the time. My mom accused him of using drugs and he flew off the handle. He started accusing her of having an affair with one of her co-workers because he sometimes drives her home. We all know she works long hours to support all of us. She wouldn’t have the energy to have an affair. She threatened to get a divorce if she ever found out he was using drugs, and he threatened to divorce her if she ever came home with any of her male co-workers again. He says he is going to start checking up on her at work, too. I don’t know what to think. Everyone says that the Angelos deal drugs, and my dad has been there a lot, but I can’t believe he would just start doing drugs at his age. As far as my mom having an affair, she is so tired when she gets off work, that she sometimes just falls into bed with all her clothes on. I really don’t think she even likes the District Manager that she car pools with. She said he bores her with stories about comic characters. All I know is that my dad isn’t acting like himself, and my mom is getting more and more resentful about him not having a full time job.”
“I think I know how you feel,” Everett said. “My parents separated when I was two, but my oldest sister and mom are always talking about what a bum he is, and how he never sends any child support. I have only seen him a couple of times since he moved out because he lives in Michigan, but he seems like a nice guy. I know he hasn’t been perfect, but I have a hard time believing he is as bad as my mom says he is. In the few times I have seen him, he hugged me and told me he loved me more than my mom has in my entire life. I wonder sometimes if she likes me at all. She talks about men like they are all evil and no good.”
Tara had only met Everett’s mom once, but his older sisters all seemed to treat him like a second class citizen. They had always treated her with respect and involved her in their conversations, but he didn’t seem to exist in their world unless they wanted something from him. Knowing he was on the brink of saying something important now, she turned sideways on the bench to look him straight in the eye.
“So what’s up with you?”, she asked. “What did you need to tell me?”
Everett fidgeted a little, and turned toward her, then looking up and down the hall to make sure no one was within earshot, he asked, “Do you think it is normal for me to have no desire to have sex?”
Tara was shocked by the question, but recovering quickly, she asked him what exactly he meant.
“Do you mean with Anne, or at all? I mean, we aren’t supposed to have sex with someone we aren’t married to, but I guess most guys think about it and want it most of the time.” She could tell she hadn’t given him the answer he wanted, so she went on. “ I know I appreciate the fact that you aren’t constantly talking about women’s body parts or watching a girl’s backside as she walks away from you. I’m glad you aren’t like the other guys.”
Everett shook his head, and kept starting to say something, “No, I meant…What I am trying to say is…It isn’t really about Anne”, but he couldn’t seem to finish any of his sentences, so he finally just said, “Never mind, it’s not a big deal”, and they continued talking about things that were a little easier to talk about for about half an hour, then went home. Tara had almost forgotten the conversation by the end of February. There were more important things on her mind.
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Tara was walking through Albertson’s looking for something to snack on when she ran into her distant cousin Marie. It had been almost five years since she had seen her, and she had grown up fast. It was hard to believe the 9-year-old she remembered was now a 14-year-old she hardly recognized. It was instantly obvious that Marie was at least eight months pregnant. Tara tried not to stare at her stomach as she talked to her. She just made small talk and asked how everyone was in the Paul side of the family.
Marie finally cut the tension by asking, “So no one in the family told you I was pregnant did they?” When Tara shook her head, Marie went on. “I could tell by the way you keep staring at my belly. Don’t be embarrassed. Everyone does it. Grandma and my bishop are pressuring me to give it up, and my mom keeps trying to hide me from the neighbors, but I plan to keep it, so everyone is going to find out anyway.” She stopped to take a breath and Tara began asking questions.
“Who’s the father? How far along are you? Are you going to finish school? Do you know if it’s a girl or a boy? How could Grandma want you to give it up? “
With every answer, Marie made it very clear that she had thought it all through and knew what she planned to do.
“Max is actually eighteen, and he has his own apartment, so I am moving in with him as soon as Kara is born. His apartment is right across the street from my Grandma Paul, so I will have family nearby. In fact, my uncle Dan is still living at home, and he has been helping me out a lot. Max and Dan spend a lot of time together. That side of the family isn’t LDS, so they aren’t as judgmental about it.”
Tara knew how that was. She felt like every move she made was against some rule the church had. She could handle it better if everyone around her wasn’t breaking the rules too, and not getting caught. Just the day before, she had been coming out of Maverik after buying gas, and Sister King scolded her for shopping on Sunday. As she hung her head and drove away, she realized that Sister King was doing the exact same thing. Deep inside, she felt Marie had really gotten herself into a fix, though. It made her realize how important the rule about not dating until you are sixteen really was. In fact, looking at Marie, she wondered why the Prophet didn’t forbid dating until eighteen or twenty-five.
Marie gave her a hug and said, “I hope you can come see the baby after it is born. We will be living in Double Tree Apartments, #32 if you want to stop by in a couple of weeks.”
“I can’t wait!” Tara squealed. Despite Marie’s age and the problems the baby would probably cause, Tara was glad to have a baby in the family. “It will be almost like having a niece or nephew.”
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When Tara got home, she asked her dad if he knew his cousin was going to be a grandma. He just grunted and said, “I don’t know why you think that is something to be proud of.” Then he plopped down on the couch, closed his blood shot eyes, and went to sleep.
Tara started cleaning up all the candy bar wrappers he had left around the living room and thought about what she had heard about drug users getting the “munchies”. Once again she wondered if her father could possibly be an addict. “Don’t be ridiculous!” she told herself, and went to finish her report for Mrs. Thompson’s class.
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A week later, the day after Valentines Day, Kara Maxine Phelps was born. She was 7 lbs. 6 oz., and had the most gorgeous blue eyes Tara had ever seen. She sat in Max and Marie’s apartment rocking her and playing with her fingers and toes. “I can’t believe how tiny she is!” she exclaimed. “I don’t remember B.C. ever being this small.”
Marie laughed and replied, “You were a lot younger when your sister was born. When your mom realized she was going to have a surprise, Ethan and I were about seven or eight, so that would have made you almost 10. He was hoping for a brother so bad, and instead he got his third sister.”
“Yeah, actually Bridget Camille never was this small. She was almost 10 pounds when she was born.” Tara said, wincing at the thought of trying to give birth. “So is it really as bad as they say? Did it hurt a lot?”
Marie winced and said, “Let’s just say, the pain is so bad you think you are going to die, then it gets worse and you wish you could die just to end the pain.” Then she laughed, and went on. “Actually, by the time I was in the regular room, I had pretty much forgotten how bad it really was. I just remember what I was thinking at the time.”
“Ouch! I can’t even imagine having that much pain. My menstrual cramps are bad enough. I throw up from the pain, and practically spend two days and two nights with a hot water bottle strapped to my waist. I didn’t think anything could hurt worse than that!” Tara exclaimed.
Marie was laughing because Max came in the room just in time to hear Tara say ‘menstrual’, and hurried right back out again.
Tara asked, “Doesn’t it bother you that Max smokes? I didn’t notice the smell until he came in just now, but doesn’t he stink like smoke all the time? Does he always smoke outside or does he smoke around the baby?”
Marie replied, “You sound just like my parents. They point out all the things about Max that are against the Word of Wisdom or something else in the church, as if I didn’t know he isn’t Mormon. They seem to think they can turn me against him or something, but it won’t happen. He is very careful not to smoke anywhere near the baby, and he only drinks a couple of beers once in a while. He loves me and the baby and we love him. That is all that matters. Please don’t be like them. I was hoping you would support me.”
Tara felt awful. “I wasn’t trying to judge the fact that he smokes. Maybe I was being a little self-righteous about it, but I just was worried about the smoke making the baby sick. Not because of the Word of Wisdom, but because of the health risks. I just hate the smell, mostly. Max seems nice and I think he cares about you and the baby. I would never try to talk you into breaking up with him.”
Marie threw her arms around Tara’s neck and said, “Thank you. I knew I could count on you. You were always the one in the family that stuck up for the rebels.” Then she teased, “Even if you never were one.”
Tara pushed her away and swatted at her. “You act like that is a bad thing. Don’t you know I am going to be rewarded in the after life for having such a boring life?”
She laughed and went on. “I just don’t have any interest in most of the things that would get me into trouble. I tried most everything, but never liked any of it. But that doesn’t mean you or Max or anyone else should be treated like dirt just because of the choices you have made. I think childbirth was punishment enough.”
Marie laughed. “Yeah, that’s for sure. I really regret getting pregnant with Max, but I would be lying if I said I regret having Kara. My life is going to be a lot more complicated, and I won’t get to do a lot of things I used to be able to do, but she is worth it. I am happy just being a mom to her and like a wife to Max. My mom thinks I am just ‘playing house’ and it will get boring after a while, but I like taking care of them. I have a lot more respect for my parents now. I just wish they could respect my decisions.”
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Everett, Anne and Tara spent a lot of time together, and with Anne on the Student Council, there were a lot of times Tara and Everett were alone together. As the school year got closer and closer to an end, Everett seemed to get more and more like a stranger. Tara wasn’t sure what was going on, but she knew he just wasn’t the same. During the month she was so busy with the baby and Marie, Everett had started wearing tee shirts and jeans (well-pressed jeans) instead of his khakis and sweater vests. He had cut his hair so short it looked like he had joined the army, instead of wearing it a little long on top, and had even let the natural color grow back. She had never really cared for the dye jobs he used to do, but they were part of him, and now they were gone. He had started acting all “macho” and was really starting to get on her nerves.
One day after she had been up all night with Kara, so Marie and Max could have a day off, she overheard Everett telling Russell Blake what a wild woman Anne was. She was sure he was lying, but either way, Anne’s reputation was on the line. She pulled Everett aside, and gave him an earful. While she was at it, she began to ask him about all the other strange things that were happening.
“You told me a couple of weeks ago that you were going to ask Anne to marry you, and now you are making her sound like a slut! What has happened to you? I thought you didn’t have any interest in sex! What has happened to change you so much?”
She paused to give him a chance to explain, but instead he just walked away. Tara went to find Anne.
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Anne was in the library with the Senior Class President discussing the upcoming Spring Fling. Tara waited for them to finish, then told Anne they better go find Everett.
She was shocked when Anne spat, “I don’t care where he is or what he is doing. Kevin just told me that everyone is talking about the ‘good time’ I gave Everett last night. I can’t believe he is telling everyone!”
“You mean you and Everett . . . ”
“Not what you think,” Anne explained. “We just started talking about marriage and that led to the wedding, which led to the honeymoon, and one thing led to another until we were both down to our underwear. I think I would have let things keep going, but all of a sudden Everett backed off, got dressed, and ran out. Just as I was buttoning my jeans, Russell came in the locker room, but he didn’t say anything, so I didn’t think he suspected anything.”
“That’s why I came to get you. Russell and Everett were just talking about last night, and Everett was implying that you and he went all the way.” Tara hugged Anne as she started to cry, then told her how worried she was. “I think Everett is just confused and dealing with something, and he is doing whatever it takes to get someone’s attention. I don’t know if he is trying to get you to pay more attention to him, or his family, or what, but he is acting really weird. I am afraid he is just going to get more and more desperate unless we find out what is going on.”
“He seemed okay to me, until this,” Anne sighed. “I have wondered about his change of clothes and hair, but thought he just wanted a change. I don’t think it is anything to worry about.”
Tara chose her words carefully. “I have been around him more than you have lately, Anne. He has become an egotistical jerk, acting all macho and disrespectful. He actually went to Gary’s bachelor’s party last week. Did you know that?”
“I knew he was thinking about it, but all they did was go down to Poky to see the tractor pulls and stopped off at a bar on the way home. Everett was going to be the designated driver.”
Tara considered the situation and decided if she had to choose between loyalty to Everett or to Anne, she had to choose Anne. “Ryan told Beth that they went to Gary’s and hired a stripper from Jackson. She was all over everyone there, including Everett. He said Everett seemed to be enjoying the party while he was there, then talked about how disgusting the girl was all the way home. Ryan thought Everett was acting a little hypocritical after the way he was acting at the party.”
Anne asked, “What do you mean, hypocritical? He has never liked girls who flaunt their bodies. He has always been very clear about that.”
“But he has changed, Anne. Can’t you see how he is acting like ‘one of the guys’ more and more, and like himself less and less?”
“I guess I have just taken him for granted a little bit lately,” Anne sighed. “He has always been too good to be true, but I was just thinking how nice it was that he doesn’t mind me spending so much time with Student Council stuff. He was always there when I needed him, and he treated me with respect. Until now. Maybe I pressured him a little too much about a temple marriage. He keeps saying he doesn’t feel worthy to get sealed, but he won’t say why. I have asked about all the sins I can think of, and he says he hasn’t committed any of them. He even refuses to watch an R-rated movie or to shop on Sunday.”
Tara rubbed her temples to ease the headache that was coming on. “He obviously feels guilty about something. At the very least, he hasn’t been treating women in general with much respect lately. I don’t blame him for not liking the way his sisters and mother treat him, but he used to respect other women.”
Anne put her arm around Tara and said, “Let’s go find him and make him talk to us.”
“I think you should talk to him alone, at least at first. Why don’t I meet you guys at Bogarts in about an hour? If you aren’t done talking by then, just leave a message with Ryan. He should be working tonight. I think I should go take some heavy-duty painkillers and take a nap.”
As Tara walked away, she couldn’t help feeling like there was something she was missing about Everett’s behavior, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. When she showed up at Bogarts later that night, Everett was already waiting, and he was alone.
“Where’s Anne?” she asked. “I thought she was coming with you.”
“She found me at Andy Michaels’s house and asked if I wanted to come to Bogarts and have a talk, but just as we got here, your sister’s boyfriend said he had a message from Anne’s parents and she had to leave. I decided to eat and go home. What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to ask you what is going on with you,” Tara explained, ” but I didn’t want to pry into you and Anne’s business without her here. I just can’t believe you are telling everyone that you guys had sex! I am sorry about the way I yelled at you earlier, but I am just so frustrated trying to figure you out lately. One day you are like my best friend, asking about my family and acting like you really care about me, and the next you are telling a group of guys that you ‘have to be nice to the fat girls’. I know you didn’t think that would get back to me, but this is a small town, Everett. I am comfortable with my appearance, and I know I didn’t imagine all the nice things you have said and done for me. I know you aren’t ashamed to be seen with me. Or at least you didn’t used to be. What has changed? Why are you acting like such a jerk lately, and what is with your hair?” She reached up to rub his nearly bald head, and said, “Or should I say your lack of hair?”
Everett reached up to run his hands through his hair out of habit, and finding none, he laughed at himself, then got serious. “A few weeks ago, my mother called me a faggot.” When Tara gasped, he just nodded his head and went on. “ It really made me mad at the time, but I started thinking about how I really feel, and maybe she’s right. I don’t think about girls and sex as much as the other guys seem to. Then I remembered something I said to my dad one time when I was about nine. We were watching a football game, and I pointed to one of the players and said, ‘I want to marry him.’ My dad just brushed it off right then, but later he questioned me about it. I thought a lot about it, and decided I didn’t really want to marry that guy, but I wanted to be with someone like him. I had this picture in my head of living in a house with someone strong like him. My dad tried to joke about it by saying I would be living with a lot of different guys on my mission, and that all guys like to think they have friends to back them up and protect them. He even blamed himself about it, saying I was just trying to find the kind of relationship he and I should have had all these years. He tried to convince me, and I think himself, that I wasn’t weird or something. I kind of forgot about it until the last few months. The closer I get to marrying Anne, the more I feel like I have some feelings to sort out. I really don’t think I am attracted to other guys. I am not gay. I can’t be. I just don’t know how to explain how I am feeling. All the changes I am making are because of my bishop.”
Tara broke in to ask, “You talked to your bishop about all this? What did he say?”
Everett laughed and said, “I am trying to tell you, Tara. I am just trying to do this at my own pace. Don’t rush me. This is very hard to talk about with anyone, but you are my girlfriend’s best friend, my friend, and a girl. You should feel lucky that I can talk to you at all.” He slugged her playfully and went to refill his drink.
As he was returning to the table, Anne came in and Tara could tell Everett didn’t want to continue their conversation right then. He did skirt around the issue and told both girls that he had told his bishop about his feelings of unworthiness and that his bishop had advised him to “Follow the example of the other guys in his Priesthood quorum,” so he had been trying to fit in a little more by wearing the same kind of clothes, and cutting his hair, and somewhere along the line he had gone too far by trying to fit in a little too much.
He apologized for all the things he had said and done to hurt Tara and Anne, and promised to clear it all up and do better. By the time he and Anne left, they were holding hands and looked like nothing would ever come between them.
Tara went home, and pulled out her old photo albums, searching for a time when she felt carefree. It seemed the older she got, the more complicated things got. “How did the world get so complicated all of a sudden?” she wondered. “I thought I could deal with just about anything until Roland came along and turned my world upside down. Now it seems like just when I think the worst has happened, something else happens to me or someone I love.” She was absently turning pages, and suddenly dropped the album when she saw a picture of Dominick smiling up at her and realized what had been bugging her all day. She ran to the phone to call Dom’s sister.
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Bella answered, sounding a little impatient. Tara identified herself, and asked how everyone was.
“Gills? Is it really you? I haven’t heard from you since I moved to Yah-Tah-Hey five years ago. Dom says you got your heart broken by some jerk down here. How close is he to New Mexico? I know some people, who know some people, if you know what I mean.”
Tara laughed at her fake accent, and the use of her dreaded nickname. Ever since she almost drowned in the pool at Grand Targhee, Dom’s family had called her Gills. Most people assumed it was just her last name shortened, so she didn’t have to explain it to very many people.
“Roland isn’t worth the effort. He is just a mixed up guy with a lot of problems that I thought we could overcome together. I was wrong, and I am trying to deal with it one day at a time. Right now, I am more worried about a friend of mine. Do you remember the heart to heart Dom had with you and me the night you caught me and Dom half dressed in the basement? Do you remember what Dom said about loving me but not wanting to have sex with me, and he went on to say something about not wanting to have sex with anyone? Later, he told us both that he sometimes thought he was never going to get married because he had never looked at a girl the way most sixteen-year-old boys do, and he couldn’t imagine ever feeling that way, and he…”
Bella cut in and dropped a bombshell. “I thought you knew Gills. Dom came out to the family last year. He dropped out of school and moved to Wyoming with his boyfriend. I don’t know why he hasn’t told you. Everyone else seems to know. How long has it been since you talked to him?”
“I lost your parents’ number after they moved. I tried to call your grandparents, but they were never home. After a while, I just gave up. It has been at least three years.”
While Tara paused to let it all sink in, Bella asked, “So what does Dom’s sexual orientation have to do with this friend of yours?”
Tara was still in shock, and didn’t know how to explain why she thought Dom and Everett were so much alike. They were really complete opposites, now that she thought about it. "What was it about Everett that made me think he was like Dom?” she thought. “Was it just the clothes they wear? The way they talked? I can’t quite put my finger on it. There is just something about them both that sets them apart from the other guys I have known. What is it?”
“Gills, are you still there?”, Bella was saying. “I hope I didn’t shock you too much. I thought he’d tell you first. You seemed to know everything else before he told us. I’m sure he meant to tell you. Maybe he was just scared that you wouldn’t understand, but I don’t know how he would think that would make a difference to you. You guys were like siamese twins.”
“Yeah, I’m still here. I am just struggling with why I didn’t know all along. Were there signs I should have picked up on?” Tara made a joke by saying, “I guess I should have known when he was the only guy friend I had that didn’t try to get in my pants.”
Bella laughed, and answered, “He told us he didn’t really even admit it to himself until he met Cooper. He knew he was different, but he thought he would grow out of it or something. What is going on with this friend of yours?”
Again Tara tried to identify the feeling she was having in the pit of her stomach. “I don’t know what to say, Bella. I have this friend who has been dating the same girl for almost three years, and is planning to ask her to marry him. He is a really good guy; he goes to church every week, doesn’t drink or do drugs or anything, but when it comes to actually making plans to get sealed in the temple, he keeps saying he doesn’t feel worthy.”
“Why isn’t he going on a mission?” Bella asked.
“His mother thinks it is more important for him to go to college and get a good job, and if you knew his mother, you would understand why he has never felt like that was something he has a choice about. In fact, if she didn’t like Anne, Everett wouldn’t have been allowed to date her. That woman has an iron grip on her family, and no one will stand up to her.”
“Sounds like we should be feeling sorry for this Anne girl if she is going to have this woman for a mother-in-law,” Bella joked. “What happens when she decides she doesn’t like something that they are doing and butts into their life?”
“I have had many conversations with Everett and Anne about that very subject, and he insists that as soon as he can get out of her house, he won’t let her in his life anymore. That isn’t the biggest problem right now, though . . . ”
“Maybe he is just feeling guilty about not going on a mission,” Bella cut in. “Maybe that is why he doesn’t feel worthy.”
Tara thought about that, and wished she could believe that could be the problem. “I think it is more serious than that,” she sighed. “I think he and Dom may have something in common. I can’t really put my finger on it, but there is something about the way Everett talks to me or acts around me that makes me think of Dom. He told me he doesn’t have sexual feelings for Anne, and that he is struggling with the fact that he never had a loving male figure in his life and the older he gets the more he just wants to be held and loved by a strong, protective male. He insists he is not gay, but he was the one to bring the word up, so I know he has at least considered it. He has confided in me a lot, and doesn’t want me to say anything to Anne until he can figure everything out, but I thought if I could talk to Dom or someone who knows him, you could reassure me that I am just imagining things. Instead, I am just more convinced that there might be something to worry about.”
“Gills, sometimes one plus one doesn’t add up to two. Don’t freak out yet, K? I didn’t mean to make things worse. Maybe your friend just isn’t ready to get married and he is just looking for a reason to put it off. Maybe he’s afraid Anne will turn out like his mother. Maybe he just needs to find a father figure he can look up to and learn how to be a good husband and father. Or maybe he is gay. No matter what happens, though, you can’t do anything about it. He has to figure it out on his own.” With the sound of a horn in the background, Bella explained that she was supposed to take her father to the store. “Before you go, you just have to tell me. Why were you half naked that day in the basement?”
“That’s a secret I will take to my grave,” Tara swore, “but I promise it had nothing to do with sex.” Then she hung up the phone before Bella could get the truth out of her.
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“If anyone ever found out what happened that night, I would die of embarrassment". It was hard enough admitting to Dom that she had gotten a tattoo on her back without her parents permission, but then her shirt had somehow gotten fused with the scab. In trying to free herself, she had made her back bleed, A LOT, and panicked. Dom was trying to help her clean up and put some Neosporin on it, but her shirt kept getting in the way, so she just took it off and held it over her chest. When Bella came down the stairs, she was so busy trying to hide the tattoo that she forgot to keep her chest covered. Dom, in the panic of the moment, threw his hands across her chest. Of course, they both just looked more guilty, and although they swore they weren’t doing anything sexual, they wouldn’t tell anyone what was really going on. "I wonder what my future husband will think when he sees the E.T. permanently attached to my back? What a silly thing to do.”
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The next morning, just as Tara was about to ask Everett if they could have a serious talk, he hugged her and said, “Tar’ I don’t know how to thank you! After I talked to you last night, I prayed a lot and went to see the bishop again, and after I told him everything, he said some things that made me feel a lot better.”
“What do you mean ‘everything’?”, Tara asked. “Did you tell him about the football player thing?”
“Yes, everything. I told him how I am afraid of Anne turning out like my mom, how I miss having a male figure in my life, how I have no desire to fornicate with Anne, and all the rest of the things that have been worrying me. He said he understood why I would be questioning my worthiness, if I have been dealing with all that. He asked me about a mission again, but also told me that my mother has already informed him that if I go on a mission, she will stop going to church, so he understands why I am reluctant to go. He told me to pray about the mission, and also about marrying Anne, and get back to him next week.” He threw his arms in the air and shouted, “I feel so much better!”
Tara looked at all the students getting off their buses who were startled by the outburst, and said, “I am glad you are feeling better. Just don’t get yourself committed to Blackfoot South before you have a chance to propose. You are scaring the children.”
Everett looked at the other students and laughed, then asked Tara to walk to their lockers with him.
“I bought this before Christmas, intending to ask Anne on Valentines Day,” he said, showing Tara a gorgeous wedding set, “but when Bryan proposed to Shelley in January, everyone was so excited I didn’t want to steal their thunder. Besides, at that time I wasn’t really sure I should get married. Now I am ready to ask her, I have the ring, and I just need to come up with the perfect setting. Do you think it would be too hokey if I proposed on the old roller coaster when we go to Lagoon for our senior trip?”
Tara laughed and reminded him that Anne hated roller coasters. “Maybe you should talk to Jan. She would know better than anyone what scenario Anne has imagined in her head. Every woman has planned that moment down to the last second, knowing that no man could read her mind, but hoping that he does it right.”
“Maybe you are right. Definitely not the roller coaster. How about the water slide at Downey, then?”, he joked, then ducked to avoid the backpack Tara was swinging at his head.
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To Tara’s surprise, Jan said Anne dreamed of being proposed to on the chair lift at the ski resort they had visited during Christmas vacation. Everett couldn’t arrange that in the middle of summer, so he compromised by proposing on the Sky Tram at Lagoon. He secretly gave everyone in their class a note, telling them to be watching at two o’clock. It seemed the whole park was at a standstill for a few minutes, waiting, then when she said yes, they all started screaming and whistling and clapping so loud that Anne nearly fell out of the chair.
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They were married on Christmas Eve. Riley Joe was born in August, followed by Samuel in January, a year and a half later. Everyone thought their life was perfect, and Tara almost forgot the conversations she had with Everett and Bella until years later when Anne had her first heart attack. Her illness seemed to break the dam of feelings Everett had been denying. He moved out and filed for divorce before she had even left the hospital.
“Yeah, I had a lot of fun with her family,” she said, thinking of Allen. “Once I got home, it wasn’t so great, though. My mom and dad are fighting like cats and dogs lately, and it got so bad this morning that the word ‘divorce’ actually came up.”
Everett put his arm around her, and asked if she wanted to go sit on the bench down the hall and talk. “I have something I want to talk to you about, too.”
Tara went around the corner to tell Beth she was going to stay at school for a little while longer, then joined Everett on the bench.
“So what’s up?” she asked.
“No you go first. I need to get up the courage to tell you what I am going through.”
Tara got nervous about what he had to say, but she started telling him what had been going on with her family during the holidays.
“You know John Angelo?” When Everett nodded, she went on. “My dad has been helping his dad remodel their house, and sometimes he doesn’t come home. Even when he comes home, he has been acting all secretive, and he’s either on top of the world or down in the dumps all the time. My mom accused him of using drugs and he flew off the handle. He started accusing her of having an affair with one of her co-workers because he sometimes drives her home. We all know she works long hours to support all of us. She wouldn’t have the energy to have an affair. She threatened to get a divorce if she ever found out he was using drugs, and he threatened to divorce her if she ever came home with any of her male co-workers again. He says he is going to start checking up on her at work, too. I don’t know what to think. Everyone says that the Angelos deal drugs, and my dad has been there a lot, but I can’t believe he would just start doing drugs at his age. As far as my mom having an affair, she is so tired when she gets off work, that she sometimes just falls into bed with all her clothes on. I really don’t think she even likes the District Manager that she car pools with. She said he bores her with stories about comic characters. All I know is that my dad isn’t acting like himself, and my mom is getting more and more resentful about him not having a full time job.”
“I think I know how you feel,” Everett said. “My parents separated when I was two, but my oldest sister and mom are always talking about what a bum he is, and how he never sends any child support. I have only seen him a couple of times since he moved out because he lives in Michigan, but he seems like a nice guy. I know he hasn’t been perfect, but I have a hard time believing he is as bad as my mom says he is. In the few times I have seen him, he hugged me and told me he loved me more than my mom has in my entire life. I wonder sometimes if she likes me at all. She talks about men like they are all evil and no good.”
Tara had only met Everett’s mom once, but his older sisters all seemed to treat him like a second class citizen. They had always treated her with respect and involved her in their conversations, but he didn’t seem to exist in their world unless they wanted something from him. Knowing he was on the brink of saying something important now, she turned sideways on the bench to look him straight in the eye.
“So what’s up with you?”, she asked. “What did you need to tell me?”
Everett fidgeted a little, and turned toward her, then looking up and down the hall to make sure no one was within earshot, he asked, “Do you think it is normal for me to have no desire to have sex?”
Tara was shocked by the question, but recovering quickly, she asked him what exactly he meant.
“Do you mean with Anne, or at all? I mean, we aren’t supposed to have sex with someone we aren’t married to, but I guess most guys think about it and want it most of the time.” She could tell she hadn’t given him the answer he wanted, so she went on. “ I know I appreciate the fact that you aren’t constantly talking about women’s body parts or watching a girl’s backside as she walks away from you. I’m glad you aren’t like the other guys.”
Everett shook his head, and kept starting to say something, “No, I meant…What I am trying to say is…It isn’t really about Anne”, but he couldn’t seem to finish any of his sentences, so he finally just said, “Never mind, it’s not a big deal”, and they continued talking about things that were a little easier to talk about for about half an hour, then went home. Tara had almost forgotten the conversation by the end of February. There were more important things on her mind.
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Tara was walking through Albertson’s looking for something to snack on when she ran into her distant cousin Marie. It had been almost five years since she had seen her, and she had grown up fast. It was hard to believe the 9-year-old she remembered was now a 14-year-old she hardly recognized. It was instantly obvious that Marie was at least eight months pregnant. Tara tried not to stare at her stomach as she talked to her. She just made small talk and asked how everyone was in the Paul side of the family.
Marie finally cut the tension by asking, “So no one in the family told you I was pregnant did they?” When Tara shook her head, Marie went on. “I could tell by the way you keep staring at my belly. Don’t be embarrassed. Everyone does it. Grandma and my bishop are pressuring me to give it up, and my mom keeps trying to hide me from the neighbors, but I plan to keep it, so everyone is going to find out anyway.” She stopped to take a breath and Tara began asking questions.
“Who’s the father? How far along are you? Are you going to finish school? Do you know if it’s a girl or a boy? How could Grandma want you to give it up? “
With every answer, Marie made it very clear that she had thought it all through and knew what she planned to do.
“Max is actually eighteen, and he has his own apartment, so I am moving in with him as soon as Kara is born. His apartment is right across the street from my Grandma Paul, so I will have family nearby. In fact, my uncle Dan is still living at home, and he has been helping me out a lot. Max and Dan spend a lot of time together. That side of the family isn’t LDS, so they aren’t as judgmental about it.”
Tara knew how that was. She felt like every move she made was against some rule the church had. She could handle it better if everyone around her wasn’t breaking the rules too, and not getting caught. Just the day before, she had been coming out of Maverik after buying gas, and Sister King scolded her for shopping on Sunday. As she hung her head and drove away, she realized that Sister King was doing the exact same thing. Deep inside, she felt Marie had really gotten herself into a fix, though. It made her realize how important the rule about not dating until you are sixteen really was. In fact, looking at Marie, she wondered why the Prophet didn’t forbid dating until eighteen or twenty-five.
Marie gave her a hug and said, “I hope you can come see the baby after it is born. We will be living in Double Tree Apartments, #32 if you want to stop by in a couple of weeks.”
“I can’t wait!” Tara squealed. Despite Marie’s age and the problems the baby would probably cause, Tara was glad to have a baby in the family. “It will be almost like having a niece or nephew.”
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When Tara got home, she asked her dad if he knew his cousin was going to be a grandma. He just grunted and said, “I don’t know why you think that is something to be proud of.” Then he plopped down on the couch, closed his blood shot eyes, and went to sleep.
Tara started cleaning up all the candy bar wrappers he had left around the living room and thought about what she had heard about drug users getting the “munchies”. Once again she wondered if her father could possibly be an addict. “Don’t be ridiculous!” she told herself, and went to finish her report for Mrs. Thompson’s class.
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A week later, the day after Valentines Day, Kara Maxine Phelps was born. She was 7 lbs. 6 oz., and had the most gorgeous blue eyes Tara had ever seen. She sat in Max and Marie’s apartment rocking her and playing with her fingers and toes. “I can’t believe how tiny she is!” she exclaimed. “I don’t remember B.C. ever being this small.”
Marie laughed and replied, “You were a lot younger when your sister was born. When your mom realized she was going to have a surprise, Ethan and I were about seven or eight, so that would have made you almost 10. He was hoping for a brother so bad, and instead he got his third sister.”
“Yeah, actually Bridget Camille never was this small. She was almost 10 pounds when she was born.” Tara said, wincing at the thought of trying to give birth. “So is it really as bad as they say? Did it hurt a lot?”
Marie winced and said, “Let’s just say, the pain is so bad you think you are going to die, then it gets worse and you wish you could die just to end the pain.” Then she laughed, and went on. “Actually, by the time I was in the regular room, I had pretty much forgotten how bad it really was. I just remember what I was thinking at the time.”
“Ouch! I can’t even imagine having that much pain. My menstrual cramps are bad enough. I throw up from the pain, and practically spend two days and two nights with a hot water bottle strapped to my waist. I didn’t think anything could hurt worse than that!” Tara exclaimed.
Marie was laughing because Max came in the room just in time to hear Tara say ‘menstrual’, and hurried right back out again.
Tara asked, “Doesn’t it bother you that Max smokes? I didn’t notice the smell until he came in just now, but doesn’t he stink like smoke all the time? Does he always smoke outside or does he smoke around the baby?”
Marie replied, “You sound just like my parents. They point out all the things about Max that are against the Word of Wisdom or something else in the church, as if I didn’t know he isn’t Mormon. They seem to think they can turn me against him or something, but it won’t happen. He is very careful not to smoke anywhere near the baby, and he only drinks a couple of beers once in a while. He loves me and the baby and we love him. That is all that matters. Please don’t be like them. I was hoping you would support me.”
Tara felt awful. “I wasn’t trying to judge the fact that he smokes. Maybe I was being a little self-righteous about it, but I just was worried about the smoke making the baby sick. Not because of the Word of Wisdom, but because of the health risks. I just hate the smell, mostly. Max seems nice and I think he cares about you and the baby. I would never try to talk you into breaking up with him.”
Marie threw her arms around Tara’s neck and said, “Thank you. I knew I could count on you. You were always the one in the family that stuck up for the rebels.” Then she teased, “Even if you never were one.”
Tara pushed her away and swatted at her. “You act like that is a bad thing. Don’t you know I am going to be rewarded in the after life for having such a boring life?”
She laughed and went on. “I just don’t have any interest in most of the things that would get me into trouble. I tried most everything, but never liked any of it. But that doesn’t mean you or Max or anyone else should be treated like dirt just because of the choices you have made. I think childbirth was punishment enough.”
Marie laughed. “Yeah, that’s for sure. I really regret getting pregnant with Max, but I would be lying if I said I regret having Kara. My life is going to be a lot more complicated, and I won’t get to do a lot of things I used to be able to do, but she is worth it. I am happy just being a mom to her and like a wife to Max. My mom thinks I am just ‘playing house’ and it will get boring after a while, but I like taking care of them. I have a lot more respect for my parents now. I just wish they could respect my decisions.”
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Everett, Anne and Tara spent a lot of time together, and with Anne on the Student Council, there were a lot of times Tara and Everett were alone together. As the school year got closer and closer to an end, Everett seemed to get more and more like a stranger. Tara wasn’t sure what was going on, but she knew he just wasn’t the same. During the month she was so busy with the baby and Marie, Everett had started wearing tee shirts and jeans (well-pressed jeans) instead of his khakis and sweater vests. He had cut his hair so short it looked like he had joined the army, instead of wearing it a little long on top, and had even let the natural color grow back. She had never really cared for the dye jobs he used to do, but they were part of him, and now they were gone. He had started acting all “macho” and was really starting to get on her nerves.
One day after she had been up all night with Kara, so Marie and Max could have a day off, she overheard Everett telling Russell Blake what a wild woman Anne was. She was sure he was lying, but either way, Anne’s reputation was on the line. She pulled Everett aside, and gave him an earful. While she was at it, she began to ask him about all the other strange things that were happening.
“You told me a couple of weeks ago that you were going to ask Anne to marry you, and now you are making her sound like a slut! What has happened to you? I thought you didn’t have any interest in sex! What has happened to change you so much?”
She paused to give him a chance to explain, but instead he just walked away. Tara went to find Anne.
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Anne was in the library with the Senior Class President discussing the upcoming Spring Fling. Tara waited for them to finish, then told Anne they better go find Everett.
She was shocked when Anne spat, “I don’t care where he is or what he is doing. Kevin just told me that everyone is talking about the ‘good time’ I gave Everett last night. I can’t believe he is telling everyone!”
“You mean you and Everett . . . ”
“Not what you think,” Anne explained. “We just started talking about marriage and that led to the wedding, which led to the honeymoon, and one thing led to another until we were both down to our underwear. I think I would have let things keep going, but all of a sudden Everett backed off, got dressed, and ran out. Just as I was buttoning my jeans, Russell came in the locker room, but he didn’t say anything, so I didn’t think he suspected anything.”
“That’s why I came to get you. Russell and Everett were just talking about last night, and Everett was implying that you and he went all the way.” Tara hugged Anne as she started to cry, then told her how worried she was. “I think Everett is just confused and dealing with something, and he is doing whatever it takes to get someone’s attention. I don’t know if he is trying to get you to pay more attention to him, or his family, or what, but he is acting really weird. I am afraid he is just going to get more and more desperate unless we find out what is going on.”
“He seemed okay to me, until this,” Anne sighed. “I have wondered about his change of clothes and hair, but thought he just wanted a change. I don’t think it is anything to worry about.”
Tara chose her words carefully. “I have been around him more than you have lately, Anne. He has become an egotistical jerk, acting all macho and disrespectful. He actually went to Gary’s bachelor’s party last week. Did you know that?”
“I knew he was thinking about it, but all they did was go down to Poky to see the tractor pulls and stopped off at a bar on the way home. Everett was going to be the designated driver.”
Tara considered the situation and decided if she had to choose between loyalty to Everett or to Anne, she had to choose Anne. “Ryan told Beth that they went to Gary’s and hired a stripper from Jackson. She was all over everyone there, including Everett. He said Everett seemed to be enjoying the party while he was there, then talked about how disgusting the girl was all the way home. Ryan thought Everett was acting a little hypocritical after the way he was acting at the party.”
Anne asked, “What do you mean, hypocritical? He has never liked girls who flaunt their bodies. He has always been very clear about that.”
“But he has changed, Anne. Can’t you see how he is acting like ‘one of the guys’ more and more, and like himself less and less?”
“I guess I have just taken him for granted a little bit lately,” Anne sighed. “He has always been too good to be true, but I was just thinking how nice it was that he doesn’t mind me spending so much time with Student Council stuff. He was always there when I needed him, and he treated me with respect. Until now. Maybe I pressured him a little too much about a temple marriage. He keeps saying he doesn’t feel worthy to get sealed, but he won’t say why. I have asked about all the sins I can think of, and he says he hasn’t committed any of them. He even refuses to watch an R-rated movie or to shop on Sunday.”
Tara rubbed her temples to ease the headache that was coming on. “He obviously feels guilty about something. At the very least, he hasn’t been treating women in general with much respect lately. I don’t blame him for not liking the way his sisters and mother treat him, but he used to respect other women.”
Anne put her arm around Tara and said, “Let’s go find him and make him talk to us.”
“I think you should talk to him alone, at least at first. Why don’t I meet you guys at Bogarts in about an hour? If you aren’t done talking by then, just leave a message with Ryan. He should be working tonight. I think I should go take some heavy-duty painkillers and take a nap.”
As Tara walked away, she couldn’t help feeling like there was something she was missing about Everett’s behavior, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. When she showed up at Bogarts later that night, Everett was already waiting, and he was alone.
“Where’s Anne?” she asked. “I thought she was coming with you.”
“She found me at Andy Michaels’s house and asked if I wanted to come to Bogarts and have a talk, but just as we got here, your sister’s boyfriend said he had a message from Anne’s parents and she had to leave. I decided to eat and go home. What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to ask you what is going on with you,” Tara explained, ” but I didn’t want to pry into you and Anne’s business without her here. I just can’t believe you are telling everyone that you guys had sex! I am sorry about the way I yelled at you earlier, but I am just so frustrated trying to figure you out lately. One day you are like my best friend, asking about my family and acting like you really care about me, and the next you are telling a group of guys that you ‘have to be nice to the fat girls’. I know you didn’t think that would get back to me, but this is a small town, Everett. I am comfortable with my appearance, and I know I didn’t imagine all the nice things you have said and done for me. I know you aren’t ashamed to be seen with me. Or at least you didn’t used to be. What has changed? Why are you acting like such a jerk lately, and what is with your hair?” She reached up to rub his nearly bald head, and said, “Or should I say your lack of hair?”
Everett reached up to run his hands through his hair out of habit, and finding none, he laughed at himself, then got serious. “A few weeks ago, my mother called me a faggot.” When Tara gasped, he just nodded his head and went on. “ It really made me mad at the time, but I started thinking about how I really feel, and maybe she’s right. I don’t think about girls and sex as much as the other guys seem to. Then I remembered something I said to my dad one time when I was about nine. We were watching a football game, and I pointed to one of the players and said, ‘I want to marry him.’ My dad just brushed it off right then, but later he questioned me about it. I thought a lot about it, and decided I didn’t really want to marry that guy, but I wanted to be with someone like him. I had this picture in my head of living in a house with someone strong like him. My dad tried to joke about it by saying I would be living with a lot of different guys on my mission, and that all guys like to think they have friends to back them up and protect them. He even blamed himself about it, saying I was just trying to find the kind of relationship he and I should have had all these years. He tried to convince me, and I think himself, that I wasn’t weird or something. I kind of forgot about it until the last few months. The closer I get to marrying Anne, the more I feel like I have some feelings to sort out. I really don’t think I am attracted to other guys. I am not gay. I can’t be. I just don’t know how to explain how I am feeling. All the changes I am making are because of my bishop.”
Tara broke in to ask, “You talked to your bishop about all this? What did he say?”
Everett laughed and said, “I am trying to tell you, Tara. I am just trying to do this at my own pace. Don’t rush me. This is very hard to talk about with anyone, but you are my girlfriend’s best friend, my friend, and a girl. You should feel lucky that I can talk to you at all.” He slugged her playfully and went to refill his drink.
As he was returning to the table, Anne came in and Tara could tell Everett didn’t want to continue their conversation right then. He did skirt around the issue and told both girls that he had told his bishop about his feelings of unworthiness and that his bishop had advised him to “Follow the example of the other guys in his Priesthood quorum,” so he had been trying to fit in a little more by wearing the same kind of clothes, and cutting his hair, and somewhere along the line he had gone too far by trying to fit in a little too much.
He apologized for all the things he had said and done to hurt Tara and Anne, and promised to clear it all up and do better. By the time he and Anne left, they were holding hands and looked like nothing would ever come between them.
Tara went home, and pulled out her old photo albums, searching for a time when she felt carefree. It seemed the older she got, the more complicated things got. “How did the world get so complicated all of a sudden?” she wondered. “I thought I could deal with just about anything until Roland came along and turned my world upside down. Now it seems like just when I think the worst has happened, something else happens to me or someone I love.” She was absently turning pages, and suddenly dropped the album when she saw a picture of Dominick smiling up at her and realized what had been bugging her all day. She ran to the phone to call Dom’s sister.
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Bella answered, sounding a little impatient. Tara identified herself, and asked how everyone was.
“Gills? Is it really you? I haven’t heard from you since I moved to Yah-Tah-Hey five years ago. Dom says you got your heart broken by some jerk down here. How close is he to New Mexico? I know some people, who know some people, if you know what I mean.”
Tara laughed at her fake accent, and the use of her dreaded nickname. Ever since she almost drowned in the pool at Grand Targhee, Dom’s family had called her Gills. Most people assumed it was just her last name shortened, so she didn’t have to explain it to very many people.
“Roland isn’t worth the effort. He is just a mixed up guy with a lot of problems that I thought we could overcome together. I was wrong, and I am trying to deal with it one day at a time. Right now, I am more worried about a friend of mine. Do you remember the heart to heart Dom had with you and me the night you caught me and Dom half dressed in the basement? Do you remember what Dom said about loving me but not wanting to have sex with me, and he went on to say something about not wanting to have sex with anyone? Later, he told us both that he sometimes thought he was never going to get married because he had never looked at a girl the way most sixteen-year-old boys do, and he couldn’t imagine ever feeling that way, and he…”
Bella cut in and dropped a bombshell. “I thought you knew Gills. Dom came out to the family last year. He dropped out of school and moved to Wyoming with his boyfriend. I don’t know why he hasn’t told you. Everyone else seems to know. How long has it been since you talked to him?”
“I lost your parents’ number after they moved. I tried to call your grandparents, but they were never home. After a while, I just gave up. It has been at least three years.”
While Tara paused to let it all sink in, Bella asked, “So what does Dom’s sexual orientation have to do with this friend of yours?”
Tara was still in shock, and didn’t know how to explain why she thought Dom and Everett were so much alike. They were really complete opposites, now that she thought about it. "What was it about Everett that made me think he was like Dom?” she thought. “Was it just the clothes they wear? The way they talked? I can’t quite put my finger on it. There is just something about them both that sets them apart from the other guys I have known. What is it?”
“Gills, are you still there?”, Bella was saying. “I hope I didn’t shock you too much. I thought he’d tell you first. You seemed to know everything else before he told us. I’m sure he meant to tell you. Maybe he was just scared that you wouldn’t understand, but I don’t know how he would think that would make a difference to you. You guys were like siamese twins.”
“Yeah, I’m still here. I am just struggling with why I didn’t know all along. Were there signs I should have picked up on?” Tara made a joke by saying, “I guess I should have known when he was the only guy friend I had that didn’t try to get in my pants.”
Bella laughed, and answered, “He told us he didn’t really even admit it to himself until he met Cooper. He knew he was different, but he thought he would grow out of it or something. What is going on with this friend of yours?”
Again Tara tried to identify the feeling she was having in the pit of her stomach. “I don’t know what to say, Bella. I have this friend who has been dating the same girl for almost three years, and is planning to ask her to marry him. He is a really good guy; he goes to church every week, doesn’t drink or do drugs or anything, but when it comes to actually making plans to get sealed in the temple, he keeps saying he doesn’t feel worthy.”
“Why isn’t he going on a mission?” Bella asked.
“His mother thinks it is more important for him to go to college and get a good job, and if you knew his mother, you would understand why he has never felt like that was something he has a choice about. In fact, if she didn’t like Anne, Everett wouldn’t have been allowed to date her. That woman has an iron grip on her family, and no one will stand up to her.”
“Sounds like we should be feeling sorry for this Anne girl if she is going to have this woman for a mother-in-law,” Bella joked. “What happens when she decides she doesn’t like something that they are doing and butts into their life?”
“I have had many conversations with Everett and Anne about that very subject, and he insists that as soon as he can get out of her house, he won’t let her in his life anymore. That isn’t the biggest problem right now, though . . . ”
“Maybe he is just feeling guilty about not going on a mission,” Bella cut in. “Maybe that is why he doesn’t feel worthy.”
Tara thought about that, and wished she could believe that could be the problem. “I think it is more serious than that,” she sighed. “I think he and Dom may have something in common. I can’t really put my finger on it, but there is something about the way Everett talks to me or acts around me that makes me think of Dom. He told me he doesn’t have sexual feelings for Anne, and that he is struggling with the fact that he never had a loving male figure in his life and the older he gets the more he just wants to be held and loved by a strong, protective male. He insists he is not gay, but he was the one to bring the word up, so I know he has at least considered it. He has confided in me a lot, and doesn’t want me to say anything to Anne until he can figure everything out, but I thought if I could talk to Dom or someone who knows him, you could reassure me that I am just imagining things. Instead, I am just more convinced that there might be something to worry about.”
“Gills, sometimes one plus one doesn’t add up to two. Don’t freak out yet, K? I didn’t mean to make things worse. Maybe your friend just isn’t ready to get married and he is just looking for a reason to put it off. Maybe he’s afraid Anne will turn out like his mother. Maybe he just needs to find a father figure he can look up to and learn how to be a good husband and father. Or maybe he is gay. No matter what happens, though, you can’t do anything about it. He has to figure it out on his own.” With the sound of a horn in the background, Bella explained that she was supposed to take her father to the store. “Before you go, you just have to tell me. Why were you half naked that day in the basement?”
“That’s a secret I will take to my grave,” Tara swore, “but I promise it had nothing to do with sex.” Then she hung up the phone before Bella could get the truth out of her.
.....................................................................................
“If anyone ever found out what happened that night, I would die of embarrassment". It was hard enough admitting to Dom that she had gotten a tattoo on her back without her parents permission, but then her shirt had somehow gotten fused with the scab. In trying to free herself, she had made her back bleed, A LOT, and panicked. Dom was trying to help her clean up and put some Neosporin on it, but her shirt kept getting in the way, so she just took it off and held it over her chest. When Bella came down the stairs, she was so busy trying to hide the tattoo that she forgot to keep her chest covered. Dom, in the panic of the moment, threw his hands across her chest. Of course, they both just looked more guilty, and although they swore they weren’t doing anything sexual, they wouldn’t tell anyone what was really going on. "I wonder what my future husband will think when he sees the E.T. permanently attached to my back? What a silly thing to do.”
.....................................................................................
The next morning, just as Tara was about to ask Everett if they could have a serious talk, he hugged her and said, “Tar’ I don’t know how to thank you! After I talked to you last night, I prayed a lot and went to see the bishop again, and after I told him everything, he said some things that made me feel a lot better.”
“What do you mean ‘everything’?”, Tara asked. “Did you tell him about the football player thing?”
“Yes, everything. I told him how I am afraid of Anne turning out like my mom, how I miss having a male figure in my life, how I have no desire to fornicate with Anne, and all the rest of the things that have been worrying me. He said he understood why I would be questioning my worthiness, if I have been dealing with all that. He asked me about a mission again, but also told me that my mother has already informed him that if I go on a mission, she will stop going to church, so he understands why I am reluctant to go. He told me to pray about the mission, and also about marrying Anne, and get back to him next week.” He threw his arms in the air and shouted, “I feel so much better!”
Tara looked at all the students getting off their buses who were startled by the outburst, and said, “I am glad you are feeling better. Just don’t get yourself committed to Blackfoot South before you have a chance to propose. You are scaring the children.”
Everett looked at the other students and laughed, then asked Tara to walk to their lockers with him.
“I bought this before Christmas, intending to ask Anne on Valentines Day,” he said, showing Tara a gorgeous wedding set, “but when Bryan proposed to Shelley in January, everyone was so excited I didn’t want to steal their thunder. Besides, at that time I wasn’t really sure I should get married. Now I am ready to ask her, I have the ring, and I just need to come up with the perfect setting. Do you think it would be too hokey if I proposed on the old roller coaster when we go to Lagoon for our senior trip?”
Tara laughed and reminded him that Anne hated roller coasters. “Maybe you should talk to Jan. She would know better than anyone what scenario Anne has imagined in her head. Every woman has planned that moment down to the last second, knowing that no man could read her mind, but hoping that he does it right.”
“Maybe you are right. Definitely not the roller coaster. How about the water slide at Downey, then?”, he joked, then ducked to avoid the backpack Tara was swinging at his head.
.....................................................................................
To Tara’s surprise, Jan said Anne dreamed of being proposed to on the chair lift at the ski resort they had visited during Christmas vacation. Everett couldn’t arrange that in the middle of summer, so he compromised by proposing on the Sky Tram at Lagoon. He secretly gave everyone in their class a note, telling them to be watching at two o’clock. It seemed the whole park was at a standstill for a few minutes, waiting, then when she said yes, they all started screaming and whistling and clapping so loud that Anne nearly fell out of the chair.
.....................................................................................
They were married on Christmas Eve. Riley Joe was born in August, followed by Samuel in January, a year and a half later. Everyone thought their life was perfect, and Tara almost forgot the conversations she had with Everett and Bella until years later when Anne had her first heart attack. Her illness seemed to break the dam of feelings Everett had been denying. He moved out and filed for divorce before she had even left the hospital.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Too Close to the Fire
How did we get here?
This place so like the old one?
We are different somehow
Yet so many feelings are the same.
It is as if no time has passed,
While we grew older, and farther apart
We see each other as we were
Back when we really weren't seeing each other at all
Our eyes were full of stars in a rose-colored world
Everyone else was invisible
We heard only what we wanted to hear
Now our eyes and ears are painfully open
We've seen and heard the best and worst life has to offer
The easy thing to do is hide behind indifference
Pretend not to care what happens to us
And yet here we are
Still drawn to the flame that consumed and burned us
We both feel the heat it gives off
Both drawn for different reasons
One needing the comfort that warmth can bring
The other drawn by the brightness it brings to a dark world
One careless move, a small fall, a thoughtless action
One mistake can put us both in the ashes of a dead fire
2001
This place so like the old one?
We are different somehow
Yet so many feelings are the same.
It is as if no time has passed,
While we grew older, and farther apart
We see each other as we were
Back when we really weren't seeing each other at all
Our eyes were full of stars in a rose-colored world
Everyone else was invisible
We heard only what we wanted to hear
Now our eyes and ears are painfully open
We've seen and heard the best and worst life has to offer
The easy thing to do is hide behind indifference
Pretend not to care what happens to us
And yet here we are
Still drawn to the flame that consumed and burned us
We both feel the heat it gives off
Both drawn for different reasons
One needing the comfort that warmth can bring
The other drawn by the brightness it brings to a dark world
One careless move, a small fall, a thoughtless action
One mistake can put us both in the ashes of a dead fire
2001
Tara, Misu & Their Just Desserts (Ch. 5)
Tara snapped back to the present to hear Allen saying, “Are you still there?”
“Yes, Allen. Of course I remember you. It was you who broke my heart though. You got married and I had to hear about it from Anne. That’s old news, though. What are you doing in Salt Lake? Much less, in Anne’s hospital room?”
“I moved here right after Kirsten and I were married,” he said. “Where are you living now?”
“I haven’t moved very far from home. I am only a couple blocks from campus here in Rexburg. Who is Kirsten? I thought your wife’s name was Teresa or something like that.”
“Tery, Teresa, and I divorced almost seven years ago. We both knew almost from the beginning that our marriage was doomed, but we held on for almost eight years. At least we didn’t have any kids to fight over when it ended, so it was over with pretty quickly. Anne told me you got married shortly after I did. Was it ‘what’s his name’? Do you have any kids?”
It was Tara’s turn to admit failure. “No, I didn’t marry Roland, if that is who you mean. I was married to a guy named Dan Feltz for almost four years, and our son Patrick was almost a year old when we divorced. Dan never wanted children, and when we found out I was pregnant, it was the beginning of the end. I didn’t trick him into it. We were trying to get pregnant, but when it finally worked, he got scared and accused me of having an affair. I just don’t think he was ready to be a father.”
“ That was one of the things that drove us apart.” Allen said. “ I wanted children desperately, and Tery led me to believe she wanted them too, but after we had been married for almost a year with no results, I ran across her birth control pills under the sink in the spare bathroom. When I confronted her about it, she said she ‘didn’t want to be tied down and if I really loved her, I wouldn’t force her to have children’. I gave in, and got a vasectomy, but I resented it for the next seven years. The clincher was when she ended up pregnant. It seems she had this “friend” at work that she did want children with.”
“So how did you meet Kirsten? How long have you known her?” Tara asked.
“I was stationed in Germany, and she was one of the locals who worked in the commissary. I ended up staying after my tour was up, and we got married a year ago.
Then my mom and dad moved to St. George and I decided to move to Utah to be closer to them,” he explained. Then as if he had just realized what she had said in the beginning, he asked, “What do you mean I broke your heart by getting married? You were the first one to stop writing. I thought you went back to that guy who broke your heart.”
“I did go to Arizona that summer, with high hopes of proving he could trust me so he would stop testing my love, but I figured out really fast that he would never change and I had changed. After that Christmas, I couldn’t settle for the way things had been before. I wanted someone who would make me feel the way you had.”
“Then why didn’t you keep in touch?” Allen asked. “I just assumed you had gotten back with him and didn’t need me in the way. I convinced myself that I had imagined the connection between us. I even went back through your old letters and realized that you were writing like I was a friend, which was not the way I felt about you.”
Before he had even stopped talking, Tara was in tears. She wanted to say, {I read every one of your letters over and over trying to convince myself that when you signed them ‘With love’ or called me ‘Sweetheart’ or ‘My Love’, that you just talk that way to everyone. You know, how your mother was always calling me ‘Honey’? I even asked Anne what she thought about us ever getting together, and she reminded me that you weren’t going to get serious about anyone until after your mission. I wouldn’t let myself believe you meant all those things the way they were written, because I was afraid to get my hopes up. When I would write back, I didn’t want to sound like I was lovesick or something, because then if you didn’t feel the same way, you would be uncomfortable.} but instead she just said, “I thought you were going to go on a mission before you got serious, so I didn’t want to make it harder for you to go. I had a passionate letter in my head. I just never sent it.”
He laughed, then got serious again. “I never went on a mission. I don’t know if you realized that. T.K. was killed in a motorcycle accident right after I put in my papers, and I ended up staying home to help my parents. I always meant to go later, but it never happened. I joined the Army instead.”
“You sound happy, though. I’m glad,” Tara said. “I guess it’s a little too late, but I did love you a lot, and your letters made my day. If we could go back in time, I would do things differently, but we can’t, so I am glad you have found someone.” Then to change the subject, she asked, “How is Anne doing? I am glad you are there to see her. I wish I could get down there more often, but with Patrick in school and Shali in the terrible two’s, I have a hard time going to the store, much less three hours away.”
“So who’s Shali?” Allen asked. “You mentioned Patrick, but did you have a daughter with Dan too? Or did you remarry?”
Tara answered with a bit of sarcasm. “The answers are ‘my daughter’, ‘yes’, and ‘yes’, but Shali isn’t from my second marriage.”
Allen laughed, “Now I’m confused. Shali is your daughter, you had a daughter with Dan, and you remarried, but you divorced Dan a long time ago.” He paused, then got excited. “Okay, I get it. You remarried Dan, right?”
“Remember I said Shalimar wasn’t from my second marriage,” she teased him. “ I was married to a guy named Jake Benson for a couple of years. Shalimar was a surprise that came to me after a one night stand with Dan a year after I divorced Jake. To make a long story short, he was acting like the kind of father I wanted for our son, and the kind of companion I wanted for me. I began to think we could finally work things out, and one night I trusted him enough to let him stay longer than I should have. He used some threats and promises against me to get what he wanted, then I kicked him out for good. Then six and a half months later, I thought I felt a kick in my stomach, went to the doctor, and Shalimar was on her way. She truly was a miracle, because Dan and I both thought we weren’t capable of having any more children. I haven’t regretted having her for a second. I am glad she and Patrick have the same father, but I sometimes wish their father wasn’t Dan.” She laughed, and went on. “He has been more of a father figure to them both since Shali was born, but he has had more chances to be abusive to me. I am really getting tired of dealing with him.”
“Sounds a little like Annie’s ex. Did you realize he won’t let her boys come see her?” Allen asked. “Not only does he take advantage of the fact that she is sick, but he seems to want to punish her for being sick. That makes me sick!”
Tara laughed at his play on words, then said, “I still have a hard time believing how Everett has turned out. He was the ideal man for her in high school. Or at least I thought so at the time. He was comfortable doing whatever we were doing. Not like most guys. Maybe that should have been our first clue, huh?” Tara knew more than she was saying, and debated telling Allen how close she and Everett had actually become, but decided it wasn’t the right time to go into it.
Allen was saying, “I don’t even care what his sexual orientation is. I am really liberal. What I have a problem with is men who walk on their hands.” When Tara didn’t seem to get the joke, he went on. “You know, so instead of seeing their faces, you just see an a. . . . ”
Tara cut him off with her laughter and said, “Whoa, I get it. You don’t have to get specific.” Then she teased, ” The Army must have taught you a lot of pretty words like that. I remember you getting a dirty look from your mother for just saying ‘gosh dang’ or something like that.”
Allen said, “I better go. They are bringing Annie back, and she looks like she is sleeping pretty soundly. I will leave a note telling her you called, and if I am here when she calls back, maybe we can chat some more.”
Tara hung up, and started thinking about Everett Lake. She still had a hard time thinking of the man Anne dated in high school being the same one who was making her life miserable now.
“Yes, Allen. Of course I remember you. It was you who broke my heart though. You got married and I had to hear about it from Anne. That’s old news, though. What are you doing in Salt Lake? Much less, in Anne’s hospital room?”
“I moved here right after Kirsten and I were married,” he said. “Where are you living now?”
“I haven’t moved very far from home. I am only a couple blocks from campus here in Rexburg. Who is Kirsten? I thought your wife’s name was Teresa or something like that.”
“Tery, Teresa, and I divorced almost seven years ago. We both knew almost from the beginning that our marriage was doomed, but we held on for almost eight years. At least we didn’t have any kids to fight over when it ended, so it was over with pretty quickly. Anne told me you got married shortly after I did. Was it ‘what’s his name’? Do you have any kids?”
It was Tara’s turn to admit failure. “No, I didn’t marry Roland, if that is who you mean. I was married to a guy named Dan Feltz for almost four years, and our son Patrick was almost a year old when we divorced. Dan never wanted children, and when we found out I was pregnant, it was the beginning of the end. I didn’t trick him into it. We were trying to get pregnant, but when it finally worked, he got scared and accused me of having an affair. I just don’t think he was ready to be a father.”
“ That was one of the things that drove us apart.” Allen said. “ I wanted children desperately, and Tery led me to believe she wanted them too, but after we had been married for almost a year with no results, I ran across her birth control pills under the sink in the spare bathroom. When I confronted her about it, she said she ‘didn’t want to be tied down and if I really loved her, I wouldn’t force her to have children’. I gave in, and got a vasectomy, but I resented it for the next seven years. The clincher was when she ended up pregnant. It seems she had this “friend” at work that she did want children with.”
“So how did you meet Kirsten? How long have you known her?” Tara asked.
“I was stationed in Germany, and she was one of the locals who worked in the commissary. I ended up staying after my tour was up, and we got married a year ago.
Then my mom and dad moved to St. George and I decided to move to Utah to be closer to them,” he explained. Then as if he had just realized what she had said in the beginning, he asked, “What do you mean I broke your heart by getting married? You were the first one to stop writing. I thought you went back to that guy who broke your heart.”
“I did go to Arizona that summer, with high hopes of proving he could trust me so he would stop testing my love, but I figured out really fast that he would never change and I had changed. After that Christmas, I couldn’t settle for the way things had been before. I wanted someone who would make me feel the way you had.”
“Then why didn’t you keep in touch?” Allen asked. “I just assumed you had gotten back with him and didn’t need me in the way. I convinced myself that I had imagined the connection between us. I even went back through your old letters and realized that you were writing like I was a friend, which was not the way I felt about you.”
Before he had even stopped talking, Tara was in tears. She wanted to say, {I read every one of your letters over and over trying to convince myself that when you signed them ‘With love’ or called me ‘Sweetheart’ or ‘My Love’, that you just talk that way to everyone. You know, how your mother was always calling me ‘Honey’? I even asked Anne what she thought about us ever getting together, and she reminded me that you weren’t going to get serious about anyone until after your mission. I wouldn’t let myself believe you meant all those things the way they were written, because I was afraid to get my hopes up. When I would write back, I didn’t want to sound like I was lovesick or something, because then if you didn’t feel the same way, you would be uncomfortable.} but instead she just said, “I thought you were going to go on a mission before you got serious, so I didn’t want to make it harder for you to go. I had a passionate letter in my head. I just never sent it.”
He laughed, then got serious again. “I never went on a mission. I don’t know if you realized that. T.K. was killed in a motorcycle accident right after I put in my papers, and I ended up staying home to help my parents. I always meant to go later, but it never happened. I joined the Army instead.”
“You sound happy, though. I’m glad,” Tara said. “I guess it’s a little too late, but I did love you a lot, and your letters made my day. If we could go back in time, I would do things differently, but we can’t, so I am glad you have found someone.” Then to change the subject, she asked, “How is Anne doing? I am glad you are there to see her. I wish I could get down there more often, but with Patrick in school and Shali in the terrible two’s, I have a hard time going to the store, much less three hours away.”
“So who’s Shali?” Allen asked. “You mentioned Patrick, but did you have a daughter with Dan too? Or did you remarry?”
Tara answered with a bit of sarcasm. “The answers are ‘my daughter’, ‘yes’, and ‘yes’, but Shali isn’t from my second marriage.”
Allen laughed, “Now I’m confused. Shali is your daughter, you had a daughter with Dan, and you remarried, but you divorced Dan a long time ago.” He paused, then got excited. “Okay, I get it. You remarried Dan, right?”
“Remember I said Shalimar wasn’t from my second marriage,” she teased him. “ I was married to a guy named Jake Benson for a couple of years. Shalimar was a surprise that came to me after a one night stand with Dan a year after I divorced Jake. To make a long story short, he was acting like the kind of father I wanted for our son, and the kind of companion I wanted for me. I began to think we could finally work things out, and one night I trusted him enough to let him stay longer than I should have. He used some threats and promises against me to get what he wanted, then I kicked him out for good. Then six and a half months later, I thought I felt a kick in my stomach, went to the doctor, and Shalimar was on her way. She truly was a miracle, because Dan and I both thought we weren’t capable of having any more children. I haven’t regretted having her for a second. I am glad she and Patrick have the same father, but I sometimes wish their father wasn’t Dan.” She laughed, and went on. “He has been more of a father figure to them both since Shali was born, but he has had more chances to be abusive to me. I am really getting tired of dealing with him.”
“Sounds a little like Annie’s ex. Did you realize he won’t let her boys come see her?” Allen asked. “Not only does he take advantage of the fact that she is sick, but he seems to want to punish her for being sick. That makes me sick!”
Tara laughed at his play on words, then said, “I still have a hard time believing how Everett has turned out. He was the ideal man for her in high school. Or at least I thought so at the time. He was comfortable doing whatever we were doing. Not like most guys. Maybe that should have been our first clue, huh?” Tara knew more than she was saying, and debated telling Allen how close she and Everett had actually become, but decided it wasn’t the right time to go into it.
Allen was saying, “I don’t even care what his sexual orientation is. I am really liberal. What I have a problem with is men who walk on their hands.” When Tara didn’t seem to get the joke, he went on. “You know, so instead of seeing their faces, you just see an a. . . . ”
Tara cut him off with her laughter and said, “Whoa, I get it. You don’t have to get specific.” Then she teased, ” The Army must have taught you a lot of pretty words like that. I remember you getting a dirty look from your mother for just saying ‘gosh dang’ or something like that.”
Allen said, “I better go. They are bringing Annie back, and she looks like she is sleeping pretty soundly. I will leave a note telling her you called, and if I am here when she calls back, maybe we can chat some more.”
Tara hung up, and started thinking about Everett Lake. She still had a hard time thinking of the man Anne dated in high school being the same one who was making her life miserable now.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Empty Places in my Heart
At times like these, I wonder...Why does God let bad things happen to good people? While rapists, child molesters, and other "bad" people get away with their crimes and live out their lives? Why does he take the young, healthy ones with wives to support, children to feed snd their whole lives in front of them while he allows the frail, weak, suffering older people to linger for years, praying to die.
Some people would say "It's destiny" or part of "The Plan", as if that can really comfort the ones left to grieve.
It's like someone came along and chopped off one of your legs. Maybe some people are better able to overcome, and soon they are hopping around on one leg like they were born that way. Others need a crutch, and get around pretty good. Still others confine themselves to a wheelchair and just give up. No two people react the same, and no matter what kind of person we are, we all have to grieve in our own way and in our own time. No one has the right to set those limits for us.
Some religions teach about life after death an think that will ease the pain. I do believe in eternal life, but that doesn't erase the pain of going on for years without them, waiting for a "reunion in heaven".
Sometimes I wonder...Why work so hard at living, when any day it could end and you were only half-finished?
Then I look into a child's face, and for a moment, forget the pain. And I hope, little by little, day by day, year by rear, I'll see enough beauty in the world that one day, I won't feel the loss so much anymore.
1997
Some people would say "It's destiny" or part of "The Plan", as if that can really comfort the ones left to grieve.
It's like someone came along and chopped off one of your legs. Maybe some people are better able to overcome, and soon they are hopping around on one leg like they were born that way. Others need a crutch, and get around pretty good. Still others confine themselves to a wheelchair and just give up. No two people react the same, and no matter what kind of person we are, we all have to grieve in our own way and in our own time. No one has the right to set those limits for us.
Some religions teach about life after death an think that will ease the pain. I do believe in eternal life, but that doesn't erase the pain of going on for years without them, waiting for a "reunion in heaven".
Sometimes I wonder...Why work so hard at living, when any day it could end and you were only half-finished?
Then I look into a child's face, and for a moment, forget the pain. And I hope, little by little, day by day, year by rear, I'll see enough beauty in the world that one day, I won't feel the loss so much anymore.
1997
Tara, Misu & Their Just Dessert (Ch. 4)
After Tara had tried everything she could think of to get Roland back, from professing her love, to begging, to even threatening to kill herself, he still stayed with Jess. Tara’s family and friends tried everything to convince her to move on. Roland’s aunt even tried to convince her that Roland had a lot of problems that he needed to resolve before he could ever be a good boyfriend or husband to anyone. Tara was inconsolable. Finally, at the semester break, just before Christmas, Roland’s aunt sent him back to live with his father. It seems Jess’s parents didn’t think he was the right guy for her, and asked Ms. Michaels to ‘do something about the situation’. Tara sank deeper into a depression, and in hopes of lifting her spirits, Anne suggested she go to the Parkinson family party in Salt Lake between Christmas and New Years.
“We always go shopping for after-Christmas bargains the first day, then go to the party that night,” Anne explained. “Then the second day the teenagers all go skiing or go to “The Galleria” or something while the parents and younger kids go to the zoo or stay at the motel swimming & playing games. I always have a lot of fun, even though some of my cousins can really get on my nerves.”
Tara wasn’t sure she could enjoy anything ever again, but to be polite, she said she would think about it. “I just don’t think your family is going to want me around. I am not exactly the most fun person to be around right now. I just wouldn’t feel like doing anything.”
.....................................................................................
Anne was insistent, and practically packed Tara’s bags for her and dragged her out to the van the day after Christmas.
“How was your Christmas?” Anne’s mom, Susan, asked after everyone was settled in the van and well on the way to Salt Lake.
Tara looked up from her V.C. Andrews book and replied, “It was okay. My mom worked the grave yard shift the night before, so we all got up early to open presents, then everyone had to stay quiet so she could get some sleep. We mostly just sat around watching movies and reading all day.” Tara had learned she could talk about anything with Anne’s family, so she went on. “ My dad didn’t come home for Christmas Eve, and wasn’t back yet even this morning.”
President Parkinson glanced at her in the rearview mirror and asked, “Do you have any idea where he is? Could he have had an accident or something?”
Tara wasn’t sure how much she should say because Anne’s dad was still her Stake President, but she decided the truth, or what she thought was the truth, was the best policy.
“I saw his pickup in front of the Angelo house yesterday. He has been helping them remodel John’s room above the garage, and sometimes he stays too late and doesn’t want to drive back into town.” At this, Tara paused to consider how to continue. “Sometimes he stays there all weekend, but when I drive by, there are a lot of cars and no one seems to be working.”
Pres. Parkinson rubbed the back of his neck, and pulled on his ear to get some idea of what to say to Tara. He suspected that Tara was worried about what everyone in town was thinking when they saw her father’s pickup in front of the Angelo’s. He also knew that very subject had come up in the last meeting he had with Bishop Royal. At the time, he assumed that the rumors about it being a “drug house” were probably just rumors, but hearing Tara’s fears made him think maybe the Angelo family was not as law-abiding as he thought. Anne, Jan and Tara knew John from school, and they may know more about his family habits than the adults in the community. On many occasions, one of his daughters had alerted him to a death, birth, or abuse situation in his stake before the Relief Society President or Bishop had a chance to. He enjoyed answering their calls with something like, "7 lbs., 6 oz. right?” before they had a chance to say anything. Some people in the stake would often joke that he was the most inspired man they had ever met because “God” was telling him who he was sending or retrieving “practically before he did it“. What they didn’t realize was that teenage girls were natural gossips, and if used for good, were a good source to find out the needs of the families in his Stake.
“Tara, I think we each should talk to your father before jumping to conclusions, but I do think you have every right to worry about how it looks.”
At this, Tara immediately sunk down in her seat, and silent tears began rolling down her cheeks.
Pres. Parkinson went on. “At least we know where he is. I will never forget the call I got from your mother two years ago.” He reached out to put his hand on his wife’s knee, “ I was still having a hard time dealing with the loss of our son, and your mother’s voice screaming ‘I can’t find Donald anywhere!’ sliced right through me. I was so afraid it would be an unhappy ending when we found his bike next to the gravel pit. When he wandered out of the trees, zipping up his pants, I think your mother was ready to put him up for adoption right then and there.”
Tara laughed at the memory of her brother coming out of the trees to find the whole neighborhood rushing toward him. “He started crying because he thought he was in trouble for peeing in the woods. When he saw Mom crying, he ran to her and promised never to use the bathroom outside again if Sheriff Perch wouldn’t arrest him. My mom was so relieved to find him safe, and it was so funny, she went into hysterics. We still tease her about the way her nose wiggles when she laughs too hard.”
Everyone in the car laughed along with her, and the conversations in the van turned to more pleasant things for the next two hours.
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As soon as everyone was settled in at the motel, Anne asked if she and Tara could shop alone.
“I don’t mind, as long as you check in with us on a regular basis,” her mother and father said almost in unison.
As Anne and Tara both laughed and gathered their purses, Mrs. Parkinson gave Anne some money, and said, “I want you to spend at least half of this to get birthday gifts for the next year. Don’t worry about mine, just make sure you get for your siblings, and your father. “
While they were walking toward the ZCMI mall, Tara couldn’t help thinking to herself, “If Anne’s family has enough money to buy a whole year’s worth of gifts, and still have some left, they must be a lot better off than I thought. I wish I had just one-tenth of what they have. Anne has loving, nurturing parents, she has her own room, and she and Jan have a car they only have to share with each other. Just the fact that they can afford to stay in a motel room for two nights in Salt Lake City after driving here in a van, and still have money to shop in the mall amazes me. I wonder why some people seem to have all the luck, and others struggle all their lives to get nothing?”
Just as Tara was starting to really feel sorry for herself, Anne yelled, “Hey Allen! Wait up!”
She started running toward a guy standing in front of the south gate of the temple grounds. Tara had a hard time keeping up, and by the time she got to them, Anne was hugging some guy with white hair and gorgeous blue eyes. Tara secretly hoped this guy was related to Anne, mostly so she could have him for herself, and so she would have a chance to get to know him over the next couple of days.
When he spoke, it was with a slight southern accent. “Who’ve ya got here, Annie? I’ve never had the pleasure have I?”
Tara smiled and held out her hand to introduce herself. “I am Anne’s friend, Tara Gilbert. We were just going shopping.” She blushed and couldn’t seem to get her mind or tongue to work. She was sure he thought she was a spaz or something. She walked to the gate and pretended to be interested in the old chapel while Anne and Allen were catching up on family gossip.
“I wasn’t sure you guys were going to be able to come this year. Didn’t Terence Keith get into trouble or something?” Anne asked.
“He ended up with community service and my parents had to pay for all the damages.” He looked at Tara and explained how his brother had been visiting his girlfriend, and they got into a fight, so he decided to “borrow” a pickup from the neighbor to get home. “He actually thought it would be okay to just leave the pickup in a parking lot near our home and call the owner to let him know where he left it. The problem is that T.K. is barely 16 and hasn’t driven much, so he ended sliding into a railroad transformer before he even got out of town. At that point he knew he was in trouble, so he just wanted to get home. He ended up wrecking two more cars before he gave up and went back to his girlfriend’s house. The police followed his footprints from the first vehicle he wrecked because he decided to cut across the field right there instead of going around the block. They probably would have never caught him if he hadn’t walked right past the evidence.”
They all three laughed and started walking toward the Crossroads Mall across the street. Tara had never been to the malls in Salt Lake before, so she was anxious to get inside. As they approached the doors, Allen jumped in front of her to open the door.
“M`ladies,” he said with a sweep of his hand. “Ma raised a gentleman.”
Anne laughed and replied, “You never opened a door for me in our life. In fact, if I remember right, I still have a few scars from the time you slammed my fingers in the door.”
She turned to Tara and whispered, “I think he likes you.”
Allen said, “She is just jealous because I was born 10 days before her and all the grandparents loved me first.”
“Your birthday is May 9th?” Tara asked. “I seem to be surrounded by May birthdays. My uncle is on the 2nd, you on the 9th, Roland on the 13th, Anne and Jan on the 19th, my father and Beth are on the 20th, my cousin on the 22nd, and my baby sister B.C. is on the 23rd.”
Allen asked what B.C. stood for, but at the thought of Roland, Tara had become a little depressed again and didn’t even hear the question. She realized that she found Allen attractive and hadn’t even thought about Roland for at least four hours. She didn’t know whether she felt guilty for actually feeling happy for a little while without him, or whether she felt guilty for putting her family, Roland’s family, Jess’s family, and Anne through so much heartache over someone she seemed to be able to get over the moment Allen appeared. She asked Anne where a bathroom was, and ran to it before she started crying.
A few moments later, Anne came in calling her name. “I told Allen to meet us downstairs at the food court. I didn’t tell him anything, but he pretty much figured out that you are upset about something. He is really worried.” She smiled wickedly and said, “I think you have knocked him for a loop, Tar’. He is always saying he will never get into a relationship before he finishes college, and he has been able to stay away from girls so well, that we began to wonder if he was gay or something.” Tara smiled a little as Anne went on. “He just told me he wants to take us out tomorrow night to see the lights on Temple Square and up to see the street where they tell the whole Christmas story from one house to the next. It is really pretty. I hope it is okay that I told him we would.”
Tara felt like she was betraying Roland, but she said, “I think that would be fun. I really like Allen. He seems like someone I could be friends with. Just friends, Anne. I still love Roland.”
With a knowing look, Anne just smiled and said, “Of course. I never said it had to be anything more than three friends going out for some fun.”
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Four hours later, while Allen helped them carry their bags back to the motel, Anne and Tara were comparing the two malls.
“I really like the Crossroads Mall better,” Tara was saying. “It has so many different stores, and there were even some I could afford there.”
“The dollar store in the ZCMI mall isn’t exactly expensive,” Anne shot back. “But I just like the ZCMI better because we go there more often, so I know how to get to the stores I like. I used to worry about getting lost in the Crossroads Mall.” Then she playfully slugged Tara’s shoulder.
“Yeah, yeah, so I got lost,” Tara laughed. “ I can’t believe I couldn’t find my way out of that department store. I’ve never seen a three-story store. We went in on the second floor, so when I got separated from you on the third floor, I didn’t think about the fact we had gone up an escalator, then when I finally found the exit into the mall, none of the stores looked familiar because we hadn’t been on that floor yet.”
By this time Tara, Anne and Allen were all laughing so hard Allen had to set the bags down to catch his breath. “I can’t believe you ended up having us paged. Not even Annie’s overprotective parents have done that.”
“I heard that, Allen Ray Brent,” said his aunt Susan from behind them. “I seem to recall you paging your mom in the Kmart when you were 13 years old because you were too lazy to look for her. The lady said, ‘We have a lost child here at the service desk. What’s your name honey?’ before you told her ‘never mind’ and went to find your mother yourself.”
Anne and Tara were laughing so hard they nearly wet their pants. As soon as Anne could stop laughing, she said, “Mom, that was mean to tell that story in front of Tara. Allen has been trying to act so mature and sophisticated all day, and you just blew it for him.”
Tara just said, “That’s okay. I saw right through his act when he got on the rocking horse in the toy store. I think it is cute that he isn’t afraid to be himself, even if he is just a little boy in a man’s body.”
Anne and her mother exchanged knowing glances, and everyone went into their separate rooms to get ready for the party.
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While the men went to set up chairs at the Stake Center where they were holding the party, Anne, Jan, and their mother teased Tara about Allen. “I know how hard it has been dealing with your feelings for Roland, but liking Allen doesn’t mean you are doing anything wrong.” Susan said. “This trip is only going to last a couple of days. You don’t have to marry Allen, just have some fun with someone of the opposite sex.”
Jan jumped in, “Yeah Tar’, if nothing else, you will learn that not all guys are jerks. Allen isn’t perfect by any means. He was quite mean to us when we were growing up. We usually wore our old worn out clothes at the family reunions so we wouldn’t get our good clothes stained. Allen would make fun of the holes in the knees and the fact that the younger boys wore hand-me-downs. Sometimes they would come straight from wrestling practice without showering, so Allen would comment on the fact that Idaho must not have modern plumbing. Or he would ride around on his dirt bike giving rides to everyone except us. I didn’t like him at all when we were younger.”
“Then I found out I had a heart problem,” Anne said. “and he was so nice to me after that. For awhile it just made me even madder at him. I didn’t want his pity.”
“Until we found out his best friend had one too, and somehow that made him look at us a little differently,” said Jan. “I guess we all realized that there are more important things than wearing the newest styles or who gets to ride the motorcycle more.”
“I’m not saying you should jump right into another relationship with Allen or anyone else at this point,” said Susan. “I just wish you could have some fun the next couple of days, and Allen is a good boy. He won’t play with your emotions the way your boy did. He just wants to get to know you a little better before he goes back to Tennessee and you go back to Idaho.”
“Did he say that?” Tara asked, a little too anxiously.
Anne laughed at her excitement and said, “He told me that he wishes he lived closer to Idaho. He tried to get me to give him your phone number and address, but I told him he had to ask you.”
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Tara met a lot of Anne’s relatives that night, but she kept her eyes on Allen all night. She couldn’t believe he could make her forget how depressed she was. She thought about Roland a few times during the night when someone would do or say something that reminded her of him, but most of the time it was negative memories, and by the next morning when Allen came to the door to invite Anne and her siblings to go skiing with him, Tara was already fantasizing about sitting in front of a fire in a ski lodge with him. She couldn’t wait to get up to the top so she could show Allen how good she was on the slopes. She had grown up near Grand Targhee, and took lessons from the time she could walk. Her parents couldn’t pay for them, but her friend Dominick’s dad worked there, so he taught her.
Unfortunately, the ski rental office was out of her size boot, so she had to get the next size bigger. By the time she reached the bottom of the hill for the third time, her feet were feeling very blistered. She decided to call it a day and went into the lodge for some hot cocoa.
Within five minutes, Allen came in and said, “I just don’t feel like skiing today. The hill is a little too soft in spots and it really throws me off.”
Tara pretended to believe him and asked if he wanted some of her cocoa to warm up.
He smiled wickedly and said, “I have a better idea,” as he put his hands down the back of her coat. They started wrestling around a little, tickling each other and getting snow off the bottom of their shoes to throw at each other.
When Anne and her brother Bart came around the corner of the lodge and found them out of breath, Anne gave Tara a knowing look, and Bart challenged Allen to a race down “Dead Man”.
The guys took off, and Anne started singing, “Tara and Allen sitting in a tree . . . ” like a little kid.
Tara didn’t care. She had never felt this happy in her life. Allen had a way of making her feel like a little kid inside, while bringing very grown-up feelings to the surface too. Tara was a little scared of those feelings because she knew they weren’t ever going to lead to anything except heartache. She had learned that the hard way.
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Anne was still teasing after they got back to the motel. Every little while she would bring up Allen and tell Tara things about his past. All the stories were about how honest he was or how compassionate, etc. Tara knew what Anne was trying to do, and she just kept pretending she wasn’t interested in anything more than having fun for a couple of days and going home. In her heart, though, Tara didn’t know how she was going to handle losing two guys in such a short time. She didn’t want to say goodbye to Allen the next day.
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At 7pm on the dot, Allen was waiting in the pickup to take Tara and Anne to Christmas Story Lane.
Anne suddenly said she was not feeling well, and told Tara not to disappoint Allen by backing out. Tara pretended to be mad, but secretly she was glad to have him to herself.
When she climbed in the passenger side door that Allen was holding open for her, she heard Eddie Rabbit singing “I Love a Rainy Night”.
“Oh no,” she thought, “not another guy who loves country.”
Her first boyfriend had been an Alabama fan, and she still heard the songs running through her head sometimes.
When Allen got in, he took the tape out and apologized. “My dad loves country. I forgot that was in there. I had something better in mind.”
He put in a tape with heavy metal ballads on it, but they didn’t sound like the original artists. Before Tara could ask about it, he told her, “ T.K. and his friends are trying to start a band, and this is a tape of them.” Tara was impressed. They weren’t as good as the groups that really sang the songs, but they sounded good.
“Bobby, Dennis and Mark all play instruments, so T.K. sings most of the songs, but when Bobby sings, he could bring tears to your eyes. He has a real gift. Have you heard of Aaron Neville? He sounds a lot like him.”
As they drove up through the avenues above Salt Lake, Tara listened to the group play everything from “Beth” to “Stairway to Heaven”. Somewhere along the way, Allen reached over and put her hand inside his. After they listened to the Christmas songs and saw all the displays, beginning with the angel coming to Mary and ending with the Wise Men kneeling to worship the Christ Child, Allen asked if she was hungry.
“I am starving!” Tara exclaimed, surprised that he hadn’t heard her stomach growling. “I haven’t eaten anything since the hot cocoa at the lodge.”
“I wanted to apologize for that,” Allen said. “Bart said it was a little forward of me to just put my hand down the back of your coat like that. He thinks you might have thought I was being a little too forward. If I offended you, I am sorry. I am just so used to wrestling around like that with my cousins and I forgot for a moment that you were practically a stranger.”
Tara removed her hand from his, and put her hand on his shoulder. “I wasn’t offended at all. I kinda liked it. I have learned how to take care of myself if I think a guy is moving too fast. I would have let you know if you were out of line.”
Allen reached up and took her hand in his again. “I am glad to hear you say that. There is just something about you that makes me feel like we have known each other forever. I have been very careful not to get attached to a girl before my mission and college, but I think I could get attached to you very easily. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since you ran into the bathroom yesterday. When I saw how hurt you looked, I hurt for you. “
He blushed a little, and changed the subject. “So, where would you like to eat? Money’s no object, as long as you don’t order anything more than $20.”
Tara laughed and told him she had never been to Salt Lake, so she didn’t know where to go. When she told him she liked pasta, his eyes lit up.
“I know the perfect place on Trolley Square. ‘The Spaghetti Factory’ is my favorite place to go when we come here. I was afraid you would say you wanted to go to Sizzler or something. I hate eating anything that bleeds.”
Tara had never heard it put that way before, but she agreed. “I hate meat too. I will eat a fast food burger once in a while, but only because I suspect they don’t use real meat.” She marveled at how much she was beginning to like Allen.
He was just beginning to be perfect in her eyes, when he said, “Remind me to check the timing belt when we get back to the motel. I think it is a little off.”
Tara joked, ”Are you a mechanic in your spare time or something?”
“Not yet, but I will be when I finish school,” he replied. “I have been helping my dad with his business for a few years now. I mostly do the body work and detailing right now, but I hope to have a business of my own someday. I painted this pickup myself. What do you think of the color? It’s called Ford Blue.”
While he was going on and on, obviously proud of himself, Tara couldn’t help thinking about the irony of him wanting to be a mechanic, just like Roland. “Beth is gonna love this,” she thought to herself.
The waitress was glad to see them go by the time they finished their meal. Allen started talking with a bad accent that was a cross between Pepe’ LePeu and Gomer Pyle, which got Tara laughing so hard she shot pop out through her nose. Then he told the waitress Tara was deaf, so ‘could she sign the menu for her‘. The waitress asked why she couldn’t just read the menu, and Allen whispered, “She is from Idaho; they don’t know how to read there.” Tara hit him, giving away the fact that she could hear him, and the waitress left without taking their order.
When they finally got their food, Allen asked if he could get some ‘catch up’ for his fettuccine. The waitress pointed out that there was marinara sauce on it, but Allen insisted that he liked it better with ‘catch up’. She said she would check on it, and as soon as she left, they started laughing again. She came back without any and Allen said, “That’s okay. I decided I would try it without, and you were right. It is good just like it is. Thank you.” To Tara, he said, “Wait until I take this home to Rufus. He loves the doggie bags I bring him.”
Tara started laughing again, and had to ask where the ladies room was. When she came back, Allen had paid the bill and was waiting for her. They went back to the motel to park the pickup and walked to Temple Square.
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The lights on Temple Square were the most beautiful display Tara had ever seen. Allen held her hand as they walked around and by the time they got back to the motel, he had his arm around her shoulders. At the door to her room, he hesitated before asking, “Would you mind if I kissed you?”
Tara put her arms around his neck and closed her eyes as he leaned down to put his lips to hers. He did it so gently, that Tara opened her eyes just a crack to make sure it wasn‘t just the wind. He started to straighten back up, then kissed her one more time, deeper this time. Tara could smell his cologne, mixed with the smell of fabric softener and garlic. She thought to herself, “This is what love smells like", then burst out laughing at how ridiculous that sounded in her head.
Allen, not sure what she was laughing about, took a step back and looked at her with a puzzled look on his face. She covered by saying she had just remembered the look on the waitress’s face when she hit him after his joke about Idaho.
“I think she almost believed you until then,” she said, as she burst into laughter again.
Allen just said, “I guess we better get to bed. My family is leaving around six in the morning. Can I have your address and phone number so we can keep in touch?”
Tara pulled out the pamphlet she had picked up on Temple Square to give her information to him, then got his address, too.
For the rest of the night, Tara laid awake next to Anne, reliving every moment with Allen.
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At five in the morning, she heard voices outside and went to watch Allen and his mother pack up and leave. She wanted to go out and say goodbye, but she was afraid Mrs. Brent would disapprove, so she just watched from the window as they pulled out of the parking lot, and whispered, “I love you, Allen.”
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Around 8:00, Anne’s family was ready to leave, and Grandma Parkinson gave Susan a wind sock with a wrestler on it. It was attached to a digger link and Susan cried when she saw it.
Grandma said, “ I saw this in St. George and thought of Lee. Please put it next to his stone for me.”
Susan said she would, then hugged her mother-in-law. “See you this summer for the reunion?” she asked.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she replied, smiling. “You drive carefully, Bryce. I worry about you driving on these roads during the winter.”
“I will, Ma. I can’t drive more than 20 miles without one of them wanting to stop anyway, so I don’t even get up to the speed limit,” he said, winking at his family.
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Just as they were driving through Layton, Tara got up the courage to say, “I moved to Sugar after Lee died. I have heard bits and pieces about the accident, but I don’t really know what happened.” She saw the pain on everyone’s faces, and quickly said, “If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”
Jan was the first one to speak. “It was my fault.” When her family all chimed in with denials, she talked over them and explained. “I was hanging out with some kids from Fremont City, and the girl I was riding with got drunk. I hadn’t been drinking, but I didn’t have my license to drive after dark, so I was afraid to let her drive and afraid to drive myself. I called home, and Lee said he would come get me. As we were crossing Canyon Creek, a carload of my friends tried to pass us and sent us off the bridge.”
Susan took up the story. “ When the State Police came to the door, I knew something was wrong, but they insisted we wait for Bryce to get home.”
“In the meantime, I was returning from a District Conference and got detoured around an accident.” Pres. Parkinson said. “ I was hoping it wasn’t any of my stake members, so I tried to see past the emergency vehicles. The only car I could see was the Jeep Roy Stephens was driving. I got a little catch in my throat because I knew he was one of Jan’s friends, but the car didn’t seem to have much damage, and Jan was supposed to be with her mutual group that night. I wasn’t too worried because I thought it was just a minor accident. I was just going to keep going, but the Holy Spirit prompted me to stop. I pulled to the side of the road, and walked back to the bridge.”
Jan took over again, crying now, “I remember waking up on the side of the ravine, wondering how I got there. Somehow I was ejected from the car and didn’t go all the way to the bottom. I ended up with just a broken arm and thirty-two stitches in my head. Someone was calling to me and telling me not to move. I suddenly remembered what had happened and sat up to see where Lee ended up.” She paused to ask her mom for a tissue, then continued, “When I saw his car down in the ravine, I knew he was dead. I just laid back and screamed my lungs out. Then a fireman lowered himself to the ledge and after making sure I hadn’t injured my neck or back, he hooked me into a harness and I was pulled up to the top.”
President Parkinson continued, “I got as far as the Jeep before Sheriff Perch stopped me and asked me to walk over to his cruiser with him. As soon as I sat down, he informed me that Lee had gone off the bridge with Jan in the car. I think I was in shock at that moment, because I just got out of the car, and walked back to the Jeep. Roy had a pained look on his face, and I asked if he was okay. When he didn’t reply, I thanked him for stopping to help. He just turned and ran away. One of the girls that were with him came up to me and said, ’He didn’t mean to do it’ before she went to comfort Roy.” He smiled at his wife and went on. “I think one of the hardest things to get over was the fact that I just couldn’t get mad at Roy. It was a stupid thing for him to do, but it was just an accident. I tried so hard to find someone to blame, but I just couldn’t blame any of the kids involved that night. I had a serious talk with them all much later, and Amber, the girl that was supposed to take Jan home that night ended up trying to kill herself because she felt so guilty. I just was so mad that Lee was gone, and I couldn’t find anywhere to release it. There was no “bad guy”; just a lot of mixed up kids.”
“I was furious too,” said Jan. “At Roy, at Amber, but mostly at myself. My parents kept telling me I shouldn’t be hanging around with that crowd, but I didn’t listen. I was naive enough to think as long as I didn’t drink or smoke with them, it was okay. The saddest thing about that night was that Roy hadn’t been drinking. He was completely sober when he went around us like that. I hated him for so long.”
Jan paused to blow her nose, and Bart took over. “I was supposed to be in the car that night too. Lee asked me to ride with him, but I refused. He had just asked Shelley Hastings to marry him, and I wanted to be his best man. He told me he was going to ask her brother Neal instead, and I was mad. I felt guilty because the last words I said to him were, ‘Why don’t you ask your best man to go with you?’”
Tara was surprised to hear how much guilt the whole family seemed to feel over what she saw as all Roy’s fault. She couldn’t believe he was the one who caused the accident. Bart and Roy had both been on the wrestling team the year before, and seemed to be very supportive to each other. Bart didn’t treat him like the murderer that he was. She couldn’t help asking them all, “How could you forgive Roy? How can you watch him go on with his life and not be mad?”
Jared, who was only ten when Lee died, spoke for everyone. “We all reacted differently to what happened, but when Dad came home that night, he sent the police away, called us all together for a family prayer, and asked Heavenly Father to forgive us all for the bad feelings we were sure to experience in the days following the accident. He asked God to ease the pain and guilt that those involved in the accident would be feeling. I remember the first time I saw Roy after the accident, I was all ready to get mad as he came toward me, but honestly Tara, I was filled with the most intense love for him. I thought for a moment that he was Lee come back to life. I just stood there and stared at him for a moment, but I wanted to hug him.” Jared blushed and pretended to see something outside the window as tears came to his eyes.
Tara realized she was crying too. As she wiped her tears away, she caught Anne’s eye and they both smiled. “Can you imagine what Roy would have done if Jared hugged him?” Tara asked as she laughed a little.
Bart laughed a little too, then told her, “I did hug him once. We were ready to start a wrestling match just two weeks after the accident, and he had been avoiding me. I was kinda glad he did, because I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t want him to think it was okay that he had caused my brother’s death, but I didn’t hate him either. I finally cornered him in the bathroom as he was coming out of a stall. He looked at me like he was afraid I was going to kill him, so I backed off a little and said, ‘I don’t hate you’. He started to cry right there in the boy’s bathroom, with all these jocks standing around and said, ‘You should. I do.’ I just couldn’t stand to hear him talk that way, so I walked over to him and picked him up in a hug like I would Jared, and just kept saying ‘I don’t hate you’ over and over until he pulled away. I still held onto his shoulders, looked him in the eye, and said ‘Lee was my best friend from the time I was born, and I will miss him every day of my life, but I will see him again, and getting mad at you will not bring him back. I don’t hate you.’ Then I walked away, and from that time on, we have been able to joke around and be comfortable with each other.”
“So he was never charged with murder or anything? Was he punished at all?”
Tara asked.
“I knew the memory of what he had done was going to be the worst punishment anyone could give him,” Pres. Parkinson said. “The judge at his hearing didn’t agree. I wrote a letter to the judge, the police department, and each of the families involved asking them to consider our family. We didn’t want to make Lee’s death the end of five other lives. Amber had already tried to kill herself and was in BHC, and Roy and the three girls that were riding with him had just gotten back to school and were starting to have a somewhat normal life. I didn’t want the death of our son and brother to be prolonged in any way.”
Jan said, “When he first asked us to sign the bottom of the letter, I was still a little mad and I refused. I wanted everyone to remember my brother was dead forever. Then I found out what Amber had done, and I felt so bad for her I agreed to sign. My dad was right. The longer we pointed fingers or let the judge punish any of the kids, the longer it would take for all of us to heal.”
Anne, who had stayed silent through most of the discussion quietly said, “If we had only known how hard it would be once the blame had stopped . . . ”
Her whole family nodded their agreement.
“When the drama died down, all we had was a family full of grief and guilt pretending to live like a normal family. We all just went through every day absorbed in ourselves and until my dad had his breakdown, we didn’t even know that we weren’t the only ones hurting.”
Tara was shocked, “Breakdown? You had a breakdown Pres. Parkinson? I thought if anyone knew for sure how to deal with death, you would.”
He laughed a little and said, “That was part of the problem, Tara. I knew I would see my son again, so I knew that wasn’t the problem. I didn’t feel any anger toward the boy and girls involved in the accident, so I knew that wasn’t the problem. I knew my family needed my love and support more than any other time, yet I felt so completely useless and powerless for the first time in my life. With all my wisdom . . . ” (the whole family laughed at the mention of wisdom, including him) “ . . . I couldn’t bring back my son, I couldn’t stop the pain and guilt everyone was feeling, and most of all I couldn’t stop feeling betrayed by my beliefs. I had grown up in the church, and I had always thought that if you know the plan of salvation, you won’t feel grief. I learned I had been mistaken about that. The church doesn’t promise you won’t grieve at all, we just know there is still hope for a future with our loved ones. We still have to learn how to deal with the hole left in our lives. I think the talk my wife wrote a year after the accident put the point across very well. Susan, what was it you said?”
“I don’t remember, Bryce. It has been so long. Something about losing a limb or something.”
“I remember,” Tara said. “I think it was one of the first Sundays after I moved here. You said everyone had to grieve in their own way and in their own time. You said it was like when someone loses a leg. Some people recover quickly, and don’t even need a wheelchair or crutches to get around. They just hop from place to place and adapt. Other people are more overwhelmed by the loss and need intensive therapy and may always have to have a crutch to get by. You said grief for the loss of a person, a pet or a relationship was the same. Some people can replace a puppy and feel better. Some can get remarried after a death or a divorce and be happier than ever before. Some need therapy or the crutch of antidepressants for a while or maybe even for the rest of their lives to function. You said no way of doing it is right or wrong for everyone. Each situation is different and each person is different, so each grief period is different.”
Pres. Parkinson laughed and said, “ And I thought the youth of today weren’t paying attention in church.”
Everyone laughed, then Tara remembered something else she had heard in that talk. “You mentioned a young woman you knew who had lost her fiancee in an accident and had even asked her bishop if it was possible to still be sealed to him. Was that Shelley?”
“Yes,” Susan replied. “She did get special permission to be sealed to Lee, and for a long time she fasted and prayed about it. After nearly six months she felt the Lord wanted her to be sealed to someone here on earth, and she didn’t go through with it. She is dating a wonderful young man now. He had some Word of Wisdom problems as a teen, and even spent some time in jail for a drunk driving accident that injured his best friend. He repented and cleaned his life up when he was 22, and served a full time mission. Now he is a police officer in Oakley, running the DARE program in the local school district. He knows how much she loved Lee, and he secretly told me he is going to propose to her by taking her to his grave and asking Lee for her hand. I thought it was a little morbid, but it sounded so much like something Lee would get a kick out of, I knew it was perfect.”
Anne said, “I totally forgot! Bryan called just before we left for Salt Lake to ask if they can stay with us around the 20th of January. He is planning a special night in Sugar City and he wants us to be a part of it. Do you think he is going to propose then?”
That would be so neat if he proposed on the 19th or the 22nd for Lee’s birthday or Mom’s birthday,” Jared said.
“He might want to have a day that isn’t linked to anyone else, Jared,” his mother replied. “It must be strange to be thrown into a family that is only considered family because your girlfriend used to be engaged to their son. He fits right in, and he seems to be okay with the situation, but I don’t think we need to be part of everything they do.”
“But Mom,” Jared said, “he was the one who said he wanted us to be part of it. If it bothered him, he wouldn’t come see us every time he is in town. Sometimes he comes even when Shelley isn’t with him. He even told me he wishes he had met Lee. I reminded him that if Lee was alive, Shelley wouldn’t have fallen in love with him, but he said that was okay, as long as she was happy. He said he would have fought Bart and Neal for the Best Man spot, and made them compete for ring bearers or something.” He grinned at Bart, who in turn tried to swat his ear.
Everyone laughed and Mrs. Parkinson said, “I still think we should prepare ourselves for the inevitable. When they get married and start their own family, they aren’t going to want to split their time between their extended families and ours. I am sure we will always be a part of their lives, but it certainly won’t be as much as we are now. Don’t pressure them to include us just because of Lee.”
Pres. Parkinson squeezed his wife’s hand, reminding Tara of the way Allen held her hand the night before. “I have talked to Bryan and Shelley both about not letting Lee get in the way of anything they do, and they both have assured me that Lee was what brought them into our lives, but they stay because they love us, not out of guilt or some debt they owe Lee. I agree with you, Susan. We shouldn’t expect them to be part of our lives forever, but I think they will be.”
“We always go shopping for after-Christmas bargains the first day, then go to the party that night,” Anne explained. “Then the second day the teenagers all go skiing or go to “The Galleria” or something while the parents and younger kids go to the zoo or stay at the motel swimming & playing games. I always have a lot of fun, even though some of my cousins can really get on my nerves.”
Tara wasn’t sure she could enjoy anything ever again, but to be polite, she said she would think about it. “I just don’t think your family is going to want me around. I am not exactly the most fun person to be around right now. I just wouldn’t feel like doing anything.”
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Anne was insistent, and practically packed Tara’s bags for her and dragged her out to the van the day after Christmas.
“How was your Christmas?” Anne’s mom, Susan, asked after everyone was settled in the van and well on the way to Salt Lake.
Tara looked up from her V.C. Andrews book and replied, “It was okay. My mom worked the grave yard shift the night before, so we all got up early to open presents, then everyone had to stay quiet so she could get some sleep. We mostly just sat around watching movies and reading all day.” Tara had learned she could talk about anything with Anne’s family, so she went on. “ My dad didn’t come home for Christmas Eve, and wasn’t back yet even this morning.”
President Parkinson glanced at her in the rearview mirror and asked, “Do you have any idea where he is? Could he have had an accident or something?”
Tara wasn’t sure how much she should say because Anne’s dad was still her Stake President, but she decided the truth, or what she thought was the truth, was the best policy.
“I saw his pickup in front of the Angelo house yesterday. He has been helping them remodel John’s room above the garage, and sometimes he stays too late and doesn’t want to drive back into town.” At this, Tara paused to consider how to continue. “Sometimes he stays there all weekend, but when I drive by, there are a lot of cars and no one seems to be working.”
Pres. Parkinson rubbed the back of his neck, and pulled on his ear to get some idea of what to say to Tara. He suspected that Tara was worried about what everyone in town was thinking when they saw her father’s pickup in front of the Angelo’s. He also knew that very subject had come up in the last meeting he had with Bishop Royal. At the time, he assumed that the rumors about it being a “drug house” were probably just rumors, but hearing Tara’s fears made him think maybe the Angelo family was not as law-abiding as he thought. Anne, Jan and Tara knew John from school, and they may know more about his family habits than the adults in the community. On many occasions, one of his daughters had alerted him to a death, birth, or abuse situation in his stake before the Relief Society President or Bishop had a chance to. He enjoyed answering their calls with something like, "7 lbs., 6 oz. right?” before they had a chance to say anything. Some people in the stake would often joke that he was the most inspired man they had ever met because “God” was telling him who he was sending or retrieving “practically before he did it“. What they didn’t realize was that teenage girls were natural gossips, and if used for good, were a good source to find out the needs of the families in his Stake.
“Tara, I think we each should talk to your father before jumping to conclusions, but I do think you have every right to worry about how it looks.”
At this, Tara immediately sunk down in her seat, and silent tears began rolling down her cheeks.
Pres. Parkinson went on. “At least we know where he is. I will never forget the call I got from your mother two years ago.” He reached out to put his hand on his wife’s knee, “ I was still having a hard time dealing with the loss of our son, and your mother’s voice screaming ‘I can’t find Donald anywhere!’ sliced right through me. I was so afraid it would be an unhappy ending when we found his bike next to the gravel pit. When he wandered out of the trees, zipping up his pants, I think your mother was ready to put him up for adoption right then and there.”
Tara laughed at the memory of her brother coming out of the trees to find the whole neighborhood rushing toward him. “He started crying because he thought he was in trouble for peeing in the woods. When he saw Mom crying, he ran to her and promised never to use the bathroom outside again if Sheriff Perch wouldn’t arrest him. My mom was so relieved to find him safe, and it was so funny, she went into hysterics. We still tease her about the way her nose wiggles when she laughs too hard.”
Everyone in the car laughed along with her, and the conversations in the van turned to more pleasant things for the next two hours.
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As soon as everyone was settled in at the motel, Anne asked if she and Tara could shop alone.
“I don’t mind, as long as you check in with us on a regular basis,” her mother and father said almost in unison.
As Anne and Tara both laughed and gathered their purses, Mrs. Parkinson gave Anne some money, and said, “I want you to spend at least half of this to get birthday gifts for the next year. Don’t worry about mine, just make sure you get for your siblings, and your father. “
While they were walking toward the ZCMI mall, Tara couldn’t help thinking to herself, “If Anne’s family has enough money to buy a whole year’s worth of gifts, and still have some left, they must be a lot better off than I thought. I wish I had just one-tenth of what they have. Anne has loving, nurturing parents, she has her own room, and she and Jan have a car they only have to share with each other. Just the fact that they can afford to stay in a motel room for two nights in Salt Lake City after driving here in a van, and still have money to shop in the mall amazes me. I wonder why some people seem to have all the luck, and others struggle all their lives to get nothing?”
Just as Tara was starting to really feel sorry for herself, Anne yelled, “Hey Allen! Wait up!”
She started running toward a guy standing in front of the south gate of the temple grounds. Tara had a hard time keeping up, and by the time she got to them, Anne was hugging some guy with white hair and gorgeous blue eyes. Tara secretly hoped this guy was related to Anne, mostly so she could have him for herself, and so she would have a chance to get to know him over the next couple of days.
When he spoke, it was with a slight southern accent. “Who’ve ya got here, Annie? I’ve never had the pleasure have I?”
Tara smiled and held out her hand to introduce herself. “I am Anne’s friend, Tara Gilbert. We were just going shopping.” She blushed and couldn’t seem to get her mind or tongue to work. She was sure he thought she was a spaz or something. She walked to the gate and pretended to be interested in the old chapel while Anne and Allen were catching up on family gossip.
“I wasn’t sure you guys were going to be able to come this year. Didn’t Terence Keith get into trouble or something?” Anne asked.
“He ended up with community service and my parents had to pay for all the damages.” He looked at Tara and explained how his brother had been visiting his girlfriend, and they got into a fight, so he decided to “borrow” a pickup from the neighbor to get home. “He actually thought it would be okay to just leave the pickup in a parking lot near our home and call the owner to let him know where he left it. The problem is that T.K. is barely 16 and hasn’t driven much, so he ended sliding into a railroad transformer before he even got out of town. At that point he knew he was in trouble, so he just wanted to get home. He ended up wrecking two more cars before he gave up and went back to his girlfriend’s house. The police followed his footprints from the first vehicle he wrecked because he decided to cut across the field right there instead of going around the block. They probably would have never caught him if he hadn’t walked right past the evidence.”
They all three laughed and started walking toward the Crossroads Mall across the street. Tara had never been to the malls in Salt Lake before, so she was anxious to get inside. As they approached the doors, Allen jumped in front of her to open the door.
“M`ladies,” he said with a sweep of his hand. “Ma raised a gentleman.”
Anne laughed and replied, “You never opened a door for me in our life. In fact, if I remember right, I still have a few scars from the time you slammed my fingers in the door.”
She turned to Tara and whispered, “I think he likes you.”
Allen said, “She is just jealous because I was born 10 days before her and all the grandparents loved me first.”
“Your birthday is May 9th?” Tara asked. “I seem to be surrounded by May birthdays. My uncle is on the 2nd, you on the 9th, Roland on the 13th, Anne and Jan on the 19th, my father and Beth are on the 20th, my cousin on the 22nd, and my baby sister B.C. is on the 23rd.”
Allen asked what B.C. stood for, but at the thought of Roland, Tara had become a little depressed again and didn’t even hear the question. She realized that she found Allen attractive and hadn’t even thought about Roland for at least four hours. She didn’t know whether she felt guilty for actually feeling happy for a little while without him, or whether she felt guilty for putting her family, Roland’s family, Jess’s family, and Anne through so much heartache over someone she seemed to be able to get over the moment Allen appeared. She asked Anne where a bathroom was, and ran to it before she started crying.
A few moments later, Anne came in calling her name. “I told Allen to meet us downstairs at the food court. I didn’t tell him anything, but he pretty much figured out that you are upset about something. He is really worried.” She smiled wickedly and said, “I think you have knocked him for a loop, Tar’. He is always saying he will never get into a relationship before he finishes college, and he has been able to stay away from girls so well, that we began to wonder if he was gay or something.” Tara smiled a little as Anne went on. “He just told me he wants to take us out tomorrow night to see the lights on Temple Square and up to see the street where they tell the whole Christmas story from one house to the next. It is really pretty. I hope it is okay that I told him we would.”
Tara felt like she was betraying Roland, but she said, “I think that would be fun. I really like Allen. He seems like someone I could be friends with. Just friends, Anne. I still love Roland.”
With a knowing look, Anne just smiled and said, “Of course. I never said it had to be anything more than three friends going out for some fun.”
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Four hours later, while Allen helped them carry their bags back to the motel, Anne and Tara were comparing the two malls.
“I really like the Crossroads Mall better,” Tara was saying. “It has so many different stores, and there were even some I could afford there.”
“The dollar store in the ZCMI mall isn’t exactly expensive,” Anne shot back. “But I just like the ZCMI better because we go there more often, so I know how to get to the stores I like. I used to worry about getting lost in the Crossroads Mall.” Then she playfully slugged Tara’s shoulder.
“Yeah, yeah, so I got lost,” Tara laughed. “ I can’t believe I couldn’t find my way out of that department store. I’ve never seen a three-story store. We went in on the second floor, so when I got separated from you on the third floor, I didn’t think about the fact we had gone up an escalator, then when I finally found the exit into the mall, none of the stores looked familiar because we hadn’t been on that floor yet.”
By this time Tara, Anne and Allen were all laughing so hard Allen had to set the bags down to catch his breath. “I can’t believe you ended up having us paged. Not even Annie’s overprotective parents have done that.”
“I heard that, Allen Ray Brent,” said his aunt Susan from behind them. “I seem to recall you paging your mom in the Kmart when you were 13 years old because you were too lazy to look for her. The lady said, ‘We have a lost child here at the service desk. What’s your name honey?’ before you told her ‘never mind’ and went to find your mother yourself.”
Anne and Tara were laughing so hard they nearly wet their pants. As soon as Anne could stop laughing, she said, “Mom, that was mean to tell that story in front of Tara. Allen has been trying to act so mature and sophisticated all day, and you just blew it for him.”
Tara just said, “That’s okay. I saw right through his act when he got on the rocking horse in the toy store. I think it is cute that he isn’t afraid to be himself, even if he is just a little boy in a man’s body.”
Anne and her mother exchanged knowing glances, and everyone went into their separate rooms to get ready for the party.
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While the men went to set up chairs at the Stake Center where they were holding the party, Anne, Jan, and their mother teased Tara about Allen. “I know how hard it has been dealing with your feelings for Roland, but liking Allen doesn’t mean you are doing anything wrong.” Susan said. “This trip is only going to last a couple of days. You don’t have to marry Allen, just have some fun with someone of the opposite sex.”
Jan jumped in, “Yeah Tar’, if nothing else, you will learn that not all guys are jerks. Allen isn’t perfect by any means. He was quite mean to us when we were growing up. We usually wore our old worn out clothes at the family reunions so we wouldn’t get our good clothes stained. Allen would make fun of the holes in the knees and the fact that the younger boys wore hand-me-downs. Sometimes they would come straight from wrestling practice without showering, so Allen would comment on the fact that Idaho must not have modern plumbing. Or he would ride around on his dirt bike giving rides to everyone except us. I didn’t like him at all when we were younger.”
“Then I found out I had a heart problem,” Anne said. “and he was so nice to me after that. For awhile it just made me even madder at him. I didn’t want his pity.”
“Until we found out his best friend had one too, and somehow that made him look at us a little differently,” said Jan. “I guess we all realized that there are more important things than wearing the newest styles or who gets to ride the motorcycle more.”
“I’m not saying you should jump right into another relationship with Allen or anyone else at this point,” said Susan. “I just wish you could have some fun the next couple of days, and Allen is a good boy. He won’t play with your emotions the way your boy did. He just wants to get to know you a little better before he goes back to Tennessee and you go back to Idaho.”
“Did he say that?” Tara asked, a little too anxiously.
Anne laughed at her excitement and said, “He told me that he wishes he lived closer to Idaho. He tried to get me to give him your phone number and address, but I told him he had to ask you.”
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Tara met a lot of Anne’s relatives that night, but she kept her eyes on Allen all night. She couldn’t believe he could make her forget how depressed she was. She thought about Roland a few times during the night when someone would do or say something that reminded her of him, but most of the time it was negative memories, and by the next morning when Allen came to the door to invite Anne and her siblings to go skiing with him, Tara was already fantasizing about sitting in front of a fire in a ski lodge with him. She couldn’t wait to get up to the top so she could show Allen how good she was on the slopes. She had grown up near Grand Targhee, and took lessons from the time she could walk. Her parents couldn’t pay for them, but her friend Dominick’s dad worked there, so he taught her.
Unfortunately, the ski rental office was out of her size boot, so she had to get the next size bigger. By the time she reached the bottom of the hill for the third time, her feet were feeling very blistered. She decided to call it a day and went into the lodge for some hot cocoa.
Within five minutes, Allen came in and said, “I just don’t feel like skiing today. The hill is a little too soft in spots and it really throws me off.”
Tara pretended to believe him and asked if he wanted some of her cocoa to warm up.
He smiled wickedly and said, “I have a better idea,” as he put his hands down the back of her coat. They started wrestling around a little, tickling each other and getting snow off the bottom of their shoes to throw at each other.
When Anne and her brother Bart came around the corner of the lodge and found them out of breath, Anne gave Tara a knowing look, and Bart challenged Allen to a race down “Dead Man”.
The guys took off, and Anne started singing, “Tara and Allen sitting in a tree . . . ” like a little kid.
Tara didn’t care. She had never felt this happy in her life. Allen had a way of making her feel like a little kid inside, while bringing very grown-up feelings to the surface too. Tara was a little scared of those feelings because she knew they weren’t ever going to lead to anything except heartache. She had learned that the hard way.
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Anne was still teasing after they got back to the motel. Every little while she would bring up Allen and tell Tara things about his past. All the stories were about how honest he was or how compassionate, etc. Tara knew what Anne was trying to do, and she just kept pretending she wasn’t interested in anything more than having fun for a couple of days and going home. In her heart, though, Tara didn’t know how she was going to handle losing two guys in such a short time. She didn’t want to say goodbye to Allen the next day.
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At 7pm on the dot, Allen was waiting in the pickup to take Tara and Anne to Christmas Story Lane.
Anne suddenly said she was not feeling well, and told Tara not to disappoint Allen by backing out. Tara pretended to be mad, but secretly she was glad to have him to herself.
When she climbed in the passenger side door that Allen was holding open for her, she heard Eddie Rabbit singing “I Love a Rainy Night”.
“Oh no,” she thought, “not another guy who loves country.”
Her first boyfriend had been an Alabama fan, and she still heard the songs running through her head sometimes.
When Allen got in, he took the tape out and apologized. “My dad loves country. I forgot that was in there. I had something better in mind.”
He put in a tape with heavy metal ballads on it, but they didn’t sound like the original artists. Before Tara could ask about it, he told her, “ T.K. and his friends are trying to start a band, and this is a tape of them.” Tara was impressed. They weren’t as good as the groups that really sang the songs, but they sounded good.
“Bobby, Dennis and Mark all play instruments, so T.K. sings most of the songs, but when Bobby sings, he could bring tears to your eyes. He has a real gift. Have you heard of Aaron Neville? He sounds a lot like him.”
As they drove up through the avenues above Salt Lake, Tara listened to the group play everything from “Beth” to “Stairway to Heaven”. Somewhere along the way, Allen reached over and put her hand inside his. After they listened to the Christmas songs and saw all the displays, beginning with the angel coming to Mary and ending with the Wise Men kneeling to worship the Christ Child, Allen asked if she was hungry.
“I am starving!” Tara exclaimed, surprised that he hadn’t heard her stomach growling. “I haven’t eaten anything since the hot cocoa at the lodge.”
“I wanted to apologize for that,” Allen said. “Bart said it was a little forward of me to just put my hand down the back of your coat like that. He thinks you might have thought I was being a little too forward. If I offended you, I am sorry. I am just so used to wrestling around like that with my cousins and I forgot for a moment that you were practically a stranger.”
Tara removed her hand from his, and put her hand on his shoulder. “I wasn’t offended at all. I kinda liked it. I have learned how to take care of myself if I think a guy is moving too fast. I would have let you know if you were out of line.”
Allen reached up and took her hand in his again. “I am glad to hear you say that. There is just something about you that makes me feel like we have known each other forever. I have been very careful not to get attached to a girl before my mission and college, but I think I could get attached to you very easily. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since you ran into the bathroom yesterday. When I saw how hurt you looked, I hurt for you. “
He blushed a little, and changed the subject. “So, where would you like to eat? Money’s no object, as long as you don’t order anything more than $20.”
Tara laughed and told him she had never been to Salt Lake, so she didn’t know where to go. When she told him she liked pasta, his eyes lit up.
“I know the perfect place on Trolley Square. ‘The Spaghetti Factory’ is my favorite place to go when we come here. I was afraid you would say you wanted to go to Sizzler or something. I hate eating anything that bleeds.”
Tara had never heard it put that way before, but she agreed. “I hate meat too. I will eat a fast food burger once in a while, but only because I suspect they don’t use real meat.” She marveled at how much she was beginning to like Allen.
He was just beginning to be perfect in her eyes, when he said, “Remind me to check the timing belt when we get back to the motel. I think it is a little off.”
Tara joked, ”Are you a mechanic in your spare time or something?”
“Not yet, but I will be when I finish school,” he replied. “I have been helping my dad with his business for a few years now. I mostly do the body work and detailing right now, but I hope to have a business of my own someday. I painted this pickup myself. What do you think of the color? It’s called Ford Blue.”
While he was going on and on, obviously proud of himself, Tara couldn’t help thinking about the irony of him wanting to be a mechanic, just like Roland. “Beth is gonna love this,” she thought to herself.
The waitress was glad to see them go by the time they finished their meal. Allen started talking with a bad accent that was a cross between Pepe’ LePeu and Gomer Pyle, which got Tara laughing so hard she shot pop out through her nose. Then he told the waitress Tara was deaf, so ‘could she sign the menu for her‘. The waitress asked why she couldn’t just read the menu, and Allen whispered, “She is from Idaho; they don’t know how to read there.” Tara hit him, giving away the fact that she could hear him, and the waitress left without taking their order.
When they finally got their food, Allen asked if he could get some ‘catch up’ for his fettuccine. The waitress pointed out that there was marinara sauce on it, but Allen insisted that he liked it better with ‘catch up’. She said she would check on it, and as soon as she left, they started laughing again. She came back without any and Allen said, “That’s okay. I decided I would try it without, and you were right. It is good just like it is. Thank you.” To Tara, he said, “Wait until I take this home to Rufus. He loves the doggie bags I bring him.”
Tara started laughing again, and had to ask where the ladies room was. When she came back, Allen had paid the bill and was waiting for her. They went back to the motel to park the pickup and walked to Temple Square.
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The lights on Temple Square were the most beautiful display Tara had ever seen. Allen held her hand as they walked around and by the time they got back to the motel, he had his arm around her shoulders. At the door to her room, he hesitated before asking, “Would you mind if I kissed you?”
Tara put her arms around his neck and closed her eyes as he leaned down to put his lips to hers. He did it so gently, that Tara opened her eyes just a crack to make sure it wasn‘t just the wind. He started to straighten back up, then kissed her one more time, deeper this time. Tara could smell his cologne, mixed with the smell of fabric softener and garlic. She thought to herself, “This is what love smells like", then burst out laughing at how ridiculous that sounded in her head.
Allen, not sure what she was laughing about, took a step back and looked at her with a puzzled look on his face. She covered by saying she had just remembered the look on the waitress’s face when she hit him after his joke about Idaho.
“I think she almost believed you until then,” she said, as she burst into laughter again.
Allen just said, “I guess we better get to bed. My family is leaving around six in the morning. Can I have your address and phone number so we can keep in touch?”
Tara pulled out the pamphlet she had picked up on Temple Square to give her information to him, then got his address, too.
For the rest of the night, Tara laid awake next to Anne, reliving every moment with Allen.
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At five in the morning, she heard voices outside and went to watch Allen and his mother pack up and leave. She wanted to go out and say goodbye, but she was afraid Mrs. Brent would disapprove, so she just watched from the window as they pulled out of the parking lot, and whispered, “I love you, Allen.”
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Around 8:00, Anne’s family was ready to leave, and Grandma Parkinson gave Susan a wind sock with a wrestler on it. It was attached to a digger link and Susan cried when she saw it.
Grandma said, “ I saw this in St. George and thought of Lee. Please put it next to his stone for me.”
Susan said she would, then hugged her mother-in-law. “See you this summer for the reunion?” she asked.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she replied, smiling. “You drive carefully, Bryce. I worry about you driving on these roads during the winter.”
“I will, Ma. I can’t drive more than 20 miles without one of them wanting to stop anyway, so I don’t even get up to the speed limit,” he said, winking at his family.
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Just as they were driving through Layton, Tara got up the courage to say, “I moved to Sugar after Lee died. I have heard bits and pieces about the accident, but I don’t really know what happened.” She saw the pain on everyone’s faces, and quickly said, “If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”
Jan was the first one to speak. “It was my fault.” When her family all chimed in with denials, she talked over them and explained. “I was hanging out with some kids from Fremont City, and the girl I was riding with got drunk. I hadn’t been drinking, but I didn’t have my license to drive after dark, so I was afraid to let her drive and afraid to drive myself. I called home, and Lee said he would come get me. As we were crossing Canyon Creek, a carload of my friends tried to pass us and sent us off the bridge.”
Susan took up the story. “ When the State Police came to the door, I knew something was wrong, but they insisted we wait for Bryce to get home.”
“In the meantime, I was returning from a District Conference and got detoured around an accident.” Pres. Parkinson said. “ I was hoping it wasn’t any of my stake members, so I tried to see past the emergency vehicles. The only car I could see was the Jeep Roy Stephens was driving. I got a little catch in my throat because I knew he was one of Jan’s friends, but the car didn’t seem to have much damage, and Jan was supposed to be with her mutual group that night. I wasn’t too worried because I thought it was just a minor accident. I was just going to keep going, but the Holy Spirit prompted me to stop. I pulled to the side of the road, and walked back to the bridge.”
Jan took over again, crying now, “I remember waking up on the side of the ravine, wondering how I got there. Somehow I was ejected from the car and didn’t go all the way to the bottom. I ended up with just a broken arm and thirty-two stitches in my head. Someone was calling to me and telling me not to move. I suddenly remembered what had happened and sat up to see where Lee ended up.” She paused to ask her mom for a tissue, then continued, “When I saw his car down in the ravine, I knew he was dead. I just laid back and screamed my lungs out. Then a fireman lowered himself to the ledge and after making sure I hadn’t injured my neck or back, he hooked me into a harness and I was pulled up to the top.”
President Parkinson continued, “I got as far as the Jeep before Sheriff Perch stopped me and asked me to walk over to his cruiser with him. As soon as I sat down, he informed me that Lee had gone off the bridge with Jan in the car. I think I was in shock at that moment, because I just got out of the car, and walked back to the Jeep. Roy had a pained look on his face, and I asked if he was okay. When he didn’t reply, I thanked him for stopping to help. He just turned and ran away. One of the girls that were with him came up to me and said, ’He didn’t mean to do it’ before she went to comfort Roy.” He smiled at his wife and went on. “I think one of the hardest things to get over was the fact that I just couldn’t get mad at Roy. It was a stupid thing for him to do, but it was just an accident. I tried so hard to find someone to blame, but I just couldn’t blame any of the kids involved that night. I had a serious talk with them all much later, and Amber, the girl that was supposed to take Jan home that night ended up trying to kill herself because she felt so guilty. I just was so mad that Lee was gone, and I couldn’t find anywhere to release it. There was no “bad guy”; just a lot of mixed up kids.”
“I was furious too,” said Jan. “At Roy, at Amber, but mostly at myself. My parents kept telling me I shouldn’t be hanging around with that crowd, but I didn’t listen. I was naive enough to think as long as I didn’t drink or smoke with them, it was okay. The saddest thing about that night was that Roy hadn’t been drinking. He was completely sober when he went around us like that. I hated him for so long.”
Jan paused to blow her nose, and Bart took over. “I was supposed to be in the car that night too. Lee asked me to ride with him, but I refused. He had just asked Shelley Hastings to marry him, and I wanted to be his best man. He told me he was going to ask her brother Neal instead, and I was mad. I felt guilty because the last words I said to him were, ‘Why don’t you ask your best man to go with you?’”
Tara was surprised to hear how much guilt the whole family seemed to feel over what she saw as all Roy’s fault. She couldn’t believe he was the one who caused the accident. Bart and Roy had both been on the wrestling team the year before, and seemed to be very supportive to each other. Bart didn’t treat him like the murderer that he was. She couldn’t help asking them all, “How could you forgive Roy? How can you watch him go on with his life and not be mad?”
Jared, who was only ten when Lee died, spoke for everyone. “We all reacted differently to what happened, but when Dad came home that night, he sent the police away, called us all together for a family prayer, and asked Heavenly Father to forgive us all for the bad feelings we were sure to experience in the days following the accident. He asked God to ease the pain and guilt that those involved in the accident would be feeling. I remember the first time I saw Roy after the accident, I was all ready to get mad as he came toward me, but honestly Tara, I was filled with the most intense love for him. I thought for a moment that he was Lee come back to life. I just stood there and stared at him for a moment, but I wanted to hug him.” Jared blushed and pretended to see something outside the window as tears came to his eyes.
Tara realized she was crying too. As she wiped her tears away, she caught Anne’s eye and they both smiled. “Can you imagine what Roy would have done if Jared hugged him?” Tara asked as she laughed a little.
Bart laughed a little too, then told her, “I did hug him once. We were ready to start a wrestling match just two weeks after the accident, and he had been avoiding me. I was kinda glad he did, because I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t want him to think it was okay that he had caused my brother’s death, but I didn’t hate him either. I finally cornered him in the bathroom as he was coming out of a stall. He looked at me like he was afraid I was going to kill him, so I backed off a little and said, ‘I don’t hate you’. He started to cry right there in the boy’s bathroom, with all these jocks standing around and said, ‘You should. I do.’ I just couldn’t stand to hear him talk that way, so I walked over to him and picked him up in a hug like I would Jared, and just kept saying ‘I don’t hate you’ over and over until he pulled away. I still held onto his shoulders, looked him in the eye, and said ‘Lee was my best friend from the time I was born, and I will miss him every day of my life, but I will see him again, and getting mad at you will not bring him back. I don’t hate you.’ Then I walked away, and from that time on, we have been able to joke around and be comfortable with each other.”
“So he was never charged with murder or anything? Was he punished at all?”
Tara asked.
“I knew the memory of what he had done was going to be the worst punishment anyone could give him,” Pres. Parkinson said. “The judge at his hearing didn’t agree. I wrote a letter to the judge, the police department, and each of the families involved asking them to consider our family. We didn’t want to make Lee’s death the end of five other lives. Amber had already tried to kill herself and was in BHC, and Roy and the three girls that were riding with him had just gotten back to school and were starting to have a somewhat normal life. I didn’t want the death of our son and brother to be prolonged in any way.”
Jan said, “When he first asked us to sign the bottom of the letter, I was still a little mad and I refused. I wanted everyone to remember my brother was dead forever. Then I found out what Amber had done, and I felt so bad for her I agreed to sign. My dad was right. The longer we pointed fingers or let the judge punish any of the kids, the longer it would take for all of us to heal.”
Anne, who had stayed silent through most of the discussion quietly said, “If we had only known how hard it would be once the blame had stopped . . . ”
Her whole family nodded their agreement.
“When the drama died down, all we had was a family full of grief and guilt pretending to live like a normal family. We all just went through every day absorbed in ourselves and until my dad had his breakdown, we didn’t even know that we weren’t the only ones hurting.”
Tara was shocked, “Breakdown? You had a breakdown Pres. Parkinson? I thought if anyone knew for sure how to deal with death, you would.”
He laughed a little and said, “That was part of the problem, Tara. I knew I would see my son again, so I knew that wasn’t the problem. I didn’t feel any anger toward the boy and girls involved in the accident, so I knew that wasn’t the problem. I knew my family needed my love and support more than any other time, yet I felt so completely useless and powerless for the first time in my life. With all my wisdom . . . ” (the whole family laughed at the mention of wisdom, including him) “ . . . I couldn’t bring back my son, I couldn’t stop the pain and guilt everyone was feeling, and most of all I couldn’t stop feeling betrayed by my beliefs. I had grown up in the church, and I had always thought that if you know the plan of salvation, you won’t feel grief. I learned I had been mistaken about that. The church doesn’t promise you won’t grieve at all, we just know there is still hope for a future with our loved ones. We still have to learn how to deal with the hole left in our lives. I think the talk my wife wrote a year after the accident put the point across very well. Susan, what was it you said?”
“I don’t remember, Bryce. It has been so long. Something about losing a limb or something.”
“I remember,” Tara said. “I think it was one of the first Sundays after I moved here. You said everyone had to grieve in their own way and in their own time. You said it was like when someone loses a leg. Some people recover quickly, and don’t even need a wheelchair or crutches to get around. They just hop from place to place and adapt. Other people are more overwhelmed by the loss and need intensive therapy and may always have to have a crutch to get by. You said grief for the loss of a person, a pet or a relationship was the same. Some people can replace a puppy and feel better. Some can get remarried after a death or a divorce and be happier than ever before. Some need therapy or the crutch of antidepressants for a while or maybe even for the rest of their lives to function. You said no way of doing it is right or wrong for everyone. Each situation is different and each person is different, so each grief period is different.”
Pres. Parkinson laughed and said, “ And I thought the youth of today weren’t paying attention in church.”
Everyone laughed, then Tara remembered something else she had heard in that talk. “You mentioned a young woman you knew who had lost her fiancee in an accident and had even asked her bishop if it was possible to still be sealed to him. Was that Shelley?”
“Yes,” Susan replied. “She did get special permission to be sealed to Lee, and for a long time she fasted and prayed about it. After nearly six months she felt the Lord wanted her to be sealed to someone here on earth, and she didn’t go through with it. She is dating a wonderful young man now. He had some Word of Wisdom problems as a teen, and even spent some time in jail for a drunk driving accident that injured his best friend. He repented and cleaned his life up when he was 22, and served a full time mission. Now he is a police officer in Oakley, running the DARE program in the local school district. He knows how much she loved Lee, and he secretly told me he is going to propose to her by taking her to his grave and asking Lee for her hand. I thought it was a little morbid, but it sounded so much like something Lee would get a kick out of, I knew it was perfect.”
Anne said, “I totally forgot! Bryan called just before we left for Salt Lake to ask if they can stay with us around the 20th of January. He is planning a special night in Sugar City and he wants us to be a part of it. Do you think he is going to propose then?”
That would be so neat if he proposed on the 19th or the 22nd for Lee’s birthday or Mom’s birthday,” Jared said.
“He might want to have a day that isn’t linked to anyone else, Jared,” his mother replied. “It must be strange to be thrown into a family that is only considered family because your girlfriend used to be engaged to their son. He fits right in, and he seems to be okay with the situation, but I don’t think we need to be part of everything they do.”
“But Mom,” Jared said, “he was the one who said he wanted us to be part of it. If it bothered him, he wouldn’t come see us every time he is in town. Sometimes he comes even when Shelley isn’t with him. He even told me he wishes he had met Lee. I reminded him that if Lee was alive, Shelley wouldn’t have fallen in love with him, but he said that was okay, as long as she was happy. He said he would have fought Bart and Neal for the Best Man spot, and made them compete for ring bearers or something.” He grinned at Bart, who in turn tried to swat his ear.
Everyone laughed and Mrs. Parkinson said, “I still think we should prepare ourselves for the inevitable. When they get married and start their own family, they aren’t going to want to split their time between their extended families and ours. I am sure we will always be a part of their lives, but it certainly won’t be as much as we are now. Don’t pressure them to include us just because of Lee.”
Pres. Parkinson squeezed his wife’s hand, reminding Tara of the way Allen held her hand the night before. “I have talked to Bryan and Shelley both about not letting Lee get in the way of anything they do, and they both have assured me that Lee was what brought them into our lives, but they stay because they love us, not out of guilt or some debt they owe Lee. I agree with you, Susan. We shouldn’t expect them to be part of our lives forever, but I think they will be.”
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