Harlow

 

 

Nursing homes make me nervous. They have a strange smell, a combination of medication and ointment. Jell-O. Soup. Sick. The worst part is that they feel like hospitals, not homes. Every room I pass has an elevated hospital bed with side rails at the ready. Shrunken bodies lay small and delicate under the dappling sunlight. Heavy quilts and thick robes are draped over their legs, their armor against the cold despite the tropical heat inside the joint.

I can’t picture Pops here. He’s too much. Vibrant and alive like no man I’ve ever known. A huge heart that beat for me when mine tried to give out. He was my sun on every cloudy day. My light in the dark of a closed closet. No air. No sound. No life.

“He’s in this one here,” the short, chubby nurse tells me. She’s giving her pink and blue polka dot scrubs a work out with her butt and her breasts, both stretching the fabric to its limits.

Pops probably loves it, the dirty old coot.

She opens the door to a room on our right, leading me inside. It’s hotter than the hallway was. Along with the heat, we’re immediately hit with the blare of the TV on the wall. It’s broadcasting a football game. College, from the size of the O-Line.

“Russ, you have a visitor,” the nurse sings happily to him.

“Josh?” Pops rasps. “What’s he doing here on a Wednesday?”

“It’s Friday, honey, and it’s not Josh.”

I step further into the room, past the walls of a small closet blocking the bed from my view. He’s sitting up in the middle of it; a mound of pillows at his back and a black remote in his hand. When he spots me, his jaw drops nearly to his sunken chest.

“Hey, Pops,” I greet him quietly.

I’m glad my voice is steady because I don’t feel it inside. The sight of him is a shock I wasn’t ready for. He’s tiny. The broad shoulders I remember are narrowed and bony, his skin hanging off of him like dough draped over a skeleton. His face is gaunt, his skin sallow. His hair is almost entirely gone. Only his Navy tattoos and his brilliant blue eyes are familiar, and even those are faded and tired.

He blinks at me, stunned. “Harlow.”

“I hope it’s okay that I’m here,” I tell him nervously. “I probably should have called first.”

“What are you talking about? Get in here. Give me a hug.”

I smile with relief, releasing a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. I step past the nurse to lean over the bed and into Pops’ embrace. He’s smaller than he was three years ago but the hug is surprisingly strong.

“It’s so good to see you,” I whisper, my heart swelling painfully.

“You too, kiddo,” he hums in my ear. “How long has it been?”

“Three years.”

“Three years,” he repeats on an amazed whisper. “Too long.”

“Way too long,” I laugh, standing up straight to smile down at him. “That’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

“That’s alright. You’re young. You have a life to live.”

“I should have made time,” I insist. “I’m sure Josh is here all the time.”

“Twice a week, but Josh doesn’t have a life.”

I laugh at his joke but in the back of my mind I’m thinking how wrong he is. Josh has a very interesting life. One that is probably becoming more colorful right this second.

I was worried about leaving him alone at the club this morning. I was even more worried I’d run into him before I got out of there. I can’t shake the memory of that kiss, no matter how hard I try. When I curled up in bed with Devo last night, he was already asleep. I followed quickly and easily after him. No remorse. No guilt. I feel worse about that than I do about the kiss.

Do I owe Devo better? Probably, yeah. But it’s kind of hard to hold onto that point of view when I know he’s out two-stroking half the county the second he gets out of my sight.

Pops looks at the nurse, gesturing to me. “This is the girl I’ve told you about. Isn’t she beautiful?”

The nurse smiles. “She’s gorgeous, Russ.”

“She and Josh were best friends as kids. You couldn’t keep ‘em apart.” He looks up at me, grinning. “When was the last time you saw Josh? He’s going to the college now. He’s the first person in our family to get past high school.”

“I saw him yesterday, actually. And the day before. He told me about college. I’m so proud of him.”

“I wish I could have seen you go to college too. You’re a brilliant girl, Harlow.”

I shake my head adamantly, sinking into the ugly yellow chair next to his bed. “No. Not me. I’m not book smart like Josh.”

“And he’s not street smart like you.”

“I think you’d be surprised by how street smart he is.”

Pops blows a raspberry, dismissing the idea. “Josh likes computers and electronics. He can’t do anything with a motor. He can’t even change a tire. But you…”

I grin slyly. “I swapped out the engine on a ’67 ‘Cuda last year.”

“You see what I’ve been saying?” Pops asks the nurse. “Beautiful and smart. She’s a dangerous girl.”

“She’s the whole package,” the nurse replies patiently. She checks her watch with a wince. “I have to finish my rounds but I’ll back to check on you two in an hour, okay?”

“Sure.”

I wait until she’s gone to open up my purse. From inside, I pull out two tall, gleaming silver cans.

Pops’ eyes light up when he sees them. “You angel,” he breathes.

“I’m guessing beer is contraband in here.”

“You knew it or you wouldn’t have snuck those in the way you did.”

“This isn’t going to send you into a coma, is it?” I ask, genuinely curious. I want to give him a treat, not kill him. “Can you mix this with your meds?”

He holds out his hand to me, waiting eagerly for the can. “Only one way to find out.”

I grin as I pop the top for him. It cracks loudly through the room, sending up the scent of hops between us. That smell and his eyes and the sound of football on the TV puts me in a time warp. I’m immediately sent back to when I was a kid, parked on the rug in the middle of his living room, munching on popcorn and listening to him and Josh go on and on about their favorite players. I like football but they love it. Like, deeply and as devoutly as some people love God or good coffee.

Pops takes a small sip of his brew. His eyes light up like a kid eating candy when it hits his tongue. “Dammit, that’s good stuff.”

“Of course it is,” I laugh as I pop my own top, settling back in my chair. “Would I bring you, of all people, skunk beer?”

“You could, but I’m glad you didn’t.”

I use my beer to point to the TV. “Who’s playing?”

“UCLA and Washington are supposed to be playing, but it’s the second half and Washington hasn’t shown up yet.”

“If they haven’t by now, they probably never will.”

“It’s that UCLA quarterback. Domata. He’s killing them.”

“Also, Washington sucks,” I remind him plainly.

He smiles. “Yeah, there is that.”

We watch in a comfortable silence as the Huskies march the ball down the field to the forty-yard line. That’s as far as they get. After that it’s one down after another without gaining a yard before they lose possession to the Bruins.

“Did you marry that boy yet?” Pops asks suddenly.

I chuckle in surprise, shaking my head. “No. I’m not married.”

“What was his name?”

“Devo.”

“No, his full name. It’s Russian, isn’t it?”

“Erik . It’s a mouthful. Devo is easier.”

“Are you still together?”

“Three years running. But he’s not exactly the marrying type. I don’t think I am either.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Is it?” I ask uncertainly. I turn the tab on my beer, spinning it around backwards. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’d be good at being married.”

“You’re good at everything you put your heart to, Harlow. And that’s what marriage is. It’s pouring your heart into everything.”

I force a small smile. “It sounds exhausting.”

“It is.” He grins at me sideways. “You have no idea what you’re missing.”

“How long were you and Carla married?”

“Thirty-seven years. And I would have killed for just one more.”

“I wish I could have met her.”

“I do too. She would have loved you.”

“I don’t know about that. I’m not easy to love.”

“Don’t start with that,” he warns me gently. “I won’t listen to it. And neither should you.”

I bite my lip, nodding my head slowly. I’m trying to breathe, trying to remember how, but it gets tough when I think about my dad. And I think about him a lot. He slips into my consciousness constantly, his influence molding my day minute by minute. I can’t look at my own face without seeing the distortion he swore was there. The defects that made me ugly and unlovable. Even sitting here with Pops, a man who has never been anything but supportive and loving to me, I think I’m shit on his shoe. I don’t deserve his love. Or Devo’s. Or Bear’s. I definitely don’t deserve Josh’s.

“Lynn talked like that a lot when she was young,” Pops comments wistfully. I’m not used to the tone; Pops doesn’t talk about his daughter very much. Basically never. “I don’t know where she got the idea that she wasn’t worth anything. Carla and I never talked to her that way. I think it was boys. A string of bad boyfriends who made her feel small. Maybe that’s why she ran…” he trails off, his voice fading. His eyes tightening. He clears his throat roughly before continuing in a stronger tone. “She made mistakes. We all do.”

I want to ask what happened. I have an idea. The whole town has an idea of what went down, but no one knows for sure. Not even Josh. All we know is that his mom, Lynn, ran away with her Uncle David days after Josh was born. Lynn didn’t list a father on his birth certificate. She wasn’t seeing anyone when she got pregnant, no one that anyone had heard about. So what’s coincidence? What’s rumor? What’s speculation and what’s real?

Lynn left behind a lot of questions. A lot of shade for Josh to grow up under, and still he blossomed. Still he bloomed into this massive, magnificent tree rising above the bullshit and the whispers that follow him wherever he goes. He’s stronger than I could ever dream of being and I think it doesn’t matter who his parents are. He would have been better than them no matter what, so it’s not worth wondering. And even if I knew, it would never change the way I look at him.

“Yeah, I know where my issues come from,” I confirm, taking a long drink of my beer. It bubbles up inside the can under my nose, bursting ticklish against my skin. “No mystery there.”

“Have you seen him lately?”

“Not really. I’ve spotted him around town but I avoid him. I haven’t been back to the neighborhood since my eighteenth birthday.”

“He asked me if I knew where you were a few months after you left.”

“Really?” I ask, my chest clenching violently. I feel instantly afraid, like my dad is in the room. “What’d you tell him?”

“I told him to get the fuck off my lawn.”

I can’t help but smile, even as my body dissolves in irrational fear. “Do you think he knows where I am?”

“The whole town knows where you are, Harlow. He could find you if he wanted to, but he’s a coward. He’s not going anywhere near that club.”

“Good. That was the plan.”

“Is that why you ran off with that boy?”

“Devo,” I remind him patiently.

“Right. Devo. Sorry.”

He’s not sorry. He doesn’t like Devo. He doesn’t like ‘hoodlums’, and it makes me wonder what he’d do if he found out about Josh’s business. What would he say if he knew where Josh was right now?

“I ran off with Devo because I wanted to be with him,” I answer his original question.

“Do you love him?”

“I better,” I laugh. “We’ve been together three years.”

“Does he love you?”

“He says he does.”

“And you believe him?”

“Why would he lie to me?”

Pops shrugs, sipping his beer, his eyes on the television. He doesn’t like my answers because they’re not answers. They’re crap and I know it but I’m standing by it because it’s all I’ve got. In truth, I love Devo. I’m not in love with Devo, I never have been, but that’s not what he and I are about. He’s been a shield for me. A warrior who swooped in and stole me from the dragon’s keep. I’m grateful for that. For the fact that he’s stayed with me all these years, bringing me into the club and giving me a family to feel safe with. And, yes, he sleeps around, but they all do. Hyde cheats on his wife all the time. Raw was never exclusive with Ava’s mom. Only Bear keeps a different code. As far as I know, he’s stayed faithful to Angela for their entire marriage. It’s an impressive feat and it’s nice for them, but I’d feel weird if Devo was that deeply devoted to me because I absolutely am not that deeply devoted to him.

Obviously.

“Josh is leaving next year.”

I start, looking at Pops’ profile. “He is?”

“He has a scholarship to MIT to study his computer engineering. He’s going to get his Masters.”

My body prickles with points of adrenaline, revolting against the thought. “He didn’t mention it.”

“He’s quiet about it. I think he has big plans to sneak out of town in the middle of the night someday. And I doubt he’ll ever come back.”

“He wouldn’t leave you behind.”

Pops chuckles mirthlessly. “He hates this town, kiddo. He hates it so much, I’d wager he’d leave us both behind if he had to. And that’s saying something.”

I reach across the bed to take Pops’ hand in mine. His skin is paper dry, soft and wrinkled. Bleached white under the caramel brown tan of my skin over his. But it feels familiar. It feels solid, despite his size, and I think Pops is a constant I can count on.

I smile at him warmly. “I’ll always be here, Pops. Always.”

I expect him to smile back. To look relieved.

Instead, he just looks sad. “I know you will, Harlow.”