The Homecoming

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“Oh, shut up and get off me!”

He rolled off her and sat on the grass. He pulled his knees up and leaned his arms on them. “Jesus, what an asshole I must’ve been.”

Iris sat up. “Yes to that.”

“Iris, seriously, I’m sorry. I took advantage of you. Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head and a couple of tears slipped out of her eyes. She brushed them away impatiently. In the moment, it had been like a dream come true! “Not physically. I think you were just moving on instinct and I didn’t stop you. I didn’t realize you didn’t know what you were doing. Or who you were doing it with,” she added with a bit of a choked voice. She looked away.

“Oh, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I must’ve known who I was with.” He shook his head. “I guess that explains the weird dreams.”

“What dreams?”

“Dreams about... Let’s save that discussion. It’s pretty embarrassing. Are you sure I didn’t force myself on you? Like a drunk seventeen-year-old moron?”

“No,” she said weakly. “I must admit I had stupidly been waiting forever for you to discover all those skinny, acrobatic cheerleaders weren’t right for you and you belonged with me, so...” She shrugged. “Thus, my broken heart. Then my anger. Maybe we can get over this now that you know. And you can leave me alone.”

“You’re sure I didn’t hurt you?”

She just shook her head.

He looked down at his knees. “It must have been thrilling for you,” he said sarcastically. “A teenage drunk climbing all over you.”

“Yeah, well...I’d always heard the first time is awful.”

“Jesus, Iris. I don’t know how I’m going to make this up to you. Sometimes it feels like every time I turn around I have one more stupid move to make amends for. This one is really going to take some thought.”

“Yeah? Well, listen, Seth. Let me make it easy for you because I have thought about it. It would be best if you just let it go, get on with your life and stop expecting me to be that girl again. I’m not, okay? I’m not your best friend anymore. I’m not going to be the one to pull your fat out of the fire every time you’re in trouble. You’re on your own. Just leave me alone.” She pulled herself to her feet.

“I don’t blame you for being angry,” he said.

“It wasn’t just the prom, you stupid shithead,” she said quietly, looking down at him. “It was everything. You used me as your tutor, your counselor so you could talk about your problems with all the pretty, popular girls, your playmate if you were bored. That night you said I was the only girl you’d ever really loved and then you just used me and tossed me out the next day.”

“Iris—”

“I’m over it, Seth. I’m over you. If you think I’m ever going to risk that kind of hurt again, you’ve lost your mind.”

Then she walked away and didn’t look back.

Five (#ulink_20c74df0-143c-51ec-a586-7953458386a4)

Iris wiped her eyes and blew her nose. She looked out her kitchen window and there he sat on the ground beside the lawn mower like the big dumb ox he was. Well, she was glad it was out. Now Seth knew everything that had pissed her off. Now he could go away because she was over it. Over him.

She made sure her doors were locked, then she threw herself facedown on her bed and smothered her cries in the pillow. She let all of the emotion out.

Before too long she heard the mower start up again. It ran for about ten minutes, then stopped and she was enveloped in silence. But the noise inside her head was deafening.

This was good, right? Getting it all out, all of it. Venting all the hurt and anger and feelings of betrayal. Because he hurt me so much. He’s been such an ignorant fool!

He’d been seventeen and stupid. And you were seventeen and not much smarter, her thirty-four-year-old self added.

Well, of course that internal argument was going to happen—she was a social worker, a counselor to young people. Young people who made mistakes every day, some that were hard to recover from, very hard to move on from.

Iris didn’t turn on the TV or her stereo. She cleaned house, literally. She cleaned out cupboards, closets, washed clothes, scoured the bathroom and the kitchen, threw away stuff in the refrigerator, filled bags and boxes with things she’d been meaning to get rid of for a long time. Clothes for donation were bagged, kitchen items that had been around since she was a teenager were boxed up—some to donate and some to pitch. She folded her underwear into little squares, rolled her towels and put them in an attractive wicker basket, changed the sheets, washed the rugs that fit into the washing machine. When the sun came out and the afternoon grew warm, she opened the windows to air out the house.

On Saturday night she had a glass of wine with her light dinner and put on an old movie—one of her favorite old chick flicks that always made her cry. She’d learned a long time ago that if there was a good cry growing in your chest and throat, a nice tearjerker could get it out of you without forcing you to dwell on the real issues.

What if she’d gotten pregnant from that spontaneous drunk coupling? she wondered. What would they have done? Would they have talked about it? Gotten married or something? Gotten married and given up their educations? Gotten married and maybe missed that fast car that had ended a prestigious football career? Gotten married because they had to and divorced later because Seth hadn’t been ready to be a husband and father, only a famous football player?

As it had happened, her period had started right away and she’d devoted herself to avoiding Seth. About a week after his reconciliation with Sassy, Seth had approached her. “You have any plans to go to the prom?” he’d asked.

She’d looked at him in horror. “You know I don’t, you imbecile. You said you wanted to take me, then you said you couldn’t because you made up with Sassy.”

“Hey, I would’ve taken you, Iris! I’m sorry, but I didn’t know you’d take that so seriously. I was just pissed.”

“Good for you,” she had said. “And now I’m just pissed. I hope you have an awful time!”

“What do you want me to do, Iris? Tell Sassy I can’t take her and take you instead?”

“I wouldn’t go with you if you were dying and it was part of your Make-a-Wish list!”

That was so vulgar of her, she thought. She’d been that outraged. It wasn’t like Iris to make cruel remarks like that. Although they hadn’t talked about it, she’d heard he had a miserable time at prom and the homecoming couple broke up again. That made her perversely happy.

Iris didn’t talk to anyone all weekend. She didn’t leave her now sparkling house until three o’clock on Sunday afternoon when she drove to a donation bin and unloaded her stuffed car into it. Then she filled the Dumpster behind the flower shop with all the trash she’d cleaned out of her little house.

That night she had a long soak in the tub. She lit candles in the bathroom. She put on soft, clean pajamas, curled up on the couch and got out one of her favorite books of inspirational quotes—something to buoy her spirits and put her back on track. After an hour of skimming she found one that spoke to her. Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies—Nelson Mandela.

“Enough,” she said aloud. “That’s enough. Moving on now!”

She closed the book and went to bed. She slept soundly for ten hours.

* * *

Seth wasn’t nearly busy enough all week to distract him from thinking about Saturday in Iris’s backyard. There was no way he was ever going to remember the events she described, but he couldn’t help but wonder how closely her description fit some of his dreams. He had dreamed of making love to her in the flower van. It had been clumsy and embarrassing in his dream. From what he gathered, it had been so in reality, as well.

There had been other dreams about her, but they’d been fantasy dreams that took place in ideal settings—rooms with satin sheets, forest glens covered in silky grass, even on the hoods of sports cars. He had enjoyed those. There might’ve been a dozen starring Iris in as many years but since he’d had lots of dreams about lots of women, he hadn’t thought the ones with Iris had any real significance. In the past seventeen years he’d only had a couple of serious relationships. They hadn’t lasted too long nor had they been very fulfilling. He’d had plenty of dates but the right woman had always eluded him. Probably because she was back in Thunder Point, mad as hell at him.

He saw Iris twice that week. Once, he’d seen her riding her bike to school on a sunny morning, waving and laughing with the kids. The other time he’d seen her from his office as she went into the diner. He had lacked the courage to follow her in there and try to talk to her. No, he wasn’t going near that until he knew what he was doing. And he didn’t. Not yet.

The following weekend it was time for him to head to Seattle to visit his friend Oscar Spellman. He was driving up on Friday afternoon, would spend Saturday with Oscar and return to his home in Bandon on Sunday, ready to take on Thunder Point on Monday morning. The timing for a long drive alone in the car couldn’t be better.

Friday night was clear and the weekend was sunny, not so unusual on the coast of Oregon in October but in Washington it was a treat. All the way up the freeway he’d been thinking. Remorse is a lot of hard work and boy, had he done a lot of hard work.

He’d been drafted by the Seahawks when he was in his first year of college. He heard they’d been surprised to find him available, but they wanted him before he got hurt because he was fast and strong and there was a very good chance he’d make them money. He got himself an agent to negotiate a good deal. His first pro year, during which he’d played a little bit, he made four hundred thousand dollars, all of which he spent on taxes and a late-model Ferrari sports car. Considering he’d never driven anything but his dad’s old clunker truck, he really thought he was somebody. And one night, right before training camp for the Seahawks started, he took his new car out for a long drive along some Washington back roads. A miserable old Chevy sedan blew through a stoplight in front of Seth and Seth couldn’t stop. He tried to avoid a collision but his car basically T-boned that old Chevy.

That was Oscar.

It was determined that Oscar had fallen asleep at the wheel after working a double shift at a manufacturing plant near Seattle. He was a forty-five-year-old machinist with a wife, Flora, and two kids. There had been two witnesses stopped at the same crossroad who could validate it. Oscar had been responsible for the accident. But Seth had been going eighty in a fifty-five zone. Ironically, he had just slowed down around the curve. He’d probably been doing ninety, maybe more. He was cited for speeding.

Both drivers were rushed to the hospital after being cut out of their cars. Seth hit Oscar’s car on the driver’s side. Seth and Oscar were both gravely injured, but Seth recovered. It took a long time, several surgeries and a lot of determination, but Seth pounded his way through the worst of it. Oscar’s spinal cord was severed.

About a year after the accident lawyers for Oscar Spellman filed a civil suit alleging that the injuries to Oscar would not have been as catastrophic if Seth had been traveling at the speed limit, if he had exercised caution while entering the intersection. All Seth had left was his signing bonus, but it was huge to a kid from Thunder Point...or a crippled black man and his family from Seattle. Seth’s league insurance had paid for his hospitalization and rehab, but Oscar, a husband and father, was going to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, unable to work, without the use of his limbs, without income. And all for the thrill of seeing how fast that little silver car could go.

“Don’t worry. We can win this,” Seth’s lawyer had said.

But that wasn’t a concern for Seth. “I don’t want to win it.”

He’d lost his education, his career, his savings, his potential to play sports all in one split second. All for a stupid mistake.

He’d visited Oscar for the first time about a year after the lawsuit. Seth was still walking with a cane, the scar on his face still bright pink. The first half-dozen visits had been really short and awkward, but then Oscar started to just sigh deeply whenever Seth appeared. “What the hell you doin’ back here, boy? Like I ain’t got enough trouble in my life?” he’d say.

Over time, Oscar regained the use of his left arm and hand. It was clumsy and not very strong or reliable, but he could feed himself and he could play checkers. He was a smart man and Seth taught him to play chess. Oscar had more time to learn about the game and practice than Seth did so the challenges became pretty one-sided with Oscar on the winning side.

“At least you have your mind,” Seth said. “Ever think of being grateful for that?”

“Ever think it might be a curse?” Oscar replied.

For the past dozen years Seth had been dropping in on Oscar and Flora every other month or so. He went to the graduations of Oscar’s kids and held a new grandchild. Seth always called ahead to make sure they weren’t having friends or family in. He didn’t want to be in the way. Oscar was sixty now and his health was rocky; just being confined to a wheelchair meant all kinds of medical problems chased him. He occupied the same motorized wheelchair with a neck brace that he’d been riding around in for years, but his kids and his church had fixed him up with some computer equipment so he could study, read, learn everything under the sun he wanted to know. With the fingers of his one good limb he could write and he had developed a whole network of friends outside the walls of his home.

Flora opened the door to Seth on Saturday morning. She’d mellowed a little over time and she’d grown beautiful in her maturity. She had help tending to Oscar from her son and daughter, and a nurse’s aide visited regularly to bathe him and exercise his limbs. Flora’s life was challenging but it wasn’t a torture of hard labor. It was safe to leave Oscar for a few hours at a time and she could take him places sometimes. When she saw Seth she smiled at him and he admired her handsome face. She was also sixty, but her face was smooth and unwrinkled. She kept her hair very short and black; she was trim and muscular, a vision both admirable and unfortunate to him. She had to work hard every day of her life.

She hugged him. “How you doin’, son?” she asked, her arms holding him sweetly.

“I’m getting by fine, Flora,” he lied. “You have somewhere to go? I can sit with the old boy for a few hours if you need a break.”