Page 6 of Townshipped
“Sawyer said butt and called me potato head,” Ashley says, throwing her arms around my sister’s hips.
“No tattling,” my sister says calmly. “Let’s tell on ourselves, not others.”
It’s a line my mom used on us, and something nostalgic rises up inside me hearing those words flow so easily out of my sister’s mouth. I may not be driven to rush out and find a wife, but I do have visions of fatherhood. I love being an uncle, but every time the kids come to my house, I’m left craving more.
I want to be the one helping with homework, throwing the ball, tucking them in at night, and not merely to pitch in as my sister raises her family.
“They did great,” I tell Karina. “Helped feed and muck and then we played Monopoly.”
“You’re the best,” she says.
“Hear that?” I shout to Trevor who is sitting in the family room with Lexi tucked under his arm. “I’m the best!”
“She just says that to keep up the free babysitting gig she’s got going with you,” Trevor answers back. “Ask my wife. I’m the best. No contest.”
Maybe it’s my mom’s not-so-subtle hinting, or the questions from the kids today. It could be the dream that won’t stop sporadically invading my sleep at night, but that word,wife, hits me in a different place today than usual.
Family dinner around the table where I ate most of my meals growing up is filled with laughter, and some serious conversation, which is usually broken up by either my niece or nephew.
We talk about Lexi’s due date, Trevor’s next assignment as a food critic, my parents’ plans to take a cruise this summer, and some new crops I’m planning to try on the farm as soon as the weather is right for tilling and planting.
“Has anyone heard from Uncle Mark and Aunt Deborah?” Trevor asks during a lull in the conversation.
My cousin Vanessa’s parents are caring for her children at their home in Michigan almost full-time right now. Vanessa struggles with excessive drinking and drug use. She has bouts of sobriety, but always seems to relapse after a stretch of abstinence. Vanessa and I are the same age. We were close as kids, but her lifestyle put a necessary rift between us for the past thirteen years.
Whenever Vanessa takes a dive into her addiction, her parents, Mark and Deborah, jump in as surrogate parents to her children, three-year-old Ty and almost six-year-old Paisley.
Mom shoots Trevor a look and then pointedly looks at Ashley and Sawyer while raising her eyebrows and her voice. In an overly sweetened tone, she says, “We’ll discuss things later.”
“Sorry,” Trevor says under his breath.
Lexi asks the kids about the school science fair coming up. While they’re distracted, Mom gives me a long glance and draws her lips into a flat line. I’ll get the story about my cousin and her children from her later, when little ears aren’t around.
After dinner I pack up and drive home—alone. Trevor still lives five houses down from my parents on the street where we grew up. He’s refurbishing an old farmhouse, with no intent to ever farm the land it sits on. But renovation is a long process, so he and Lexi still live on one side of their duplex while they look into renting out the other half if they can find a tenant. My sister lives four blocks over from our childhood street.
I’m the only one who moved out of town. A twenty-five-minute drive is considered “far” around these parts since everything is mostly five or ten minutes away from anything else. As I pass through the neighborhoods and then onto the country road that leads to my place, I think about my life and my future.
Maybe I’ll look into a dating app, even though my sister-in-law tried one and had a horrific experience before she settled down with Trevor.
I need to do something. As my friends have joked on numerous occasions, it’s not like a woman’s going to land on my doorstep and miraculously fall in love with me.
3
MALLORY
Icheck out of the hotel after my breakfast in bed—breakfast for one as Ryne would so aptly have reminded me and anyone within four city blocks. My next destination on the itinerary Buck and I carefully mapped out six months ago is Cincinnati.
Over the next five hours, the New York, Michigan, and Ohio landscapes pass by outside my windshield while images of brides fleeing the altar float through my head like sheep jumping a fence, only these are women dashing away from grooms, leaping over pews and sliding down church banisters, hoisting their skirts as they thumb ride away from the chapels where they almost sealed their fates.
I didn’t leave Buck at the altar. Calling things off with two weeks’ notice has to be better than taking off down the aisle in front of God and everyone, right?
I stop for lunch at a Cracker Barrel in a small town outside of Columbus, because I’m of the mind that people should always stop at iconic American roadside diners like Dutch Pantry, Denny’s, or Big Boy when they are on a road trip. It’s something my family never did—the road trips or the diners.
The hostess seats me in a booth. A waitress with a name tag that saysDonnacomes over. She’s probably ten years older than me and has her hair up in a knot of a bun on her head.
She doesn’t bother pulling a pad out when she asks, “What can I git ya?”
“How about chicken pot pie and a diet soda?”
