Page 28 of SEAL'S Baby Surprise
“Not at all. He encourages Julia to come over and play. But he’s almost bigger than Austin, and when he’s home, our tiny house is just filled up. Having Julia over when he is gone helps me feel less lonesome.”
Mrs. Turner isn’t a small person, herself, but she is tall and rangy rather than round and chubby like me. Julia hugs her around the hips and says, “No one should feel lonesome.”
Mrs. Turner hugs her back, in the automatic way many moms do. My mom never had.
It makes me ache to see them. One of my nannies hugged me like that. She had been a grandmother, helping send her grandkids through college. I’d missed her a lot when my mother declared I was too old for a nanny and needed a governess instead.
“They came to see Squeegee,” Betty says. “Where is she?”
“I think she hid under the bed,” Mrs. Turner says.
“Here, Squeegee,” Betty calls. She’s answered by a tiny black nose poking from under the dust ruffle of the downstairs bed, and a squeaky little puppy bark. Betty reaches under the bed and pulls out a fuzzy mop of white hair. She is just about the cutest thing ever.
We don’t stay long. We all pet Squeegee, then Austin and I head back to the van. When we get there, Austin looks down at Ark. “Patrol, big guy,” he says. Ark gives a sneeze, then he trots back down the row of residences (you can’t call them houses).
“What will he do?” I ask.
“Patrol,” Austin answers. “The pup is too timid to bark at intruders. I’ll leave our door unlocked in case Julia needs to come back. Ark will go back and forth between us, and probably sleep outside the Turners’ place.”
“You feel safe doing that?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says. “I’m plenty tough enough, don’t you think?”
I laugh. I know he makes me feel safe. “But what about Ark? Will he be safe?”
“You bet,” he reassures me. “He won’t leave his assigned patrol area, and the neighbors all know him. Since we’ll have the van to ourselves, what do you want to do tonight?”
“Can we watch a movie?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says. “I’ve got something I’d like for you to see. It was a classic my grandmother used to watch. I’ve thought about it a lot since I’ve been back stateside.”
“Is your grandmother still alive? Can we go see her?” I’m not sure why I ask that. It just seems like such a natural thing to do.
“I’m afraid not,” Austin says sadly. “Grandma passed away while I was still in high school. That’s probably why I wound up such a mess. She used to keep me on the straight and narrow.”
“Straight and narrow,” I say. “I’ve heard that and always wondered what it meant.”
“For strait is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life,” Austin quotes. “Grandma was big into Bible reading. She used to drag us all to Sunday school and church. When she got too feeble to make the trip, the preacher at our local church used to come around on Sunday afternoon and read with her.”
“How can a gate be straight?” I ask, because it seems an odd way to describe a gate.
“It means narrow. The quote is out of Matthew, and it’s kind of like poetry. By saying that the gate is strait, and the way narrow, they don’t have to use the same word twice to describe it.”
We are getting back to the van now. “Is there an opposite?” I ask.
“Oh, yeah,” Austin answers. “‘Go in at the strait gate, because wide is the gate and broad the way that leads to destruction.’ Grandma and the preacher used to have a field day gossiping about who was rollin’ down the broad highway to you-know-where.”
I laugh at that. Not that people doing stupid things and getting into trouble is funny, but just the way Austin said it. I could just see an elderly woman, all propped up in bed and a fellow dressed up in a suit with a Bible in his hand, and the two of them chattering away about who was headed for the hot place.
“Grandma wasn’t all that religious,” Austin says. “But she had a good time visiting with the preacher. I miss her. She was good to talk to. We used to watch this movie a lot when I was a kid.”
I think about that. There is no one in my life that is good to talk to. Or there hadn’t been, until I met Austin. I am curious to see the movie and find out what it was about.
“Sounds fun,” I say. “You can tell me about the bits she thought were important.”
14
LEE
