Page 24 of The Progressions

“I don’t. I did it myself,” he said. “I packed my shit and then I left the boxes in the garage, ready to go. I had scheduled the pickup, trying to give Shay enough time to do hers. She changed the date and had the movers take everything else, too.”

“So you’re actually an organized person,” I noted, and he shrugged and finished the fizzy lime drink. It did taste good, and it had been easy to make. But I knew, from buying his groceries, that he was also using a big variety of ingredients to prepare meals for himself. From what he’d described (when I’d asked), they sounded tasty, too. Like, he chopped fresh herbs to make his own sauces, and the dishwasher was full each morning of various pots, bowls, spoons, and implements that I didn’t have in my own kitchen.

He was a weird guy, I decided, but then rethought my opinion. No, it wasn’t that he was weird, but that I just didn’t really get him.

As if he’d read my thoughts about food, he looked again into his refrigerator. “I’m going to make dinner.”

“Sounds like a good plan, if you’re hungry.”

“Do you want some?”

“No, thanks. I have to get home to my dad.” We had talked just this morning about Tyler, and Dad had said how he’d like to meet the Woodsmen player…

“You could come with me, instead,” I suggested. “I can make something for all of us.”

“Me, at your house?”

“Sure,” I offered. “You don’t have practice tomorrow. Aren’t you all driving up to the ferry?”

“What ferry?” he asked quickly.

“To Mackinac Island for the team trip.”

“We have to take a boat?” His tone remained sharp. “There’s no bridge to this island?”

“There are no cars allowed on it at all, except for emergency vehicles, I think. Come on to my house,” I urged. “I’ll tell you more about Mackinac and you can see the garden. Although, we’re having a terrible problem with powdery mildew on our cukes, so they’re not the prettiest. And there’s some root rot in the basil, but we’re fighters. We won’t quit on our plants.”

He stared at me.

“Come on,” I told him, and when I looked behind me, he had picked up his keys and was following.

I had a lot of new messages on my phone, mostly from people I hadn’t spoken to in years (and who hadn’t been my friends then, and certainly weren’t now). They were all wondering about the rumor they’d heard that I was with the new Woodsmen player, but I deleted those and blocked them. I also did that with all the super mean messages from other people I didn’t know at all—my number must have leaked somehow. There were also a lot of missed calls and voicemails but I didn’t bother to listen to that trash, either. Then the light turned green, and it was the last one I would see until Monday, when I turned around and came back this way. Where I lived, there were a few stop signs but that was it in terms of traffic control.

The yellow car was behind me all the way to my driveway, bumping over the potholes in the last mile or so where no road crew ever ventured. I got out and he did, too, and looked at the home where I’d lived for my whole life.

His first words about it stated the obvious: “This is tiny.”

“It’s only one bedroom,” I agreed. “I’m not sure what it was meant to be originally. Maybe a summer cottage for people coming up from downstate? We’re pretty far from any lake back here, though. Maybe it was a hunting cabin.” I walked toward the front door. “My parents bought it when they first moved up north, and my dad says it was like a little hideaway in the woods. They were going to move when I got big enough for school but then…Dad?” I said as I let us in. “We’re here.”

I had called him from the car so he wasn’t startled by our appearance, and when he came out of his room, I could see that he’d made an effort with his own appearance, too. He waswearing a shirt with buttons, which must have taken him forever to do, and his hair and beard were combed very neatly. He pushed the walker in front of himself, carefully fitting it through the bedroom door which was really not wide enough.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m Jerry Decker.”

I could tell by how he was using the muscles of his face that he was doing his best to make the words clear. “Hi, Daddy!” I said, smiling at him. It was so nice that he’d gone to all this effort! “This is Tyler, Tyler Hennessy. You know, the guy who catches a football sometimes.”

“I try to,” Tyler said. He stepped forward and put his hand out, like he wanted to shake. Then he seemed to realize how that wouldn’t work, and he dropped it. He stood awkwardly for a moment and added, “It’s nice to meet you, sir.”

“Likewise,” Dad said.

“Have a seat,” I told them both. The living room was also the dining room and it was also the kitchen, so I helped my father into a chair at the table. Tyler took the couch, but then he stood up.

“Aren’t we making dinner?” he asked.

“I’ll do it. You two can talk,” I said. “It’s not like I’ll be excluded from the conversation, either. It’s hard to have secrets in this house.”

“How do you like Michigan?” my dad asked Tyler.

“It’s…it’s all right.” He sat again, kind of stiffly. “There’s a lot of water here.”

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