“You’re right. I doubt Billy would have wanted me to. It’s just that today makes me sad.”
“Me too. But don’t blame yourself. Let’s just talk about the good changes in your life since then.”
“Sure. Well, for instance I believe that I never truly liked adventure before that train almost hit me. At least not like I learned to love it. You know this is the first time we’ve really talked about it, which kind of makes me realize how influential that accident truly was.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think that somehow after Billy died I changed. I mean I always liked carnivals and a little bit of excitement.”
“All kids do.”
“True. But after we moved away I started liking Chinese food.”
“As you get older you start to enjoy things you didn’t,” Beth said.
“That’s true too. But I always hated Chinese. I remember the first time I ate it and liked it. I can’t remember why, but my father had brought some leftover Chinese home from the office. Mother knew better than to serve it to me. I wouldn’t eat it.”
“Picky, picky.”
“Sure was. But for some reason, the next Saturday my mother was out doing the laundry, I think our washer was on the blink, and I had just gotten home from baseball practice at the high school. I was famished. So I dug in the fridge. Low and behold there was the Chinese. I passed it up three times before the smell prompted me to open it. For some reason, even though I always hated the smell, it was intoxicating to me.”
“Intoxicating?” Beth questioned. “Really?”
“Yeah it’s a strong word, but it’s the right one. I ate the food and it was the most delicious stuff I ever tasted. In the middle of it my Mom arrived home. She saw me eating it and stared. Finally she said, ‘You’re eating Moo Shu pork, do you know that?’ I said, ‘Yes. I guess my tastes changed.’ It just floored her to think I would now eat Chinese. And it wasn’t just that I ate it once in awhile, it became a craving of mine. “Then in the middle of sophomore year, all of a sudden, I became left-handed.”
“That’s impossible. You’re kidding me. Right?”
“Nope. I’m not. It really was weird. One day I wrote right-handed, the next day I wrote left. I never told anyone that but you Beth. But it’s the God’s truth. That was really weird.”
“I bet. You know what, I think Billy was left-handed too.”
“You’re right he was. I remember Jimmy used to tease him about being stupid because of it.”
“You were saying that you got into adventure. How so?”
“Well, I began taking up sports just for the sheer excitement of them. Like water skiing and snow skiing. Not cross-country, but the fast windy downhill type. Always, I searched for windier, steeper courses. Hell, I had hated sports in grammar school, but as I grew older I became addicted to that adrenaline rush. Anything. Once a sport lost its excitement I stopped doing it. Flying and hang gliding became boring after awhile. Too easy, not enough chance of failure.”
“Failure? You wanted to fail at flying?” Beth asked astonished. “You mean you wanted to die?”
“No. And no I didn’t have suicidal thoughts because of what happened to Billy. It was more like other sports held more chance of getting that high. Flying and hang gliding were too easy. With a mountain, or water beneath me I couldn’t always tell where the next tree or wave would be. So I became adventure addicted-I even tried bungee jumping when it first came out if that tells you anything.”
“It tells me you’re crazy,” Beth laughed.
“Maybe I am. It is almost like my drug of choice you know. I have friends who do cocaine, I have friends who drink heavily, and I have friends who pick up new sex partners nightly. That’s their thing. I don’t do any of that, but I do go wild for on-the-edge experiences. One time I even tried walking on a tight rope, just for fun.”
“That’s fun?”
“For me it was. I almost made it too, but slipped.”
“There was a net, right?”
“Nope. That was part of the thrill. No net. But I was lucky, I caught the rope.”
“You were lucky.”
“Yeah, it’s almost as if I couldn’t die. Especially considering all the amazing things I’ve tried. Like I was not fated to die just yet. So that’s part of what has changed.”
“Only part?” Beth asked.
“Well, a few other things happened.”
“Like what?”
“I was deathly allergic to penicillin as a kid. After a night of studying like crazy, I took this exam in college. Well I finished it, but I passed out. Pneumonia, they told me later. The doctors didn’t have a medical history on me and injected me with penicillin. Instead of a terrible reaction, it actually saved my life. It could have been a fluke or something I guess.”
“That’s true. Truth is stranger than fiction sometimes.”
“Yes. My interests changed in high school.”
“You told me, you became interested in sports.”
“That and I began to hate English, which I had always wanted to go into. For all my childhood I remember wanting to be a college professor.”
“A noble cause.”
“Yes I know it is. And you’re great at it.”
“Thanks.”
“But in college I turned to business. Something I had never been interested in before. I even took classes in Accounting.”
“So? Kids change.”
“They do. But I had always hated math before, even stunk at it. Yet I found that I got better and better at it. And science too. I had liked English and history as a kid, but as I got older I became more proficient at science and math. Weird, huh?”
“Kind of. Most kids who like the humanities don’t do well in the sciences, and vice versa. At least from my experience. Not that you couldn’t have liked both. But you said you did better than you expected.”
“I did. I got better in science and worse in history. Of course, who really cares about the Renaissance?” Kevin teased, knowing she taught history.
“That is strange. But not from a guy who turned lef-handed,” Beth teased back.
“I guess I deserved that bit of ribbing. One other thing has changed since Billy died.”
Some kids screamed in the background. Beth said, “Hold on Kevin.” Then she moved the phone from her mouth, but Kevin heard her talking to her kids anyhow. The words were muffled but discernible, “Go play outside kids. I’m trying to have a conversation on the phone now. Your father said to come inside it was going to rain? Okay, stay in, but go up to your room and play there.” There was a rustling sound, “Sorry Kevin.”
“No problem. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“No. I’ve got a while before dinner. Go on. You were saying there was one other change since Billy. What was it?”
“I met a girl. I mean a woman.”
“Oh, that’s great. What’s her name?”
“It’s Rose.”
“How’d you meet?”
“That’s the odd part. We met in a country and western bar. I’d always hated country music as a kid, until well, until I was about eleven years old. A friend of mine, actually just an acquaintance named Jack, suggested we meet there. While I loved the music, I usually avoided going to these bars because most of them were dives. Yet, for some reason I agreed to meet him there.”
“You must have been bored that night.”
“Probably,” Kevin said. But that wasn’t it. Dives stank of stale beer and played music that was too tinny. That night was no different. But he was different. He found himself toe tapping and singing songs.
Rose came up to him and said, “Hi cutie.” She was too bold for him. He saw instantly that they had nothing in common. She dressed in skintight pants, and wore an open shirt revealing hefty cleavage. But from the moment she
