Part 85 (1/2)
”Zach,” she began.
He held up a hand. ”Let's not go there.”
”I think we need to.”
”I don't need to,” he said, pus.h.i.+ng away from the table.
”Zach, wait,” she pleaded. ”I want you to know, I didn't want to leave you and David.”
Okay, enough. ”But you did.” He stood up. He felt like he was towering over her.
Her eyes filled with tears. ”I didn't want to uproot you and take you away from your friends.”
So she'd just made his decision for him. ”Well, that explains everything, like why we hardly heard from you all those years.”
”I...” She hung her head.
Yeah. You. That about summed it up. Zach left the kitchen just as Kendra was coming in. ”Are you leaving already?”
”I've got to go,” he said. Before he really let Mom have it.
”But you just got here,” Kendra protested, trailing after him.
”I'll catch up with you guys later.”
They were in the living room again now. Natalie sprang from the couch, Queenie draped over her shoulder. ”You can't leave yet, Zachie,” she protested.
”Sorry,” he said tersely.
”Where are your cookies? You forgot your cookies,” Natalie said.
Zach shook his head and kept walking. ”Thanks anyway. I'm not hungry.” In fact, he felt like he was going to puke.
A visit to the gym didn't help him feel any better. Neither did grabbing a burger on the way home. Once he was back inside his house, he pulled a c.o.ke out of the fridge and then went into the living room, determined to leave behind all thoughts of his messed-up past. He flopped onto the couch and grabbed the TV remote. Tom appeared out of nowhere and jumped onto his lap. ”Hey, buddy,” he said, and patted the cat. ”It's just us guys tonight. No women. Who needs 'em?”
The cat stopped purring and twitched his tail.
”Trust me. You're better off on your own,” Zach said, and aimed the remote at the TV. But in all of Cable Land he found nothing to grab his attention. Nothing in his Netflix queue interested him either. He switched off the TV and tossed the remote aside. He looked at Tom and Tom looked right back, his tail whipping back and forth.
”Yeah, I know. Can't live with 'em. Can't live without 'em. But we're going to, dude.”
The determined affirmation sent him to the kitchen in search of beer. Then he returned to the living room and picked up the book he'd ordered from Amazon, The Handyman Handbook, and dove in.
CHAPTER ONE: TOOLS EVERY MAN NEEDS.
Never mind tools. What every man needs is a good woman's love.
Okay, that was enough sitting on the couch. He needed to do something, like take an inventory of what he had.
He already owned a lot of the basics: hammers and screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers, and a skill saw. But some of the items mentioned in the book, like a miter box, staple gun, grinder, and C-clamps, he still needed.
Wait a minute. Didn't he have C-clamps in that old toolbox Dad had given him when he moved out? What else was in there? He couldn't remember right off. Well, now was as good a time as any to find out.
He made his way to the second floor, Tom trotting up the stairs beside him. ”What a man needs,” he informed the cat, ”is to stay busy.” He pulled the chain that let down the ladder and climbed up into the attic with Tom still along for the ride.
Due to the steep pitch of the roof, Zach had to stoop until he got into the middle of the room. He looked around him and frowned. Chamber of Horrors II.
The attic of his childhood home, dubbed the Chamber of Horrors by his dad, had been a collection of everything imaginable, from birdcages that had outlasted the bird to childhood toys. One of the biggest messes in the attic had been the boxes of Christmas decorations which his mother had collected since the Mayflower landed. She would spend hours decorating the house each year, always in new colors and motifs. Every year Mom replenished her stock. Zach remembered Dad saying that he would sooner be dragged by the devil into h.e.l.l than have to schlep any more Christmas stuff up to the attic. But the cache of holiday decorations continued to breed, right along with all the other household detritus-everything from winter boots to washers for the kitchen sink wound up in there, all in boxes, none of them labeled. It became a vortex, sucking in everything and anything.
Zach looked at the mess around him and shook his head. How did people manage to collect so much stuff so quickly? Over there by the far wall was the basketball hoop he'd taken when he moved out. He'd hauled that dumb thing from apartment to apartment. And now it was here even though he was planning on selling this place and moving to a condo. What did he think he was going to do with a basketball hoop in a condo?
That was just the beginning. He wove past the neglected markers of his life, wondering why he was keeping all this stuff. There were skis and poles and boots he hadn't used in the last two years, his lacrosse stick and gloves from high school, boxes of textbooks he'd never read again, and Gram's old rocking chair that he was going to get around to refinis.h.i.+ng one of these years. There was the box of Christmas ornaments, souvenirs from happier times. Mom had left them behind for him along with a note that read, ”For your first tree, when you have a family of your own.”
Dad had insisted he take them. Why was he keeping them? G.o.d only knew.
He was halfway across the attic when he caught sight of the box with his Nintendo. He and David used to play that all the time. Now, that would be fun to haul down and ...
He never finished his thought. Too distracted by the sight of the old game, he forgot to watch where he was walking and tripped over the runner on the rocking chair. Down he went, doing a face plant with a thud and a curse, raising enough dust to give himself a sneezing fit. What was he doing up here anyway?
”To h.e.l.l with this,” he decided.
But just as he was getting to his feet, Tom jumped onto a pile of boxes. It had been stacked haphazardly and the landing wasn't a success. The top box tipped over and as Tom leaped for safety it broke open, spilling c.r.a.p across the floor. Lovely.
Zach scowled at Tom, who was now crouching in a corner, ready to bolt if anything new toppled. ”Thanks a lot, dude,” he grumbled.
Tom flicked his tail, not happy with getting scolded.
”Yeah? Well, I'm not happy cleaning up after you. What do you think of that?”
The cat kept his thoughts to himself.
Zach had come up here to stay busy. He heaved a resigned sigh and made his way over to the box, which held a collection of mementos: his first baseball mitt, a couple of Little League trophies, his high school diploma, senior prom picture, and some photo alb.u.ms. He took one and plopped onto the floor cross-legged, all the while telling himself he was a fool. Going down memory lane was fun for some people, but his particular path was tangled with thorns.
Tom joined him now, and rubbed up against him as he opened it. ”You're lucky you're a cat,” he muttered. ”No problems.”
Tom meowed and rubbed again.
”And no, I'm not feeding you now. I'm busy.” Wandering uselessly down that th.o.r.n.y memory lane, for no good reason. Except that he was already irritated and wanted to get good and p.i.s.sed off? Maybe.
He thumbed through the alb.u.m, seeing snapshots of himself in his Little League uniform, at Christmas with his first pocket knife (the one he managed to cut himself with less than two hours after opening the present), at the ocean with his dog Dexter, sitting on the deck, drinking lemonade and hamming it up for the camera with his brother, his best friend Henry, and Henry's sister Anna. In the background, lolling on a deck chair with a drink in her hand, sat Aunt Leslie.
Aunt Leslie. It had been the greatest day in Zach's young life when she and her two kids moved in next door. She'd been his mom's best friend and their two families did everything together. He still remembered how sad he felt when Aunt Leslie moved away and took his friends with her.