Asking for Trouble (29 page)

The figure on the check he’d written made the on-duty manager’s
eyes widen, and he started talking about photos and press opportunities. Joe nipped
that one in the bud, hustled himself and Alyssa out of there.

“That it?” she asked when they were in the car again.
“Everything paid off?”

“All but one.” He had to stop and take a breath, but he knew
it was time.

“You need to visit their grave,” she said.

“Yeah.” He shot a look at her. “You don’t have to come. I
could drop you off at the airport to wait for me.”

“Do you want to drop me off? Because I’d rather come.”

“You want to come to a cemetery?”

“Joe. I’m a minister’s daughter. I’ve been to a lot of
cemeteries. And even if I hadn’t, even if this was the very first time, I’d
want to come with you. Unless you really, really don’t want me there, I’m
coming with you. So I’m asking you. Do you not want me to come?”

“No,” he said. He saw the hurt in her eyes and went on
hastily. “No, I mean, I don’t not want you to come. I mean, yes, I think I want
you to come.”

“Then let’s go.”

Two graves, but only one stone, at the head of the right-hand
plot.
 
Joe looked down at the bronze
plaque inlaid in the simple concrete memorial, took a deep breath and looked up
again, out across the manicured grass, the orderly rows of markers, up at the
relentless blue of the desert sky, the shape of the mountains rising against
the horizon to the north and west. And just like that, he was standing there,
eleven years old. Numb. Bewildered. Lost.

He’d just talked to his dad for Christmas, he’d thought over
and over again on that January day, standing beside Cheryl and shivering at the
bite of the wind across the field of dead people, trying not to look at the
hole in the ground, at what was lying inside it. His dad couldn’t be in that
box. Not his dad, so big and tough and brave that nothing could hurt him,
nothing could stop him. He couldn’t be gone.

But he was. The truth of it was there in the hollow pit of
Joe’s stomach, in the lump in his throat that wouldn’t go away, in the pain
that had pinched his chest since he’d braked to a stop on his bike at the sight
of the two officers getting out of their car, slamming the doors, starting up
the walk to the front door of his house. He’d known then that his dad was gone.
Every military kid knew what the two officers meant, what they were there for.

This was real. He’d watched the casket being carried from
the hearse by the honor guard. He’d heard the chaplain say the words, had seen
the folded flag handed to his mother. He’d heard the shots fired in salute. He
knew it was real.

The tears, unable to be denied, blurred his eyes now as they
had on that day, and he could barely read the inscription, but he knew what it
said.

John “Jack”
Raymond Hartman, MSgt, U.S.A.F.

10/16/52 - 12/31/91

They shall not grow
old, as we that are left grow old

 
He stood there
until he couldn’t stand up any longer, then sank to his haunches, put his
elbows on his knees, and buried his head in his hands, there in front of the
grave.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” he whispered. “I didn’t do it. I couldn’t.
I’m so sorry.”

Alyssa heard him, because she was there too, crouched uncomfortably
beside him, her arms coming around him, holding him tight.

“He’d know,” she told him, her voice low and urgent in his
ear. “He’d forgive you. If he were here, he’d tell you so. He’s telling you now,
in your heart. Let him know that you hear him. Let him forgive you, Joe.”

He was on the cool grass again, another May evening in Vegas,
just like that last night, the night when his mom had told him to leave. He had
his arms wrapped around himself, and he was crying for the first time since
that worst time, and crying for the same things. For his dad, that he wasn’t
here, that he couldn’t ask him for forgiveness, that he’d never again feel the
strength and solidity of his body, the security of knowing that everything
would be all right, because his dad was there. For his mom, for what she’d
become, for the loss of everything she’d once been, and for the fact that he
could kneel before her grave and not feel sorry she was dead. For Cheryl, that
she’d left him too, that she’d had no choice but to go. And for himself. For
the loss of his childhood, his parents, his sister, his innocence. For the boy
who’d been alone.

Alyssa didn’t say anything else, just crouched next to him
and held him while he cried and shuddered and tried to wipe the tears away, the
tears that insisted on coming, more than twenty years’ worth of them, as if
they’d been held behind a dam that had burst, broken wide open.

It was minutes before he got himself back under control. Not
crying anymore, but left shaken and bruised and emptied. He took a couple last
deep, shuddering breaths, felt her shift beside him. He opened his eyes, saw
her reaching into her purse, digging around, pulling out a few tissues and
handing them to him, then continuing to rub his back as if she couldn’t help
it.

He blew his nose, wiped his eyes. “Damn. I’m sorry.”

“No. Don’t be sorry.”

“Tomorrow,” he said, “when they open, I’ll call this place,
arrange for her marker.”

“If that’s what you think he’d have wanted,” she said, “then
that’s what you should do.”

“You must be wondering what you got yourself into,” he said
when they were in the car again. Alyssa had taken the keys from him, and he hadn’t
protested. She was driving them down the winding road, through the tall black cemetery
gates, back to the airport.

“What do you mean?”

“Me crying all over you.” He blew his nose again, because
the emotion was creeping up again. “Some tough guy. And here you thought I was this
big, strong hero.”

“Joe.” She pulled over on the wide boulevard, braked to a
stop, shifted the car into Park and left it idling, the air conditioning
pumping, and turned in the seat to face him.

“You
are
strong,”
she said, and the look on her face told him she meant it. “You
are
tough. I can’t imagine what it took
to go through everything you did and become the man you are. Your dad would
have been so proud of you. If he could see you now, if he could have seen you
today, he’d be saying, ‘That’s my son. That’s my boy.’ Just like when I look at
you and I think, that’s my man, and I’m so proud that it’s true.”

He groped for words that didn’t come, but it didn’t matter,
because she was still talking.

“There’s nothing about you that isn’t right for me,” she
told him. “There’s nothing you are that isn’t good enough for me.
 
You told me your dad was a good man, but
you’re a good man too. I don’t love you because you’re big and tough. That’s
sexy, of course it is, but it’s not why I love you. I love you because you’re
strong and good and . . . and
real.
Because
I know I can trust you, because I feel it all the way through. Not just to my
heart, all the way down to my soul. I see who you are, and I know you, and I
love you. And if your dad were here, he’d know the exact same thing.”

He couldn’t answer, but she didn’t ask him to. She was
crying herself now. She hadn’t cried, he realized, back there in the cemetery.
She’d held steady, just like she had on that night after he’d seen Cheryl.

He reached for her across the center console, and she was
hanging on tight, and so was he, and he couldn’t have said who was supporting
whom. All he knew was that right here was where he needed to be, and holding
her was what he needed to do.

It was a long time before they were quiet together again,
because Joe hadn’t wanted to stay in Vegas, even with Alyssa along. He’d done
what he’d had to do, and it was time to go.

“Do you mind just going back to my place?” he asked her when
they’d landed at SFO late that evening and retrieved his car. “I can cook.”

“Fine with me,” she said. “Do you want me here, or would you
rather be alone? Because that’s all right, if that’s what you want.”

“No. I want you.”

He cooked sausages and fried potatoes, and she made a salad,
and she talked a little and he didn’t. Afterwards, they did the dishes
together, and he thought that he could do the dishes next to Alyssa for the
rest of his life, and that he wanted to.

Then he took her to bed and made love to her, and tried to
show her with his body everything he couldn’t say, how glad he had been to have
her with him, how grateful he was for her courage and her support and her love.

But when they were quiet again, her head against his heart,
he found that it wasn’t enough, that he actually needed to say something, too.

“Thank you for coming with me today,” he said. “I needed
you.” It wasn’t nearly as hard to say as he’d thought it would be, so he said
it again. “I needed you, and I love you. I’ve never said either of those
things, and I thought it would scare me, but it doesn’t. It feels good.” And
that was how she felt. Good, and soft, and warm, and close.

She paused a moment before answering. “Thank you for letting
me come. Thank you for trusting me. But, Joe.” She hesitated, and that wasn’t like
Alyssa at all.

“What?” He tightened his hand around her shoulder, pulled
her closer.

She laughed a little against him. “I
am
scared. You aren’t scared to share what you’re feeling, and I
am. Isn’t that something?”

“Tell me.” His heart was pounding now. She couldn’t be
telling him this was a mistake after all. She couldn’t. He’d known it was a bad
idea to let her come, and a worse one to cry in front of her. He hadn’t been
able to help it, but he should have waited until he’d been alone to break down.
He should have waited, but he hadn’t been able to.

She was talking again, though, so he listened. “I need you
too,” she said, “and it
does
scare
me. I’ve been in love with you for half my life. I’ve spent fifteen years
telling myself that I had a teenage crush on you, and measuring every man I
dated against you anyway, and having them come up short every single time,
because they weren’t you. I have to face it. I love you, and I need you, and I
know that’s never going to change. So if this isn’t real,” she said, and he
could hear the entreaty in her voice, “please tell me now. Let me start trying
to somehow undo fifteen years, because I’m so afraid that it’s going to take
longer than that to convince myself that you weren’t right for me. If it isn’t
forever, please, Joe, if you can, tell me now.”

“I can’t tell you that,” he said, that lump in his throat
threatening again. “Because it’ll never be true. It’s real, and it’s forever,
and we both know it. Remember when I told you, that first time we made love,
that if we did this, you were mine?”

“I remember. And I thought later,” she said, her voice not
steady at all, “that I should have asked you to promise me the same thing.”

“I promise it now. I’m yours, and you’re mine, and that’s
it. We’re both done, aren’t we? Are you ready to say we’re done?”

Her hand, which had been stroking his chest, his shoulder,
stilled. “I’m done. What do we do, though, if we’re done?”

“Well, I think we get married, don’t you?”

“We do?” She sounded a little breathless.

“If it’ll make you sure that you don’t have to look anymore,
then, yes, we do. I’m already sure. I’m done looking. I’ve found what I want. I
found it a long time ago, but I thought, it doesn’t happen this way. It can’t
be this easy. But now I think maybe it can. Maybe it did, and I just didn’t
trust it. I’m ready to trust it now, if you are. I’m ready,” he said, and felt
the weight of years rolling off his chest, “to trust you. Are you ready to
trust me?”

She was crying, her tears warm and wet against his skin. “I
always have,” she told him. “I already do.”

They drove over to Rae’s cottage the next morning to make
their first announcement.

“Oh, score,” Rae said happily. “All it took was one ski
vacation. All it took was one little push. I
knew
it.”

“And now you’re going to take credit for the whole thing,”
Alec sighed. “Don’t you think Joe and Alyssa might have had a little something
to do with it?”

“Well, let’s look at the facts,” she said. “Progress until I
came on the scene: zero. Progress since then: complete. You can’t argue with
results.”

“No,” Alyssa said, and she was laughing, and Joe was
grinning pretty hard himself. “You can’t. I’m willing to give you the credit
for the push.”

“Thank
you,” Rae
said.

“Did you tell the folks already?” Alec asked.

“No,” Alyssa said. “We decided we should do it in person. We’ve
been traveling all weekend anyway. What’s another road trip?”

On their way up to Chico, though, she sounded less sure.
“Maybe we should just have called,” she said.

“Wouldn’t you rather do it this way?” he asked in surprise.

“Yes, I would. I’d have liked to tell your sister in person
too, but Alaska’s a little far even for us. But thanks for letting me listen
in. That felt good.”

“It did. And I’m thinking, if we’re going to be making this
trip as often as I think we are, and having as many adventures as I see in my
future, maybe it’s time for me to take flying lessons. What do you say?”

“Only if I get to take them too,” she answered instantly. “I’d
love that. Do you think we could?”

“Why not? We can do whatever we want to do.”

“Whatever we want to do. Wow. Somebody to have adventures
with, somebody who likes them as much as I do. That’ll be . . . that’ll be
something.
People are always saying not
to take risks,” she continued impulsively, “but I think that’s the biggest risk
of all, don’t you? Living your life afraid, and then your life is over, and you
never did the things you really wanted to do. I don’t want to have that life.”

“Well, don’t worry,” he said, smiling across at her. “I
don’t think there’s any danger of that, and I’m ready to help you do it. As
long as I’m there to make sure you run through your checklists first, that is.”

She sighed and put on her little show for him. “Fine. I
guess for flying lessons, I can put up with some nagging.”

He had to laugh at that one. “I’m thinking you’ll have to. I’m
guessing we’ll have the rest of our lives for me to drive you crazy.”

Back in Chico again, then, in her parents’ living room this
time, where only five months earlier, Joe realized, he’d sat and watched Alyssa
rolling on her green exercise ball, and this moment hadn’t seemed remotely
possible.

“Do you want to say?” she asked him, looking shy, which was
a new look for her.

“Yeah. I’ll say. We’ve come to tell you,” he told her
parents, “that I’ve—” He stopped. He couldn’t exactly say that he’d asked
Alyssa to marry him, but he couldn’t exactly say that she’d asked him, either.
“That Alyssa and I have decided to get married,” he finished. There. That
sounded better anyway.

“Oh. Oh, my goodness.” Susie had both hands crossed over her
chest, and looked, Joe realized with relief, absolutely thrilled, maybe even as
thrilled as she was about babies. She was probably
thinking
about babies, and that was just fine with him, because he
was thinking about them too.

“Oh, that’s wonderful. I’ve been hoping. I’ve been
wishing,”
she said, and she was
laughing, and maybe crying a little, too. She hugged Alyssa, then came to Joe
and gave him his own hug and kiss, and he could feel some tears rising, and it
didn’t even bother him, and he hugged her right back.

“I couldn’t be happier,” she assured him, pulling him down
for another squeeze.

Dave was standing back, though, his face impossible to read,
and Joe felt a pang of alarm.

“What kind of an engagement are you planning on?” the older
man asked when Susie was done with her hugging.

“The short kind,” Alyssa said, and Joe took her hand.

“That’s about it,” he agreed. “Short. Maybe . . .” He looked
at her. “Summer?”
 
He laughed. “Next
month?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling back at him, so happy, and he
thought that if his heart got any bigger, it would burst right out of his
chest.

“A little soon, isn’t it?” Dave asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Joe said, still smiling like a big dumb
idiot. “Seeing as I’ve been in love with your daughter for about fifteen
years.”

“You’ve known her that long, yes,” Dave said. “And you’re
saying you’ve had feelings for her that long, and that’s just fine. I believe
that you love her, and that you feel sure. But a couple needs time together to
work things through, and you’re still in the courtship stage, and that’s a
different thing, even physiologically, from a long-term relationship. It takes
a good year for the first infatuation to wear off, to know what’s underneath,
how much you can count on it. I’d like to see you wait until
next
summer, ideally, winter at least.
To make sure, before you take those vows, that you’re both ready to mean them
for a lifetime.”

Alyssa was looking anxious, and Joe tightened his hand
around hers, and his smile was gone now.

“With all due respect, sir,” he told Dave, “no. We’ve got
the rest of our lives to work things through. I’m not going anywhere, and
whatever I have to do to make this work, I’ll do it. I’m promising Alyssa here
and now, and I’m promising you and her mother, too.”

A man always keeps his
word.

I hear you, Dad,
he
promised.
And I’m going to do it.

“And another thing,” he told Dave. “I found another one of
those Cherokee proverbs.” He felt stupid reciting it, but he took a deep breath
and did it anyway, because there was a time when even a quiet man needed to
talk, and this was it. “It said, ‘A woman’s highest calling is to lead a man to
his soul so as to unite him with Source. A man’s highest calling is to protect
woman so she is free to walk the earth unharmed.’ It sounded like a pretty good
description of what Alyssa’s done for me, and I know it’s what I mean to do for
her. I don’t want her to be my girlfriend, or my fiancée either. I want her to
be my wife. I want her to know,
I
want
to know, I
need
to know that even if
something happened to me, she’d be taken care of. And I need her, too. I need
her to be my wife. I want your blessing, yours and Susie’s. But I’ll marry her
without it. I’ll marry her anyway.”

“You’d do that?” Dave asked. “Even if it meant disappointing
us?”

Joe could feel the hot blood rising from his chest all the
way to his face, the distress following right along with it, but he knew the
answer. “Almost nothing matters more to me than this family,” he told Dave.
“But one thing does, and that’s Alyssa. I know she’s your daughter, but she’s a
grown woman, and she knows her own mind. I trust her to make the right choice
for herself, and I think you should too.”

“Hmm,” Dave said, his face still impassive. “What do you
say, Alyssa? I know this all feels really good right now, but life won’t always
be this rosy. Joe’s just said he’ll be there for you. He’s made some pretty big
promises. Are you willing to do the same? Are you ready to say that you’re
going to work it out, no matter what? Not just say it, but mean it? Are you
ready to promise that you’re not going to cut and run when things get tough?”

“I know you think that’s who I am,” she said. “But I’m not
that person anymore.” Her voice, her gaze were steady, and Joe was so proud of
her. “I’ve got a temper, it’s true, but Joe can handle it. I might not be the
easiest person to live with, but luckily, he is. I’m never going to find
anybody better.”

She was smiling now at her father, and Joe could see that
Dave was every bit as lost against that smile as he was himself. “Ever since I
figured out I couldn’t marry you, Dad,” she said, “I’ve been sad. But I finally
found a man who’s as good as you. I’ve found him, and he’s mine.”

And he was. Body, heart, and soul, he was hers. He didn’t
know how to say that, though, so he just held her hand and hoped that she could
feel how much he meant it, and that he could show her. He would have a lifetime
to do it. That should be almost long enough.

Dave looked at both of them as the seconds ticked by, Susie
seeming to hold her breath beside him.

At last, Dave spoke. “I’d have preferred a longer
engagement, but I know that Alyssa’s right. She couldn’t have found a better
man. So, son.” He held out one big hand to Joe. “Welcome to the family.”