We Are the Light(67)
Later, when Jill and I were alone together on a walk through the Pisgah National Forest, I asked why she allowed so many miles to separate her from her parents. She said it was so that she could live close to Darcy and me. When I asked why again, it was with a little more emphasis in my voice. She said that Darcy had been her best friend and that she could never have left her. Then she said Darce had helped her through a rough patch with her biological father, back in middle school. The way she said it made me understand that I wasn’t supposed to ask any additional questions, and I didn’t. Darcy had once told me what Jill’s real father had done to her, saying that’s why Jill had married Derek, because she had been hardwired to tolerate abuse. And it was Jill’s current stepdad who had helped her mom get them away from Jill’s biological father, which is why Jill considers Mr. Dunn to be her real dad, and even uses his last name to this day. I think Jill understood that I knew all of the above already. I could just feel it. So I kept quiet.
“Besides,” Jill added as she kicked a pine cone off the trail, “Majestic’s my home. It will always be my home.”
Jill cooked fabulous meals every night for her parents. The food was so good you didn’t even realize it was vegan. We did jigsaw puzzles together. And Mrs. Dunn and I teamed up against Jill and her father for several epic games of pinochle by the roaring woodstove. Toward the end of our stay, the temperature plummeted and the four of us bundled up and went in search of frozen waterfalls. Mrs. Dunn made us two large thermoses of vegan hot chocolate spiked with cayenne red pepper. Every time we found another partially frozen waterfall glistening like a strange vertical forest of icicles we’d pour spicy-hot dairy-free cocoa into the red screw-off mugs and toast the glory of mother nature.
On our last night together, we had an early Christmas. I couldn’t believe that Mr. and Mrs. Dunn had actually bought me presents and was beyond moved when I opened up a trucker hat and matching sweatshirt, both of which read “Brevard, NC.”
“So you remember to come back,” Mr. Dunn said.
“Soon!” Mrs. Dunn added.
“Lucas has presents for you too,” Jill told her parents, which made me blush because the gifts I brought were stupid. But it was too late to pretend I had nothing to give, so I went to our room and retrieved the two small wrapped boxes.
When I handed the Dunns their gifts, Mrs. Dunn said to her daughter, “Did you wrap these?” because no one believes that a man can wrap a present properly, but I really can and Jill told her mother as much, which seemed to impress her. Once the coffee mugs that I had made with David Fleming in pottery class were out of their boxes, they looked mawkishly amateurish and even deformed to my eye. Without giving ourselves the necessary time to master the craft, David and I had gleefully made mugs for every member of The Survivors, along with Mark and Tony and some of our family members. But this gift exchange with the Dunns was our hasty work’s debut. I wanted to call David and tell him not to distribute the rest at the many Survivor-hosted holiday gatherings because the current experience was so humiliating.
But then, as her parents inspected their mugs, Jill rather proudly said, “Lucas made those with his own hands.”
“Did he?” Mrs. Dunn said while taking in the bluish-green glaze.
Mr. Dunn stood and left the room, which I thought was a bad sign, but he soon returned with a bottle of what he called “the good stuff,” and then we all sat around the wood-burning stove singing along to the old-timey holiday songs playing on the radio and sipping top-shelf scotch from the lumpy mugs David and I had made for Mr. and Mrs. Dunn.
A few hours later, Jill was asleep in her father’s recliner and Mr. Dunn had already retired to his bedroom. I was helping Mrs. Dunn dry and put away the dinner dishes when she turned and looked up into my eyes. I looked down into hers and sort of thought they were saying, I’m sorry, but then as I looked a little deeper, I somehow knew that Mrs. Dunn’s eyes were actually saying I love you. Once I recognized that, she put her arms around me and pulled me into her, and then she rested her head on my heart. I wrapped my arms around the old woman and hugged her until I felt myself starting to shake, nearly as bad as I had when I went to Isaiah’s church and everyone was touching me and praying. Mrs. Dunn began to rock me back and forth, almost like I was a baby, and she kept saying she was sorry and that I was going to be okay and that she was happy I was with Jill, which was when I started wanting whatever was happening to be over.
When Mrs. Dunn finally let go of me, she turned away and began wiping her eyes with a dishrag and then retreated to her bedroom.
I went back into the living room and looked at the white Christmas lights on the Dunns’ fake tree, which was decorated mostly with ornaments that Jill had made when she was a little girl. My favorite was a squirrel composed of a pine cone and pasted-on googly eyes and a tail little Jill had obviously cut off of a stuffed animal. I turned and looked at my friend sleeping under a thick patchwork quilt her mother had made by hand from old clothes. The soft light of the Christmas tree was illuminating her face in a way that made Jill look very young and almost holy. I think I might have watched my friend sleeping in that ethereal glow for hours.
When we left the next morning to make our way to Florida, Mr. and Mrs. Dunn didn’t cry, but I could tell they were feeling blue and so I told them that we’d be back soon and often, which is a promise I’ve managed to keep, as Jill and I now visit them once a season, so four times a year. I have grown to love them both very much—like the parents I never had, but maybe deserved somehow.