The ring of the phone was so soft, and his sleep so deep, that Dylan
had managed to work the sound of it into his dream. In his dream, he was back
in high school. He had just managed to coax Faith O'Donnell to his locker under
the guise of showing her his new letterman jacket. He was proud of his
letterman jacket with the thick embroidered volleyball on the sleeve, CAPTAIN
in big block letters just below it. He was proud of it to be sure, but the truth
is that he would have said just about anything to get her to have a one on one
conversation with him, even stand in his general vicinity, for that matter.
Right now Faith was so close to him that he could smell her strawberry lip
gloss. He was astonished by how much more beautiful she was at this distance.
He showed her the jacket and watched her smile widen. He added with pride that
he had just won an academic scholarship, and that college was definitely going
to happen. Dream Dylan was doing incredibly well – Faith was suitably
impressed, hanging on his every word.
He watched her run her
fingers over the stitching of his name, tracing the cursive letters, her shiny
pink fingernail tracing each letter. “You are so amazing, Dylan.” He raised an
eyebrow. She continued, “I mean, you’re an incredible athlete, you’re smart,
you volunteer, you play the piano.”
“And guitar,” he added
quickly, so as not to interrupt her flattery.
“And, you’re not so bad
looking.” She felt her cheeks start to warm – getting hotter with every word – but
she continued, “You’re sort of the perfect guy.”
Dylan felt like he was
floating. Her litany of compliments gave him enough nerve to finally ask her
out. He drew a deep, calming breath to try and steady the quiver he knew he
would have in his voice. “Faith, would you like to go to the homecoming dance with
me?”
Before she could
answer, the third period bell rang.
And rang.
And rang.
Faith began to vaporize
before his eyes as the school bell gradually morphed into the pestering ring of
his phone. He begrudgingly left Faith behind, standing at the locker and about
to say yes (he hoped). With any luck, he thought, they would meet again soon.
Dylan glanced at the
clock, 3:25am. He answered the phone without even looking to see who it was. He
knew that a call at this hour would probably not be good.
“I don’t know what to
do, Dylan. . . she’s my world. . .she can’t go yet. . . I love her so much. . .”
Henry’s voice was barely recognizable through the sobs.
“Henry? What? Wait.
Slow down. What happened?”
He spoke in fragments,
the long pauses where he was obviously trying, with little success, to gain
composure. “It’s my Eva. . . she got out of bed. . . complained she didn’t feel
well. . .they say her heart stopped. . .what if she dies, Dylan?”
Without even realizing
it, Dylan rotated the brass switch on the hurricane lamp that sat on his night
table. The mechanical click reverberated off of the old knotty pine walls with
such force that he was certain he woke the whole house. He threw off the covers
and began to dress himself as Henry shared more details of what had happened to
Eva. For Henry, just saying it out loud was cathartic, and he calmed a little
with each sentence. As of yet, no one had given Henry an official diagnosis,
but it was clear that they were incredibly lucky that Henry insisted on calling
911.
“She’s going to be
okay, Henry. I know it. Is Junior there with you,” Dylan asked, squeezing the
phone to his ear with his shoulder as he wiggled himself into his jeans. The
old wooden floors moaned loudly under his shifting weight. This cabin only has one volume – thunderous, he thought.
“You’re the first one
I called. I knew you’d know what to do. Can you come over to the hospital?
They’re getting ready to take her there now.”
Dylan hesitated. He realized
Henry had forgotten about the family reunion. This week was the first in three
years that the whole family was able to get together in the same place at the
same time, and it was usually Dylan’s schedule that was the problem. He recalled the tense phone call with his
parents earlier in the summer.
“I can’t get vacation right now, mom. We’re in the middle of a huge
project.”
“But,
Dylan, you’re the only one who can’t do it. Please come, Dyl,” she begged.
He
heard his father in the background, “Is he coming?”
The
sound became muffled as his parents began their own conversation as if he
weren’t there – sidebars, Dylan called them. He pictured the scene as he
listened: His mom held the phone against her chest in one hand, the other
(barely) covering the receiver as she yelled into the family room to his dad,
who was firmly rooted in his recliner for the evening.
“He
says he can’t get vacation. Some big project,” she began.
“What
does that mean, can’t get vacation? It’s his vacation. He just needs to take it,” his father insisted. Dylan wished it were that simple.
“Dylan,”
the phone unmuffled now, “it’s your father. Listen, your mother is in tears.
She’s been planning this for a year. Please do what you can to make this
happen, okay son?”
Dylan’s slight pause
was enough to make Henry recall that he was out of town. “Wait. This is your
reunion week, isn’t it? Never mind. You stay right there with your family. I’ll
call Junior; he can be here in an hour. I’ll be okay.” Dylan could hear the disappointment
in his voice.
“Henry, listen, maybe
I can get there in a couple of days. It would kill my mom if I left now.” The
words felt like acid pouring from his mouth. He could hear them stinging his
friend, but he couldn’t even imagine telling his mother he had to go. “Do you
have a ride to the hospital?”
“You best stay there,
then. As it turns out, half of the Lodge is working night shift, and they’ve
all offered me a ride. Seems I’ll have my pick of squad cars to follow the
ambulance. I better go.”
“I wish I could be
there, Henry,” he apologized. “You and Eva are practically family to me. You’re
both in my prayers. Please call me as soon as you know something.” Dylan hung
up and stared at his phone. He was in an impossible situation, and he hated it.
Henry was as much a part of his family as his actual blood relatives. There was
no way of explaining that to his parents, though. They would just stare at him
blankly as he tried to put the depth of a fraternal bond into words that made
sense to them. He has his own children to
handle it, they would say. It wouldn’t matter to them that Dylan was the
first one he called.
He pulled the lace
curtain back and glanced out his bedroom window. In the gloaming, he saw the
grass, needle-like with frost. The sun was still below the horizon but had
already begun to paint the bottoms of the impossibly high cirrus clouds with a
hundred shades of gold and orange. There
was no way he was getting back to sleep at this point, so he decided to go make
some coffee, to feed his inner caff-fiend,
as he liked to say. He desperately needed to come up with a way to at least
broach the subject with his parents so that he could, at the very least, leave
a day early without a whole lot of grief.
He crept down the
well-worn stairs of the cabin shoeless, placing his feet at the extreme edges
of the treads so they would be less likely to squeak. Even the slightest noises
carried through here as if the house were wired for sound and he had
microphones on his feet. He was desperate not to wake anyone.
His plan, when he
reached the bottom, was to switch on the pot and retire to the porch to watch
the sun continually re-imagine the palette of the sky. There, alone, he hoped an
answer might come to him.
He imagined the scent
of coffee as he reached the main floor and headed toward the kitchen. I drink way too much of this stuff if I can
smell it before it brews, he thought.
He rounded the corner
toward the kitchen and saw first one, then a second cup of coffee sitting on
the long oak table, the steam rising and curling from both. He looked up from
the mugs to see his mother’s silhouette framed perfectly in the soft yellow
light of the open refrigerator.
“What are you doing
up,” he asked.
She closed the door
and turned toward him. He wasn’t sure how to read the look on her face, it
seemed both happy and sad. He noticed her eyes glistening, a little wetter than
usual. She gestured for him to sit and he obeyed.
“I heard you on the
phone, and I thought maybe we should talk.”
To be continued. . .
Sooner or later, we will each face a situation
like the one you just read. In today’s world, time is our most precious
commodity, and (somewhat ironically), the one with the most demands on it.
Dylan’s mom sees her son being swept into his own life. Dylan feels the pull of
loyalty to two families – biological and fraternal. And Henry is facing the
uncertainty of his wife’s illness in her later years, and perhaps by extension,
his own mortality.
How will they handle it? We each have our own
hierarchy of importantcies. The pressing need of one person may be the last
thing on earth another would want to do. Successful interaction with others
often relies on our ability to view any given situation from atop the other’s
hierarchical pyramid. Remember, Modern Vitruvians, that we are judged not only
by who we are, but by who we are in the presence of others.
In the next issue, we will see how it all goes
for Dylan and his loved ones. Until then, think about how well you handle
situations where you have competing loyalties. Do you attempt to force your
will, or do you compromise? Does one desire always take precedence or can you
rearrange your hierarchy to accommodate difficult circumstances? What would you
do in Dylan’s situation? His mom’s? Henry’s?
What do you think will happen next? Weigh in, share your own story, or ask questions in the Comments section below.
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