17
Luke
Iwas sitting at the dining table with my family when I received Maddie’s text.
It said: Luke, please stop looking for me at the salon. You are keeping me from doing my job. Also, do not come to my house. If you continue to pursue me, you will force me to permanently leave Conway. I’m sorry. It’s better this way.
I read it five times, trying to picture her writing the words. Tension raced through my body, knotting my muscles from head to toe. What the ever-living fuck? This was how she was signing off? It’s better this way? That shit read like I was a stalker, rather than a man who couldn’t seem to get through to a woman who he would literally jump in front of a moving train for. Also, who was this fucking robot texting me? Where was Maddie? It was like invasion of the body snatchers. First, she throws me out. I thought we were going to have a fight, not never see or talk to each other again. Then, I can’t reach her or find her. Thank God, Delores told me she was with Claire. I was out of my mind thinking something happened to her, visions of carbon monoxide poisoning or falling in the shower strangling my every thought. And now, this is what she says?
I get it. I reacted poorly. But honestly, how else was I supposed to react? She told me something sad. Something that hurt. Was I supposed to laugh and be like, kids, schmids, who wants any of those? I also get that this is a thing for her. I think she’d been struggling to tell me for a while, but still, we couldn’t work through it if we didn’t talk about it. She didn’t make any room for me to formulate an opinion. I’d had time now. I’d thought about it. And, honestly, there were many options for us. We could try fertility treatments. We could adopt kids. Or we could never ever have any and I would still want Maddie. I had a fucking barrel of siblings. I was probably going to be an uncle a dozen times over, and with no kids in our house, we could spend our lives christening every surface. That sounded awesome. I couldn’t tell her that I’d imagined a life where I wasn’t a father before I met her, but now I had, and it didn’t kill me. A life without Maddie, that was unbreathable.
Fuck that stupid text message. With a scream trapped in my chest, I threw my phone down on the table.
“Whoa there, Patty, who pooped in your sprouts?” Cody asked.
Wyatt chuckled.
“Fuck you both,” I spat, my voice bitter with years of repressed anger.
Wyatt’s eyebrows shot up, surprised, “Someone, clearly.”
“Language, Luke,” my father said nonchalantly from the end of the table.
“No. Fuck them. Fuck each and every one of you. I’m a grown-ass man. I’m a vegetarian. Why do you care?” I was loud, shaking with anger. “You know what else? I’m an artist. A good one. And I drive an hour from here to take art classes so that you jerks won’t give me a hard time.”
Bill tried to speak, “You drive—”
“No. You don’t get to say anything yet.” I stood up, eyeing each and every one of them. “I’m always the butt of your jokes. Do you know that? I go out there and work our ranch just as hard as any of you and you treat me like the fucking blond sheep of this family.” I punctuated my rant by hitting the dining table with my fist. In my head, I’d called myself the blond sheep rather than the black sheep a million times.
Looking around the room, I realized that the color had drained from all my brother's faces and Sarah looked like she might cry.
My father spoke first, “Sit down, son.”
I sat. He was the boss after all, but he was also a constant voice of reason for all of us.
He continued, “Okay, I think we all see that Luke is upset. Am I right?” My siblings all nodded. “Do y’all have things you want to say to him?” His way of mediating felt familiar. It was how he managed us when we were teenagers.
Bill spoke first, “I honestly didn’t know we were hurting you, Luke. I’m sorry.” My other siblings concurred by nodding their heads.
I put my head in my hands, emotion raging in my chest, tears threatening to spill from my eyes. I didn’t know how much anger I was holding back. Without looking at them, I said, “Shit, I didn’t mean to yell like that but it’s true. It’s a death by a thousand cuts kind of thing. I feel like y’all are constantly making me feel like I’m a joke.”
“Language,” my father said again and my brothers laughed. My father cursed like a sailor but never let up on us using off-color words.
Sarah spoke up, “Can you tell us about the art class?”
God, I’d made such a mess of all this. I was supposed to confess this stuff in a way that was well thought out and now I just screamed it all out like a madman. I took a deep breath, “It’s a drawing class,” I said, not making eye contact with anyone.
“I remember that horse you drew on the side of the barn before we painted it with mom,” Wyatt said. “Do you remember that, Bill?”
“I do,” my father said. “Looked like a living beast, like it was going to run off into the pasture at any moment. Your mother took a million pictures of it the day before we bought the paint.”
I don’t know why that was the trigger but I started crying, giving them a whole new reason to make fun of me. Only, they didn’t. Sarah jumped up from her seat and hugged me.
“Goddammit, I feel terrible. I promise I’ll never call you Patty again,” Cody said.
I wiped my eyes. “No, you can. It’s not that you guys call me Patty. I just need to know that you are behind me, no matter what.”
“Fuck, I’d literally die for you, brother,” Wyatt said.
My father shook his head, smiling, “What am I going to do about this language?” We all rolled our eyes.
Bill picked up his knife and fork and started to cut his chicken while he spoke, “Okay, so you’re taking a drawing class. You said it’s an hour from here, so at Fletcher?”
I nodded. The others picked up their silverware and Sarah returned to her seat.
He continued, “That’s cool. What can we do to support you?”
“There’s an exhibition next week. I guess you could come.” Thinking about class, and the exhibition, I wondered if Maddie would be there, and I started blubbering again like a little baby. For the record, I wasn’t hysterical. I was just a sappy fuck.
“Oh no,” Sarah said, jumping back up. With her arms around me, she said gently, “What’s happening now? I feel like this is more than just overwhelming for you?”
“Maddie,” I managed to choke out.
Sarah stage whispered to the rest of them, “See, I told you they were on the outs.”
I looked up at her. She shrugged. “It’s a small town.”
Of course, they knew.
Sarah shooed Bill out of his seat so that she could sit next to me. “What happened?”