Take Me Out
Entry 21:
Sunny had been begging me to go to the park for a few weeks. I think she was getting restless of staying in the house and seeing on TV what the kids her age in the rest of the world do. So yesterday, taking a break from the book, I broke down and agreed to take her.
That's the first since I was maybe Sunny's age myself that I've been around such a large gathering of children. But as slightly awkward as it was for me, I know it had to be a universe of a different kind for Sunny. For a while, we stopped at, observed, and passed by every piece of playing equipment the place had to offer in search of the kids who 'looked the friendliest' to her. It wasn't until one little girl with almost platinum blonde ponytails came up to Sunny and complimented her on her 'really cool socks' that we stopped near a huge contraption with slides coming off the sides and swings hanging from them. I took the bench closest to it, returning all the waves Sunny gave me whenever she'd do something she wanted me to share her excitement in. For a moment, I got lost in thinking about my mother and my situation with her until I realized Chloe was calling me and waving feverishly at me from across the park. Even as thick as the air was with children and playground sounds, I still momentarily wondered where I was having never associated Chloe someplace other than the coffee shop.
I felt my hands start to fidget and words from my vocabulary start to float away when she sat down next to me. I watched her as her eyes traced the paths of a boy and girl, both them stopping at the swings.
"Your...kids?" I asked, feeling the inability to start small talk with her rear its ugly head.
"Oh, heavens no." she said through a laugh, "My brother and sister are in town for a wedding and I'm spending some time with my niece and nephew before they go back. They've been with me just about all day. The boy is Dominic, my sister's son and the girl is Spencer, my brother's daughter. Sweet kids, around Sunny's age I think."
Just then, Sunny turned her attention to me again but waved to Chloe instead when she saw her.
"She's just as precious as I remember her being." Chloe smiled and waved back at Sunny until she turned her attention back to her new friend. "I haven't seen you guys in at Serenity's for a while. It isn't because of that night..."
The night she was talking about took no time at all to come back to me and send a small charge of electricity to my lips again as a reminder.
"No, it definitely wasn't that. I just haven't had the time to make it by there."
"Oh, that's good." she said, relief riding on her words, "That's really good because, uh—Hal, do you want to have dinner with me sometime?"
"Like a date?"
"Yeah." My slowness to respond visibly unnerved her.
"I'd love to, Chloe, but when I said that I hadn't had the time to make it by the shop, I meant that it was because Dave died not so long ago."
"Oh God, Hal." She cupped her hands over her mouth and gasped into them. "I'm so sorry. I had no idea. How are you holding up?"
Her eyes, her face, the way she effortlessly reached over to touch my arm before I could say anything, and even the way she tilted her head to accept whatever answer I had was more honest than I had been being with anyone in the past few weeks.
"I'm…okay." That felt good. I was 'myself again' for Sunny, and I was 'only tired' for anyone else who asked me. But for Chloe, I could just be honest. "Most days, I feel like I've accepted everything but every once in a while, I feel like I could buy the plot next to him and bury myself in it."
"It's okay to feel that way. Accepting it doesn't mean you can't still have those days."
I was going to tell her that she sounded like she was speaking from experience but her cell phone chimed and she fumbled around in her purse to answer it. When she got off, she waved her niece and nephew over to her.
"Seems like my brother and sister want their kids back." She put her hand on my shoulder and then lightly pressed her lips on my cheek. "It was really good to see you Hal and again, I'm really sorry about Dave. I know you and your daughter are going to be okay, though."
Chloe looked back at me one more time as she left the park with her niece and nephew, delivering a painful reminder that I had just turned her down for a date. I'm pretty sure she was thinking, Hal, you are a jackass. But then again, that could have been my own internal monologue.
As greatly as I've been resisting the urge to kick myself, I know (perhaps more than ever) that I have a lot of things to work out right now. I'm screwed up in ways I'm just beginning to discover and I wouldn't dare want to bring more people into this than there has to be.