After dinner, they played board games and talked out on the porch as the sun began to set. Artie had his wheelchair back and was able to move around a little more freely on the porch, but there was no way he would be able to get from the porch down to the dock without being carried again. There was talk of a boat ride tomorrow.
As the sky painted itself in gorgeous shades of pink and orange, Tina joined Artie to appreciate the view from the porch.
"Breath-taking," she said.
"Thanks," Artie teased. "Yeah, it's gorgeous, huh? Can't believe it's been so long since I was here."
"Artie, I can believe it," Tina said, keeping her voice low as she spoke. "Are you kidding me? I'm sorry you have to do all this. No wonder you didn't want to come back."
"It wasn't as bad as I remembered it," Artie said. "I mean, it makes sense, I wasn't ready to deal with anything like that was I was just ten." He sighed. "It also makes sense that they're selling it, I mean, they're getting older. It just makes me sad now, that I didn't come back any sooner."
They were interrupted by Artie's grandmother, with a gorgeous looking array of pies, chocolate and strawberry, and Tina was kind of glad her spring break involved pies with Artie's grandmother, not bikini-ready beach bodies.
Once they'd finished the desserts, there was some discussion about sleeping arrangements. There were four bedrooms upstairs. One was the grandparents' master bedroom, the next went to Nora and Kerry-Ann, the next to Artie's parents, and the last one went, after some discussion, to Amy and Cameron. Artie's parents were kind of old school, and since Amy and Cameron weren't married, they would have preferred to have Cameron in the game room with Artie, but then that left Tina navigating two flights of stairs in her boot in the morning, just to get down to the kitchen.
Artie allowed himself to be pushed back up the steep incline of the driveway (at least he could sort of use his chair) and through the front door again, Tina following behind. When they shut the doors to the game room, finally alone, she leaned against them and grinned. "I'm glad I've got a bum foot now," she said. "Because I'd rather stay here with you."
Artie looked around the game room. "This is where Pops keeps photo albums," he told her. "If you want to see pictures of me and Amy as kids."
"Heck yes, I do!!" Not only did Tina love this kind of stuff, but also, the only little kid photo she had seen of Artie was the portrait in his livingroom.
Tina, on the other hand, was an open book, and they'd looked at lots of photos together, even the baby photos of Tina during her first year of life, which had been taken in an orphanage. Those few photos that had been sent over were the only pictures her parents had of that time in her life. They more than made up for it later.
Tina got comfortable on the couch as Artie went looking for the photo albums. Finding one, he set it in his lap and brought it over, parking his chair alongside the couch by Tina. He handed her the album first, and then moved himself from chair to couch.
"Most of these were taken here," he said, opening the book in her lap. "So it's kind of a mix, some are just Pops and Mimi, some are Aunt Nora and Uncle Jeff and Kerry-Ann, and some are us Abrams. Abramses? I never know how to say it in the plural."
He flipped past the first few, which were younger versions of Patti and Arthur, sometimes with Nora and Nancy in the pictures with them. Then came some of Artie's parents, pre-kids, and Tina was taken aback by how much Artie looked like his father. John Abrams was in his early twenties in these. It was weird to think of him as being almost the same age Artie was now. Naturally, baby Amy was next, followed by some cute ones of baby Artie. Finally, there were some of Nora, who seemed to start her relationship with Artie's Uncle Jeff sometime shortly after Artie had been born. And then came some of Nora and Jeff with their brand new baby, Kerry-Ann. Tina stopped to study a few cute shots of the cousins together, including one funny one with Artie standing next to Amy, making a horrible face at her while she was holding baby Kerry-Ann.
"This one's my favorite," he said. "I was six, and I was not impressed with the baby. I just wanted to go ride the jet ski with Pops, and they were making me take these boring pictures."
"I see now why the house is so special," Tina murmured, flipping past a sweet one with Patti (Mimi) and her three grandkids, standing on the dock, with fishing poles.
Kerry-Ann looked to be about two, but she was still holding her own tiny pole. That would make Artie eight and Amy eleven. Eight. Tina's heart sank when she looked at this one, because it was probably just a few months later, when everything would change.
As she flipped through the album, she realized that the next few were only Kerry-Ann and her parents, plus more of Patti and Arthur. Artie's family was noticeably missing from the next several pages. It was then that Tina noticed Artie wasn't saying much at this point.
"There's some more of us, a few more pages over," he said, flipping a little more quickly past the ones of his cousin and finally landing on the ones where they'd visited again, for his tenth birthday.
In one posed family picture outside of the house, Artie was in the blue wheelchair. Tina remembered him having that one when she first met him, back in seventh grade, before he made the switch to a red one right before their freshman year. There were quite a few photos that showed Artie on the couch. And there were some cute ones of he and his grandfather, side by side, blowing out ten and sixty candles, respectively. But what caught Tina's attention the most were some photos in which Artie and his mother were missing. In these, the rest of the family was pictured on the boat. But Artie wasn't there.
"I was off somewhere, being pouty," he explained, seeming to guess what she was thinking. "Mom wanted to me to ride along in the boat but I didn't want to. It reminded me of water skiing. I mean, it was too cold to do it in March anyway. But it was all I could think of, how I wouldn't be able to do it anymore."
"Well, that's understandable..." Tina didn't think it was nice of everyone else to just expect Artie, a still newly paralyzed ten-year-old, to sit back and deal with all of the emotions that probably came along with going back to a place with so many memories. Oh, no...
Artie had already noticed, though, that she was fighting tears. He closed the photo album. "Oh, no," he said. "This is why I don't talk about before. This reaction right here."
"I'm sorry, I'll stop," Tina said. "I really want to know about your history, Artie, about all of it. It makes me feel so much closer to you." She paused. "Wait, you said you couldn't do it anymore, did you get up on water skis before?"
"Yes." Artie paused, thinking about something. "I wonder if it's still there..." Wordlessly, he got back into his chair and wheeled across the room to a book shelf. He thumbed through the books for a few minutes, then paused when he landed on a certain title. "Great Expectations," he shook his head. "Artie, you ten-year-old smart ass..." He opened the book and held up the pictures, triumphantly. Wheeling back to the couch, he handed them to Tina.
"Look at you," Tina exclaimed. "On water skis." After she studied all three photographs, she stared at Artie. "You hid these pictures in that book ten years ago?"
"Yeah," he said. "I hid them in Great Expectations because I was reading that book during my visit. And I guess I hid them there because of the irony of the title. I always did like irony."
Tina still thought all of this was incredibly sad, but she would not cry again. So she took a deep breath instead. "Were you... were you any good on water skis?"
Artie shrugged. "You can see for yourself," he said. "Pops has a bunch of video tapes around here someplace. And he's also still got a working VCR, I think, or he did ten years ago."
"Videos?" Tina was really excited now, and Artie laughed when he saw it on her face. In spite of his initial hesistation, it looked like he was beginning to enjoy sharing the before with Tina.
"Woman, we are going to your house soon, and you better have videos, too," he said. "Payback for all this." But, as promised, he wheeled across the room again, stopping in front of the TV and opening the cabinet. Sure enough, there was the VCR.
"So, my Pops — the original Arthur — he was always making videos. They're pretty good, given the low quality of the technology. They're all labeled with the years." He sifted through several tapes. "Here's 2003."
Thankfully, the VCR did work. The tape started with Artie's 8th birthday at the lake and Arthur's 58th. Artie, she noticed from this tape, was the type of kid who was always moving. For example, Amy was conducting a pre-birthday interview with him while he was hanging upside down from a tree branch by his knees. "So, Artie, what do you want for your birthday?"
"To live here," was Artie's reply. "Ohio is boring."
"Okay, here's the good stuff," Artie said, as the video stopped and restarted with some shaky camera work, since the person holding the camera was on a moving boat. On the end of the rope was Artie, who was sitting back in the water, ski tips up, looking confident already. It was summertime in this footage.
"He's a pro," said the cameraman, presumably Arthur, who was most likely the only person allowed to operate his video equipment on board a speed boat. "Perfectly positioned... here we go... alright, way to go, Artie! Up on the first try!"
Artie stayed up on the skis, and after a few minutes, he ventured outside of the wake. He went back and forth behind the boat a few times, before someone, off-screen, yelled for him to wrap it up. With that, he smoothly let go of the rope and sank, flashing a peace sign as he went.
Tina was so engrossed in watching the little boy on water skis that she forgot about the guy sitting next to her for a moment. Remembering, she checked in on him, surprised at how he could sit this calmly and watch himself doing all these things that were impossible now.
"Does it bother you?" Tina wanted to know.
"It... did," Artie said, pausing the tape. "And does a bit still, I would be lying if I said it didn't at all. I know I couldn't have sat here and talked about before with you like this back in high school. I guess it's different, now that I'm older."
"Well, you're about to turn twenty in..." Tina checked the clock. "Oh, gosh, when did it get so late, Artie? You'll be twenty in ten minutes."
"Cool," said Artie. "I'm going to sleep."
"What? Oh come on!" Tina said. "Stay up and show me more of this tape. I want to see what's next."
"So do I," he said. "I never watched this one, definitely not the last time I was here."
As Artie hit play, however, the next footage was not at the lake house. Artie leaned forward in alarm when he realized it was footage from the hospital. "Why was he filming here?"
"You can stop right there if you want to," Tina said, quickly, not sure what had happened here that Arthur thought would be worth seeing on tape one day. Wasn't this something they'd all like to forget?
"Alright, here we go," Artie's grandfather was saying, zooming in and out on a small boy in a blue wheelchair and pajamas. "Artie picked out his new blue chair today, and he's already learned his first trick. Take it away, Artie!"
Artie did his characteristic half-smirk, not quite the big grin on the face of the boy who'd been hanging upside down in a tree, but not the face of someone who'd completely lost hope either. He pulled back on wheels, sharply, bringing his stationary feet up off the ground a few inches. "My wheelie still needs work," he said.
"I kind of remember that now," the Artie who presently sat beside Tina muttered, intently concentrated on the screen. "So much of that time is a blur. But I remember Pops and Mimi being there, pretty much the whole time. They stayed in Ohio a long time after..."
"Hey, Artie," Tina interrupted, looking at the clock. "Happy twentieth." She leaned in, then, and planted a light kiss on his lips. "Thanks for bringing me here."
Artie touched his lips, eyes searching hers in confusion. She was still trying to work out what it meant, too. All she knew was, in that moment, she'd wanted to kiss him.
"Thanks, Tee," he said.