[Tuesday, April 28, 1992]

Julie was sound asleep, and so was Eric, when Tami pulled into their apartment parking lot at 12:05 AM.

She had hoped Mr. Taylor would call after Eric before the door to the garage shut behind them, that he would tell Eric that he loved him and didn't regret the sacrifice he had made for his son. But the man just stood there in the midst of his shop staring at the floor.

She left Eric sleeping in the car and took Julie upstairs. She was just heading for the front door to go back down to get him when it opened. "Hey," he said softly when he came in. His hair was a tangled mess.

"Hey," she said back.

Tami took Eric's hand and led him to bed. He stripped to his boxers and lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling in the darkness. She changed into a nightshirt and lay beside him on her back and took his hand. The ceiling fan beat unsteadily above them, tracing darker shadows on the already dark ceiling.

"Thanks for driving," he said. "Thanks for…for everything."

She couldn't see him well, there in the darkness, but she could feel his mood, in the reluctant clasp of his hand, in the heaviness of his body against the bed, in the rigid way he lay. The disappointment was no longer rolling off him like a wave, but those dark waters were still lapping at him.

She considered her words carefully and decided on this brief truth: "You impressed me."

His laugh was short and sharp, a scoffing snort. "Really?When was that? When I lost my self-control and threw that bottle? When I tripped over my own feet in the bar? Or when I upchucked on the side of the road?"

"When you refused to scapegoat Mo, even though it would have been an easy thing to do. When you were honest with yourself about your abilities. When you set goals for the future, with me and Julie in mind. When you stood up for yourself to your father. Eric, you impressed me."

In the darkness, he turned to her and sought her lips, the failure flowing out of him and the pride pouring in. His caresses were gentle but confident, and her need built gradually. They made love slowly but intensely, her sighs drifting up and dissolving with the whir of the overhead fan, his voice a deep, thrilling murmur in her ear as he asked her if she liked what he was doing to her, if it felt good, if she wanted it, if she wanted more…

"Yes….yes….yes…." was her soft cry of reply. "Please, Eric. Please."

The wave of her pleasure mounted, crested, and broke to the sound of his low moan. They both gasped for air in the aftermath, settled and stilled, and in the warmth of their mutual embrace, drifted off to sleep.

[Wednesday, April 29]

When Eric got home from the youth flag football program, Tami already had dinner on the table. As they ate, he said, "I need to go to the computer lab after dinner, if that's a'ight."

"Bwead," Julie said, as she brought a piece of dinner roll to her mouth. "Yum!"

"Why?" Tami asked. "Didn't you finish that history paper?"

"I'm going to print out some resumes. Start faxing them off to schools tomorrow. Play up the youth coaching angle." He smiled. "And my peer tutoring experience."

Tami chuckled as she bent down to pick up the sippy cup Julie had just knocked over. She handed it back to the girl and said, "I need to send out my resumes too. But I'll wait to see who hires you. It'll probably be easier for me to find a counselor position at a school near your school, than for you to find both a teaching and coaching position at a school near my school."

He dipped his spoon into his stew – a hodgepodge she'd thrown together from yesterday's leftovers – and said, "The alternative certification program is going to cost money, and it's going to be 50 hours a week. I won't be able to earn much this summer."

"We'll figure something out," Tami assured him.

"I guess you wouldn't have to worry about money if you had never broken up with Mo. He'd be bringing you home a nice paycheck."

"Sure. Whatever he didn't spend on his mistress."

"Mistwess?" Julie said. "Mistwess?"

Eric glanced at their daughter as though suddenly realizing Julie was not entirely deaf to their conversations.

"There's a reason I married you, Eric," Tami told him.

He pointed his spoon at Julie. "Yeah. I know. She's sitting right there." He made a silly face at Julie and she giggled.

"Several reasons I married you. I'll take a conscientious and faithful man over a paycheck any day."

"Another thing," Eric said, turning his attention from Julie to Tami. "We have to be out of the apartment by May 30. My scholarship is up when we graduate. They let us finish the month. That's it."

"We can't pay for an extra two months? While you get certified and I keep working at the admissions office?"

He shook his head. "They don't do that. I asked. And there's already a waiting list for this apartment."

"I suppose we could live in the parsonage for a couple of months. I could find some kind of temporary work in Tyler until I have a counseling job. Tyler Community probably has one of those certification programs. Grandma could watch Julie while I work and you get certified. Free childcare."

"Ga-ma!" Julie said. "Ga-ma make cook-eeees! Yummmmmm…."

"I don't want to live with your mother, Tami."

"Neither do I, but…they have a spare bedroom. Two, actually. I'm sure she'd say yes. It would just be two months. Then we'd get an apartment wherever you get your job."

The kitchen phone rang. Tami went to answer it, covered the receiver, and said, "It's your father." He shook his head. "Eric, you should talk to him."

"Tell him I'm not home."

Tami sighed and relayed the lie. When she sat down, she said, "You really should call him back, Eric."

"Not today," Eric said, raising his beer bottle. "I just don't want to hear it from him today." He sipped and said, "I'm sure he read about all the undrafted free agents who have started signing contracts, and he's going to tell me again how I'm not even trying." He set his bottle down with a light plunk.

"Daddy twows bot-tle!" Julie said.

"Daddy doesn't throw bottles anymore, Monkey Noodle," he told her. "Daddy doesn't throw anything anymore."

"Daddy twows Julie! Up! Up! Up!"

He smiled. "After dinner. Daddy will toss Julie up just a little. And spin her." He looked at Tami. "And why is Daddy talking in the third person?"

"Because Daddy is a good daddy who loves his Julie."

[Saturday, May 2, 1992]

Tami was studying for finals at the table in the breakfast nook while Julie lay languidly on the couch in the living room watching a Sesame Street video. The child had decided, at less than two years old, that she was giving up naps. Tami had tried to force the issue, but between work and school, she didn't have the energy to fight her daughter. So she'd opted on this compromise – vegging to the television.

When the phone rang, she popped off the pressure gate that was blocking off the kitchen. Julie had a habit of emptying lower cabinets and playing with oven knobs. She could climb over these gates, but she usually accepted them as a "Stay Out" sign.

Her father-in-law was on the other end of the line, and he asked for Eric. "He's not home."

"He's never home when I call," Mr. Taylor said skeptically.

"He's really not here. He's interviewing today," she said. "For a teaching and coaching job in Hewitt."

"Already?" he asked.

"Well, we're about to graduate in a couple weeks. Any hire would be conditional on him completing that alternative certification program, of course."

"Huh. Well, listen, he's apparently decided not to return my calls, so would you relay to him a message for me?"

"What's that?"

"Tell him I don't understand his decision to quit playing football - "

"- I'm not going to tell him that."

"Wait, Tami. Just listen. Tell him that I don't understand his decision to quit playing football, but I understand that it's his decision to make. Tell him that he's given me…" He stopped. He coughed. He cleared his throat. "Tell him that he's given me more than I ever gave away for him. He's given me a son I can be proud of, because he's a man with strong family feeling and a sense of responsibility and a willingness to work hard. A man of integrity. He's given me the daughter I never had, a young lady who is fiercely loyal and compassionate, and he's given me the cutest, sweetest granddaughter a man could ever ask for."

Tami, feeling relief for Eric and affection for her father-in-law, smiled. "I'll tell you what. Why don't I just tell him to call you, and then you tell him all that?"

"But will he call me?"

"He will if I tell him to."

[*]

When Julie was settled in bed that night, Tami approached Eric about calling his father.

"I don't need that stress in my life right now."

"Eric, I think he wants to apologize."

"My dad doesn't apologize."

"He absolutely does!" Tami insisted. "He apologized that time he punched the hole in the wall." Tami could see where Eric got his short fuse from, but also where he got his ability to self-reflect and admit his instinctive reactions could be wrong.

"He's just going to tell me I'm not trying hard enough again."

"I don't think he's going to tell you that, Eric. I talked to him. I think he wants to…he wants to make amends between you two."

"He heard Owings signed with the CFL yesterday and he's going to try to persuade me to. Talking to him is going to stress me out."

"Fine. I'll tell you what, sugar. If you go call him right now, when you're done talking to him, I'll give you a blow job. Would that de-stress you?"

He smiled, that little closed lipped grin he had, with a matching twinkle in his eye. "Is that a promise?"

"It's a promise."

"I'll make the call right now."

Tami went to their bedroom to read in order to give him some privacy. He came back to the bedroom just eight minutes later. Tami did not consider that to be a good sign at all. They clearly hadn't talked properly.

He began to undo his belt. He had on dress slacks and a button-down shirt, because he'd been dressed for an interview, and he looked more handsome than usual. "So, um…" he said, "you want to kneel for this? Or sit on the edge of the bed?"

"Are you serious?" she asked. "We have to talk about your conversation with your dad first."

"Why?"

Tami shook her head, but then she considered that she'd probably get more out of him after he was de-stressed anyway. She slid to sit on the end of the bed. "Come here," she told him. "Let's see if this gives me a good angle."

He smiled and pulled his belt from the loops. It dropped to the floor with a clang. He stepped closer and began gently stroking her hair while she undid his button and zipper. "You're tall," she said.

"The futon frame is really low."

She began to ease his pants down to his knees. "Tell me one of your fantasies."

"I used to fantasize about you doing this to me under the bleachers in high school."

"Before we were dating?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

"After we started dating, but before you gave me…" He smiled and chuckled happily. "That coupon."

"Yeah?" she teasingly parted the flap of his boxers. "Tell me all about it, sugar. And if you stop, I stop." She leaned in and started with a single, taunting swirl of her tongue, the way she had the first time, when it was new to him.

"Cruel, cruel, girl," he muttered. He related his fantasy as best he could, but toward the end, he just said, "Yeah, you did that, Tami…and that, and…yes…God yes!…just like that….oh, Tami…you did it…just….like…. oh God….ohhhhhhhhh Goooooood…."

When he had recovered and put on the athletic shorts he wore as PJ bottoms, and she'd put on her night shirt, and they'd crawled into bed together, he kissed her neck and asked if she wanted him to "return the favor."

"I want you to talk to me," she said. "About your conversation with your father."

He shrugged. "Not much to talk about. He said Andrew is sort of kind of but not really crawling."

"And?"

"And he thinks Mo McArnold won't make it out of training camp."

"And?"

"Karen's been doing really well in medical school this semester. She's going to accelerate her program. Finish her degree as early as she can. Wants to do her residency at Dallas Presbyterian when the time comes."

"And?" Tami asked.

"He's thinking of incorporating his remodeling business as an LLC, instead of sticking with the sole proprietorship model, for liability reasons."

Frustrated, Tami exclaimed, "Did he not talk to you about…you know…important things?"

"He said something kind of strange," Eric answered.

"What's that?"

"He said, there are more important things than football."

"That's no so strange."

"It is coming from him. And then he said he was proud to have raised a son who turned out to be a man of good character."

"That's nice, right? I bet that made you feel good."

"Tami, he'll always think I should have made it to the NFL."

"Maybe. But that doesn't mean he isn't proud of you."

"Yeah," Eric said. "But not for that. He'll never get to be proud of me for that."

Tami sighed. "Eric, sometimes I think you're harder on your father than he is on you."

"Is that some kind of psycho…psycho…whatever?"

"I don't think there's anything at all psychotic about the statement."

"You know what I meant."

She propped herself up on an elbow and kissed him. He smiled beneath her lips. She adored that sleepy, happy smile of his. "Maybe I will allow you to return the favor."

"Mhmmm," he murmured, and kissed her lazily. "It would be my pleasure." He flipped her suddenly onto her back and began attacking her with kisses on her neck and over her shirt, all the way down to the hem. She giggled and pushed at him playfully while he slid up her nightshirt and hooked his fingers into the edge of her panties. "These have to come off, babe."

After he'd tossed them on the floor, he grew serious and attentive. Soon enough, she wasn't laughing anymore. She was digging her fingers into his hair, clutching the short, thick, strands, and begging him not to stop.