A few hours
later, Loretta jumped up on the couch and started barking like crazy at the
window.
“Mama’s
home! Mama’s home!”
Chuck started
doing his “Mama’s Home! Dance”, running in circles and screaming at the top of
his lungs. I heard a car door shut and
then, a few seconds later, the jangling of keys outside the front door.
“Well, hi
everybody,” Beval said as she walked into the living room. Loretta jumped up and down in front of her,
and Chuck sprinted at her to give her a hug.
I leaned my head back so it was on the chair, and exhaled.
It was over.
I was done.
I walked three
blocks over to Metropolitan and Powers, where I decided to finish the job in
style by calling a car to take me home.
“Hello,
Metroline.”
“Hi, I’m at
Metropolitan and Powers.”
“Where you
going?”
“Metropolitan
and Wythe.”
“Five minutes.”
I put the phone
back in my pocket and waited on the corner.
I began to think about The Dell, with everyone loving to hear how I
watched Chuck, and I remembered Charlie Brown saying something about a
book. Hell, maybe I should write that
book. Instead of worrying about making
something out of myself, maybe I already had.
Maybe in our three years together, I’d grown as much as Chuck had – at
worst, him showing me that I didn’t have to be a loser for the rest of my life
might have been the one small step that would make all the difference. As I looked across the thick, hazy street, images of our days
together began rolling in front of me like an old film. I saw him getting bigger, talking and
laughing, going from a pile of skin that did nothing but sleep and cry to a
grown boy; by the end of the movie, I was shocked at how much he’d
changed. And in every image, I was with
him. And he was with me. He was my best friend.
Suddenly I ran
around the corner as fast as I could and crouched down with my back against a
brick building, squatting as if I was a catcher. I crossed my arms on my knees, laid my head
on my arms, and cried without control.
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