It's been a long while, and I suspect a lot of you have been seriously frustrated and annoyed, but it's here at last.
It's Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada. Some celebrate today (Sunday). Some celebrate tomorrow on the official Thanksgiving Day. What better way to celebrate Thanksgiving in Canada than to spend the day with the de Villiers family.
Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canucks. To the rest of the world, my best wishes go to you.
Enjoy.
Neil
“Jesus Murphy, Gramma!” Justin exclaimed excitedly that Monday morning Thanksgiving Day in October. It was the twins’ first ever Thanksgiving celebration with us. If they had celebrated Thanksgiving before they came to live with us, they had no memories of it.
We were gathered in the Hayes household, invited there by Brad’s parents to have breakfast with them before heading out to Maple Grove to join my parents and my daughter for Thanksgiving dinner in the early afternoon. Once there, Brad and I, along with John, would be helping Dad close up the pool for winter while Mom and Bernice prepared dinner. I really had no idea what would be involved in winterising a swimming pool, but Dad had made a list of everything that needed to be done and he would be only too happy to supervise.
At that moment, though, winterising Dad’s swimming pool was the furthest thing from my mind. All of my attention was on my minutes-older son who had stunned us all with his slightly-altered but very familiar exclamation. My eyes flew to his gleaming little face. Bits of his breakfast dotted his lips and chin and his cheeks were puffed out from the unswallowed bits of food he’d tucked in them so he could talk. He knew he wasn’t supposed to talk with food in his mouths, but I chalked up his little memory lapse to the excitement of the day. What with spending two nights at their uncle’s apartment where Nathan had served them what must have been a delicious holiday dinner, their Thanksgiving just seemed to be getting better and better, and it was all beginning with Bernice’s breakfast.
“This stuff taste-es really, really good!” he continued.
“Really, really, really good!” added his twin brother. Jeremy, apparently, wanted to make sure his grandmother got the message that he not only liked the breakfast as well, but he liked it one ‘really’ more than Justin did.
I froze in mid bite; my hand held a folded piece of toast directly in front of my astonished and trepid face, ready to be deposited into my open and waiting mouth that suddenly felt as dry as the sands of the Sahara. Neither the twins nor Lindsay had ever used my little ‘catchphrase’ before, either in front of us or in front of anyone else that I knew of. Somehow, though, it sounded much more like a curse when Justin said it than when either Brad or I said it. I dreaded the reactions it might cause in their grandparents.
My eyes flashed first to Brad. He, too, appeared to be just as mortified as I was. His green eyes were wide as he gaped at me. His lips shuddered a bit as if he was going to say something but closed it again as if changing his mind. Next, I looked to Brad’s father. John had a small, amused grin on his face and a delighted smile in his eyes. Finally I dared a glance toward Bernice, our sons’ grandmother and my mother-in-law. She was staring at Justin with an indiscernible expression on her face. I had no idea what she might be thinking or what she might say. It could have been anything I could imagine, and I imagined a lot that morning.
I closed my mouth and waited.
“That ‘stuff’, Justin,” she corrected much as a teacher would correct a young student, “is called porridge.”
“I know,” Justin grinned back at his grandmother, “but my mouth doesn’t like to say that.”
“Me, too,” said Jeremy with an identical grin (minus a tiny scar on his upper lip, of course) on his face.
Without missing a beat, Bernice continued. “Do your mouths like to say ‘oatmeal’?”
The boys looked at each other and, in precise unison, said “oatmeal”; they looked back at their grandmother and rocked their blond-haired heads up and down on their necks. “Mm-hmm,” they hummed as they finished chewing their bites of food and swallowing it.
“Then please call it ‘oatmeal’ instead of ‘stuff’.”
“Okay,” they replied happily, and then Justin said suddenly and rather unexpectedly, “Jesus Murphy, Gramma! This oatmeal taste-es really, really good!”
There was a brief, palpable moment of silence, and then the room erupted in laughter, led off by Bernice who, as it turned out, laughed harder than everyone else as the boys bounced up and down in their seats and clapped their hands in unabashed glee. Bernice laughed so hard, in fact, that she had to dab at her eyes with a tissue.
The twins were right, though. Bernice’s homemade maple and brown sugar oatmeal was the best I’d ever tasted. They’d had oatmeal before, of course. Many times. But this was the first time they’d eaten maple and brown sugar flavour. It was my habit of breaking of a bite-sized piece of toast and spoon some oatmeal onto it and popping it into my mouth as I was doing that morning. Justin had tried it my way the first time he’d eaten oatmeal with us but quickly discovered that he didn’t like that method. Too slow and too much trouble and effort, I suppose. He much preferred, as did Jeremy, Daddy Brad’s method of tearing off a bit of toast and using it as a spoon of sorts to dunk it directly into the oatmeal and scoop it out of the bowl. Not only was it easier that way, but it was a lot more fun to boot. That’s how they were eating it that morning, which accounts for the bits of breakfast splattered around their mouths. They weren’t so good at judging the size of their torn-off bits of toast, but they were pretty good at stuffing it all in their mouths.
Brad and I had already taken our showers in the camper before joining Brad’s parents for breakfast, so, now that our morning repast was finished and the twins were taking a quick bath together, we adults sat at the table enjoying a relatively quiet caffeine pick-me-up as the sounds of subdued chitchat and play came to us from the bathroom down the hall.
“Has Lindsay talked to you yet about staying here with us until the house is finished, Ted?” John asked off-handedly after a long, satisfying sip of hot, freshly-brewed coffee.
“Um, no, she hasn’t,” I answered without even trying to disguise my surprise. “Why? Has she asked you if she can?”
“Not outright,” Bernice cut in, “but she’s been dropping enough not-so-subtle hints for us to figure out that she’d like to.”
“Like what?”
“Well,” Brad’s father continued, “she says she can’t sleep because you and the twins snore too loud. She says stuck in the middle and gets it in stereo every night. And there isn’t enough room on the table for her to spread out her homework.”
“And she says the water heater sounds like a ghost when it turns on,” Bernice added, “and she’s tired of always having to put the toilet seat down. Of course, we’d be delighted to have her stay with us. The boys, too, if it’s getting too cold in the camper.”
“The camper’s warm enough,” Brad said. “We’ve only had to turn on the furnace a few mornings so far to take the chill off. But, I doubt if anyone could drag Justin and Jeremy out of Winnie to stay in here when we’re sleeping right outside the door.”
“I can believe that,” John said. “I suspect they’d live in a Johnny-On-The-Spot if that’s where you were.”
As Brad and his parents had been talking, I had been trying to figure out why my daughter hadn’t talked to me about it, and then I thought that maybe she had been dropping hints to me and Brad as well, but we simply hadn’t picked up on them. “Well, Lindsay hasn’t said anything to me about it,” I said after a bit, “but I’ve noticed she’s been a lot quieter lately. She usually just curls up in the corner on the daybed and loses herself in a book.”
“She needs her privacy, Ted,” Bernice told me bluntly. “She’s growing up and there isn’t anywhere for her to go to get some. Wherever she goes in the camper, somebody else is there. Tell me. Has she asked if she can invite Daniel for dinner some night?”
“No.”
“She asked me.”
My eyebrows flew up so high on my forehead that I’m sure they did the mambo with my hairline. “Really? When?”
Bernice nodded. “Oh, two, three weeks ago. Of course I told her she would have to get permission from you first.”
“She hasn’t said anything to me. Brad?” Brad merely shook his head ‘no’. It didn’t take me long to decide that I would remedy the situation as quickly as possible while, at the same time, chastising myself for being so blind to my daughter’s needs.
Not long after that, with the twins neatly dressed and their hair neatly combed and their teeth brightly brushed, we were all ready to head out to Mom and Dad’s place to join them for Thanksgiving dinner. I had thought Brad’s parents might ride with us in the van but they followed us in their own car. Apparently they were meeting some friends for a light evening meal and playing a card game called Hasenpfeffer. Justin and Jeremy were in their car seats behind us counting the cows they saw in the fields as we passed. Well, at least they counted as high as they knew how to count, and then they’d start all over again. If I remember correctly, by the time we got to Mom and Dad’s, they were up to six for about the fourth time.
“I can’t wait until the house is finished,” Brad said quietly so the boys couldn’t hear, “and we can start taking showers together again. I really miss that.” He added a wink in case I missed the innuendo in his voice.
“I do, too,” I answered back just as quietly, “but you’d better hope the designer our parents hired to do our bedroom and en suite designs a shower big enough for the two of us to. . .” (I made quick quotation marks in the air with my fingers) “wrestle in.”
“Oh, don’t you worry, Pops, it’ll be lots big enough to do tag team.”
I glanced at him. He was wearing faded jeans and a crisp, white T-shirt with a Ryerson logo on it. He had a wickedly sneaky, mischievous, I-know-something-you-don’t-know grin on his face, punctuated by his chipped tooth smile which caught the early morning sun and actually sparkled like a diamond in a Prince Charming kind of way.
“Okay, Tiger, spill it. What are you hiding?”
His grin got even wider. “Nothin’, Pops.”
“Bullshit, Brad. You’re hiding something and I want to know what it is.”
“I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll show you ‘spoilt’. Now come on. How can you be so sure the shower’s going to be big enough?”
Brad was silent for a few lengthy moments as he looked out the passenger window, obviously thinking about whether or not he would spill the beans. “Okay,” he whispered finally as he leaned toward me. “But don’t say anything to anyone that I told you. Especially Mom. She mentioned the designer’s name the other day when she was asking me about what colours we both would like in our bedroom. Honest, Ted, she doesn’t even realise she said it.”
After a swift glance over his shoulder to see if the boys were paying any attention to us, he continued: “Anyways, Mom mentioned his last name and I looked him up on the Net. Wasn’t hard to find him. There was only one designer named Beardsley in the city.”
“British,” I commented.
“Yeah. His accent reminded me of the guy on the plane who switched seats with me.” Ah, yes. The other Clive Barker. “I gave him a call and asked if he could do me a favour as a surprise for you. I asked if he could make room for a separate shower that can rain and is big enough to pitch a pup tent in.”
That made me laugh out loud. “Why in hell would you want a shower that big, Brad? Are you planning on inviting Nathan and Barry to join us in there or something?”
“Well, I hadn’t thought of that, but if you want to, I’m sure it’ll be big enough for all of us with room to spare. But no.” Brad’s voice dropped even more in volume as he leaned closer to me. A huge dose of playfulness entered his voice and there was no disguising his unbridled excitement. It all cried out in his words. “I was thinking more for the times when, you know, for when we want to get a little frisky in there the way we did before. I wanted to make sure there’s enough room for to get as frisky in like we usually get in bed without having to worry about smashing my head against the wall when you’re drilling for oil on the moon. I love sex in the rain.” He followed up that last statement with an exaggerated wink in one eye, a roguish gleam in the other, and a rather exotic and alluring sweep of the tip of his tongue across his upper lip.
I was pleasantly surprised that Brad would want a shower big enough for a party of four and sneak around behind our backs to get it, but I was even more surprised to discover how exited I got knowing that my Tiger would want a shower big enough for us to drill for oil in each other’s moons in a rain shower. His excitement was contagious, as evidenced by the sudden and apparent shrinkage in the crotch of my underwear and jeans.
We succeeded in making it the rest of the way to the big house in the country without rending denim or my cotton polyester briefs, although the briefs were a bit damper than they were when we left home. I pulled into the drive and parked the van behind Dad’s car (John parked beside me) and, as we climbed out, so did Justin and Jeremy. As we began to cross the lawn toward the front door, it opened and Lindsay came running out with Zoe close on her tail. They passed Justin and Jeremy, who were running in the opposite direction. They shared a ‘hi’ and a short wave in passing. I knelt on one knee to greet my daughter with a hug and kiss.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said with a huge smile on her pretty face. “Did you miss me?”
“I sure did, Sweetheart. Hi, Zoe.”
“Hello, Mr. de Villiers,” she grinned back at me.
“Look what Grandpa and Grandma bought for me yesterday at the flea market.” She held out her left arm to show me the new heavy-link bracelet which now adorned her wrist. “They bought one for Zoe, too. Hers is gold. I wanted silver.”
I glanced at Zoe, who was holding out her new bracelet with undisguised pleasure and pride. “Isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?” she asked breathlessly.
“Very pretty,” I told them as I rose to my feet. “Both of them. Does your mother know about it?” I asked Lindsay’s young friend.
“Yes,” she said, nodding her head. “Mrs. De Villiers phoned my Mom and asked if it was alright to buy it for me.”
“Good. Okay, come on. Let’s go inside.”
The first thing that hit me like a pillow in the face was the delicious smell of the turkey in the oven filling the whole kitchen. Nothing says Thanksgiving like Mom’s roasting turkey.
Mom was ready for us with coffee and tea for the adults and chocolate milk for the kids. A dessert tray of Mom’s delicious, homemade pumpkin tarts made from a real pumpkin fresh from the field along with a bowl of hand-whipped whipped cream sat on the table to which Bernice began adding a large assortment of her famous cookies and cakes. They would be left out to be enjoyed throughout the day at our leisure. Justin and Jeremy, still full from breakfast, each took a pumpkin tart and two peanut butter cookies. They sat at the smaller card table which Dad had set up for the ‘kiddie table’. Lindsay and Zoe joined them. Zoe, who didn’t like pumpkin, took an extra chocolate cupcake with marshmallow frosting instead.
The boys gobbled down their snacks before excusing themselves so they could go outside to play in the fort and swing set Dad and Brad had built for them earlier that summer. No sooner did the back door close behind them when it opened again and they came running back in.
“Daddy,” they called in unison, “can we play on the swimming pool?”
“Are you crazy?” I laughed. “It’s too cold to go swimming.”
“We don’t want to swim in it,” Justin said.
Jeremy finished the thought: “We want to play on it.”
“You can’t walk on the pool,” Brad chuckled, expressing the amusement which, I was sure, the rest of us were feeling at that moment.
“It’s got a floor on it now,” said one.
“Like a bouncy castle,” said the other.
“Can we play on it?” said both at the same time.
“What in heck are they talking about?” I asked to nobody in particular as I walked toward the back door. Brad walked beside me. Our parents followed close behind. Lindsay and Zoe remained at the small table and enjoyed what was left of their snacks. Walking on water didn’t seem to be of any interest to them whatsoever.
As soon as I saw the pool, I knew something was up. The water level was significantly lower and the entire pool was now covered in an enormous, blue plastic tarpaulin. “What’s this, Dad? I thought we were going to close down the pool this morning?”
“It is done,” Dad proclaimed in his usual laid-back way. “It was completed on Saturday afternoon whilst you were in Toronto.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t do it by yourself,” I told him. “You said you needed our help.”
“As it turned out,” Mom explained quickly, “your father didn’t need any assistance whatsoever to retrieve his billfold from his slacks and pay the Bronson boys to do it for him.”
“Sat what?”
“Son,” Dad began explaining, “I may still be able to give my wife when she sees me dressed in my bathing costume, but a pool boy I am not. I do not mind sweeping and vacuuming the pool at the weekends. It is a pleasant way to spend a few hours on a warm, summer afternoon. However, I found it much more pleasant to sit back on my chaise with a nice glass of iced tea with lemon at my side and watch Donald and Devon do the labour for twenty-five dollars each.”
“We would have done it for you for free,” Brad said.
“That is true,” Dad continued, “but I would have felt compelled to assist you. I felt no compulsion whatsoever to assist the Bronson boys. It was, in fact, quite enjoyable and most rewarding watching them work.”
“Indeed,” Mom added. “Your father even convinced them to plough the drive for him this winter and to mow the lawns next season.”
Dad’s lip curled up ever so slightly in one corner and he gave me the tiniest of winks. I’d seen that look before every time Dad saved himself unnecessary work. He was far from lazy, but if there was a way to get out of doing something he didn’t like to do, he would find it.
“So, what do we do now?” I asked as I indicated our work clothes with a sweep of both hands down my body. “We came dressed for work.”
“You can change the oil in my auto or you may change your clothing and give thanks that you no longer are required to do anything else on this Thanksgiving morning. On the other hand, Son, if it will make you feel more fulfilled and less guilt-ridden, I would not refuse an offer to reimburse my fifty dollars were you to make it.” And with that he turned and walked back inside to have another cuppa followed by Mom and John and Bernice and a healthy dose of light-hearted titters.
Brad and I followed the others after giving a stern warning to the twins to stay in the back yard. They already knew that they were forbidden from going near the pool and the chain link fence around it. They promised they would, but we would check often to make sure they kept that promise.
Lindsay and Zoe were back upstairs in Lindsay’s room doing who knows what up there. Mom and Bernice busied themselves in the large eat-in kitchen preparing Thanksgiving dinner. A fresh pot of tea sat on the stove and a freshly-brewed pot of coffee sat on the warming plate of the coffee maker.
“Have you decided on how you’re going to decorate the house?” Bernice asked from the sink where she was peeling potatoes. “Have you decided on a theme?”
Brad and I, having changed into our good clothes, sat across from each other at the table in the kitchen. Dad sat to my right with his back to the counter while John Hayes sat to my left. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Brad turn his head toward me. I glanced at him and the damned-if-I-know expression on his face told me that he was just as befuddled as I felt. He shrugged one shoulder and tilted his head slightly toward. “I think we’re just going to go out and buy the furniture and stuff we need when we need it. Right, Pops?”
Before I could respond, Bernice continued: “What about paint? What about flooring, carpeting, drapes and curtains, light fixtures, bathroom tiles, counter tops? There’s a lot more to it than ‘furniture and stuff’.”
“Oh, yeah,” Brad replied as he glanced briefly at me again. “I don’t know, Mom. Guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.
“Have you considered an interior designer?”
“Gee-sus, Murphy, no!” I exclaimed. “Never again, Bernice. Mom and Dad know how I feel about designers. Connie hired a one before we split up. Some haute couture bi. . . er, woman from some exclusive firm in Toronto. She cost me a bloody fortune and we ended up with a pile of crap that cost me another fortune to fix before we could even sell the house. Sarah Richardson wouldn’t have cost me as much money as that woman did, but Connie hired her and signed a contract without telling me and we couldn’t get out of it. If I’m going to have another crappy looking house, I’d rather do it myself and save a pile of money.”
“I remember it well, Teddy,” Mom said with a bit of a shudder. “I never knew what colours chartreuse and puce were until I saw them in your diningroom and the guest room.” She gave another shudder. “Honestly. Puce! And you wondered why we didn’t stay overnight when we visited you.”
Mom was wrong. I knew why they didn’t stay overnight, and I didn’t blame them.
“I would love to have a room decorated by Sarah,” Bernice said almost dreamily, “but I was thinking more along the lines of perhaps hiring a student from one of the designer schools in Toronto.”
“Oh, yes,” Mom said. She paused in her mixing of ingredients for homemade rolls. She turned to face us, wiping her flour-dusted hands on her apron. “A friend of ours in Crystal Beach hired a student from George Brown College in Toronto. Remember, Jan?”
“Indeed I do.”
“Audrey had her guest room and a guest bath done for little more than petrol money for the girl. Audrey hired the workers and bought the supplies and furnishings, of course, but otherwise, the student’s only other stipulation was permission to use before and after pictures for her portfolio. She did a beautiful job, didn’t she, Dear?”
“Very professional,” Dad said before taking another sip of his tea. “Of course, the plumbing would not have leaked had she asked me to install it.” His voice dropped to a very soft volume meant to be heard only by the men at the table. “Gilbert Hanley would not know how to plumb his ass.”
“What did you say, Dear?”
“I said, ‘the inspector should not have let the work pass’.”
Dear Old Dad. He had his moments.
Before Dad got himself into hot water, I jumped in and asked, “How did she find the designer, Mom?”
“In the newspaper,” Mom began to explain as she returned to preparing her batter and tending the cranberries boiling on the stove. “The girl lived in St. Catherines and put adverts in all the local newspapers.”
“I think it would be fun working with a decorator and having a coordinated house,” Brad beamed. “It would sure save us a lot of work ‘specially when we don’t really have a clue what we’re doing. What do you think, Ted.”
Once upon a time I might have insisted that we do it ourselves, considering my almost compulsive need to be in charge and my previous encounter with that designer bitch, but seeing Brad’s excitement that Thanksgiving morning and knowing that it would be our home made me think twice before giving my answer: “Sounds like a plan. It was hard enough picking out shingles and windows and siding for the outside. Decorating the inside would a nightmare now that I think of it. I hated the old house, but I didn’t have a clue what to do with it, so I just left it the way it was when I bought it for the most part. It couldn’t turn out much worse than what we could do by ourselves, could it?”
Brad’s bright face brightened even more and his happy smile widened. “I’ll check online when we get back home. GBC should have its own newspaper. Most colleges do. We can put an ad in there and see what kind of response we get.”
I liked seeing Brad happy. It made me happy to see him that way. It was moments like that which made me thankful of that thunderstorm so long ago when I first set eyes on the man, standing just inside the door of my new house with four of the drawers from my grandmother’s dresser in his hands, who would change my life forever.
* * * * *
The decision to eat in the kitchen was unanimous. The table in the diningroom could comfortably seat eight, but not the ten people who would have to sit at it, and there wasn’t enough room to set up the smaller table for the kids. That wasn’t the case in the kitchen. With the smaller collapsible card table which had matching folding chairs set up for the four kids, we could at least all eat in the same room. Mom had covered them beautiful linen tablecloths with matching napkins and placemats. They made the separate tables look like they belonged together.
Except for Dad and John, who adjourned themselves to the livingroom, everyone had a hand in setting up the tables for our Thanksgiving dinner. Even Justin and Jeremy helped by setting out the silverware. Well, they sort of helped. To them, a fork was a fork and a spoon was a spoon, no matter how big they were so, as long as each plate had one of each, they were happy and beaming with pride at the fine job they’d done. When they were finished and watching television in the livingroom with their grandfathers, Brad and I quickly circled the tables wiping their hand and fingerprints off the utensils and properly setting out the silverware.
The dinner, as always, was magnificent and delicious. Both Mom and Bernice Hayes were superb cooks on their own. With their talents combined, however, they created something magical. There was the usual turkey stuffed with Mom’s special apple and chestnut dressing specially seasoned with a healthy dose of sage and roasted to mouth-watering perfection, Bernice’s honey-glazed, melt-in-your-mouth ham shank, huge bowls heaped with mashed potatoes and several vegetables fresh from a farmers’ market, assorted jelly salads, an amazing Waldorf salad created by Bernice, a steaming bowl of Dad’s favourite pepper squash, and more desserts awaiting us on the counter. Justin and Jeremy’s eyes were as large as their dinner plates. They had never seen so much food all in the same place in their entire lives.
Dad started things with off with a special Thanksgiving grace given in both Afrikaans and English after which Brad and I fixed plates for the twins and our mothers helped Lindsay and Zoe serve up their own dinners. My father carved the turkey. Brad’s dad sliced the ham.
With the kids properly situated at their table, we adults settled down to enjoy our own meal. Dad sat at one end of the rectangular, solid wood table. Brad’s parents sat on one side. Brad and I sat on the other.
“You know,” John Hayes began when we were well into the dinner, “at this time last year, my wife and I had no idea where the future was taking us. We certainly never thought that it would bring us to this point, sharing this Thanksgiving dinner with all of you. We could see what was happening between Bradley and Ted, but we weren’t at all certain what we should do about it or even if we should do anything about it. We talked a lot about it. We could see what it was doing to our son and we couldn’t remember seeing him so happy for a very long time.”
Bernice put her had on John’s hand. After a quick glance at each other, Bernice took over. “Ultimately, we decided not to do or say anything. If this was what Bradley wanted, then we would support him in whatever decision he made. We’re very glad we did. Not only is our son happier than he’s ever been, we gained someone who we are very proud to call our son-in-law. We also gained a beautiful granddaughter, two delightful and adorable grandsons, and two very dear friends. This is all more than we could have hoped for and we are very, very thankful for the day Ted moved in next door.”
“Cheers,” Mom announced as she picked up her glass of wine and raised it into the air. The rest of us joined her in the toast.
“If I may,” Dad said when the toast was finished and the glasses were returned to the table. “We, too, could not have dreamt that this Thanksgiving Day would find us living in this house with a new son-in-law, two new grandsons, and two new friends. The beginning of our journey to this point was challenged by a few – what are they called? Stumbling blocks? I could not accept Bradley. I felt that he was corrupting my son and turning him against me and my wife. My stubbornness would not allow me to see otherwise until, by chance, Bradley and I spent an afternoon together in the garden and I began to see why my son fell in love with him. Without even trying, Bradley ingratiated himself into my heart just as he had ingratiated himself with my wife. Not only did I come to accept him and my son, I came to care very much for him.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Brad interrupted briefly.
Dad smiled at him and nodded his acknowledgement. “There is such strength in you, Bradley. You are sincere and honest to a fault, and brave enough to take on the task of becoming an instant father and caretaker. Then fortune favoured us when a transfer position came available and now we live nearby where we can involve ourselves with our family more often than several times a year. For all of that, we could not be more thankful.” Dad picked up his wine glass again and acknowledged Brad and his parents. “We are grateful that you are all part of our family now and that we are part of yours. Gesondheid!”
I lifted my glass as did the five others at the table and we all repeated the Afrikaans cheer.
“Daddy, what are you doing?”
“We’re just talking about things we’re thankful for, Justin.”
“Do you have something you’re thankful for?” Brad asked curiously.
“M’hm,” he murmured as he nodded his head with a secretive twinkle in his eye. “I’m happy because I tooted and you didn’t hear me.”
* * * * *
Brad’s parents left for home later in the afternoon. It wasn’t long after they left that Lindsay and I walked Zoe home. The boys wanted to come with us but one glance at Brad told him that I wanted to be alone with Lindsay. He had no problem convincing them to stay with him so they could play pirates in the backyard fort and jungle gym. The last we heard from them, Justin and Jeremy were trying to convince Dad to allow them to make Daddy Brad walk the diving board plank into the swimming pool.
The girls walked in front of on the gravel shoulder of the road, chitchatting away between themselves and paying very little attention to me. Maple Grove is a town without sidewalks. Zoe carried a grocery bag with a small assortment of snacks for her and her family. Without me even having to call to them, they stopped at the highway and waited for me to take their hands and guide them across the 4 lanes of traffic. Fortunately, traffic was quite light and we didn’t even have to dodge cars.
As we continued down the road, they released my hands and hurried on in front of me. Occasionally they bumped their heads together for a private whisper, usually followed by a short bout of giggling and tittering and a quick peek over their shoulders to make sure I was too far away to hear them. I would just smile, give them a small wave, then turn my head away and look at whatever was there to see along the side of the road.
It was a nice walk to Zoe’s house, and only three cars passed us in both directions. The day was sunny and comfortably warm. Wispy clouds floated across the blue sky. Small town country sounds filled the air around us marred from time to time by the intrusive roar of a passing car. I had plenty of time to think what I would say to my daughter on our journey back to our waiting family.
We had phoned Zoe’s parents before we left the house to tell her we were on our way. As we neared her home, the front door opened and her mother stepped out onto the small veranda and down the steps to the walkway. Her father came out moments later. Zoe and Lindsay ran the rest of the way. By the time I got there, Zoe’s older brother, Dougal, had joined his parents as well. All his skater-boy attention was on the contents of the bag of goodies Zoe had brought home with her. Zoe, meanwhile, was proudly displaying her new bracelet to her admiring parents.
Introductions were made and niceties exchanged. Zoe’s parents shook hands with me, but Dougal mumbled a quick “yo” before disappearing back into the house with the bag of desserts in one hand and a piece of Bernice’s chocolate raspberry cake in the other. A large bite was missing from the cake and Dougal’s mouth was busy chewing it.
We didn’t stay long, just long enough to become mildly acquainted with Zoe’s parents and to wish each other a Happy Thanksgiving. We didn’t even go inside. Lindsay and Zoe said their goodbyes with a quick hug and we were off again.
Lindsay walked beside me until we reached the street and crossed it. She gave a quick glance over her right shoulder, peering behind my back toward Zoe’s house, and, apparently satisfied that nobody was watching, reached out with her right hand and grasped my left hand in it. She was Daddy’s Little Girl again, at least for as long as it took us to walk back to her grandparents’ house.
Lindsay had grown up so much over that past year or so since I removed her from her mother’s custody that horrific night. Not only had she grown physically, but emotionally and mentally as well. When I look back at the few years leading up to that moment when she took my hand there on the side of the road, I’m amazed that she came through the experience unscathed and unscarred.
In those few years from the time when we were a happy family, she went through her mother’s down-home parenting to her obsession with the social ladder. She endured her parents’ separation and divorce. She left her home and father and was sent to live with a mother who was more concerned with the money her daughter would bring her than for the daughter herself. She was shipped back and forth from apartment to apartment until I bought a new house so Lindsay could have her own bedroom when she came to visit me. She suffered a broken arm at her social climbing mother’s hand and a subsequent custody case. She watched her self-destructive mother fall apart before her eyes. She accepted the fact that her father, who once loved her mother, now loved another man. She adapted easily to the disruptive integration of two young boys into the family, boys to whom she would ultimately become a big sister. She gained a step father, she became a granddaughter, she discovered boys weren’t all that bad, and she was surprised that one boy in particular was more important to her than soccer camp. And then she lost almost everything that she could call her own, including her home, in the fiery blink of an eye.
She took it all in stride. She adapted. She dealt with it, and she did it all, so it seems, much better than I had done. I had grown in many ways, too, the least of which was realising that I wasn’t king of my castle anymore. There were two of us now. But it took a near-breakdown and the near-alienation of my younger son and the fear in all of my family and friends for it to finally sink in.
Bernice had been right that morning. My daughter had been growing up much faster than I had been noticing. On that Thanksgiving Day in October, I woke up with a daughter who would forever be my little girl. By the afternoon, I was facing the fact that she was swiftly becoming a young lady. Still, at moments like this, when we were alone and away from the prying eyes and ears of her friends, she became Daddy’s little girl again, much closer to a little girl sitting in Daddy’s lap than a young lady in training bras. Sometimes her body and her brain had trouble keeping up with each other and trying to decide which one they wanted her to be.
Lindsay clasped my hand in hers and I closed mine around it as we walked along the gravelled shoulder on the side of the road. “Did you and Zoe have fun this weekend, Sweetheart?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Lots, Daddy,” she replied. “I really liked staying overnight at her house. Can I stay there again sometime?”
“Sure, as long as her parents don’t mind.”
“I don’t think they mind. They’re really nice people. Even Dougal is nice when he wants to be. He even let us play with video games when we want to. I like him.”
“More than Daniel?” I asked wryly.
Lindsay giggled and squeezed my hand tighter. “No, Daddy,” she replied quickly. “Daniel’s a lot prettier and he smells better.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I thought Dougal looked kind of cute in that brown toque he was wearing.”
I looked down at my daughter with a furtive look on my face. She looked up at me with such a look of stunned disgust on her face. “Eww, Daddy! That toque makes his ears stick out! It makes him look like Dobby!”
I think they must have heard me laughing all the way from Dad’s place. I stopped walking and managed to pick up my daughter without giving myself a hernia. I was surprised at how much more effort it took than it had the year before. Lindsay wrapped her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist as I gave her the biggest hug I could. “I love you so much, Sweetheart,” I told her.
“I love you, too, Daddy.”
After a long hug and a great big kiss on her cheek, I set her down and we continued walking hand-in-hand, approaching the main highway we would have to cross again. It was only a stone’s throw away when I said, “I’m really sorry we don’t have room in the camper for you to invite Zoe to stay overnight, Sweetheart. At least not until the house is finished and you get your own bedroom again. There really isn’t even room to invite her over for dinner some day, is there?”
“No,” Lindsay replied quietly, giving me a weak but encouraging smile. “But that’s okay, Daddy. I don’t mind. I can wait until the house is finished.”
“That hardly seems fair to you, though,” I added as I looked down at her. “You can’t even invite your friends to stop by after school, and it can’t be very easy for you having to live in such a small space with me and Brad and your brothers.”
She shrugged her shoulders and said, “I’m a big girl now, Daddy. I can wait. Honest.”
We crossed the highway in silence, again with little difficulty, and were on the home stretch. Mom and Dad’s house was in sight. “I know what we can do, Sweetheart,” I said suddenly and excitedly as I drew us both to an abrupt halt. I said it as if I had just thought of it despite the fact that I had been thinking about it most of the day.
“What, Daddy?”
I squatted down in front of her and grasped her shoulders lightly in my hands. “What would you think if I asked your Grandma and Grandpa Hayes if you can stay with them until the house is done? You could have your own room again, and you can invite Daniel and your friends to visit, and Zoe could even come to stay overnight if she wants.”
Lindsay struggled to keep her excitement under control, but her face lit up like a lighthouse beacon. “Do you think they would let me?” Her thrilled voice quivered despite her efforts.
“Oh, I’m sure they would. Would you like me to ask them?”
“You wouldn’t mind if I stayed with them?”
“Not at all, Sweetheart. I’ll still be living right outside the door, and you can come visit us or have dinner with us any time you want. It’s still your home you know. . . such as it is. We can ask them tomorrow, okay?”
That Thanksgiving night was the last night Lindsay would sleep in the Winnebago with us until we moved into our new house. Of course, John and Bernice consented to taking Lindsay in with them and acted as though we hadn’t planned the whole thing that morning. She moved into their home that evening after having leftover turkey with us in the camper.
Lindsay dined with us quite often after the move, either in the camper or us with her and her grandparents. Her friends stopped by much more often after school and Daniel even took to walking home with her for the occasional lunch. Zoe came to visit her as well and stayed overnight a few times. It was clear to everyone how much happier she was now that she had her own private bedroom once again. It was clear even to me.
I missed her, though, more than I thought I would.
* * * * *
The twins were in bed and sound asleep, put there by Brad and myself after helping them go pee and getting them changed into their pyjamas. They’d fallen asleep halfway home and had barely stirred as we got them out of the van, into the camper, and readied them for bed. Their first Thanksgiving Day had been a grand, belly-stuffing, and exhausting one indeed. And they didn’t even complain about not getting any presents.
Lindsay got changed and ready for bed in the bathroom as she always did, then joined Brad and I on the daybed to watch a bit of television. She curled up beside me, nuzzling against me and laying her head against my side. I cuddled her with my arm around her shoulder and held her close. Brad sat on my other side with his laptop in his lap as he browsed the George Brown College website. He finally found and bookmarked the page where we could submit our ad for a designer. All we had to do was to create the ad itself and Brad would send it in for us.
Soon enough, though, Lindsay was ready to go to sleep, too. It had been a long and busy weekend for her as well. I helped her set up her fold-out bed as Brad closed down the Winnebago for the night. After a hug and a kiss goodnight, I tucked her in, turned out the lights, and joined Brad in the bedroom for a bit more hugging and kissing of our own.
Before long, with the lights dimmed and the hugging and kissing abandoned, I lay on my left side on the bed, propped up on my elbow with my head using my upturned hand as a pillow. My right hand was otherwise occupied a little further south. All my attention was on Brad. He was sitting up in the bed beside me, his hips aligned with my eyes, giving me a perfect view of his performance. His right hand was occupied similarly to mine; his mouth was making magic happen right before me.
It never got old watching Brad pleasure himself. It fascinated me just as much that night as it had the first time I’d watched him in those early days of our relationship. It never seemed to get old for him, either. He enjoyed doing it. That was obvious. He says he always did it for me, but I think, deep in his heart, he enjoyed doing it for himself just as much. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I loved watching him, pure and simple. I could watch him do it all day long.
I sensed Brad’s eyes on me and tilted my head up. Sure enough, he was looking at me. I smiled at him, displaying my pleasure, and, even with his lips stretched taut around the head of his cock, he managed to make a smile back at me. His hand froze at the base of his shaft and he began to lift his head with glacial slowness and my gaze returned to his cock. His lips slid slowly and easily over the glassy-smooth cockhead until they rested at the tip. Then, as they continued to retract, his tongue appeared, pressing against the piss slit there. His tongue, too, began to lift away from his cock and a sparkling thread of lube and spit began to stretch out until it looked as though his tongue was attached to his cock by a thin strand of transparent silk.
The wispy filament finally broke, smacking back to its source with a subdued but audible snap. The remainder of the watery strand dangled from Brad’s tongue but disappeared with a quick and silent slurp before his head bowed lower once more and his tongue began to dance on the smooth, plum-coloured skin of his bloated cockhead. He bathed it and teased it, flapped at it and lapped at it, fluttered at it with the tenderness of a butterfly’s wing and traced the coronal ridge as if he were circumnavigating the globe.
His head dropped down again until his lips reached the sensitive skin of his cock and began stretching and sliding over the spongy head once more. He went as far as he could go, bobbed his head a few times, and made a familiar request with a single guttural grunt. My right hand abandoned its task temporarily, moved up to the back of my Tiger’s head, and pushed down firmly but gently. His lips slid smoothly over the bulbous helmet and locked themselves behind the coronal ridge. His whole cockhead was buried inside his mouth. His head sank lower still, and it didn’t stop until three fingers worth of his cock shaft was inside his mouth as well.
I groaned my appreciation before relaxing the pressure of my hand on his head. He followed my hand back up, his receding lips revealing first the shaft and then the rest of his cock. Down I pushed again, then up and down again, helping Brad suck as much of his cock into his mouth as I knew our efforts would allow. From my vantage point I could see the good feelings mirrored in Brad’s face. His eyes were closed now and his excitement bristled on his furrowed brow sending sparks of sexual energy out and away until they seeped through my skin and ignited inside me.
There were only the sounds of slurping and sucking, the faint squeaking of the bed beneath us, whispers of Brad’s hair being rustled lightly by my fingers, and the harsh sounds of air being inhaled and exhaled through his nostrils to break the silence of the night. I lifted my head and dropped my forearm to the mattress. Brad’s eyes opened and followed my movements as I slid closer to him. The hand on the back of Brad’s head came to a momentary standstill; my other hand pressed palm up against his thigh where it lay upon the duvet cover, wriggling its way beneath the heated flesh until Brad lifted his leg slightly and allowed my arm to slide under it, seeking the two tender orbs that I knew it would find there. When I encountered them, I cradled them in my palm as though they were precious and fragile soap-bubble eggs.
Brad groaned his approval and, as my fingers gently joggled his balls, my other hand took up its helpful cadence once again. It was only minutes before he was at the point of no return, but Brad could make a performance feel like it was lasting for hours. His body language told me that it was time to release his head and let him take over. My hand returned to its previous task of pleasuring myself as Brad’s head lifted until only the tip of his cockhead remained entrapped between his lips. His hand, which had remained immobile where it was wrapped around the base of his cock, took up the previous stroking motion of his lips. I watched with rapt attention as his hand began its jouncing grip on his solid tube of flesh.
The increasingly-urgent sounds coming from Brad’s throat magnified and intensified. Muffled as they were by the pulsating head of his magnificent cock, they still sounded very much like the sounds which would emanate from the creature I had nicknamed him for. I could easily imagine the sensations they were creating in him. I knew the sensations they were creating in me.
As the seconds passed, the stroking of Brad’s hand accelerated, making rapid, squishy sounds as the skin of his palm rubbed over the spit-slick skin of his dick. Brad’s eyes closed and clenched again. His forehead wrinkled and furrowed from concentration and exertion. His cheeks were like a bellows, collapsing in on themselves with each inhaled breath and ballooning out with each exhale. Each heartbeat brought him closer and closer to his orgasm. It was all about him, now – him and his ultimate goal. Nothing else mattered and very little could prevent his climax.
Nothing did. Within a few breathless strokes, Brad’s face scrunched up even more than it was before. His hand motion suddenly slowed on the upstroke and came to a complete stop at the top of the shaft, just beneath the swollen, satin-like glans. His grunts became groans of blissful ecstasy as his cock throbbed, pumping his juices through it and into his waiting mouth. Even in his climactic throes, Brad’s lips slackened enough to allow several streams of his semen to trail down and over the head of his cock and to pool in the valley between his clasping fingers and thumb and the turgid his cock shaft where it awaited my anxious tongue. I was quick to move in for the feast. It was ambrosia to the palate. Together we shared his orgasm.
Mine followed soon after when Brad, mere seconds after his own climax came to its inevitable conclusion, flipped himself around onto his knees, pushed my hand away from my cock, and quickly and expertly took over. The magic that his mouth had been making on his own cock was now making magic on mine. Moments later, he was sucking the juices out of me. He did not share.
It was a wonderful close to a wonderful Thanksgiving Day. So much had happened. So many things accomplished. So much love had been shared. As I lay there in bed with my beloved Tiger curled up by my side, I began to think of all the things I was thankful for. Before I got beyond being thankful that I was married to Brad, someone who I couldn’t even imagine not being a part of my life now, my Tiger invaded my thoughts with his question.
“Do you know what I’m most thankful for, Pops?” he asked in a whisper. “Even more than falling in love with you?”
“No. What?”
“You letting me.”
Happy Thanksgiving indeed. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a happier, more fulfilling one.
It's Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada. Some celebrate today (Sunday). Some celebrate tomorrow on the official Thanksgiving Day. What better way to celebrate Thanksgiving in Canada than to spend the day with the de Villiers family.
Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canucks. To the rest of the world, my best wishes go to you.
Enjoy.
Neil
* * * * * * * * * *
WATCHING BRAD
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WATCHING BRAD
Page 219
“Jesus Murphy, Gramma!” Justin exclaimed excitedly that Monday morning Thanksgiving Day in October. It was the twins’ first ever Thanksgiving celebration with us. If they had celebrated Thanksgiving before they came to live with us, they had no memories of it.
We were gathered in the Hayes household, invited there by Brad’s parents to have breakfast with them before heading out to Maple Grove to join my parents and my daughter for Thanksgiving dinner in the early afternoon. Once there, Brad and I, along with John, would be helping Dad close up the pool for winter while Mom and Bernice prepared dinner. I really had no idea what would be involved in winterising a swimming pool, but Dad had made a list of everything that needed to be done and he would be only too happy to supervise.
At that moment, though, winterising Dad’s swimming pool was the furthest thing from my mind. All of my attention was on my minutes-older son who had stunned us all with his slightly-altered but very familiar exclamation. My eyes flew to his gleaming little face. Bits of his breakfast dotted his lips and chin and his cheeks were puffed out from the unswallowed bits of food he’d tucked in them so he could talk. He knew he wasn’t supposed to talk with food in his mouths, but I chalked up his little memory lapse to the excitement of the day. What with spending two nights at their uncle’s apartment where Nathan had served them what must have been a delicious holiday dinner, their Thanksgiving just seemed to be getting better and better, and it was all beginning with Bernice’s breakfast.
“This stuff taste-es really, really good!” he continued.
“Really, really, really good!” added his twin brother. Jeremy, apparently, wanted to make sure his grandmother got the message that he not only liked the breakfast as well, but he liked it one ‘really’ more than Justin did.
I froze in mid bite; my hand held a folded piece of toast directly in front of my astonished and trepid face, ready to be deposited into my open and waiting mouth that suddenly felt as dry as the sands of the Sahara. Neither the twins nor Lindsay had ever used my little ‘catchphrase’ before, either in front of us or in front of anyone else that I knew of. Somehow, though, it sounded much more like a curse when Justin said it than when either Brad or I said it. I dreaded the reactions it might cause in their grandparents.
My eyes flashed first to Brad. He, too, appeared to be just as mortified as I was. His green eyes were wide as he gaped at me. His lips shuddered a bit as if he was going to say something but closed it again as if changing his mind. Next, I looked to Brad’s father. John had a small, amused grin on his face and a delighted smile in his eyes. Finally I dared a glance toward Bernice, our sons’ grandmother and my mother-in-law. She was staring at Justin with an indiscernible expression on her face. I had no idea what she might be thinking or what she might say. It could have been anything I could imagine, and I imagined a lot that morning.
I closed my mouth and waited.
“That ‘stuff’, Justin,” she corrected much as a teacher would correct a young student, “is called porridge.”
“I know,” Justin grinned back at his grandmother, “but my mouth doesn’t like to say that.”
“Me, too,” said Jeremy with an identical grin (minus a tiny scar on his upper lip, of course) on his face.
Without missing a beat, Bernice continued. “Do your mouths like to say ‘oatmeal’?”
The boys looked at each other and, in precise unison, said “oatmeal”; they looked back at their grandmother and rocked their blond-haired heads up and down on their necks. “Mm-hmm,” they hummed as they finished chewing their bites of food and swallowing it.
“Then please call it ‘oatmeal’ instead of ‘stuff’.”
“Okay,” they replied happily, and then Justin said suddenly and rather unexpectedly, “Jesus Murphy, Gramma! This oatmeal taste-es really, really good!”
There was a brief, palpable moment of silence, and then the room erupted in laughter, led off by Bernice who, as it turned out, laughed harder than everyone else as the boys bounced up and down in their seats and clapped their hands in unabashed glee. Bernice laughed so hard, in fact, that she had to dab at her eyes with a tissue.
The twins were right, though. Bernice’s homemade maple and brown sugar oatmeal was the best I’d ever tasted. They’d had oatmeal before, of course. Many times. But this was the first time they’d eaten maple and brown sugar flavour. It was my habit of breaking of a bite-sized piece of toast and spoon some oatmeal onto it and popping it into my mouth as I was doing that morning. Justin had tried it my way the first time he’d eaten oatmeal with us but quickly discovered that he didn’t like that method. Too slow and too much trouble and effort, I suppose. He much preferred, as did Jeremy, Daddy Brad’s method of tearing off a bit of toast and using it as a spoon of sorts to dunk it directly into the oatmeal and scoop it out of the bowl. Not only was it easier that way, but it was a lot more fun to boot. That’s how they were eating it that morning, which accounts for the bits of breakfast splattered around their mouths. They weren’t so good at judging the size of their torn-off bits of toast, but they were pretty good at stuffing it all in their mouths.
Brad and I had already taken our showers in the camper before joining Brad’s parents for breakfast, so, now that our morning repast was finished and the twins were taking a quick bath together, we adults sat at the table enjoying a relatively quiet caffeine pick-me-up as the sounds of subdued chitchat and play came to us from the bathroom down the hall.
“Has Lindsay talked to you yet about staying here with us until the house is finished, Ted?” John asked off-handedly after a long, satisfying sip of hot, freshly-brewed coffee.
“Um, no, she hasn’t,” I answered without even trying to disguise my surprise. “Why? Has she asked you if she can?”
“Not outright,” Bernice cut in, “but she’s been dropping enough not-so-subtle hints for us to figure out that she’d like to.”
“Like what?”
“Well,” Brad’s father continued, “she says she can’t sleep because you and the twins snore too loud. She says stuck in the middle and gets it in stereo every night. And there isn’t enough room on the table for her to spread out her homework.”
“And she says the water heater sounds like a ghost when it turns on,” Bernice added, “and she’s tired of always having to put the toilet seat down. Of course, we’d be delighted to have her stay with us. The boys, too, if it’s getting too cold in the camper.”
“The camper’s warm enough,” Brad said. “We’ve only had to turn on the furnace a few mornings so far to take the chill off. But, I doubt if anyone could drag Justin and Jeremy out of Winnie to stay in here when we’re sleeping right outside the door.”
“I can believe that,” John said. “I suspect they’d live in a Johnny-On-The-Spot if that’s where you were.”
As Brad and his parents had been talking, I had been trying to figure out why my daughter hadn’t talked to me about it, and then I thought that maybe she had been dropping hints to me and Brad as well, but we simply hadn’t picked up on them. “Well, Lindsay hasn’t said anything to me about it,” I said after a bit, “but I’ve noticed she’s been a lot quieter lately. She usually just curls up in the corner on the daybed and loses herself in a book.”
“She needs her privacy, Ted,” Bernice told me bluntly. “She’s growing up and there isn’t anywhere for her to go to get some. Wherever she goes in the camper, somebody else is there. Tell me. Has she asked if she can invite Daniel for dinner some night?”
“No.”
“She asked me.”
My eyebrows flew up so high on my forehead that I’m sure they did the mambo with my hairline. “Really? When?”
Bernice nodded. “Oh, two, three weeks ago. Of course I told her she would have to get permission from you first.”
“She hasn’t said anything to me. Brad?” Brad merely shook his head ‘no’. It didn’t take me long to decide that I would remedy the situation as quickly as possible while, at the same time, chastising myself for being so blind to my daughter’s needs.
Not long after that, with the twins neatly dressed and their hair neatly combed and their teeth brightly brushed, we were all ready to head out to Mom and Dad’s place to join them for Thanksgiving dinner. I had thought Brad’s parents might ride with us in the van but they followed us in their own car. Apparently they were meeting some friends for a light evening meal and playing a card game called Hasenpfeffer. Justin and Jeremy were in their car seats behind us counting the cows they saw in the fields as we passed. Well, at least they counted as high as they knew how to count, and then they’d start all over again. If I remember correctly, by the time we got to Mom and Dad’s, they were up to six for about the fourth time.
“I can’t wait until the house is finished,” Brad said quietly so the boys couldn’t hear, “and we can start taking showers together again. I really miss that.” He added a wink in case I missed the innuendo in his voice.
“I do, too,” I answered back just as quietly, “but you’d better hope the designer our parents hired to do our bedroom and en suite designs a shower big enough for the two of us to. . .” (I made quick quotation marks in the air with my fingers) “wrestle in.”
“Oh, don’t you worry, Pops, it’ll be lots big enough to do tag team.”
I glanced at him. He was wearing faded jeans and a crisp, white T-shirt with a Ryerson logo on it. He had a wickedly sneaky, mischievous, I-know-something-you-don’t-know grin on his face, punctuated by his chipped tooth smile which caught the early morning sun and actually sparkled like a diamond in a Prince Charming kind of way.
“Okay, Tiger, spill it. What are you hiding?”
His grin got even wider. “Nothin’, Pops.”
“Bullshit, Brad. You’re hiding something and I want to know what it is.”
“I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll show you ‘spoilt’. Now come on. How can you be so sure the shower’s going to be big enough?”
Brad was silent for a few lengthy moments as he looked out the passenger window, obviously thinking about whether or not he would spill the beans. “Okay,” he whispered finally as he leaned toward me. “But don’t say anything to anyone that I told you. Especially Mom. She mentioned the designer’s name the other day when she was asking me about what colours we both would like in our bedroom. Honest, Ted, she doesn’t even realise she said it.”
After a swift glance over his shoulder to see if the boys were paying any attention to us, he continued: “Anyways, Mom mentioned his last name and I looked him up on the Net. Wasn’t hard to find him. There was only one designer named Beardsley in the city.”
“British,” I commented.
“Yeah. His accent reminded me of the guy on the plane who switched seats with me.” Ah, yes. The other Clive Barker. “I gave him a call and asked if he could do me a favour as a surprise for you. I asked if he could make room for a separate shower that can rain and is big enough to pitch a pup tent in.”
That made me laugh out loud. “Why in hell would you want a shower that big, Brad? Are you planning on inviting Nathan and Barry to join us in there or something?”
“Well, I hadn’t thought of that, but if you want to, I’m sure it’ll be big enough for all of us with room to spare. But no.” Brad’s voice dropped even more in volume as he leaned closer to me. A huge dose of playfulness entered his voice and there was no disguising his unbridled excitement. It all cried out in his words. “I was thinking more for the times when, you know, for when we want to get a little frisky in there the way we did before. I wanted to make sure there’s enough room for to get as frisky in like we usually get in bed without having to worry about smashing my head against the wall when you’re drilling for oil on the moon. I love sex in the rain.” He followed up that last statement with an exaggerated wink in one eye, a roguish gleam in the other, and a rather exotic and alluring sweep of the tip of his tongue across his upper lip.
I was pleasantly surprised that Brad would want a shower big enough for a party of four and sneak around behind our backs to get it, but I was even more surprised to discover how exited I got knowing that my Tiger would want a shower big enough for us to drill for oil in each other’s moons in a rain shower. His excitement was contagious, as evidenced by the sudden and apparent shrinkage in the crotch of my underwear and jeans.
We succeeded in making it the rest of the way to the big house in the country without rending denim or my cotton polyester briefs, although the briefs were a bit damper than they were when we left home. I pulled into the drive and parked the van behind Dad’s car (John parked beside me) and, as we climbed out, so did Justin and Jeremy. As we began to cross the lawn toward the front door, it opened and Lindsay came running out with Zoe close on her tail. They passed Justin and Jeremy, who were running in the opposite direction. They shared a ‘hi’ and a short wave in passing. I knelt on one knee to greet my daughter with a hug and kiss.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said with a huge smile on her pretty face. “Did you miss me?”
“I sure did, Sweetheart. Hi, Zoe.”
“Hello, Mr. de Villiers,” she grinned back at me.
“Look what Grandpa and Grandma bought for me yesterday at the flea market.” She held out her left arm to show me the new heavy-link bracelet which now adorned her wrist. “They bought one for Zoe, too. Hers is gold. I wanted silver.”
I glanced at Zoe, who was holding out her new bracelet with undisguised pleasure and pride. “Isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?” she asked breathlessly.
“Very pretty,” I told them as I rose to my feet. “Both of them. Does your mother know about it?” I asked Lindsay’s young friend.
“Yes,” she said, nodding her head. “Mrs. De Villiers phoned my Mom and asked if it was alright to buy it for me.”
“Good. Okay, come on. Let’s go inside.”
The first thing that hit me like a pillow in the face was the delicious smell of the turkey in the oven filling the whole kitchen. Nothing says Thanksgiving like Mom’s roasting turkey.
Mom was ready for us with coffee and tea for the adults and chocolate milk for the kids. A dessert tray of Mom’s delicious, homemade pumpkin tarts made from a real pumpkin fresh from the field along with a bowl of hand-whipped whipped cream sat on the table to which Bernice began adding a large assortment of her famous cookies and cakes. They would be left out to be enjoyed throughout the day at our leisure. Justin and Jeremy, still full from breakfast, each took a pumpkin tart and two peanut butter cookies. They sat at the smaller card table which Dad had set up for the ‘kiddie table’. Lindsay and Zoe joined them. Zoe, who didn’t like pumpkin, took an extra chocolate cupcake with marshmallow frosting instead.
The boys gobbled down their snacks before excusing themselves so they could go outside to play in the fort and swing set Dad and Brad had built for them earlier that summer. No sooner did the back door close behind them when it opened again and they came running back in.
“Daddy,” they called in unison, “can we play on the swimming pool?”
“Are you crazy?” I laughed. “It’s too cold to go swimming.”
“We don’t want to swim in it,” Justin said.
Jeremy finished the thought: “We want to play on it.”
“You can’t walk on the pool,” Brad chuckled, expressing the amusement which, I was sure, the rest of us were feeling at that moment.
“It’s got a floor on it now,” said one.
“Like a bouncy castle,” said the other.
“Can we play on it?” said both at the same time.
“What in heck are they talking about?” I asked to nobody in particular as I walked toward the back door. Brad walked beside me. Our parents followed close behind. Lindsay and Zoe remained at the small table and enjoyed what was left of their snacks. Walking on water didn’t seem to be of any interest to them whatsoever.
As soon as I saw the pool, I knew something was up. The water level was significantly lower and the entire pool was now covered in an enormous, blue plastic tarpaulin. “What’s this, Dad? I thought we were going to close down the pool this morning?”
“It is done,” Dad proclaimed in his usual laid-back way. “It was completed on Saturday afternoon whilst you were in Toronto.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t do it by yourself,” I told him. “You said you needed our help.”
“As it turned out,” Mom explained quickly, “your father didn’t need any assistance whatsoever to retrieve his billfold from his slacks and pay the Bronson boys to do it for him.”
“Sat what?”
“Son,” Dad began explaining, “I may still be able to give my wife when she sees me dressed in my bathing costume, but a pool boy I am not. I do not mind sweeping and vacuuming the pool at the weekends. It is a pleasant way to spend a few hours on a warm, summer afternoon. However, I found it much more pleasant to sit back on my chaise with a nice glass of iced tea with lemon at my side and watch Donald and Devon do the labour for twenty-five dollars each.”
“We would have done it for you for free,” Brad said.
“That is true,” Dad continued, “but I would have felt compelled to assist you. I felt no compulsion whatsoever to assist the Bronson boys. It was, in fact, quite enjoyable and most rewarding watching them work.”
“Indeed,” Mom added. “Your father even convinced them to plough the drive for him this winter and to mow the lawns next season.”
Dad’s lip curled up ever so slightly in one corner and he gave me the tiniest of winks. I’d seen that look before every time Dad saved himself unnecessary work. He was far from lazy, but if there was a way to get out of doing something he didn’t like to do, he would find it.
“So, what do we do now?” I asked as I indicated our work clothes with a sweep of both hands down my body. “We came dressed for work.”
“You can change the oil in my auto or you may change your clothing and give thanks that you no longer are required to do anything else on this Thanksgiving morning. On the other hand, Son, if it will make you feel more fulfilled and less guilt-ridden, I would not refuse an offer to reimburse my fifty dollars were you to make it.” And with that he turned and walked back inside to have another cuppa followed by Mom and John and Bernice and a healthy dose of light-hearted titters.
Brad and I followed the others after giving a stern warning to the twins to stay in the back yard. They already knew that they were forbidden from going near the pool and the chain link fence around it. They promised they would, but we would check often to make sure they kept that promise.
Lindsay and Zoe were back upstairs in Lindsay’s room doing who knows what up there. Mom and Bernice busied themselves in the large eat-in kitchen preparing Thanksgiving dinner. A fresh pot of tea sat on the stove and a freshly-brewed pot of coffee sat on the warming plate of the coffee maker.
“Have you decided on how you’re going to decorate the house?” Bernice asked from the sink where she was peeling potatoes. “Have you decided on a theme?”
Brad and I, having changed into our good clothes, sat across from each other at the table in the kitchen. Dad sat to my right with his back to the counter while John Hayes sat to my left. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Brad turn his head toward me. I glanced at him and the damned-if-I-know expression on his face told me that he was just as befuddled as I felt. He shrugged one shoulder and tilted his head slightly toward. “I think we’re just going to go out and buy the furniture and stuff we need when we need it. Right, Pops?”
Before I could respond, Bernice continued: “What about paint? What about flooring, carpeting, drapes and curtains, light fixtures, bathroom tiles, counter tops? There’s a lot more to it than ‘furniture and stuff’.”
“Oh, yeah,” Brad replied as he glanced briefly at me again. “I don’t know, Mom. Guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.
“Have you considered an interior designer?”
“Gee-sus, Murphy, no!” I exclaimed. “Never again, Bernice. Mom and Dad know how I feel about designers. Connie hired a one before we split up. Some haute couture bi. . . er, woman from some exclusive firm in Toronto. She cost me a bloody fortune and we ended up with a pile of crap that cost me another fortune to fix before we could even sell the house. Sarah Richardson wouldn’t have cost me as much money as that woman did, but Connie hired her and signed a contract without telling me and we couldn’t get out of it. If I’m going to have another crappy looking house, I’d rather do it myself and save a pile of money.”
“I remember it well, Teddy,” Mom said with a bit of a shudder. “I never knew what colours chartreuse and puce were until I saw them in your diningroom and the guest room.” She gave another shudder. “Honestly. Puce! And you wondered why we didn’t stay overnight when we visited you.”
Mom was wrong. I knew why they didn’t stay overnight, and I didn’t blame them.
“I would love to have a room decorated by Sarah,” Bernice said almost dreamily, “but I was thinking more along the lines of perhaps hiring a student from one of the designer schools in Toronto.”
“Oh, yes,” Mom said. She paused in her mixing of ingredients for homemade rolls. She turned to face us, wiping her flour-dusted hands on her apron. “A friend of ours in Crystal Beach hired a student from George Brown College in Toronto. Remember, Jan?”
“Indeed I do.”
“Audrey had her guest room and a guest bath done for little more than petrol money for the girl. Audrey hired the workers and bought the supplies and furnishings, of course, but otherwise, the student’s only other stipulation was permission to use before and after pictures for her portfolio. She did a beautiful job, didn’t she, Dear?”
“Very professional,” Dad said before taking another sip of his tea. “Of course, the plumbing would not have leaked had she asked me to install it.” His voice dropped to a very soft volume meant to be heard only by the men at the table. “Gilbert Hanley would not know how to plumb his ass.”
“What did you say, Dear?”
“I said, ‘the inspector should not have let the work pass’.”
Dear Old Dad. He had his moments.
Before Dad got himself into hot water, I jumped in and asked, “How did she find the designer, Mom?”
“In the newspaper,” Mom began to explain as she returned to preparing her batter and tending the cranberries boiling on the stove. “The girl lived in St. Catherines and put adverts in all the local newspapers.”
“I think it would be fun working with a decorator and having a coordinated house,” Brad beamed. “It would sure save us a lot of work ‘specially when we don’t really have a clue what we’re doing. What do you think, Ted.”
Once upon a time I might have insisted that we do it ourselves, considering my almost compulsive need to be in charge and my previous encounter with that designer bitch, but seeing Brad’s excitement that Thanksgiving morning and knowing that it would be our home made me think twice before giving my answer: “Sounds like a plan. It was hard enough picking out shingles and windows and siding for the outside. Decorating the inside would a nightmare now that I think of it. I hated the old house, but I didn’t have a clue what to do with it, so I just left it the way it was when I bought it for the most part. It couldn’t turn out much worse than what we could do by ourselves, could it?”
Brad’s bright face brightened even more and his happy smile widened. “I’ll check online when we get back home. GBC should have its own newspaper. Most colleges do. We can put an ad in there and see what kind of response we get.”
I liked seeing Brad happy. It made me happy to see him that way. It was moments like that which made me thankful of that thunderstorm so long ago when I first set eyes on the man, standing just inside the door of my new house with four of the drawers from my grandmother’s dresser in his hands, who would change my life forever.
* * * * *
The decision to eat in the kitchen was unanimous. The table in the diningroom could comfortably seat eight, but not the ten people who would have to sit at it, and there wasn’t enough room to set up the smaller table for the kids. That wasn’t the case in the kitchen. With the smaller collapsible card table which had matching folding chairs set up for the four kids, we could at least all eat in the same room. Mom had covered them beautiful linen tablecloths with matching napkins and placemats. They made the separate tables look like they belonged together.
Except for Dad and John, who adjourned themselves to the livingroom, everyone had a hand in setting up the tables for our Thanksgiving dinner. Even Justin and Jeremy helped by setting out the silverware. Well, they sort of helped. To them, a fork was a fork and a spoon was a spoon, no matter how big they were so, as long as each plate had one of each, they were happy and beaming with pride at the fine job they’d done. When they were finished and watching television in the livingroom with their grandfathers, Brad and I quickly circled the tables wiping their hand and fingerprints off the utensils and properly setting out the silverware.
The dinner, as always, was magnificent and delicious. Both Mom and Bernice Hayes were superb cooks on their own. With their talents combined, however, they created something magical. There was the usual turkey stuffed with Mom’s special apple and chestnut dressing specially seasoned with a healthy dose of sage and roasted to mouth-watering perfection, Bernice’s honey-glazed, melt-in-your-mouth ham shank, huge bowls heaped with mashed potatoes and several vegetables fresh from a farmers’ market, assorted jelly salads, an amazing Waldorf salad created by Bernice, a steaming bowl of Dad’s favourite pepper squash, and more desserts awaiting us on the counter. Justin and Jeremy’s eyes were as large as their dinner plates. They had never seen so much food all in the same place in their entire lives.
Dad started things with off with a special Thanksgiving grace given in both Afrikaans and English after which Brad and I fixed plates for the twins and our mothers helped Lindsay and Zoe serve up their own dinners. My father carved the turkey. Brad’s dad sliced the ham.
With the kids properly situated at their table, we adults settled down to enjoy our own meal. Dad sat at one end of the rectangular, solid wood table. Brad’s parents sat on one side. Brad and I sat on the other.
“You know,” John Hayes began when we were well into the dinner, “at this time last year, my wife and I had no idea where the future was taking us. We certainly never thought that it would bring us to this point, sharing this Thanksgiving dinner with all of you. We could see what was happening between Bradley and Ted, but we weren’t at all certain what we should do about it or even if we should do anything about it. We talked a lot about it. We could see what it was doing to our son and we couldn’t remember seeing him so happy for a very long time.”
Bernice put her had on John’s hand. After a quick glance at each other, Bernice took over. “Ultimately, we decided not to do or say anything. If this was what Bradley wanted, then we would support him in whatever decision he made. We’re very glad we did. Not only is our son happier than he’s ever been, we gained someone who we are very proud to call our son-in-law. We also gained a beautiful granddaughter, two delightful and adorable grandsons, and two very dear friends. This is all more than we could have hoped for and we are very, very thankful for the day Ted moved in next door.”
“Cheers,” Mom announced as she picked up her glass of wine and raised it into the air. The rest of us joined her in the toast.
“If I may,” Dad said when the toast was finished and the glasses were returned to the table. “We, too, could not have dreamt that this Thanksgiving Day would find us living in this house with a new son-in-law, two new grandsons, and two new friends. The beginning of our journey to this point was challenged by a few – what are they called? Stumbling blocks? I could not accept Bradley. I felt that he was corrupting my son and turning him against me and my wife. My stubbornness would not allow me to see otherwise until, by chance, Bradley and I spent an afternoon together in the garden and I began to see why my son fell in love with him. Without even trying, Bradley ingratiated himself into my heart just as he had ingratiated himself with my wife. Not only did I come to accept him and my son, I came to care very much for him.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Brad interrupted briefly.
Dad smiled at him and nodded his acknowledgement. “There is such strength in you, Bradley. You are sincere and honest to a fault, and brave enough to take on the task of becoming an instant father and caretaker. Then fortune favoured us when a transfer position came available and now we live nearby where we can involve ourselves with our family more often than several times a year. For all of that, we could not be more thankful.” Dad picked up his wine glass again and acknowledged Brad and his parents. “We are grateful that you are all part of our family now and that we are part of yours. Gesondheid!”
I lifted my glass as did the five others at the table and we all repeated the Afrikaans cheer.
“Daddy, what are you doing?”
“We’re just talking about things we’re thankful for, Justin.”
“Do you have something you’re thankful for?” Brad asked curiously.
“M’hm,” he murmured as he nodded his head with a secretive twinkle in his eye. “I’m happy because I tooted and you didn’t hear me.”
* * * * *
Brad’s parents left for home later in the afternoon. It wasn’t long after they left that Lindsay and I walked Zoe home. The boys wanted to come with us but one glance at Brad told him that I wanted to be alone with Lindsay. He had no problem convincing them to stay with him so they could play pirates in the backyard fort and jungle gym. The last we heard from them, Justin and Jeremy were trying to convince Dad to allow them to make Daddy Brad walk the diving board plank into the swimming pool.
The girls walked in front of on the gravel shoulder of the road, chitchatting away between themselves and paying very little attention to me. Maple Grove is a town without sidewalks. Zoe carried a grocery bag with a small assortment of snacks for her and her family. Without me even having to call to them, they stopped at the highway and waited for me to take their hands and guide them across the 4 lanes of traffic. Fortunately, traffic was quite light and we didn’t even have to dodge cars.
As we continued down the road, they released my hands and hurried on in front of me. Occasionally they bumped their heads together for a private whisper, usually followed by a short bout of giggling and tittering and a quick peek over their shoulders to make sure I was too far away to hear them. I would just smile, give them a small wave, then turn my head away and look at whatever was there to see along the side of the road.
It was a nice walk to Zoe’s house, and only three cars passed us in both directions. The day was sunny and comfortably warm. Wispy clouds floated across the blue sky. Small town country sounds filled the air around us marred from time to time by the intrusive roar of a passing car. I had plenty of time to think what I would say to my daughter on our journey back to our waiting family.
We had phoned Zoe’s parents before we left the house to tell her we were on our way. As we neared her home, the front door opened and her mother stepped out onto the small veranda and down the steps to the walkway. Her father came out moments later. Zoe and Lindsay ran the rest of the way. By the time I got there, Zoe’s older brother, Dougal, had joined his parents as well. All his skater-boy attention was on the contents of the bag of goodies Zoe had brought home with her. Zoe, meanwhile, was proudly displaying her new bracelet to her admiring parents.
Introductions were made and niceties exchanged. Zoe’s parents shook hands with me, but Dougal mumbled a quick “yo” before disappearing back into the house with the bag of desserts in one hand and a piece of Bernice’s chocolate raspberry cake in the other. A large bite was missing from the cake and Dougal’s mouth was busy chewing it.
We didn’t stay long, just long enough to become mildly acquainted with Zoe’s parents and to wish each other a Happy Thanksgiving. We didn’t even go inside. Lindsay and Zoe said their goodbyes with a quick hug and we were off again.
Lindsay walked beside me until we reached the street and crossed it. She gave a quick glance over her right shoulder, peering behind my back toward Zoe’s house, and, apparently satisfied that nobody was watching, reached out with her right hand and grasped my left hand in it. She was Daddy’s Little Girl again, at least for as long as it took us to walk back to her grandparents’ house.
Lindsay had grown up so much over that past year or so since I removed her from her mother’s custody that horrific night. Not only had she grown physically, but emotionally and mentally as well. When I look back at the few years leading up to that moment when she took my hand there on the side of the road, I’m amazed that she came through the experience unscathed and unscarred.
In those few years from the time when we were a happy family, she went through her mother’s down-home parenting to her obsession with the social ladder. She endured her parents’ separation and divorce. She left her home and father and was sent to live with a mother who was more concerned with the money her daughter would bring her than for the daughter herself. She was shipped back and forth from apartment to apartment until I bought a new house so Lindsay could have her own bedroom when she came to visit me. She suffered a broken arm at her social climbing mother’s hand and a subsequent custody case. She watched her self-destructive mother fall apart before her eyes. She accepted the fact that her father, who once loved her mother, now loved another man. She adapted easily to the disruptive integration of two young boys into the family, boys to whom she would ultimately become a big sister. She gained a step father, she became a granddaughter, she discovered boys weren’t all that bad, and she was surprised that one boy in particular was more important to her than soccer camp. And then she lost almost everything that she could call her own, including her home, in the fiery blink of an eye.
She took it all in stride. She adapted. She dealt with it, and she did it all, so it seems, much better than I had done. I had grown in many ways, too, the least of which was realising that I wasn’t king of my castle anymore. There were two of us now. But it took a near-breakdown and the near-alienation of my younger son and the fear in all of my family and friends for it to finally sink in.
Bernice had been right that morning. My daughter had been growing up much faster than I had been noticing. On that Thanksgiving Day in October, I woke up with a daughter who would forever be my little girl. By the afternoon, I was facing the fact that she was swiftly becoming a young lady. Still, at moments like this, when we were alone and away from the prying eyes and ears of her friends, she became Daddy’s little girl again, much closer to a little girl sitting in Daddy’s lap than a young lady in training bras. Sometimes her body and her brain had trouble keeping up with each other and trying to decide which one they wanted her to be.
Lindsay clasped my hand in hers and I closed mine around it as we walked along the gravelled shoulder on the side of the road. “Did you and Zoe have fun this weekend, Sweetheart?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Lots, Daddy,” she replied. “I really liked staying overnight at her house. Can I stay there again sometime?”
“Sure, as long as her parents don’t mind.”
“I don’t think they mind. They’re really nice people. Even Dougal is nice when he wants to be. He even let us play with video games when we want to. I like him.”
“More than Daniel?” I asked wryly.
Lindsay giggled and squeezed my hand tighter. “No, Daddy,” she replied quickly. “Daniel’s a lot prettier and he smells better.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I thought Dougal looked kind of cute in that brown toque he was wearing.”
I looked down at my daughter with a furtive look on my face. She looked up at me with such a look of stunned disgust on her face. “Eww, Daddy! That toque makes his ears stick out! It makes him look like Dobby!”
I think they must have heard me laughing all the way from Dad’s place. I stopped walking and managed to pick up my daughter without giving myself a hernia. I was surprised at how much more effort it took than it had the year before. Lindsay wrapped her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist as I gave her the biggest hug I could. “I love you so much, Sweetheart,” I told her.
“I love you, too, Daddy.”
After a long hug and a great big kiss on her cheek, I set her down and we continued walking hand-in-hand, approaching the main highway we would have to cross again. It was only a stone’s throw away when I said, “I’m really sorry we don’t have room in the camper for you to invite Zoe to stay overnight, Sweetheart. At least not until the house is finished and you get your own bedroom again. There really isn’t even room to invite her over for dinner some day, is there?”
“No,” Lindsay replied quietly, giving me a weak but encouraging smile. “But that’s okay, Daddy. I don’t mind. I can wait until the house is finished.”
“That hardly seems fair to you, though,” I added as I looked down at her. “You can’t even invite your friends to stop by after school, and it can’t be very easy for you having to live in such a small space with me and Brad and your brothers.”
She shrugged her shoulders and said, “I’m a big girl now, Daddy. I can wait. Honest.”
We crossed the highway in silence, again with little difficulty, and were on the home stretch. Mom and Dad’s house was in sight. “I know what we can do, Sweetheart,” I said suddenly and excitedly as I drew us both to an abrupt halt. I said it as if I had just thought of it despite the fact that I had been thinking about it most of the day.
“What, Daddy?”
I squatted down in front of her and grasped her shoulders lightly in my hands. “What would you think if I asked your Grandma and Grandpa Hayes if you can stay with them until the house is done? You could have your own room again, and you can invite Daniel and your friends to visit, and Zoe could even come to stay overnight if she wants.”
Lindsay struggled to keep her excitement under control, but her face lit up like a lighthouse beacon. “Do you think they would let me?” Her thrilled voice quivered despite her efforts.
“Oh, I’m sure they would. Would you like me to ask them?”
“You wouldn’t mind if I stayed with them?”
“Not at all, Sweetheart. I’ll still be living right outside the door, and you can come visit us or have dinner with us any time you want. It’s still your home you know. . . such as it is. We can ask them tomorrow, okay?”
That Thanksgiving night was the last night Lindsay would sleep in the Winnebago with us until we moved into our new house. Of course, John and Bernice consented to taking Lindsay in with them and acted as though we hadn’t planned the whole thing that morning. She moved into their home that evening after having leftover turkey with us in the camper.
Lindsay dined with us quite often after the move, either in the camper or us with her and her grandparents. Her friends stopped by much more often after school and Daniel even took to walking home with her for the occasional lunch. Zoe came to visit her as well and stayed overnight a few times. It was clear to everyone how much happier she was now that she had her own private bedroom once again. It was clear even to me.
I missed her, though, more than I thought I would.
* * * * *
The twins were in bed and sound asleep, put there by Brad and myself after helping them go pee and getting them changed into their pyjamas. They’d fallen asleep halfway home and had barely stirred as we got them out of the van, into the camper, and readied them for bed. Their first Thanksgiving Day had been a grand, belly-stuffing, and exhausting one indeed. And they didn’t even complain about not getting any presents.
Lindsay got changed and ready for bed in the bathroom as she always did, then joined Brad and I on the daybed to watch a bit of television. She curled up beside me, nuzzling against me and laying her head against my side. I cuddled her with my arm around her shoulder and held her close. Brad sat on my other side with his laptop in his lap as he browsed the George Brown College website. He finally found and bookmarked the page where we could submit our ad for a designer. All we had to do was to create the ad itself and Brad would send it in for us.
Soon enough, though, Lindsay was ready to go to sleep, too. It had been a long and busy weekend for her as well. I helped her set up her fold-out bed as Brad closed down the Winnebago for the night. After a hug and a kiss goodnight, I tucked her in, turned out the lights, and joined Brad in the bedroom for a bit more hugging and kissing of our own.
Before long, with the lights dimmed and the hugging and kissing abandoned, I lay on my left side on the bed, propped up on my elbow with my head using my upturned hand as a pillow. My right hand was otherwise occupied a little further south. All my attention was on Brad. He was sitting up in the bed beside me, his hips aligned with my eyes, giving me a perfect view of his performance. His right hand was occupied similarly to mine; his mouth was making magic happen right before me.
It never got old watching Brad pleasure himself. It fascinated me just as much that night as it had the first time I’d watched him in those early days of our relationship. It never seemed to get old for him, either. He enjoyed doing it. That was obvious. He says he always did it for me, but I think, deep in his heart, he enjoyed doing it for himself just as much. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I loved watching him, pure and simple. I could watch him do it all day long.
I sensed Brad’s eyes on me and tilted my head up. Sure enough, he was looking at me. I smiled at him, displaying my pleasure, and, even with his lips stretched taut around the head of his cock, he managed to make a smile back at me. His hand froze at the base of his shaft and he began to lift his head with glacial slowness and my gaze returned to his cock. His lips slid slowly and easily over the glassy-smooth cockhead until they rested at the tip. Then, as they continued to retract, his tongue appeared, pressing against the piss slit there. His tongue, too, began to lift away from his cock and a sparkling thread of lube and spit began to stretch out until it looked as though his tongue was attached to his cock by a thin strand of transparent silk.
The wispy filament finally broke, smacking back to its source with a subdued but audible snap. The remainder of the watery strand dangled from Brad’s tongue but disappeared with a quick and silent slurp before his head bowed lower once more and his tongue began to dance on the smooth, plum-coloured skin of his bloated cockhead. He bathed it and teased it, flapped at it and lapped at it, fluttered at it with the tenderness of a butterfly’s wing and traced the coronal ridge as if he were circumnavigating the globe.
His head dropped down again until his lips reached the sensitive skin of his cock and began stretching and sliding over the spongy head once more. He went as far as he could go, bobbed his head a few times, and made a familiar request with a single guttural grunt. My right hand abandoned its task temporarily, moved up to the back of my Tiger’s head, and pushed down firmly but gently. His lips slid smoothly over the bulbous helmet and locked themselves behind the coronal ridge. His whole cockhead was buried inside his mouth. His head sank lower still, and it didn’t stop until three fingers worth of his cock shaft was inside his mouth as well.
I groaned my appreciation before relaxing the pressure of my hand on his head. He followed my hand back up, his receding lips revealing first the shaft and then the rest of his cock. Down I pushed again, then up and down again, helping Brad suck as much of his cock into his mouth as I knew our efforts would allow. From my vantage point I could see the good feelings mirrored in Brad’s face. His eyes were closed now and his excitement bristled on his furrowed brow sending sparks of sexual energy out and away until they seeped through my skin and ignited inside me.
There were only the sounds of slurping and sucking, the faint squeaking of the bed beneath us, whispers of Brad’s hair being rustled lightly by my fingers, and the harsh sounds of air being inhaled and exhaled through his nostrils to break the silence of the night. I lifted my head and dropped my forearm to the mattress. Brad’s eyes opened and followed my movements as I slid closer to him. The hand on the back of Brad’s head came to a momentary standstill; my other hand pressed palm up against his thigh where it lay upon the duvet cover, wriggling its way beneath the heated flesh until Brad lifted his leg slightly and allowed my arm to slide under it, seeking the two tender orbs that I knew it would find there. When I encountered them, I cradled them in my palm as though they were precious and fragile soap-bubble eggs.
Brad groaned his approval and, as my fingers gently joggled his balls, my other hand took up its helpful cadence once again. It was only minutes before he was at the point of no return, but Brad could make a performance feel like it was lasting for hours. His body language told me that it was time to release his head and let him take over. My hand returned to its previous task of pleasuring myself as Brad’s head lifted until only the tip of his cockhead remained entrapped between his lips. His hand, which had remained immobile where it was wrapped around the base of his cock, took up the previous stroking motion of his lips. I watched with rapt attention as his hand began its jouncing grip on his solid tube of flesh.
The increasingly-urgent sounds coming from Brad’s throat magnified and intensified. Muffled as they were by the pulsating head of his magnificent cock, they still sounded very much like the sounds which would emanate from the creature I had nicknamed him for. I could easily imagine the sensations they were creating in him. I knew the sensations they were creating in me.
As the seconds passed, the stroking of Brad’s hand accelerated, making rapid, squishy sounds as the skin of his palm rubbed over the spit-slick skin of his dick. Brad’s eyes closed and clenched again. His forehead wrinkled and furrowed from concentration and exertion. His cheeks were like a bellows, collapsing in on themselves with each inhaled breath and ballooning out with each exhale. Each heartbeat brought him closer and closer to his orgasm. It was all about him, now – him and his ultimate goal. Nothing else mattered and very little could prevent his climax.
Nothing did. Within a few breathless strokes, Brad’s face scrunched up even more than it was before. His hand motion suddenly slowed on the upstroke and came to a complete stop at the top of the shaft, just beneath the swollen, satin-like glans. His grunts became groans of blissful ecstasy as his cock throbbed, pumping his juices through it and into his waiting mouth. Even in his climactic throes, Brad’s lips slackened enough to allow several streams of his semen to trail down and over the head of his cock and to pool in the valley between his clasping fingers and thumb and the turgid his cock shaft where it awaited my anxious tongue. I was quick to move in for the feast. It was ambrosia to the palate. Together we shared his orgasm.
Mine followed soon after when Brad, mere seconds after his own climax came to its inevitable conclusion, flipped himself around onto his knees, pushed my hand away from my cock, and quickly and expertly took over. The magic that his mouth had been making on his own cock was now making magic on mine. Moments later, he was sucking the juices out of me. He did not share.
It was a wonderful close to a wonderful Thanksgiving Day. So much had happened. So many things accomplished. So much love had been shared. As I lay there in bed with my beloved Tiger curled up by my side, I began to think of all the things I was thankful for. Before I got beyond being thankful that I was married to Brad, someone who I couldn’t even imagine not being a part of my life now, my Tiger invaded my thoughts with his question.
“Do you know what I’m most thankful for, Pops?” he asked in a whisper. “Even more than falling in love with you?”
“No. What?”
“You letting me.”
Happy Thanksgiving indeed. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a happier, more fulfilling one.
To Be Continued
