Erik Ead is that man.
When I was a little girl, my dad would sleep with me. I held his finger in my hand. I didn’t hold it because he was my dad, I held it because it gave me an assurance that he was there, and that he loved me. I told myself that as long as I had his finger in my hand, we were connected, and that he loved me. I never told him why I held it. I kept it a secret.
When I would wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes it would be gone. I would reach around in the dark and find it, and grip it in my hand. Squeezing his finger was my way of telling him I loved him, and knowing that he loved me.
I thought about it, and I wanted to talk to my dad, and I wanted to talk to Erik. I owed it to my father to talk to him about this, and to Erik. I opened my text screen and scrolled to Erik’s name, and typed him a text.
ERIK EAD:
Part of me has been missing my entire life. I have lived with a void in my soul. You fill that void, and you fill it perfectly. I love you, and I don’t want to lose you. Life without you in it is not living. I need you in my life to survive.
I read what I had typed.
Love.
We had not discussed love. Erik was a very deep person, and although he had a very sensitive side, and could be very caring, he was not one to be pressured into
anything
. In fact, he had proven many times through what he had done, and stories that he had told, that he would walk away before he would allow anyone tell him or try to convince him to do anything.
If I was going to consider losing the support of my father, and staying here to build a relationship with Erik, I needed to know that he was at least going to be receptive to me loving him. I reread the message.
If he is not willing to love me, or try to develop a love for me, I cannot do this. I have to be a woman, and not a girl, and go to grad school. If he will love me, my life will be complete. He will fill my void, make me whole.
I remembered the day he came into the dealership.
It’s Erik with a “K”, Kelli.
Enunciate.
Follow me to my motorcycle.
I pressed send.
GENE.
I had spent three years in Vietnam, and seventeen more years after that god forsaken mess of a war was over in the US Navy. Twenty fucking years. I lived on base, saving every penny I possibly could to try to spend my life succeeding at something.
I never intended to do any of this, or to build any of this for myself. I had always intended on doing it for my family. My wife and my daughter - the two loves of my life.
Women, to me, have always been like literature, and not like arithmetic. They aren’t something you can just calculate or figure out. They are un-fucking predictable, and always lead you in a direction that you have no way of knowing where or how it may end.
My wife, after my daughter was born, began using heroin again. She had promised right after the war that she was done with it, and that she would never use it again. From what I saw in the war, people aren’t able to stop using heroin and stay off of it for any period of time. That fucking drug kills people and kills their soul if it doesn’t kill them first.
I bottle fed Kelli, and tried to get Margaret some help to get off the drug. She couldn’t breast feed because she had that damned drug in her system. That damned woman. Why she ever tried to start using the drug again – after being off of it for two years, is beyond me.
When Margaret overdosed, I left Kelli with my parents, and took her body back to San Diego to be buried. I never recovered from losing her. She was the one woman I loved, and the only woman I loved. I am a firm believer that there is one person on this earth that we are meant to love, and that person, if we are able to find them, makes life worth living. Without that person, we live an incomplete life.
After Margaret passed, my love for Kelli became so much different. Kelli was the love of my life. When I bottle fed her, I thought of Margaret. I spent many nights with Kelli while she was young, guessing at what to do to make her be as comfortable as she could be. She slept in my bed for three years, beside me.
She got where she would hold my finger in her little hand while we slept. Sometimes, when I woke up in the night, I realized it was Kelli, reaching over me and trying to find my finger to hold so she could go back to sleep. When I finally decided that she was getting too old for me to have in bed with me, she cried like she was a baby again.
I remember going into her room, and sitting beside the bed talking to her, and trying to explain everything about why she couldn’t sleep with me anymore.
It’s time for you to grow up and be a big girl, Muffin. Be a big girl for daddy and sleep in your room. Make daddy proud of you and sleep here like a big girl.
I would hold my hand on the bed, and she would squeeze my finger until she fell asleep.
After she fell asleep, I’d walk into the other room and cry. I’d cry for Margaret. I’d cry for Kelli, and I would cry knowing that the rest of my fucking life would be spent alone, except for Kelli. I could never have another woman in my life. There was one love in my life, and she was gone. No one on earth could ever replace Margaret.
The military taught me plenty about life, and I have kept those thoughts with me throughout my life after the military. Discipline. Planning. Implementation. These things have me a dealership that is recognized by BMW of North America as one of the greatest dealership’s in the nation. These types of things aren’t handed to anyone, you earn them. I earned everything I have in life, and I earned this, fair and square, through hard work.
When Kelli was in grade school, she stood out. Kelli always stood out from the rest of the kids in school. Really, truth be known, Kelli has stood out in anywhere she has ever gone. The most beautiful girl in the entire world, and smart, too. She was in third grade when they wanted to move her up grade in school. I told them I would not consider it, because there was no telling what problems might become of it later. They could not provide me with any form of statistical data to support that there would be no problems in the future – from her being the youngest one in the class – so
no
remained the answer.
Kelli never really dated anyone, and that has always made me happy. She has had boys that were friends, but she has never been one to go out and date boys. She was in high school when boys started coming around, but she never had any interest to speak of in them. When she was twelve, I told her for the first time about my wanting her to run the dealership when she was older. We have talked about it every year since then, around her birthday. It was always something I looked forward to, letting Kelli know that she was the most important thing in my life, and that I wanted to give to her what my life’s accomplishment had been.
A woman in a dealership has always, right or wrong, been looked down upon. There still aren’t too many women sales persons in a dealership - they come and go, but it is more of a man’s world. I never quite understood that, and I have had several woman sales staff, but the men always throw a fucking fit about it, and sooner or later, they women leave.
Kelli being the owner of this dealership has been my goal since she was one year old. I thought, when Kelli was born, that I would sell it by the time I was fifty-five. Eventually, we would all move to another state, and live through Kelli’s high school years in a place like California. Margaret and I retired, and Kelli going to school. Kelli would meet a good man, and live across town from us in a house with her husband. That dream was shattered by Margaret’s love for that fucking dope. God damned woman.
My parents were the only ones that ever knew what happened to Margaret. When Margaret was on that damned dope, I told everyone she was a drunk. Everyone in town thought she was a drinker, and that she couldn’t get off the bottle. I could never tell anyone that my Margaret was a heroin junkie. I loved her too much to embarrass her like that.
When she passed, I was in a trance. It was like I was in the war again. I have seen plenty of death, and may have a different view than most, but I never looked at what I did as being wrong. My parents, until their death, never quite agreed with me about what I did. I told them all along that I did it for Kelli, and for my respect of Margaret.
I found her in the bathroom, and held her in my arms, there at the tub. She was in her white robe, the one I bought her for Christmas. God damned slippers were on the floor beside her, her body all twisted in a mess there by the tub. I brushed her hair back, and forgave her for leaving us, and prayed to God almighty.
I went in and woke up Kelli, and took her to my folks. My folks and I talked, and I told them my plan. Although they never agreed then, or even later for that matter, they never said a word about it. Everybody knew Margaret as a drinker, and would never question it.
I dropped off Kelli, and went to the dealership and got a used pickup truck. I went in the garage and got a body bag from my foot locker, and put Margaret in it, and put her in the bed of the truck. Winter of 1991.
I packed some bags with clothes for both of us, put them in the truck, got Margaret’s dope and needles found, and packed them into the glove box. I drove straight to San Diego in that truck with Margaret in the back. 1200 miles. Twenty hours is what it took. I spent most of the time that I drove cussing and crying.
I started smoking again on that trip. The thought of living a life without Margaret was more than I could fathom, and it didn’t sit well with me. When I got to Chula Vista, I got a hotel room off the highway and waited till morning. I called the police in the morning, and told them that I woke up to her, cold and stiff.
I explained that we had been driving all night, and that I carried her in the room from the truck thinking she was asleep. They never questioned me, and said that she was dead when I carried her into the room. I explained that she must have took a shot at the stop in Arizona at the truck stop.
They searched the truck and found her bad with the needles, dope, and such, and confiscated it. After the autopsy was done, and they called, I buried her there in San Diego, and never said a word to anyone but my folks.
I told everyone that she left and never came back. For years, most thought one day she’d sober up and return, we’d been together for a few decades after all. Some, after a few years, started a rumor that I had paid her to leave, so as to keep from embarrassing Kelli. I let them say what they had to say, all the while knowing the fucking truth.
I loved that woman and still love her today. I always told myself one day I would tell Kelli, but I am afraid that secret will go with me to my grave. There is not one single shred of benefit that will come from Kelli knowing that her mother died as a heroin addict. Not one.
Kelli went on to have perfect grades throughout school. She never got involved in anything but track, and she loved to run. She would spend all of her evenings after school running and doing homework. Nothing ever made me happier than to see her succeeding at what she set as a goal.
She got scholarship offers from all over the country, and chose going to school in the state, at KU, so she could be closer to me. She agreed to go to Columbia for her Graduate School to get the business masters. We agreed all along that a woman in this industry would need that to be a success, and to be perceived by others as being a success. She had my respect, but she would have to have that sheepskin to have the respect of everyone else.
Being without her, and knowing that she would be so far away was something that was going to be tough for me. Losing Margaret took a good chunk of me when it happened. Losing Kelli was going to be tough, even if I knew she was in another state going to school.
There were times when I wish that we could go back to the days when she held my finger in bed. Those days are long gone. Gone from ever happening again, but not gone from my mind.
Kelli is and will always remain the only thing in my life that I love.
KELLI.
Wondering what Erik was thinking drives me crazy sometimes. He doesn’t talk too much when he is away from me, and thinking about what he might be thinking about is sometimes more than I want to think about. My mind gets all jumbled with the possibilities of what he may be thinking, and whether or not I have done something to make him upset with me. He always tells me when I ask him if he’s upset that he isn’t. I don’t ever want him to be upset with me, not ever.
We needed to talk about my grad school, and about us, and he never responded to that text I sent him. I knew, knew, knew when I typed it that it was a bad idea. Even if I love Erik with all of my heart, it was a really bad idea to send that text. It was so childish of me, and so irresponsible of me. Erik was the best thing to ever happen to me, and I didn’t want to lose him over a ridiculous selfish text message.