The remaining days we had together were packed with loads of fun spent with Jacquelyn, Joey, and me having the best time of our lives. We played inside and out, driving the adults crazy. We even had time to hang around online, visiting with our ILD.com friends. Boy were they envious, that I got to see and play with LilPrince and Roo in real life. I could only imagine how they would all act if they also found out that I was real life friends with Sissy4U a.k.a. Stacks.
I also made sure to email Meek. Through email we swapped phone numbers, addresses, and were able to talk on the phone several times. I didn’t send him the info about The Shack, basically because Gary wasn’t there anymore and I didn’t know what was going on out there. Instead Meek and I both did some online searching and found a cool lady down in Florida that was willing to make a board for Meek. What was so cool about this lady you might ask? Well she had no arms! That is right, she was born with no arms, but that didn’t stop her from learning to surf and eventually learning to make her own surfboards. She does it all with her feet. She even had a video on her website showing her surfing and making boards.
I even talked with Pepper on the phone because he was sleeping over at Meeks. As you might expect, Pepper went just as nuts at getting to talk with me on the phone as he had when he met me at the water park. I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the attention a little.
At the dinner table the night after Grandfather had spanked me, everyone was present except for Grandfather. I was glad I didn’t have to ask where he was, Daddy Phil had been the one to bring it up.
“Will Alastair not be joining us this evening?” he asked Grandmother.
“I’m sorry to say, he was called away on business this morning and won’t be back until late.” Was her initial answer, but then her countenance fell and she added, “Alastair doesn’t handle loss well. When our son passed away back in ’78 Alastair did the same thing he is doing now. He became withdrawn, short tempered and poured himself into his work.”
Mommy Beth then said, “Everyone deals with it in their own way.”
“My mom never told me she had a baby brother that died.” I said.
Grandmother leaned back in her chair and played with her pearl necklace. “Oh darling, Henry wasn’t a baby when he passed away and he was older than your mother as well. I am not surprised that she never spoke of him. The two of them never got along.”
She paused a moment to take a sip of water, “It happened in the spring on his seventeenth birthday when we lost him.”
God knows I shouldn’t have asked but I did. “What happened?”
Grandmother didn’t answer at first and Mommy Beth said, “Alvin let’s not talk about that okay.”
But Grandmother spoke up, “Oh no, it is alright.” She said to Mommy Beth and then directed her words to me, “Henry went surfing one afternoon with his friends from school and never came home again.”
“He was surfing? Here? In Maine?” I asked and the way I said it, really wasn’t proper; I mean not at that moment but I couldn’t help myself. The idea of surfing in Maine? I mean it is too dang cold for that. The only way someone could surf here would be to wear a heavy wetsuit and even then… I mean, dang it would be cold!
“Alvin!” was all that Daddy Phil had to say to me to let me know I was being an insensitive jerk.
Jacquelyn who had been sitting as quiet as a church mouse beside me and holding my hand under the table finally found her voice. She asked, “Did he drown?”
I looked back to Grandmother to see her softly shaking her head.
“No one really knows for sure what happened. Henry’s friends were not able to join him so Henry went surfing alone.”
“So he died while he was surfing?” Joey asked but it was the way he asked. Like he was almost going to cry.
Again Grandmother was shaking her head and fidgeting with her pearls to the point that I was expecting them to break. “The Coast Guard searched for three days before calling it off.”
“Oh that is so sad.” Mommy Beth said tearfully.
I sat back in my chair; suddenly I felt like I had been punched in the gut.
“Henry?” I said to myself.
Everyone else continued the conversation, but not me. My mind had gone off on its own. I don’t even remember eating my dinner or anything else up until bedtime. I kept thinking about what Grandmother had said; playing it over and over in my mind.
It had been Meek who, when we were later talking on the phone, figured out that perhaps the reason my grandfather was so against me surfing was because of what happened to Henry.
__________
I forget which day it was that two of my friends from school came to visit. I think maybe it was Wednesday or was it Thursday? Oh, it doesn’t matter either way. Stacks and BB had come over to meet Daddy Phil and Mommy Beth in person. You know something that is funny, tall and tough Stacks cried when she first met Mommy Beth. I think she cried because she was so excited to finally get to meet them and hug them in real life. Once she got over her initial exhilaration she, Jacquelyn, and Mommy Beth went off alone for some ‘Girl Talk’ is what they called it.
BB who is normally not shy started out quiet but after Daddy Phil got a hold of him and held him on his lap for a while he totally came out of it.
I wish there weren’t so many secrets between us all as to who is a member of ILD.com and who knows what about whom. It would have been so cool to have everyone come over to meet the creators of ILD.com. We could have had an awesome sleepover.
Joey was over the moon with excitement at meeting Stacks in person. He kept hanging all over her, but when Mommy Beth and Stacks went off alone he started hanging all over me. I’m not sure why, but he seemed to keep his distance from BB. I wasn’t having that so I picked him up and dropped him right on top of BB. After that there was no separating them.
BB and Joey turned out to be like long lost Brothers. They acted the same and kept saying the same things. Boy we sure laughed a lot because one would start saying something and the other would then finish it. Then they would yell at that person to stop it.
I didn’t get to talk with BB or Stacks too much; they were too interested in talking with their online Mommy and Daddy. Anyway I can talk to them anytime I want. I did however get to ask Stacks two things before she left.
“What do you think of Jacquelyn?” I asked her while sitting in the media room.
Stacks leaned close and whispered into my ear, “I think she is perfect for you.”
“Really?” I said almost giggling over the idea that Stacks, someone I care for and whose opinion I strongly value, thinks my girlfriend and I are perfect for each other.
The other thing I asked was whether she had seen any of our other friends. She said that except for BB and her half-sister Bertha, she hadn’t seen Larry, Chris or Fish since the wreath service.
“I heard that Larry and Chris’s mom sent them to stay with their aunt for the summer somewhere in New York.” She said.
One evening, while I was hiding in the pantry once again, I was talking with Meek and Pepper. I told them how my grandfather was trying to get me to stop surfing, how he had taken my surfboard away from me and how I wanted so badly to go to California to compete. I suppose deep inside, all three of us knew that we’d never be able to pull it off, but we began making plans to hitchhike all the way to California. Amazingly enough, Pepper turned out to be the level headed one and toward the end of the week he had convinced Meek and I just how dangerous hitchhiking would be.
Regrettably, the inevitable day came when it was time for Jacquelyn and Joey and his parents to fly home. Boy I was super bummed out about that. I didn’t want them to leave. I even tried to talk Daddy Phil into staying an extra week, but he said his vacation time was all used up and he had to get back to work. I made the mistake of telling him he didn’t have a job because he was in the military. I got tickle tortured for ten minutes due to that little comment.
I suppose it was a good thing that their flights were so early in the morning. We didn’t have time to get all depressed and brood. From the moment Mommy Beth woke us up, everything went super-fast. Joey and I took one last shower together and even one last towel fight in the bathroom afterward.
Jacquelyn came into my room fully dressed and ready for breakfast. Mommy Beth had just finished diapering Joey and me but we weren’t even dressed yet. I suppose for Jacquelyn, it was the icing on her cake. It was the one thing she had so desperately wanted to see during her visit; me in nothing but a diaper.
“Jacquelyn!” I squealed and tried to hide my diaper with my inadequate hands.
“Oh hush up you big baby!” she teased.
I acted like I was going to fight her and she adopted a threatening pose.
“Oh you want some of this again?” she said, referring to the other day when she and I were roughhousing. I like to think that I let her, but truth be told, she overpowered me, pinned me to the floor and partially stripped me to get to see my diaper. She had done the same thing at her place when I had first met her.
I chuckled and waved her off by saying, “Not a chance.”
“That’s because you know I would whoop your diapered butt again!” she said and then softened.
Breakfast was only cold cereal and juice. And as soon as we were done eating we headed for the airport. Grandmother and I tagged along to see them off and I am glad of that. It gave me that much more time with my friends.
We arrived at the airport and surprisingly we didn’t have to carry the bags all the way inside. There was a nice guy right there on the sidewalk that checked the luggage in, took care of their tickets and told them which gate they needed to go to.
Due to security reasons, Grandmother and I had to say our goodbyes inside the lobby area. Since we didn’t have tickets, we weren’t allowed past the security checkpoint.
I didn’t think the airport would be so crowded that early in the morning but it was. There were people rushing all over the place.
Saying goodbye was hard and I cried. Mommy Beth promised to let me come up and visit later in the summer. Jacquelyn surprised me and everyone else when she gave me a goodbye kiss on the lips right there in front of everyone.
Joey first made a groaning sound and then teased us about it. “Jacquelyn and Alvin sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G! First comes love; then comes marriage; then comes baby Alvin in a baby carriage! Sucking his thumb, peeing his pants, doing the Hula-Hula dance!”
I tried to chase Joey, but Daddy Phil told us we weren’t allowed to run around in the airport. I had to settle with threatening to get him back some other time.