Andrea Millhouse

*** The origin of this story is my five part series entitled "Karen" ***

*****

I held the eight by ten inch color photo in my left hand. If I didn't know any better I would have thought that I was looking at a younger version of my little brother, only with a Military haircut. Standing around six feet one inch, I surmised, Rick's massive arms were held limply at his sides. With a blank expression on his face, Rick was looking dead-pan into the lens of the camera with half closed eyes.

His expression looked similar to someone that had just been bested out of his last dollar at a hand of poker some Saturday night during an all night card game in a cheap hotel room someplace.

The woman standing next to him, with one arm around Rick's waist, was leaning forward and away from him and looking directly up at him with a mocking smile.

She was stunning from head to toe and young. The long blonde hair was thick and swept back over her shoulders in a lazy fan the way I had always remembered it to be. The large eyes that I had looked deeply into, so many times, were filled with mirth and one couldn't help but see the joy in her smile. The petite five feet, four inch frame was lithe and much stronger than it looked this I knew from having held her, myself.

With her head cocked at a jaunty angle to peer up at his face it was obvious that she was teasing him, the body language in the photograph said it all. She had "gotten his goat" somehow, the way lovers sometimes do. Obviously there had been someone present to capture the moment on film for posterity sake.

I felt a tear run down my cheek as I gazed at the photo and thought of holding her and looking into those eyes and the way she had kissed me and all of the wonderful things she had once said to me. I wish I could hold her and look into those eyes, just once more...

Her blue jeans were faded bell-bottoms which fit her slender frame perfectly, along with her lace-up dress boots which had been her favorites. The heart necklace which she was wearing in the photo was now in my own possession and always would be. The white button-up shirt had ruffled sleeves with flowers embroidered on them and although old, on her, it had class. Then again, everything about her had emanated class ...and a lady's gentleness.

"You about ready? Give me two minutes, OK? I'm almost done." presently came from the bedroom now.

"Yeah, no hurry." I replied without looking up from the photo.

What on earth could she have been saying to Rick in the photo I wondered? ...She had been Christened as Lovisa Svea Olofsson or "Lovey" to her close friends. To me she had simply been "Mom" and it suddenly seemed strange to be looking at my mother's photograph and me actually being older than she, herself, had been when the photo was taken. Looking at the photo objectively it wasn't hard to understand the attraction men had felt for her.

My mother had been an absolute knock-out. Large dark eyes had been framed in a heart shaped face with high cheek bones beneath a thick weave of auburn hair, parted in the middle and cascading down majestically in natural curls. Mom had rich full lips meant for kissing and a cynical grin whenever she was being playful as she now was, in the photo.She had been blessed with crooked teeth which had seemingly only added to her beauty, almost as if the teeth were, themselves, implying that she should be a pirate's girl somehow.

My God, she had been stunning to look at.

Her natural beauty had been only half the story, in truth. Mom had always been first and foremost ...a lady. She had been strong enough to let others think that they were the strong one when in actuality it was always Lovey that had kept things together whenever the world fell apart and raising my little brother and me, by herself, the lid had blown off of our world on a regular basis, at least in our teens it seemed like. Strong and steadfast Mom had somehow always been our guiding hand and kept the ship intact and upright and we had always survived yet another storm together as a family.

At fifty five years of age now, myself, I was looking at the photo for the first time in my life, at least this week I was, since the photos had been picked-up from the photo shop in Vegas. The woman in these photos, especially this one particular photo, had seemed somehow foreign to me or, perhaps, maybe a better word, exotic. In the recently discovered photos I was seeing my mother in a way in which I had never seen her, in life.

I was looking at a girl in love, a girl in love with the man I now knew was my father. A man I wish I could have known. A man I was determined to meet, even though it would be posthumously.

I now thought of Rick's greeting card, postmarked nineteen sixty seven, with its promise of marriage and what it implied. Andrea and I had only recently discovered the hidden card inside Mom's jewelry box a few months prior. I surmised that the woman I was looking at in the photo most likely suspected that she was with-child for a second time, now with my little brother Ricky.

Instinct told me that the photo I was looking at had been taken early in, or very near nineteen sixty seven. The card which Andrea and I had found in Mom's jewelry box most likely had yet to be written by the man she was standing with when the photo was taken. There MUST be a way to discover the truth but I couldn't yet think how -

"Let me see." Andrea now said as she bent over me in the nude to look at my eyes.

I took off the plastic safety glasses and let Andrea peer at my eyes or more specifically my lower lids which were black and blue and swollen with salve and pus emanating from them.

"The swelling is down, are you glad you carried through with it?" she asked peering more closely at the work.

"Yes, it was coming to the point where I didn't even like to have my photo taken any more honey" I said as she leaned down and kissed me.

Andrea grunted an acknowledgment at my confession and peered at the lower lids more intently now.

"My God, he took a whole palm full of fat from beneath my lower lids, Andrea." I said in reference to my procedure as I held up my empty palm with imaginary fat in it.

I then continued with "The bags people develop under their eyes is nothing more than FAT, the surgeon explained to me. How was your flight by the way? Sorry I couldn't have picked you up."

"It was alright, I slept through most of it." she replied

"Are we going to make love or go eat and do a bicycle ride like we planned? You need to make up your mind now before nature makes it up for us." I said pulling her into my lap and squeezing her bottom with my right hand while simultaneously leaning up for a full-on kiss.

"Let's do a ride, I need to shed some jet lag and eat a sandwich at the deli" she said, standing and turning on her heel now as she began to pad in her bare feet for the bedroom again.

"You're a tease, Andrea Millhouse." I said as I continued to study the photo again.

"I'm worth waiting for. Did you masturbate while I was gone, how many times? Did I give you a blow job most of the time or did we do it doggy style? - be honest" she asked mockingly from the hallway.

Looking up from the photograph now, I snickered at her raw humor and made a subtle acknowledgement.

"Your eyes look really good, Tim." Andrea called from the bedroom now.

"Hurry up and get DRESSED you nymph ...you're a very bad example to me, you've corrupted an innocent truck driver, you know that? I hope you're proud of yourself lady!!" I said smiling in a loud voice and shaking my head.

Andrea ignored me from the bedroom.

Looking at the photo again and thinking back now, Andrea must be right; Mom would have been around thirty nine years of age in the photo if she was in fact carrying Ricky. Mom had pushed her age of carrying a child to the very limit at fortyish. Apparently, before carrying me, she had been told by her physician that if she really did want children at her age that she'd better get busy and get with it -

"Sonofabitch, I want a cigarette." Andrea called out half heartedly from the bathroom now.

"You quit, remember?" I responded, looking up at the wall.

"fuck you" she replied sarcastically.

"WATCH YOUR MOUTH!" I suddenly heard Mom yell, only it was my own voice...

"It's my condo, if you don't like it, go to your own and sleep by yourself tonight!" Andrea called back defiantly.

Andrea, I had discovered, was half Cherokee and half Irish and she had a hot temper, probably from both sides of the coin but her wrath was always short lived, she never seethed and thank God, she wasn't a drama queen, I wouldn't be with her if she were. Andrea had been gone for four days, on business, and we were teasing each other now.

"Little shit." I mumbled in reference to Andrea as I set the photo on the coffee table and closed my eyes, rubbing my forehead.

"I heard that!" Andrea retorted from the bathroom.

"I love you, please GET DRESSED SO WE CAN GO, ALREADY!" I replied in mocked exasperation.

I heard water begin running in the bathroom sink as Andrea mumbled some kind of a profanity in response to my comment.

Shaking my head, I picked up the photo again. Thinking hard now, ...I most likely had been with my Grandparents Oley and Ada as an infant when this photo was taken I surmised. Growing up, Ricky and I had spent many summers with them on their spread outside of Phoenix and we had loved it. We had learned how to drive farm tractors, work on farm equipment and fabricate things from steel from my Grandfather.

Nycolaus or "Oley" as he was fondly known, had come to America from Sweden with his very pregnant wife, Ada, aboard the Cunard liner Mauretania in the year nineteen twenty seven and shortly thereafter, Mom and Aunt Elsie were born as twins. The "Blonde Bombers" as they had become known later in their adolescence by admiring local teenage boys.

My Grandfather had been uneducated but had possessed an incredibly high I.Q. and been an extremely talented machinist and metal fabricator. A personal acquaintance of Clessie Cummins, Grandfather had been invited with great enthusiasm to move to the United States where he had worked for a brief time with the engineering department at Cummins Engine Manufacturing. The relatively new firm had held much promise yet it had also been fledgling at the time of my Grandfather's employment there, he was later stolen away by a vast increase in salary by the metal stamping department at The Studebaker Corporation.

As I sat and studied the photo now I recalled fondly the image in my mind's eye of my Grandfather and Gramma Ada while they sat together as an elderly couple, him in his straw hat and her in her bonnet, drinking their spiked "Lemonade" together on the front porch swing while Ricky and I drove old worn-out hay trucks and farm tractors around the orange farm and talking non-stop about which local girl we were currently interested in. Those hot summer days with Grandfather and Gramma were paradise for Ricky and me, growing-up. I then thought of the time-

"Are you listening to me, you silly fuck?" Andrea asked now with feigned exasperation in her voice.

She was wheeling out her white road bike and dressed in her sweat clothes now. Andrea had been dropping a few more F-Bombs than I was comfortable with since she had gotten home from her trip. I had learned, with her, that this was a signal that she was a bit fatigued and irritable and that I needed to pay a little more attention and pamper her some.

"Guess I'm obsessing again honey." I replied sheepishly.

"It's time for you to put that away for a while now, Tim." Andrea said earnestly, referring to the photograph.

"I know. Let's do a ride now and we'll both feel better" I said,

Getting up and grabbing my recumbent bicycle from the corner of the living room then, I followed her out the door. We locked the door of the condo and carried our bikes down the three flights of stairs and through the palazzo of the building. We buzzed ourselves through the security gate of the building whereupon Andrea mounted her machine and donned her sunglasses.

Looking at me then, she said "Let's ride, cowboy."

Andrea, I knew, was presently tired from her trip and airline flight. Following behind her now as we steered onto the paved bike path I likened her to a steam locomotive, slow to start and then gradually to begin and build speed.

I was no slouch when it came to bicycling but Andrea was in a league considerably above and beyond me. Watching her pedal her machine now, I could tell that she was arguing somewhat internally with herself about riding instead of just curling up and watching a movie in the condo together this evening. Yet I knew that she would push through her fatigue in a few minutes and that Id soon be eating her dust.

Mom and Andrea shared a lot in common, I thought, and I wished the two could have met in this life. Both had integrity, both were hard workers and the top tier of their professions. Each of them were physically gorgeous and health conscious. After her divorce, Andrea admittedly had slid into a downward spiral of marijuana and depression for a few years until rediscovering exercise and more specifically, bicycling, which we both loved.

We agreed on most things and were diametrically opposed on most everything else. That was fine, we didn't try to change the other person, we just tried to respect the other's opinion and focus on what we did agree on. We weren't perfect at it by any means but we were working on it.

Andrea drank wine or champagne, probably close to twice a year, on holidays usually. She had given up the marijuana at some point and focused her attention on her professional career and fitness. "A runner's high is always better anyway." She had confided in me. The nicotine was another story for her altogether though. Ashamed at her inability to abstain altogether, she struggled constantly and still dabbled with smoking - in secret.

She used nicotine lozenges and had also experimented some with the patch on occasion to try and curb the urges which plagued her. It was especially hard for her to accept the fact that there was something pertaining to herself that she was unable, as of yet to control with will power alone, and Andrea had a lot of self will.

Admittedly she still enjoyed smoking and especially so with sex. On occasion I would gently remind her that I was in fact behind her in support of her and that the nicotine wasn't a moral issue and to just keep trying.

...A light breeze began to wave Andrea's hair as she gracefully took a left hand curve ahead of me along the bicycle path. We were moving a little faster now and Andrea was beginning to build a head of steam and I knew it wouldn't be long before she would really start to fly on that bike.

Sitting back on my recumbent I continued peddling my own machine and just admired the shape and motion of Andrea's beautiful body as she began to find her rhythm with the bicycle. "I'd say I did OK in finding this one, wouldn't you, Mom?" I asked quietly in reference to Andrea.

"Don't I intimidate you? Most guys are intimidated by me for some reason." Andrea had once said to me.

I had replied that, yes, at times she could be intimidating to me but generally, no. Andrea was, herself, a knock-out, the way my mother had been. Andrea had the classic good looks of a proud Cherokee woman combined with the thick wavy hair and large bosom which the Celtic women were known for.

Andrea was my own age at fifty five yet she could easily pass for thirty nine or forty and most of my buddies and co-workers were genuinely shocked whenever I reveled her true age to them. Andrea was smarter than me, more successful than me, more polished than me and certainly more sophisticated than me. Intimidated by her? No, I bragged about her every chance I got - because she loved and wanted me.

My mind began to clear as we continued riding; we were away from most of the casinos and vehicular traffic now and farther into the Mohave Desert where it was much quieter. I started thinking about the recently discovered photographs again and was soon asking myself the same questions I had been pondering for the last several months. Who was Rick Sheffield, really? What had he been like? Where had Mom met him? Did he have living family members? Where did they live? Would they even consider speaking with me? Who had taken the photo of Mom teasing him? the photo that so intrigued me.

That he was a soldier in Vietnam, Andrea and I knew. ...Rick's name was on the memorial wall, we had discovered via the internet. The Military would never divulge any personal information to me because technically speaking, I wasn't considered a blood relative of Rick's.

From what Andrea and I had pieced together with help from the recently discovered photos is that when Mom had met Rick, she had been childless and within the throes of a failing marriage, it had been the early nineteen sixties. She had been married to a man whom I had believed all of my life, to be my actual father and I had believed this to my own age of fifty four. Mom had been gone almost a year by the time the photos were discovered so we obviously couldn't ask her.

I seriously doubted that she would have ever talked about any of it anyway. Mom had always been open and honest with Ricky and I but her romantic life was one area where she could play her cards extremely close to the vest and I don't think her Old World values would have ever let her admit to anything in regard to a love affair and child birth with Rick Sheffield, my actual father. In essence, Mom had lived her whole life in denial to some degree. That was fine with me, Mom had done the best she could and she had been a wonderful mother and human being.

Looking at the photos, I had quickly realized that my little brother, Ricky, had received the massive arms and upper body of Rick Sheffield and also the Swedish good-looks of my mother. Ricky had driven the neighborhood girls wild with his muscled physique and long blonde hair; he had a very striking resemblance to Peter Frampton. I wish Ricky and I could have grown-up with Rick, calling him "Dad," like any normal family. I wish we could have gone on camping and fishing trips as a family together and watched him flirt with my beautiful mother.

I was content with my physical appearance and the hair color which fate had bestowed upon me, which was now a grayish brown. However, I did wish that I had also received the huge arms and upper body the way Ricky had. A bit of vanity on my part perhaps... "You're gorgeous the way you are and the girls love you, stop being negative." Mom would say and kiss my cheek. Watching the rear side of Andrea Millhouse as she pedaled her bike now, I concluded that, yes, there must be something appealing to women, about me.

...Now I started to see the imaginary black coal smoke rolling out of Andrea as her endorphins began to kick in and she began to pull away from me on her bike. Andrea was entering the mind zone of tranquility which exercise creates and she was feeding fuel to those piston legs and was about to hit her stride now. This would entail a short distance of all-out effort and speed and then she would throttle back a small degree and ride on the crest of her adrenaline for the long haul, occasionally dipping into her reserve energy for short bursts of speed, just for the thrill of it.

Her jet lag and fatigue were beginning to fall by the wayside and I decided to just let her go and keep my own pace. Admittedly, my recumbent bicycle was heavier than Andrea's sleek road bike, I had tools, spare parts, rain-gear, a tire pump, bear mace and a gallon of water on board all of which was located in a plastic milk crate which I had bolted to the rear of my bike, but even so, Andrea was more athletic than I would ever hope to be.