FOR C.J.
Early on Tuesday morning, Dillon's cell phone rang and woke him out of a dead sleep. It was too early to take a call, and way too early for the rude awakening his ringtone was blaring from the nightstand next to his bed: The intro of Won't Get Fooled Again by The Who. No one in their right mind calls this early. Why didn't I turn this damn phone off last night? he wondered. But he was curious and looked at the phone. The call was coming from a number he recognized. It was the landline in the house where he grew up. So he answered.
"Hi, Mom," he said into the phone. He knew his father would never call him unless he suspected him of stealing his golf clubs.
"Good morning, Honey," his mother said.
"Kind of early, Mom, isn't it? What's up?"
"I know Honey, but I have to leave for work soon. And I thought you'd want to know."
Dillon sat up in bed. "What? What happened?"
"C.J. died."
Dillon's heart sank. He and his mother sat in telephone silence for a long moment. Finally, he asked, "When?"
"Late yesterday. The ambulance came and got him. He died on the way to the hospital."
Another extended pause.
"Poor Katy," he said, and exhaled as tears formed in his eyes. "Have you spoken to her?"
"Not yet," Tanya said. "Millie called and told me." Millie was the neighborhood busybody and knew everyone's business.
"Poor Katy," he repeated.
"Anyway, I'm sorry to deliver the news, but I knew you'd want to know."
"Yes, Mom, Thank You. And please find out the funeral arrangements and let me know as soon as you can."
"I will. What are you going to do?"
"I'm coming back for it."
"Are you sure that's the right thing to do?"
"It's the only thing to do. I have to. "
----
Dillon grew up in a modest, split-level house in a suburban, middle-class neighborhood. Just him, his sister Irene, who was two years younger, and his parents, Tanya and Miles. The textbook nuclear family. His parents still lived there. Dillon now lived in a town three hundred miles from there. He had moved away several years before under somewhat of a cloud. He thought it was the right thing to do at the time, considering the circumstances he faced. He thought if he moved away, someplace where nobody knew him, he could spend his days living his life instead of trying to outlive his past.
When Dillon was a boy, a young couple moved in next door to them. The new neighbors, Katy and Cliff, were young marrieds in their twenties, and despite the fact that they were nine or ten years younger than his parents, they all soon became good neighbors and friends. And Dillon liked his new neighbors almost instantly. Because of Lady.
Lady was a striking, beautiful white German Shepherd. Katy and Cliff had found the dog on the side of a road, injured, bleeding, evidently hit by a car. They rescued her and took her to a vet. They got her patched up, and took her home to heal. They ran ads for weeks, trying to find Lady's owner. No response. They were okay with that. By then, they loved Lady, and Lady loved them.
Dillon fell in love with Lady. She was the dog he'd always wished he'd had. He walked her, he hugged her, he rubbed her belly, and he played with her. He must have thrown her soggy tennis balls a million times, and she happily ran them down and returned them to him, and softly dropped them at his feet.
Dillon became the next-door-neighbor-all-around helper to Katy and Cliff. He tended to Lady of course, but also took care of many other chores to make a little money. He helped in the yard, weeded their garden, cleaned the deck, shoveled their driveway when it snowed, fed their fish when they were away, among other things. Cliff traveled for his job, so oftentimes Katy was alone during the week and Dillon was a big help.
When Katy became pregnant, Dillon was nine years old and got a crash course on the birds and the bees and soon became her right-hand man. He helped her out as much as he could when Cliff wasn't around. Whenever he noticed her pulling into her driveway, he'd run over and carry her packages or groceries or whatever else she had, inside for her. She worked as a real estate agent, so she was always lugging a bag full of papers and files.
Over the months, as her belly grew, Dillon had conversations with Katy like he'd never before had with an adult. She didn't talk down to him, or treat him like a child. She was actually interested in what he had to say.
"Do you want a boy or a girl?" he asked her one time.
"I don't care," she'd said. "I'll love him or her either way. But if it's a boy, I hope he's just like you."
They bonded over those expectant months. When Katy finally gave birth, she had a little boy. He was named after his father. Clifford Junior. Katy called him C.J. from the start. But it did not turn out to be the happy, blessed event everyone was expecting.
Before long it became obvious that something was not right with the little boy, and after umpteen tests and referrals and doctors and prayers and fits of angst and depression and optimism and hopelessness, they learned that their precious little boy had muscular dystrophy. And it wasn't the run-of-the-mill, everyday muscular dystrophy, which was bad enough, but it was the ugly, ruthless, evil, black sheep cousin of M.D., the one that guaranteed a short life. Duchenne syndrome, they called it. C.J. was a very sick little boy.
----
After the phone call from his mother, Dillon went to work that day and went through the motions for eight hours. He was a salesman for a company that sold lawn, garden and farm equipment, but he didn't sell anything that day. Not even close. His heart and mind were far away. About the only thing he accomplished was to arrange to take a couple days off so he could go back home, or what was once his home, and attend the funeral.
He got back to his apartment that night, ate a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of soup for dinner, and did a load of laundry. He was happy his roommate wasn't around because he wasn't in the mood to chit-chat. He had just started to pack a bag for the trip when his mother called and told him the funeral plans. There would be viewings on each of the next two nights, Wednesday and Thursday, and the funeral would be Friday morning. He decided he would work Wednesday, and drive there on Thursday for the viewing. If all went well he could attend the funeral on Friday, and have the weekend to visit with his folks and maybe a friend or two.
----
The first few years of C.J.'s life were a steady parade of doctor's offices, tests, grim news and hopes for a miracle. It put a great strain on Katy and Cliff of course, and their marriage began to suffer. Katy was a strong mom, but her sadness was a weight that became harder and harder to disguise. Cliff had a terrible time coping with having a terminally-ill child, as if his sperm were the cause of it and somehow made him less of a man. He appeared embarrassed and ashamed, and never bonded with his son. He traveled more and more, and drank more and more, distancing himself, trying to lessen the pain and desperation. As C.J. was growing up, his dad was not much of a factor. His parents eventually separated, got back together, separated again. Wash, Rinse, Repeat.
Dillon continued doing the chores Katy asked him to do, often with C.J. sitting in his wheelchair on the back deck, watching him. He'd always make a point to sit with C.J. for a while, and they would talk about things. A lot of things. Especially sports.
Dillon was amazed with C.J.'s knowledge of sports, especially baseball and football. Although he'd never play the games, even at the age of six or seven C.J. knew the rules and all the players and their numbers and their stats and where they'd gone to college, and he asked smart questions. He knew the histories of the sports, facts and events from way before his time, stuff of which Dillon had no clue. Mother Nature had given C.J. a badly-damaged body, but she had also given him a brilliant and curious mind.
By the time Dillon was a senior in high school, he was a star on the baseball team. Katy would bring C.J. to all the home games and would park his wheelchair in the special spot the team had reserved for him, where he'd root for his team. The players would come over to him and say hi, and considered him the team mascot and their number one fan.
Over the years Dillon had spent hundreds and hundreds of hours doing chores for Katy, and spending time talking with her and C.J. As a result, he came to realize two very important things.
One, C.J. was not just an unfortunate, disabled kid who happened to live next door. No, he was much more than that. He was smart, he was witty, and despite everything he'd been through, he was a happy child. He was a friend. A close friend. Like the little brother he'd never had.
And two, he no longer just viewed Katy as the amazing mom next door who didn't talk down to him and paid him to do jobs that needed to be done around the house. He saw her differently now. She was a friend, yes, but she was a woman. A strong, attractive woman. Some innocent flirting happened from time to time. So what if she's fifteen years older, he thought. No harm done.
He found himself admiring her pretty face, trim body, firm breasts, and tight ass. And he always noticed her fingernails. They were always manicured and neatly polished, and regardless of what color she'd chosen for her other seven fingers and her two thumbs, her right pinky was always the same: Bright, fluorescent purple. It stood out like a beacon, and Dillon didn't know what it meant, but he liked it.
He didn't act on his desires, of course. Why would a thirty-something, semi-married woman with a sick child be interested in an eighteen year old boy? He tried to put her out of his mind. He went off to college and studied and got involved in a number of activities. He partied and slept with various girls. But when he came home for holidays or summer vacations, he would always spend time next door with Katy and C.J.
When Dillon came home for the summer after his sophomore year of college, he was twenty years old. He went next door to visit, and learned that the doctor had placed C.J. in a treatment facility for a few days for another battery of tests. That's when his affair with Katy began.
