“Maybe this isn’t—” I started.
“Dress comfortably. Meet you out front in twenty minutes!” Tanner said, turning and jogging back down the dock. I didn’t feel threatened by Tanner’s affections. In fact, a part of me liked it when he grabbed my hand. Not because I liked him that way, but because it felt nice to know that while I was gone and worried that no one had missed me, that I didn’t have anyone who cared, that Tanner was here all along, missing me.
With our son.
Chapter Eleven
Doe
Everything in Ray’s closet, my closet, was light in color. Beyond the slatted bi-fold doors was a sea of white, yellow, and pink. Mostly sundresses, Jackie-O looking skirt-suits, and blouses that button up to the neck. It’s not that anything was ugly. On contrary, it was really beautiful. A little conservative, but beautiful. But I wished for the clothes I’d left back at Kings. Black tank tops, snug fit jeans, and flip-flops.
All were chosen and bought for me, courtesy of Preppy.
Which was another reason I probably loved them so much.
I ran my hands over the different fabrics on the closet and wondered how in the span of a few months my taste could change so drastically. Or maybe I always liked my comfy clothes, but just hadn’t been able to speak my mind.
Maybe when I lost my memory, I grew a pair of balls.
After a little further searching I had found a few things I felt comfortable in and after a quick shower I put on a pair of black Converse sneakers, a black V-neck, and a pair of ripped jean shorts. I met Tanner out in front of the house as he’d instructed. He pulled up in a newer model shiny black truck with bright chrome accents. Something had been done to it to make it a lot taller than most trucks on the road, which got me to thinking about another black truck. More of a farm style truck from the sixties or seventies, and the man who looked so good driving it. “Mommy!” Sammy shouted from the backseat, bringing me back to the present, and my heart did a little skip.
“Let’s go make some memories!” Tanner said, rounding the truck to open the door for me.
During the entire half of an hour ride, Sammy babbled endlessly. I was impressed with Tanner’s patience, especially when Sammy let out a high-pitched screech that could only be described as a pterodactyl scream and Tanner only laughed and shrugged his shoulders. “He does that when he’s frustrated.” Tanner pursed his lips. “And when he’s happy, and when he’s upset, and when…he does it all the time,” he admitted. We turned off on an exit marked Indian Reservation. We crossed under a sign made out of bent branches that announced that the place was called ALLIGATOR FUN LAND. Sammy squealed with delight when Tanner took him out of his car seat and the second his little feet hit the ground he raced through the gates in front of us.
We chased Sammy from exhibit to exhibit. The entire time, Tanner talked me through what we’d done there before. What I’d said. What I had thought about the flamingos or the turtles. Anything to connect the past to the present and trigger a memory. Most of the time, I just smiled and nodded as I watched the little boy of energy that was my son run circles around us.
For lunch we ate hot dogs from a cart and brought them into the little arena to watch the alligator feeding.
Sammy crawled up on my lap. “Mommy, look!” he cried out, pointing to where a man dressed in a safari type outfit, khaki shorts and matching short-sleeved collared shirt, had entered the gate housing a small dark pond. “Where the gators?” he asked, chewing on his fist as he spoke, spreading the mustard from his hot dog up into his nose. Tanner reached out and wiped his face with a napkin.
“You gotta watch the pond buddy,” Tanner said, pointing to the water. When the trainer tied a piece of red meat to the end of a rope, attached to a long pole, the audience of around twenty people went quiet. He pushed the pole out over the water and shook it so that the rope and the meat dangling from it danced in the air. In less that a second, several alligators rose to the surface in a series of splashing and thrashing, opening their strong jaws and climbing over one another to get to the meat. The largest of them all was the one who was successful, clamping his razor sharp teeth around the meat, snapping the rope, and disappearing back under the water as quickly as he’d appeared. Tanner and Sammy clapped and cheered along with the rest of the audience but the entire thing felt unsettling to me. The trainer was provoking beasts kept in captivity.
It felt wrong.
There was enough trouble in the world; there was no need to go looking for it by dangling bait in front of a hungry beast with sharp teeth.
Tanner nudged my elbow. “The feeding show never was always your favorite.”