She was also insulted.
“You thought I’d pull away?” she queried.
“Babe, my father is a felon.”
“And you are a soldier.”
“What’s your father do?” he asked abruptly.
“He does many things. He’s an entrepreneur.”
“Right,” Hap muttered.
“And what does that matter?” she asked sharply. “You’d expect me to pull away because your father is a felon, I should expect you to pull away because mine is a successful businessman?”
“Luci, you’re a fuckin’ supermodel.”
“Former supermodel.”
“Like they call a former president, ‘president’ after he earns that title, same goes for a supermodel. You never quit bein’ that.”
It was rather funny how he put that.
Luci didn’t laugh.
“Your point?” she pushed.
“You grew up with money. You got your own money.”
“And?”
“And the house you’ll see on Wednesday looks nothing like this one. Or Sam and Kia’s.”
“Yes, Travis was still enlisted when we met and married and we owned a home in Fayetteville that was not like this one either.”
“Yeah, I went to that home, babe. And that didn’t look anything like my place either.”
She pushed up, having to press into him to do it, and got on her forearm to look him in the eye in order to share, “I’m still not seeing the point.”
“There is no way, in fuck, when I got a workin’ vehicle, I’d spend money on a fuckin’ driver.”
He was losing patience.
So was she.
“That’s understandable, but you weren’t going to,” she retorted.
“Yeah, I know,” he shot back. “You were gonna dump a few hundred on a ride like it was nothing, like you probably dumped a couple hundred on that nightie you had on this morning. I’m not complain’, baby. That nightie is fuckin’ sweet. But no one spends hundreds of dollars on a nightie.”
“I do,” she snapped.
“Right,” he bit out.
“So you’re telling me you have not progressed, like quite a bit of the rest of the world, to being capable of dealing with a woman who’s successful in her career, and financially?”
“I’m telling you my dad was an asshole, my mom was a flake. I grew up on a farm with my grandparents in the time when small farms were being eaten up by big outfits or foreclosed on by banks. So we had nothin’ but pride in our land, which eventually was lost. A three-generation legacy owned by a bank for about two weeks before they auctioned it off to a corporate entity who ’dozed the house my great-great-grandfather built so they could plant more corn.”
Dio mio.
What a tragedy.
“Hap,” she whispered.
“We turned the lights off when we left a room,” he carried on. “We slept under three/four blankets because the furnace was cranked down to about fifty, because we couldn’t afford to heat the house when we weren’t conscious in it. We ate leftovers until they were all gone. Since Gramps would lose his mind if a banana got overripe, we had banana bread all the time because I didn’t like bananas. Gram never gave up on tryin’ to get me to eat ’em, but I loved banana bread and no way in fuck Gram would waste an overripe banana by just throwing it in the trash.”
And Hap’s attention to meticulously putting away food was explained.
“What did you do when you lost your farm?” she asked quietly.
“Gramps got a job haulin’ around feed and seed at the feedstore. He was sixty-two. Gram got a job as a teacher’s assistant. I made it my job to drink, carouse, give them shit, cause them grief, and generally make them live in fear they raised one son to be good for nothin’, then they raised his son to be the same. We left a four-bedroom farmhouse to live in a two-bedroom apartment. It felt tiny. Because it was tiny.”
“Oh, bello,” she whispered.
“I enlisted, told them I did, Gram dissolved into tears. Cried for hours. She thought I’d land in prison like my dad. It wasn’t a surprise. I’d planted those seeds. Gramps, he grabbed my shoulder and held so tight, I checked later. It made marks. Then he snatched me by the head and slammed our foreheads together and just stood there with me, breathing, for what felt like years. That was his way to share his relief I might not turn out to be a total asshole.”
“You’re not that young, angry man with an absent mother and father watching your grandparents struggle anymore, Hap. They’re surely proud of you now.”
“I know that,” he bit out. “Though they were both dead before I made Private First Class.”
So much sadness.
So much loss.
So young.
Oh Hap.
Luci again pressed close.
Hap kept talking.
“Dad’s still alive. So’s Ma. Until about five years ago, when I finally got my point across I was not down with the fact that they fucked away my childhood but felt entitled to hit me up for money or a place to stay, or I’ll repeat money when they thought I had it to give.”
“Did you . . . give them that?” she asked hesitantly.
“Fuck no,” he clipped. “Didn’t stop them from askin’, which meant I felt like a dick I couldn’t be the bigger man, take care of my folks, even if they didn’t bother takin’ care of me.”
Well.
No.
“You should not feel badly because you refused to help them, Hap.”
“Yeah, you find it easy to say no to your old man?”
“My father loved me. He nurtured me. He was proud of me, showed it and told me. And I’ll admit, he even spoiled me. So yes, I assume I would have trouble saying no to him. The thing is, he doesn’t ask. Not only because he doesn’t need to, but I’m his child. He simply would not. Ever. Not ever. You don’t do that to your children. Unless you were in the direst of straights that were beyond your control. You take care of your children until you die.”
She stopped speaking and Hap just stared at her.
So she started speaking again.
“And I’m unspeakably offended that you’d think I would think less of you because of whatever decisions your father made, or your mother, or things you did as a young man. Or the fact you had a time when you didn’t have money and lost everything, so you value it, and I must have a mind to that. That’s all you had to say, and I would have a mind to it. As I hope you will have a mind to the fact I like to shop. I like nice things. I have the means to get them. I’ll even desire to get some of them for you. But I’ll do that in a way that does not make you uncomfortable, if you return that favor by not making me feel uncomfortable I have those means.”
He seemed to be calmer, and was definitely holding her tighter, but there was something . . . off that she didn’t understand when he asked, “This works with us, what’s your dad gonna think when he meets me?”
Luci was not calmer when she asked back, “What do you think he thought of Travis?”
“Gordo didn’t have a father who was a felon.”
She had entirely no control over her voice raising, and if she had, she wouldn’t have used it, when she asked, “So now you’re insulting my father, assuming he’ll judge you by your father’s misdeeds?”
He rolled into her, trapping her full body this time.