Sparks by Yolanda Olson
On the boardwalknear the beach there are some small bars, a few outdoor diners, and multiple paths that lead to the sand. Luke seems a bit overwhelmed because he expected a ghost town of sorts, and to be honest, so did I.
We settle on one of the smaller diners with outdoor seating because it seems to be the least populated of all of the buildings surrounding us. Since I’m not very hungry, I order a small bowl of ice cream and he orders a club sandwich. Our server moves quickly and seems to be completely frazzled by the amount of people out tonight, which makes me smile.
She can’t be much older than Luke—maybe two or three years, and she seems to have a good head on her shoulders. I find myself wondering if my son would be interested in getting a job at a place like this, but the way he’s picking at his sandwich tells me otherwise.
I also wonder if he notices our young server stealing glances in his direction. She’s mostly frazzled because of the crowd, but I can tell that part of her nervousness comes from his presence. I know it because it’s how I would act when his father would come to visit with me.
“She is pretty, isn’t she?” I ask him once she’s out of earshot again.
“Huh?” he turns his eyes up toward me as he finally takes a bite out of his sandwich.
“The girl serving us, silly,” I reply with a laugh before I lick my spoon and dip it back into the bowl.
Luke shrugs as he leans back in his chair, “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her yet.”
I shake my head at him and lift another spoonful of ice cream into my mouth. The world could come tumbling down on his head and he would still be trapped somewhere in his own thoughts without even noticing the destruction around him.
“I have seen that guy over there that keeps staring at you, though,” he adds quietly.
Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes internally. When I was a young girl and first told my mother that I wanted to join the convent, she told me that I was too pretty to waste my life on my knees praising anyone except a man that would return the favor. She wasn’t being cruel, she just wanted me to make sure I knew that I was equal to anyone that walked the face of the Earth and she wanted me to know my worth. She wanted grandchildren and since my brother had cancer when he was a teenager, the radiation treatments left him sterile. It was up to me to fulfill her dream and I wonder if she would be proud of me now—even if the way I went about becoming a mother was completely unconventional.
“Take a look,” he says, nodding almost imperceptibly in the direction of my admirer.
I sigh and lean back. I reach up and pull my ponytail tighter, glancing over to where Luke motioned toward and almost fall back out of my chair.
“We have to go,” I say to him once I regain my bearings.
Luke nods as he folds his arms across the tabletop. “Yeah, I thought he looked familiar.”
I get to my feet quickly, almost knocking the chair down, and reach down for my son’s wrist.
“We need to leave. Now.”
“I’m not done with my sandwich yet,” he says, pulling out of my grip. “And I may want to take a look at the waitress now that you’ve mentioned how pretty she is.”
I want to walk away and leave him, but I don’t know if he would be able to find his way home. I don’t want to abandon him here because I see an old ghost, but I don’t want to face my past right now either.
“We’ll come back tomorrow night. Let’s go,” I say, putting my hands on my hips.
Luke looks up at me and a strange smile plays across his lips. “You look so adorable when you’re angry. I try not to laugh, but sometimes I wonder if you’d be capable of making me do what you want me to do.”
“Please,” I hiss at him. “We’ll take the fucking sandwich with us, but I want to pay this bill and go before …”
“Before?” he asks, glancing over in the direction of my ghost again. “Oh, here he comes.”
I’m horrified—wishing the Earth would open up and swallow me whole, but I know that’s not how things work. A wish is nothing more than a hopeful sentiment that rarely ever travels where it should.
“Hello, Taylee,” my ghost says in a frosty tone.
I jump, not realizing how close he had gotten already, before I turn to face him, a huge smile forced onto my face.
“Father Moore! It’s been years since I’ve seen you,” I exclaim. I clear my throat to remove the sudden falsetto tone it’s taken on and sit back down in my chair. “Would you like to join us?”
He glances down his nose at Luke who’s now sitting back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, eyeing him dangerously.
Father Moore holds Luke’s glare with an even stare of his own before he slowly shakes his head.
“No thank you. I just thought I would come over and say hello since it’s been so long,” he explains with a tight smile.
I begin to wring my hands nervously as Father Moore looks me up and down with an un-approval I haven’t seen since I first told him about Luke’s father.
The loud scrape of a chair brings me back to the moment and when my son drops an arm around my shoulder and pulls me protectively close to him, I let out a small breath of relief.
“Mom, is this the priest? The one from your old church?” he asks in a mischievous tone.
“It is. Luke, this is Father Moore. Father Moore, this is my son, Luke.”
Father Moore extends a hand toward my son who shakes his head and waves him off.
“There’s no need to pretend we like each other, mister,” Luke says evenly. “Actually, I’d be much obliged if you got the hell away from my mother and maybe shove that nose up your God’s ass where it belongs.”
“Luke,” I hiss at him, giving his leg a swat. He smirks at me, tightens his grip, and turns his attention back to the shell-shocked priest. I’m sure he’s heard quite a few things in his day, but I don’t think anyone has ever been quite as harsh during their first talk with him.
“I should have known that anything that fell out of your womb would be as rotten as the man that put it in there,” Father Moore says, before he turns on his heel and stalks away from us.
“Come on, I’m bored with this place,” Luke says, walking back to his plate and taking one last bite of his sandwich before he heads to the register.
* * *
“How did you recognize him?The priest, I mean?” I ask Luke on our walk back home.
“From the pictures in that box at the bottom of your closet,” he replies, scratching his chin.
“Wait a minute,” I say, pulling him to a halt. “What are you doing snooping around in my room?”
I’m angry that he’s admitted to being a snoop, but not angry enough to punish him over it. He’s just a curious child and always has been, though I will have to set some rules for him now apparently.
Luke shrugs and looks down at me. “Sometimes when you’re gone, I miss you and I go into your room because it smells so much like you. I’ll take a nap in your bed or I’ll just look around and see if maybe I can figure out what you were like before you had me. I know it sounds weird, and I’m sorry for poking around in your shit, Mom, but it just makes me feel better until you finally come home.”
I’m taken aback by his explanation. I’ve never known him to have a warm bone in his body for the fifteen years he’s walked on this damn planet, but he always manages to say the sweetest things when it comes to me. It’s almost as if he knows that I need the kind words to keep me going day in and day out.
“Don’t go in my room anymore without my permission, okay?” I say to him, looping my arm back through his.
“Sure thing,” he replies, pulling his arm out from my grip and wrapping it around my shoulder. “You know, I’m not scared of much in this world, but I think the only thing that would do me in is not having you around. I know I don’t say it a lot, but I love you, Mom.”
“Oh honey,” I sigh. “I love you too. You’ve always been the perfect son, in your own way, and I know that we’ll be okay. No matter what happens between us—we’ll be okay.”
The rest of the walk home is silent, and it doesn’t seem to bother him anymore than it does me. Luke will make some woman really happy someday and I can only hope that she’ll treat him the way he deserves.
