Saudade

Chapter 17

                “First Spencer brings me home a ginger, and now you bring me home a packers fan?” Lee groaned, Harry’s right hand in his, outstretching his arm.  “Come on kid, have you no backbone?!” Harry’s eyes widened, opening and shutting his mouth in his attempt to formulate a respectful response. Lee gave him a good tug then, pulling him against his chest. “Just kidding, curly, I don’t give a shit.” Just as gruffly Lee released him abruptly before opening the driver’s side door to his truck. “But no complaints on Sunday when we’re watching the Vikings!”

                “Yes sir,” Harry nodded, looking at me. I bit my lip as I smiled; I hadn’t warned Harry that Lee was nearly as crazy as Spencer and I loved watching him struggle. Spencer hopped into the passenger seat while I nestled between Ed and Harry in the back. Before we even buckled our seatbelts, the truck roared down the empty landing strip.

                “How in the hell d’ya even know about the Packers?” Lee asked, haphazardly rounding corners and barreling down the freeway too fast.

                “Big football fan, sir,” Harry said.

                “That’s  a shame, son…Packers.” Lee laughed, relaxing into his seat as we got farther out of the city and closer to highways. “So, kids, when’s the wedding gonna be?”

                “I told you dad,” Spencer said with an exasperated laugh, “we’re going to discuss it while we’re here. Whatever works best for you and mom.”

                “Your mother or my wife?”  Lee asked quietly and Spencer’s shoulders stiffened.

                “The woman I consider my mother,” she replied. She struggled to keep calm but the anger underlying her words was too pronounced to ignore. Lee nodded and fell silent momentarily, as if he regretted mentioning her birthmother at all. After a moment, he cleared his throat loudly and continued as if nothing had happened.

                “Well, you know I’d do anything to be there and so would your mom. I’d swim the ocean for you, Dummy.” He stuck one of his large hands on the back of her head, fluffing her hair. Had anyone else done it, Spencer would have slapped their face clean off their head, but not for her dad. “So, Ed, how drunk did you have to get her in order to get her in the air?” I looked over at Ed, who was smirking, eyes wide.

                “She was out by the time we were in the air,” he chuckled.

                “You mean you didn’t hear a word from her for eight hours?” Lee gasped dramatically at Spencer, who pulled a grotesque face in return. “What in the hell’d you give her?! Everclear?”

                “That’s an American thing, dad,” Spencer giggled. “Anyway, no, I just had some…beer?”

                “You little shit head,” Lee laughed, “I know you. You can drink my weight and yours in beer and run a straight line, even in those shoes of yours,” he pointed to her high heels. “You’re probably still drunk off tea and vodka, snot.” Lee loved to give people unaffectionate pet names, though Spencer was always ‘Dummy’ first and foremost. Spencer clapped her hands together in laughter, bobbing her head up and down.

                “A little. I’ll take a nap when we get home.” She peered outside at the cornfields that now lined the road. The crops were long gone, leaving behind dirt to be ripped up by scruffy teenage boys in pickup trucks. 

                “That reminds me,” Lee raised his eyebrows high. “Your sister’s got her new boyfriend over.”

                “She has a boyfriend?!” Spencer and I screeched at the same time and he nodded.