Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [54]
A practiced smile. “No.”
There was a lot I wanted to say at that moment, but wasn’t sure how to get it out and even less sure that it would do any good. In his mind, I was an impetuous, twenty-one-year-old starving artist. He’d made up his mind long before I walked in that door. “Yes sir.” I turned, walked out and pulled the door closed quietly behind me.
While I was hurt, Abbie was livid. I’d never seen her so mad. After an hour she had yet to cool off. We stood down by the water. Actually, I stood and she paced. “Just who does he think he is?”
“He’s your father.”
“That doesn’t make him God.”
“Not in his mind.” We stood there, deflated and angry. “Maybe if I made something of myself and came back in five years he’d change his mind, but I heard him the first time. No means no. Forever.”
She stared out across the water, shaking her head. I knew that anything less than total compliance was akin to a declaration of war—one more shot across Fort Sumter. I didn’t want that for Abbie and I had no desire to separate her from her family. I knew that what I was about to do would be painful for a long time to come, but I also knew it was best.
I needed to give her an out. I turned her toward me. “Please forgive me for what I am about to do.” She began slowly shaking her head. “Abigail, your father is right.” I took one step back. “I’m the product of a trailer park. You are Southern royalty. I’m a dreamer, a loner, and I seldom get what I think or feel out of my mouth. I’m more suited to work the parties at your parents’ house than attend them.” Tears filled her eyes. “You’re a national phenomenon who can talk with kings and queens or sweetgrass basket weavers.”
“Doss…”
“I’m good at one thing. Everything you touch turns to gold.”
She began to shout. “Don’t you dare do this to me. Not because of him.”
“Abigail, your mom was right. I’m not your kind.”
She placed her right index finger to my lips. “I’m a girl, in love with a boy.”
Somewhere a ship’s horn sounded. In the river, a boat planed and started skimming across the water. Beyond the Battery, a horse and carriage ambled down cobblestone. Overhead in the midnight darkness, seagulls were squawking, and in the park behind us, a girl threw a tennis ball for a slobbering chocolate lab beneath a streetlight. I took both her hands in mine. “Will you marry me?”
It was the Friday after Thanksgiving, 1992.
She stamped her foot. “Doss Michaels! You just scared the crap out of me.”
“Abigail…will you marry me?”
She pounded me on the chest. “Not until you say you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t really mean that.”
I knelt. “Abbie, I can’t give you the life your father has given you and your mother. I don’t know how I’ll make it in this world so I can’t promise you much of anything. Except this: I will give you all of me. No pretensions, no walls, no lies. There’s never been and will never be another man on the planet who will love you the way I do. When I’m not with you, it hurts. And when I’m with you, it still hurts ’cause I know somewhere in the next few hours I’ll be without you again. I’ve been hurting most of my life and I don’t want to hurt anymore. Please take me…and the islands inside me…and make me whole.”
She looked at me out of one corner of her eye. “You ever do this to me again and I’ll—”
“Abbie?”
She chewed on her lip. “I have a confession.” She half turned and pointed. “I have a mole on my butt.”
“Can’t wait to see it. It’ll be our little secret.”
She shook her head. “Doss. I’m not the woman on the magazines. No one is that woman. She’s a figment of—”
“I’m not in love with the woman at the checkout counter.”
“Yeah, but…I’m just the outline. They put me in a computer, erase the wrinkles, shrink the nose, pull in the chin, draw in the cheeks”—she cupped her hands beneath both breasts—“make my boobs bigger.”
I shook my head. “I’m in love with the Abbie that’s standing in front of me.”
She knelt, eye level with me. “And when I’m old and ugly, sagging in all the wrong places?