“You call that nothing?” Dad asked. “Ten minutes into the film, Pixar took my heart and smashed it into smithereens, and you call that—”
“Spoiler alert.” She glared at him.
“Might as well go see Toy Story 3.” He turned to her. “Or the goddamn Brave Little Toaster.”
“Honey.”
“Might as well go see A Walk to Remember. Or hey, why not just screen My Girl and Brokeback Mountain back to back.”
“Uh, nope. Ixnay on that cowboy flick we don’t ever talk about,” I said.
They argued about movies all the way to the park. I managed to save some chips for others.
When we got there, we had to park down the street and walk the rest of the way. My parents are old hands at family outings. They brought their fat-wheeled wooden wagon, so I dragged our stuff along behind me while they skipped ahead like kids.
I didn’t think finding the group from Hope House would be that easy, and I scanned the throngs of families with kids for any sign of Tug. Pretty soon I realized I only had to look for the knot of people with the most uncomfortable body language because, yep, there they were.
Tug sat stiffly at one of the picnic tables, talking with two other men. In their vicinity, there were two more men I’d have pegged as belonging to their group, even if I hadn’t seen them at family group. They all either had the look of deer in headlights or they smiled too hard as if they were balanced on a board, atop a ball, waiting to get their equilibrium.
“Hey, Tug,” I called. His head whipped around. “You remember my parents?”
Before he could answer, Mom sat beside him and wrapped him in a hug.
“Hello, stranger.” She backed off and caught his face between her hands. “Let me get a good look at you. It’s been years.”
Tug pressed his lips together.
“You’re all grown-up.” She sighed. “Can’t get over it.”
Standing behind mom, Dad held out his hand. “Great to see you, son.”
Tug looked bemused, but he reached out and they shook. He had to turn and untangle his legs from the bench before he stood.
“Good to see you too.” He wrapped his arms awkwardly around his middle. “How’s the shop?”
“Can’t complain.” Dad nodded. “We lost ground until we opened up an online store. People still like to buy from local businesses, but it’s nice to have that reach.”
Tug nodded mechanically. “That’s good. I miss that place.”
“Well, don’t be a stranger,” Mom invited. “If you come, let me know. I can have lunch made up for us.”
The look Tug sent me was the same bewildered helplessness he’d shown when he asked why I’d stay with him at a motel while he detoxed. I guessed then he had a hard time believing anyone cared enough to go through that.
Now, I wondered if he simply thought nobody would care about him at all.
Mom and I flipped the quilts we’d brought onto the grass, and the others sort of gravitated to the spot we chose. Before I knew it, she’d given everyone plates and plastic cutlery and soft drinks.
Keylan, one of the two men who had kids in the group, had started up a charcoal fire in one of those tiny tabletop grills. He cooked all the hotdogs. His wife Jennifer placed them in buns and put them on a platter. John’s wife arrived with their kids, a vat of potato salad, and three dozen chocolate chip cookies.
The park filled with the mouthwatering aroma of grilling meat. Everyone seemed to have lugged their supper to the screening. It felt like there were a hundred kids running between the playground and the picnic area.
As the evening wore on, the scent of sunscreen gave way to the sharp chemical tang of mosquito repellent.
The local parks and recreation department ran a couple of games for the kids and gave away prizes, then at dusk, when the food was put away and the kids were exhausted, we settled down to watch the movie on a giant inflatable screen.
I kept an eye on my Dad while the montage he’d talked about was going, and because of that, I barely heard Tug’s sibilant hiss when they got to the big emotional moment.
“Jesus fucking Chrissssst,” he whispered. “What the actual, ever-loving fuck is this movie supposed to be about?”
I turned and found tears streaming down his cheeks. “Tug?”
“No. Jesus. This is a kids’ movie?” He got up and made his way to the outside edge of the crowd.
“Go after him.” Mom gave me a shove. I ducked down and hurried through the seated moviegoers.
I found Tug sitting in one of the bigger kid swings. He had his head down, face covered with both hands.
He must have heard me because he looked up when I got close.
“What the fuck was that?” A sob tore through him. “And why would Dr. Franklin tell a group of emotionally unstable idiots to go watch it?”
“Um. I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before.”
“Isn’t that a kids’ movie?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So why does it start out by demolishing the old dude’s life?”
“I… got nothing,” I admitted. “But just so you know, you’re having the same reaction my dad did the first time he watched it.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded and stepped behind him. “They talked about it in the car on the way here.”
I gave him a push in the swing. It didn’t go very far because Tug dragged his feet.
“You don’t want to swing?”
“Not really.”
He stood and made his way to a climbing structure made from red metal tubing with blue and yellow poly resin walkways, chutes, and slides. It had a little platform in the center. Tug walked up one of the slides and sat under its square blue roof. I was not nearly as sure-footed as he’d been, but after a moderate amount of slipping, I joined him.
“Sorry.”
“What do you have to be sorry about?” He brought his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. “It’s Pixar who owes me that ten minutes of my life I’ll never get back. I mean, like, warn a guy, will you?”
“You might be a little… permeable, right now.”
“Oh, I know.” He rocked on his butt. “I cry if a firetruck rolls by with the siren going. It’s just stupid.”
“You’re on antidepressants?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Do you feel like they’re helping you?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Some.”
“It won’t last forever.”
“I know.” He moved to let his feet dangle over the platform edge. “Your parents look good. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel when I saw them again.”
I glanced up warily. “You gave me permission to invite them, or I wouldn’t have.”
He shrugged. “How’d you tell them about me?”
“Since you sent the letter to the shop, they were there when I opened it.” When he didn’t look at me, I said, “You seemed to be okay with me sharing what happened. It was okay, wasn’t it?”
“I meant you to, but I still worried how they’d take it. Your parents are the last people in the world I want to let down.”
“They’re not like that though. They don’t have expectations for people. They go with the flow.”