Happy Accidents

He was just minding his own business, when the world stop. Counting the change in the register, after the morning rush, although his restaurant was still full of customers.

The voices combined in a rambunctious slur of noise, but he tuned them out. The afternoon lunch crowd is usually rowdy, and it is almost time for the man to go home for his lunch break.

A man with a blonde beard approaches his counter, and slaps a twenty dollar bill on the red bar.

“I’d like a club sandwich with homemade onion rings,” His voice is as monotonous as his attire, a dull grey shirt and faded blue shorts. The man appears to have just rolled out of bed, and his skin is oily like a chicken fried steak.

“Yes sir, it’s gonna be nine-sixty-nine,” He hands the gentleman his change, and turns his order in. He begins to make the order himself, but Betty his long time cook waves him off. The kitchen is her place as she always says, he didn’t mind reminding her that he belonged everywhere in this place. After all, he was the owner, and this was his baby.

He walks into the hall, the sound of potatoes crisping in the deep fry reaches his ears, as he makes his way toward the office. Her voice floats through the open space, and he smiles as warmth floods his chest.

“How are you doing this afternoon?” He wraps his arms around her, spooking her so she jumps further into his arms. She slaps his hands away, turning to face him with a wry crooked smile.

“Oh, it’s definitely been a day, Lottie is waiting at home for you. "

“What for?” His eyebrows furrow into a snake, and he leans his arm against the grey threshold of the door. His wife stares at him with wide bright blue eyes, and her short dark hair is in a mess of sorts. Her cheeks are rosy, as if she’s been fussing with someone. Beads of sweat sprinkle across her forehead, and her lips are agape like her breath is ragged.

“She’ll have to be the one to tell you, hun.” She drops her gaze to the floor, her shoulders are slumped, her demeanor is ashamed.

What did Lottie do now? His second child drove him crazy, she just couldn’t control herself. Between wrecking every damn car he bought her, to sneaking out her two story window there was nothing that stopped her from acting a fool.

“I was hoping to take a nap,”

“You won’t be napping after she tells you what she did, trust me.”

***

The drive home is exponentially short, he only lives but two streets down from his business. His house rests on the corner of Pruett and Seventh Street. The houses in the neighborhood are well kept for the most part, and the folks are polite.

A few strangers ride their bikes, in a skewed line that barely avoids impeding traffic. Leonard continues past where his washateria is, his oldest son is currently managing the place, and the small convience store on Seventh Street is closed right now due to a pipe bursting earlier this week.

Leonard had a lot on his mind, as he drove down his familiar street. Past the yellow two-story with an iron gate balcony. A strange shade of faded yellow, that was always an eyesore.

He parked his maroon truck in the drive, and rubbed his temples for a good while.

The man was tired, he was stressed, and he was ready for Sunday night when he could finally enjoy the weekend. He barely opened the truck door, before the cat started barking meows at him. He sighed, aggravated. Today was not the day he wanted surprises from his children, and if the surprise was coming from one of his children, he would pray it was not Lottie.

He walked past the cat, greeting him with an exasperated sigh. The cat doesn’t move out of his way, so Leonard steps over him with long legs and large meaty calves. He opens his lily-shaped mailbox, that needs a new coat of light pink paint, and he routinely snatches the mail out of it’s rightful spot. He hangs his head, and then he opens the door. For once wishing, that his house was not full of several other individuals with their own idealizations of how things should be. If they all jumped on the same plane he was riding, and realized that this is how things are and will be. Everything would go smoothly like cream cheese and frosting.

When he opened the front door he immediately walked into the dining room. His daughter sat in her mother’s chair, adjacent to their front door.

Her head rested against the table, her red hair resembled the same rat’s nest she used to sport when she was little. That is until her mother grabbed a hold of her, and made her tidy herself up.

Lottie was a thin girl with small bones, and a long frame. She’s wearing a big gray sweater, she’s been wearing clothes that her mother would consider hopeless. Large blouses, ugly big sweaters, oversized overalls. All the outfits she never wore before, and the way her eyes watered at him as soon as she set eyes on him. He knew what she was going to tell him before the words could leave her mouth and hang like wet laundry in the air. The silence is deafening, so loud he can hear the blood gushing in his ears. She shakes her head, her chair scrapes loudly against the wooden floor, and she stands up like a four-year-old that has soiled themselves.

“Dad, I don’t know how to tell you this,”

“Lottie, how could you? You’ve trashed our name, and you’ve gone and ruined your life! What were you doing laying on your back for that lazy sloppy man?” He drops his lunch sack at his feet, not caring that his ribeye steak sandwich is ruined, and approaches her. He bends down until they are eye level with each other, and he huffs in her face like he’s mad enough to blow the house to pieces.

“Lottie, you cannot stay here and have this baby. What will the town think? What will people say? Oh did you hear about the Calhouns and their wild daughter?” His mind is fast tracking now, down a road he warned everyone of his children about, although he overly stressed the importance of being safe to his daughter. For this reason, she would be the one stuck with the bastard child, she would raise the child on her own, and that man she is with now will slowly fade into the white noise of a blank television.

Because he was not the type of family man he’d recommended, but a lousy man with zero ambition and absolutely no life goals. A loser scummy individual with no future, that was who his daughter shacked up with, that’s the person she decided she wanted to risk spending her entire life being attached too, for a careless romp in the hay.

He was disgusted. He threw his hand on hips and shoke his head.

“I didn’t think it would happen. "

“Bull crap Lottie, that is a lie and you know it. Your mother and I will sign you up, and we will ship you off to that camp for troubled girls like you.”

“I just wanted to feel loved!” She passionately hollers back, the tears fill her eyes, and her chin crinkles into a hundred wrinkles.

“You are loved!” He argued with his seventeen year old daughter, and the fury that streams through his blood is making it difficult for him to think.

“Lottie, I cannot do this right now. Go to your room. We will talk about this later,”

“Don’t you want to know what I am having? How far along I am? When the baby comes? ” Her voice is hopeful, like a child spotting a slight ray of sun shine on a rainy summer day.

Leonard’s heart is shattered, despite the fact that his daughter doesn’t see his pain that stems from her horrible judgment, he can’t decide if he does want to know about the life growing inside his child.

He’s disgusted by the gravity of the situation, his child was no longer a young girl, but a woman. A young irresponsible woman with a difficult road ahead of her, and a life cultivating inside of her. She wasn’t ready for this sort of responsibility. She wasn’t even fit to take care of herself, and that lousy sack of potatoes she calls a boyfriend isn’t much better equipped.

Leonard shook his head, his face the same hue as a ripe cherry tomato, and he gripped his fists very tightly to his side. He was not an abusive parent. He did yell and holler but he hardly ever struck them. They had to have done something horrendous to be spanked, but now that they were older. The best he could do was punish them with tough love. If that meant keeping his guard up, and distancing himself from his daughter to prove to her that she royally screwed up. He would. And he did.

“No Lottie, I don’t want you to tell me. I don’t want to know what the gender is. I don’t want to know anything.” The words slice through his chest, so he can only imagine how far they penetrated into her back. Her face falls, and those blue eyes, the same ones her mother sparkled with; they welled up with giant tears the size of quarters.

“She’s a girl, and she’s due in October. I’ll pack my stuff and leave. My family doesn’t want me anymore. "

“What do you expect Lottie? You started a new family without us. This is your fault.”

“Leave me alone, Dad. Ryan will pick me up later. He will take care of me, and you will see you were wrong!” She bolts to her room, her stride is not much of a gait anymore, but a sorry waddle. Her hips are spreading so her feet are slightly pointed out. This struck him as strange since she usually was rather straight footed, but his mind was still barely processing the pregnancy in the first place.

***

He hated every morning for the next two months. When her knight-in-not so-shining-armor never showed up to pick her up Lottie sat on the white bench in their front yard for hours. He let her stew out there for some time, before he even entertained the idea of allowing her back inside. He thought about the way she sat their with her chin held high, pointed at the road like she knew someone was eventually going to come for her even though she knew no one was indeed coming. There was no one to rescue poor Lottie Calhoun from the terrible mess she made, and even though he wanted to scoop his daughter in his arms. He yearned to whisper in her ear that it would be okay that this could be fixed. But there was no fixing her situation.

The girl would never have a chance to do the things she could have before, and for that Leonard felt deprived. He didn’t understand why his daughter had refused to give herself a chance to succeed. She drove him crazy.

Then he let her inside on the one condition she had nothing to do with the man that abandoned her with his child. Their wedlock conception embarrassed him to no end, but he choose to stand by his daughter.

He watched his daughter gain a watermelon for a belly, and her nose expanded flatly. Her hair grow so fast that she cut her day the week she was due to go into labor. The discomfort she experienced reminded him of the mistake she made, and he resented the unborn baby that stole his daughter’s future.

***

I’m in the drug store buying a pillow, one to put in between my legs. It is awfully hard to sleep with this giant belly. My twin bed doesn’t make it much better, I struggle to think of a way to fit your crib in here with all my things. There is no way, so I must go through everything before you get here. The problem is you are supposed to come into the world in two days, so I will do my best to prepare myself for your arrival I promise.

“Our life is a mess. I am sorry, Jules. But Mama is going to make it better. I promise. Your Pa thinks I can’t do it. But I can prove him wrong. For you. I promise I will do the best . ” I cry rubbing my belly with my left hand, and blowing my nose with my right.

I have two dressers full of clothes, but I need to sell them. After this, they won’t help me. He is only letting me live here because your father is not in the picture. That is okay. We are gonna make it through. I don’t think I can provide the lifestyle Pa managed but I can definitely make an effort too.

It’s midnight, and it’s cold. The October frost is already here, and the way they are predicting this weather it will an extremely brutal winter. Thank goodness your Great Aunt Lola loves us, she’s supplied most of your wardrobe.

I think all of these things in my head, while caressing my belly. The lamp is still on, and I haven’t much energy to turn it off. I’m drained of fuel, my engine is completely burned out. And my room is still a complete mess.

Everything is in a disarray not just my room, but the enigma that is my life is completely disoriented. Ryan is gone, and he skipped town without a single glance back.

It’s fine. He proved everyone right he was a loser without a car, and bank account. He proved me so wrong, I could feel sorry for myself but there was nothing for me to get out of that.

So, I rested my aching back against the bed, with my swollen ankles and feet out in front of me stretched across the wooden flooring. These candles were not mine. I didn’t recognize the form my body had morphed into, and quite frankly I didn’t like that my uncle of joy was wrecking my body.

Suddenly, a sharp pain shot across my stomach, right where my hand had just rubbed the tender skin. My pants were soaked and warm. It felt like I urinated myself, but then the pressure began building. My hips ached, my back cramped, and my stomach pulsated. I could feel my baby girl moving, and I screamed with frantic terror. I stood up, being extremely careful and aware of my foot placement.

“Mom!”

***

They rushed her to the hospital, Lottie had yet to pack her diaper bag, so Mae stayed back to gather the necessary things they would need.

Leonard felt a queasy sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, like they were driving to the police department to face Lottie’s life prison sentence. Of course, the only crime she committed was against herself, and her sentence wasn’t a life term, just eighteen years. But a lot happened in eighteen years, he wish she would have seen this before.

Now, he sat in the waiting room. Lottie requested that he stay with her, but Leonard could not see his daughter like that. Her eyes were baggy and tired, her hair a mess and strung in all sorts of directions.

Mae rushed into the waiting room, and immediately flew inside her room. She barely spoke to him. He was okay with that, his stomach was so unsettled, he wasn’t sure how much talking he muster.

Several hours later, Mae stepped out with gleaming blue skies for orbs. A beautiful smile shined on her face, and she was glowing. She was so happy, she walked up to him like they were fifteen again. She kissed his cheek, and grabbed his hand leading him like she did the first time they met.

“Come meet our gorgeous granddaughter,” Her usually light voice was thick with emotion.

When Leonard stepped into the room, he could feel that the atmosphere was different. As if he was leaving behind a different version of his life in the waiting room, when the door shut. And the start of his life now was beginning, sunlight filtered into the room, and left an eerie ambient aurora. He approached his exhausted daughter, she was a pale porous poreclain, but her grin shone like the stars. She offered him the pink bundle of blankets, and he took the baby. A serene feeling touched his soul. When he laid eyes on his first born granddaughter, he melted like chocolate left in a car in the state of Texas. Big brown eyes, olive skin, and full curly black hair. Those big saucers stared back at him, with an innocence that he knew he would spend the rest of his life working to protect.

“Oh my those big brown eyes are gonna steal everyone’s hearts, aren’t they?” He coos, and his granddaughter wraps her tiny hand around his finger. His heart gives a painful but wonderful squeeze as his wife whispers,

“Some call it a blessing in disguise, we call it a happy accident.” Leonard smiles with so much love in his heart, a special kind of love only reserved for grandchildren. He coddles his new favorite love until Mae, his first favorite love whisks her away, to the second love of his life, Lottie.