The Second Rape of Dr. Emily Pershing - C4

Chapter 4

Kendall and I dropped Danni and Hot Wheels off at the house and took off for the nearest cul-de-sac for what would begin, what I predicted would be, a series of weekly doses of sheer automotive terror. Kendall’s giddiness gradually turned into grave trepidation—which was good as far as I was concerned. Comfort is the ultimate goal, but in the meantime, I wanted to know there’s a degree of respect for the potential for tragedy, so I would take fear over cockiness every time. I picked a nice, easy spot from which to start and… we traded seats.

“What are you doing?” I asked as Kendall sat motionless in the driver’s seat.

“Shhh… I’m saying a prayer,” she said quietly.

She was way ahead of me. I hadn’t realized this was going to be a religious experience, but who was I to pass up an opportunity to get the Lord’s attention before embarking on our epic journey to the end of Wilson Street and back. We took a minute to ourselves and once we both had our composure, she was ready to begin her “pre-movement” ritual. Since she was very young, Kendall has always taken a moment to plan her trip, whether it was a bike ride down the street or just a walk from her bedroom to the bathroom. Danni and I had figured she was gathering up the will to commit to the idea of expending energy; but, eventually she divulged that she was just making sure that wherever she was going was really the place she wanted to be. It’s baffling to think about how much time would have been saved throughout my life if I only possessed such wisdom and self-discipline. Hubris perhaps, but whatever form of pride it is, I still find myself wasting trips to places that hold nothing in store for me other than the reminder of Kendall’s insight.

Teaching her now, I couldn’t help but think back on the day we spent learning to ride her bike for the first time. She was so small. Kendall’s always been a quick learner, and stubborn like her mother; she was up and riding within fifteen minutes—no training wheels—she would have nothing to do with them. I remember having mixed feelings because she took to it so quickly, and because I enjoyed it so much that I wanted it to last much, much longer—what a proud moment. Now, as I watch her from the passenger’s seat of the family Expedition, once again, she seems so small. She adjusts her mirrors, she studies the pedals, the instruments, her surroundings. It’s always fun to watch them processing information. Sometimes I take a bit of pride in just knowing that there’s anything going on in there at all.

“Takin’ it all in?” I asked to break the tension.

“Jus… you know what… okay… I’ll…”

“Alright.” I backed down.

Sometimes it’s really amazing how much she’s like her mother. With another minute or so of contemplation, she was ready to go. She gave herself a quick nod and reached for the key.

“Hold on a second…” I interrupted, “… you’ve got a plan?”

“Yup,” she said confidently.

“That’s good,” I agreed, “but having a plan is only good for knowing where you’re going and how to get there. There’s a lot of stuff you can’t plan for though.”

“I know,” she assured me, “that’s why I want to have the easy stuff out of the way before I go. I don’t want to be one of those people Mom always yells at cuz they don’t know where they’re going. They end up driving around like idiots and then they’re not paying attention to the road anymore—just the buildings, and trying to figure out where they went wrong. Mom already taught me!”

“You see how upset you’re getting—and we haven’t even left yet.”

With squinted eyes, she said, “Touché, Father.” A newly composed Kendall quietly gathered herself.

“You are wise, young Tripper,” I said in my best Shaolin monk impression, “Now, you are ready.”

We spent about an hour driving to and fro, all around the neighborhood. There was only one time when I seriously considered jumping out to save my own life, and we did have to go back and talk to the Mollenheimer’s after Kendall’s attention had briefly switched from the road to the “cute boy” who was waxing his fender over on Linden—they were very understanding and quite inspirational. Randy Mollenheimer had pulled a brilliant evasive maneuver and rescued Kendall (and more importantly, me) from a low speed fender bender. All in all, it was a pretty good lesson. Any one you can walk away from… right?

Afterward, we went back to the house and, of course, I got out and kissed the ground—Kendall was not amused. Danni and Ashley were gone, as I had suspected. Kendall tossed me the keys with a perfect no-look, behind the back pass that hit me square in the chest because I was doing the no-look, not paying attention, what the hell just hit me in the chest, pass reception. She hustled off to pee and I grabbed a beer from the fridge—but didn’t open it. I put it back on the shelf and waited for her to emerge.

“Hey, Tripper,” I said as she was turning the wrong way down the hall, “Come here a minute.”

She reluctantly came into the kitchen and plopped down on the stool at the bar. She said nothing—just looked at me and raised her eyebrows as if to say, “Well? I’m here.”

“So…,” I began awkwardly, “you’re a… uh…”

“Girl?” she added.

“Yeah. One of those,” I confirmed.

“Okay…” she said cautiously.

“And… well, you’re mother…”

“Also a girl,” she interjected supportively.

“Yeah, well, here’s what I’m thinking: You know our anniversary is coming up, and I was thinking about doing something…”

“Weird?”

“No… it’s a good plan—I just… I could use your advice,” I said innocently.

“Really?” she asked with a hint of sarcasm.

“Really.”

“What’s the plan?” she asked as she reveled in her newfound authority.

“Let’s go,” I said and motioned to the door.

She jumped off of the barstool and grabbed the car keys off the counter.

“Ah, we’re actually leaving the neighborhood for this,” I warned with a crushing blow to her enthusiasm. She reluctantly handed the keys back to me. “Fine, but I may have to charge you a fee for my advice, you know.”

I looked on at her whimsical attempt at a power play. “You know, your mother doesn’t have to know about the Mollenheimer incident…”

“Hmmm… now that I think about it,” she surrendered, “it would be insulting to try to put a price on my advice anyway.”

We drove to Breckenridge Park, which is a pretty “sizey” park—as far as parks go—they say it’s a couple-hundred acres with lots of trees, ponds, a little amphitheater, winding paths, and as Ashley figured out years ago, lots of places to get lost.

“I haven’t been here in years… not since Ashley was… probably three,” she said. “You used to go to work, and Mom would take care of Ashley during the day before picking me up after school, and then we’d hit the park to discuss all the wonderful things I learned in school.”

“I remember it well,” I replied, “My work day almost always ended with a rendezvous at Breckenridge with you girls—not bad living. I loved it, actually. But then your mom started working again and you guys had child care service right in her building so evenings at the park got less and less frequent until it was eventually just a memory.”

“Yeah, that sucks.”

“Man, I used to love coming to the park when we first moved to the new house. You were eight when we first came, and Ashley was hardly a lump in your mother’s dress.”

“Gross.”

“We were on our way to the movies, remember, because you wanted to see ‘Nemo,’ and on the way, we drove by Breckenridge.”

“Nemo rocks!”

“Agreed. You’d been yapping from the moment we left the house about how Mina and Rachel and that ‘stupid boy’ had already seen it, and how you couldn’t wait to see all the fishes and the sharks and the star fishes and the… then all of a sudden you were quiet. Your mom and I looked at the back seat simultaneously to see if you were hurt or something. You had seen the park and all the trees and green grass—couldn’t take your eyes off of it. You could see the first pond from the street with its fountain and all the ducks and geese and kids running around, remember?”

“Yeah, that was awesome.”

We’d come to the Midwest from a little railroad town south of Albuquerque so she hadn’t seen anything like that before. She was mesmerized. Danni and I glanced at each other and we both knew the plan. After Nemo and his new friends were in the ocean, we headed straight for Breckenridge. Now we were back again. As always, we immediately started off walking toward the big, “main” pond with the fountain—it was as if nothing had changed. I used to hold Kendall’s hand to thwart any running off, as children sometimes do in a place like this. She’s only a few years older now, but so many things have

changed about Kendall since the last time we were here—including the fact the she no longer requires a restraining hand to help her control herself. As we began the walk toward the pond, we were curious to see if there had been any changes; my mind was concentrating on the surroundings, ready for the inherent disappointments that come with the “upgrades” to an otherwise familiar place. I couldn’t help but notice, however, the emptiness of my hand. That was the first thing I noticed they had changed.

We joined the numbers of people who strolled along the waterside. “Dad?” she broke the silence.

“Tripper,” I replied.

“Have you ever noticed that wherever you go: school, work, the mall, restaurants, and stuff; people are always in a hurry? They’re always walking really fast to get to the next place they need to be, right?”

“I know what you’re saying,” I confirmed.

“But when they go to a park, everyone just seems to…”

“Stroll?” I said.

“Yeah, stroll.”

We both instinctively looked at our feet as Kendall began to exaggerate the “strolling” in her walk—I couldn’t help but join in. We strolled. We talked. We strolled some more.

“Wow,” she said, “It seems like we just started walking and I just realized we’ve done a complete lap around the pond!”

“Whoa, you’re right. Hmmm… did I say anything important?”

“I don’t think so. Did I?”

“Probably,” I joked as we continued strolling.

A toddler with a bag of popcorn was being accosted by a hoard of ducks and laughing uncontrollably as his mother fumbled with her cell phone to try to get pictures. Kendall had hers out in an instant and within moments had enough footage to run it on the six o’clock news. She went up to the lady and told her she could “send the pics” to her since she had clearly missed the opportunity. The woman gratefully accepted. After all the waterside data transfer was complete, the woman thanked her again, and then looked at me with another word of thanks.

Kendall began to walk toward me and said, “So, Mr. LeCrae, why have you brought me here today?”

I thought it was cute as she turned to her advisory role, but I noticed the woman’s look of gratitude had suddenly turned to that of one who is quite appalled. She quickly scurried away.

I anxiously escaped with, “Well… Miss LeCrae…” It was too late; the damage was done. “Your mother and I,” I continued, “Have an anniversary coming up!”

I hoped I got through to the suspicious lady with that proclamation, but she was too far off. I turned my attention back to Kendall.

“Yeah, we covered that,” she said without a clue about the drama she had innocently created.

“Right,” I shook it off and gathered myself, “so here’s what I’m thinking: I want to do a second honeymoon.”

Kendall’s eyes widened. I couldn’t tell if it was because she was excited about the idea, or if she was excited because she instantly knew that meant we’d be leaving for a weekend.

“Dad, that is so sweet,” she said. Of course! The woman is long gone, and now she calls me dad. “Where are you going to take her?”

“Well, that’s just the thing. I want to do the honeymoon thing, but you know how tight we are on funds right now.”

“You’re gonna take her to the park?” she asked, deflated.

“No,” I demanded, “I’m not going to take her on a honeymoon in the park. I was thinking that, instead of a honeymoon, we could just re-do our vows… in the park.”

Again, the eyes widened.

“Come with me!” she said with a newfound enthusiasm.

We walked with all the effort we could gather without actually breaking out into a run.

“What happened to strolling?” I pleaded.

“I have… look… just c’mon,” she insisted.

“You don’t think it’ll still be there if we walk too slow?”

“Fine! We’ll ‘stroll’ if you can’t keep up,” she said, chagrinned, “I have this place. When I was a kid,” (apparently she’s not a kid anymore), “there was this place and nobody knows where it is, well, probably a lot of people know where it is but, I used to pretend that nobody knew where it was, and I would pretend that I was getting married in this awesome, grassy, hidden place with all of my friends.”

“Really?!” I followed her fervor, but I couldn’t help but wonder why little girls so often fantasize about getting married. Who does a six year-old marry in her mind?

“Yes, really,” she continued, “and I know exactly how we’ll do it.”

“We?”

“Yeah! We! C’mon,” she demanded as our pace gradually grew back to a near run.

She led the way, for about six miles—it was probably less than a mile actually, but it seemed like at least six with the hurried gait and all. We headed toward a thicket of small evergreens with a faintly worn path heading into its forefront, and what looked like a densely treed area at its rear. I began to think maybe she was right when she said nobody knew about this place. As if she’d been there just yesterday, Kendall led me through the smaller trees and well into the larger ones as well. I imagined how a little girl’s imagination must have been running wild in a place like this, with everything so huge to such a small person.

“Everything’s so much bigger than I remember it,” she exclaimed to my surprise, “It’s like it’s all grown since the last time I was here.”

“It’s only… been… a few years,” I explained. I was awestruck. I never would have imagined that such a place existed so close to our home. It was like another world.

“How is it possible you found this place as a kid?” (suggesting she was once a kid.)

“I came here with Mina and her mom,” she explained.

We walked a few hundred feet through the large tree trunks and just when my thoughts were beginning to turn from marveling at the beauty of this place, to being concerned about how far we’d gone, we took a hard left between two towering pines and there it was—a small field, maybe half an acre in size, surrounded by trees, virtually untouched by others. I was stunned, not only by its splendor, but by its solitude. I stood there, quiet, amazed. Kendall looked at me the same way Danni and I looked at her when we first drove by the park years ago.

“Dad,” she said softly. She looked up at me, there between the piney, sylvan entryway, with a proud look on her face, and told me, “I know exactly what’s going through your mind.” She went on, “Here’s what you’re gonna do: you get rid of me and Ash for the day. You tell Mom you’re taking her out to dinner—something lame.” (Damn. We’ve always gone out to dinner.) “But tell her you found this really neat stuff and you want to show her because… you know how much she likes nature and stuff. Tell her that a couple days before, your boss has you… researching tree rings or something, so anyway, you came out here to find the biggest trees you could find and saw this weird purplish mossy stuff growing all over the side of this one tree. You bring her out here, get down on your knee, and propose to her… again… and you present her with a magical popcorn necklace,” she paused in a sort of daze.

“Or a ring,” I suggested.

“Yeah, or a ring,” she snapped out of it, “then, you bring her around the corner to the entrance and there we are!”

“We? Again?”

“Yeah, me and Ash and all your friends.” She danced into the open field. “It’s all set up with rows of white chairs, a big pretty arch with vines and flowers, a gigantic table filled with all kinds food and drinks, and then a carriage will take you away to your new house,” she described.

“Tripper,” I said solemnly, “This isn’t some crazy fantasy.” She was silenced, her enthusiasm completely deflated. “There’s no way,” I explained, “that we could ever get a carriage through these trees…” I could see her holding her breath. “But we are definitely going to make everything else happen just the way you described it!”

She screamed with excitement. The plan was solidified with a hug and we got to work on the details immediately. We spent a good two hours discussing the intricate details of the wedding. I couldn’t help but get that sinking feeling that someday we’d be going over details of Kendall’s wedding and not my own. It’s hard to even think for a moment about handing her over to some schlub someday.

I remember, like yesterday, the day Danni told me she was pregnant. Kendall was… well, let’s just say she was a surprise. We hadn’t planned on having kids for quite a while, but there we were…

“So, how was work?” Danni asked once I had settled in on my favorite relaxing spot.

“Fine,” I replied slowly. She had never asked me that before, so I knew something was up.

“That’s good,” she said as she built up the courage to tell me.

“You?” I volleyed back.

“Good, good!” she returned.

“Ssssoooooo…”

“So…” she said, “I’m… pregnant.”

The next thing I remember is… I was thrilled. We both had our careers in our forethoughts, but everywhere we went, we’d see kids playing with their parents. It was a small town, so we often got invited to baby showers, birthday parties, graduations, and the like. The birthday parties were what really got me thinking. For Danni, it was the baby showers. Now it was her turn to have a shower. Everything changed… and we couldn’t have been happier.

Kendall showed up about two weeks early and took us all by surprise again—February 21, 1995—seven pounds, eight ounces. There were some complications with the birth and I wasn’t able to be with her. Everything went okay, but as you can imagine, I was terrified for my wife and daughter. We were at the hospital in Albuquerque—my parents drove all night—and Mr. and Mrs. Kelly had been there almost from the start. Percy and Luke weren’t far behind. We got the word that everything had gone just as well as it could have gone, and Danni and my new baby girl were doing fine.

Keeping my parents up to speed, I had been describing to the Kelly’s the symptoms, the water breaking, the contractions, the rush to the hospital, the complications, and all the procedures. I’ve always been fairly verbose. There hadn’t been an event that I couldn’t describe at the very moment, giving any standers-by the play by play as things unfolded, but as soon as the nurse held her up behind the infamous glass wall for us all to see, my dad said I was speaking in gibberish. I was a wreck—we all were. He said, for the first time he could remember, I was completely tongue-tied—tripped up by a tiny baby—and thanks to Dad, “Tripper” had her nickname… even before she had her birth name.

Fifteen years later, Tripper was planning our second wedding. She and I had agreed on how everything would look, sound, smell, and even taste. Once it had been decided, we started walking back, and this time… we strolled. On this walk, she took my hand, proving once again, she knew exactly what I had been thinking.

We cleared the thicket, hand in hand, and who was strolling by but the lady and her young son. Nice… just perfect. We kept walking. Funny how this time the walk back seemed so short.

As we walked past the big pond, Kendall started giggling to herself.

“What’s so funny?” I pried.

“That lady totally thought you were a child molester.”

The little runt knew exactly what she was doing the whole time.

“Yup,” I agreed subtly, “Yes, she did.”

I paused as she giggled on.

“I hate you, Tripper,” I said lovingly.

She kissed me on the cheek and gently said, “I hate you too, Dad.”

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