They got married 6 months later, possibly because she was already pregnant. I was the best man, and I did not get invited on the honeymoon. I made a joke about it at the reception, when I danced with the bride.
"Are you sure I can't come along on your honeymoon?" I asked, grinning. They were only going to Phuket, Thailand for three days. Apparently Hannah had read all of Sidney Sheldon's books and wanted to see some of the stuff he put in them. They didn't have enough money to go on a fancy honeymoon and both of them had to be back to go to their jobs.
"You're still going to be our best friend," she said, smiling. It was good to see her happy. "But there's a limit, Sam."
"Okay," I said, drawing the "ay" out in a long sigh.
"You'll still get to see plenty of him," she said. "I'm not taking him away from you completely."
And she didn't. I was around a lot. I suppose part of that was because there was no woman in my life, at least not one I wanted to make happy for the rest of hers. I guess I hadn't yet found one I wanted to learn to love.
So she didn't take him away from me. It was the Army that did that. It took him away from both of us. When I think back on it now it sends chills down my spine, because it was a lot like what happened to his grandparents. It took longer, but we lost him just like his grandmother lost her husband in WWII.
We had Desmond for 10 years before he died. In this case "we" means Hannah, their daughter Heidi, and me. I had dated a dozen women since they got married, but there were never any sparks. I was still alone, except for them. He joined the Army a week. He said it was to honor his grandfather. He was one of the people who went into the war before it actually started. All we were told (she was told, actually) was that he was there to identify targets and that he was killed after the bombing started.
Heidi was almost 11 when her father died. I was "Uncle Sam" to her, probably because neither Hannah nor Desmond had any siblings. I watched her grow up like an uncle might, I suppose, except I was probably around a lot more than your average uncle probably would have been. I was the one who taught her to ride a bike and play catch, or at least I was the one who helped her practice that kind of thing. I always had to read her a story whenever I came over, at least until she was about 6 or 7 and said, "I can read all by myself now, Uncle Sam." Then, one time I told her a story, making it all up and after that I had to tell her a story every time I came over. It got so I ran out of material, so I just retold her things I'd read in books, making changes suitable for her age.
While I did this, Desmond and Hannah got things done that had been neglected or put off because they were raising a little girl. Children tend to dominate your time. It's just how things are. So I was sort of a nanny whenever I went over. I was also the official babysitter whenever they wanted a night out.
It was natural, when Desmond died, that I lend a hand. I was just as torn up about it as they were, or at least that's how it felt to me, but I knew I needed to rise above that and help them get through it. He was gone. I wasn't. That meant I owed it to him to take care of them as best I could.
There was life insurance that helped, but there were a ton of things that had to be done. I won't go into detail, but dying creates reams of paperwork and literally dozens of things that have to be done legally to close or change business accounts and things like that. I also cooked for them for a week. I got help from people in their church, who brought over food that just had to be warmed up to serve. Giving them that much time wasn't a problem for me. I had inherited ownership of the local transfer station, where garbage trucks from a sixty mile radius dumped their loads in a big metal building. My people then pushed it through holes in the floor into 18 wheelers, which then took them away to an actual landfill. I had seven employees who knew what they were doing before it became mine and didn't really need me, if I had to be somewhere else. I spent most of my time in the large appliance area, salvaging copper and brass and getting the iron pile ready for being picked up by a metal recycler.
It was probably three months or more before it seemed like everything was done that had to be done, or at least could be done. We were still waiting for a couple of companies and one bank to finalize things.
Eventually there was an evening when Hannah and I were just sitting in the living room. It was kind of odd. We weren't talking about anything, just sitting there. I think we were both tired and still a little shell-shocked by everything that had happened and what we'd had to do because of it. Heidi was in her room. She'd been spending a lot of time in her room.
"Thanks," Hannah said, suddenly.
"What for?"
"Everything," she sighed. "I don't know how we'd have gotten through this without your help."
"I didn't do much," I said.
"You did plenty."
"Desmond would have wanted it that way," I said.
"I know. But thank you anyway."
"You're welcome." For some reason that night we helped her change her tire popped into my mind, and I saw Desmond standing there with his lopsided grin, saying, "Anything to help." I almost said it myself, as I thought about it, but then didn't. It was true, but I also thought it was assumed.
"I'm worried about Heidi," she said.
"Yeah." I couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Would you go check on her?"
"Sure," I said.
I got up and went to Heidi's room. She was lying on her bed, reading. She looked up at me when I opened the door. I'd been around enough that she didn't complain that I hadn't knocked.
"You okay?" I asked, feeling lame.
"I guess so," she said.
Then, as if a faucet had been turned on, she was crying. I went and sat down on the edge of the bed and she came in for a hug. I just held her while she cried. Ten minutes later she pushed away from me.
"It will get better," I said, feeling even lamer.
She didn't say anything.
"You know where to find me if you need anything," I said. I'd been sleeping in the guest room pretty frequently, at least two nights a week and sometimes more. We didn't live next door to each other anymore.
"Okay," she said.
And that was it. She didn't cry anymore after that. Hannah teared up a lot, but after another three or four months she seemed to have adjusted.
Years went by and things seemed to find a normalcy of sorts. I still went over pretty frequently but my relationship with them had changed. I just sort of assumed that, to Hannah, I was this guy she could ask anything of, and was comfortable around. She didn't seek male companionship, and more than once I thought about Desmond's grandmother, who'd made the same choice after losing her mate. Heidi still called me Uncle Sam, but no longer demanded I tell her stories. She got interested in art and that seemed to take over her life.
By the time she was 15, Heidi had soaked up everything public schools had to offer her, in terms of art, and her teachers recommended she start getting instruction at a more professional level. In their case, that meant getting her into a charter school that specialized in the arts. Hannah got her into the graphic arts program of the Nanyang Academy of Arts. The guest bedroom I'd spent so many nights in got turned into Heidi's art space, which took up a heck of a lot more room than I'd have thought "art" would take. The bed was still in there, but now it was shoved in one corner and when I used it, I usually had to clear a bunch of stuff off of it. Or Heidi did. I wasn't allowed to just randomly touch stuff.
As it turned out, her public school teachers were right. She was good. She got some of her art into exhibitions and finally started to seem like the cheerful girl I'd known before her father died.
When whe started her junior year at NAA, they urged her to begin applying to universities and such. I thought that was kind of stupid, since she still had two years of Secondary school to finish, but that's how they do things these days. A couple of months into her second semester, she started getting letters from colleges. Some were rejections, but two of them showed promise. Both of them laid out conditions for her acceptance. She had to maintain a high GPA. She had to have letters of recommendation from two teachers and two adults not related to the school system, one of which had to be a professional artist of some kind. She had to develop a portfolio, which had to include a whole bunch of different kinds of art, in a whole bunch of different media.
What was relevant to me about all this was that the portfolio had to include at least three figure studies, and that is where, once aqain, having Desmond as my best friend changed my life forever.
You might think my life had already been changed forever, but in reality I'd still been perking along just like I always had. I'd never had any strong feelings about what I wanted to do with my life. I'd always been a follower and, in my case, I'd followed Desmond, for the most part. He was the super hero. I was the sidekick. That hadn't bothered me. Great leaders can't be great leaders if nobody follows them.
Anyway, about the only strong feelings I'd had were about things I didn't want to do with my life. Such as join the Army. Basically, other than helping out with Hannah and Heidi, I just puttered through life. I'm one of those people who are happy if they have enough money for their basic needs and don't require complicated long-term financial plans to feel like the future will be good. I suppose I'm the kind of person who ends up scraping by on a Social Security check in later years, but my needs had always been simple. I suspect I thought about it like this: "As long as I have books and a couple thousand calories a day, I'll be okay."
That was about to change.
The change started one evening while we were having supper. I either stayed for supper or came over by invitation about two or three times a week, though I didn't sleep in the guest room that often anymore.
"Mom," said Heidi through a mouthful of mashed potatoes.
"Don't talk with your mouth full," admonished Hannah.
Heidi made a big show of swallowing.
"Mom?" she said, opening her mouth much wider than needed, obviously to display it was now empty.
Hannah didn't rise to the bait. "Yes?"
"I have a problem."
Hannah waited. I continued to eat.
"You know those figure studies I have to have for my portfolio?"
Hannah took a bite and just nodded.
"I did one of my own hand and it came out okay, but I have to have full figure drawings of a male and female, too. I tried looking in the mirror to do me, but it's not going to work."
"I'd be happy to pose for you," said Hannah, getting right to the point. "Assuming you don't object to drawing your mother."
"Thank you," said Heidi. "I don't object at all. "
Then she turned to look at me. She didn't have to say a word. I looked over at Hannah and found she was staring at me as well.
"Me?" I said, through a mouthful of mashed potatoes.
Hannah groaned while Heidi grinned and I swallowed hastily.
"Why me?" I asked. Don't ask me why I was uneasy about this. I mean what could it involve? I'd have to sit still for a while and look regal or something. Wasn't that what you always saw in portraits? Everybody looked regal, or at least interesting. I didn't think there was anything interesting about me.
"Gee, I don't know," said Harper. "Now that I think about it, I guess it will be easy for me to walk around at the mall and find some stranger to come over and take off all his clothes so I can paint him." She took a bite of green beans and (intentionally, I thought) talked with them in her mouth. "Yeah, that should be a piece of cake. There are plenty of weirdoes out there who would jump at the chance."
Now I admit here, that my thoughts got a little fragmented at that point, so my brain didn't work all that well. The first thing I thought about was the word "naked", which appeared in my head like the advertisement sign board in Orchard Road. Then some synapse in my skull connected that word with me, and then, in a flash, with Hannah, who had already agreed to pose. Of course her situation might be entirely different than "mine", but I couldn't keep my thoughts from reflecting on that. The brain works at the speed of light, or pretty close, so all these images kept flickering like bursts of lightning, bouncing from me naked (and of course with an embarrassing boner) to Hannah who, if you'll remember, I told you was a babe. Then it would be back to me without that embarrassing erection, my cock being wilted and all of two inches long, which was even more embarrassing. Then it was back to Hannah again who, for some insane reason, had assumed a pose appropriate for a porn site, and then I imagined Heidi naked, standing there painting without a care in the world. Finally my brain overloaded and the fork fell out of my limp fingers. I think I drooled a little bit. I know one corner of my mouth felt moist.
"You don't have to be sarcastic about it," said Hannah, frowning at her daughter. "And what's all this about nudity?"
"The figures have to be nude, of course," said Heidi, as if that should be obvious to anyone.
"Who says?" asked her mother.
"The instructions, that's who."
"Instructions are a what, not a who," corrected Hannah.
"The instructions," said Heidi with exaggerated patience. "That's what."
"I'd like to see these instructions," said Hannah.
"Sure," said Heidi, who started to get up.
"After supper," said Hannah.
"Okay," said the girl. She looked at me. "Why do you look so pale?"
"He's a man, Darling," said Hannah, who glanced my way and then went back to eating.
"What does that mean?" asked Heidi, who was still looking at me.
Hannah glanced at me again while she chewed. I had this horrifying suspicion she could see right into my thoughts. I felt my face get hot and I decided I needed to wash it. Actually, I just needed to get away from her gaze... ...
