Shade of Avocado - Part 36
Making Repairs (Piper)
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Sharon’s Garage was a neat, modern facility with large, well-lighted repair bays, and a clean, comfortable customer reception area. It was a busy place, though in no way chaotic. There was more of a precision in the activity throughout it. A group of photographs on the wall suggested that Sharon learned her trade in the Air Force. The pictures showed her and other airmen working on large military vehicles and the stripes on her uniform ranked her as a Technical Sergeant. I felt even better about Mick's recommendation to bring the van here for repairs.
Sharon herself stepped up to greet Avery and me. Her twill trousers and pressed shirt, embroidered with her name, appeared tailored compared to my grungy attire. Her hair was up in an orderly bun the way it was in her Air Force photos. Mine was stringy, being on the third day from my last shower. Nevertheless, Sharon was courteous and upbeat as she met us.
“You have the green camper van, correct?” she confirmed.
“Yes,” I answered. “It just kind of died on us yesterday. Every light on the dashboard was on, the engine quit and there was no power. Except the charging ports…as far as we can tell.”
Sharon jotted down some notes onto the clipboard as I described what happened. She nodded like she understood the situation. “Sounds like an electrical problem might have messed with your onboard computer. It might take a while to trace down the problem’s source. I’ll have to give you an initial estimate on the diagnostic part, then we’ll have a better idea what needs fixing and how long it will take.”
“Okay,” I said. “Is there a hotel nearby? We’re from way out of town.”
Sharon smiled. “Sure. Pete, would you please bring the pickup around and give these folks a ride to the Best Western?”
A young man with a red ballcap flashed a thumbs-up and reached for a set of keys from a hook on the wall. Meanwhile, I wrote in our contact information on Sharon’s clipboard. Avery collected our duffel bags from the van, and we met Pete at the front door.
Sharon rejoined us as we were about to climb in the pickup truck. “We’ll give you a call when we find out what’s going on. Should be before five.”
“Thank you, Sharon,” I said. “Our tow truck driver, Mick, told us we’d be in good hands with you.”
“I appreciate it, ma’am. You two relax this afternoon and we’ll take care of it.”
Pete drove us up the street to the motel. It was only two blocks, but it was nice to be shuttled over anyway. Avery slipped five bucks to Pete as we got out and the young man gave us a salute in thanks.
The desk clerk informed us they only had king rooms with one bed available for tonight. Avery and I looked at each other and decided it would be okay. To be honest, we were both too exhausted by now to think about intimacy requiring even minimal physical exertion.
Once in the room, we took turns showering and changing into clean clothes. I left my hair wet to enjoy the coolness as it dried. Both of us laid down flat on our backs on the big bed. While a nap was tempting, we had a greater urgency to unpack the baggage not containing our clothes.
“I was grouchy because of the heat,” Avery said to me. “But when we started arguing with each other, I think I got angry because I was afraid of losing you again. Somehow, we lost track of each other during college, but I have been kicking myself over it, from time to time, ever since. I can’t tell you enough how ecstatic I was when we accidentally found each other again. A piece of me that had been lost since you moved away, was growing back again. Then I started feeling it slipping away.”
“I don’t know if you remember, Avery,” I said. “My parents got divorced when I was around ten or eleven. I did my best to stay away from their arguments as much as possible. I doubt I mentioned them to you. When I needed to leave the house and their conflicts, I escaped into our friendship. We’d go sit on your front lawn or walk around the block a few dozen times. Or we’d play games with some of the other neighbor kids. You were a refuge for me during that time and you still were until we moved away. We started arguing and yelling and getting mean yesterday, and I remembered the way my parents would fight. And how my ex-husband would fight with me. None of us could ‘fight fair’, the way Mick explained it. I was scared to death you would turn into the same kind of person, and we’d turn into my parents.”
“Is that why you were questioning whether you could trust me, Piper?”
“Probably, at first. But not for very long. Avery, my mother decided we could do better financially with the support from other family if we moved back to Georgia. I didn’t want to leave, and I especially didn’t want to leave you. But she had made up her mind. You were so sweet and thoughtful, before and after we moved away. Your letters were so encouraging and when I found one in the mailbox, I had such a happy day. You were helpful with my boyfriend. I didn’t know whether to consider you my best friend, a big brother, or what? But you were the best, Avery. You’ve always been someone I could trust.”
Avery slid his hand over to hold mine. “I’m sure we’re going to have disagreements, Piper. But I promise I will always do my best to fight fair with you.”
“I will, too. You were the best part of the time in my life and, if I’m lucky enough to have that person back for this time in my life, I’m going to do everything to make sure I will always have you.”
Avery rolled over to give me a gentle kiss. It was our first kiss since our argument. Our gaze brought back the memory of our first kiss when we were teenagers.
“It’s so funny, Avery. I try to remember what led up to us kissing the first time, where we were, and it isn’t coming back to me. How the moment is still so vivid to me and why I can’t recall how we got there, what happened just before and right after. Or, what we said to each other. It’s kind of driving me crazy. Do you remember any of it, Avery.”
“No, it is weird. I admit I’ve tried to get the whole memory back and it’s nothing but vagueness. But our kiss has connected us ever since, wherever we were, whether I knew where you were or not. As I said when we talked about it at the picnic, it is something that will never change for either of us.”
We both wrapped our arms around each other and all the tension, anxiety, angry and hurt feelings drifted away. In the next moment, Avery and I drifted away into sleep.
The ringing of my phone awakened us a couple of hours later. It was Sgt. Sharon calling about the camper van.
“Well, Piper, it looks like the electrical in your camper upfits caused trouble with the van’s onboard computer as I suspected. It shouldn’t be too difficult to correct the problem and make sure it stays isolated from the central control unit. I’m hoping the computer is still okay and that it shut down to protect itself. We’ll test it out thoroughly and, if it’s okay, we won’t have to replace it. It’s going to take us another day, either way. At this point, I’ll give you an estimate of $1,350. Shall we go ahead?”
“Yes, of course,” I said. “Thank you for getting to it so quickly.”
“No problem. We’ll get you back on the road soon as we can. I’ll talk to you again tomorrow.”
Avery and I went to a restaurant across the parking lot to have dinner. Having skipped lunch again, we both went for hearty meals and did not resist their great looking pies for dessert. We even had a cup of coffee knowing we would not be kept awake by it tonight.
What kept us awake for a while was how we lost track of each other. Avery and I corresponded regularly in the couple of years between the move to Georgia and my visit with my father when I was sixteen. Avery and I were able to spend a few hours alone during that trip. At some point, the letters stopped. Avery said he accidentally lost my address during our big argument yesterday, but I stopped writing, too, to be honest.
“Avery,” I asked, “I can’t understand why we didn’t at least kiss goodnight after we went out to eat.”
“I suppose we were kind of shy about it,” Avery speculated. “Or because we were both in our own relationships by then.”
“Yeah, I guess we were. Still, it baffles me we didn’t even share a ‘friendly’ kind of kiss. We had been so close and were so excited to be together again. We didn’t know the next time we’d see each other.”
“Maybe we didn’t have enough time getting used to being together again,” Avery said. “It was only, what, three hours? At my age, I was constantly debating with myself whether I should do whatever when I was around a girl. Kiss her, put my arm around her, hold her hand. Ask her out to the prom. I always had some hesitation, how she’d react, if I’d get rejected.”
“I might have picked that vibe up from you, Avery. I didn’t want to scare you off either.”
“I was so much in my head that day, I don’t think I remember much about going to dinner with you and anything we talked about. I probably kept it so superficial.”
I thought back about it also. “I was trying to recall it, too. It’s hazy.”
“Where did we go that evening?”
“No, it was still afternoon. It was really a late lunch.”
“That’s right, Piper. We went to the Boardwalk at the marina, and we talked while we looked at the water. The birds were paddling around between the boats, and the sky was blue.”
“We went into the little fish market. We ordered their fish and chips, right?”
Avery and I were there, once again. Biting into the hot, crispy battered fish. Tasting the salty French fries. The aroma of our food blending with the scent of ocean air.
Talking to each other. But not quite hearing what they…we…were saying.
Then an emotion shared. Something moving powerfully through our entire bodies.
Unpleasant. We were angry at each other. We got up from the table and left.
We returned to the present moment, sitting on the bed in our Flagstaff motel room.
I understood immediately. “We didn’t kiss goodbye because we were both pissed!”
“Yeah,” Avery agreed. “Like we had never been so mad at each other before.”
“What were we talking about in the fish market? What were we so angry about, Avery?”
“I…can’t remember. Now, other than being mad and having fish and chips, the rest of the afternoon is a blank.”
“I don’t know what the rest of it was either. It’s…like with our first kiss. But this feels way worse. Why the hell were we so angry with each other? It wasn’t only me…it was mutual.”
“That experience we just had…it was…we had the same exact emotion, reacted the same way.”
I was quiet. I drew inside myself, looking down at my hands clasped together in my lap. I looked back up at Avery with sadness and regret.
“But, Avery,” I asked, “Why? I thought I remembered the day as a happy one. I’m trying to think of a single reason we be so mad at each other. Was it something you said?”
“Or something you said? And I reacted to it?”
“Hold on,” I said. “Let’s not start a new fight. Or at least, let’s fight fair.”
Avery nodded in understanding. “Start with ‘I’, not ‘you.’”
“Yes. Perhaps it was something I said.”
“Or was it just something that happened between us. Is it important who started it?”
I was thinking in silence again, my imagination reeling. “You don’t suppose there was some suggestion of us doing something…inappropriate, shall we say?”
“Piper, I don’t think that happened. I have…had then, too much respect for you.”
“Maybe I was the one who suggested it.”
“Okay, look. I think we’re borrowing trouble here we don’t need. We can’t recall what made us angry. How many arguments have we had with people where we don’t remember what they’re about anymore? Whatever the issues were, they were probably forgiven, and were, for certain, forgotten.”
“True enough. But I can’t help being bothered about this. After two years missing each other so much since I’d moved away, we ended our date in an awful way. When we met up again at the reunion picnic and went out to dinner, we thought about that day. We asked each other why we didn’t kiss when I was sixteen. Doesn’t it annoy you a little?”
“Yes, it is a mystery, Piper. But I feel we'll move past it. It’s not likely to be important anymore. I’m sure it’s no reason for us to be angry now.”
“No, I’m sure you’re right. What’s important is we can solve our differences now. Old ones and new ones.”
Following a deep breath, Avery and I smiled and took each other into our arms. We settled into that big, comfortable bed, to do what we had waited so long to do. Get a long, peaceful night’s sleep.
The next morning, we went to the same restaurant for breakfast, a big one like the kind I whip up on a Saturday. We arranged to extend our stay at the motel one more night as it looked like it would take Sharon most of the day to complete repairs on the van. It was okay, because Avery and I had completed our repairs.
We picked up a map and some travel brochures from the hotel lobby to plan out the next part of our trip. We figured we should go on to the Grand Canyon first, and whenever we made our way back toward New Mexico on Interstate 40, we would check out the sites we missed due to our detour.
Sharon’s call came later in the morning, and she gave us the good news that the onboard computer was still alive and the rest of the work they needed to do would be completed before five in the afternoon.
For lunch – after last night’s dinner and this morning’s break-feast – we opted for a light salad. When we went back to our motel, we made arrangements to stay a couple of nights in a bungalow at the Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim. Something about making plans with Avery gave me an incredible rush.
Sharon called us again to let us know Pete was on his way over to pick us up as the van was ready to go. When they brought the van around, they had not only fixed it, but they had also given it a thorough wash and shined up all the windows.
Sharon explained what they did. “Some of the circuitry in the kitchen and water pump upfits were feeding back into the van’s electronics. It confused the onboard computer, and it shut down. We added some components to prevent the bad electrical signals going down the line and put in a breaker to cut it off completely if it tries to do it again.” She showed us where the breaker switch was located and how to reset it.
“We see this happen a lot with van conversions, in RVs and commercial vehicles,” she added. “So, we have a real good idea how to fix them. Something similar used to happen on military transport trucks and jet fuel tankers. Some places might take a week to find what was wrong. We have a lot of experience is all.”
“We appreciate it, Sharon. And we appreciate your service, too.”
“Thank you, ma’am, sir. If you need anything when you come through this way again, please stop by.”
We drove over to a market for some more food before going back to the motel. It was still early, so we washed a load of clothes that really needed doing. After dinner – and another slice of pie – we were excited about the next leg of our trip. Wanting to make an early start in the morning, we got into bed together and dreamed of our road ahead.