How To Win

He complained to Jamie.

Jamie said, “She can soothe me.”

Distracted, irritated, Tyler said, “I’ll tell her.”

“Get my name right. She calls me Johnny.”

So Tyler explained her mistake. “People in control of many others have some difficulty with names.”

“She sure as hell knows yours.”

“I’m divorced, so I’m not a wet-nosed kid. She expects me to know the ropes?”

Jamie smiled. He licked his lips and put his lower lip under his teeth but he didn’t reply or embellish anything.

He made Tyler laugh.

What a time it was. His longing for Kayla. His adjustment at the office. The adjustment of the coworkers to him. Their now knowing who he was because of all the problems he was having. And it was all because of one woman. Kayla. Kayla Davie who chose to discard Tyler’s name.

That Kayla Davie Fuller was due a set down. Any woman her age ought to be more pliant than she was. She acted as if she had all her life to find a good man. One better than Tyler.

What man was better than he?

Two

Especially in big cities, there are little sections or groups of people who are isolated by their jobs or interests or kinship. Each segment believes they are The City. They’re the important ones. It’s mental territory.

It is solely for them that the city puts on the park festivals, the food tastings, the bands playing and the marching parades. It is all done only for their segment’s own entertainment.

The other people who are there are just phantom people.

The actual citizens who live among friends hardly ever even see the phantoms who are busily involved in their own lives and their own groups. Well, they don’t see them unless some hungry eyes are looking for someone of the opposite sex. Then they see everybody!

But mostly a group sees only those in their own group, and they ignore the many others who are all unseen shadows. The phantom ones drive cars and walk streets and go to grocery stores and to their cleaners.

The phantoms are like elevator background music. They are there to fill in the edges of lives so that no one believes he’s alone. The phantoms are busy with things to be done.

So are those busy people who think they are so special that the world is really just theirs. To those who believe they are the ones in control, the world is for them. Simple. That is true. But all the segments of people think that way. It is their own group that is the important, vibrant, needed one.

For those isolated, self-contained groups, the strangers’ houses might just as well be empty. The unknowns’ offices are blank. The other people in the restaurants don’t county. Not unless you’re looking and then those strange ones are real but unknown others.

Few people think about all those unknown others who live in the city and move about. They don’t really matter unless they get into some kind of trouble. Then everybody helps. Helping isn’t thought out, it is reaction.

Such thinking was just so, for those who were involved with Tyler and Kayla.

Their friends and kinfolk talked to each other about the divorced pair. At a remote family wake, one cousin of Tyler’s mother said of the divorced pair, “I do declare I’ve never seen any couple so hostile to each other. Even Cousin Douthet didn’t carry on this badly. I’ve no patience with the two of them.”

“Hush! Tyler is right over there, and he can hear you!”

The cousin pinched her mouth as she lifted her eyebrows and looked down without moving her head. “Listening to me just might do him some good.”

And at her side, a male voice inquired softly, “What would you say to him?”

It was Tyler himself who spoke. So his mother’s Cousin Maren replied, “You ought to’ve been talking to that child, all along. She’s a Davie, and you let her get away from you!”

“I wasn’t there when she left.” Well, he was asleep...on the sofa in the living room. But he had the audacity to add, “I had no choice.”

And Cousin Maren replied, “Once I left Hebert!” She raised staying hands and turned her head aside. Although no one said anything, Cousin Maren held up her hands as if they’d all gasped and protested such an act. She went on: “And Hebert came to Daddy’s house and said, ‘You get her out here as quick as you can!”’

Tyler inquired, “And, did your daddy do that?”

“No.”

So Tyler asked, “What’d Cousin Hebert do?”

“He came into my room and said to me, ‘Get your things together, woman, I’ve used up my patience with you.’”

“He said that?” It was Tyler, himself, who exclaimed. Of course, Tyler had heard her husband’s version so he was interested in this one.

And Cousin Maren replied, “I stood firm and lifted my chin.” She showed them how she’d done that. “And I pointed to my doorway and told Hebert, ‘Leave here.’ But he would not.

“I finally had to go down and open the front door for him. He then picked me up and carried me to his car. My daddy tried to help me, but Hebert wouldn’t allow that.”

Tyler was the only new listener. All the others had heard Cousin Maren’s version, in its varieties, for some time, by then.

And with some unkind humor, Tyler asked, “Did you ever escape again?”

Cousin Maren sighed and looked off sadly. “I never managed. Hebert is such a determined man.”

So Tyler offered, “I’ll come help you the next time.”

There were coughs that covered the listeners’ shocked hilarity.

But then Maren looked up at Tyler, and he saw that she was not loved as she wanted. Hebert had never cherished her as she’d needed. So she had made up what she wanted.

With earnest compassion, Tyler told his mother’s cousin, “He was lucky your daddy couldn’t stop him, and he got you back. You’re a jewel.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and Tyler hugged her.

As she leaned into his arms, the old lady asked, “How could Kayla ever have left you?” And she looked up at Tyler’s eyes with such remorse.

The odd thing about that little vignette was that it didn’t just joggle Tyler’s understanding, but it surprised the watchers who’d never before realized Cousin Maren was so vulnerable. It made them all think and, after that, they were kinder to her.

But the experience touched Tyler. He’d been deliberately pushing the edge with the old lady. He was acting that way to amuse the watchers. How strange to realize the old cousin wasn’t a joke; she was human and she needed attention.

So Tyler searched the noisy crowd out to find Cousin Hebert and told him very seriously, “Your wife needs some civil attentions from you. You need to admire her and hold her hand and be kind.”

Cousin Hebert squinted his eyes at Tyler and asked, “What all’ve you been drinking, boy? I want some of that.”