Thad's Mistakes (The Two Moons of Rehnor)

  The Two Moons of Rehnor

  Novella Collection

  Thad's Mistakes

  by

  J. Naomi Ay

  Published by Ayzenberg Inc

  Copyright Ayzenberg, Inc. 2012-2016

  All Rights Reserved

  140316

  Cover Design by Amy Jambor

  Photo credits [email protected] and Franck [email protected]

  Also by J. Naomi Ay

  The Two Moons of Rehnor series

  The Boy who Lit up the Sky (Book 1)

  My Enemy's Son (Book 2)

  Of Blood and Angels (Book 3)

  Firestone Rings (Book 4)

  The Days of the Golden Moons (Book 5)

  Golden's Quest (Book 6)

  Metamorphosis (Book 7)

  The Choice (Book 8)

  Treasure Hunt (Book 9)

  Space Chase (Book 10)

  Imperial Masquerade (Book 11)

  Rivalry (Book 12)

  Thirteen (Book 13)

  Betrayal (Book 14)

  Fairy Tales (Book 15)

  Gone for a Spin (Book 16)

  The Firesetter series

  A Thread of Time (Book 1)

  Amyr’s Command (Book 2)

  Three Kings (Book 3)

  Exceeding Expectations (Book 4)

  A Cosmic Dance (Book 5)

  I made a mistake. As I stood there at the altar pledging to love, honor, respect and most importantly be faithful to Leslie, in the back of my mind I kept hearing a tiny voice yelling, "No!"

  When the organ started to play the recessional, after I took Leslie's hand and together we skipped down three steps, and then paraded up the aisle, that voice seemed to grow louder and louder.

  By the time we stood in the foyer surrounded by everyone we knew in this entire world, the voice was positively shrieking, blocking out just about everything Leslie was attempting to tell me.

  "What's the matter, Thad?" My mom nudged my arm and caught my eye while Leslie was busy hugging all of her twelve bridesmaids.

  "Nothing," I insisted. "Nothing at all. Everything is great."

  Mom nodded knowingly as if she didn't believe me and then turned away to kiss some strange woman who claimed to be a distant cousin of Dad's although he denied ever knowing her.

  That was the great thing about weddings. All sorts of relatives crawled out of the woodwork to splurge on your free food, alcohol, and cake, in exchange for a savings bond, or the toaster they picked up on sale. If they managed to corner you long enough for a conversation, you got to hear all about more distant and unknown relatives, who either received the Nobel prize for chemistry last year, or were in jail.

  "Dude." An enormous hand appeared in my face as Dennis lowed. He sounded mildly bovine which coincidentally matched his looks.

  "Dude," I replied high-fiving the paw. I hoped that would be enough, but of course it wasn't. Guys that clocked in at 300 plus pounds tended to hug, especially when it was their best friend that needed the hugging.

  "Dude, you're a married man," Dennis moaned in my ear as he squeezed the last of my life force from my body.

  "Yeah, yeah, I know, Dennis," I gasped. "I was there."

  "I can't believe it, man. You're all grown up."

  "Yep. That's me. Thad Mattson, Adult."

  Dennis made a wailing sound, again more bovine than human, and his tiny brown eyes filled with tears. He was just about to start reminiscing. I could tell from the slight intake of breath which always preceded a long winded tale of one or another high school football game.

  Before he began to regale the crowd with my disastrous tenure as Varsity Quarterback, in the only season in history when our school lost every game, Dad arrived to my rescue.

  "Dennis," the Captain said sternly. "Hard to believe they had a tuxedo big enough to fit you."

  Dennis smiled broadly and attempted to hug Dad which the Captain deftly avoided by stepping aside and shoving my younger brother, Larry into the newly vacated space.

  "Dude, keep your mitts off me." Larry clawed his way out from under both Dennis and the Captain, bolting for the bar where there was already a long line.

  "He had better be ordering soda pop," Dad grumbled as Dennis moved on to smother Mom in his embrace.

  "He'll be fine, Tim," Mom replied turning her attention back to us as the line of relations had withered down to just Leslie's cousins.

  "He's underage."

  "He's been drinking plenty at his frat parties. He can have a beer now if he wants."

  Dad, a full captain in command of a five hundred crew Spaceforce starship, opened his mouth to protest but quickly shut it as there was no arguing with Mom, the Admiral of the Mattson family.

  Larry ultimately abandoned the drink queue a moment later and instead raced across the room towards a gaggle of Leslie's sorority sister bridesmaids. Each one of them wore a maroon taffeta floor-length dress that just shrieked of wedding apparel and would have looked ridiculous outside of this church. Actually, in their matching dyed shoes and stiff, sprayed coifs, they looked ridiculous inside this church.

  Larry strutted in front of them, a nineteen year old tuxedoed peacock.

  "Thad?" Leslie nudged me as I watched Larry trying to chat up Ming Feinberg, a half Chinese, half-Jewish law student who had more brains in her thumb than Larry had in his entire head. "Thad!"

  "Yes? Sorry? What dear?" I smiled congenially at my new bride as the sick feeling continued to spread from my stomach throughout my intestine.

  "The photographer wants to take some pictures. Come on. Let's go outside and get some nice shots with the mountains in the background."

  "Leslie dear," Mom interrupted, her own heavily sprayed coif wilting around her shoulders. "It's awfully hot right now. Maybe we can just take some pictures inside, and when it cools off later, we can snap some sunset shots."

  Leslie's mouth set in a firm thin line, a clear indication of annoyance with Mom's suggestion.

  "Mother Shelly." Now Leslie smiled showing all of her oversized pearly white cheerleader teeth. "I'm sure I won't be looking so fresh later, and of course I want to memorialize this moment when I am at my absolute best. Come Thad." She yanked my arm.

  Mom smiled also, though behind her lips, I could see the stiffness of her jaw as she gritted her teeth.

  "Shelly," Dad said loudly taking her arm. "It's only 104 outside. We can manage for a few minutes."

  Forty minutes later, we were all drenched in sweat as we headed toward the banquet hall for our catered dinner dance. I had wanted a Southwest theme, heavy on the guacamole and chips, maybe wings with chipotle barbeque sauce or stuffed fried jalapeno poppers. Instead, we ended up with some kind of dry chicken, grey steak with brown gravy, or an unnamed slab of white fish along with a tablespoon of overcooked vegetables that were as thin as matchsticks.

  "Isn't it delicious, Thad?" my darling wife insisted.

  I was on my fourth beer by then which had helped to settle my stomach and quiet that nasty voice that was still calling from the back of my brain, reminding me that I had, in fact, made a horrible mistake. By my sixth beer, I was hoping I would have put the damn thing to sleep. If not, I'd have to keep drinking until it finally shut up.

  "Scrumptious," I replied and gallantly kissed Leslie's pale hand, her manicured fingernails and cuticles, a perfect and preppy glossy pink.

  Dennis stood up right about then and banged his knife against the water glass. When that didn't quiet the multitudes, he shouted, "Shut up!" in the voice he usually reserved for protesting the refs' bad calls.

  When silence finally fell around the room except for the tinkling of a few water glasses or the shuffling
of the waiters as they cleared plates, Dennis launched into a long and tearful speech that began with our first encounter in second grade.

  "We were lined up to get our flu vaccinations," Dennis wept. "And there I was standing behind this little shrimpy dude with the strangest name I had ever heard. I kept calling him Tad, like a tadpole you know, that little fishy thing that frogs come from. Anyway, we were waiting in line, and I kept poking him and saying, 'Tad! Tad!' and he kept turning around and telling me to knock it off which of course made me want to do it even more. We got all the way up to the front of the line when he turned around, fists raised, ready to punch me out just as the nurse came to poke him with that needle. Well, Thad just fell over like he had been hit with a brick, clipping my nose with the top of his head and nearly knocking out my front teeth. The next thing I knew we were both on the floor covered in blood and from that moment forward, we were also the best of friends. When we got to fourth grade, Thad was sitting in the table group next to me when—"

  "That's enough, Dennis." The Captain stood up and loudly cleared his throat. "Larry wants to say a few words."

  "But I'm not done."

  "Yes, you are." Dad started clapping loudly which prompted the other guests to politely set down their forks and glasses and clap, as well.

  Dennis beamed, and his big round face blushed bright red. He bowed as much as his bulk would allow and then returned to his chair, whacking my shoulder with a meaty paw in passing.

  "Larry?"

  Larry had managed to stay glued to Ming's side throughout dinner by trading with one of Leslie's cousins for the seat next to the girl. He had one elbow propped on the table and was gazing star struck at both Ming's face and cleavage, obviously uncertain which he appreciated more.

  "Larry." The Captain cleared his throat even louder, this time catching Ming's attention so that she nudged my brother, which forced him to look up. "Get over here and toast your brother and sister-in-law."

  "With what?" Larry asked, eliciting a polite chuckle from the crowd. "You said I'm not old enough to drink."

  "Your water," the Captain barked, which caused Mom to run her own sweaty water glass across her forehead and against her limp hair.

  Eventually, Larry came up to the head table and mumbled something about what an awesome guy I was and what an awesome girl Leslie was and how we were going to have totally awesome kids before he strutted his way back to Ming's side.

  We had to sit through a few more painful toasts, one from a sorority hen who cackled something about shopping opportunities now that Leslie had my income to dispose of, and another toast from a second cousin of Dad's, who was far too drunk to be coherent.

  Afterward, we posed in front of the multi-tiered white frosted cake, smashed bits into each other's mouths and then took to the dance floor to waltz through a synthesized version of ‘Somewhere in Time.’

  By the time it was socially acceptable for us to hang up our dancing shoes, change to our traveling clothes and ride off into the sunset in my ten year old Toyota with 273,000 miles on it, only Mom and Dad, Leslie's parents and a few of their contemporaries were standing. Larry, Dennis, the sorority gaggle and all of the cousins were either lying about or dragging across the dance floor in various stages of inebriation.

  Leslie and I drove exactly twenty miles, checked into a Hilton Garden Inn which I had paid for with points earned during my short career as a Pharmaceutical Rep and proceeded to honeymoon. That consisted of sharing a toothbrush as I had forgotten mine, sharing a hairbrush as I had forgotten that, too, and sharing a bed which we had done multiple times before over the last year but not a whole lot else.

  "I'm feeling a little nauseous tonight," Leslie muttered and turned her back to me. Within an instant, she was snoring softly.

  "No worries, honey," I replied and found the remote.

  Turning on the vid, I located a game, some second rate collegiate women's basketball tourney. I watched the tall, well-muscled girls race back and forth across the court, shooting hoops better than most guys, and I cracked open yet another beer from the room's mini-fridge.

  Here I was, Thad Mattson, age twenty-three, marginally successful at selling pills, married and in seven months, going to be a father. This was a colossal mistake.

  ****

  "Thad!" Leslie had this way of shrieking, raising her voice to levels that just seemed to blow out my ear drums.

  Literally, my head would completely plug up as if I was underwater. I would stand there and watch her yell not hearing a word she said, just absorbing the shock of the sound waves as they reverberated off my skin.

  Jimmy started screaming like that, too. He would look to Leslie as if waiting for a cue and then the minute she opened her mouth, he'd start wailing at the top of his lungs. When he finally strung a few sounds together to form his first word, it wasn't Mama or Dada or anything normal like that. Nope, my kid greeted the world each morning by standing in his crib and shrieking, "Thad", exactly parroting Leslie's voice in timber and tone.

  There were two things in this world I began to hate. One was the screaming, and the second was shopping malls.

  Every Saturday, just to get out of the house, just to get away from the oppressively small apartment that the three of us squeezed into, Leslie demanded we go to the mall.

  My knees grew weak merely at the suggestion. Bile rose in my throat recalling the scent of the endless acreage of linoleum floors intermingled with racks of unsold clothing, and over-greased food court cuisine.

  By the time we pulled into the mall parking lot, and especially if any screaming was included along the way, I suffered from palpitations, hot flashes, migraines, and severe chest pain, all at the same time.

  "Thad?" Leslie asked, marching across the ten mile span of the parking lot. "Is something wrong?"

  "Thad?" Jimmy demanded poking his head around the curtain of his stroller.

  "Mall disease," I would mumble pausing for my last breath of unfiltered air before plunging forward through those revolving doors into the teeming masses of shoppers.

  "Again?" Leslie would shriek.

  "Again?" Jimmy would parrot.

  "Yes, again," I would invariably say. "I am allergic to mall disinfectant."

  This would buy me a brief reprieve, resting my weakened legs and even weaker stomach next to that odd foam filled vinyl boat thing that was infested with toddlers crawling over and around it like ants on a marshmallow.

  "Out!" Jimmy screamed as we approached the toxic monstrosity.

  He squirmed and fought against the small fabric seat belt until I released him from the stroller, whereupon he bolted forward into the snotty nosed, coughing mass.

  Within seconds, Jimmy had shoved a red-headed pixie girl off the bridge of the boat and into the sponge blue sea while simultaneously managing to launch a foot and a fist at a much larger boy. He now found himself struggling against the synthetic wave surf, drowning amongst all those foam blue cushions.

  "Thad!" he shrieked until I forced myself off the bench and propped him upright to climb once again to the wheelhouse and resume his battle for command of the vessel.

  In the meantime, Leslie, fully armed with my credit cards, was off battling her own nemeses as they fought for that elusive and solitary handbag, scarf, boot or blouse which was marked down an extra thirty percent, today only.

  "Your little boy is cute," a voice next to me remarked as I watched the red head tumble into the surf.

  She was resilient, quickly climbing up the side of the ship and shoving Jimmy away from the steering wheel, while he gripped it in his small iron fists, turning it wildly as if battling gale force winds and forty foot swells.

  "Cute," I scoffed. "That's not the adjective I would have used."

  "He is," she insisted. "He knows what he wants, and he's determined to have it. There's nothing wrong with that. Those are good qualities."

  "Are they?" I glanced sideways at the girl sitting next to me, noting immediately the stiff posture that
was at odds with the wild blonde curls bouncing around her shoulders. "Spaceforce," I concluded instantly. "Home on leave?"

  "How did you guess?" She laughed, her bright blue eyes lighting up with surprise.

  "I did a year in the Academy before deciding my back couldn't handle sitting so straight. I'm more of slumping, rounded shoulders kind of guy. My dad's also a starship captain, and I've spent far more time than I would ever like in space. Everyone else went to Hawaii or on a Caribbean cruise for vacation. We went to Spacebase 41-C and cruised to Spacebase 41-B."

  "Not exactly the same thing?"

  "No sugar sand beaches with babes in bikinis. Spaceforce's best wasn't quite the Love Boat. Of course, I don't remember any ensigns looking like you. All the women on the Excelsior had more facial hair than the men."

  She laughed again and blushed shyly making me wonder if I had quit the Academy too soon.

  "Excelsior…hmm…is your dad Captain Mattson?"

  "One and the same. Thad Mattson." I held out my hand. She shook it firmly.

  "Katie Golden and an ensign as you so aptly guessed. That little terror who keeps knocking your son into the drink is my niece, Cindy."

  "Are you from around here?" I leaned back on the bench and sucked in my gut, releasing her hand slowly until she tugged it away. I wasn't planning anything, especially with a Spacegirl, but it didn't hurt to have a little fun once in a while.

  "No. I'm from up north. We're just here over the holidays to get a little sun. It's raining and 40 degrees in Seattle. My mom always thinks I'm deficient in Vitamin D from living in space, so she insists that we spend some time down here in the desert. I'm not sure how hiding inside a shopping mall is helping with that, but, what the heck, it beats the rain. Cindy!" She jumped up and pointed her finger at the red-head before she shoved Jimmy once again into the sea.

  Cindy turned briefly and glared at her aunt then smiling victoriously, she once again took command of the ship.

  "Your niece is pretty determined to be in charge. Does she take after you?"