Honey, Baby, Sweetheart by Deb Caletti Page A

that crouching.”
“I suppose so,” I said. Joe Davis sat down again. He folded his hands over his chest as if he’d just eaten a good meal and was now waiting for the movie to start. It looked like he would wait there a long time, so I told him about Travis. I told him what had happened the night before. I told him that there were big pieces of me that thought I was in love with Travis Becker. Those pieces of me didn’t want to give up Travis. I avoided the eyes of the sad-faced Jesus. He looked very disappointed in me. I wished he had a Sea World T-shirt on too.
“Wow,” Joe Davis said when I finished. “That’s a lot to deal with, all right. I can see you are feeling pretty bad about it.”
His sympathy made a lump rise in my throat and my eyes grow hot with tears. “Aren’t you supposed to make me do something, like say a bunch of prayers?”
“I’m sorry, Ruby,” he said.
“Don’t tell me. Catholics again?”
“Yep. Anyways, I’m thinking the thing you should do is talk to your mom about this.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
I knew he was in love with my mother. I didn’t want to betray her by giving him negative information. Explaining why I couldn’t talk to her right now would be like telling him that she laughed at the religious channels and couldn’t make a fried egg to save her life and always left it to someone else to put a new roll of toilet paper on. Something he should have to find out at least after a few dates.
I thought for a while. I remembered something I once heard about minister-patient confidentiality, or something like that.
“This stays between us, right?” I asked.
“Absolutely.”
“She’s broken right now,” I said. “Everything is in pieces. Even the kitchen is in pieces. Our dog chewed a big hole in the wall.”
Joe Davis winced in empathy. He crossed one leg over the other. He wore sandals, too. Maybe good men could be found in sandal-like shoes.
“I can’t give her anything else in pieces,” I said.
“Things come apart before they can be put back together again.”
“What do you think I should do?”
Joe Davis leaned forward, elbow on one knee, and scratched his neck. “You know what I’ve learned in this job? The people who ask for advice are the ones who already know what they should do.”
“I should go to Sea World,” I said. He looked at me like I was crazy, so I pointed to his T-shirt. I was suddenly in the mood for a little humor after dropping that package at Joe Davis’s feet.
Joe lifted one fist in the air. “Shamu power,” he said.
“I’d have a whale of a good time,” I said.
Joe Davis groaned, threw his head back as if in pain. “I love Sea World,” he said. “But the one thing that bothers me is that they sell fish and chips there.”
“Eek,” I said.
Then Joe Davis got serious again. He looked at me. “Ruby? Here’s the thing. About this guy. Sometimes we are so convinced someone is throwing us a life preserver that we don’t notice that what they are actually doing is drowning us.”
I remembered that day at Marcy Lake, Travis’s hand clutching my wrist, my tight lungs, his crooked smile under that green, murky water. Joe Davis was more accurate than he even realized.
I tossed him some brave words. I owed him something, I guess, for being kind to me. “It’s a good thing I’m a strong swimmer,” I said. I didn’t believe it; I doubt he did either. You know when your own mind means business, and when it is only saying what it thinks it should.
When I left the church office I noticed the sign. DOG IS MAN’S BEST FRIEND. It looked like Joe Davis was having a little fun with the unknown sign changer.
On the way home, I stopped to watch the paragliders. I wanted to see their bravery and their rightness. And that day was a whale-themed day, because to my surprise, for the first time ever, I saw him. The I Love Potholes guy with the whale van. He wore shorts and sandals, a T-shirt emblazoned with a heart with wings, the logo