An Uncomplicated Life Read online

  “You guys wanna move up there?” I ask.

  “I’m comfy here,” Jillian says.

  They’ve been together a lifetime, or so it seems. They are people who enjoy each other’s company and have for more than five years. I know adults married five years who can’t stand the sight of each other. We all do. Jillian and Ryan are an old married couple. I’m comfy here, she says.

  The bus passes a dance studio. Jillian notices the sign above the studio door. “I think we should do ballroom dancing again,” she announces. They’d taken a class together a few years earlier, a Christmas present to each other.

  “I do not want to do ballroom dancing,” Ryan says. It’s midday. The bus is not crowded: A couple of students, a day laborer in gray overalls, released from his morning shift. Jillian, Ryan and me.

  “I love your daughter, and I will always take care of her,” Ryan says, just because the thought occurred.

  “I’m happy about that,” I say.

  The bus chugs haltingly, stop to stop. It’s not the most efficient method of traveling, but it does give Ryan time to be social. Passengers come and go. Ryan makes them feel important. “Have a good day, sir,” he says to the guy in the overalls. The man looks up, a little wide-eyed. Maybe no one ever wished him well on the bus before. “Bless you,” Ryan says.

  The rocking and swaying is making him drowsy. “You can’t fall asleep,” I tell Ryan.

  “We can’t?”

  “Nope. You could sleep right through your stop.”

  I suggest that one person could sleep, so long as the other is awake. Jillian and Ryan think that’s a good idea. Especially Ryan. “Wake me up, honey,” he says.

  Everything is new. When he’s awake, Ryan reads every word on the inside of the bus. He hears the computerized voice announce upcoming stops. “Who’s talking?” he wonders. Jillian checks out the storefronts. The pizza joints, the dance studio, the restaurants and the sports bars, especially the sports bars, with their neon signs in the windows.

  “Ryan, you can get a beer there,” Jillian says.

  “Cool,” says Ryan.

  The TANK bus crosses the Ohio River and moves on into downtown Cincinnati. The nest of streets thickens, there are more people, and the pace speeds exponentially. Jillian and Ryan’s eyes get a little bigger. They’re suburban kids.

  “This is downtown Cincinnati?” Jillian asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Where your office is?”

  “Yes.” Well, sort of. I work at home or at the ballpark or arena. My newspaper building is downtown.

  Ryan knows we’re getting close. He reaches his arm toward the stop cord. “You don’t want to pull that yet,” I say.

  “When?”

  “I’ll tell you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The bus nears Fourth and Main, their stop. I tell Ryan to pull the cord. We get out, but not where I think we’re supposed to. I had assumed the bus would stop at the large downtown terminal. Instead, it stops a block south. We have 12 minutes to find the stop for the Number 3X bus, the one to Kenwood.

  I’m confused. The schedule says the 3X picks up at Fourth and Main, right where the 11 bus left us off. But the sign there makes no mention of the 3X bus. We walk up the block, to the left, toward the terminal.

  This is where I should mention that I am the one who’s lost. The leader of the pack, the adult, the guide: Lost. Jillian and Ryan are following me, and I have no idea what I’m doing.

  “Hang on a minute,” I say.

  Oh. It also might be worth noting that when we boarded the bus at NKU, I had to borrow money from my daughter. I had only a $10 bill; the fare was $1.75. Exact change only, please.

  When we boarded the second bus, I had to borrow more. I guess I needed my own Zip-Loc bag of quarters. Also, in the midst of note taking about this trip, my pen ran out of ink. What is it we say about people who have Down syndrome and people who don’t? We’re more alike than different?

  “Jills, you got a pen I can borrow?” I ask.

  She does. We’re only as good as the way we treat each other. I wouldn’t have been able to ride the bus or write what I saw. Not without my responsible, prepared and forward-thinking kid. The one with Down syndrome.

  We trudge on, toward the terminal on Fifth Street. It is January. A light rain falls in the 40-degree bluster. We get to the big terminal, three lanes across, several shelters. There are signs for seemingly every bus route in and around Cincinnati. I read every one of them. I ask Jillian and Ryan to do the same. There is no 3X bus to Kenwood. There is a kiosk at one end of the terminal. I ask the man inside about the 3X bus.

  “Sixth Street, a block up,” he says.

  “Yeah, but the schedule says Fourth,” I say.

  “Sixth, Fourth, either one,” he says.

  “Okay, but I didn’t see a sign for the 3X bus at Fourth and Main,” I say.

  I’m sounding a little panicked—six minutes before the bus comes!—and overall pathetic. The guy behind the glass owns the weary look of someone whose life is too full of people asking stupid, pleading questions.

  “Walgreen’s,” he says.

  What? By now, I’m losing what little patience for myself I have left. The temperature is 40 degrees and it’s raining. With me are two young adults who trust me to know what I’m doing, and now we’re down to five minutes before the 3X bus departs and leaves us freezing on a downtown street.

  “The stop you want is in front of Walgreen’s, okay?” the guy says.

  Having already revealed my naked ineptitude, I don’t dare ask him where, exactly, the Walgreen’s is on Fourth Street.

  Jillian and Ryan stand quietly behind me, shivering in the mist. They’ve taken their backpacks from their backs. They’re looking a little solemn. “We lost, Dad?” Jillian asks.

  “We got it now,” I reply. “We’re straight.”

  This was good, actually, I tell them, as we head around the block toward the holy land of Walgreen’s and, please God, the stop for the 3X bus. “This is what you do when you don’t know something. You ask,” I say. “This was a good lesson in problem solving.”

  We’re all but running—I at a brisk walk, the two of them at a steady trot. These are small people, with small legs. Ryan is just over five feet, Jillian six inches beneath him. My incompetence is forcing them to run in the cold rain.

  “Gotta go, gotta go,” I say.

  “This is fun,” Ryan says.

  God bless him.

  We make the corner, left from Fifth to Fourth. We are back where we started. Three minutes before the bus is supposed to arrive at 2:53 p.m. And there it is! Walgreen’s is up a block, across the street, maybe 50 paces from where we got off the TANK bus.

  “We had ’em all the way,” I say.

  Jillian says, “What?”

  We stand briefly in the rain at Fourth Street and Vine, waiting for the 3X. A newspaper box containing a free weekly catches Ryan’s eye. “You should read that. It tells you places where you can take your girlfriend for a hot night on the town,” I suggest.

  “Ooooh,” Jillian says. “I like a hot town.”

  The ride from downtown to suburbia is 15 miles. It takes 55 minutes. The bus stops and fills every other corner. The riders wear empty expressions, neither good nor bad. It’s just part of the drill. Jillian rests her head on Ryan’s shoulder. The gentle swaying of the bus would put anyone to sleep. She closes her eyes. “My eyes are open, sir,” Ryan says.

  The journey ends in Kenwood, a well-off suburb. The stop is across a busy street from an upscale shopping mall, filled with sit-down restaurants. Jillian and Ryan exit the bus, hand-in-hand. She has already made plans for the next bus ride.

  “Ryan,” she says excitedly. “Cheesecake Factory.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Sometimes, We Drove

  They have all these places for lunch.

  —JILLIAN

  As much as I wanted Jillian to ride the bus, I missed the time we had in the car
during her first year in college. Three days a week, we’d pile in, semi-awake. I’d pick up Ryan and away we’d go. Thirty minutes doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but you can learn a lot in half an hour.

  “Top o’ the mornin’ to ye,” I’d say, when Ryan got in the car.

  “Top o’ the mornin’, sir,” he’d say. And away we went.

  Somedays, Jillian and Ryan would sit in the backseat together. Others, for reasons unknown, at least to the driver, Jillian rode shotgun. On this particular day, Ryan has the backseat to himself. He leans forward and starts massaging his girlfriend’s shoulders. “I take good care of your daughter, sir,” he says.

  “I know you do.”

  “Honey?” Ryan says.

  Jillian has fallen asleep. I nudge her awake. “Your man is talking to you.”

  “Yeah, Ryan?”

  “Do you like this?” Ryan asks, his fingers busy across the tops of Jillian’s shoulders.

  Jillian says she does.

  “When we get married, I will do this every night,” Ryan says.

  “We not ready yet,” Jillian says. She will be 20 in a month. Ryan is all of 22.

  “Aw, honey.” Ryan is protesting from the backseat. He remembers the salesman at the mall jewelry store. “Our guy won’t hold that ring forever.”

  Jillian says, “Ryan?” It is more a declaration than an interrogation.

  “Yes?” Ryan says. His fingers are working double-time.

  “You are my best boy. But I will tell you when we will get married.”

  I chime in. “Ryan, if you elope with my daughter, I will hunt you down.”

  “What does that mean, sir?”

  He wants to talk about the concept of eloping. I do not.

  “I will hire a pack of bloodhounds and the FBI. When they find you, I will tell them to strip you naked and feed your fingertips to the wolverines.”

  Ryan wants to know what a wolverine is.

  Jillian says, “Da-a-a-d.”

  There were mornings when they discussed that evening’s date—Dewey’s Pizza or Mimi’s Café?—and whether they’d see the newest Pixar movie or the new one with Justin Bieber.

  “Parents don’t do both,” I’d suggest. “We save money. We do one or the other.”

  “We do both,” Jillian said.

  There were mornings when they discussed their families as if I weren’t right there, driving the cab.

  “My dad yelled at my brother last night,” Jillian might say.

  “Why, honey?”

  “Somethin’ ’bout money.”

  Ryan added that one of his brothers was grounded. “My mom was really mad,” he said.

  “About what?” I asked. I was curious about why Ryan and Jillian would talk about family things in front of me. And you know, I was interested in why one of Ryan’s brothers was grounded.

  “Sorry sir,” Ryan said. “I won’t talk anymore.”

  “You can talk, Ryan,” Jillian said.

  This particular morning, I started the trip by asking Jillian what she liked about college. Just about every day, she would declare that she was a big fan. On this day, I wanted to know why.

  “The restaurants,” she said

  “I’m sorry?”

  “They have all these places for lunch.”

  “Yeah, I know, sweetie. But what about classes? What about that great college experience you’re having? You know, the whole independence, being-your-own-advocate thing. That stuff. What about that stuff?” I asked.

  “They have Starbuck’s,” Jillian said.

  She had always been a big fan of food, and that hadn’t changed. The weekend errand runs that prompted Jillian’s fast-food riffs hadn’t ended. They’d simply shifted locales. For some of us, dining out is a big sucking sound in the right rear pants pocket. To Jillian, it is a basic human need.

  “Sushi,” Jillian said.

  “What?”

  “I eat sushi for lunch sometimes.”

  “Nobody eats sushi for lunch,” I said. “Especially not college kids. Especially not this college kid, whose parents are paying tuition and for her lunch.”

  “I eat sushi,” said Jillian. “I love sushi.”

  The student union at NKU is food heaven. Seemingly every eatery of her youth has gathered for a convention, right in the middle of campus. This thrills her. Jillian’s best college experience, evidently, is choosing between tacos and fried wontons. I draw the line, however, at sushi. “No sushi for lunch,” I said to my daughter the college gourmand. “Got it?”

  “Okay,” she said. “Chef salad.”

  Whatever.

  “Let’s change the subject,” I offered. “How are your classes?”

  “I love my acting class,” Jillian said. “I’ll show you guys tonight.”

  “Can’t wait,” I said innocently.

  For her first year at NKU, we’d decided to split Jillian’s classes between core courses and electives. She took Dance and Public Speaking one semester, Spanish and Acting the next. The Jillian Daugherty show played well within the confines of Drama 101. That night, we got a brief performance. Jillian bopped around the family room, pointing fingers and pretending to drink a beer. Her professor had asked her to produce a scene with which she was familiar. Uh-oh.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. Jillian held her head with both hands. “I can’t believe it. I just drank six beers.”

  “Wait,” I said to Kerry. “I thought I said no fraternities in the college experience!”

  Jillian was in a bar. At least this is what she said. It could be a gentlemen’s club, as she was making references to women in cages.

  “Bartender!” my 19-year-old daughter yelled. “Another round!”

  Because she operates in a guileless, agenda-free world, this is either acting in its purest form, or it’s not acting at all. We guessed an acting class would be a natural for Jillian. We were right. Whether that’s good or bad we’d begun to wonder.

  “Hey, baby,” Jillian said.

  Baby?

  She was talking with a man in the bar. I could feel the crimp on my face spreading across my eyes and a frown at the corners of my mouth. “Um, Jillian . . .”

  “No, no, Dad. Wait,” she said.

  “Do you want a beer?” she asked.

  “Watching this, yeah, absolutely,” I said. “Maybe more than one.”

  “No, Dad. I’m acting.”

  “Oh.”

  “What’s your name?” Jillian asked the bar patron.

  “What the . . .”

  “Dad. Dad. Stop. Please. I’m not finished.”

  Jillian alternated between holding her head and expressing shock at the six beers she had—“Oh, I can’t believe what I’ve done!”—and hitting on Baby on the next stool. Jillian mentioned something about “Later on.” I wondered what her professor thought of her parents.

  “Where’d you get this stuff?” I asked. “I mean drinking and flirting and, you know, women in cages.”

  “The Disney Channel,” she said.

  “Oh. Okay then. Carry on.”

  She proceeded. It was both alarming and pleasing, like the time in grade school when she had referred to a boy in her class as a “deck.” We were impressed with Jillian’s imagination and ease of expression. The content though . . .

  Jillian ended by leaving Baby at the bar. Thank God.

  “I gotta go home,” she explained, “and sleep this one off.”

  In the car the next morning, Jillian asked me what I thought of her performance.

  “I give it a 70, Dick,” I said. “Good words, but I couldn’t dance to it.”

  Jillian said, “Da-a-a-d.”

  From the backseat, Ryan said, “What does that mean, sir?”

  We arrived at school at the appointed hour. As was my drop-off custom, I announced, “Yet another on-time arrival from Daugherty Airlines!” Jillian rolled her eyes and informed me that the car was not an airplane. Ryan, as was his custom, chanted along with me, knowing it irr
itated his girlfriend. As they exited, I said, “Have a wonderful, fabulous, amazing, incredible, mesmerizing, fantastic . . .”

  They’d be through the doors of the BPE Building before I ever finished. “Day,” I said to myself.

  CHAPTER 25

  Dave Bezold

  We change each other’s lives.

  That’s the beauty of collaboration.

  —KELLE LEMLEY

  Dave Bezold is the men’s basketball coach at NKU. He would have found Jillian Daugherty eventually. People like Bezold are meant for people like Jillian, and vice versa.

  In March 2010, Bezold and I appeared on a sports talk-radio program at a restaurant just off the NKU campus. We were there to talk about the upcoming NCAA tournament. Dave had something else in mind.

  “Do you think Jillian would like to be a manager for the basketball team?” he asked.

  Dave didn’t know Jillian, but he knew of her. He made it his business to know people who wouldn’t let an errant spin of life’s wheel slow them down. He’d been dealing with them his whole life. He married a woman who grew up the same way, on a farm in Wisconsin. Being gracious was inevitable.

  “No guarantees,” he said. “I don’t want anybody feeling like this will be a sideshow. She needs to be able to operate within our family. She has to work. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll at least know we tried.”

  I posed the question to Jillian later that night. Her answer didn’t require a lot of thought. A new set of homeys? Potentially an updated “home dawg” to take Evan Stanley’s place? Jillian gets a trill in her voice when she’s unusually excited. Her pitch is a note or two higher on the scale. “Wha-a-a-t?” she said when I told her the news. “Yes! Yes!”

  I told her nothing was guaranteed. “Coach Bezold said he’ll give you a shot, and see how it goes.”

  “Oh, it’ll go great,” said Jillian. “Don’t you worry about that, Daddy-O.”

  Not long afterward, Kerry took Jillian to Bezold’s office for an interview. The coach explained Jillian’s duties in detail. She would fill water bottles at practice, mop the basketball floor, be in charge of passing out fresh towels to sweaty players. During games, Jillian would get water for players during timeouts and keep the towels coming. She would do whatever the head manager, Danny Boehmker, told her to do.