I retreated to my room. Changing my mind, I headed down the stairs to start on the cleaning job in the shed. Other than the pictures, a few T-shirts, some oldies records, and some sports trading cards there hadn't been much in the attic. I had kept the shirts. They were too big, but I would grow into them. I wondered why Dad hadn't taken them with him when he left. I asked Mom. She said they were shirts that they had bought matching ones of at events they went to together. Dad had left them, saying if she wanted him out of her life, he didn't want any nostalgic reminders.

As I went towards the back door, I heard Seth's voice. "Give him some time, Patsy. He'll come around. Right now he's hurt and confused."

"Confused!" my mind fumed. I felt like puking. "Now he's playing shrink with Mom," I thought.

Seth was the only one who called Mom Patsy. I guess it was his pet name for her. I would have thought she would hate it. I had heard her correct someone who called her Patsy once, saying the name was Patty. But she seemed to like it coming from him. He met her when he had a patient on the psyc floor where she worked. He was a psychiatrist. That's why he could come to the house at 4PM every day. He could set his own hours since he worked for himself.

When I got to the shed and flipped the switch, nothing happened. A little moonlight came in the skylight and large windows in the back, but they were pretty dirty. I don't think anyone had been in the shed since Dad left. In the murky light, I could make out an object with a tarp thrown over it, a table near the window had a saw mounted on it, and a bunch of tools hanging on a pegboard on a wall. There were also plenty of cobwebs. I considered going to get a light bulb, but the lights were long florescent bulbs. We didn't have bulbs like that in the house, so I would have to come out here when it was light outside and could figure out what kind of bulbs I needed.

I headed back to the house. I noticed that Seth's car was gone. That made me uneasy. I hadn't been alone with Mom much over the last few weeks except when we were asleep. When I entered the house, there were no lights on downstairs.

"Good," I thought. "Maybe Mom went to bed."

I considered watching some TV but wasn't much interested. Instead, I headed upstairs, trying to move quietly so as not to alert Mom to my presence before I got to my room and could lock her out.

I needn't have bothered. When I got to my room, Mom was sitting on the bed with the photo album in her lap. Tears were running down her face.

"Hey," I shouted. "Don't be dripping on my book." I pulled it from her hands. "What are you crying about anyway? You threw him out."

"Oh, Wayne." She sounded worn out, vulnerable. "It's way more complicated than that."

"Look," I took the bull by the horns.. "I'm not a baby or even a little kid any more. I can understand complexity. Try me."

"Okay, I'll try." She took a deep breath and stood. "But I need to get something that might help."

She came back with a plastic box, the kind she stores her winter clothes in during the summer. She took out a scrapbook. She sat down on the bench under my window and patted the spot beside her.

Reluctantly, I perched on the edge of the bench as far from her as the small space allowed. She sighed.

"Come over here, Wayne. You need to be close enough to hold one side of this book."

When I didn't move, she looked at me with pleading eyes. Then she added, "This is full of pictures of your Dad. I need it to help you understand our story."

I slid over, but I remained on the edge of the bench. She moved to the edge of her side and opened the album, placing the front in my lap. An 8X10 glossy was on the first page. Dad was sitting on a Harley, grinning. In the background were a bunch of teenage girls in uniforms, hugging schoolbooks. The school building was behind them.

Mama pointed to one of the girls. "That's me the first time I saw your Dad. He gave me the picture later. He told me that he had trouble concentrating on looking dashing for the camera because of me."

"Why was he getting his picture taken?"

"There was a race track and dirt bike track opening on the edge of town. Uncle Clarence was part owner. They were shooting advertising pictures. They had Paul pull up just as school was letting out; figured he would attract an adoring audience. They were right."

Mama turned the page. There were more bike pictures, mostly action pictures. In some Dad was in the air, in others he was crouched low over his bike like a racer. The pictures gave the impression of speed and possibly danger.

"Your Dad transferred to my high school his Senior year. I was a Sophomore. He asked me out a week after the first picture was taken. I said no. His reputation as a 'bad boy' had preceded him. Good boys didn't ride bikes and wear leather jackets."

Mama was talking as though in a trance. I had lots of questions but didn't want to interrupt her train of thought.

"Everyday when I went to my locker, I would find a picture shoved through the slots in the front."

She took one picture out of the little corner brackets that held in on the page. When she turned it over, I saw that there were words on the back.

"Don't listen to rumors," it read.

One by one she took them out so I could read the backs.

"You know you want to ride with me... I'm the one you've been waiting for... What are you afraid of?... Wait 'til you feel the wind in your hair... Life is meant to be lived... Let me cut the apron strings... Freedom awaits."

She turned the page. Centered was a picture of Dad on his bike with Mama on the back. Her arms were wrapped around him, her head on his back. She was smiling tentatively at the camera.

"After two weeks, I gave in." She had a faraway look in her eye and a Mona Lisa smile on her lips. "My parents let me date him, but they forbade me to ride on his bike."She shook her head, her lips pursed. "For the first time in my life, I ignored them. I was firmly under your Dad's spell. We sneaked around. He would pick me up in his car. We'd drive to where he left the bike and park the car. We went to places that I knew my parents and their friends wouldn't be caught dead, places that bikers hung out."

She laughed softly, almost a girlish giggle. "In some ways it was fun, but in other ways I was always afraid." She sighed.

"We were so different. He lived on the edge, pushed the boundaries. For him everything had to be faster, higher, harder, more daring."

"I was the good girl. I didn't break the rules. I was the ultimate conformist. I feared speed, heights, difficulty. I stayed far away from the edge."

I touched the picture. Dad's head was thrown back. His eyes shone, a rakish smile lit his face.

"You can tell. He looks like he's ready to take on the world, but look at you. You're holding on as though trying to draw strength from him. The smile doesn't quite reach your eyes. A hint of fear lurks there. You look like Cinderella wondering who turned her carriage into a Harley."

"Exactly." She smiled. 

She flipped a couple of pages to a prom picture. Mom looked like a princess in her formal gown, jewelry, and glittering heels. Dad looked more like a pirate. He had on dress pants, a fancy shirt and cummerbund. But there was no tie or tails. Instead he had on a leather jacket and the top couple of buttons on his shirt were unbuttoned.

She turned back to the bike picture. She slowly turned the pages letting me look at the pictures of her and Dad that were taken that year.

After the prom, there was a graduation picture of Dad in his gown with his arm around Mom. The next picture was of Dad in uniform.

"Someone like your Dad who craves excitement is probably destined to be a soldier." Mom sighed. "He enlisted for two years right after graduation. I tried to talk him out of it, tried to convince him to try college. He said he could learn more from life than books. He said it was his patriotic duty to join, said the world was becoming a dangerous place. While I finished high school, he joined the navy. He was on the USS Cole when it was bombed in Yemen. He wasn't among the injured, but that attack confirmed his fears that the world was changing and the US was no longer safe."

"He wrote me almost every day. Sometimes it would only be a sentence or two, but it kept me tied to him."

"No way a good girl was going to abandon her man while he was serving his country."

She nodded. "Maybe you can understand the complexities."

She turned the page, showing me pictures Dad had sent her from his postings. Finally there was another prom picture. In it Dad was in uniform and Mom in a princess getup.

"He surprised me." Her smile was tinged with sadness. "He got leave and came home for my prom. I hadn't planned to go, but my best friend convinced me that we could go together. She told me she didn't have a date, that she had broken up with her boyfriend. She said she had already bought her dress and couldn't return it. She wanted 'the jerk' to see that she could have fun without him. They pretended to be on the outs for two weeks before the prom. Paul had written to her and got her to help him surprise me. When he knocked on my door that night, I thought it was Sandra. I almost fainted when I saw him."

"That's the night I was conceived, wasn't it?" I asked. I had long ago done the math and knew there only a few months between their wedding and my birth.

She colored a little. "Probably." Her voice was barely audible, and I had to lean forward to catch her words. "I wasn't expecting to loose my virginity that night. Your Dad was only home for two weeks. He was determined to make the most of it. If it wasn't that night, it was sometime during those two weeks." After a slight pause, she added, "In his defense, he wanted to elope. I refused. I had plans for college. My plans didn't include marriage for at least four more years. I told him we could be engaged but that I wanted a wedding, not a quick marriage by the Justice of the Peace. He bought me a ring the next day."

She reached in the box that was on the floor by her feet. She took out a small marble box and opened it. Inside was a ring, a ruby encircled by tiny diamonds.

"We weren't into traditional." She held the ring up so the ruby reflected the light. "I always preferred colorful gems to diamonds. I kept it after our marriage ended. I thought you might want it for your wife some day."

She handed me the ring. I took it and touched the ruby with my finger. I remembered it catching the sun's rays when we were on the beach. I was really little, probably not more than four.

"I asked you if it was made of blood." I twirled the ring in the light. "Dad said, 'No, it's a dragon's tear. A knight captured it to win the heart of his princess.'"

"And I said, 'You already had my heart. This just sealed it.'"

"What a waste of a tear." I ended the moment with a caustic statement, not willing to let her lull me into letting go of my anger.

After that, there were wedding pictures.

"We got married the day he got home from overseas." Mama rubbed her stomach, caught in the memory. "I was six months pregnant, but I didn't have much of a belly yet. The doctor said that the first child doesn't show early on if you're in good shape. If Paul had gotten home any later, I would have had to wear a maternity wedding dress. I started ballooning a couple of weeks later."

There were pictures of them at a barbecue at Uncle Clarence's house. In one, Mama was leaning against a tree. Dad had his hand on her belly, like he was feeling the baby kick. In the next, he was standing with his back to her, smoking a cigarette. She looked like she was crying.

Mama reached out a touched the picture, as though wiping the tears from her eyes. "The Navy changed your Dad." He voice was full of pain and, perhaps, regret. "He didn't re-up, but there was a restlessness in him, a new recklessness. If 911 had happened a few months earlier, he would have never left the Navy. He probably would have re-enlisted then, but he loved me, and you were on the way..." she trailed off. "Pregnancy changed me. I loved him, but my natural cautiousness returned full force, the protective instincts of a mother, I guess."

She pointed to the picture of Dad with he back to her. "He had just told me that he wanted to take the Blue Ox to the bike rally in Sturgis, S.D. He wanted to buy a sidecar and take me with him, even though I was seven months pregnant. I told him that he was insane. I said that if he loved me he wouldn't go. He told me I wasn't being fair. He said the girl that sneaked out with him in high school would have gone. Finally, he told me he was going. He said it would be his last road trip before he put the Ox out to pasture, so to speak. He said he'd come back and be the husband that I deserved." A tear dripped onto the back of the her hand. She wiped it swiftly across her eyes, as though angry with herself. When she continued, the softness of fond memory was no longer in her voice. "When he came back, he tried to be the man he thought I wanted. He tried to tame his wild side, but more and more often, he drowned his need to live on the edge in a bottle." Mama caressed a picture of Daddy standing with a bear in his hand. She stood in the background, holding me, a resigned, tired look on her face. "And I was so young. I had no idea how to help us find the balance we needed to make our marriage work long term."

Following that were anniversary pictures and a few pictures of the two of them taken on vacations or special occasions.

When there were only a few pages left, she said, "These last pages are going to be difficult for you to look at, Wayne. They were taken by a private investigator before our divorce. They are the reason your Dad signed the papers rather than fighting me."

My heart sank. I was expecting infidelity, but I said stoically, "I told you I can handle complexity."

The last set of pictures was not what I expected. They were pictures of a bunch of prescription bottles with Dad's name on them. Some of the photos had Dad sticking a needle in his arm. The last few showed him taking money from teens and passing them baggies.

I gasped. "You turned him in." I choked out the words. "You put him in jail." I jumped up, throwing the book on the floor. "You could have gotten him some help! Instead you betrayed him."

"No, Wayne." She reached out and grabbed my arm. "That's not what happened."

I wrenched from her grasp. I ran from the room, down the stairs and slammed out the front door. I wandered the streets wondering how I could have so misjudged my mother. Instead of helping my Dad, she had destroyed him.

When I got home, there was an envelope on my bed. It said, "Wayne, please read this."

I wrote return to sender on it. The next morning, I slid it under my Mom's bedroom door.

That day when I got home from school, I went straight to the shed. I scrubbed the back windows. I climbed a ladder and took a pressure washer to clean the skylight. Afterwards, I went inside. Sunlight poured through the newly scoured windows. When I climbed up to take the florescent lights down, I realized that the reason they didn't work was because they were loose. I twisted them into place and tried the switch. They came on immediately, but I didn't really need them while the sun was up. Just climbing up to look at the lights, I had gotten cobwebs in my hair. I took a broom and got rid of the pesky things before I started to explore.

The first thing I did was to take the tarp off of the big object by the left wall. I couldn't believe what I saw. Dad's Harley was under the tarp. The tank was royal blue. Stenciled on it was "Blue Ox." I laughed as I ran my fingers over the lettering. Dad had named his Harley after Paul Bunyan's Babe.

I tried to picture my Dad riding the bike, but all that came to mind were the pictures from the album. I had no memories of Dad on a Harley. I wished I had asked Mom some of the questions I had thought of while she was reminiscing. Why had Dad stopped riding his Harley? If he stopped riding when he hurt his back, wouldn't I have memories of him riding it? Surely a little boy wouldn't forget that his Dad rode a motorcycle. That was too cool to forget. But then, she seemed to imply that Dad had stopped riding the Harley after that last road trip. She said he put it out to pasture, so to speak. I thought she meant he quit taking long trips on the bike. Maybe she meant he quit riding it altogether. Was that part of his taming?

The bike was obviously kept in great shape. I checked. The gas tank was empty and the oil had been drained. Someone had prepared the bike for storage. Two helmets hung from the handlebars. One was royal blue and looked like it had seen some use. The other was hot pink and looked brand new. There were used, but clean, tools in one of the saddlebags on the back. In the other saddlebag was a U.S. map. A route that began in New Orleans, Louisiana and ended in Sturgis, South Dakota was drawn with a marker. There was also a brochure for a sidecar. It showed a man and a woman on a bike with a kid grinning from the sidecar. I wondered if Dad had thought that if he got the sidecar, Mama would agree to a family outing with me in the sidecar. The final item in the saddlebag was the bike manual.

"Wow," I thought. "I bet I can get this thing running."

I checked everywhere on the bike for a key. I looked under the seat. I checked to see if Dad had put it in a magnetic case under a fender. I looked inside the helmets. I practically turned the saddlebags inside out. Nothing.

About that time I heard Seth calling for me. He heated supper for us on the nights he was there. Mom left something in the fridge. I didn't want to get his curiosity up, so I threw the tarp back over the bike and headed to the house.

Every afternoon for the rest of my grounding, I explored the shed. I was searching for the key to the Harley. Surprisingly, the shed was very organized. I couldn't imagine someone who lived on the edge being so orderly. I wondered idly if Mama had been the one to do the organization and keep it that way. I even got up the nerve to ask her.

She grinned. "I'm guilty of providing the organization. I bought the peg board. At a garage sale, I bought the shelf with the jar lids attached so you could screw jars in and out. It was perfect for his nails, screws, and stuff. I helped him set it up, but he kept it that way. The shed was his man cave." She shook her head, a smile still flirted with her lips. "I wasn't banned, but I wasn't exactly welcome there. I pretty much left it to him. When he left, I put the padlock on the door. I haven't been inside since."