George Hartmann Box Set Read online

  I’m fiddling with a loose switch plate cover in the dining room as I wait for the movers. My lovely wife is waiting in the kitchen, propped up on the kitchen island. Poor Ali has been a trooper. I’m told it’s not wise to move a pregnant woman. Goes against the nesting instinct and all. She isn’t due until the end of February, but she looks like she could pop any day now. Apparently, that happens once you’ve had a couple of babies and the ligaments are all stretched out. She says the weight of the baby is hurting her back sometimes, too.

  I find my wife even more attractive when she’s pregnant. Which means I find myself having to take a breath and remember that she might be uncomfortable before I try and jump her bones. Like right now, as she bends over to pick up a water bottle that rolled off the counter and she lifts her tight, muscular backside up into the air pointed in my direction. I’m not sure if she’s doing it on purpose or if she just so happened to angle towards me, but in a warm rush, I’m instantly ready to unzip my trousers, peel down her curve-hugging jeans, and place my hands firmly on her hips while sliding inside her from behind. If the boys weren’t awake and in the next room, that’s exactly what I’d do. She’d feign protest for a minute, saying things like how it’s the middle of the afternoon and the blinds haven’t been hung and anyone could walk up to the window. But then I’d wrap my arms around her, and slowly move my hands along the surface of her skin upwards under her blouse until they found her soft breasts and firm nipples. She’d melt into me and moan with delight. I could have Alessandra Davies every single day and never get enough. For now, though, I’ll have to wait.

  Ethan and Leo are playing on the living room floor with tiny trucks from their toy bags. “Vrooom, vrooooom,” I hear cheerfully echo against the empty walls. Those toy bags are the ticket. Ever the practical one in our relationship, I had the idea when Ethan was a baby. We used to bring a toy or two with us when we left the house, but he’d always get tired of the same old same old pretty quickly. While problem-solving, I thought about the different kinds of gear required when conducting a military operation. I figured we should take the same approach to mobile entertainment for our little one: plan way ahead for every imaginable possibility. Ali was skeptical at first, and she laughed while watching me pack the little bag with what she considered way too many unnecessary options. Rolling toys, chewy toys, building toys, and colorful toys all got a spot. The very first time we used the bag at a restaurant, it worked like a charm. Ethan was about ten-months old and we’d gone out to a waterfront place on the Potomac to celebrate Uncle Liam’s birthday. We knew it would be loud and busy and full of adults who wouldn’t want to hear a baby fussing, so we came prepared. When Ethan got tired of a toy, we’d simply switch it out for a different type. If he was tired of the rolling car, we’d put it back in the bag and pull out a colorful board book instead. When that got boring, we’d hand him a few connecting beads to work with. He stayed occupied, and quiet, for the entire four-course meal with the exception of a little happy babbling which won the hearts of the restaurant staff. Good baby. And good daddy, if I do say so myself. We all need something to occupy ourselves with. I get it.

  Our custom home on a hill with unobstructed views of Cayuga Lake has been built from scratch and fitted with a cozy, craftsman-style door I really dig. The kind made out of solid wood with three rectangular windows at the top. Ali’s idea. Gooseneck lanterns sit dutifully on either side, ready to light the way home. There’s a wreath in the back of our SUV she wants me to hang. It’s a looker -- golden magnolia, lush cedar, vivid blue thistle, and tender eucalyptus, according to the item description-- handmade by a company out of San Francisco. She had the company make and ship a fancy wreath to us in D.C. ahead of time so we could immediately hang it on our new door. I’m not kidding when I tell people she must have been some sort of designer in another life.

  We bought the house a couple of months ago when I first accepted the new position and we decided to make the move north. Even though the place had already been partially completed at that point, I couldn’t imagine how we were going to whip the rest of it into shape from a distance. The first builder had gone out of business last summer due to a death in his immediate family, and the house had been sitting partially completed for several months. The hardwood flooring wasn’t installed yet, a defect in the fireplace made it unsafe, and it looked like there might have been a water drainage problem in the front yard. Luckily, Mom jumped in and has been great overseeing the necessary construction projects for us. I suppose that’s one major bonus that comes along with living near your mother. She found a builder with a specialty in mimicking original historic details from the local area, and boy, those folks are worth their weight in gold. The work was done on time and the place looks fabulous. I can’t wait to get everything in and unpacked.

  The house is big at more than seven thousand square feet, and luxurious. It’s by far the nicest home we’ve ever lived in. There are six bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms. There’s a large area in the finished basement that we’ve made into a game and media room, and an amazing screened porch on the back that looks out over the lake and surrounding woods. There are three total fireplaces: one in the great room, one on the screened porch, and one in our master bedroom which shares a wall with the master bathroom and can be accessed from either side. Ali can’t wait to get into the clawfoot tub with a glass of Moscato and listen to cinders crack and pop in the fireplace. It’s not like I’ve ever really been poor, but this is a whole new level. Even our street name, East Shore Drive, sounds rich.

  My wife grew up wealthy in Manhattan. I doubt this house feels out of the ordinary for her. Her dad, Roderick Davies, is a famous playwright from London. Roddy has had more hit Broadway shows than I can count. On top of writing and directing plays, he somehow finds time to teach drama at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Ali’s mom is no slouch either. Marjorie Dyer plays a mean viola in the New York Philharmonic. She has proudly sat first chair as Principal Viola for the better part of two decades, and she doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Marjorie studied at Juilliard, where she met and married Roddy when he was a young visiting professor in the seventies. Together, those two provided Ali and her brother Nicky with the best New York City had to offer. To their credit, though, the kids are grounded in a way that doesn’t always happen for rich kids in the city. They’re good people.

  My dad, on the other hand, grew up dirt poor in a little village called Bannersville in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. His parents got pregnant with him at their high school prom and tried to make a go of it. Uncle Liam came along not even eighteen-months later, but by that time the young family was already falling apart. Their dad took off for a stint in the Army, but never returned to the kids’ lives when he returned to American soil. Their mom was often strung out on prescription meds she stole from the understaffed hospital where she worked as a pharmacy clerk, and she wasn’t caring for my dad and his brother properly.

  When Dad was three and Liam was two, their mom fell completely apart and abandoned them in heartbreaking fashion. Would you believe she left those boys alone in their upstairs apartment while she mailed a letter to an older couple she knew? She later said she felt certain they’d take the boys in, but still. What if they hadn’t? What if the letter had been lost in the mail? It’s hard to not be angry with her, but I assume she wasn’t even in touch with reality at that point. Dad and Liam were left wearing nothing but pajama bottoms in the winter, and they spent nearly three days alone before Grandad and Grandmother, as I called them, came to the rescue. Thank God it was mid-week when the letter was in transit. If it had been over a weekend, I’m not sure the boys would have made it. And thank God they didn’t figure out how to unlock the door because they could have wandered downstairs and into the busy downtown street outside. Dad was found with peanut butter crusted on his face and shirt. He had somehow opened the jar, or maybe his mom had opened it before she left. It looked like he had tried to feed some peanut butter to
Liam as well, but no one knows for sure what the boys ate or drank during their three days alone. Both were dazed and withdrawn when they were rescued. They had, of course, soiled their pants multiple times, and because the wood furnace used to heat the apartment had burned out long before help arrived they showed early signs of hypothermia. EMTs who responded to the scene said it was one of the most upsetting things they’d ever seen.

  Grandad and Grandmother Marks raised Dad and Liam as their own. They were some of the kindest, most forgiving people I’ve ever met. They even allowed Dad and Liam’s biological mom to visit every now and then when she got up the money to travel north from her sister’s house in Maryland. But they were urgently, painfully poor. Both were in their late fifties when they took the boys in, and they were barely getting by themselves. They’d had one biological son, Benny, who was a young adult at that point, and they’d never imagined having to support and care for two toddlers during what would have otherwise been their retirement years. They scraped together what money they could to make it work, mostly relying on social security disability benefits for a logging injury Grandad had sustained, and then later social security retirement benefits. They raised their own livestock and grew their own food, but there were times when it didn’t stretch and they all went hungry. Other times, they couldn’t pay the electric bill and were cold. They were too proud to ask for help.

  I sometimes think about them and what it must have been like, especially because Ethan and Leo are about the same age now as Dad and Liam were when their mom left. What a completely different world that must have been. Liam’s the only one around to tell the stories anymore, and he was so young when it happened that he doesn’t really remember the three days spent alone in the apartment with Dad. What he does remember is how close he and Dad always were. They bonded tightly. Because no one else understood what they’d been through. And because they were the only blood relatives each other knew.

  The minute Dad was old enough to get out and get busy on his own, he did. When he was seventeen, he saved up money from his part-time job at the service station in Bannersville and bought a train ticket to Brooklyn. He loved Grandad and Grandmother dearly and hated to leave them and Liam, but he had work to do. He made it his life’s mission to earn a fortune he could pass on to his family so that none of his people would ever have to suffer in poverty again. His determination must have shown because as soon as he stepped off the train he walked into the Food Center next to the elevated train tracks on Bushwick Avenue and secured a full-time job. He made a friend right away, too, in the owner’s son. Tommy Macca agreed to let Dad stay on the couch at his apartment until he could find a place of his own, and the two of them ended up long-time buddies. When Dad opened his own store in the borough five years later, Tommy was one of his first employees, followed by none other than Liam Hartmann himself. By the time Mom and Dad got together and I came along, Dad was a successful businessman with a chain of thriving local department stores called Hartmart. He was careful with money and we lived frugally. I never had to worry about having the basics taken care of, but I’m pretty sure my childhood was very different than what my wife was living on the other side of the East River. No matter how successful Dad was, I think he held onto the fear that it could all be taken away at any moment. It’s hard to completely shake the kind of extreme poverty he experienced as a kid. I think Dad’s childhood also made him hyperaware of everything happening around him. He had to be in order to survive. And I think he somehow passed that on to me. I’ve always scanned every environment I’ve stepped into. I notice all the fine details. It’s a skill which served me well in the Air Force.

  Mom grew up comfortable enough in Ithaca, but for some reason, she seems to be morally opposed to being wealthy. I can’t quite figure it out. John Wendell was a salesman for the New York, Auburn and Lansing Railroad, the only line to operate in Tompkins County. He was a careful saver and did more than okay for his family through smart investments over the years. He and Grandma were able to pay for Mom to attend nursing school up in Syracuse, no problem. And Mom makes a respectable living as a R.N. all on her own. She has for years. Dad left her a lot of money, too, but you wouldn’t know it. She lives in a simple little house and chooses cars based on what looks least ostentatious. Her latest pick: an older model Buick Century. I won’t get started on her social justice warrior activities. Her heart’s in the right place, but I think she goes overboard in sympathizing with the oppressed and demonizing the military and those in power. We agree to disagree on a lot of things.

  The movers are here. Finally. I’m not going to make it over to Cornell today, but at least our things have arrived. I can see eight or ten guys huddling outside on the front stoop wearing nothing but t-shirts and jeans with long sleeved thermal shirts underneath. No coats. They look freezing cold now as the snow falls hard around them and their breath fogs up the afternoon air, but I’ll bet they’re anticipating the physical work ahead and know coats would just get in the way. I, for one, sweat my ass off when physically exerting myself if I’m bundled up too heavy. Then I get a chill from being all wet and sweaty in the cold air, and it ends up worse than if I had suffered through being cold in the beginning. These are practical guys, apparently. I can respect that.

  “Come in, folks! Can I offer you some hot chocolate or coffee?” I hear Ali say as the group of them streams through the front door and the guys begin to take off their hats and gloves. It’s probably good we haven’t hung that wreath yet anyway. It would get bumped and banged around. And I know what you must be thinking. Yes, Ali had me haul our espresso machine with us in the Tesla, along with some handmade mugs featuring snowflake lace detailing, I might add, in order to make warm drinks for our guests. I mean, hey, these people are carrying our worldly possessions through the cold and snow and over the slick ground. She says it’s the least we can do. They smile and seem to appreciate the gesture. Who wouldn’t smile at a beautiful woman handing them a warm beverage on a snowy day? I have that wife. She is a treasure. They sip and make small talk before getting down to business.

  It's remarkable, to reflect on the fourteen years me and Ali have spent together. We’ll be celebrating another wedding anniversary this summer. Sometimes it feels like just yesterday that we met and like the world is whizzing by too fast. Other times, I’m convinced we’ve known each other forever and that there's no real hurry.

  Our story began with good old Uncle Liam who happened to know Ali from a French cooking class he and his wife Estella took together in Arlington. Ali was a participant in the class, too, and they all got to know each other over the course of the three-month curriculum and then stayed friends afterward. As Ali recounts it, Liam once told her that she absolutely had to meet his nephew, big George Hartmann. “You’re both knuckleheads,” Liam told her with a grin. Looking back, I think that meant neither one of us much liked to follow directions or the beaten path. Which is a good thing, in my book.

  Liam and I served together in Germany and then again in D.C. around the time Ali was also in our nation’s capital attending law school. It was all very patriotic. As the story goes, Liam had told Ali just a few sparse details about me, but they were enough to pique her interest. He told her how I was so tall I parted a crowd as I walked, how I was from New York like her, and how I must have lived near her apartment building because there was a donut shop down the street and I often brought in a box of their warm, gooey goodies for my colleagues when I was running late. Guilty as charged. Uncle Liam told her I was smart, and that the Air Force trusted me with important jobs. He, of course, wasn’t at liberty to go into any more detail about what those important jobs involved. Ali said she’d love it if Liam would arrange a meeting.

  Fast forward two years. Yes, two whole years. Uncle Liam dropped the ball. Ali hadn’t met me and still wanted to. Liam hadn’t even mentioned her to me at all. I know, right?

  Ali bumped into Liam in a grocery store parking lot one day and he explained how I was up for reen
listment and had to make a decision which might send me overseas for the next few years, effective pretty much immediately. “Come on, Liam,” Ali said. “At least connect us before George leaves town so he and I can have lunch together.” This was before the days of easy social media access to everyone you wanted to look up, and besides, I kept a low profile online due to the top-secret nature of my work in the Air Force. Liam assured her he’d make the connection.

  Two weeks later, Ali was sitting at a table alone, studying for law school exams at the food court in Patriot Park mall. Odd choice, as I pointed out, but it was Christmas time and she had always loved the festive environment at the mall that time of year. Kids were all smiles riding the big, pretty carousel nearby, and the smell of freshly baked cookies filled the air. The music coming over the loudspeakers had Ali humming Have a Holly Jolly Christmas when she noticed me. I eased down at the table next to hers and our eyes met. As she tells it, I was a cool drink of water. I don’t know about all that, but she says she loved my lush head of dark hair and friendly blue eyes. She remembers thinking right away that I had a family-man vibe about me and that I was surely already married.

  She was radiant. Like a beam of light. Her golden-brown hair fell just below her shoulders and framed her elegant long neck and her jawline. I thought she was out of my league. I was smiling. A lot. And I’m pretty sure it was a goofy smile, too. I couldn't seem to stop myself, even though I was trying hard to play it cool. I had zero game. Ali jokes with me now about how I was trained by the United States government to withstand torture in a prisoner of war situation, yet I came completely undone when I first saw her. She always asks how that even makes sense, and I don’t have a good answer.

  “Hey,” I managed, nodding in her direction while grinning from ear to ear.

  “Hey, how are you doing?” she said back, warmly.