The following is part of a serialized story, Everyone Thinks I Dream of Chocolate. You can find the first chapter here.
Trey was always tired. As a maintenance worker, I would see him wander back and forth from the East Wing of the Old Town Mill to the West, then back again. I’ve only talked to him several times while he worked there. He was friendly but this kindness was usually clouded by irritation and exhaustion.
In one of the first conversations I ever had with him, I was taking a smoke break outside. He came out of the garage with a trash bag over his shoulder. As he was doing his job, we got to chatting.
“You know, I was flipping out because my daughters got into my Amazon account and bought some books. Cost $15 dollars and I don’t have that money and I’m trying to get a refund but customer service is putting me through all this bullshit.”
I smiled and agreed with his frustration with the world. I couldn’t relate because I never had kids but I smiled and played along. Still, I thought it was strange. This was a grown man angry about $15 worth of easily refundable money. Even weirder, Amazon makes it very easy to cancel or return orders so I didn’t really understand why he was so frustrated.
Still, it was his life, not mine. I understood that life was hard so I agreed with him all the way through until I finished my break.
Later, I came to realize two things about Trey:
- He was in his late 20’s, raising two daughters who had different mothers.
- To cope with the first point, he was always high.
“Trey? Good kid but he needs to wear a fucking condom,” Dick once said.
Sometime after that first conversation, two girls started showing up at the Old Town Mill almost every day. It was the middle of summer and school had finished for the year. The Mill was a popular place for the local kids to loiter and I figured that was their MO.
Then, one day, I was in the kitchen cleaning the floors when I heard some yelling. I ran to see what it was all about and saw Trey yelling at the two girls. His pupils were bloodshot, a combination of weed in his body and sweat dripping into his eyes. The girls were looking down. They looked to the side, with an awkward half-smile, marking their guilt and the tension of the moment.
I’m not exactly sure what they did but I didn’t stick around to find out. I had enough experience dealing with stressed parents to know it is never a good idea to help when they were in this zone. I went back to the kitchen.
Several weeks later, on a lazy Wednesday. I heard the drumming of quick, loud footsteps coming from the eatery. It reminded me of an elementary school gym, the way that the sound carried throughout the Mill in a thunderous echo. I went to investigate and saw Trey’s daughters running around. They were probably playing tag, weaving between tables, booths, and chairs. I had just cleaned the space after the lunch rush. It was organized when I left it and now it was in disarray again.
“Girls! Girls!”
They both stop and look at me.
“You guys can’t be playing in here, ok?”
They both give me a nod.
I was about to leave when I had a thought. I looked around for a moment, then asked,
“Where’s your dad?”
They both shrugged their shoulders.
I waited with them for a couple of minutes. I made sure to switch my gaze between the three different entryways into the eatery. I checked my watch. 5 minutes had passed. I had to finish my current set of chocolate-dipped peanut butter crackers or the batch would be ruined.
I also didn’t want them to just sit there in the eatery waiting for their dad. As a maintenance guy, Trey could be anywhere in the building, even the places that very few people knew about. That’s when I remembered the first conversation I had with Trey.
“Hey, do you guys like to read?”
They both gave me a nod and a smile.
I walked them over to the Book Store and told the worker what was happening.
“Do you mind letting them hang here until Trey comes back?”
She agreed.
The Bookstore is right next to the chocolate shops so it was still in my sight. I went back to my chocolates, making sure to keep an eye out for Trey.
10 minutes later, I spotted him enter the Eatery from the back patio.
“Hey,” I called out. “They are in the book store!”
He rushed past me as I was taking off my apron. When I caught up to him, he was grabbing them by the wrist.
“I told you to stay exactly where you were,” he said.
“We did.”
“No, you did not. I was looking all over for you.”
“Trey,” I said, “I told them to wait here for you.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Well we couldn’t find you and I knew you would make your way to the chocolate store eventually.”
“Why are you telling my kids what to do? I could see them just fine from the roof!”
I didn’t tell him that he couldn’t have seen them because they were inside running around in the eatery. I felt there was no point in pushing the issue.
“Sorry, man.”
“It’s fine. Just please don’t tell my kids what to do. I got it. Alright?”
I nodded. He took his daughters to the end of the hall and turned the corner.
The next week, I was making a set of chocolate-dipped pretzels when Dick came back from a smoke break.
“I talked to one of the maintenance guys. Apparently, they had to let Trey go.”
“What? Why?”
“His daughters. The deal was that they could come as long as he was doing his job. Seems he couldn’t cut it.”
I still wonder if my intervention caused Trey to lose his job. This was not the first time that my attempts to help someone backfired, especially if there are kids involved. It makes me wonder if parenting and childhood are just cycles of attempting protection and inevitable futility. Luckily, Chrissy and I have no interest in having kids. Our biggest argument is whether or not we want to get a dog. Personally, I don’t even want to be bothered by the prospect of raising a pet. My problems are simple and I would like to keep them that way. Unfortunately for Trey, his problems were anything but straightforward.
It has been over 2 years since I last saw Trey. I hope wherever he is now, whatever he is doing, his life has gotten simpler. I hope his daughters, probably in middle school now, are old enough to take care of themselves a little more. I hope that at the very least, $15 is not enough to set him off into a stress-induced panic.
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To Be Continued…
Danger Wonka 