"Come over to my house." I said, holding my ground, using my adult voice.
"What?"
"Talk with me." I offered. "Sit down with me and tell me why you think I should stay away from your daughter. Why you think you know better than she does what's good for her. There has to be a reason. You can tell me what it is."
"I can tell you the reason right now." He said. "It's because you are a lowlife scumbag who is only after one thing."
I held his gaze. "No." I said. "I'm not."
"You are." He insisted. "She told us how you were. About the girls at school. Well you are not going to add her to your list. You are not going to destroy her life."
"So you thought you would do it for her?" I asked.
"How dare you…"
"Did you tell her that you would only pay for college if she stays in Spokane?" I asked him.
"If that's what it takes to keep her away from you." He said.
"Think about that Mr. Blackmore." I said. "Step outside yourself and think about what you're saying. Nina wants to be a doctor. She's geared her entire high school curriculum towards getting into college and med school. There is no med school in Spokane. You are talking about taking away her dream just to keep her away from me. Does that sound like a person who is acting in his daughter's best interests? Does that sound like the workings of a rational mind?"
"You will lose interest in her by then." He said. "Once you don't get what you want from her…"
"I already have what I want from her." I said. "I have her love. And I will not lose interest in her."
"You don't have the slightest idea what love is." He spat. "And neither does she. You're just trying to make her think you love her so she'll give in to you."
"Believe me Mr. Blackmore." I assured him. "I know what love is. Your daughter has shown me. We're not ordinary teenagers and I am not the way you think I am. Look at me." I told him. "Do I seem like a typical teenager to you?"
He stared for a moment, his face showing the first signs of confusion, his mouth open to make a reply. Finally he said, "No. You don't."
"Come over to my house." I offered again. "Talk to me like one adult talks to another. You're not afraid to do that, are you? You're not afraid that you might be wrong?"
"Afraid?" He asked. "Boy, there is absolutely nothing about YOU that can scare me."
"Then prove it." I challenged. "Come over to my house. We'll have ourselves a little talk, like men, and if you can convince me that I'm hurting Nina in any way, then I'll leave her alone."
"And why should I believe you about that?" He wanted to know.
I shrugged. "What have you got to lose?"
He continued to look at me for a long time as his mind worked over what I'd said. Finally he nodded. "Okay Son." He said. "I'll meet you at your house and we'll talk. And when we're done talking I expect you to keep your slimy self away from my family."
I smiled. "Well that's a start Mr. Blackmore. I trust you know where my house is?"
When we arrived at my house it was of course empty. I sat Mr. Blackmore down on the couch and excused myself for a moment, going into the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator and took out two of the beers from the twelve-pack that Tracy had bought for me. They had been in just long enough to be of the proper drinking temperature.
I carried them into the living room and handed one to Nina's Dad. He looked at me strangely.
"As I recall from the days when you liked me," I told him, "You're partial to a cold brew when you get home from work."
"You think I'm going to be impressed by your possession of beer?" He asked.
"I'm not trying to impress you." I told him. "Just talk to you, one adult to another. I've found that adults talk better, looser, over a few beers. Don't you agree?"
He looked at me, a full-blown version of THE LOOK. "You don't seem like a teenager at all." He whispered.
"Let's pretend there's no age here Mr. Blackmore." I said. "We're having a serious discussion with long-term ramifications." I popped open my beer and sat down in my Dad's favorite chair. "So for now, let's just be Bill and Jack, two adults talking over an important subject."
Mr. Blackmore seemed confused by my words. I sensed a softening of the barrier he'd thrown up and felt I'd finally broken through. And then his expression returned to one of angry determination. He shook his head violently. "You're good Son." He told me, accused me, "That's what I need to keep reminding myself about people like you. You can seem so damn nice, so damn reasonable, so damn adult." He stood back up, setting the beer down on the coffee table. "You took me in once when you first started hanging around my daughter. Shame on you. But you almost took me in twice just now. That's shame on me." He began heading for the door.
"Mr. Blackmore." I said reasonably.
"You're not going to nice your way back into our house." He said. "Stay away from Nina."
"There's someone like me in your past, isn't there?" I asked him.
He stopped suddenly, jerking his head towards me. "What?"
"Tell me what happened." I said. "Why do you feel so strongly about me? It has something to do with the reason you came home right after the war but didn't marry your wife, who was your high school sweetheart, until 1951, doesn't it?"
He was now staring at me, agape.
"Doesn't it?" I prodded.
"Who have you been talking to?" He asked me, horrified.
"Just my own common sense." I assured him. "Nina supplied me with the dates and I was able to draw conclusions on my own. Your reaction to me is irrational Mr. Blackmore. You've focused on an aspect of my personality, my success with girls, and you won't hear anything else, won't listen to your own daughter even. Something happened to you and your wife after the war but before you got married, didn't it? Something to do with a womanizer who talked sweet?"
He continued to stare in disbelief.
"Tell me about it." I repeated. "Like I said, if you can convince me that I'm hurting your daughter, I'll leave her alone."
"You want to hear about it?" He asked me, glaring.
"Yes." I told him. "Sit down, open your beer and tell me about it. I'm a good listener."
"All right Son." He said. "You want to hear why I don't like you, why I won't let you near my daughter, I'll tell you." He sat down on the couch again, making no move to pick up the beer.
"Mary and I WERE high school sweethearts, as you said. We met when I was a junior and she was a freshman. That was in 1942 right here in Spokane. Mary was the most beautiful, sweetest, most desirable girl I'd ever met in my life. I could talk to her about things I couldn't talk to anyone else about. I fell in love with her right away, maybe even before our first date. And she fell in love with me too."
I nodded, not speaking, picturing Mary, a.k.a. Mrs. Blackmore, as she must have been back then. She'd probably looked and acted a lot like Nina.
"By the time I started my senior year we were an "item" as we said back then. Oh, how I loved her, young man. I couldn't wait until the day when we were finally married. We were going to have a church wedding with hundreds of guests and then buy a house near the falls." He shook his head sadly. "Things didn't quite work out that way."
"I have my share of blame to take for the way things turned out. If not for me going off to fight in that stupid war…" He trailed off.
"Something happened why you were at war?" I asked.
He glanced up at me for a second, not answering my question. He sighed and finally picked up the beer bottle. He twisted the top off and took an enormous drink.
"Everyone wanted to go to war back then." He told me. "The soldiers were gods. They were fighting for this great arsenal of democracy we live in. Whenever you went to the movies and saw the newsreels you saw our fabled soldiers fighting those godless Krauts and Japs. You can't imagine how glorious they made war look."