Inheriting Jack

by Kris Webb

  Picking up some very small dumbbells, I surveyed the weights corner, which was reflected in the mirror in front of me. About to turn back to my own reflection, I caught a glimpse of a man doing bench presses in the corner and stopped mid bicep curl. I’d noticed him on a visit to the gym a couple of months earlier, but hadn’t seen him again. This was probably not surprising, considering that by no stretch of the imagination could I be described as a regular gym user.

  He was tall and had brown curly hair that was just a bit too long. Mentally adding a breastplate, I decided that he looked like a Roman gladiator in shorts and a T-shirt.

  Realising I was staring, I looked away and rehefted my weights, wishing that they were slightly more significant looking. Glancing back again, I noticed that the object of my attention had the sleeves ripped out of his T-shirt. I’d have to knock a couple of style points off for that one, but would be prepared to let it pass, I decided magnanimously.

  Resolutely keeping my eyes to myself, I finished my weights. Sit-ups next.

  After wiping my red face with my towel and pushing my sweaty hair behind my ears, I headed for the mats, which just happened to be in the corner next to the bench press. Spotting a large ball against the wall, I decided to do my sit-ups across it, something I’d never done but had always thought looked very cool.

  Not looking at the gladiator, who was midway through another set of bench presses, I picked the ball up and moved it to the centre of a mat.

  ‘Now what?’ I muttered. Tentatively I sat on top of the ball and lowered myself backwards. As my head tipped upside down, I felt the ball roll sideways. My body started to follow and I scrabbled with my feet in a desperate attempt to keep my balance. As I did, the ball and I rotated like an inverted crab trying to flip itself over. My body tipped further sideways and I increased the speed of my feet until I was moving quickly in a large arc across the mats. Suddenly my feet lost their grip and I fell off the ball onto my side. There was a resounding thump, followed by a groan as the air was forced out of my lungs.

  I kept my eyes closed for several seconds and tried to breathe. When I opened my eyes, I was looking straight at a pair of legs. Forcing my head up, I saw the gladiator’s head and torso. Despite the ache in my chest, I noted that he had green eyes and slightly crooked front teeth.

  ‘Um . . . are you okay?’ he asked tentatively.

  ‘I’m . . . fine,’ I forced out, dragging myself to a sitting position. ‘Just a little bit winded.’

  Glancing around, I saw that I’d managed to attract the attention of the whole gym. I’d always known that the bad karma I’d generated years ago by laughing at a man who’d fallen off a running machine would come back to haunt me.

  ‘Do you think you can stand?’ the gladiator asked, holding out a hand.

  I seriously doubted it but wasn’t going to miss a chance to hold that hand. I stretched out my arm.

  He hauled me up, depressingly with decidedly more strain than he’d shown while bench pressing.

  ‘Thanks, I’m fine now,’ I muttered, too embarrassed to look at him. ‘Guess I should get back to it,’ I added, while vowing never to go anywhere near one of those balls again.

  ‘Yeah, okay then.’ He smiled and returned to stacking the weights he’d been using.

  Deciding that I’d finish my sit-ups in private, I headed for a mat behind one of the mirrored poles. The sight of a toned woman doing rapid crunches was too much for me though. Abruptly I reversed my steps and headed for the exit.

  Looking down, I rummaged in my backpack for my car keys, wondering what chaos was waiting at home. I stopped as I stood on the back of someone’s heel.

  I saw with horror that it was the gladiator.

  ‘Sorry,’ I apologised, wondering why I was unable to walk and operate like a normal human being at the same time. ‘Miles away . . .’ I volunteered vaguely.

  ‘No problem,’ he said, smiling.

  He walked out the door and turned left. I followed him, my steps slowing as he turned down the small side street where my car was parked. This guy was going to think I was stalking him.

  He stopped next to an old MG and looked up as I passed. I smiled and jingled my car keys loudly in an attempt to show that I had a legitimate reason for being there.

  I opened the door of my car and slid into the driver’s seat. Twisting the key in the ignition, I heard the motor turn over several times without catching. My heart sank. After several seconds I tried again, knowing it wouldn’t do any good.

  ‘Come on, come on, you dog of a car,’ I fumed.

  A car slowed down beside me. I looked out of the window to see the gladiator looking over at me.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine thanks.’ Pasting a confident smile on my face, I prayed that he would drive away. I hadn’t humiliated myself this much in front of anyone since the time I threw up on a date after a particularly turbulent roller-coaster ride. ‘Sometimes it just takes a few goes to start.’

  Either he believed this highly unconvincing lie or, more likely, he had just decided I was beyond help.

  ‘Okay then, good luck.’ With a wave he took off. As I watched his car disappear, I reflected that it was at least twenty years older than mine and yet it had started first go.

  Past experience had taught me that once my car decided not to start, there was no point in trying any further. I needed a mechanic.

  I looked at my watch. Despite Patrick’s confidence, I was worried about leaving him alone with Jack for too long, and arranging a mechanic now could take hours. Walking home and dealing with the car later seemed like the best option.

  I opened the door and stepped onto the road, just as the gladiator’s ancient car came hurtling back around the corner. I cursed under my breath as he pulled up on the other side of the road.

  ‘My mother told me that I was never to leave a damsel in distress,’ he said. ‘Still not having any luck?’

  ‘No, but it’s all right, thanks. I’m going to walk home.’

  ‘Well if you’re going to walk, it can’t be far out of my way. Jump in and I’ll give you a lift.’

  I hesitated for a very short moment. If this guy was a homicidal psycho, he’d done a magnificent job of orchestrating this situation.

  ‘That would be great,’ I answered.

  ‘I’m Tony.’ The gladiator held out his hand as I squeezed into the passenger seat.

  ‘Julia,’ I responded.

  ‘Okay. Where to, Julia?’ he asked as he put the car into gear and moved off.

  I gave him directions and he nodded.

  I tried surreptitiously to sniff my armpit, unsure as to whether I’d remembered to put deodorant on that morning. While I couldn’t detect any BO, I decided I shouldn’t get too close and pressed myself against the car door.

  ‘So, have you been going to the gym for long?’ he asked.

  ‘Well . . . I’ve been a member for about a year but I really wouldn’t describe myself as a regular. I figured if I paid up front for a full year, guilt would force me to go.’ I shrugged. ‘My brother worked out that I now average about eighty-three dollars per visit.’

  Tony smiled. ‘I guess that explains why I haven’t seen you around before.’

  So he hadn’t exactly been ogling me the last time we were there together. I reminded myself that some people did actually concentrate on exercising when they were at the gym and tried to think of something witty and interesting to say.

  ‘What about you? Do you go there often?’

  I could have come up with a worse conversational gambit – but not much.

  ‘Yeah, I try to make it about four times a week. The gym helps take my mind off work.’

  ‘Where do you work?’

  ‘TV53,’ he said, and then added with a wave of his hand, ‘don’t worry, you wouldn’t have heard of it. It’s a community television station that produces about ten hours of programming a day. Not exactly cutting-edge television, but I’m produci
ng, which is what I really wanted to do.

  ‘What do you do?’ he asked as he turned left into my street.

  I always dreaded being asked that question. In my experience, telling strangers you were a lawyer was only a step away from telling them you were an axe murderer.

  ‘I’m a lawyer,’ I mumbled, thankfully spared Tony’s reaction as I gestured for him to pull over outside my house.

  ‘Thanks for the lift,’ I said, and then added impulsively, ‘Would you like to come in for a cold drink?’ The words were barely out of my mouth before I regretted them and I silently willed him to say no.

  He looked surprised and hesitated. ‘Um . . . sure,’ he answered. ‘I’m not due at the studio until this afternoon.’

  What was I thinking? I had no idea what degree of chaos was waiting for me inside the house and Tony certainly wasn’t expecting to have to deal with a confused and upset child.

  As we walked up the footpath, I realised I’d forgotten my key. Not wanting to wake Jack with the doorbell, I led Tony down the side path to the steps at the back of the house. As we stepped onto the deck, I could see Patrick through the open glass concertina doors. He was standing in the kitchen with his back to us in front of a very wide-awake Jack who was strapped in the new highchair Patrick had bought yesterday.

  ‘Okay, my man, here’s what we’re going to do.’ Patrick paused for a couple of seconds, obviously in search of inspiration.

  Jack’s attention span rivalled that of a grasshopper and as we watched he drew a deep breath, preparing himself for a cry.

  Patrick struck a dramatic pose with one foot in front of the other, one arm punching the air and the other held in front of his face.

  Stunned, Jack breathed out again and Patrick slumped into a rapper pose, with his thumb and little fingers extended. He began waving his arms in front of his body and chanting: ‘Yo, Jack. I’ve been hearin’ that you were feelin’ blue and so I figured that this is what we’d do.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said in his normal voice, straightening slightly.

  I looked over at Tony, wondering what on earth he was thinking of this.

  Smiling, he raised his finger to his lips and looked back at Patrick.

  Seeing Jack start to squirm, Patrick turned to the pantry. Rifling through the various cans and packets stacked on the shelves, he extracted a paper box and held it above his head in triumph.

  ‘Okay, my man!’ he exclaimed.

  As he turned back to Jack, I saw he was holding a packet of pancake mix. While I couldn’t remember buying it, it certainly couldn’t have been bought by Patrick. He’d lived without a refrigerator for six months before he moved in with me and thought tomato sauce was a raw ingredient.

  Ripping the top off the box, Patrick handed the plastic packet to Jack as he searched through the cupboard next to the stove. Jack put the bag in his mouth and started chewing on it. Patrick pulled out a bowl and banged it loudly on the bench, causing Jack to jump. He took the saliva-covered plastic bag out of Jack’s mouth and, holding it by one corner, slit the other with a knife and tipped the mixture violently into the bowl.

  ‘Now this here powder is gonna make some dough; just as soon as you can,’ he paused and then added, ‘say yo!’

  Reading the back of the packet, he muttered, ‘Damn, it needs an egg. Who keeps eggs?’

  Opening the fridge door he stared in surprise to see the packet of eggs I’d bought the day before. Flipping back the top of the packet, he took out an egg and tossed it over his shoulder, catching it just before it landed in front of a delighted Jack.

  ‘But first we’ve got to make a crack in this egg.’ He banged it on the side of the highchair and dropped the contents into the bowl, tossing the shell towards the bin in an overhead basketball shot that fell well short of the mark.

  ‘And mix it round with this here . . . spoon.’ His rhyming genius seemed to have momentarily deserted him.

  He held the bowl under the tap for a slurp of water, which I was sure in no way resembled the amount required by the recipe. Picking up a spoon, he proceeded to roughly beat the mixture.

  ‘Doosh, doosh, doosh,’ he chanted, in what I presumed was supposed to be background rap music.

  Patrick’s performance seemed to be working for Jack, who was entranced.

  ‘Now right here is where the good bit is gonna start. We’ll heat this pan and jive on to the next old part.’

  Patrick up-ended the frying pan and rubbed his left hand back and forwards across it as if he was a DJ mixing a record. He put it on the stove top and, while waiting for it to heat up, did a very passable moon walk from one side of the kitchen to the other.

  Tony and I instinctively stepped back to stay out of Patrick’s peripheral vision.

  Touching the pan with his finger, he jumped and stuck it in his mouth. ‘Sssssss,’ he imitated the sound of steam for Jack. ‘Well this damn pan is hot, so let’s get it movin’. We’ll toss on this mix and carry on a groovin’.’

  Holding the bowl up high, he poured some dollops of mixture into the pan. He pulled a spatula from the container on the corner of the bench, waiting a few seconds before sliding it into the pan.

  With a flourish he flung the misshapen pancake into the air in a slow arc which looked like finishing on the floor in the far corner of the room. Snatching the pan off the stove, he dived onto the floor and miraculously caught it.

  Jack let out a high-pitched squeal, never before having witnessed such a performance.

  Standing up gingerly, Patrick felt his chest for bruises and hobbled back towards the stove where he flipped the remaining pancakes very carefully. Breaking one up with a fork, he blew on it for a few seconds and then handed it to Jack.

  ‘Now, Mister Jack, there’s just one rule you must know, and that is if you decide to blow,’ he paused to maximise the effect of the rhyme, ‘my cover with the big J, then, my son, that will surely be,’ he paused again, ‘the last time that you get to eat a pancake while she’s, ah, not here.’

  I was just storing this piece of subterfuge away for future reference when Tony’s mobile phone rang.

  Patrick spun around. Seeing us on the deck, the colour instantly rose to his face.

  ‘How long have you been there?’ he demanded.

  ‘Yo, Jack, I’ve been hearin’ that you’ve been feelin’ blue,’ I chanted with a grin as we walked into the kitchen.

  ‘Oh no. You saw it all?’ he asked with a wince.

  ‘Yo man,’ Tony answered as he switched off his phone.

  ‘Where on earth did that routine come from?’ I asked.

  ‘Bits of it I saw on a Steve Martin movie, the rest I made up as I went along,’ Patrick shrugged. ‘Jack woke about twenty minutes after you left. I was going to take him for a walk, but every time I tried to put him into his stroller he screamed blue murder. I was running out of ideas.’

  ‘Interesting pancakes,’ I said, looking at the weird-shaped and half-cooked objects sitting on the bench.

  ‘Ah, Julia . . . about what I said at the end,’ Patrick squirmed.

  ‘Yes?’ I asked with raised eyebrows.

  ‘Well, I’m just trying to create a bit of a bond here and thought that a shared secret might help,’ he tried. ‘You know how it is – kind of a boy thing.’

  ‘Whatever,’ I said, enjoying myself too much to get into a debate about Patrick’s childcare techniques.

  ‘Anyway, he seems to approve of the pancakes,’ Patrick commented. We all looked at Jack who was trying to chew a huge mouthful of semicooked dough.

  ‘My God! He’s eating it!’ About to explain why a child eating a pancake justified such a level of excitement, I suddenly realised how strange this scene must look. ‘Sorry. Let me start again. Tony . . . This is Patrick and Jack,’ I said.

  ‘Hi,’ he answered uncomfortably.

  I realised that he must think that a married woman with a child had just invited him home for a drink.

  ‘Patrick is my brother and Jack is . .
.’ I struggled for an easy way to explain the situation and decided there wasn’t one. ‘Jack is my best friend’s son – she died in Italy a week ago and he’s living with me now.’

  The words came out in a rush. I felt the tears rise to my eyes and bit my lip hard.

  ‘Oh . . . I’m really sorry.’ Tony shifted from one foot to the other. I was sure he was wishing desperately that he’d tossed me out of the car and kept driving, or better still, never turned his car around in the first place.

  ‘So . . . good gym session?’ Patrick asked, clearly doing his best to change the subject.

  The question reminded me of how much I had humiliated myself. I wondered fleetingly if I would have to change gyms.

  ‘Well, that depends. Ever fallen off a sit-up ball in the middle of a crowded gym?’

  Patrick paused, piece of pancake halfway to his mouth. ‘You didn’t?’

  Beside me I heard Tony choke back a laugh but he couldn’t suppress a smile as I nodded.

  Patrick doubled over with laughter. ‘Haven’t I warned you to leave high-tech gym equipment to the experts?’

  Even Jack seemed to think the whole thing was pretty funny as he continued to stuff pancakes into his mouth.

  Patrick’s laughter had broken the tension.

  ‘What can I get you to drink?’ I asked Tony. As I did, I reflected that unless he felt like sucking down five child-sized tetra juice packs, water was probably the best I could offer.

  Tony eyed the coffee machine on the bench. ‘It’s probably going to dehydrate me for the next twelve months, but what I really feel like is a coffee,’ he admitted.

  Much to my annoyance Patrick gave me the thumbs-up behind Tony’s back.

  I’d long been a vocal opponent of health drinks. The only vegetable juice I could stand was tomato, and that was only when it was combined with vodka and Tabasco sauce. Energy drinks always tasted like seawater to me. Someone who craved caffeine rather than wheat juice was definitely my kind of person.

  I caught myself. I’d known this man about half an hour. During that entire time I had been red of face, sweaty of hair and fully occupied in making a fool of myself. We had a long way to go before a mutual love of coffee could be of any assistance in our being each other’s kind of people.