Dinner at Jack's

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Dinner at Jack's Page 13

by Rick R. Reed


  Jack didn’t answer, not because he couldn’t speak but because he knew if he did, what would come out would be mean-spirited, sarcastic, a way of pushing them both away. And for just this moment, this day, he was fighting mightily against those impulses.

  He simply looked over at his mom and allowed his lip to curl up in just one corner to indicate a smile.

  Beau came in behind her, holding the white melamine tray he’d grown so used to these past few years as Maisie brought him most of his meals on it. He flattened himself against the headboard as the smells danced across the room to linger under his nose. He breathed in, and their rich, savory notes—garlic, red pepper, Parmesan cheese—ignited something, threw a switch in his brain.

  The food not only smelled delicious in an almost transportive way but smelled familiar. Again, Jack couldn’t pinpoint why. Neither could he deny he’d smelled this particular arrangement of aromas at some time in his past—and the association was good. He grasped for it, trying to catch the memory dancing just out of reach in his fevered brain, but he couldn’t catch hold of it. He couldn’t hold it, as it were, in mental hands so he could lift it up, examine it, and place it appropriately in his memory. No, all the smells inspired was a vague nostalgia, as delightful as it was frustrating.

  Beau neared the bed. He set the tray down not on Jack’s lap, but next to him.

  “I have a feeling you’re going to love this,” Beau said softly, staring into Jack’s eyes.

  Jack allowed himself, for only a second or two, to stare back, noticing the rich green of Beau’s eyes, which were the color of moss. He tore his gaze away. Something told him it wasn’t right to stare into another man’s eyes that way. There was something shameful in it.

  Instead he looked down at the tray. On it was a white bowl filled with little pillows of pasta he remembered were called gnocchi. They glistened with olive oil, dotted here and there with flakes of red pepper. The tang of the cheese, although barely visible on the pasta, rose up to Jack’s nostrils to remind him it was there. Next to the pasta was a plate upon which was piled a mound of greens, it too glistening with a light dressing. Jack could smell the lemon in it, acidic, tangy, making his mouth water.

  He gripped his fists together so tightly he could see his knuckles whiten in his mind’s eye. A sudden urge, powerful, rose up, to push the tray very gently, and while smiling all the while—off the edge of the bed.

  No! Why did he want to do such a thing?

  He couldn’t bring himself to say anything, especially not anything like “This smells amazing” or “Oh my God, this looks so good.” But he could fight the impulse to fling the food, a gift really, to the floor. Or at least he thought he could…

  He looked at Beau, then away quickly, to level a glance at his mother, who was all expectancy and hope. Her hands were clasped together, almost as though she were praying. And maybe she was.

  Staring down at the tray at last, he lifted it up and onto his lap. He grabbed the paper towel on its surface and tucked it into his collar. Finally he lifted the bowl up and took in a gnocchi.

  The flavors danced, truly danced, on his tongue, an explosion of savory heat. He closed his eyes and reveled in how this simple bite of food transported him, made him one with his body in delight…and again, weirdly, nostalgia. He forced the latter away and continued eating, without realizing right away he was also keeping his eyes closed.

  When it dawned on him that he was sitting there, gobbling his food down with his eyes shut, his eyelids snapped up. His mother hovered over him, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Beau stood in the background, wearing a subtle but visible smile of triumph.

  Those two ignited a tiny flame of rage within Jack. He glared at them. “Do you think a guy could eat in privacy?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Beau said. He grabbed Maisie’s hand and led her from the room. They closed the door softly behind themselves.

  And Jack found himself eating every bite. And wanting more…

  Damn Beau!

  * * * *

  Later, he awakened in the middle of the night, a little cry still on his lips. He’d been dreaming. Jack tossed and turned restlessly a couple of times, his back aching and his sheets damp from sweat. Although he knew he’d be better off simply trying to close his eyes and reclaim the oblivion of sleep, he couldn’t keep the dream images at bay. They rose up like scenes from a movie to taunt him, to make him wonder what their meaning was.

  The first thing he recalled about the dream was being in court, examining or cross-examining a witness. This was odd enough in itself, because the kind of law Jack had practiced back in Seattle was civil litigation. His junior associate status at the firm hadn’t placed him in an actual courtroom often. He was the guy back at the office, putting in research, organizing, writing, and generally doing the grunt work so the lawyers who were in court looked good.

  But in the dream, he stood at the front of a courtroom, one he was sure he’d never been in. That was not to say, though, that it was a courtroom he hadn’t seen. He had—in a movie. It was the same courtroom in To Kill a Mockingbird. And now that Jack allowed himself to relax a bit into his damp pillow, he recalled that the dream itself, like the movie, had been in black-and-white. And if he didn’t know better, Jack saw himself in the dream dressed like Atticus Finch.

  He had been pacing, looking down at the wooden floor and grasping for his next question.

  Jack shivered when he realized what the question was.

  “Why didn’t you just kill him?”

  Jack sat straight up when he saw, in his mind’s eye, the person on the witness stand. The person, a young man who appeared in full color despite the black-and-white rest of the dream, was dressed in a black Nirvana T-shirt and ripped jeans. Combat boots. He had rosy cheeks and a head of curly blond hair that made him appear angelic.

  So why did recalling that face induce in Jack such terror? So much terror, in fact, that he now found it hard to breathe. He had to fight an urge to hop from his bed and run outside into the cold. He had no idea where he would go once he got out there, but at least it was away from him.

  And why, why, why was he so scary? He was just a kid. Little more than a boy, with a face of disarming and utter innocence.

  But something about remembering that face made Jack seize up inside, made him bite his lower lip to keep himself from screaming.

  The boy, man, whatever, answered him. His voice was hollow, like something you’d hear in some documentary show, where the voice was filtered to make it sound unrecognizable.

  “I didn’t kill him because I wanted to teach him a lesson,” the man/boy said. “If he died, how could he ever learn what I was there to show him?” He laughed. “That would make no sense. I just wanted to make him change his ways. His sinful ways. Sometimes you have to go through a whole lot of darkness to see the light.”

  Jack swung his legs over the edge of the bed, sitting up more fully, his spine ramrod straight. He groped for the glass of water Maisie had left earlier on his nightstand and downed its tepid contents in a single gulp. The words from the dream came back so clearly, as though he could hear them being spoken aloud in his dark bedroom. They chilled him.

  Where had they come from, though? The dream was not a memory. The most time Jack had spent in a courtroom in his limited run in Seattle was as an assistant, second chair, on a case where a woman was suing her plastic surgeon for a botched nose job.

  He had never examined or cross-examined a witness. It wasn’t even much of an aspiration for him.

  So this dream was entirely a fantasy, made up. Yet the blond boy looked so familiar to him, but not in a nice way. In a way that made him want to throw up. Right now, at just the memory of that face, that curly blond hair, Jack could feel his gorge rising.

  To avoid vomiting, Jack forced himself to get out of bed and move to the window. He raised the blind and stood just to the side of his window and peered out. The street in front of his house, which was a busy n
orth-south route heading into Fawcettville’s tiny downtown, usually had lots of vehicles coming and going. But now, in the middle of the night, the road was empty. Jack felt like he was the only person in the world. Outside the stillness felt empty and cold. Dirty snowbanks, glistening as they melted, lined either side of the street. A rusting pickup that had to have been at least twenty years old was parked in front of their house.

  He felt like the quiet—no, the deadness—outside was a reflection of his heart.

  He pressed his forehead against the window’s glass, reveling in the cool it provided. And then he jerked his head away with a little gasp. He remembered another part of the dream. This time it was the same courtroom, but now it was in full color. Rays of sunlight streamed in through the high windows.

  He could see the dream imagery. It was almost slow motion as the perspective, from his own eyes, moved toward the back of the courtroom and a massive pair of oak doors. They swung open slowly of their own accord.

  And there, standing in a shaft of light, was Beau. Snow fell softly all around him.

  What the hell? Jack walked, numb, back to his bed and crawled into it, then pulled the covers up to his neck.

  He grabbed the remote from the nightstand and switched the TV on, turning the volume down to just barely audible. An infomercial about some sort of slow-cooker contraption was playing. Jack sighed and settled in to watch.

  Chapter 15: Daisy Reveals a Hidden Asset

  I was lugging in groceries with Ruth dancing around my ankles, trying her best to trip me, when Daisy emerged from what I had started to call the “big house.”

  “You want some help with those?” She bounded off the porch, black hair flying behind her, wearing only a pair of jeans, a black sweater, and a pashmina.

  “That would be great.” Both arms laden down with reusable shopping bags, I gestured toward the open hatch of the car. “If you’d just get the paper towels and that one bag, you’d save Ruth and me here a trip.”

  Daisy hurried to comply and followed me up the stairs to my garage apartment.

  After setting the bags on the counter, Daisy started for the door. Ruth, of course, wanted to go with her. To prevent this and to be neighborly, I asked Daisy if she’d like to stick around for a cup of tea. Since I’d moved in, I’d only seen the woman a few times, and those were from my window as she went to and from her car, a blue Prius. I appreciated her respect for my privacy, but I did want to get to know my sole neighbor a little better.

  “You sure? It looks like you have stuff to do.”

  “Really? Putting groceries away and then maybe seeing who Marilyn Milian is chewing out today on People’s Court? That stuff? I think I can eke some time out of my busy day to have a cup of tea with you.”

  “Great!” Daisy plopped down on the couch and glared at Ruth, curled up at the other end of it.

  I finished putting away groceries and called over, “If you think you’re going to intimidate her into getting off the couch, you better think again. If anyone intimidates anybody from getting off that couch, I’m sorry to say it will be you moving, my dear.” I smiled.

  “Oh, you caught me. I was hoping I could minimize the smell of dog on me when I get home. The cats will never forgive me. To them, the smell of dog is akin to the smell of another woman on a cheating spouse.”

  I laughed and thought or another man. “What kind of tea do you want? I have green, chamomile, and an awesome Earl Grey with extra bergamot.”

  “Oooh, that last one sounds perfect.”

  I set about making the tea, and in a very short time, we—the three of us—were settled quite comfortably in the living area, sipping tea like civilized folks do. Well, except for Ruth. She never did take to tea.

  After some small talk, Daisy wondered what I’d been doing to keep myself busy. “I mean, besides People’s Court?”

  “Oh, it’s sad how completely you summed up my life.”

  “Really? No job prospects lined up? I hear Walmart’s looking for a night stocker.” She snorted. “I love the idea of being a night stocker. I’m thinking of applying myself, just because it would be fun to say that’s what I did.”

  “I get that. I do sort of have a job, although to call it that is a stretch.” I told her all about my cooking for the Rogers. I went into Jack’s PTSD and how his mother hoped my being there and my food could help him, if not face his demons, at least take a few tentative steps back into the land of the living. “So far, not much luck, but as Karen once sang, ‘We’ve Only Just Begun.’”

  Daisy sipped her tea. I debated whether I should tell her about my past association with Jack. In the light of day, the link seemed weak and insubstantial. Imagining myself telling her about it just made it seem absurd, the stuff of a bad romance movie.

  “It does sounds like he’s wrestling with some form of PTSD.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, that’s exactly what his mother and I think.”

  “Is he seeing anyone for it? It’s a tough condition to treat.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, primarily because the disorder itself is usually a form of self-protection. To get past that, you have to get past how the victim will cling to the disorder in a strange way to keep him or herself sane. That may not make much sense to you or me, being sort of crazy to avoid being even more crazy.” She smiled. “I’m sorry. I’m out of practice.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, back in the day, before I was lord of the manor here at the River House, I was a therapist. Not a psychiatrist but a licensed psychologist. I had a practice back in West Virginia. It’s where I met my husband. I treated him for kind of a similar sort of thing, but he knew why he was stressed. He just didn’t know how to deal with it.”

  “Oh? Why was that?”

  “He was dying. Of AIDS, as I mentioned when we first met.” Daisy smiled, but there was something soft and bittersweet in her brown eyes.

  “I guess it was wrong to say Philip—that was my husband—suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. For him, it was more like pre-traumatic. The trauma being his impending death from AIDS, which he was convinced didn’t happen anymore. And with good reason. The drugs they have today pretty much have wiped out people actually dying from the virus.” She tucked some hair behind her ear. “So we talked, and he knew the drugs were failing him. We got close, and when he said he wanted to come back here to die in the house he’d grown up in, with the view of the river, we agreed I’d come with him.”

  “And you got married?”

  She nodded. “Oh yes. I wore a vintage dress I had found years ago in a used clothing store in Los Angeles.” She yipped out a short laugh, almost like a bark. “It was a minidress, linen, trimmed with lace daisies around the bottom.”

  I took a sip of my tea, but it had gone cold. “But you married him? Was he gay?”

  “As a handbasket. He was all the stereotypes—a hairdresser by trade, he loved Judy Garland and Bette Midler, couldn’t resist a show tune, and even was known for his amazing impersonation of Ethel Merman singing ‘God Bless America.’” She smiled. “Philip was a nelly queen with the softest hands.” She peered into my eyes. “And the softest heart. He was the kindest man I ever knew.”

  I stared down into my tea, wondering. I didn’t have the courage, or the right, to ask what was in my head.

  But Daisy read my mind, I guess. “You’re wondering why we got married. Sure, we could have been close and I could have still been with him, been his friend, his Grace, but marriage? Why?”

  I nodded, feeling slightly ashamed. The answer was there, but I couldn’t quite grasp it.

  “Why does anyone get married?” Daisy nudged my leg with her toe.

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “I loved him. I wanted to be with him. In the end, that’s all that matters.”

  We were silent for a long while. At last Daisy said, “You were telling me about this guy. What’s his name?”

  “Um, Jack. Jackson Rogers. D
o you know him?” Fawcettville was a small town, and sometimes it seemed everybody knew everybody else. Or if they didn’t, there was only one degree of separation.

  Daisy shook her head and laughed. “I’m an outsider, remember? I’ve only been here a few months myself. And I really haven’t met many people.” She sighed. “I’m still not sure I’m going to stay. I probably won’t. But for now, I have enough money from insurance and savings to just enjoy the house and Philip’s memory. And you have to admit, the view of the river is quite calming.”

  Daisy was a more interesting person than I gave her credit for. I wanted to know her better. “Of course. I grew up here…in the East End?”

  Daisy nodded.

  “Anyway, Jack has been a handful for his mom, Maisie. She works over at Rock Springs. Believe it or not, she reached out via Craigslist, looking for someone to cook for her son.” I told her about my prior experience as a chef, both personal and otherwise.

  “She must have a good job over there if she can afford a personal chef.”

  “Oh, it’s not like that.” I told Daisy about our deal. “I think she just wanted to try and get someone into Jack’s life, if you want to know the truth. From what I can see, he doesn’t ever step outside. He stays holed up in his room all the time. And he’s relatively young—our age.”

  “Oh, honey, that is young!” Daisy laughed.

  “Anyway, I’m not sure what I’m doing. The first time I cooked for him was a disaster, but at least this last time, he didn’t throw the food at the wall.”

  I looked to Daisy to see if she was surprised. She wasn’t.

  “Just go slow. If I had any advice, it would be that. Don’t try to force anything.”

  “I get that.”

  “What happened to him? Do you know?”

  “That’s just the thing. No one does. His mom and I think that if he remembers, it might help him start to heal.”

  “And you’re right about that. But I repeat, go slow.” She surprised me then by reaching over and giving Ruth a scratch behind her ears. “You said he at least ate what you made last night. How’d you manage that?”

 

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