Dinner at Jack's

by Rick R. Reed

  “Thanks.” I took a bite of my own soup and had to admit her description was both flattering and spot on. Throughout the pre-dinner drinks—vodka and tonic for Maisie and me, beer for Dad—I’d had to resist the urge to ask Maisie about Jack. I didn’t want to upset her.

  “What the hell’d you put in this, anyway?” Dad asked.

  Despite the phrasing of the question, I could tell he was enjoying the soup. He was almost finished with his bowl when Maisie and I had barely taken a couple of spoonfuls ourselves.

  “It’s just carrots cooked in chicken stock…” And I proceeded to tell him how I’d made the soup, not that he was really that interested. Gourmet cooking for Dad was heating a Marie Callender chicken pot pie in the microwave and adding canned Parmesan to the mix when it was done.

  “I didn’t know you were such a good cook, son.”

  Maisie rolled her eyes. I noticed how she covered his hand with hers. “Niles, honey, you know Beau’s a chef. How could you not know?”

  She removed her hand to take another spoon of soup, and I realized I could have an ally, a bridge if you will, in this woman.

  “Well,” Dad grumbled. “He never cooked for me before.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t listen to him, Maisie. He’s full of it. Even growing up, I was always experimenting in the kitchen.”

  “Yeah,” Dad snickered. “Like that time you made pancakes and were waiting around for them to brown through to the top?” He snorted.

  I had to laugh too. “In my defense, Maisie, I was only ten. I shouldn’t have been using the stove unsupervised.” I cast a glance over to Dad.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know where your mother was.”

  We finished the soup, with Ruth keeping a careful eye on us the whole time. I told her she wouldn’t have liked this anyway.

  I stood up to clear the table. It was time to get the fish ready. Ruth mentioned the tuna was what she’d really been waiting for. She said the smell of the fish on the counter had been driving her “all kinds of crazy.”

  Wisely, I didn’t answer her. But we did exchange a knowing glance.

  I began heating the cast-iron skillet and massaging the tuna with a bit of olive oil. I sprinkled it with coarse gray sea salt, fresh-cracked black pepper, and as an improvisational touch, coated it with some black sesame seeds I had in my spice cupboard.

  The plates looked perfect—good enough to serve in the finest restaurant. The slices of tuna atop the shiny greens looked both beautifully composed and delicious. I served Maisie first, and she oohed and ahhed over her plate. Then Dad, who told me his fish “wasn’t done.”

  “What is this? Sushi?” he asked.

  “Niles…” Maisie cautioned.

  “Just taste it, Dad. Trust me.”

  I poured us all some wine, and we dug in. We hadn’t gotten very far when there was a soft rap, barely audible, at the door. We all stopped talking.

  I looked over to the door’s window. Jack’s blue-eyed gaze met mine.

  “Oh my God.” Maisie set down her fork. “I told him he could come when we were getting ready to leave, but I didn’t think he’d actually do it. I tell him he’s welcome to join me lots of places, but he never says yes. He must have walked here.”

  Dad poked me. “Well, don’t just sit there! Let the man in.”

  “Right,” I mumbled and hurried to answer the door. Jack wore a pair of khakis, running shoes, and a blue button-down Oxford cloth shirt. Whether he knew it or not, the clothes reminded me of our date. His hair glistened, shiny and freshly washed. He’d pulled it back into a ponytail. Even his beard was trimmed.

  “You look great.” I stood back to allow him to enter. “I’m so glad you could come.” I smiled.

  Ruth rushed over to sniff him, and Jack peered down at her. I had no idea how he felt about pets, nosy, snorting dogs especially, but he immediately dropped down into a squat so he could come nearly face-to-face with Ruth and scratch her behind the ears. “What a sweetie,” he cooed. “Beau never mentioned you.” He gave her head a vigorous rub. “He’s been keeping you a secret.”

  Ruth flipped over, paws in the air, ready to have her belly rubbed. I had never seen her warm to someone so quickly, even if her pose was obscene. I wanted to joke that she learned the pose from me but didn’t know how that would go over with Dad. Correction—I did know how it would go over with Dad, which is precisely why I bit my tongue.

  “You are just the cutest little girl in the world, aren’t you?” Jack asked her, and I could hear her respond, “You got that right, handsome.”

  “Well, come on in and have a seat. I’ll get you some food.” I gestured toward my chair and made a place for him by clearing away my place setting. There really wasn’t room for four at the table, but I was happy to lean against the sink. My most profound cooking lessons, in a way, had come from my mother, and the first of these was that the cook hardly ever sat down.

  I got him settled at the table with a fresh place setting, a cup of the carrot soup, and a plate of the ahi and salad. He smiled up at me as I served him, and it sent a little spark coursing through me. Our gazes met and held for what seemed like a long time, so long in fact that I felt heat rise to my cheeks.

  I must have been exaggerating the length of that visual connection, because it seemed like neither my father nor Maisie noticed it, as they continued to eat and happily chat away about the latest episode of Scandal.

  I smiled because of the intensity of Jack’s and my eye lock, but also because I noticed the same thing going on with Dad and Maisie. It was sweet.

  And in its own way, kind of miraculous.

  “This looks wonderful,” Jack pronounced. “You’re really good with fish—even canned tuna.” Jack laughed.

  “Oh, a smartass,” I whispered and thought—You really are making strides, aren’t you? But what does it mean? Are you really getting better? Or is this simply a side of you I’ve yet to see?

  Jack touched my hand for a second, and the connection was akin to a kiss. I moved quickly away to stand and watch this group assembled in my little kitchen. They talked. They laughed. They ate. And it was so blissfully normal. I thought how quickly life can change—how what’s unexpected can become the expected.

  A new normal, to coin a phrase.

  Later, as everyone was getting ready to leave, Jack was first to the door. He opened it and looked back at me awkwardly. “I should go,” he said, standing frozen at the threshold. Something about the night outside the open door made him sound fearful and a little lost. I glanced out, searching for rain. But the rain had disappeared, and the breeze blowing in, while not balmy, was warm and smelled of the river.

  “What are you talking about?” Dad asked. “We’re driving you home.”

  “It’s not a long walk.” Jack moved a couple of inches farther toward the outside, but I could see there was a reluctance in his stance.

  “Don’t be silly,” Maisie said, shrugging into her coat. “You’re coming with us.”

  Jack looked from his mother to me, and I could see the conflict in his eyes and features. But I wasn’t sure what the conflict was. I asked, “Is everything okay?”

  Jack nodded in a way that indicated everything was just the opposite.

  “It’s still raining, isn’t it?” my father asked.

  “No. No.” Jack smiled, seemingly grateful for a chance to talk about something other than what was bothering him. He leaned out a bit into the night air. “I can almost feel spring out there.”

  “Well, if you wanna walk, who am I to stop you?” Dad said. “You’re a young guy! God bless you if you have the legs for it. At my age, I make it a policy not to walk when I can ride.” He grinned, and I saw a lot of warmth in that smile. I noticed he grabbed Maisie’s hand and clutched it in his own, their fingers intertwined.

  At my father’s mention—or rather, blessing—Jack frowned and stepped back inside, closing the door. “You know, that ride sounds good.” He stared down at the floor. “I’ll
take you up on that, on second thought.”

  “Good thinking,” Maisie said. “It could start to rain as you walked, and you’d get drenched. We don’t need you getting a cold, especially not this close to spring.” She let go of Dad’s hand and went to Jack. She gripped his arm and looked at him. Something, I’m not quite sure what, passed between them in their gazes. I guess I’d just call it sympathy or maybe even a kind of understanding.

  Jack turned to me. “Thank you, Beau. Everything was delicious. Of course, I’d expect nothing less from you.”

  I nodded. “You’re always welcome, Jack. Come by anytime. The meals here are on the house.” I winked.

  He seemed to struggle with what he wanted to say next. “Going out there, outside, leaving you, reminded me of something.”

  “Oh?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” He swallowed. “Something about it just made me feel a little sick to my stomach.” He shrugged and attempted a smile. I say attempted, because he didn’t quite succeed. “Who knows why.”

  Dad and Maisie exchanged worried looks.

  I wasn’t sure what to say. It was, to say the least, an odd moment, loaded with meaning that none of us, I reasoned, knew quite how to decipher. “Okay,” I finally said. “I’ll see you next week, Jack. Any requests?”

  “Just that you keep coming.”

  And with that, he stepped out into the night.

  My father then did something unexpected. And it brought tears to my eyes that I struggled to hide. He walked over to me and hugged me. He planted a quick kiss on my cheek.

  “Thanks for everything, son,” he said softly in my ear. “You’ve come a long way from burning pancakes.”

  Do I need to mention here that hugs were a rare commodity from my father? No, I didn’t think so.

  Maisie watched, a smile on her face. “We really enjoyed ourselves tonight, Beau. Thanks for bringing us together.”

  I closed the door after Maisie and Dad stepped outside and waved through the window. I could see Jack had already made his way to the bottom of the stairs. He stood quietly, staring out at the river across the road. The moon, a thin silver crescent, had risen while we’d eaten, and the river reflected its shimmery opalescence.

  I turned back to the mess of the kitchen, the pots and pans with their crusty residue, the stacks of dirty plates, and sighed. The evening had been, for the most part, a success. More than that—a celebration, because Jack had moved forward once more.

  I tore myself away from the chaos in the kitchen—it would be there waiting for me whenever I was ready—and sat down on the couch with Ruth. She snored softly. I scratched her behind the ears, and her eyes opened. She looked up at me.

  “I don’t get it.”

  Ruth cocked her head.

  “He seemed to be enjoying himself until it came time to go. There was something about leaving—”

  And I stopped myself as an epiphany hit me. I confided to Ruth what I was thinking. “It reminded him.” I stopped for a moment, letting the realization sink in. “Taking leave. It reminded him of our date, him wandering off into the night, to walk home alone.”

  Ruth stared at me, but she kept her own counsel. I knew she was thinking it was better for me to come to my own realizations.

  I had a quick image of ice—and something dark just beneath its frosted-over surface. Fingertips pressed against the smooth surface of the ice, looking for escape. “Something happened to him that night, Ruth. Something terrible, and I’m afraid it’s lurking now, just beneath the surface. I think my presence might have hurried it up a bit.”

  Ruth turned around a couple of times, getting comfortable at the far corner of the couch before saying, “For better or worse.”

  “For better or worse,” I repeated, laying my hand gently on her head.

  Chapter 21: A Dream Wriggles It Free

  Jack turned in his bed, murmuring. In the darkness, his hands rose of their own accord, as though in supplication. A scream, muffled and eerie, tried to loose itself from his chest.

  The snow comes down harder. A couple of feet away and all he can see is white, as though the world ends there. Jack wonders if this qualifies as a whiteout.

  He’s walking down Pike Street and has just passed under the convention center arch that rises over the street, which temporarily blocks out the snow coming down. Cars hurry by, heedless of the weather, their tires hissing on the damp pavement. Jack thinks the wet could turn to ice all too soon. The hissing sound could be more. He pictures demons hiding in the snow.

  It could be a bad night.

  He wanders through the downtown. The snow lightens a bit, seeming more of a blessing, less of an alarm. He notices how it kind of muffles the sound, how silent the night is. He feels like he’s the last man on earth as he moves silently, stopping here and there for a moment to gaze at the store windows decorated for the holidays.

  A couple passes him, arms around one another, as they emerge from a restaurant, their laughter in the quiet night almost jarring. He looks over his shoulder at them and smiles. It’s Mom and Beau’s dad, wrapped together like two young lovers. Sweet.

  On Puget Sound, in the distance, a ship blasts its horn. Jack looks toward the water, and the ship is so big, it towers over the skyline. A dragon sits on the bow of the ship, staring forward, occasionally breathing fire that melts the snow.

  Jack shivers. The night has been one of magic.

  Ever since he graduated from law school and moved out here to the Pacific Northwest, his life has been one of single-minded drive and purpose. He makes time for little else beyond his legal career and making a name for himself at the firm. Eighty-hour workweeks are not uncommon. Weekends are filled with briefs—and not the fun kind you pull down to reveal the surprise nestled inside—and lots of research. But he needs to make his mark, he reasons, in spite of the lack of social life, in spite of the lack of that mythical beast the human resource gurus refer to as “work-life balance.” He’s not the only junior associate on staff, and all the others are just as young and hungry as he. He knows that if the time should come when the herd needs to be thinned, the weakest will be the first to go. And he can’t let it be him. Not when he’s come so far, an only child of a poor single mother in a little town clinging to the banks of the Ohio River.

  As he moves north, out of downtown and into his adjacent neighborhood of Belltown, he notices the snow has changed. It has a weird tinge to it. In the streetlight, he can see the flakes have transitioned to an almost neon green, which reminds him of the witch’s skin in The Wizard of Oz. Indeed, next to his favorite Thai spot on Fifth Avenue, he spies an orchard of apple trees and knows if he attempts to gather a few of the Granny Smiths the withered branches hold out in offering, he will get his hand slapped.

  He is almost to his building. There’s a shortcut through an alley that will bring him to a service door in the back. He shivers again. His teeth chatter. The snow, pure white again, is coming down harder once more, the flakes big and fluffy, threatening a blizzard, a whiteout, a real Jack London weather clusterfuck.

  He thinks he should get inside as quickly as possible, where he can warm up. Where he can reimagine his date with Beau, take out each glance, each tender word, each touch, and those kisses, bring them out one by one like jewels, like treasured memories, and covet them. He smiles and tries to ignore the shadows he sees moving in the alley. They are like what his grandma from West Virginia used to call “haints” or ghosts. They’re made from night, but they have cold breath and quick, quirky movement. They race about in the alley from side to side between the two high-rise buildings as though trapped there.

  He thinks he should simply take the long way around, be safe. Yes, he’ll arrive damper and colder in the lobby, but at least he’ll be in one piece.

  He shakes his head. “Don’t be silly,” he announces to himself aloud so the haints can hear him. “There’s nothing there that can hurt you.” Shadows aren’t real. Ghosts aren’t real.

  And he goes int
o the alley.

  And the black swallows him up.

  * * * *

  Jack flew into a sitting position in his bed, his spine stiff. He gasped. His heart hammered in his chest so hard he feared the onset of an attack. His hands gripped the edge of his quilt and sheets so tightly, his knuckles were white.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God!” he whispered over and over, a litany, a prayer. He unclenched his right hand enough to reach for the TV remote control, then dropped his hand to the surface of the bed. “No. Not this time.”

  He leaned back into his pillows, gasping and wondering if he was hyperventilating. The room seemed full of the shadows in his dream, and he wanted to scream and to flail them away with his arms.

  “Mommy,” he whimpered, soft, then louder, until the word morphed into a shriek.

  His door flew open, and he looked over to see Maisie standing there, clutching her quilted housecoat close against her chest. Her hair was in disarray, but even in the dark, Jack could see it was her face that truly revealed disarray. In it he saw mirrored his own turmoil and terror.

  She rushed to his bedside. “What is it, honey?” She reached out and then rested the back of her hand against his cheek. The touch calmed him at first and then deadened him inside. He stared up at his mom, knowing his gaze was wild eyed. He spotted the concern on her features, the pity, the love.

  “What is it? Tell me.” She made him scoot over. She sat at the very edge of his bed. “Bad dream?”

  He couldn’t seem to locate the ability to coordinate his brain and tongue together to form speech. He shook his head, pursed his lips, trying to calm himself. At last he said, “More.”

  “More what, sweetheart?” She picked up the empty water glass on his nightstand. “You need more water?”

  He shook his head. He licked his dry lips and said, “More than a bad dream, Mom.”

  In the darkness, he looked up at her, and understanding dawned on her features. Without quite understanding how he knew, he realized she got what he was saying. Wordlessly, she took him in her arms and held him, moving more onto the bed in order to do so.