Last Dance at Jitterbug Lounge

by Pamela Morsi

For that reason, Viv wanted the nights and weekends to be left up to the twentysomething nieces, nephews and cousins who had less flexibility in their schedules of work, school and kids.

  This was all very foreign to Jack. He was his grandfather’s closest relative and could easily imagine himself not having come here. It was beyond understanding for him to think of being a twenty-one-year-old college kid sitting up all night with an ancient great-uncle. But the kids in the Shertz family seemed to accept it as the normal thing to do.

  Jack wondered, not for the first time, how different he might have been if he’d grown up here among these people, as one of them. He had been much better off, he was certain, amid the intellect and affluence of the Van Brugge household.

  Aunt Viv had drafted Jesse’s granddaughter, Lisa Marie, who was apparently homebound with five children, to create a suitable schedule that would ensure that Bud was never alone, and that no one was overly burdened by his hospitalization.

  Jack and Claire had been relegated to two hours that morning. And now, in midafternoon, they were back at the house in Catawah. Claire was making herself useful to Theba, who’d come over on some errand. Jack had no idea what they were up to, but he was determined to steer clear.

  He stood uneasily on the front porch for a few minutes. He glanced at both the wicker chairs and the swing, but he was too antsy to sit. Instead he propped his foot on the bottom crosspiece of the railing and leaned forward, elbow on knee staring out into the open land across the street from the yard and thinking. One of the slats had broken loose from the railing. It momentarily captured his attention and Jack began to wiggle it with his foot.

  He pulled the cell phone out of his pocket, flipped it open and then stared at the face of it for a moment. There wasn’t anybody he really needed to talk to. He’d spent most of his two hours at Bud’s bedside making business calls. He didn’t feel like that was so bad. Claire wanted him to have conversations with Bud and that talking about anything was fine. Jack decided that he could extend that idea to speaking with other people and allowing Bud to just listen in.

  He stuck the phone back in his pocket and wondered about the concept of free time. He never had any free time and always thought he wanted some. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  The problem, of course, he told himself, was that he was here in Catawah. If he’d been in San Antonio with several days off, there would have been plenty to do. Even on nights and weekends he spent endless hours on the job. And when he wasn’t working, there was the new house. He couldn’t just hand the contractor a check and expect the place to turn out to his liking. Every trim piece and electrical outlet had been his decision. Claire should have done more. But she wouldn’t lift a finger to help him. He’d made every choice himself. Now all that was left was paint, tile and carpet. And it looked as if those decisions were going to fall to him, as well. He didn’t really mind doing it, but it was the principle of it. It was their house. She should be involved in it. Claire was just too stubborn. Every wife in the world wanted a new house, a bigger house. But not his wife. No, she wanted to stay put in a starter home that was too small for their family and not lavish enough to entertain his clients.

  As Jack felt his annoyance rising, he deliberately pushed the problem to the back of his mind. It wasn’t fixable. Claire was being unreasonable. There were no solutions to that except very bad ones. So he just wouldn’t think about it at all.

  But he had to think about something. With his foot he’d managed to significantly worsen the problem of the broken slat on the railing. He squatted down, assessing the situation. It wasn’t critical, but Bud was certainly in no condition to repair it. Jack decided to make himself useful. This was something that he could fix. He headed around the side of the house, looking for tools.

  The shed was padlocked. Jack assumed the key was one on the line of hooks hanging on the wall inside the screened back porch. He glanced over in that direction to see the door propped open and to hear the voices of his wife and his cousin Theba. He still wanted to avoid them. Immediately he looked at the hinges and frowned. He hoped his grandfather hadn’t believed he was actually securing anything inside. Using a penny from his pocket as a screwdriver, he managed to free the hinges from the frame and folded open the still-locked door.

  Inside it smelled like sawdust and linseed oil. Jack felt along the inside wall in the darkness for a light switch and finally noticed the long piece of string hanging down from the bulb. Electricity revealed a small, neat and well-organized workshop. His grandfather had been meticulous about the care of his tools. Bud’s preference, it seemed, was for hand work. He had a couple of power saws and an electric drill, but the expensive nail gun on the shelf was still in its plastic packaging and sported a faded red-and-green bow, a ghost of a Christmas past.

  Jack quickly found a small-size crowbar, a claw hammer and a mallet. He carried all three back to the front porch. Although he’d never done this particular job, he was confident. He’d been naturally gifted with his hands since boyhood. The way things were put together had always made sense to him. Without help, supervision or even permission, he’d built a treehouse in his backyard. His mother was so leery of it that she’d paid a retired building inspector to assure that it was safe. The guy had looked it over and given the thumbs-up.

  “You’ll always be able to find work in the building trades,” he’d told Jack.

  He’d been delighted by the praise.

  His mother had put a damper on his pride later that day when he proudly relayed the story over dinner.

  “Well, of course you could be in the trades,” she’d said, dismissively. “But you’re bright and gifted enough to aim higher. What do you think, Ernst? Maybe architecture? Architecture is not so blue collar.”

  Jack squatted down to pop out the slat as he recalled the memory. He wondered, not for the first time, how his natural parents had ever gotten together. A regular G.I. grunt like J. D. Crabtree could never have met his mother’s high standards.

  He removed the rotten board from the railing and found two others that were almost as bad. He was just pulling out the third when he heard the crunch of footsteps on the driveway gravel. Glancing up he saw Preacher McKiever, Theba’s husband, and he sighed aloud.

  “Hullo!” the man called out to him. “Keeping yourself busy, I see.”

  The preacher didn’t look much like a preacher this morning. He was an angular man, far too thin and with a face stretched so closely across the front of his skull that he looked ghostly even in the prime of health. He was dressed in faded overalls, T-shirt and a scruffy ball cap that advertised a septic-tank service.

  Jack rose to his feet, acknowledging the man with cold politeness. He didn’t want to encourage this guy. It was bad enough that they were related by marriage, but he had no interest in forming any kind of social connection.

  “I do what I can,” Jack answered. “Theba’s out in the back with Claire.”

  It was Jack’s hope that the man was merely picking up his wife. Though the fact that it was she who brought the car and that the preacher had arrived on foot didn’t give him much hope.

  “I know,” he answered. “I’ve been up at the church shoring up some plumbing problems.” The last was spoken with a gesture explaining his attire.

  “How’s your granddad doing this morning?” he asked. “Theba and I aren’t on the schedule at all this weekend.”

  “He’s the same,” Jack answered. “The doctor said that the swelling in his brain is going down, which actually makes the bleeding worse. The monitors indicate periods of consciousness, but nobody’s actually been able to get a response from him.”

  McKiever nodded solemnly. “Well, I want you to know that he’s on our prayer chain. And we’ve got some world-class prayers among our little congregation.”

  “Uh…thanks,” Jack said.

  “Actually, I came down here to make sure you got a personal invitation to come to service tomorrow,” he said. “Being away from home and liv
ing in and abiding now in such a valley of uncertainty, you’ll be requiring some sacred time with the Lord.”

  Jack raised a skeptical eyebrow, but didn’t comment.

  McKiever glanced at the wood in Jack’s hand. “Are you going to try to reuse those slats or cut new ones?”

  “I thought I’d cut new,” he answered. “This one I might be able to plane down enough, but these other two are practically powder.”

  The preacher nodded. “Did you find everything in your granddad’s shed?”

  “I found the tools,” Jack answered. “And there were a few old boards on the shelf that I might be able to use.”

  “If not, I know where he stores his woodpile,” McKiever said.

  The two made their way back around the house.

  The preacher noticed Jack’s folded back door. “I think the key to this padlock is on the back porch,” he said.

  Jack nodded. “I figured as much, but I didn’t want to interrupt the ladies.”

  McKiever laughed. “I doubt if you could interrupt,” he said. “But you might very likely be drawn into whatever project the two of them have set their mind to.”

  Inside the shed, Jack walked over to the west wall and reached for a small pile of cut boards in the corner of the top shelf. He examined one of the boards closely.

  “I was going to use this,” he said. “It looks like it’s been sitting there for quite a while, but this is better wood than you use on a porch rail.”

  He handed the piece to McKiever for verification.

  “It looks like walnut,” the preacher said. “That’s high-dollar lumber nowadays. Is all that up there the same?”

  “I think so.” Jack brought all of the wood down and they laid it out on the worktable. There were nine pieces in all. Two had been carefully dovetailed. Jack slipped them together and the grain lined up perfectly.

  “He must have been making a drawer to a cabinet or something,” McKiever said.

  Jack was quiet for a long moment. “I think I know what this is,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I remember getting some boards out of here when I was a boy,” he said. “Bud scolded me and said they were for a treasure box my father had been making.”

  McKiever gave a little gasp of surprise and surveyed the boards more carefully. “Do you know the story of Geri’s treasure box?” he asked.

  Jack should his head. “No, I haven’t heard it.”

  The man remained hesitant. “I’m sure Theba could tell it better than me,” he said. “Your grandma Geri always kept her special things, things that were dear to her under the bed in J.D.’s room. What I recollect hearing is that young J.D. was on leave from the service and got it in his head to make her a treasure box. He wanted to make it real pretty and he wanted to make it brand-new, cause everything that woman ever had was castoffs. It took him awhile to find just the right wood. He finally settled on some black walnut. And he worked on it for a few days before he went back to his base. He was going to finish it next time he came home.”

  Jack nodded thoughtfully, surveying the wood differently now.

  “But then, when he got to San Antonio, the boy got busy. He fell in love and then got married. He did get back home for a few days before he headed overseas. But mostly I guess everyone understands why a fellow would rather spend his last days home with his new bride rather than his old parents.” McKiever chuckled lightly and shook his head. “I think everybody just forgot all about the treasure box, figuring he’d finish it when he got back from Vietnam.”

  “But he didn’t come back,” Jack said.

  “No, he didn’t. Bud never spoke a word about it, but Geri told her sisters that he was just stuck. He couldn’t bear to finish it, but he couldn’t give the wood away. I suspect that this is that wood.”

  Jack nodded wordlessly. He pictured himself once more using this fine walnut for a skateboard ramp. It was amazing that his grandfather hadn’t been more angry. Jack began gathering up the pieces and putting it back on the shelf it came from.

  “So where’s this woodpile?” he asked McKiever.

  The preacher at least understood when a subject didn’t require further discussion.

  “There’s a flap door underneath the back of the house—he keeps it on a palate down there.”

  Claire had awakened that morning when her husband had reached for her. The old cast-iron bed was bouncy and squeaky, but there were no children who might wake up and no place she needed to be on time. She gave herself up to the pleasure of having intercourse with him. Even from their earliest days together, it had always been good. It was one of the few things between them that hadn’t changed. And beyond the welcome physical release, there was the embrace, the affection, the kissing and cuddling that were actually more dear. Sex had its substitutes, but there was no alternative to the touch of another human being.

  So their day had begun on a high note, but had become twangy later and she was convinced that Jack must be tone deaf.

  At the hospital something had changed. Claire sensed it from the nurses. Nothing was said to that effect. The doctor said that there were no notable changes in his condition but from the moment she walked into the room, Claire sensed that something was not right. In the hallway she said as much to the nurse. The woman nodded.

  “I had that feeling, too,” she admitted. “But everything we look at—” She indicated the computer screen on the rolling unit she manned. “Everything seems very much like yesterday.”

  “But it’s not,” Claire stated flatly.

  The nurse didn’t attempt to dispute that.

  “Everybody has good days and bad,” she said. “It may not be an irreparable setback, just a temporary wavering on his road to recovery.”

  Claire tried to be mollified, to take on a more positive attitude, but back in the room her husband didn’t make it easy.

  Jack was using his time with Bud to phone his office. No one was supposed to be working on the weekend, but somehow Jack always managed to catch up with Dana.

  Claire sat across the room from him as he talked to her. It didn’t matter that the two discussed drainage and impervious cover restrictions; it was the way they talked to each other, the way his voice softened into a tone that was so familiar to Claire and, she had once thought, exclusive to her.

  When he finally ended the call, Claire couldn’t bite her tongue fast enough not to scold him about it.

  “Couldn’t that have waited?” she asked sharply.

  Jack shook his head. “Dana has a meeting tonight with Butterman, I wanted to be sure that she was completely up to speed on the project.”

  “She has a meeting tonight?” Claire’s voice was incredulous. “What kind of business meeting happens on Saturday night?”

  “It’s a last-minute thing. I’m not even sure what the man wants to know. But Butterman’s a busy guy with a lot going on,” Jack said. “I’m sure he has to fit building contractors in wherever he can.”

  “I’m sure he holds a spot open on Saturdays for those building contractors with really big boobs.”

  Jack sighed heavily and gave her a stern look. “This pointless cattiness doesn’t look good on you, Claire.”

  To avoid any further discussion he began phoning once more and spent the rest of the hour touching base with current clients.

  By the time their replacements showed up, two middle-aged cousins named Sherry and Bob Lee, Claire was past mad and into near despair. She didn’t understand Jack anymore. They didn’t value the same things. If she met him now, she would never have had any interest in him. Their marriage hardly stood a chance.

  Driving back to Catawah with Jack only eighteen inches away from her, she effectively avoided him by calling the children. Standing in line to ride the roller coaster at Sea World, the kids were laughing and acting up so frantically, Claire could hardly get a word in. Finally she got Zaidi on the phone, but that wasn’t a perfect conversation, either.

  “Guess what, Mom?”
she burst out, not allowing Claire to even hazard. “I got my ears pierced. Toni bought me some amethyst studs that I just love. I can’t wear them until my holes heal, but they are completely yowling!”

  “You got your ears pierced?”

  “Toni said I could.” Her tone was partly defiant, partly pleading and partly just passing the blame.

  “Well, that’s great,” Claire responded forcing herself to sound happy about a circumstance that couldn’t be changed. “And I’m sure the new earrings are perfect. Your grandmother has excellent taste.”

  Continued discussion yielded the fact that having purchased the jewelry for Zaidi, “in order to be fair” she bought a new and very expensive game system for the twins. Claire tried to be cheerful about that, too. But what she wanted was to be with her kids. To stop them from getting all starry-eyed about the things that Toni could buy for them. She believed that children needed limits. She even believed that adults needed them, as well.

  When Presley asked to speak to Daddy, she handed Jack the phone. She listened to him talk to the kids. Or rather she listened to him listening to the kids. Laughing with them, enjoying their excitement. There was no deliberateness about his conversation, no concern about saying the right thing, encouraging in the right way, maintaining the balance between instilling values and fostering independence. He was just parenting from the hip. Jack was good at that. Claire was not.

  When he finished the call, he glanced over in her direction, smiling. His expression changed immediately.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she answered immediately. It would have been more truthful to have said everything: Dana, the house, the kids, his job, his attitude toward Bud. Or maybe nothing was the correct answer. Because nothing her husband did, thought or said seemed all right to her anymore.

  Claire kept silent for the rest of the trip and got out of the car the minute they pulled into the driveway. She needed to put some distance between herself and her husband. Inside the house she slipped into what she now considered her work clothes. From a stack of vintage blue jeans she’d found in the back-room closet, she recovered a well-worn and faded pair that fitted comfortably. She’d matched that up with one of Bud’s old shirts, tying the long length of it in a knot at her waist. And finished off the look, which might aptly be described as hausfrau hobo, by wearing Geri’s green plastic gardening clogs she’d found still sitting where the old woman had left them by the back door. She pulled her hair into a ponytail and stepped outside.