The Five Lives of John and Jillian

by Greg Krehbiel

  The odd mix of similarities and contradictions continued in their physical features as well, although John had to admit that Susan was slightly better looking in a way that was hard to nail down. Their similarities almost got John in trouble one day. Susan was rinsing out her tea cup in the office sink as John walked into the kitchen to get another cup of coffee. John’s mind was on something else and he was operating on autopilot. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to walk up behind this slender, attractive woman, who looked very much like his wife, and put his arm around her waist.

  He caught himself at the last second, but the experience made him reflect on his behavior in the office, especially around Susan. Long ago he had abandoned the silly notion that a man and a woman could have an entirely sexless relationship. There was a sexual element to every relationship and every encounter. The trick was to make sure it was appropriate and within bounds.

  But that was easier said than done. After that near-miss in the kitchen, John paid more attention to Susan’s glances, and it worried him that he thought he saw more than just a friendly interest in her eyes. It worried him even more that he might have unwittingly encouraged her interest by his own behavior, as if his overflowing love for Jillian had spilled onto her silly twin.

  John picked up the baby blue sheet of paper Susan had just left in his in-box and scanned it quickly. Another party. A May Day celebration.

  John laughed out loud.

  “What’s so funny, John?” Susan’s voice came from a few cubicles down. It was understood that you could talk over the cubicle walls in the morning, when there were only a few people in the office. John and Susan were two of the early birds.

  “I thought Jillian had you accustomed to these pagan festivals.”

  “You know Jillian is a church-going woman now,” John said in an odd tone of voice.

  Susan scoffed. “Episcopalian? That’s one of those ‘believe whatever you want so long as you sing quietly’ churches. I’ll bet you the voice of the Goddess still echoes in her heart, even in that Episcopalian church.”

  “And you, Susan? Does the voice of the Goddess echo in your heart?”

  “John. You’re a married man,” she said, looking around the corner with a devilish smile, “or I’d show you.”

  He opened his mouth to reply and then thought better of it.

  “Thanks for the invite, Susan,” he said, and then turned on the light over his drafting table.

  * * *

  It was one of those days where everything seemed to be going perfectly – one of those days that made all the other annoyances of work worthwhile. John was so deeply into his project that the afternoon sped by. When the phone rang, he looked with some surprise at the large analog clock mounted on the wall of his workspace. It was later than he thought.

  “John Matthews,” he answered.

  “John, something terrible has happened,” Jillian said. The quality of the transmission told him she was on a cell phone. “A friend of mine was in a horrible car accident. I’m on my way to the hospital now.”

  “Should I meet you there?”

  “John, I’m on a plane to Ohio.”

  Jillian grew up just outside of Columbus, but he didn’t know she had any close friends there. Her only sister was in France, and her parents had died years ago. She had moved to Maryland to go to school and never went back.

  Who could be worth flying out there on the spur of the moment? he wondered, and why didn’t she call me before she got on the plane?

  “Why couldn’t you wait for me?”

  “I only barely caught this plane, John, and they say there’s not much time to spare.”

  Something in those words, or in her tone, shot a sudden sense of panic into John’s heart. He felt a knot form in his throat, and dark thoughts suddenly clouded his mind. For some reason he remembered Jillian’s odd reaction when he was in her sewing room, and he wondered if his first guess might have been wrong.

  “Listen,” she said, “the stewardess says I have to get off the phone now. I’ll call you tonight.”

  “Okay.”

  “I love you,” she said.

  “Have a good flight.”

  John set the phone down and sat still for a moment, staring at the carpet between his feet. Then he grabbed his coat and turned to head out of the office.

  “Is something the matter?” Susan asked. She was standing in the entrance of his cubicle with a worried look.

  John nodded. “I don’t know what it is. Something’s happened to one of Jillian’s friends, and she’s gone off on a plane to Ohio.”

  Susan seemed to pick up subtle clues from the intentional ambiguity of the answer.

  “I’m sorry.” She grabbed the baby blue sheet of paper from John’s in box and put it in his hand. “You have my number if you need anything. Anything at all, okay?”

  “Thanks, Susan,” he said, genuinely touched by her concern, and headed for the door.

  The train ride home was the longest he’d ever taken.

  Chapter 7 – Norma

  Jillian couldn’t remember any of her relaxation techniques as she sat in the back seat of the cab. The closer she got to the hospital, the more her anxiety grew. She needed something to distract her, but she could only think of her friend lying in a hospital bed, probably dying. Maybe already dead.

  It felt odd to be away from home with nothing but her purse and a light jacket, but she hadn’t had time to pack. Even as it was, dropping everything and taking the first plane, she was concerned the hospital wouldn’t let her in. 10:40 was quite a bit past visiting time.

  “Hey, lady, should I wait for you?” the cab driver asked as he pulled up to the hospital entrance.

  “No, thanks,” she said, paying the steep fare in cash and hurrying out the door.

  Jillian stood up straight and took a deep breath as the cab pulled away. She was here, but had she made it on time? She shivered as she hurried through the well-lit double doors, saw the sign for intensive care and started to run. She’d been hundreds of miles in the last few hours, but now that she was really here, smelling those distinctive hospital smells, seeing the flowers in the gift shop and the medical equipment along the corridors, her emotions threatened to overwhelm her. And then she passed the office of the chaplain.

  She almost couldn’t speak when she reached the nurse’s station.

  The nurse heard her running and looked up. “Are you Jillian Collins?”

  “Yes,” she almost gasped. “No, actually. Jillian Matthews now.”

  “We’ve been expecting you. You can go in, but you’ll have to make it short.”

  Jillian nodded and turned away. Part of her wanted to run into the room and part of her wanted to run out of the hospital and get away. The smells, the art, the nurses’ clothing – it all made a knot in her stomach. But she wasn’t about to turn away. She tried to brace herself for the sight and then walked into the intensive care room.

  A metal hospital bed sat in the middle of the cold, tiled floor, surrounded by monitors with strange, eerie displays. There was a woman on the bed, propped up on two pillows. An IV was in her arm. Half her head was covered with a bandage, but something else looked grotesquely unreal about her form, beneath the covers.

  Jillian inhaled sharply and brought her hand to her mouth as she realized what it was. Her left arm and leg were completely gone.

  The sound of her breath alerted the woman to her presence.

  “Jillian,” she gasped.

  Jillian stepped forward and took the woman’s right hand gingerly. She reached her left hand to stroke her cheek. Tears streamed down her face as she looked into the eyes that stared at her from that bed – eyes that seemed hollow, with no hope.

  “Can you take him back?” she asked, struggling for the breath to speak. “There’s no one else to care for him, now, and he’s all I have.”

  “I’m married now,” Jillian said.

  Pain wracked the woman’s body for an instant, but then
she settled back on her pillow.

  “He doesn’t know?”

  Jillian couldn’t hold it back any more. She fell into the cheap, plastic chair next to the bed, still holding her dying friend’s hand, and cried onto her shoulder.

  * * *

  Reaching for the light switch in the sewing room of their house was one of the hardest things John had ever done. For almost two years he had never thought to question Jillian or pry into her affairs. He never quite believed that he deserved the depth of her love, but he never doubted that she loved him faithfully.

  Now it seemed there was some secret she was keeping from him, and she was on a sudden, unexplained trip back to her hometown to see an “old friend.” It was obvious she hadn’t wanted him to come along. Her plane had landed already, and she hadn’t called.

  With mixed feelings of guilt and justified suspicion, he flipped on the light and started looking around. The familiar room took on a strange aspect. Were there hidden dangers beneath the bolts of material – things he would rather not know about, but which he had to discover?

  For a few minutes he felt waves of guilt as he opened boxes and examined drawers only to find scissors, thread, patterns in notebooks, material and other things he couldn’t name. The guilt became an oppressive weight and he was about ready to quit. He realized he could never be a spy. Even here, in his own house, he feared being found out, even though he knew Jillian was in Ohio. Somehow even a phone call would have been a disaster.

  He decided to look in one last place and then give up the search. He opened the large, wooden box that sat next to the sewing machine. In a minute he found an old shoe box in the bottom. His stomach tightened as he opened it, confirming his worst fears. On top of a stack of letters was a photograph of another man.

  But the man seemed improbably old. Maybe 60. It definitely wasn’t Jillian’s father, and he didn’t look at all like Jillian – probably not a relative. His shock of red hair, his ruddy complexion and his large, heavy features contrasted sharply with Jillian’s fair skin and delicate nose and lips. On the back of the photo, written in some other woman’s handwriting, were the words, “Ivan, the week before he died. April, 1993.”

  John grabbed the first letter and started reading.

  “Dear Jillian,” it began, from one Norma Stevenson.

  “Karl is taking Ivan’s death very hard. He’s withdrawn from his friends and doesn’t seem to have any energy. He sits around the house with a blank stare on his face.”

  John took the box out to the kitchen, grabbed a beer from the fridge and sat at the table. The letters confused him at first, but he quickly realized that this was not the correspondence of a secret, or even an old, love affair. Jillian had taken an extraordinary interest in the life of a small family in Columbus: Norma and Ivan Stevenson and their son Karl.

  He had never heard these names before. Were they relatives? Friends of the family? Maybe a family she’d adopted through some charity?

  There were references to her “kind financial support,” as well as various gifts she had sent for Karl, but never a word from the boy himself. No thank-you letters, but plenty of school art projects. There were crayon pictures of his house, penciled sketches of space ships battling for control of the cosmos, and essays on “what I want to be when I grow up,” and “how I spent my summer vacation.” But nothing that indicated the boy knew anything of Jillian.

  He was still unsure what to make of it all. Jillian’s recent behavior, and the fact that she’d hidden this from him, hinted at a dark secret. But there was nothing here to blemish her character.

  John was on his third beer by the time he got to the bottom of the box. There, in a plain white envelope, was a copy of Karl’s birth certificate. He was born seven pounds, 10 and a half ounces on March 21, 1988, and named Karl Aaron .... John’s heart almost stopped as he read the last name.

  Collins.

  His eye raced to the mother’s name, and there was no mistake. Karl was Jillian’s child.

  * * *

  Jillian stayed at Norma’s bedside until she slipped into a coma and the doctors sent Jillian out of the room. The hospital chaplain asked her to come down to the chapel and let the nurses do their work. Jillian kissed Norma’s forehead and then left, following the chaplain without thinking or even realizing where she was going.

  Where was Karl? Who would take care of him now?

  And then, as if a hidden part of her mind suddenly came back, she remembered that she was supposed to call John. She desperately wanted to hear his voice, and, better yet, to put her head on his shoulder and cry. But what could she say to him?

  “Excuse me, pastor,” she said. “I need to make a phone call.”

  Jillian’s cell phone was dead, so she slipped into a phone booth to make a collect call. The pastor stood by, waiting quietly.

  “I’m sorry, there’s no answer,” the operator said.

  “It’s late. Maybe he’s asleep. Can we wait another minute?”

  A painful minute went by as the phone rang to no avail.

  “Okay, operator. Can you place another collect call for me?”

  Chapter 8 – The Secret letters

  The bottle of Glen Fiddich seemed the only reasonable companion to take to the well in the woods behind the house. It was a clear night, and unseasonably warm. John wanted to stay away from the phone. He really didn’t want to hear from Jillian until he had a chance to sort this thing out.

  His first reaction was anger at her betrayal. When they were courting, she had insisted on abstinence until their wedding night. And now he finds out that she had born a son to ... some man. Thinking of that turned his anger into rage. She had led him to believe that she had saved herself for him. He had never asked for that, and he hadn’t expected it of her. When they first met, he had no particular concerns about sex. If she had been with a man, he would have understood.

  But she lied to him.

  He took a swig of the expensive scotch, and then he shook his head. “No, she didn’t lie,” he said aloud.

  She had never said anything directly, he’d only inferred it from all her talk about “wanting her and not just sex,” and all the other things about waiting until marriage.

  All John could think about was Jillian in another man’s arms. For two years he had believed that she was his and his alone.

  John looked up at the stars with a snarl, and shook his head angrily.

  “And where were you in all this?” he accused. “Do you have some grand lesson I’m supposed to learn, and you couldn’t think of another way to teach it? A book would have sufficed. Or even a stupid sermon. Couldn’t you contrive that? Or are you that impotent?”

  He grabbed a rock and hurled it at a loose stick at the top of a tree, but five beers and too much scotch whisky was getting to him and the throw wasn’t even close, which made him laugh bitterly.

  “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you trials, and pain,” he muttered to the air and to the ground. “All in the name of curing your soul, because I can’t think of any better way to do it,” he added mockingly.

  “I should have looked into your past before I pledged myself to you,” he said in a cold voice, again looking up to the stars.

  The words were out before John had a chance to think about them, and hearing himself speaking that way was like a slap in the face. Did he really feel that way about God, and about Jillian? Even through the alcohol he felt some remorse for making so much of his pitiful disappointments. He’d read about the sufferings of the saints and martyrs with a kind of fascinated horror. The more courageous among them had faced death willingly, but uncounted thousands were simply slaughtered, or starved, or died in the plague.

  “It doesn’t even matter if it’s me or them,” he muttered, taking another drink. “It shows who you are, and it shows how stupid I am to trust you. You abandoned them.” He shook his head bitterly.

  “Do you love slaughter and death? Is that the real reason
you tortured your son?”

  The intellectual side of John’s brain knew he wasn’t nearly drunk enough to excuse this kind of talk, so he took another long pull from his bottle. He intended to go on hating God, and the whisky made it feel easier.

  At the same time, he realized he knew too much – too much theology, too much philosophy and too much history – to justify this kind of ignorant talk. He wanted to drink himself to a lower mental state, where yelling at God made some sense. But it wasn’t working. He knew that accusing God of evil was sophomoric, but then he laughed and reached for the missing book of matches in his pocket.

  “I will not be afraid of a host that encamps against me,” he recited, and, “I lay down and sleep in peace, for you alone make me dwell in safety.”

  He spat on the ground.

  Images from history books flooded his mind. Invading armies, slaughtering villages. Children crying out before being beaten to death, or hauled off to be slaves to Muslims.

  He laid his head down on the ground and started to sing a quiet lullaby.

  “Sleep my child and peace attend thee,

  All through the night.

  Guardian angels God will send thee,

  All through the night.”

  * * *

  He awoke the next morning as the sun peaked over the stone well in the center of the clearing and shone in his eyes. His mouth felt dry and full of cotton, and he was horribly thirsty. He knew his head would pound as soon as he moved, so he decided to lay still. But then he remembered that it was Friday and he quickly looked at his watch.

  “Oh, no,” he groaned, trying to sit up.

  “Don’t worry. They’re not expecting you,” a familiar voice said, startling John. “I called an hour ago and said you were going to be too sick to come in today.”