The Five Lives of John and Jillian

by Greg Krehbiel

  “If you take that boy into your house – and God bless you if you do – then you’re biting off a big piece of jerky. You got me?”

  John smiled and nodded.

  “Like I said, Jack. You’re a good man.”

  * * *

  As soon as they drove around the corner, out of sight of the house, John noticed Jillian collapse into the bucket seat of the rental car and take a very deep breath, as if she’d been holding it all morning.

  “Wiped out?” John asked, reaching over and rubbing her left shoulder with his right hand.

  Jillian reclined her seat a little and nodded.

  “Where to now?” she asked.

  “First we’ll grab a bite to eat. Then we have an appointment with a lawyer.”

  Jillian shook her head and chuckled to herself. Of course they’d need a lawyer, but she hadn’t thought of it. She wasn’t certain when John had had the time to find one, but it was like him to think of that, and she was glad he was here to take care of those things.

  The last time she had to seek legal counsel was more than ten years ago, a couple months after she realized she was pregnant. She was 18, poor and scared. She didn’t know much about lawyers, and expected the worst: a cold, money-hungry man in an expensive suit whose only friends were the books on his wall. It took quite a while to get over the shock that the attractive, young, hot-shot lawyer who managed her case had more than a professional interest in her.

  She lay back in the rental car seat and looked at John out of the corner of her eye. Her very own knight in shining armor, she thought. But was this real? Did John really intend to go through with an adoption? She’d never even suggested the idea to him, and she didn’t need to. It was as if the matter was settled from the moment he arrived. She had a kid. He’s her husband. The kid needs help. We adopt. That’s the right thing to do. End of story.

  There was a time when Jillian would have been satisfied with that answer. Sometimes John seemed so calculated about social behavior, as if an etiquette book had been impressed on his brain. It had never been a question to him whether they should plan to take his mother in as her eyesight failed. It was simply the right thing to do. His own plans and aspirations would have to bend to fit.

  But so far, these things had always been short-term accommodations. So-and-so died, so we have to mourn with the bereaved and pay our respects. So-and-so got married, so we have to rejoice with the family and help the couple along in their new life. It’s the 4th of July, honor the flag. It’s time for the reading from the Holy Gospel, stand. There was a time and a season for everything.

  Jillian was wondering how far that went with John. Adopting a kid wasn’t like saluting, or standing. This was a struggle they’d face for years to come, and the worst of it was that they couldn’t nail it all down and keep a tidy register of what had to be done when. This would be a new and unknown challenge, and neither of them knew what might come up.

  It all reminded her of John’s conversion more than a year ago. He had wanted to make God into an intellectual puzzle: check the facts, verify the logic, examine the alternatives and make a decision. But God didn’t play along. He had insisted on making John deal with Him as a person – One to whom he was accountable, rather than an argument he could evaluate.

  It had nearly been his undoing.

  Karl would be like that – not a duty or a concept. He would upset John’s apple cart, just as God had. He would find ways to change the rules, slip outside the planned path, or create a new problem when everything looked as if it was going fine.

  Then Jillian glanced at the ring on her finger and smiled to herself. He’s managed to deal with me.

  Chapter 11 – Breaking Through

  After a brief appearance before a judge on Monday morning, John headed back to Bowie while Jillian stayed in Columbus to make sure the adoption petition kept moving, and to spend as much time as possible with Karl. He expected her to take him to the zoo, or the movies, to buy him clothes, or take him out to lunch – the kinds of things long-lost parents did on television. But Jillian had another agenda.

  Norma wanted her ashes to be scattered from a bridge over a stream in her favorite park, just outside Columbus. It was the bridge where Ivan had proposed to her, 26 years earlier. Jillian took Karl there every day. They walked around the park, always ending up at the bridge, where they both stood, watching the shallow stream flow over its pebble-strewn bed.

  Karl never complained. He never asked why she took him there, and he never spoke of Norma. Jillian didn’t press him, she just stood there with him and talked about whatever small things came up. But mostly they were silent. Sometimes Karl would turn and look away for a long while.

  Thursday was a dreary day – overcast and threatening – but they went to the park anyway. They got to the bridge just as the first drops started to fall. It was a light drizzle, hardly enough to notice except when a branch would accumulate enough moisture to let a big drop fall with a splat on the wooden bridge, or into the stream.

  Karl stood on the other side of the bridge from Jillian and watched the water flow away from him. Jillian watched him silently until she saw his shoulders start to quiver and hunch forward. She let him cry for a minute on his own, and then she took him in her arms and cried with him. He buried his head in her chest and they stood like that on the bridge, without speaking, as the rain continued to cover them like a moist blanket.

  Eventually Karl was all cried out. Jillian held him a little longer and ran her fingers through his hair.

  “Do you want to take a swim?” she said. “We’re already soaked.”

  Karl laughed and pulled himself up to kiss her cheek.

  For the rest of the afternoon they skipped rocks on the creek. Karl asked about John, and Jillian’s house in Maryland.

  * * *

  “So let’s go through the list, Dave,” John said. “Have you bought the flooring yet? Okay. How about the tile? Doors and windows?” John checked off the items on his scratch pad with his pencil. It wasn’t looking good. They knew the addition was going to challenge their budget, but that was before the expenses of an adoption. Now, things were looking grim.

  “So it’s too late to cut costs?”

  John noticed a shadow on the carpet and sensed someone standing at the entrance to his work area.

  “Okay, Dave. I’ll get back with you soon. Thanks.”

  He hung up the phone and turned around to see Joe standing in the doorway. John tried hard to suppress his annoyance. Joe was the office fundamentalist, and after an initial and, John thought, uncharacteristically helpful phase, when John was first studying the Bible and Joe was able to give him some helpful pointers, Joe had turned into an absolute plague.

  Joe was deeply offended that John had the nerve to join the Episcopal Church and still call himself a Christian. Disdain for the Episcopal Church was probably the only thing Joe and Susan had in common.

  “Jerry told me to see you about these things,” Joe said, holding up one of Susan’s flyers for her up-coming May-Day party.

  When their architectural firm was purchased several months before by some investment bankers, a lot of the support staff was let go and several tedious functions had fallen into John’s lap. One of them was “communications,” which seemed to cover everything from the sublime to the absurd – even, it appeared, what could be distributed in the inner-office mail.

  “Let me guess, Joe,” John said, already in a foul mood. “You don’t like the color.”

  Joe scowled. “I don’t like the double-standard, John. Why does she get to advertise for her pagan celebrations when we can’t pass out flyers for the office Bible study?”

  John shook his head.

  “You’re imagining persecution again, Joe. You can’t use office equipment to advertise your Bible study, or anything else that isn’t company-related. But for your information, we don’t stock baby-blue copier paper,” he said, holding up Susan’s announcement for emphasis. “She had this done
downstairs at the print shop. If you want to do the same, and distribute an invite to a Bible study, you’re welcome to do it. Nobody will stop you.”

  The good news didn’t help Joe at all. Now, he just looked silly, so he turned and walked away.

  “Any time, Joe,” John called after him as he left, and immediately regretted it. He didn’t want to be on bad terms with Joe. They had almost been friends a couple years ago. Joe had been helpful during a hard time. But then their relationship turned sour.

  “Episcopal?” Joe had said. “You’re going to join the Episcopal Church. Why not go the whole way and become Roman Catholic? Episcopal is just half-way to nowhere.”

  “It’s not Fundamentalist, if that’s what you mean, Joe. And it’s not Roman Catholic. It’s somewhere in between, and that’s about where I am.”

  “‘And because you are lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth,’” Joe recited. “Being ‘somewhere in between’ is a political solution, not a faith solution. You’ve got to take your stand on what you believe in, not on compromises.”

  “Who says I’m compromising? What the Episcopal Church confesses is what I believe. They believe in liturgy, sacraments, bishops and apostolic succession, but not the pope. You may think that’s a compromise between antichrist and pure congregationalism, but I think it’s the right answer.”

  That conversation had been unpleasant enough, but it only got worse as the months passed. Joe seemed to have an approach to the Bible that divided people into two camps: his way or the devil take you.

  In the here and now, John regretted that he couldn’t talk to Joe. He wanted to ask him about the adoption, but even more about his finances. Joe was into budgeting and frugal living in a big way, and John’s review of his bank statements made it clear that things didn’t add up.

  He stared at the numbers on his Excel spreadsheet for few minutes, then shook his head and closed the program.

  Chapter 12 – Tonight is Ostara

  It was a rainy Thursday afternoon in Washington. John was working long hours to make up for the time he’d taken off, and in anticipation of future trips back to Columbus. The office was quiet, and he thought he was alone as he turned off the lamp over his drafting table and packed up his brief case.

  Before he could reach for his rain coat, Susan showed up at the entrance to his cubicle with a brown paper bag under her arm.

  “Oh. Susan. I thought you’d left for the day.”

  “Not yet. I’ve been a little worried about you recently,” she said as she pulled a six-pack of beer out of the paper bag. “You’ve looked down, and I figured you could use a drink.”

  John glanced at his wall clock. He was planning to leave a few minutes early so he could buy a beer at Union Station and drink it on the train. He looked at Susan and paused for a moment, unsure what to do, but then he shrugged and set down his brief case. I guess I might just as well have one here.

  “You’re right,” he said, taking a bottle from Susan and offering her a chair.

  They quietly nursed half a beer each before either said a word.

  “So where’s Jillian been lately, John?”

  John cocked his head, raised a questioning eyebrow and peered suspiciously at Susan.

  “Well, you usually call her after lunch, but this week she’s been calling you, and at funny times. And you sound odd when you talk to her. You’ve been talking a little louder, like she’s far away.” Susan laughed. “Some people do that, you know. You can tell when they’re talking long distance.”

  John looked even more suspiciously at her.

  “So who’s paying you to spy on me?”

  Susan smiled. “I’m just keeping a friendly eye on you.”

  “So where is she?” she asked again.

  John grunted and shook his head. “She’s away on business.”

  Susan didn’t hide her disappointment. “John, do you expect me to believe that?”

  “She is.” I didn’t say what kind of business.

  “Okay,” she said, tossing her empty bottle into John’s trash can and putting the rest of the six-pack back in the bag. “If you’re going to be that way with me, I’ll just take my friendly concern and be on my way.”

  “You rat,” John said playfully, looking at his watch. “You kept me just long enough to miss my train. The next one isn’t for 45 minutes.”

  Susan glanced back, over her shoulder. “I know that.”

  “Okay,” he said, knowing he’d been outsmarted. “I guess you’ll find out soon enough anyway. Sit back down and open another beer.”

  * * *

  Fifty minutes later, Susan and John were walking to her car in a nearby underground lot. Susan had offered to drop John off at the Bowie train station on her way home to Annapolis.

  As John walked with her to the parking garage, he had a slightly giddy feeling, as if he was on a first date, and although he wouldn’t permit himself to think about being unfaithful to Jillian, he enjoyed the feeling all the same.

  Susan opened the trunk of her fire-engine red Mazda Miata and put her briefcase in. She was about to walk around to the driver’s side when she stopped and held up the keys.

  “I bet you’d like to drive my little sports car, wouldn’t you?”

  John smiled like a kid on Christmas morning. He would never buy one of those tiny things himself, but he’d admired them on the road a few times, and wondered what they were like. And it was a perfect night for driving a little sports car with a pretty woman. He took the keys and she brushed past him on the way to the passenger seat. She was close enough for him to catch a whiff of some delicious scent – maybe her hair conditioner, he thought. It didn’t smell like perfume.

  John opened her door.

  “Are you sure you want to go through with this, John?” Susan asked as they pulled onto New York Avenue.

  He reached for the stick shift and his hand brushed something smooth and satiny. He glanced down and noticed that her short skirt seemed even shorter, and his eyes lingered for a moment on her long, attractive legs.

  John thought for a moment before answering.

  “I don’t see how I have much choice.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, as if he was talking nonsense. “Of course you have a choice. You have a right to be happy in your life. You can’t let everyone else determine how you’ll live, what you’ll do, and where you’ll spend your time and effort.”

  They stopped at a traffic light. The street light shone through the front windshield, illuminating Susan’s legs. Her long, bare and slightly muscular arms seemed to shimmer with a pale light in the passenger’s seat.

  “You didn’t know any of this was going to happen,” she continued.

  “No, I didn’t. But when I stood at the altar, I promised myself to Jillian in sickness and health, for better or worse.”

  Susan laughed. “You were just saying what the priest told you to say. It didn’t even enter your mind that something like this might come along.”

  John remained quiet. He caught a whiff of warm, spring air. Somewhere close, daffodils were blooming, and, try as he might, he couldn’t keep his glance from straying across the tiny space between himself and Susan. Something about the lighting in the car – or was it just in his mind? – kept pulling his eyes toward her legs, and her lithe and athletic profile. Every time he looked he could see the hint of a smile on Susan’s face. And even when he fought it, he could feel those legs pulling on his eyes and playing with his mind.

  He took a deep breath and concentrated on the road. He liked the feel of this car. It handled well, and had lots of pep. It seemed fitting to be driving this car on this night, but he wasn’t sure why.

  “What about your life, John. Your needs.”

  “Life isn’t about satisfying your own needs,” he almost whispered.

  “‘An it harm none, do what you will,’” she said, quoting the Wiccan rede. “Isn’t that what Jillian used to believe? Tell me. How would anything be different if you
decided to put aside your over-active sense of duty and do what you want to do? What would change?”

  “I’d change,” he said quietly. “I’d be somebody I don’t want to be.”

  “But John, you can’t afford to adopt this boy,” she said, reminding them both what they were really talking about. “You’re building an addition to your house. Your mother may need your help. Jillian’s living in a fantasy world, and you’re encouraging her. A week ago that boy didn’t know Jillian from Eve, and there’s no reason he should have. You should just let the courts handle it, like they do every day for hundreds of kids, and you should get back to your own life.”

  John didn’t really know what to say. In a way, Susan was right. John had no tie to Karl, and Jillian didn’t need to have any. She chose to. And he had allowed her to make this choice – a choice that would change both of their lives – without so much as a word.

  “Do you really want to let her do that to you? There are alternatives, you know.”

  Something just short of a shiver seemed to run through John’s body, and he breathed in slowly and deeply. They were out of the city now, driving east on Route 50. The air in the car seemed to have changed. His body told him to forget about all his troubles and let the evening air intoxicate him. His mind told him to stop the car and hitch-hike the rest of the way. His will did nothing.

  “What other alternatives?”

  “You’ve already thought of them,” she said, and John could see that she was looking at his hand, which was unnecessarily resting on the stick shift, just inches from the edge of Susan’s skirt. “But why don’t you stop being the hero for a little while? You need to let go and think about what you need. You’re a young man, and Jillian’s been away all week. Just let go, for once. Forget responsibility and duty and do what you want.” She paused to let that sink in for a moment. “After all, John, tonight’s Ostara.”