The Five Lives of John and Jillian

by Greg Krehbiel

  And maybe no Karl.

  * * *

  “No, I do like IHOP,” John protested, “and I think you’re being a snob,” he said, getting annoyed.

  “C’mon,” Jillian teased. “The only reason you want to meet them at IHOP is because you think that’s the kind of place the Russells go. They’re IHOP, K-mart kind of people. Admit it.”

  John shook his head and watched the road. “Either you’re joking, or I don’t want to know about it. The fact is that I like their cheese blintzes.”

  Jillian smiled and looked away. They’d gone to IHOP last year in Williamsburg, but John apparently didn’t remember. It was a bad habit, she knew, but she liked to tease him. Sometimes he did look like a stuffed shirt, and maybe, just maybe, teasing him about it would keep him from ever becoming one. She had no idea how counter-productive it was.

  She looked out the window and smiled. Early summer was one of her favorite times. For the first time in her life she was going to have her son with her, living in her house. She could cook his breakfast, bandage his knee, take his temperature, tell him the plaid shirts don’t go with patterned pants. John still worried about the details, but she was sure they were doing the right thing, and it would work out. And if by chance it didn’t, then it wasn’t meant to be.

  Somehow, on this beautiful morning, it seemed impossible that it wouldn’t work.

  Jack and Sandy Russell were a few minutes late, but they seemed far less nervous than they were the last time they’d all met together. For one thing, John was wearing blue jeans, sneakers and a golf shirt, instead of wool slacks, Bostonians and a starched button-down. For another, this was their turf. Late coming in, it took them another minute to get past some friends at a table close to the door.

  Over coffee (tea, with milk and sugar, for Sandy), cheese blintzes, eggs over easy, pancakes, smothered in blueberries, and French toast, they worked out the remaining details of the transfer. Karl had never been on a plane, so this would be his first chance to fly. Jack and Sandy would drop him off at Port Columbus airport, and John and Jillian would pick him up at BWI. That would make good-byes and hellos easier on Karl, John thought. Nobody would be watching his body language for conflicting loyalties.

  John felt the large breakfast like a sack in his gut as he waddled back to the rental car after they had worked out all the arrangements. Jillian had eaten just as heartily, but it seemed to have no impact on her elfin frame. She laughed at him when he loosened his belt one notch.

  The next stop was Steinbach’s office to finalize the agreement with Tom Henry. They’d already seen a draft and approved the language, so it was simply a matter of signing the papers, receiving the check, and handshakes all around.

  John expected to be uncomfortable in Tom’s presence, but they actually hit it off rather well, to Jillian’s surprise. There was, however, one minor sticking point.

  “I’m not against the language here, Tom,” John said, “but there’s one thing I don’t quite get. You don’t mind if we send Karl to a non-denominational Christian school, but you’d prefer we send him to a Catholic school. Right?”

  Tom nodded.

  “And you don’t want to have any say at all if we choose the former. But if we go to a Catholic school – this is what I don’t understand – you don’t insist on approving the school, but you want to know which school it is, and you want to be able to talk to us about it. I don’t get it.”

  Tom’s constant smile seemed to grow as John’s expression became more perplexed.

  “I don’t know much about non-denominational schools, John, and I think you and Jillian can pick one better than I could. But there’s Catholic, and then there’s Catholic,” he said, with a tinge of regret. “I want Karl to be raised Catholic. I realize that’s your business. But if he’s going to a Catholic school, I’d like it to be a genuine Catholic school. Like most other things in our culture today, Catholic education isn’t in the greatest shape, and some of the schools are downright destructive.”

  “I know what you mean,” Max chimed in, turning to John. “I’ve been Catholic all my life, but the church today is very different than it was when I was growing up. It’s amazing, John. The Catholic Church has a rich, beautiful heritage, but it’s all being abandoned by the grown up hippies who run the parishes.”

  “That’s exactly it,” Tom said. “I’d like a good, Catholic school, but failing that, I’d rather Karl go to a decent non-denominational school than one of these modernist, quasi-Catholic things.”

  John nodded. “Okay. I’ve done some reading on Catholicism myself, and I know that what you read in the books is not what you see in the parishes. But there’s a good priest out our way. He’s a genuine Catholic, it seems, and ....”

  Jillian cut him off.

  “Excuse me, John. Sorry, but I thought we were going to visit with Karl before our flight home. If you get started on this, we’ll never make it.”

  Max and Tom smiled, and John looked at his watch.

  “When have I ever been late?” he asked, and then he remembered the one time and quickly added, “No, don’t tell me.”

  She frowned, but Tom said, “There are still a few things I’d like to straighten out with John. Would it be possible for John to stay here and have lunch with us. You could pick him up on the way back?”

  Max stepped out to talk to his secretary, and John and Jillian conferred quickly. Jillian was a little disappointed that John wasn’t going to visit with Karl, but they had seen him last night. John had crawled around through the tubes and balls and slides of Fun Town USA for two hours, until both he and Karl were dripping with sweat.

  “Okay,” Max said, coming back into the room. “That’ll work for me. Just give me a half hour to finish up a few things around here. There’s a decent sandwich shop across the street.”

  Jillian headed back to the Russell’s house, and John, Max and Tom had a simple lunch and worked out the fine points in the agreement. The more they talked, the happier Tom got, and by the time John and Jillian were on their way back to Maryland, John was thinking it might just work.

  Except for the lawyer bills.

  * * *

  The next morning, John was sitting at his desk with his head in his hand, staring at his computer screen.

  It was times like this that he craved a private office with a door. Office etiquette kept people from barging in, but he wanted to be alone with his misery.

  The forms from the Maryland Adoption Network were clear and easy to follow for a detail-oriented guy like John, and the conclusion was equally clear: they didn’t have a chance. Where the forms required sums of credits and debits, there were “helpful” guidelines in the margin explaining “preferred” and “absolute minimum” requirements. If Jillian’s business did as well this year as last, which was unlikely with all her trips out to Ohio, and if they had no legal bills, they just barely passed the minimums. But a legal fee of as little as $1,000 would put them out of range, and it was sure to be ten times that – which reminded him that he hadn’t received a bill from Steinbach yet.

  It was going to kill the review, and therefore the adoption, and therefore break Jillian’s heart, but there was nothing else for it. He called Steinbach’s office, asked the secretary to email his estimated bill, and then he headed up Connecticut Avenue to visit the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

  * * *

  He walked back to his office an hour later, sure they would fail the financial review. At least they’d have Karl for a couple months, and maybe that would be enough. Or maybe there were other options: foster care instead of adoption, or something like that.

  In any event, there was no point worrying about it any more. He’d finish the papers, get Jillian’s signature that night, and mail them off tomorrow. The adoption would certainly be denied.

  When he returned to his office there was an email from Steinbach’s office. He opened the attachment and almost cried when he read it.

  “For legal services: PRO BO
NO.”

  * * *

  Two weeks later, dressed in his recently acquired school uniform, with a silk neck tie in his hand, Karl gently knocked on the bathroom door while John finished shaving.

  “Yes, Karl, what .... Oh. Trouble tying the thing? Okay, come on in and let me show you. It’s not so bad, once you get the hang of it. And your mom picked up a secret weapon for you.” He reached into the medicine cabinet and pulled out a curious looking button with an elastic loop.

  “Vicious old women design boy’s shirts to make the collars unbearable” he said, struggling to get his finger under Karl’s collar to undo the button. “This will help. It’s like magic.”

  Karl chuckled as John attached the button stretcher and turned the boy around to face the mirror. Then he showed him the full and the half Windsor knots.

  Karl suffered through Jillian’s inspection before they all loaded into the car and headed out for the short drive to church.

  “Can we get donuts after church?” Karl asked.

  “If you can sit still during the sermon and tell me what the main point was, I’ll buy you any donut you want,” John said.

  “Does every sermon have a point?” Karl asked.

  John laughed and tousled Karl’s hair.

  “Good question, Karl. I think you and I are going to get along just fine.”

  THE END

  Pipe Dreams

  Chapter 1: On the Couch

  “C’mon, doc, don’t tell me you haven’t dreamt of a sexy pagan before.”

  John reached for another handful of pistachios from the oriental bowl on the cherry wood coffee table as Dr. Robbins smiled, raised his eyebrows and looked up and slightly to the left of where John sat, thinking it over.

  “Daydreamed, maybe,” he said in that precise voice John interpreted as “You should take everything I say absolutely seriously,” but he softened it with a conspiratorial smile. “Okay, ... daydreamed for sure. But I can’t recall any actual dreams like that.”

  John nodded and tried to choke down a particularly dry mouthful of nuts.

  “I suppose I hadn’t actually dreamed of one either, until a few months ago.”

  That was when it started, he thought, and on a sudden impulse he reached into the pocket of his herringbone jacket and felt the smooth briar wood on the stem of his pipe. He pulled it out and noticed the surprise on Dr. Robbins’ face. John relished the quick, wide-eyed look Dr. Robbins gave the pipe, and his subsequent effort to cover it up with his standard clinical detachment.

  John smiled. He was past caring about people’s silly little foibles. I’ve done twenty things today that are statistically more dangerous than smoking a pipe, but this is what makes you worried.

  “When did you start smoking?” the doc asked, holding his pen over his notebook. The concern in his voice and the disapproval on his face almost made John laugh.

  John shook his head and sighed, then looked up with a mischievous smile.

  “You’ve been on my case to quit drinking so much, so I had to find something else to do.”

  In truth he didn’t give a damn what this doctor thought about his personal habits.

  “I didn’t mean smoking, for God’s sake,” Robbins said. “What’s wrong with coffee, or biking, or fishing, or ... going out?”

  There it was again. It had to come up in every session. Dr. Robbins thought it was past time for John to try to date again. Real dates, with some emotional attachment. Not just chance encounters and one-night dates.

  It had been three years since Jillian had died.

  Dr. Robbins had an irritating way of pressing John on the dating thing, so he decided to change the subject.

  “I saw her,” John said with a dead serious expression as he fingered his pipe for moral support. He feared broaching this subject with a man who had the power to have him committed, but he also feared keeping it in.

  An awkward silence followed. The curtains rustled slightly as the air conditioning kicked in and the fan engaged. It was a hot day for June in the District.

  “Who did you see, John?”

  “Jillian, of course.”

  “Jillian is dead.”

  “I know she’s ....”

  His face went red, he shifted in his seat and turned away, forcing himself to break off what he intended to say. Then he waited while the familiar voices had their say in the back of his mind. He could hear his father’s reply, full of anger and indignation. Then he heard his first boss, with her poison tongue, making every syllable of every word into a dagger. And then it was his own voice — or, rather, the voice of the smart alecky kid he used to be.

  They were a small part of the chorus — his constant companions. The “inner interlocutors,” he called them. Voices from the past. People he’d known, or in some cases only imagined. They chimed into his consciousness from time to time, depending on their interests and the subject at hand. Each had a specialty, almost like a patron saint. He had to put up with them, let them have their say, and more often than not they’d show him exactly how not to reply.

  Maybe they were patron demons.

  A solid fifteen seconds later — although it seemed like more in the quiet office — he continued in a composed voice.

  “I know that she’s dead, okay. I think I know that better than anybody. But I saw her in Lafayette Park as plain as I’m seeing you.”

  Dr. Robbins said nothing, so John continued in a quiet voice.

  “I called out to her. Too quietly, I suppose, because .... Well. Because I knew it couldn’t have been her, and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. But it was her.”

  John sat forward in his chair. He’d been wondering all week if he should tell the doc about this. Would he think he was crazy? John had a friend in college who’d been committed, and when John visited him in the psych ward it was as if Henry had become a different person. All the fire was gone. It was like he was sleep-walking through the remnants of his sad life.

  But now it was out in the open and he was going to see it through.

  “You know how you can tell who a person is by the way they walk and the way they stand, even if they’re a hundreds yards away? Well she was only ... maybe 50 yards away. I could see her plainly. Her hair was different, and she was wearing strange clothes, but it was her. I saw her face. I tell you it was more exactly her than any twin or imitation could ever be.”

  He stopped himself. He had become a little more agitated than he wanted, so he took a few seconds to calm down.

  “Anyway,” he said with a bit of a self-deprecating laugh, as if to say, “yeah, I know I must be crazy,” “I lost her on the other side of a cab and then she was gone.”

  He put his pipe in his mouth. He couldn’t smoke in the doc’s office, but sometimes he enjoyed the tobacco flavor that endured in the bit even without lighting up.

  Dr. Robbins was quiet for some time, looking at John with an oddly detached and vacant expression, almost as if he might be gearing down for a mid-afternoon nap. But this was the face he wore when he had to think quickly and arrange his words just so.

  “Can we step back for a moment from what happened in the park and let me see if I have all this right? You’ve been a bit of a stranger recently, John, and I have some catching up to do.”

  “So,” he continued, gesturing with his left hand as if he were about to start counting on his fingers, “a couple months ago you started smoking a pipe to distract yourself from drinking. Is that right?”

  John shook his head and smiled. “That’s more of a joke, I suppose. Or an excuse. I started smoking again because I was bored. I had always liked the smell when my grandfather used to smoke at my parent’s house.” He held out the very pipe as witness. “And I smoked for a few years before I met Jillian. But she didn’t like it so I gave it up. Now it doesn’t seem to matter.”

  “Your health doesn’t matter?” The words had layers of meaning and accusation. John had been coming to Dr. Robbins fairly steadily for three years, not c
ounting the last few months, and a lot of what they discussed seemed scripted. The same concerns. The same advice. Nothing changed, and that seemed to make Dr. Robbins increasingly worried, as if there ought to be more progress by now.

  “I’m not depressed, doc,” he said defensively. “Or ... Hell. I’m not clinically depressed, but yes, I probably am depressed. I don’t know. In any event, smoking a pipe isn’t going to kill me. Okay. You want the truth?” He sat up straight and spoke in a clear voice. “My father and my grandfather spent the last ten years of their lives as demented, doddering old fools. My great grandfather didn’t fare much better, but that’s only because we don’t know as many details. If smoking kills me before dementia sets in, I’ll consider that a mercy.”

  Dr. Robbins sat and waited a moment for the air to clear. He jotted something down in his notebook, then looked up at John as if he was trying to suppress the condescending smirk that wanted to come out.

  “We’ve talked about that, John. Your father and your grandfather had dementia in old age, and probably as a result of head trauma. You’re a different man. We know more about what causes mental illness, and we have better medical care these days. You’re not doomed to die of Alzheimer’s.”

  He saw by John’s expression that it was no use.

  “Let’s get back to my schedule, if you don’t mind,” Dr. Robbins continued. “When did you start smoking the pipe?”

  “Well, I’ve smoked occasionally for years, but I think I took it up again as a daily thing in early April. I could check my receipts, if it matters.”

  “And shortly after that you started having these dreams about Jillian?”

  “Yes, but they weren’t dreams about Jillian. It was ... it was like meeting her all over again, but not her. She was different, and I was different. I’m not sure I can find the right words to explain it. I felt as if I was acting a part in a play, but she .... She wasn’t the Jillian I knew .... I don’t know how to explain it. It was her, and not her.”

  “It’s odd that this Jillian in your dreams is a Wiccan,” Dr. Robbins said.