The Five Lives of John and Jillian

by Greg Krehbiel

  The toaster popped. John set down the paper and his coffee cup and retrieved the three brown slices as Jillian finished with the eggs. He slopped some butter haphazardly on his two pieces, but carefully covered every square centimeter of Jillian’s toast. Jillian put two eggs on his plate and one on hers, and smiled at her toast.

  “Did you see the letter you got yesterday?” she asked. “The address was hand written. I set it on your desk.”

  “No,” John replied. “An actual letter? How old-fashioned. Who from?”

  “I didn’t recognize the return address, and there was no name.”

  “I’ll take it with me,” he said. “What do you have planned for the day?”

  “I’m still finishing those valences for the McCarthy house, and I have an appointment at two with Johnson windows.”

  “Really,” John said, setting down his fork and looking at her with wide eyes. “Congratulations.”

  Jillian beamed. She’d been trying to set up this meeting for years. Her business making custom window treatments kept her busy, but it was all one-off jobs, and she relied on recommendations. If she could partner with Johnson, her business would explode.

  John got up from the table and walked over to kiss her. “Well done,” he said. “I hope it goes well.”

  Jillian smiled and put orange marmalade on every square centimeter of her toast.

  A few minutes later John was finishing his morning routine and getting ready to leave for the train.

  “Almost forgot,” he said as he headed for the door, then reversed course, ducked into his study and retrieved the hand-written envelope from the top of his desk. “Give me a call after your meeting with Johnson,” he said as he kissed her goodbye. “I want to hear how it goes.”

  Jillian put her right hand in John’s hair and held him so close their noses were touching. “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you too,” John whispered. “See you later.”

  * * *

  Just after three that afternoon Jillian called John at work. He was deep in the design of a workers’ cafeteria for a plant renovation. The old building required so many changes to bring it up to code that he wasn’t sure the owners were going to be able to afford it. They might have to tear the whole thing down and start from scratch, but he would view that as a personal defeat. He was determined to find a way, and the phone call annoyed him.

  “John Matthews,” he answered in a gruff voice.

  “I’ve just come from my meeting with Johnson.”

  It took a moment for John to get his head out of the drawing and remember the rest of his life. The details slowly dripped into his consciousness. Jillian’s voice. Important meeting with Johnson. She doesn’t sound happy.

  “Hi, Jillian,” he said. “Sorry, I was deep in a project. How did it go?”

  The phone was silent for an awkward moment.

  “Is this a bad time? Maybe we should talk tonight.”

  “No, no,” he said. “I’m back and you have all my attention. You don’t sound happy. How did it go?”

  “Not all that badly,” she said.

  “But …,” John encouraged.

  “They were suitably impressed with my work, it’s just that they don’t have a program for promoting small contractors, and I’m not big enough for them to partner with. I’m in an awkward in-between place and they’re not sure how they would work with me.”

  “Hmm,” he said, feeling the immediate need to think of a solution, but then reminding himself that wasn’t always the wisest thing to do. “I’m sure that’s frustrating. How are you doing?”

  “I’m frustrated,” she said in a voice John couldn’t interpret.

  “What can I do to take it all off your mind?” he asked, and then to make sure she didn’t get the wrong idea, added. “Is there someplace you’d like to go, or something you’d like to do?”

  “Oh, you don’t need to fuss over me,” she said, in a voice John interpreted as “please fuss over me.”

  “Well, I wish I could give you a hug, anyway,” he said. “I’m sure you’re not in the mood to cook, and I’m in the mood for sushi. How about we head over to The Silver Dragon tonight.”

  It was a calculated risk. She said “don’t fuss,” so if he’d suggested some place nice that could have backfired. The Silver Dragon was easy and convenient, but not elegant by any stretch. It was nice enough to have waiters, but not the sort of place you dressed up for. It all depended on her mood.

  “I’ll be okay,” she said.

  “Yeah, but I want sushi,” John said in mock annoyance. Jillian laughed.

  “Okay. We’ll do it for you then.”

  “Right. I’ll be home about six. Are you going to be okay until then?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, a little cheerier. “Thanks.”

  “Hey, I’m proud of you for trying,” John said. “You do great work, and I’m sure there’s some way to get a larger audience for it.”

  “I’ll see you tonight,” she said, and hung up.

  As John set down the phone he wondered if he should make reservations for someplace nicer, but his eye strayed to his over-sized plasma display and he noticed a clear code violation. His mind was immediately drawn back inside his project. He spent the rest of the afternoon deep in building codes and ideas for how to transform a horrible old steel and concrete space into a pleasant and efficient spot for employee lunches.

  At five o’clock he packed up his laptop and transferred the work for his trip home. The design tools were a lot harder to manipulate on the small screen, without a proper mouse, but he was in the middle of a few ideas and he had to sketch them out before he lost them.

  At six o’clock his brain was still full of schematics of kitchen counters and lunch tables as he drove up the gravel driveway to their little cottage in the woods. With an effort he pushed it all aside and tried to prepare himself for whatever he might find. A depressed Jillian. A crying Jillian. An “I’m over it” Jillian, or even an angry Jillian who had figured out some way that it was all his fault.

  She met him at the front door in lipstick, high heels and a bathrobe.

  “I made the reservations for eight,” she said as she undid his tie.

  * * *

  About 11:30 that night Jillian sat bolt upright in bed. Some noise in the room had pulled her out of sleep with a start. She looked around wide-eyed, expecting to see a robber, or at least a lamp that had crashed to the floor. John was asleep next to her.

  She was about to wake him, but when she looked at him something told her it was John who had made the noise. He usually slept on his back, but he was laying in an unusual position on his side with his limbs sprawled out in every direction. His face looked pained. His mouth was moving, as if he was muttering, and from time to time a groan would escape his lips. She wanted to wake him, but she knew that would doom him to remembering whatever nightmare was disturbing his sleep. She lay down next to him and put a gentle hand on his shoulder, hoping to calm him.

  “No, Jillian, no,” he said in a pained voice, still in his dream. He babbled a few things after that, and eventually fell back into dreamless sleep.

  Jillian lay awake another hour before she finally drifted off.

  * * *

  Jillian’s window treatment business kept her at home most mornings. She and John started the day early, and she could rarely visit clients before nine or ten o’clock. She bought most of her supplies online, so the early hours of each day were usually spent sketching designs or doing the actual manufacturing of new pieces.

  By ten o’clock she was ready for a break, which often meant a strong cup of reheated coffee and a plain croissant. This particular Monday she couldn’t shake a bad feeling. Something was wrong with John. Very wrong.

  For weeks now he had been sleeping fitfully, often muttering, and clearly in some sort of distress. Sometimes she could catch the words. Most of the time it didn’t make any sense, but she heard her own name a few times, and often he
said something that sounded like Jesus.

  It took a few nights of sleepless watch to figure that out, but eventually it clicked. He was saying G.S., not Jesus. And that made Jillian worry.

  John had a high school girlfriend named Gayle Stevens, whose awkward nickname was G.S. One night out a few weeks ago, when John and Jillian had quite a lot to drink, John confessed that he’d run into Gayle at lunch. She worked in the building across the street from his office, and she had invited him to Happy Hour more than a few times. He’d always said no.

  John had strict rules about that sort of thing. A married man doesn’t spend time alone with any woman but his wife. It was a deep part of his soul, and breaking a rule like that would torture him.

  There was also the tablet. John liked to check his email on his iPad, and a few times Jillian got the impression he was trying to hide something from her.

  This particular ten o’clock she decided that she didn’t need the coffee or the croissant. She needed answers, and as much as it pained her to do it, she opened the folder John had prepared for her. It was where he kept all his account numbers, passwords and anything she might need in an emergency.

  She logged in to his computer and spent the next hour searching his emails, his browser history, and anything that might give a clue about what was troubling her husband.

  * * *

  Jillian hadn’t found anything incriminating on John’s computer, but the act of snooping itself had made her more suspicious. To know where to look and what to search for she had to imagine what he might be up to, which planted dark thoughts in her mind. Those dark thoughts festered through the afternoon.

  She could tell by the patterns in the time stamps that he’d deleted a lot of his emails, and his browser cache and cookies only went back one week. Why had he cleared them? And what was in the password-protected zip archive called “fragments.” What a weird name for a folder.

  She brooded for hours, staring at the screen with a cold cup of coffee in her hand. When she noticed the time she realized she needed to start thinking about dinner, but then she noticed there was a message on her phone.

  “Late meeting,” John had texted. “Won’t be home until 8, and I won’t need dinner. Sorry.”

  Jillian sat and stared at the computer another half hour, then she grabbed her purse, got in her car and started driving.

  She had nowhere in particular in mind, she just needed to get out of the house and breathe. She opened the windows and the moon roof of her Honda CR-V and drove south on 197, then north on Rt. 3. She started to wander, turning onto roads she didn’t know and didn’t pay much attention to where she was headed.

  About 6:00 she was driving down a windy road somewhere near Annapolis when she saw a cute little French restaurant with a gravel parking lot and its own vegetable garden out back. She pulled in and walked around the garden for a few minutes.

  She loved gardens. On her first birthday after they were married, John had built five 10x10 raised bed gardens in their backyard. Early in their marriage she and John had worked them together, but he’d lost interest the last couple years. They used to have beds of herbs, rows of spinach and lettuce, eggplant, squash, peas and beans. Now it was mostly tomatoes and peppers, and three of the five beds were idle this year.

  “Jillian, is that you?” came a half-familiar voice from across the parking lot. She turned to see Sean walking towards her. He was a large, red-faced, hairy man who looked like a Viking, or one of William Wallace’s companions. In fact he was the deacon at her Episcopal Church. Jillian had always liked Sean. He was an interesting man who had converted to Christianity in his mid-twenties, after spending the previous decade as a Wiccan. He had the zeal of a convert and took his church responsibilities seriously, and the congregation loved him.

  “Where’s John?” he asked, looking around.

  “Oh, he had to work late.”

  “What brings you way out here?” he asked. “It’s a nice place, don’t get me wrong. I love it. But it’s a little far afield for you, isn’t it?”

  “I was out taking a drive and I ... just stopped. No real reason.”

  Sean gave her a penetrating gaze that seemed to read more than Jillian liked. Despite his Anglican piety, he always had a bit of the sorcerer’s edge to him. She felt as if Merlin were probing her mind.

  “I was about to go inside and have a light dinner,” Sean said. “Join me?”

  She wanted to, but she knew she had to decline. John wouldn’t approve, and ... she had to admit she liked Sean. Having dinner alone with him would be crossing a line, and she resented John for that.

  She smiled at Sean and looked at her watch. “I actually have a few things I need to do.”

  “Just a glass of wine, then,” he said. Jillian looked down and shook her head.

  “I really can’t,” she said quietly. “Have a nice dinner.” She started back towards her car. Sean stood there a moment watching her, then turned to go into the restaurant.

  Jillian thought of John, and she wondered what was going on with him. He had to stay late at work from time to time, but it wasn’t like him to just text her about it. He always called. And the dreams. Why is he suddenly having such vivid dreams, and talking in his sleep? She stopped after a few steps and turned around.

  “Sean,” she called across the parking lot.

  He turned and walked back towards her.

  “There is something I’d like to talk to you about,” she said when he got close enough to avoid shouting across the lot.

  “That’s what I’m here for,” he said, pointing to his collar, which he wore even when he was off duty.

  “Do you know much about dreams?”

  “A little,” he said. “Have you been having strange dreams?”

  “Not me,” she said quickly. “Do you think we could have coffee some morning this week?”

  “Any time,” Sean said with a smile, “or right now,” he added, gesturing towards the restaurant.

  Jillian looked at her watch again. She didn’t have any place to be, but Sean didn’t know that.

  “I need to go,” she said. “How about coffee tomorrow at nine at the Starbucks near the church?”

  “I’ll be there,” Sean said, and they went their separate ways.

  Jillian drove home in an odd mood. Wordless thoughts seemed to flow through her mind, giving her a sense of both calm and excitement. She felt good that she resisted Sean’s invitations, but she wondered why he was being so ... friendly. Was he coming on to her? She felt flattered by his interest, but also a little concerned. He’s the deacon, for God’s sake. But the attention was nice — particularly today — and she did like him.

  She got home right before 7:30, opened a bottle of Viognier and settled into the corner of the couch with her kindle. She was desperately hoping that Psmith was half as enjoyable as the Wooster stories, but by mid-way through her second glass she decided no amount of hoping would make it that way, so she returned to the old reliable and re-read The Purity of the Turf.

  John got home at a quarter to nine. With an effort Jillian got up from the couch and met him at the door.

  “Sorry to be so late,” he said.

  “What happened?” she asked. “You smell like tobacco.”

  John grinned somewhat sheepishly. “Sorry,” he said. “There were some things I had to take care of, and before you ask, yes, I did have a smoke.”

  “You weren’t meeting with Gayle, were you?” Jillian asked before thinking.

  John looked confused, as if the name didn’t register, but then his eyes brightened and he laughed. “Oh, heaven’s no,” he said. “And if I had she’d have scalped me. Did I tell you about the time she stole my grandfather’s pipe?”

  John was trying to be light and funny, but Jillian wasn’t in the mood. He reached out and took her hand. “Don’t worry, okay? I don’t blame you for being curious, and I don’t want to sound overly mysterious, but can I ask you to trust me on this? I really shouldn’t tell y
ou much. It’s ... well, that’s more than I should say.”

  Jillian looked at him with pained eyes and wavered between a desire to trust him and a need to get it all out in the open, whatever “it” was. The day had been more than trying, and she felt like the frayed end of an old rope.

  “Hey,” John said tenderly as he saw the tears forming in her eyes. “What’s the matter? Did something happen today?”

  She wanted to talk about his dreams and the things he’d been saying in his sleep. She wanted to confess that she’d been snooping around on his computer, and she wanted to cancel her appointment with Sean and get back to where things had been only a few weeks ago. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong and she felt so frustrated about it she wanted to break something.

  John took her in his arms, but she was stiff and unyielding.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I guess it was a bad night for me to stay late. I should have called first.”

  She softened a little.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “It came on suddenly, but, ... really, Jillian, I can’t explain any more. I’m sorry.”

  They stood there in the foyer, just holding one another, for a long time. Jillian slowly softened in John’s arms.

  * * *

  Jillian felt guilty over her bran muffin the next morning. Not about the muffin, but about the fact that she was going to see Sean to talk about John. She thought about telling him — making sure it was okay — which it wouldn’t be. Besides, he’d made it clear last night that he was keeping something secret, so there was little chance he’d tell her if she confronted him about it. She had to find out on her own.

  John acted as if everything was normal and didn’t seem to notice Jillian’s mood. He gave her a perfunctory kiss and headed out to the train station as he did every day, and Jillian sat at the table for a long time and picked at her muffin.