by Rick R. Reed
We just stood there like that for a long time, the sounds of the TV blaring in the background, smeared chili on the counter. I stroked Maisie’s stiff brownish-red hair for a moment, then let her go. I kept my hands on her shoulders and peered into her eyes. “I’m so sorry this didn’t work out. And I really hope Jack finds some peace. And you too. Neither of you should have to live like this.”
“Thanks,” she said. Her lower lip quivered. “I need to be alone now, okay?” The query came out as just a little more than a squeak.
I nodded. “Of course.” I thought about reminding her she had my number—at least I assumed it would still be in her phone from when I first called in response to her ad—and of telling her I would be there for her if she needed a shoulder to cry on, if she needed a friend. But I had a sneaking suspicion she’d think the words were hollow, just something you say, because of our short acquaintance. So I briefly touched her cheek. My hand came away wet. “Take care.”
I hurried into the living room and shrugged into my coat and put my shoes back on. I opened the door into the night and was surprised to see that snow was falling, so softly it was almost sneaky. The street outside was coated with a layer of white. Since it was late March, I thought this could very well be the last snow of the season. I looked at a cone of the stuff in the yellowish light from the streetlamp in front of the house, where it appeared to be coming down even harder.
I stuck my tongue out, tasting a flake or two. Then I headed toward my car. I hurried inside and then slammed the door shut behind me. The little car, once started, heated up quickly. I thought about turning on the windshield wipers but decided to sit for a few moments, simply watching as the snow fell down all around me, cocooning me. I was still shaken.
And something Maisie had said earlier came back to me. “He woke up in a snowbank…” It didn’t strike me as odd at the time, but now it did, because Seattle, in my many years of living there, rarely saw snow in the winter. No, winters there were gray skies and drizzle, temperatures in the forties.
A snowbank? Something about that gnawed at me, at just the periphery of conscious memory. I grasped for it, but nothing would come.
Finally I put the car in gear and gave the little ranch house what I thought was a parting—and final—glance as I pulled away. Maisie stood at the living room picture window, shoulders slumped. I told myself she was depressed about the weather.
Chapter 10: I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas
Dark Beer and Beef Stew
Some bacon grease
2-3 lbs. stew meat, cubed
Salt and pepper for the meat
4 carrots, chopped
2 parsnips, chopped
1 turnip, chopped
3 big cloves of garlic, minced
4 onions, quartered
1 t each of the following dried herbs: marjoram, tarragon, basil, herbes de Provence
2 bay leaves
2 cups beef stock or 2 cans (10.5 ounces) beef consommé
12 ounces of a good dark beer, like Guinness
1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup flour
More salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
Put your bacon grease in a Dutch oven and let it melt down over medium-high heat. Salt and pepper your stew meat and add it to the hot fat. Sear, turning to brown all sides, in batches if necessary. Remove to plate or bowl. In the same grease, throw in your veggies and onions. Let them soften for a few minutes, then add in your herbs and bay leaves. Finally, pour in your stock and your beer. (Suggestion: drink a beer to match the one you’re cooking with.)
Simmer for an hour to an hour and a half, until the liquid is reduced and concentrated and the beef is tender. At this point, mix your flour and water and add to the pan to thicken the sauce. Serve hot.
Serves 6.
* * * *
“So Brad probably won’t be able to eat with us on Sunday. And Grace is doing something with her friend…who’s most likely covering for her so she can go out with some ex-con she met online,” Mary Beth laughed. “You wanna reschedule our Sunday dinner for the following weekend? I can put the pork chops in the freezer.”
“Dad hasn’t backed out, has he?” I asked, hoping both that he had and hadn’t. My dad and I had one of those “complicated” relationships you’ve heard tell about. I suppose a lot of us, gay men especially, do.
“Oh no. He’s looking forward to it. He’s bringing a six-pack of Bud.” She giggled.
“That sounds like Dad.”
Mary Beth sighed. “You know, he’s softened up a lot in the years you’ve been gone and since Mom passed. It would do you guys good to get reacquainted.”
“I don’t know that we ever were acquainted.” I laughed, but behind the smartass response, there was pain and longing. Somewhere inside me, I knew a little boy still existed, pining away for the love of his macho dad, love that I always thought he withheld. But as I grew older and hopefully a little wiser, I begrudgingly came to accept that he was just a man trying his best. He was a byproduct of his upbringing, just as I was. If I ever wanted any kind of connection with Niles St. Clair, I knew I’d have to accept him for who he was.
Just like he needed to accept me as who I was.
I shifted my conscious mind away from these musings that were better left for when I was alone. “Well, hey then, why don’t the two of you just come over here to my new digs? You haven’t seen it yet, and for the three of us, there’ll be enough room. We can crowd around my little table.”
“I was secretly hoping you’d come up with that idea,” Mary Beth said.
“Well, why didn’t you just suggest it yourself?”
Mary Beth avoided the question. “I’ll drop by tomorrow with the pork chops and other stuff you asked for.”
Tomorrow was Saturday. Mary Beth continued, “And what time should we get there on Sunday?” She laughed. “This’ll be fun. Just Dad and his two kids.”
“Lots of fun,” I said, distracted. I moved to the window to look outside, where it was growing dark. “Looks like it’s snowing again out there,” I told Mary Beth.
“Winter’s last hurrah. At least I hope so,” she said. “Well, Grace just got home. I better get off so I can log out of her Facebook account on her laptop before she comes in.”
“Mary Beth!” I chided, but she’d already hung up. I wanted to ask her if the ex-con thing was just a wisecrack or a real fear, but I’d have to wait.
I set the phone down and shut off the one lamp I had turned on, simply so I could sit on my couch opposite the front window and look at the snow as it came down, its big flakes dissolving as they hit the river water, now black in the deepening twilight.
Ruth hopped up, grunting, on the couch beside me. “Purty, ain’t it?” she asked in an accent she must have picked up from our new landlord. I rolled my eyes.
“You hate the snow.”
“Oh, but I like it from in here. The way it comes down ever so gently.” Ruth yawned and farted. Then she turned in a circle and finally ended up in a neat little mound, like a pillow, with her blockish head on her paws. “It makes me feel all warm and cozy to look at it out there while I’m in here.”
I patted her head. I knew what she meant. I had to admit, I’d missed the snow when I lived in Seattle, for the reason Ruth had just mentioned. There was something so comforting about being inside a warm house while the wind blew and big white flakes fell from the sky. It was even more comforting if you had a beef and beer stew simmering on the stove, as I did.
For the past week, this had been my life—sitting on the couch, daydreaming, and interrupting those two things long enough to cook myself something amazing in the kitchen.
I was gaining weight. And getting bored.
I made myself get up, which was the opposite of what my drowsy self cried out for, and shut off the heat under my stew. I gave it a stir, reveling in the cloud of steam that rose up, with its notes of roasted beef and herbs.
I returned to the couch and lay down on my side, bei
ng careful to keep my feet and legs away from Ruth at the other end. She was now in the crook of my knees in a little human dog bed. She was already snoring like the proverbial trucker.
I closed my own eyes, enjoying the howl of the wind outside and the smell of the stew. I planned to sleep for maybe a half hour or so, then get up and take Ruth out for a walk along the river, whether she bitched about it or not.
* * * *
I watch Jackson disappear into the snow. I shake my head in lusty wonder at how gorgeously his broad shoulders fill out his dark coat. And even at this distance, I think how much I’d like to run my fingers through that thatch of wheat-colored hair.
I look around to make sure no one’s standing close and whisper to him, “Oh, you’re not getting away from me, Mister. As soon as I get back from Ohio, you and me, we’re gonna put it to the test and see where this love-at-first-sight thing is headed.”
I watch and watch until eventually the snow swallows him up. Then I turn and look for a cab to take me home.
I’m in a cab, but it’s days later. Somehow, magically, time has elapsed, and my visit to my family in Ohio has already come and gone. Right now we’re headed north on I-5, away from Sea-Tac Airport.
And I’m on my brand-new cell phone, a Christmas present to myself. There’s only one person I want to call. I have the receipt on which he wrote his number laid out on my thigh, and I punch in the digits.
It rings and rings. And then rings some more. These days, with answering machines and voice mail, endless ringing and busy signals seem like a thing of the past. But apparently not for Jackson.
I shrug and try to make myself believe this is not a bad sign. I’ll try him again when I get home.
I look out the window at all the snow that fell the day I left town—barely getting out of Sea-Tac. Even in the fading light, I can see it’s still banked on the side of the road, not pretty anymore, layered over with a crust of grime. It’s just gray and depressing.
The cabbie is talking about the snow, how a bus full of kids almost plunged off a steep street on Capitol Hill right onto I-5 earlier in the week, how the city has almost shut down because of the record snowfall and other calamities.
But the only calamity I’m worried about is that Jackson will never answer his phone or, worse, that he gave me the wrong number.
I look at the back of the cabbie’s head and think for a moment that it’s Jackson.
* * * *
I awakened from the dream with a start. The snow outside had stopped. The apartment was dark, the only sound Ruth’s steady snore. It felt like someone had just been here and departed only seconds before I opened my eyes. I looked over to the door and saw the chain lock in place.
I lay there for a long time, letting my mind savor the dream imagery. It took me all of about two minutes to put it all together, and when I did, I gasped.
Ruth stopped snoring for a moment and then went right back into it, louder than before.
I sat up, agitated, on the couch. I stood and stretched my arms above my head and moved to the window. The sky had cleared and was now full dark. An orange crescent moon hung low on the horizon, and I could see its shape, wavery, reflected on the slick blackness of the river. A barge was making slow progress on the water’s surface.
I spoke the words aloud because I was dumbfounded by the revelation. “Is it him? Is Jack…Jackson?” I shook my head—no, it can’t be—and then pressed it against the coolness of the windowpane. It simply couldn’t be. Too coincidental.
I thought about the similarities. Both had blond hair, for one. But Jackson’s, if memory served me, was lustrous, thick. Jack’s was stringy, clumped, and dirty. Even with a washing, I didn’t know if it could approach the silky beauty of my missed-connection love from way back, the man I’d never really forgotten, the one about whom I’d always wondered what might have been.
Jack was a skinny thing, unhealthy, like some sort of wraith. Jackson, on the other hand, was vibrant, maybe even a little beefy, strong, muscular. He was a beautiful man. And God help him, Jack was not. At least not in his current state…
I tried to bring up mental images of the faces of both men, placing them side by side, trying to convince myself they were not one and the same.
And I couldn’t do it. I knew, deep inside, that Jackson equaled Jack. They were the same man. I knew it with the same kind of certainty that I knew Mary Beth was my sister, that Ross was a cheating bastard who never deserved me, that I was gay right down to my twinkle toes.
Jackson was Jack.
I shook my head, and a burst of nervous laughter erupted from me. What were the odds?
Talk about fate!
Part of my conscious mind fought against the notion and tried various avenues to convince me that Jack could not be Jackson. Aside from the physical similarities, Jack was irascible, a curmudgeon before his time, a shell of a man trapped in misery and pain. Jackson was fun, warm, compassionate, and sexy as hell.
And yet, and yet…I knew.
I think I didn’t want to accept the simple truth, the coincidence, because it was truly painful to surmise that the vibrant, alive, and sexy man I remembered, so gorgeous and full of life and promise, had somehow morphed into this hidden person, a ghost of his former self.
What a tragedy.
I almost couldn’t bear to accept the pain of this truth, what it all meant.
What the hell had happened to him?
And had it happened, oh my God, the night after our date?
Again that vision of him walking down Pike Street returned, but now I didn’t view Jack in it as an object of lust or a dream of the future, but saw him and his walking away as a journey into dread, into pain, into something so horrible it would change his life forever and transform him into someone else.
I plopped down on the couch. Ruth, as if sensing my distress, woke. She moved close to put her head on my lap. I liked to think, just as I liked to imagine her talking to me, that she made the gesture out of a need to comfort me. The fact was, she was probably just angling for petting. I did what she wanted, stroking her little nearly square head.
I wondered what I should do now. I mean, wouldn’t you? I could get up off this couch, rush right over to the Rogers’ house, and tell them about our connection from eight years ago.
And what good would that do? Would it make who Jackson had become any different? Would it ease his torment? Would it free Maisie from her self-imposed prison of caring and love?
In short, would it change anything?
I honestly didn’t know. The cynical part of me believed that it wouldn’t make one whit of difference. That part told me I had severed ties with this broken little family, and for my own mental health, I should keep things as they were.
But my mental health had never been a high priority. Caring for others, even to my own detriment, had always ranked higher. Sometimes I hurt myself this way, and I knew it. But did that stop me?
Hell no.
What I would do, I mused as I moved to the stove to turn the heat on under my stew, would be to wait. Give myself time to think. Maybe—and I knew this wasn’t true but thought it anyway—I’d come to see I was mistaken, and that the man a few miles away from me was not the same man I’d had the date with back in Seattle, on the eve of its worst snowfall in years.
I shook my head…again. I dished out my stew and set it on the counter. Steam rose up.
Ruth appeared next to me, brown eyes cast upward, imploring. “You know, a good dog owner would share some of that. Us dogs, mostly, are carnivores.”
“That’s not true, Ruth. You know you’ll eat anything.”
“Quit stalling. Gimme some beef.”
I picked up Ruth’s bowl from the floor and pulled out a few pieces of the stew meat, which was so tender it nearly crumbled in my fingers. I set it before her. “Enjoy.”
“Thanks,” she grunted before tucking in.
I grabbed my own bowl and a spoon and went to the couch to sit down and
eat. It had started snowing again outside, hard, and I tried to let the view soothe me as it had before.
It was a losing battle.
Chapter 11: Glazed Pork Chops and Smashed Potatoes
Glazed Pork Chops
4 pork bone-in chops
2 T brown sugar
1 t garlic powder
1 t onion powder
1 t thyme
1 1/2 t salt
1/2 t ground black pepper
2 T olive oil, divided
1 cup apple cider vinegar (I like Bragg’s)
4 T maple syrup
1 T stone-ground mustard
Preheat oven to 400°F.
In a small pan, whisk together apple cider vinegar, maple syrup, and mustard. Bring to a boil, and then reduce to a simmer. Cook until thick—about 10 minutes.
In a bowl combine sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, thyme, 1 teaspoon of salt, and pepper. Add 1 tablespoon of oil and mix with a fork until it’s a paste.
Pat the pork chops dry with paper towels, and pat on the spice rub so the chops are covered on both sides.
Heat the remaining tablespoon of olive oil in a large cast-iron skillet (or other oven-proof skillet) over medium-high heat.
When sizzling, add pork chops and sear on both sides, about 2 minutes per side.
Place in the oven and roast for about 5 minutes.
Remove pork chops from the oven, pour glaze over them, return in the oven, and bake for another 5 minutes. Sprinkle with remaining 1/2 t salt before serving.
Serves 4.
* * * *
I watched from the door as Dad got out of the car and made his way around the house and to the set of stairs that would bring him to my front door. In spite of the cold and the snowflakes still dancing in the air, he wore only a lightweight jacket he’d probably held on to since the 1970s. It was what he would call a windbreaker. It was dull beige, no lining, with a zip-up front. In his hand he clutched a brown paper bag, and I could guess without thinking what was inside—a six-pack of Budweiser, his favorite beer from as far back as I could remember. He drank the stuff, honestly, like I drank water. Yet I had never seen him drunk. I had some in my own fridge right now, just in case he didn’t bring his own.