Wait For Me Jack

by Addison Jones

  Two months later, two big things happened on the same day.

  ‘This is Tom. Tom, this is my dad and mom. Jack and Milly. Actually, you’ve met already, ages ago. At that Fourth of July barbecue, remember?’

  Silence. Tom was five foot two to Elisabeth’s five foot seven. He was wearing a track suit.

  ‘Close your mouth, Dad. He’s cool about this.’ She patted her enormous bump.

  ‘I’m not into genetic vanities,’ explained Tom in a low voice. ‘I don’t look for immortality that way.’

  And then the phone call interrupting the celebratory toast.

  After Jack’s mother’s funeral, the family, which now had thirty-six-year-old Tom grafted on to it, ate lunch at Arrivederci. It was a rowdy lunch, and no one observing them would think it was post-funeral. Lots of red wine, loud chatter and laughter. Toasts galore. And under the table, some knees were touching, and some hands were entwined occasionally. At least four, including Ernie and Bernice. Look at them, thought Jack – still at it obviously. And Sam had brought his new girlfriend. A loud girl in a red turtleneck, obviously synthetic. As a rule, MacAlisters never wore turtlenecks or anything synthetic, but Jack was polite to her anyway. Danny and Donald seemed to be flirting with her, but then they always wanted what Sam had. Colette had brought fourteen-year-old August then discreetly left, promising to return later to pick him up. August, oddly, had loved his grandmother, and his eyes were still red. This puzzled Jack. Had he got his mother wrong? Had she been lovable? The other children didn’t seem bothered much by her absence, not even Elisabeth really. Grandma MacAlister had been a crusty cold figure in their lives, not unlike Grandma Molinelli. He’d not had any time to think about her since she died. All the arrangements had fallen to him. Hardly even time to get his suit cleaned. Ivy had sent a card. Wanted to come to the funeral, Jacko, but think it’s been too long now. Think going home might finish me off. I am so sorry you got to do this thing all on your own.

  When Jack returned to the table after paying, there was only his wife left. Billy must have gone off with one of his siblings. Or maybe his girlfriend’s mother had picked him up. Maria and Billy rarely spent a whole day apart. Jack didn’t care. Billy was seventeen and annoying.

  ‘Well,’ Milly said.

  He couldn’t decipher her expression. He was a little drunk and worried about driving. Something else to stop the mom thoughts. Was his wife about to cry? To throw up?

  ‘Let’s go, Milly. Let me help you.’

  ‘No, thank you. I can get up myself. You go to the car, I’ll be there in a minute.’

  ‘I’ll walk with you, honey.’

  Pause. He stood and stared at her. She sat and stared back, then said:

  ‘I said I am fine. I’ll meet you at the car.’

  ‘Christ,’ he said under his breath. Got the car and pulled it up to the front door. For two cents, he’d drive off right now and leave her. Stubborn woman! He spotted her wobbling a little at the entrance, and a young man rose from his table and opened the door for her. The man glared at Jack. Jack had the window down and he could clearly hear his wife’s tinkling laughter and her flirty voice: ‘Why, aren’t you kind! I was hoping someone would open the door.’

  ‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ he said to himself. ‘Get in the car,’ he told her through the open window.

  ‘Did you see that nice man over there?’

  ‘Get in the car, Milly.’

  And off they drove, into the afternoon of his mother’s funeral day. Everything was increasingly surreal. He thought of the cinnamon banana cake his mother often baked. Always underdone, so it was dark and easier to eat with a spoon in a bowl. And that box of Christmas ornaments she’d kept in her cupboard under the stairs. Couldn’t recall, for the moment, if she’d even had a tree the last few years. There was a reindeer ornament he’d always liked, even as a teen. It had gems on each antler point.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful about the wedding?’

  ‘What wedding?’

  ‘Weren’t you listening?’

  Nothing in this day irritated him more than her knowing some family news that he did not.

  ‘Of course I was listening,’ he bluffed. ‘You mean the fact they’re tying the knot seconds before the baby pops out? Hardly call that a wedding to be excited about. Not in the ordinary sense, more like a marriage of convenience.’

  ‘He is a nice boy, Jack.’

  ‘Sure, sure. He’s very nice.’

  ‘You say nice like it’s a bad thing. He told her she was the only woman he’d ever really loved.’

  ‘And she believed him?’

  ‘Oh! To hell with you Jack MacAlister. I suppose you think you know everything about marriage.’

  ‘Well, I’d say it probably has a better chance when there’s no baby on the way.’

  ‘They know that! Of course they do.’

  ‘I bet they’d never get married at all, if she wasn’t pregnant.’

  ‘And that would be good? You don’t think strong marriages can come from weak beginnings?’

  Oh, Milly was exasperating. That day at Bolinas, the day of that kiss – it might have never happened. Nothing had changed.

  Once home, he took a walk to clear his head of wine, then did a bit of editing on Fiordinski’s new manuscript. Made a note about an invoice for his secretary to type up. Made notes for a speech he had to give on Saturday, for the Dulcinea Short Story Prize, and better get it right this year after the last fiasco. He’d stood there in a room of 500 people, praising the winning author’s ability to convey profound loss without sentimentality, while the author had stood by him frowning, tilting her head, puzzled. How was he to know her story had been a comedy about getting on the wrong train? Was he expected to have read the damn thing? Was it so unrealistic to think the conveying-profound-loss-without-sentimentality was a phrase that could apply to 99% of literary fiction? But this time he was prepared. Even read the stupid story.

  He took a phone call from Billy.

  ‘Staying the night at Maria’s, okay?’

  ‘But it’s a school night.’

  ‘We’re going to study. It’s cool, Dad.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Jack. ‘It’s not, technically, cool at all.’

  Maria was on the pill now, so at least there wasn’t that to worry about. At least Billy had said she was on the pill. Something about her Catholicism had been part of that sentence, but Jack hadn’t really listened. Now he could hear Maria giggling and some record playing in the background. Elvis Costello singing about an aim that was true. Well, to hell with Billy. But still, he suddenly wished he would come home. And next year, no kids would live at home. He’d yearned for that day, and yet now he dreaded it.

  ‘Pick me up tomorrow after school, Dad? Got football practice till six.’

  ‘Okay. Goodnight.’

  Jack went back to his editing. Secretly he thought what the writers did, and what he did too, was a kind of magic. It made him smile. A man took his thoughts and emotions, and without opening his mouth, transferred them via black scribbles on paper into the minds and hearts of people he’d never meet. Strangers. A silent miracle every time, but everyone was so used to it, the miracle was unnoticed. Aside from perceptive people like himself, of course. Now and then, he appreciated the miracle of writing.

  Jack and Milly ate dinner in silence. Scrambled eggs on toast. Not-hot eggs on soggy bread.

  9:00. Time for the news and a brandy. They settled in their usual places and watched the news. At a commercial, he turned the volume off and said, looking at the television screen:

  ‘You remember when Glen Miller disappeared?’

  ‘Jack, what are you talking about? Glen Miller was killed.’

  ‘No one knows that, Milly.’

  ‘Well, he’s dead. Died years ago.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t saying he was alive now. I was just asking…’

  ‘Of course I remember when he died,’ she said with contempt. ‘You think I’m stupid?’


  Oh, his heart was so heavy. It was so unfair. He sighed, and she heard it and turned to him with her old dispelling smile. Melted things a little.

  ‘Sorry, honey. What about Glen Miller?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Come on. You brought it up.’

  ‘It’s nothing, forget I mentioned it. It’s just, I was thinking. It was pretty damn sad, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose. I was only a….a sophomore in high school, I think.’

  ‘Did you cry?’

  ‘Yes, I think I probably did. All the girls cried.’

  ‘Yeah. Same at my school.’

  ‘Did you cry, Jack?’ she asked with a laugh in her voice.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘No. Yes. I don’t know. I didn’t know you then. Maybe you were soft when you were eighteen.’

  ‘I did not cry.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Jack stood up and poured himself another large brandy. He said from the kitchen:

  ‘But that doesn’t mean my heart wasn’t broken.’

  ‘What? I can’t hear you.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Hey, didn’t your dad die that same year? When you were a senior?’

  ‘About six months earlier, when I was a junior.’

  ‘Terrible.’

  Milly watched the TV a few minutes, then said:

  ‘Must have been tough on your mom. First her daughter jumps ship, then her husband dies, then you head off to war.’

  ‘Huh. Yeah, I suppose. Never thought about it, to tell the truth.’

  ‘Are you sad about your mom?’

  ‘What a question.’

  ‘Well, you haven’t said anything. Or acted sad. Have you cried? I haven’t seen you cry.’

  ‘It was just before Christmas.’ A second brandy was finally hitting that particular spot behind his ribs.

  ‘What was?’

  ‘When his plane disappeared. Over the English Channel.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. You are nuts. Where’s the remote? What are you doing now? Hey, I wanted to watch that!’

  ‘Oh shut up, Milly. Just shut the hell up, okay?’ Jack put on a record, lowering the needle carefully.

  Milly opened her mouth, then closed it. Then opened it.

  ‘She was my mother-in-law for thirty-one years. I miss her too, you know.’

  The opening notes of ‘In the Mood’ purred into their living room. And with it, those dark green shoes he bought to wear to the spring hop, and that girl’s perfume – like no flower on earth, just a sweet smell on a sixteen-year-old girl named…Doris! Doris Smithers was her name, and when he asked her to dance, her face lit up like a firework display spelling out YES. God, when was the last time a girl looked at him with such undisguised, wholehearted admiration? Well, aside from Colette of course. He’d stepped on Doris’s toes repeatedly, and each time he apologised, she giggled. Giggled as if she’d drunk a whole bottle of gin.

  My throat hurts, he wanted to say. The words were in his mouth, as solid and sour tasting as lemon-flavoured hard candy, or unripe plums. If he could speak he would say: My throat is so swollen I cannot swallow. Everything hurts. My eyes burn, my chest hurts with every breath, and my stomach. My stomach has something hard and sharp and painful stuck right in here, just above my belly button. Why aren’t we able to really talk to each other? Tell each other how we really feel? That hurts too. I’m lonely.

  He turned the volume up.

  ‘Fine!’ said his wife. ‘I don’t care. I am going to bed.’

  He stood by the stereo, and stared at the record as if it needed him looking to keep going. He rocked on his feet a little, to the music.

  ‘Darn dog!’ she said, as she tripped over Scout. ‘Darn stupid leg!’ she yelled at her lame leg.

  ‘I agree. Stupid leg.’

  ‘What do you mean? I haven’t noticed you tripping over the dog. Haven’t seen you take ten minutes to walk up the hall to bed.’

  ‘You think your lameness has just affected you? It happened to me too, you know. Your being crippled happened to both of us.’

  ‘Oh, good night!’ she shouted.

  He waved one hand a little.

  Then from the hall, her hard flat tone: ‘I love you!’

  Jack pretended he hadn’t heard. He was wondering why, despite his dad dying, losing Glen had felt like the first proper death of his life. It had been crushing to think that there would never be another Miller record to line up to buy. That all there would ever be of Glen Miller was already here. Christmas had been ruined.

  ‘Jacko-honey, what on earth’s the matter? You haven’t touched your turkey.’ His mom’s voice, a little thick with sherry, but well meaning, warm. She’d even tried to touch him. The old mom hug, and he’d almost fallen into it, but then he caught her eyes and there was a definite laugh hiding there. Mocking him and his sadness! He’d pushed her aside and left the house, slamming the door. He took a long walk, that long ago Christmas evening, every step in time to the Miller songs in his head. Over and over again, ‘Moonlight Serenade’, ‘In the Mood’, ‘Everybody Loves My Baby’. Till he felt a humming personal connection. Glen was right there, walking beside him – only him, because in this neighbourhood, only Jacko MacAlister understood and truly loved him. Jacko was walking his wake.

  Till he suddenly stopped under a dripping sycamore – it was drizzling, of course – and remembered that Glen Miller was missing over the English Channel, presumed dead. Not definitely dead. He could be alive! And this thought cheered him up so much, he dived into it with everything he had. Not a walking wake any more, he practically skipped back home. Alive! Somewhere in Europe, in his Army uniform. God, Glen looked damned good in that khaki. Someone somewhere was probably cooking something nice for him right now. Maybe it was all a government plot to keep it secret. Maybe Glen was being used as a spy now, or maybe he’d been injured by his own army, and they were so embarrassed they were nursing him back to health in secrecy. Or maybe Glen had been kidnapped, or taken prisoner, or maybe he just had enough and bailed out himself. Met a cute French girl, and he wanted to be a normal guy for a while. No wife, no fans, no fame. Yeah, that would be like him. Had enough of all the fuss. Back to basics.

  Just before high school graduation, Jack signed up with the army. All the way to the recruiting office, and all the way home, Jack kept beat with the music. His feet took the rhythm, and his head and shoulders took the brass, threading its sexual, sassy way through. War come get me!

  When the record was finished, Jack tried to turn it over but he was too drunk and his hand was clumsy. The needle fell on the record and the noise was so awful, tears finally came. And because he was alone and drunk, and because there would never be another Glen Miller record or cinnamon banana cake baked by his mother, and because his father was finally someone he missed, and because his wife was someone he could French kiss on the beach but could not confide in, he did not bother wiping the tears or blowing his nose. Just lay down on the sofa, fell asleep and carried on crying in his sleep. Deep shuddering breaths, snot and tears on the sofa pillows. Scout, who at six months was already a lumbering Labrador, contentedly licked Jack’s face.

  A month later, into the world came the first grandchild. Not a dramatic entrance, more like the quiet departure of his mother. Just the usual sequence of small ordinary events, leading to a push in a darkened hospital room and another human, luckily with all the usual number of digits. Milly set about buying blankets and teddies. She felt the world turning on its axis, and everything was exactly as it should be. Her family was expanding finally. This was why she married, why she had children.

  Jack didn’t give the baby a minute’s thought. He spent more emotional energy on wooing that young Asian lesbian novelist who won the Baker Prize for her unpublished novel. She had everything the critics would love. They’d eat her up. He had to sign her up before anyone else noticed her. And there was Ike, one of Milly’s dogs – he was twelve now and
needed to be taken to the vet again about that alarming skin condition. And he had to get his mother’s house valued and on the market. Paint it first? Might get their own house painted while they were at it.

  No, Jack did not open one of the bottles he’d set aside years ago for special occasions, but when this first grandchild was presented to him, at a week old, he smiled absent-mindedly and said:

  ‘Well, hello you.’

  The symmetry was pleasing. Mother gone, grandchild born. And a boy too! Well, this was pretty good, really. And it was good, too, that he didn’t miss his old mother much, wasn’t it? She’d been alive, and now – incredibly, silently – she was not. His life seemed to have swallowed up her passing, quite painlessly. Her house had been cleared out in a day, a surprisingly easy task. She’d already shed so much. But instead of being relieved, her empty house had made his heart flutter in a mild panic. He would die one day and his having been alive would amount to nothing too. He would be missed only occasionally and then not at all, and everything that mattered to him would be regarded with the same cynicism and ignorance that he brought to bear on his mother’s belongings. Consigned to the Goodwill or the garbage.

  He looked at his new grandson. A whole human being who recently was not, and now he was. He looked at the baby’s hands all curled up, and his downy eyebrows, his scrunched up face.

  ‘Has he got a name yet?’ he suddenly asked, looking up at his daughter.

  ‘No. We had lots of girl names ready, but.’

  ‘Well, how about…’

  ‘Jack? Forget it, Dad. No offence.’

  ‘No! How about Glen?’

  Three Years Earlier

  Cooking with Leftovers

  Oct 3rd, 1982, Berkeley

  1:31pm

  ‘But what’s wrong with her?’ Jack asked his nephew Donald.

  ‘Nothing. I just don’t think she’s the right one, Jack. I don’t want any doubts when I walk up that aisle.’