Wait For Me Jack

by Addison Jones

  ‘Lady!’

  His voice trailed through the shadows under the trees, interspersed with low warm laughter.

  ‘Lady!’

  He returned with the dog and an anxious face, and sat down beside Sam. He noticed his son’s knees still had scabs, just like a seven-year-old. Did he still fall off his bike? And what was he doing smoking this stuff, at his age? He was just a kid. Gin was tons better. You knew where you were with a martini. Must explain that to him. As soon as talking became possible.

  ‘How are you Dad?’

  ‘Not. Good.’ He leaned closer and whispered: ‘I’m screwed. How can I go home to your mother like this?’

  So they walked around a bit, till things seemed less scary for Jack, talking about football scores and camping plans. His eyes were bloodshot and the pupils dilated. By the time they headed back to the house, Jack’s heart had stopped pounding quite so fast, and light and sound had almost reverted to normal intensity.

  ‘Thanks, Sam,’ he said as they approached home. ‘Really.’

  ‘No problemo. Hey, don’t look in the mirror for a while, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘It’s far out, isn’t it? Getting high.’

  Jack imagined replying that, yes, it was far out getting high, but the phrase made him cringe, would sound affected in his mouth. In any case, talking was still difficult.

  It was only 4pm, but Jack went straight to his bedroom to lie down. And there she was. There was his wife. He really did have an actual wife, an entire female human being who belonged to him. Sorting laundry out on the waterbed, neat piles of shirts and shorts and pyjamas – their children’s clothes. Imagine that – they had two children! Children who wore clothes! One of whom just got his old dad stoned. His whole life was a Goddamn miracle.

  Billie was her usual dreamy self. The summer months, with the kids home, seemed to be an endless round of interruptions and domestic chores. She was never alone, and missed her solitude a bit but didn’t dwell on it. Most days she moved from one activity to another, and hummed songs from her youth. A bit of hair had fallen out of her ponytail, so it curled up on her neck. That was what he noticed first, as her face was turned away. That curl, that part of her neck. And a relief she wasn’t looking at him.

  ‘Not feeling that great, hon. Going to lie down for a while,’ he said as naturally as he could, then moved some clothes, lay down on his side and closed his eyes. The water in the bed sloshed loudly. He stayed still and waited for the turbulence to subside. How had he never noticed how noisy it was? But still, it was warm at night when he got in, and also proved they were not valley fuddy-duddies. All in all, a great way to sleep. But what was that smell? Jesus, since when had clean clothes smelled like this? He wanted to bury his face in the neat pile next to him. He wanted to open his mouth and eat those shirts. He was very conscious that everything was wonderful, but what he really wanted was to feel normal again. He sighed. His old self, that oblivious being, hovered just beyond the bed. Oh, blessed unselfconsciousness!

  He heard the door close softly, and the water sloshing of Billie on the bed beside him. She lifted one of his arms and placed it around her chest, as she manoeuvred herself backwards into the curve of his body. For a few minutes Jack slipped into a deep sleep, as if her presence had unlocked him somehow, returned him to his relaxed self. Wife as antidote to marijuana-induced paranoia. But when she moved slightly, he instantly rose to the surface. Trying to ape normality, he slid a hand up her leg. Then scooped her breast inside her bra, recorded how moist it felt. He didn’t feel inside his own body – instead, he watched himself. She was a stranger, really. He was a stranger too. And hell – what he was doing was just bizarre, wasn’t it? Wanting to literally slot into this being. This woman. He carried on regardless, but while fiddling with the condom, was humiliated to find there was nothing to make one necessary.

  ‘It’s okay, honey,’ she said casually, as if this was not an entirely new experience. ‘I’ve got to take Elisabeth and Sam to the mall now anyway.’

  He got up after he heard the front door slam, and went to his desk. Tried to work, then decided to do chores instead. Nothing that required thought. Tightened the hinges on the basement door. Paid some bills. All the while thinking: To hell with marijuana. Goddammit, what if it’s ruined him permanently?

  Then he stopped suddenly and phoned Ernie.

  ‘So, Ernie, you know about grass, right? Joints.’

  ‘I know, but have you tried any?’

  ‘Really! Both of you?’

  ‘Me too! Yeah, yeah. A while ago. Well, earlier today, actually.’

  ‘To be honest, I liked it, but then I hated it.’

  ‘But yeah, me too. Nah, nah.’

  ‘No, not Billie. Not yet. Maybe never, to be honest. She doesn’t even drink, much.’

  And though nothing they said was particularly funny, he laughed his old laugh. His old Ernie-laugh. Thank God for Ernie.

  Then, while he was thinking of something else, he was delivered back to his old frame of mind. Whew! And yet, within seconds, he was remembering being stoned as a pleasurable experience. Scary, sure, but like a roller-coaster ride. Adrenalin washing the pettiness of daily life out of him, and now he felt like a new man. A different man, but with a connection to his youngest, truest self. The Jacko he’d thought he’d lost for ever. That cocky boy. He said to himself, parenthood and marriage clipped my wings, but I am back in the saddle now. (Automatically he noted his mixed metaphor, as if he was editing some manuscript. Some days, he couldn’t say or hear anything without mentally editing it. Every time someone said Have a nice day! he marked it with a red pen. Cliché. Unless it was meant ironically, of course.)

  All evening, he took covert looks at Billie, while she was scolding the children, filling the dishwasher, picking her nose when she thought no one could see her. Later in bed, he told her to leave the light on, and she did, reluctantly. Asked her to take her pyjamas off slowly. And she did.

  ‘Wait, honey,’ she said. ‘Wait till I get a thing for you.’

  But suddenly things had gone too far, and he thought: Oh well, what harm can one time without do? Also thought: when was the last time he’d felt like this? The last time she’d kissed him back like this? In fact, had they ever kissed like this before? The waterbed sloshed noisily for fifteen minutes.

  Two months passed. Billie was on a grapefruit diet, but it was a disaster. She’d been eating nothing but grapefruit for almost seven weeks, and all she had was indigestion. In fact, she’d put on weight! Billie was thirty-eight and in search of her eighteen-inch waist. She blamed her children. Three delivered by caesarean, after stretching her poor belly skin to smithereens. The memory of Charlie flicked through her with its habitual jagged bite, then her thoughts moved on, she always made them move on. He was the flicker that shadowed her days. A silence that took up space, rising and then falling back again. She would wear that grey dress again. It cost a fortune, and she would not give it to the Goodwill. It hung at the front of her closet, a daily taunt. Wasn’t it pretty, with its fine embroidery on the yoke, and the three-quarter-length sleeves? The narrow grey belt? Sophisticated, that’s what it was. Something a valley girl would wear, it was not. Every time Billie thought of her childhood, she shuddered. Milly Mae Molinelli grew up in a hick town. Billie MacAlister, or Mrs Jack MacAlister as she preferred to be called, lived in her own house in Marin County, the wife of a very successful publishing executive. (So what if his business card called him editor; he was an executive, really. She told everyone so.) Her children – a girl and a boy, yes, how lucky! – attended a good school and played with the children of psychiatrists and doctors and lawyers. Mrs Jack MacAlister dressed with understated flair. She was classy. Very. She wore real Levis, not cheap imitation Levis. She bought expensive (on sale) dresses from I. Magnins, if proof was needed.

  Every day, she sent her young husband off to work in his Brooks Brothers yellow or pink shirt. Well, Jack was not young, but to Billie h
e was still exactly the same boy with extraordinary cowlicks who’d walked into her office that day. In her mind, the fact she’d married him was entirely down to her determination, born that first day, to catch that cocky boy as he was walking away from her down Pine Street. Cupid with his arrow poised had Billie’s face and her steady aim. She’d arranged her own marriage. And if it wasn’t always perfect, well – c’est la vie! Also, que sera sera! It was perfectly normal to feel life was one step forward, two steps back. Or was it two steps forward, one step back? Some days felt like one step forward, six steps back.

  Maybe she should quit the grapefruit diet, she was starting to feel sick. Car sick, all day. Or maybe she really was sick. A stomach bug. Or food poisoning. Then one day, a Monday, her shopping day, she vomited in the cold cereal aisle. It was that sudden – no warning, no time to get to the bathroom. Her children were disgusted. Billie was embarrassed, but also worried now. She made a doctor’s appointment.

  ‘How long have you been feeling nauseous?’

  ‘Oh, a few months.’ She wouldn’t tell him about the grapefruit diet. He’d scold her.

  ‘Could you be expecting?’

  She looked at him blankly, waiting for him to finish his sentence. Expecting what? For it to rain at last? For her waist to return and the grey dress to fit?

  Eating normally again was bliss. Now that she knew the reason, the sick feeling was ignorable. As soon as Jack got home, she’d tell him. Except that when he got home, he was in a lousy mood for some reason to do with his boss, and a writer whose name was misspelled on the book cover. So she decided to wait. Billie had more respect for her husband and his career than most people had for the president. Well, this president, anyway.

  Besides, he’d said many times that two was the perfect number. (Charlie had been an accident too.) Their house only had three bedrooms. Their family was complete, and other challenges were occupying him now. While rehearsing how to tell him, she cooked his favourite dinner: meatloaf. She poured a lot of ketchup into the meat mixture, and used white bread crumbs, a few spoons of sugar and an egg. Squished it all between her fingers till it was gluey enough to form a loaf. Three strips of bacon over the top, for that salty crispy flavour. Ah! Nothing like meatloaf. They both liked it, though it was valley food, so a private liking. She’d tell him tonight. After dinner.

  She glanced at him occasionally while she was peeling potatoes. He sat in the living room and frowned over a checkbook. Oh dear. Budget night again already. How could she have forgotten? She’d wait till tomorrow to tell him. Or the weekend. He was always more relaxed on the weekend. Maybe they’d have a dinner party, with some of Jack’s work friends. It was kind of cute the way he got out his brass water pipe when they had company. Everyone was wanting to try it these days. Their crowd had been invited to join the party after all. Personally, she didn’t care for marijuana. She had enough trouble holding her thoughts in a useful way, as it was. And besides, smoking anything these days made her cough. At the same time, she was proud her husband smoked the occasional joint or pipe. They were a modern liberal family. She was still doing things her mother would not approve of.

  ‘Hooray!’ she said softly to herself, breaking up the syllables to make two words. Hoo. Ray.

  Meanwhile, the kitchen radio played KFRC’s hit parade. The new hit by the Bee Gees, ‘To Love Somebody’. And while the meatloaf sizzled in the oven, Billie’s feet did a graceful little dance between the sink and the counters. She didn’t even notice – she was that anxious about her secret. Her breasts were hot and heavy already, but the rest of her, her feet and legs, her arms and hands, was blissfully unaware of the change, while she slow danced with herself.

  She sang along.

  There’s a light, a nanana of light, that shines on me. Nananananana. If I ain’t got you. If I ain’t got you. You don’t know what it’s like, you don’t know what it’s like, to love nanana, to love nanana. The way that I love you.

  She didn’t know all the words; she never did and she didn’t care.

  Two Years Earlier

  Home on the Road

  April 10th, 1965, Highway Five

  8:42am

  They were driving up the valley highway. Elisabeth and Sam were sitting in the back seat of the old green Hillman. Billie looked out the front window, but the low morning sun flickering dark-bright dark-bright through the straight rows of olive trees hurt her eyes, so she turned to look out the side window. Concentrated on looking down each long row of trees. Focus, blur, focus again; a row a second. In and out. It was hard work but it kept her busy and it was not as confusing. She was very tired. Then her eye caught the first sign. It was a wooden placard of a fat Italian-looking woman, her black hair in a red spotted kerchief and a frying pan in her hand. And though Billie was nearly thirty-six, she still felt the old excitement. She forgot the rows of trees and sat forward to look for the next sign. Her mouth started to water in anticipation, and there it was – a thin wooden man in a blue striped apron, his hands on his hips and a string of sausages dangling around his neck. Yes. Then the sign with the single word. Bill. Then the sign saying and Kathy’s.

  She turned around to see if the kids had noticed. For a millisecond, she saw Charlie between them, his chubby cheeks and his wild infant hair, then he was gone. Sam and Elisabeth’s eyes were not shut, but they looked asleep. Slack, pale. She couldn’t help but notice again how they’d lost their cuteness. In fact, at twelve and ten, they were both, in different ways, quite funny looking. Sam was still very blond and Elisabeth’s dark hair was pretty, but they were both too skinny, too freckled and pale, with sticky-out ears and gangly hands and large bony feet. She and Jack had discussed this and laughed. How could two beautiful people make such funny-looking kids? Maybe it would skip a generation. Maybe their granddaughters would have feminine feet and their grandsons not have sticky out ears. Meanwhile, even as it puzzled her, she felt an extra protectiveness towards Sam and Elisabeth. To begin life with such a disadvantage.

  ‘Anyone awake yet? No?’ shouted Jack. ‘Then we’ll forget Bill and Kathy’s and keep going.’

  ‘Stop the car! Pancakes!’ both the children cried, shedding years and yelling like six-year-olds.

  On the horizon, across from twin silver silos and surrounded by flat fields, was the familiar building – log cabin style, with old covered-wagon wheels fencing in ice plants.

  ‘Nah, let’s go on to the Red Top. It’s only thirty miles.’

  ‘Daddy! Stop the car! Put on your blinker, put on your brakes!’

  ‘What? Did you hear something, honey?’ No slowing down.

  ‘Jack, cut it out. They’ll be hysterical. She’ll throw up.’

  ‘Mom’s right. I’m going to be sick, I’m going to vomit all over the seat, stop the car!’

  ‘You always go too far, Jack.’

  He smiled as if this was a compliment. Sprinklers sprayed them lightly as they walked up the path to the restaurant, the kids running ahead. Bacon and coffee beckoned, but it was the pancakes they came for. Short stacks, tall stacks, five inches across, melting whipped butter and hot maple syrup. Sometimes the blueberry syrup. Every Easter and every Thanksgiving – the long drive up the valley to Billie’s mother in Redding. They always had early morning starts, and in the beginning Jack and Billie would carry the limp pretending-to-be-asleep bodies of their children out to the car, and bundle them into the back seat. Pancakes at Bill and Kathy’s was part of the ritual.

  Back in the car, heading north again, the second phase of the journey began. Four hours to go. The Sacramento valley was flat as Kathy’s pancakes. The straight road disappeared in a shimmering heat haze. Jack fiddled with the radio dial, scooting past country-and-western singers singing about dead dogs, preachers preaching about Judgment Day, commercials for manure and cheap vacations in Reno. Billie squinted her eyes and tried to see mirages. The watery waves rising from the highway, then vanishing as they got closer. By eleven o’clock both children were bare-chested and th
e windows were all the way down and the dust of the farms was coating everyone inside and out. Up ahead, it would all be washed away in the shower in the cool basement, but for now it felt permanent. A dust-coated family.

  Jack pulled over at a rest stop and they switched places; Billie drove and Jack tried to snooze. And as they approached the heart of the trip, Billie realized she was waiting. There was always a fight – she couldn’t remember a trip up the valley that did not include bickering, then loud hurled words, then hours of silence. The core of the day. Awareness didn’t ever seem to prevent it, and she was listening for its beginning.

  ‘Billie! Pull back, you can’t pass that truck now.’

  ‘Darn it Jack, you made me jump – don’t do that! You almost caused an accident.’

  ‘Stopped one, you mean.’

  ‘Do you want to drive?’

  ‘No. I’m going to sleep,’ he said, and closed his eyes.

  ‘Because if you can’t trust me to drive, maybe you’d better.’

  ‘I’m not listening. You just want to argue.’

  ‘I just want to be treated with some respect. When you’re driving, do I continually criticize you?’

  ‘Shut up, Billie.’

  ‘No, I will not. When you drive, I trust you, I relax.’

  ‘I’m tired, Billie.’

  ‘I don’t know why. It wasn’t you that stayed up till midnight packing.’

  ‘I loaded the car.’ He opened his eyes and yawned.

  ‘Which took five minutes.’

  ‘Jesus, that Chevy’s right on our ass. Get back in the slow lane.’

  ‘That’s it. You can drive.’ Brakes squealing, more dust rising, more cars honking angrily.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘And we’re getting a dog, Jack. We all want a dog.’