I realized she was trying to suppress a grin. I said, “I know what that means.” She leaned forward and raised an eyebrow, and I said, “A remark that’s got nothing to do with anything.”
“Very good! You’d be surprised at how many people think they understand something and it turns out they’ve got it totally wrong.”
I highly doubted that.
The pastor settled more firmly into her chair and tapped open a tablet. “Wherever your influences might have originated, what’s important now is the family unit the two of you are forming together. So let’s start with the closeness quiz.”
We’d filled out a bunch of stuff at the start of this whole process. Mainly what I remembered was cranking through everything as fast as possible—sounding as normal as I could—while I tried not to worry about how much time Jacob was spending in our war room. And also wondering if it was a crappy decision to tell him about Kamal’s journal to begin with.
Pastor Jill said, “Remember the matrix of closeness and flexibility you filled out?”
How could I forget? When Jacob rated himself as “flexible,” I’d had to restrain myself from saying, “In your dreams, mister.”
I nodded.
“For the most part, it looks like you both feel the relationship is a good balance of intimacy and independence, with equal give-and-take. Does that sound about right?”
“Absolutely,” Jacob said with great assurance…while my alerts pinged over the fact that she’d led with for the most part. “What we have is a truly solid partnership.”
The pastor smiled. “I always love hearing that.” Wait, was she humoring him? “But, Vic, I did notice that you rated yourself as somewhat connected rather than connected. That’s pretty brave, don’t you think?”
Brave wasn’t the word I’d currently choose. I tried for damage control. “I’d been single for an awfully long time before I met Jacob. So I’m just used to doing my own thing.”
“We both value our independence,” Jacob added. “Our jobs are demanding and they impinge on our schedules and plans. It’s just a matter of practicality.”
Pastor Jill said, “I’d really like to hear more from Vic.”
I swallowed hard. “About…what?”
“How you only feel ‘somewhat’ connected.”
How ridiculous would I look if I admitted that I checked that box at random so as not to make it look like I was covering something up by rating our every last dynamic as ideal. “It’s work-related,” I said vaguely.
Jacob chimed in. “If Vic needs time alone, I respect that. Sometimes it’s best we don’t relive our day at work.”
“How do you feel about that, Vic?”
“Uh…fine?”
Pastor Jill fixed me with a look that was just a smidge too long, then said, “I’d like to do an exercise with you—a few simple questions to help me get a better picture of what makes you tick.” I shifted uncomfortably and she said, “There are no wrong answers. Just say whatever comes to mind and finish the sentence.”
“O…kay.”
“Great! My favorite meal is…?”
“Uh…pizza?”
The pastor rewarded me with an encouraging smile, then said, “One of my favorite books is…?”
“I’m not much of a reader.” I thought back to high school and named the only book I could remember. “Lord of the Flies was okay.”
“I get really embarrassed when…?”
“I’m supposed to make small-talk.”
“If I had more time, I would…?”
Drop everything and hunt down the guy whose experiments turned our world upside down. Because consciousness existed on the other side of death, even a consciousness as corrupted and degraded as Dr. Kamal’s. I was the strongest medium I knew—off the charts. If anyone could interrogate him from this side of the veil—if anyone could put an end to Jacob’s suffering by getting some straight answers—it should be me. But apparently all the talent in the world wasn’t worth shit if you didn’t know how to work it.
Pastor Jill blinked expectantly and I said, “If I had time? Maybe I’d work out.”
I think she bought it.
“Okay, guys, I can tell you’re both pretty goal-oriented, and I’d really love for you to connect over an activity that’s not so serious.” She thumbed through some papers and handed me a printout. “Here’s a list of local activities and classes. I know you’ve got a million and one things to do leading up to your wedding, so chances of the two of you taking up ballroom dancing or macrame over the next week are pretty slim. But just invest an hour connecting over something low-stakes, something playful, and I guarantee you’ll each discover some new and interesting things about your better half. In fact, you might even find the experience meritorious.”
Jacob leaned into me and peered down at the page. “Scrapbooking Your Family History,” he read. “That would definitely give us something to talk to my parents about.”
Pastor Jill said, “Vic, how does that sound to you?”
“Fine.” An awkward silence followed the answer, putting me on the spot to elaborate. “Jacob’s folks have a basement full of memories. I think it would give us a good excuse to go through it all.”
At the sound of the truth, Jacob’s thigh tensed against mine—but the pastor must’ve taken my answer at face value. She said, “Old photos and mementos can be a real treasure trove. But I will warn you…go easy on the glitter. That stuff ends up everywhere.”
13
JACOB CLIMBED INTO the car, slammed the door, and sagged into the seat. “Why did I think this would be a good idea?”
“Because doing something feels better than doing nothing?” I reached for him carefully so as not to whack him with my cast, then remembered my bulky plaster burden was no longer there. I wasn’t as adept at threading our fingers together as I might have liked, but at least my arm could breathe again. And the prescription salve had done a really good job. “Nothing we find out is gonna change the way I feel about you. Nothing.”
We drove the rest of the way back in silence, though that actually wasn’t saying much, since you could drive from one end of town to the other in fifteen minutes flat. Back home it sometimes took me that long to get from one stoplight to the next. As Jacob turned down his parents’ street, he took his foot off the gas and just coasted in a way that you’d never get away with in Chicago without some road-rage douchebag ramming you from behind. But there was no one else on the street, which gave him a moment to collect his thoughts, then say, “I thought I could compartmentalize the damn notebook and all its ramifications. I really did. But then I look at my parents and I wonder if my whole life was a lie, and….”
He pulled over and took my hand—gingerly, like he wasn’t used to the cast being gone either, and ran his thumb along my knuckles. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m ruining everything.”
“Give me at least some credit. Look how long you’ve had to put up with all my bullshit—half of which I can’t even freaking remember. Not only can I handle the fact that you need some answers, but I’d feel like a grade-A asshole if I didn’t help you find them.”
Despite the protest of the seatbelts, we leaned in and stole a kiss. I can’t say for sure that sadness has a flavor…or if it does, maybe I’d been inured to it, once upon a time. But it had been a while, at least for me. And I can’t say I recommend it.
When we came up for air, I freed myself from the seatbelt so I could take his face between my hands and make him look me in the eye, though I softened it by bonking our foreheads together so we were too close to really focus. “Us. That’s what’s important. And if either of us ever loses sight of that, it’s up to the other one to remember. Sometimes that’s you—and sometimes that’s me. And that’s why we’re good together. Because it only takes one of us to set things right.”
We weren’t kissing, exactly—more like breathing each other’s breath and staring at the blur of one another’s eyes—when another voice intruded. A dis
tinctly annoyed voice saying, “Seriously? You’re half a block from Mom and Dad’s house and you’ve gotta pull over and make out?”
Jacob’s sister Barbara stood in the middle of the street in a green and yellow Packers sweatshirt with her hands planted on her hips. If this were Chicago, someone would have mowed her down by now. But, as we’d already established, this was definitely not Chicago.
Jacob powered down his window and said, “Nice to see you too, Barb.”
In the way of siblings, she was entirely unaffected by his sarcasm. “I’ve been waiting for half an hour. We need to go see Grandma before visiting hours are over.”
Jacob popped open the locks and said, “Come on, we’ll go right now.”
“Maybe we should just wait till tomorrow,” I said. “When we have more time.”
While I had more time to weasel out of going along was more like it—but Barbara climbed into the back seat, gave her purse a very decisive settle, and said, “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Mom, but I think sooner is better than later.”
She gave Jacob directions, more like a series of cryptic landmarks like, “…that breakfast place—no, the other one,” but he seemed to know what she was talking about. And as we pulled up not twelve feet from the front door, she said, “Don’t get mad if Grandma doesn’t know you. Ever since the fall, she’s been confused.”
I guess that’s not something most people would want to hear—but I’d be perfectly fine if she mistook me for a random passerby. Judging by the muscles working in Jacob’s jaw, though, he wouldn’t be nearly as calm if it happened to him.
Nursing homes are potential hot zones for ghosts, what with the concentration of death being abnormally high. But I was better at handling myself these days, and no longer had a free pass to get out of potentially haunted situations…even ones I’d really love to sit out. But I could hardly toot my horn about being there for Jacob and then stay in the car, so I called down some white light, wrapped it around me, and headed in.
The place was nothing like the home where Richie Duff whiled away his days watching TV, playing cribbage and arguing with old Jewish ladies. It was smaller and plainer, and way more clinical. Sure, there was a nod to making things look homey, with plants and posters and the occasional stuffed animal. But underpinning the whole place were the particulars of institutions: fluorescent lights, rubbery flooring, and the chemical reek of disinfectant.
Every corridor looked the same to me and I quickly got all turned around, but Barbara had been there before, and she knew the way. We found the elevator and piled in, and when the doors closed, she said, “Grandma’s timing stinks.”
Jacob shrugged uneasily. “It would never be a good time, would it?”
“I guess not. But your wedding is enough to worry about without all of this.” She gestured vaguely—at the elevator, the nursing home, the world.
I kept my mouth shut. It was longest Barbara had gone without criticizing either of us, probably because her chronic dissatisfaction was now aimed at their grandmother. And I wasn’t about to say or do anything to swing her focus off that target.
We passed a nurses’ station where the staff gave Barbara a nod, me a once-over, and Jacob a lingering stare. TV chatter drifted out from doors up and down the hall, but the room Barbara led us to was silent.
Unease crept down my spine and I automatically pulled down more white light. I doubted it would do me much good, though, since the cause of all my dread wasn’t even dead yet.
Barbara poked her head in the door. “Grandma? It’s Barb.” She managed to come off pretty cheerful, if you ignored the frown line between her eyebrows. “Look who’s here.”
I followed Jacob into the dim room, where his grandmother sat in a lounger wedged between the bed and the wall, staring out the window while she wrung her hands. She looked smaller than I remembered. But her intimidation factor had never had anything to do with size.
The old woman peered at us through hazy bifocals as we filed into the room. It was a double, though the second half was empty. I instinctively backed up toward that half to put as much distance between me and them as possible. Maybe Pastor Jill would have insisted that this family was now mine as well as Jacob’s…but in this case, I was perfectly content to stay on the outside.
“Hi, Grandma,” Jacob said, and went down on one knee beside her so she could get a better look at him. “It’s good to see you.”
He took her hand. There was a clatter of beads, and I realized she hadn’t just been sitting around lost in her own jumbled thoughts. She’d been praying the rosary.
She seemed surprised to see Jacob. At least, I thought she was…until she said, “Freddie?”
No one had mentioned a Freddie to me before, but I figured they’d fill me in later.
Jacob squeezed her hand. “No, Grandma. It’s Jacob.”
“What are you doing here?”
“He’s visiting.” Barbara said. “He’s getting married next week.”
Grandma jerked her hand out of his grasp. “Well, he’d make a terrible husband.”
Jacob flinched like she’d just slapped him. “How could you say that?”
Grandma turned her head away and refused to even look at him, let alone apologize.
Jacob is usually pretty good at keeping his emotions to himself, so it really sucked to see his heart breaking. And as much as I wanted nothing more than to blend into the institutional wallpaper, I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. I angled my way around the beds, slipped past Barbara, and put a hand on Jacob’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s give her some time to digest the news. We can come back in the morning.”
Grandma Marks might not have been willing to look at Jacob, but she was sure eager to get a load of me. Her gaze snapped up to take me in, and I steeled myself for an earful of recrimination. But instead of pelting me with insults for getting hitched with her grandson, she looked at me in shock and said, “Father Paul? What are you doing here?”
Jacob and Barbara both cut their eyes to me, and Jacob cringed.
“Yeah, I can see it,” Barbara said—whatever that meant. “Vic is right, let’s let Grandma get some rest. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
Barbara tried to give her grandmother a kiss on the cheek, but she squirmed out of the way. Jacob was too hurt to even make the attempt. Hopefully the old woman wouldn’t kick the bucket and leave him with a sour memory of their final encounter. Though I guess if she did, I could always concoct a different parting message—one where she left him with a less awful goodbye.
We walked to the car in silence, which Barbara broke with a gusty sigh. “Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I could sure use some pie.”
Even pie would have a pretty hard time cutting through the pall that had been cast over our mood, but since our only other option was to go back home to Jacob’s parents and paw through their basement, I figured it was in our best interest to try and shovel down a few slices.
We stopped at a diner. It was small and dingy in a way some hipster in Chicago would spend big bucks trying to replicate. But it was relatively quiet, with just a few old-timers at the opposite side of the joint having a loud discussion about whether someone’s great-grandson was named Taylor or Tyler.
We slid into a booth with Barbara across from both of us. Neither Jacob nor his sister seemed very interested in the menu, which led me to believe that “pie” was code for “talking.” Which made it a hell of a lot less appealing.
The waitress came by and we got coffee all around. It was so late they only had apple pie left, which was better than nothing. I ordered myself a slice so the trip didn’t turn out to be a total loss.
While Jacob was shredding the paper wrapper from his drinking straw, Barbara finally worked up the wherewithal to speak. “I didn’t realize she’d be so bad. We’ll try again. Tomorrow’s Saturday and I can come by nice and early.”
Jacob sighed. “If she’s declining, I don’t know that I can handle going back for anot
her round.”
“The nurses said it gets worse after dark. I guess it’s a common thing with dementia.”
“That’s what’s wrong with her?” Jacob said—almost as if he thought it was Barbara’s fault. “Dementia?”
“That, or maybe some kind of delirium. Brought on by the trauma.”
“And once she gets over the fall, what are the chances of it getting better?”
Barbara shrugged. “At her age? Not good.” She reached across the table and took Jacob’s hand. “I really didn’t know she would be that bad tonight. Just yesterday she knew exactly who I was, and even asked about Clayton.”
Jacob took his hand back. “Big surprise. You were always her favorite.”
“Me?” Barbara seemed genuinely confused. “Since when?”
“Since always. The two of you were always doing church things together.”
“I guess…but she never seemed too happy about it. And the way Mom was always making little digs about me going, I figure it all balanced out. But speaking of church…?”
Both of them turned to me with identical looks of appraisal. I busied myself with my bland coffee.
“There’s not that big of a resemblance,” Jacob said.
“Father Paul was tall…he had dark hair…and you know Grandma can barely see three feet in front of her own face. I’ll bet she just saw Vic as a tall blur. Same reason she took you for Uncle Fred.”
I said, “No one’s ever mentioned Uncle Fred. Is he coming to the wedding?”
In the awkward silence that ensued, I wondered if maybe Uncle Fred was six feet under. Which technically wouldn’t mean he’d miss out on the festivities. Just that it would be harder for him to RSVP.
It was Barbara who finally answered. “We don’t have anything to do with Uncle Fred. I guess I met him once—”
Other Half (PsyCop book 12) Page 8