My heart's a languishing flame and you drive me into the rain saying this will quench the desire in her name. But it won't, babe. -Jackson Killian
Chapter Nine
Jeanie was gone when I got home from work. Devin was asleep on my couch; his long body monopolized every square inch of space including both side-arms, his head on one, his feet dangling over the other. Quinn was snuggled up in the crook of his forearm, butt sticking up in a posture that can only be comfortable for the very young.
Devin had texted me earlier to say that his dad knew he was crashing here, so I dimmed the floor lamp and threw an extra blanket over the two of them before shuffling through the kitchen towards my bedroom, hitting light switches as I went. I left a trail of darkness behind me.
My room was still and cool and dark. I flipped on the bedside lamp, the warm glow illuminating my perpetually unmade bed and my jammies in a tangle at the foot of it. I kicked off my Skechers and stripped down to my underwear. Chilled and breaking out in gooseflesh, I hurried into flannel pants and a thermal.
In the bathroom I took off my watch and freed my hair from its barrettes, fatigue seeming to seep into my blood from leaden bones. Whatever my limbs were made of, my eyelids were also. I brushed my teeth, but not as long as I should have.
My phone was still in the pocket of my scrubs. I pulled it out and wiped the screen on the front of my thermal.
I had a message from a 424 area code.
11:23pm: Text me when you get off work.
11:25pm: It's Jack by the way.
I sent a text before I could decide against it.
12:47am: What's up?
Instead of the answering chime I was expecting, my phone vibrated abruptly in my palm as the display showed a gray silhouette and the same 424 number. He was calling instead of texting.
"Hey," I said, my voice quiet as I closed the bedroom door. I left it open a crack, just in case.
"Hey. How was work?"
His congenial tone and the banality of the question had me coming up short. "Um..."
"I wanted to say I'm sorry. For earlier. I've been thinking a lot. Since I left you this afternoon and... Well. Today didn't go how I wanted. I thought we were going to make a plan, you know? And I wanted you to know. I still hope we can do that."
I sat down on the edge of my bed and looked down at my bare feet. "Okay."
"I accept what you said. When you said... about doing what you did, for me. I don't need all the details right now. I think it's best if we don't really talk about it so much. I just accept it. I accept this."
"Okay," I said again.
"This isn't easy for me. And I expect it isn't easy for you either. My being angry about everything doesn't help. I get that. I'm open to Zen, Kit. I want to let it go a little bit. I don't want to fight with you, or your friends, or your friends who are half my age but bigger than me. I don't want that. I want to find a way to be part of Quinn's life, and that means... being part of your life too."
He sighed and went on. "I get what you said earlier about co-parenting without hate. We have to work through some things, but maybe we can start, by just. Trying to let go of some of the animosity... and try to be ... try to just get along."
I wasn't sure he was done. The herky-jerky way he was talking, I thought he might say more. And I didn't quite have words yet.
"Kit?"
"Yeah. I'm here." I bit my lip and stood, the phone pinched between ear and shoulder as I crawled onto the bed. "Do you really think you can do that?"
"Right now, I think I can. I can try. I know that. I can bite my tongue, when I need to. I can be civil, when I need to. I learned diplomacy once... upon a time."
I smiled but didn't say anything.
"You're smiling, I can hear it."
How could he know that?
"You know, Kit. Two people come together the way we did for a reason. There's maybe a million people in this world that you could be compatible with, you know? But not after you've spent years loving someone. And loving to love. That kind of love makes a groove on your brain, on your soul. You try to walk out and you just keep falling back in."
I slid my feet under the covers and scanned the foot of the bed for my thick nighttime socks. "What exactly... do you mean, Jack?"
"I mean. What I was trying to say earlier. I've missed you."
I stopped rustling around. "It doesn't seem that way to me."
"No... I suppose it wouldn't. Old wounds I'd considered healed, reopened by new circumstance."
The line was quiet and in the silence I heard the grinding gears of a lighter. When Jack spoke again, he was speaking around a cigarette.
"In that hallway, with you in that get-up... do you know how long it took me to know you?"
I shook my head, which of course, he couldn't see. He blew smoke before answering, and I could see it, could see him so clearly—his face pointed at the ceiling, neck long.
"I know you, Kit. I know the way you walk, the shape of your bare shoulders. The set of your mouth. I might have thought I was forgetting you, but I couldn't, not really. Not when I saw you."
A dangerous warmth flooded me, together with suspicion.
"Jack... are you... are you drunk?"
He chuckled and I knew. He was drunk- dialing me. He'd hate himself for this tomorrow. And me, maybe. The notion instigated a small war inside me. More than anything I wanted to let Jack go all runny and sentimental.
A small, boring, adult voice in the back of my mind was saying: Shut it down. Shut it down, now.
I think it was the voice of Ellen Ripley, from Aliens. An oft-quoted movie in my marriage. Particularly when Jack found his snacking attempts thwarted by an empty container. Shaking a cookie bag he could be heard to say, "That's some real pretty shit. Game over, man. Game over."
Or the times I'd ask Jack if there was anything I could do to help and he'd look at me with a half-cocked grin and ask, "I don't know. Is there anything you can do?"
We'd probably seen it fifty times and quoted it even more.
"I'm not, actually."
"But you've been drinking." It was a statement.
"No. I don't drink, at the moment."
"At the moment?" I asked, curious.
"I make better choices. Sober."
Skepticism furrowed my brow. Jack had always been a drinker. It was something he did daily, in the form of a nightcap at least. But he'd also always been honest. Aside from occasionally pulling my leg to see if I would fall, he wasn't a liar.
"Are you going to feel the same way tomorrow? That we can try to get along?"
"Do you think we could try?"
I cleared my throat. "It won't be as simple as it sounds. But. Yes. I can try. And... I think we can at least agree not to fight around Quinn. That's important. Especially after he comes to realize exactly who you are."
"Mm. Do you think... I mean, is it instinctual for a child to look for two parents even if all they've ever known is one? Think about it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Quinn doesn't understand the concept of a father, even. Or does he?"
"I don't think he does. At least, he hasn't asked me about... about "dad." But when he starts school... he will be asking then, for sure."
"I think he knows who I am. Is that weird?" Jack's voice was deep, thick with smoke and maybe more.
"No. He's very empathetic. Intuitive, you know?"
"Like you, maybe."
"I don't really see a lot of me in him. More... you."
Through the phone I could hear a faint wheeze as he sucked smoke through the filter. "How do you feel about that, Kit?"
"Gotten a psych degree since I last saw you? Would that have been in your five-year monologue?"
He chuckled again, taking it as the light joke I meant it as.
"Truth is. I like it. It's interesting to me," I said, being honest.
"It's that groove. It's hard not to fall into it. It's like... hiking down a mountain. Hiking, you're looking for your next solid step, you know? Where to place your foot; what you can hold on to, to ease your way down. And then you look, and there's been a slide. Right there. The whole time. You climbed this fucking mountain and it took forever, but you got to the top. You were there, for a time... on top of the world. But you couldn't stay. The descent is a fucking bitch... it's harder than the climb because there's no view waiting for you at the bottom. It's just a slow arduous trek down into the goddamn grave."
"That's cheery. Tell me how you really feel." I caught a glimpse of myself in the big oval mirror over the dresser, my face looking ghostly in the dim light.
"And the slide... she's right fucking there. You can climb right in. But you can't... because it just gets you to hell all that much faster."
"Um—"
"That's the ride, my friends. Everybody off. And if you didn't enjoy it, there's no refunds or do-overs. That's your lot, mate."
"Jack—"
Something creaked on his end; there was a clinking sound, a slider door closing maybe. What I was about to say was lost, instead I asked, "Where are you staying?"
"At the Hampton. In Folsom. Only until Friday though. Then I go back."
"What then?"
"I don't know yet. I was supposed to go back Sunday after the show, but then..."
"You had a baby?" I was joking, but as soon as I said it, I worried he wouldn't take it that way. To my relief, he laughed. He really was at ease, at least, for the moment.
"Yeah... well. That was a bit of a shock."
"So, you go back, and then what?"
"There's still a lot to figure out, isn't there? I can't really Ping-Pong around. I really think we need to be in the same place. Do you agree?"
"That depends." I said, guarding my feelings. I didn't want to live in LA. I was scared to have Jack uproot his life. I felt like I stood on a precipice and the chasm open before me was full of worry. I didn't want to fall into it.
"You know... I've spent so much time being pissed at you. It's sort of gotten in the way of other, more important feelings. I have a son. And... I'm pretty sure... I'm happy about that."
"Good." My voice was so small I wondered if he heard me.
"Devin—does he watch Quinn while you're working?"
"Not usually. Sometimes."
"Protective of you two... you trust him?"
"Oh yeah. He's family."
"Family? You're related?"
"No. He's family you choose. Not blood. Better."
He was quiet a moment before saying. "Like a wife." And his voice sounded coarse with my betrayal all over again.
"Sometimes we choose wrong. That's all," I whispered.
"So... in our relationship, as an example. Which one of us chose wrong?"
"I would think that was obvious. You did."
He laughed again, light and warm. "I did, didn't I."
That hurt, but I let it go. I walked right into it. "It's sort of like... choosing a melon."
"A melon?" He exaggerated the "a," as if to say it was a matter of choosing melons.
"Yes," my tone acerbic. "My dad used to pick his melons by the way they sound. He'd hold it to his ear and knock on it. He told me it should have the heft of a soggy diaper—whatever that meant—and a round hollow sound."
"I've never heard someone liken a piece of fruit to a nappy full of shit. Great marriage analogy, Kit."
"Not that. I meant—you have to guess at the inside of the thing when the outside is an unreliable indicator. I've never gotten the knack of it. And last summer I had the produce manager at Raley's help me pick a watermelon. She told me you want to look for one that isn't shiny and it should be heavy, with a dull yellow spot. She had a completely different set of criteria for a good melon."
"The analogy goes deeper. How was the watermelon?"
"It was great. But then I tried to pick one myself, I don't know, like a week later. It was heavy; it was a nice shape. It met all the standards. I got it home and it was rotten inside. I had to throw it away."
I fell quiet and he didn't speak. My last words rang between us. I opened my mouth, determined to find something inane to say—anything—to erase the echo of my last statement, but I had nothing.
He sighed. "Spot on."
I grimaced, my scalp and neck warm with shame.
"You know. It's nice to hear you put your foot in your mouth."
"I can't believe I said that."
"The incomparable Kaitlyn Garen and her analogies... missed those. So apt. So brutal."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I like it when you speak your mind. Marriage is shite anyway."
"Right? It was the pits." I was being sarcastic, and of course, he knew it.
"We managed okay for nearly five years though... and three before that."
I said it before I realized I didn't want to say it. "Soon we'll have been apart, longer than we were together."
"It already feels like longer, to me."
What was I supposed to say to that? But I didn't have to answer.
"So... if I promise to be good. Can I come over again? Without your guard dog growling at me?"
I rolled my eyes. "He's not my guard dog."
"Whatever he is. I don't want to get into it with a child; it's ridiculous. It's juvenile."
"Quinn and I go to a play-group tomorrow morning. We'll be home after lunch, but he'll be napping."
"I'd like to see him again before I go. I need to figure some stuff out. But I'll be back, Kit."
...
"Katie."
It was still raining. That was the first thing I noticed. Followed quickly by just how comfortable I was. My whole body felt like it had melted into the mattress. I floated on white cotton bliss.
Had someone been calling my name?
"Katie," he whispered again.
I sat up. "What's up, Dev?"
"I'm leaving for school. Quinn's up and watching a Yo Gabba Gabba video."
I tossed back my covers, fighting the powerful urge in my muscles to just flop back down against the pillows. I felt like I could sleep another six hours. I grumbled my way into the kitchen to find that Devin had already made a pot of coffee.
"Oh, bless you child." I sounded like my grandmother, my voice choked by sleep.
"I'm taking this today. Is that okay?" He held up a silver to-go cup and I nodded, yawning.
"Later," he said, heading out.
I grumbled again and filled my mug.
Two cups of coffee and a shower later I was feeling almost human.
Quinn was in chaotic music mode, more interested in changing CDs and pressing buttons than listening to any one song. He'd already cycled through several CDs and again he stopped mid song. I wondered if he was looking for a feeling he couldn't find.
He didn't want Michael Jackson or Billy Joel. He hissed at "Tainted Love" and shuffled, his finger stabbing at the rotate button. I brought my coffee cup over to the stereo and sat down next to the pile of CDs he'd discarded. He screeched furiously at the opening riff of "Stray Cat Strut" as his mood disintegrated. His eyes were huge and glossed over with the tears of frustrated dissatisfaction. I tried to coax him into my lap, but he fought me with furious little arms and legs.
"What do you want, kiddo? Something new?"
I reached for the disc he held and he twisted away from me and threw it. It struck the side of the bookshelf with a light ping and danced awkwardly down the wall to the floor.
He gave me a defiant look, his lower lip sticking out with the force of his frown.
"I think you need a time-out."
Quinn went into utter meltdown at those words. He howled and stomped; the cowlick on the back of his head swayed gently despite his small but effective violence. I picked him up; he launched himself away from me—a writhing bundle of boy challenging my strength and my patience. His voice escalated into angry wailing as big crocodile tears ran over his ruddy cheeks. I plopped him down in his time out corner where he turned to the wall and stomped in place.
He sobbed and occasionally yelled something nonsensical, but he didn't move—and I wondered when the power of the time-out corner would lose its ability to hold him.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket and I pulled it out to find a text message informing me that playgroup had been cancelled due to illness.
"Great," I said aloud, and Quinn raged anew. I checked my watch. One minute to go.
I sighed and looked at my grumpy son's back. It shivered under his sweater as he hiccupped air, his feet still as he gave up the stomp. I hoped that a good cry was all he needed.
"Time." He turned around and faced me, still crying, lips turned down and squeezed tight. A trail of clear snot ran from his nose over his upper lip. It quivered when he snorted in air then smeared across his cheek when he scrubbed his face with chubby fingers.
"Do you need to cry some more?" I asked, and he shook his head emphatically.
"Are you going to keep throwing things?"
His frown got poutier, and I thought the tears welling in his eyes might spill over. "No."
"Time-out can be over then. Come here."
I squatted down and he climbed onto my knee and snuggled into my neck. I rubbed his back and he gripped my sweater, needing comfort.
"Let's get a Kleenex, okay?"
In the bathroom I wiped his nose and peered into Quinn's eyes. The rims were red, lashes glued together by tears.
"Better?"
He sniffed, his frown quivering despite his nod of agreement. I pushed the silken hair back from his flushed forehead.
"Once upon a time," I began, not really sure where this would go or what I would say. I swallowed. "In a strange faraway place full of lights and music and dancing..."
I thought of Vegas, the glow of it, the indistinct cacophony of people laughing and singing. The storms of call-girl cards fluttering down the strip, caught on a night-breeze. Dueling pianos with jangling keys, magic tricks through dry ice smoke, the scent of stale alcohol and fresh sweat.
The triumph of jetted water waltzing into the sky—glittering gold like everything else.
"There was a boy who loved music. Almost as much as you do." I smiled at Quinn, but he could tell it was forced. He returned it; lips mashed together like mine.
"He was haunted in that place. It was magic for everyone but him. For him it was like..." I tried to find the right words to explain—safe, non-scary words, but important. "Fake. Not real. Pretend."
"The junk-lady." Quinn said. I smiled for real. He returned it, showing me his teeth. He meant The Labyrinth, when Sarah ate from the poisoned peach and woke up home, but it was all a lie. My empathetic son, understanding things on a level that astounded me.
"Exactly like that."
I zipped up the front of his hoodie and went on. "So, in order to break the curse and escape, he had to make a trade. You know—like when you give something up and get something different. An exchange."
Quinn looked unsure.
"Like when you gave Devin a piece of pizza and he gave you a Clementine. Remember? You traded."
"Yes!" Quinn clapped his hands together. "We traded."
It sounded like wee-ah-teeerded,but I knew what he meant.
I stood up and held out my hand. He took it. I led him to the front door and hoisted him up so he could twist the deadbolt open.
A promising bright blue sky peeked between gunmetal grey clouds. The yard was fresh with fallen rain. Puddles reflected the sky overhead and leaves weighted down by water glittered green, everything smelled earthy and clean.
Both Quinn and I took deep breaths, bringing that new air into ourselves. My lungs stretched and seemed to glow in my chest. Invigorated, I went on.
"So. He made a trade. He got to escape, but he had to leave behind his most treasured possession."
Quinn looked up at me. "His Uma?"
"Yes. Like, his Uma. But for him it was music. Music was his Uma."
I thought of the day Jack and I had visited a Vegas pawnshop, and he'd curled himself over a 1979 Epiphone and made it cry under his hands. His hair spilled over his face—something I thought he had done on purpose to hide the emotion there. I knew that Jack knew he couldn't afford it—but for a solid ten minutes he played it like the possibility was there.
He hadn't said it, but the look on his face when we'd left the shop screamed: One day. One day he'd own an instrument like that.
Jack might have left everything in Vegas, but he didn't leave music. The trade really went the other way.
Quinn didn't know that though, and it was just a story in any case. I scooped him up and carried him into the carport.
"Go in car?" He looked over my shoulder at the house standing open, the front door ajar. His worried expression suggested something was amiss.
"No, sweetie, just going to the carport."
I set him down—the soles of his shoes scrabbling the gravel—and scanned the stack of plastic tubs looking for the green one I knew held Jack's music collection.
It was second from the bottom in a stack of five. I unburied and hoisted it down. The box was cold under my hands, but dry.
Quinn came to stand by me. I scrunched my nose at him, wondering if he'd forgotten the story I was telling.
I popped the top and peeled it back. Quinn peered in, eyes growing wide. I felt very aware of my breath—caught in my throat as it was. I watched Quinn's face, the smile growing on my own at the wonder there, then I looked into the box.
There were CD wallets and jewel cases and notebooks. I could see Jack's hand on everything, including the script I knew filled those pages.
"Should we take it inside?"
Quinn nodded and pulled at the handle. The thing didn't budge.
"You go," I said, gesturing towards the front door with my head as I wrapped my hands around the sturdy handles. "I'll carry it in."
Quinn galloped ahead of me, up the concrete stairs and through the open door. I navigated to the stereo and set the box down next to it. Quinn clasped the edge of the box and jittered excitedly; a big expectant smile reassuring me that this was just what he needed this morning.
I lifted out the first CD in a jewel case, not reading the label but recognizing it by color and script—The Dire Straits—and handed it to Quinn. "Magic music," I said.
"Boy's music?" Quinn asked. I bit my lip and nodded.
He clutched it to his chest. "Mine, now?"
I nodded again and reasoned that if Jack wanted any of this back it was just too bad.
He opened the case with reverence, oohing at the metallic gleam of the CD. It's silver shine looked charmed even to me, and I marveled at the power of suggestion.
Quinn handed it to me. He often had a hard time getting the discs out. The gesture spoke volumes about his own enchantment. He could normally be found pressing the case to the ground with one hand and roughly yanking the disc out with the other.
I plucked the disc free and held it out like a badge, fingers on the rims. He stuck his little index finger through the hole and held it steady with his other hand as I opened the disc changer.
I'd coached him on how to hold a CD, but I'd never seen him so careful about it. Normally, he just grabbed the thing like a Frisbee and I let him. If a disc ever failed to play or stutter, then he'd remove it and hand it to me with the command, "Shammy."
We called the microfiber cleaning cloth the "Shammy," and I'd routinely use it to wipe away his prints.
He put it in the slot and pressed the correct button to close the tray.
I watched his face and hoped he wasn't going to be disappointed.
"Ready?" I asked. He answered with a smile and a fidget, anticipating his own desire to dance.
I pressed play and the first track loaded. "Sultans of Swing" started.
The intro—smooth, seductive, and jammy—pulled heartstrings I didn't know I had, drawing back the curtain on memories I'd long kept at bay.
Rolling down the highway in the Tacoma as I nodded along while Jack sang. I'd chime in on words I knew, few at first, then more as I gradually learned their catalog of music.
This song had been on our wedding playlist too; one of the final songs we'd danced to—Jack breaking from my embrace to do some air-guitar, barely able to contain his own love for the song. I loved the way he loved it.
I was smiling and my eyes were filling with tears. The super-real.
I pressed my knuckles to my lips and glanced at Quinn. He wore a bewildered smile but wasn't dancing. I exhaled in a rush and stood, Quinn's gaze following me up. I held my hands out to him and flexed my feet rhythmically, doing my best Twyla Tharp impersonation. Quinn squealed.
We danced together. Me bent over him, wiggling my butt and jiggling his arms as he hopped around in his spastic way. We broke apart only when the song ended, my phone buzzing as "Lady Writer" started up.
In the unfathomable way of the universe, I had a text from Jack asking what we were up to.
If you only knew, I thought.