The House of Good Intentions | Chapter One
Title: The House of Good Intentions
Author: lemon_bar
Chapter I:
Word Count: 4,994
Chapter I
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There's a draft in the main window of the master bedroom. For the longest time Jack hadn't believed it was actually there, but he got tired of hearing about its supposed existence. He'd given in and paid good money to have the windows in the house replaced but Joan kept bitching: "They didn't seal the window right. You'll have to call them back."
Jack never called anyone back to fix the windows and Joan had started sleeping on the other side of the bed. His side. That first winter with the new sleeping arrangements had been enough to convince him that the draft was real, that maybe Joan had a point. He never got around to making the call though, and now the cold air creeping into the room at night seems like a metaphor.
"What are you doing out of bed?" she asks, her voice low and rough with sleep.
"I'm looking out the window," he says, rolling his eyes.
The moon is full; low and bright and heavy enough that it feels as if any moment now it will drop right out of the sky and crush the house. Jack finds himself hoping for that. The cold air hasn't numbed him yet but the prickling chill's enough to distract him from the pain that had called him awake. It's almost constant now. Jack can feel the heavy weight of something, just there, so close and just waiting; barely kept at bay. He can't name it; doesn't want to put a name to the feeling because he's not ready to face it.
He knows what it is just the same. It's ever-present, lurking close in the corner of his mind.
There's a soft rustling behind him. Joan's shifted in bed, maybe turned around to face him. He doesn't look at her, keeps his attention on the moonlight, keeps waiting for that big bright sphere to come tumbling down on top of him.
"Are you coming back to bed?" She's awake enough now that her voice has smoothed out. Slick and imperious; he can practically hear her judgment of him.
Letting the curtain fall closed, Jack turns toward the bedroom door, starts walking. "No."
The house is quiet. Empty. He knows that it wasn't always like that. Knows that there was a time when Claire and Brian filled the space up with unbearable chaos just by being there, but he can't remember it. There must have been moments when they turned their stereos up loud, run down the stairs or raised their voices as they bickered. There must have been moments where Jack had to tell them, "Shut up, for the love of god!" They were teenagers after all, that's the kind of shit teenagers do. The memories are murky, at best.
What he does remember is the house swallowed up with the sounds of a baby crying, Joan clattering around in the kitchen as she cooked or cleared away. Always clattering, always busy. He remembers clicking the volume up on the television set, up and up. Watching the game and wishing that, for just one god damned minute, things could just be quiet.
The silence now is eerie. Haunting. Memories skulking around every corner, resurrected in his mind by the oddest of things and he finds himself moving through the house with the lights off, like he can maybe avoid them if he just sneaks around carefully enough.
Soon enough, he's twisting the key in the lock that Joan installed on the liquor cabinet all those years ago, in preparation for the new addition that no one wanted. "Christ," Jack mutters to himself. "What a time to become a good fucking Catholic."
Alcohol doesn't chase the memories away, but sometimes it helps him get beyond them.
There's a bottle of whiskey sitting in the cabinet but only enough remains in it for one mouthful. Jack takes a swig and carries the empty bottle with him to the kitchen. He's never understood why Joan hides her liquor when they have a perfectly serviceable liquor cabinet, but she keeps it in the damned kitchen cupboard with the peanut butter and the fucking cereal.
Shoving aside a box of frosted Mini-Wheats Jack's fingers curl around a familiar glass shape. The bitch has a full bottle of gin back there.
He replaces her gin with the empty bottle of whiskey, idly wondering if she'll notice. Whether she does or not won't make much of a difference he figures, because she won't say anything either way.
Uncapping his prize, he takes a long swig straight from the mouth of the bottle, washing down dreams in black-and-white: graveyards and dark pits and dirt and pain. Every step he takes these days is shadowed by a pressing imminence. He tries to find the humor in it but fails every damned time. All he's found so far is self-pity.
He's old, but not old enough to take the surprise out of the news that he's dying. He'd sat in that leather chair and laughed and rubbed his suddenly sweaty palms on his thighs. Jack remembers asking the doc for the prognosis. The answer had only made him laugh harder.
He hadn't been laughing when Joan had started to cry. No, he'd shut his mouth and glowered. As if his death would mean anything to her.
He's old and dying, counting down the days before his soul gets chased out of his cancer-riddled body, and there isn't a damned thing to be proud of. Not a damned person out there who he thinks might actually give a shit when his time's up.
"Well. That, at least, is a place to start," someone says.
Jack spins on his heel, turning to face the stranger. Even as he turns, his senses screaming at him that someone's broken into his home, into his kitchen, he can't find it in himself to be afraid. Somehow, it feels like he's been expecting exactly this. Like he's been waiting, and now he feels tangled knot inside him ease a little. Finally, a part of him sighs. Finally.
There are four chairs tucked in around the kitchen table and perched on the back of the one directly opposite where Jack's standing is a young man. Jack waits for the panic or the fear to kick in but it remains stubbornly absent. He feels as if he's known this kid all his life, like the presence of this stranger is absolutely right, is good.
It's been a long time since anything in Jack's life felt good.
"Before you ask," the kid says, raising a hand to forestall a question Jack didn't even know he'd been about to give voice. "I figure you need at least half of this before you actually believe me." He's holding out a bottle of Jim Beam Devil's Cut whiskey.
The hand proffering the whiskey and the arm attached to it and the whole of kid's body is glowing faintly, haloed in light. He radiates youth and innocence, his skin smooth and pale, his lips full and hair bright and blond, but Jack knows this isn't a kid when he looks into those blue eyes: deep and unfathomable as an ocean.
"Jesus," Jack mutters, forgetting the stolen gin in his hand and reaching automatically to uncap the offered whiskey.
The blond tips his head to the side, wincing. "Not quite." Then he pushes out one of the kitchen chairs with his foot. "Sit down, Jack."
Jack obeys. "What are you?"
The question earns him a teasing smile. "The first of three ghosts." The little shit even has the audacity to waggle his fingers like he's telling a fucking campfire story.
After a moment, the teasing expression eases, something soft and compassionate creeping across the stranger's face and he says, "You know who I am."
It's the first time Jack can think of where anyone's looked at with that expression. He doesn't like it. It leaves him feeling raw, exposed and vulnerable. He sets the bottle down the table with a clack, swallows thickly and can't help wondering, "It's time, then."
"Not quite." The blond slips off the back of the chair, striding confidentially over to a cupboard where he retrieves a glass, which he carries back to the table.
"What do you mean?" Jack watches the deeply amber liquid spilling over the lip of the bottle as the kid pours.
"Drink up," the stranger instructs, recapping the bottle.
Again, he obeys. Despite the kid's insistence and his own sense of familiarity, Jack's certain he's never seen this young man before. There's an answer that's niggling but he chokes it back.
Jack knows a thing or two about religion. Couldn't really avoid it given his heritage, to say nothing of who he married. Maybe he puts on a good front, voicing disdain for Joan's Sunday morning rituals and scorning faith as often as he curses it, but Jack's Irish born and raised and some things are just ingrained. Force of habit.
If he's drunk enough, and he usually is, he still catches himself muttering prayers whenever he passes a graveyard. But that doesn't mean … it couldn't mean…
"There's an ugly truth in here, somewhere," the blond murmurs, and when Jack looks he sees the kid running his fingers over the thick wood cross hanging to the left of the back door. It's a relic from Jack's childhood, one that he hates. Joan loves the thing.
When he glances around his kitchen trying to see it like a stranger might, he curses under his breath. Religion is everywhere. Even on the damned counter where he catches the kid flipping through a church pamphlet listing coming events.
For some reason beyond his understanding Jack can't stand to be associated with the annual children's spelling bee, the church choir performance, or the fall bake sale. "It's my wife's." He knocks back his whiskey and reaches for the bottle.
The blond's eyes unfocus and then, just as quickly, clear. "Joan."
Jack takes another drink, his eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"
"Jack. You know who I am."
"If I knew I wouldn't be asking!" He wonders what would happen if he took a swing at the kid. Frankly, he's a little concerned about the possible consequences.
"You do know," the kid tells him. "Just give yourself a second."
It's a struggle to keep fighting the answer, but Jack keeps at it. Sitting there and staring as the kid wanders around, calm as you please, tiptoeing his fingers along the green-covered book of psalms propped against the side of fridge, sandwiched between Betty Crocker's cookbook and a stack of bills.
What the hell is Joan doing, keeping a damned book of psalms in the kitchen?
The kid's eyes shift, meet his gaze with an infinite patience, and Jack gives in. The kid's right, Jack does know.
With a soft smile, the kid says, "You can call me Justin."
"Justin," Jack repeats, testing it. "Am I dying?"
"You know that you are."
"I mean right now," Jack clarifies. "Am I going to die right now?"
"Soon."
Probably the natural response to having his death confirmed so plainly should be fear. Jack isn't afraid. He feels calm, and maybe a little resigned. "Why are you here?"
That, at least, seems to take some consideration. Justin mulls that for a bit before he answers. "You're good at managing things, aren't you, Jack?" He retakes his perch, settling on the back of the chair and Jack's momentarily discomfited by the fact that, once again, the kid's perching on the two inch wide chair-back, feet tucked on the narrow ledge that the back of the seat leaves, and somehow managing not to topple the entire thing over. That's got to be breaking some science law or something.
"This is the one thing you can't 'manage'," Justin tells him.
"What?"
The kid shrugs, like the answer's obvious. "Your death. You can't avoid it. You have no choice but to confront it."
Jack plucks up his glass and takes another long swig. The stinging flavor makes him wince, but it feels good. Familiar. "You sound like my fucking wife."
"Like when she refused to tell your kids about the cancer for you?" Justin says, guilelessly. "I know more than you think."
"You're not going to lecture me about how I'm going to hell for using profanity."
"No, Jack," Justin says. "You're going to hell for a lot more than that." The answer, spoken so plainly, chokes the breath out of him. "Relax."
"Relax?" Jack snarls. "This isn't a fucking game! This isn't some feel-good goddamned Christmas movie! This is my life!"
Justin leans forward, his hand wrapping around Jack's forearm. "No," he says, unflappable. "This is your death, and it can end however you want it to."
"What are you talking about?"
"You made choices," Justin says, sitting back. "That's what people do. That's why humans were given free will, so they can go out and make choices, and make mistakes and learn from them. But those choices brought you right here to this moment, and the powers that be have decided to give you one more choice before the end."
"Which is what?" Jack scoffs. "To get a glimpse of what the world would be like if I never existed, and then everything will resolve itself and be perfect again?"
Justin's face scrunches up in apparent confusion. "No," he says, slowly. "They gave you me." Then he beams, like Jack should be grateful or something.
Jack doesn't feel grateful. "Stop speaking in circles, you little shit."
The good humor disappears off Justin's face in a flash and in a movement too fast for Jack's eyes to follow, he moves from his perch until he's leaning forward across the table, right up in Jack's face. "Then maybe you'll understand this: you fucked up."
Jack blinks. Shocked. "Are you allowed to swear?"
"You fucked up, and now here you are, and you have one more choice: you can keep ignoring your imminent death, tell me to piss off, and accept where you'll end up."
"Where's that, exactly?" Jack butts in, feeling a little frantic to know.
Justin's eyebrows jerk upward. "I can't tell you."
"Some kind of divine regulation?"
"No." There's something in the kid's tone that makes Jack's spine straighten, something resilient and unflinching, something to be respected and feared. "I'm not here to waste my breath talking to you about the afterlife. I'm not going to stand here and urge you to repent because, in my opinion, that doesn't do shit."
"What are you here to do?" Jack demands. "What? Just tell me!"
"I'm here to help. That's all," Justin says. "You want to give up, stick your head in the sand and pretend everything's okay, then fine. That's an actual choice you can make. I have better things to do than sit around and listen to you bitch and moan about the injustices in your life."
"I did have it hard!"
"Well, get over it! You want sympathy, talk to someone who gives a shit."
Jack shoves his glass away and half-stands, his fists braced on the tabletop. "You're supposed to give a shit!"
"How can you expect me to, when you can't even be bothered?"
"God dammit," Jack snarls. What the hell had he ever done to deserve this? All his life he'd made sacrifices for people, and now here he is and his own death can't even belong to him. This little prick of a kid has to come in stirring up trouble. "You don't talk to me like that!"
Justin gets right back in his face. "I'll talk to you however I want. I'll do whatever it takes to make you understand. I'm here to help you, Jack Kinney. But you have to want me to."
Just like that, all the anger leaches out of Jack's body, like those were the damned magic words or something. Alacazam. Jack slumps back down in his chair, his head dropping down into his hands and he sighs. "Okay."
After a moment, a warm hand drops down on his shoulder and squeezes once, briefly, the barest contact. "That's a start."
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When Jack asked Justin when he was going to die Justin had only said, "Soon". Jack was looking for something a little more specific but he figures it can't be much time at all because the moment Jack finishes his glass of whiskey Justin tells him to go upstairs, take a cold shower and get dressed.
"We're going for a walk," Justin says, when Jack refuses to budge without further explanation.
That isn't much of an answer at all but Jack takes it. He goes upstairs and follows his orders. When he's dressed, Joan follows him back to the kitchen and asks what he wants for breakfast.
"Nothing," Jack tells her. "I'm going out."
She's wearing that god-awful maroon colored robe that she always buttons right up to the neck. Last Christmas when Jack had been wandering aimlessly through a department store he found a whole rainbow of those robes and realized they aren't actually housecoats at all, they're nightgowns. His wife wears a fucking nightgown over top of her nightgown. He doesn't really know what that means but it irritates him.
One slender eyebrow cocks up, her mouth pinched and straight. Jack thinks that if he held a ruler up to her lips he'd discover that they really did hold a completely straight line. "Out?" she echoes. The disapproval's evident in her tone. "At this hour?"
"I'm going for a walk." He leaves before she can ask any more questions.
He marches down to the end of his driveway and briefly considers which way to turn because it's not like Justin bothered to tell him where they were going, and now the kid's disappeared.
Except not because there he is, hands tucked in the pockets of his jeans, standing casual as you please right there on the side of the road. When he catches Jack's eye Justin tips his head 'come on', and they fall into step.
"I'm not fucking 'making amends' or some bullshit," Jack says, because he feels that should be made clear. He hasn't done anything wrong.
"This way."
They end up walking in silence. Jack tilts his head down staring as his feet trudging through the brown, crunching leaves piling up in the gutter on the side of the road until they come to rest in front of a black wrought-iron gate.
Glancing up sharply, Jack's suspicions are confirmed. "This is a cemetery." Ignoring him, Justin pulls open the pedestrian gate and holds it, staring pointedly until Jack walks through. "Why did you bring me here?" Jack demands, but he doesn't get any explanation.
Instead, Justin leads him into the bowels of the cemetery, resolutely ignoring all of Jack's questions. In turn, Jack allows himself to feel deliciously maudlin.
There's an early morning mist filling in the gaps between headstones, the grass and dead leaves beneath his feet are stiff with frost. There's no color in the sunrise. The silence is almost suffocating, disturbingly sentient, somehow; Jack feels as if he's being keenly scrutinized by the dead.
Every now and again they pass a grave on which sits a single candle ensconced in colored glass, red or blue, sometimes green. Some tombstones have small flags, wreaths or fake flowers. The vast majority are unadorned. Forgotten.
When they come to a stop it's by a freshly dug, open grave. The diggers only just disappearing down the narrow black-tar road. Jack wishes he hadn't capitulated so easily. He doesn't want to be here, but all the fight left him in that moment, and now he can't bring himself to yell or tell the kid where he can stick whatever bullshit he's got planned.
Justin stands there, gazing down into the dirt depths and says, "Everyone just wants to be loved, don't they?"
Jack snorts. "Love's a bunch of crap. Everyone just wants to be free." This prompts a smile out of the kid, something wistful in his expression, and Jack finds himself continuing, "I keep telling my sonnyboy. I tell him, 'Don't you tie yourself down to one woman'."
Justin meets his gaze. "So, you're free?"
"I'm not free," Jack scoffs. "Not with the Warden watching me like a goddamned hawk."
The corner of the kid's mouth quirks up. Jack wants to tell the little sonofabitch to stop laughing at him, but his own sense of awe and respect keeps him mute. Apparently there are some lines even he isn't prepared to cross. "Hypothetically speaking," the kid says. "Say you're free. What happens when you reach this point?"
"What point?"
"Right here," Justin says, tipping his head back to look down into the open grave. Jack feels like a grade-school kid being taken to a museum so he can better understand the circle of life. Please refer to example A in the chart. "You get right here," Justin continues. "Then what?"
Jack narrows his eyes. "I don't believe in hell."
"Are you sure?" Jack keeps his mouth stubbornly shut, and eventually Justin's expression eases, humor seeping back into it, and he shrugs. "That's convenient."
Memories of long Sundays spent in church, fighting the urge to cling to his mother's hand as the minister spat images of eternal damnation down onto him flicker through Jack's mind. Like his faith, his fear is ingrained. He's almost scared not to believe.
Justin continues, "You don't want to make amends but you're angry and bitter because you don't think there's anyone who's going to stand by you when you die, and actually feel sorry to see you go."
"I did everything I could." Jack rolls his shoulders back. "I have nothing to regret."
The stretching silence makes him shift his gaze back to the blond. Justin's looking at him with an inscrutable gaze. When he catches Jack's look, he says, "I could show you things. Make you see." The offer sounds more like a threat than an offer.
Jack imagines the kinds of things that Justin might show him. Thinks about the things that might be surrounding them right there where they stand, the sorts of things that only someone like Justin could know. Jack doesn't want to see any of it. He doesn't want to hear anything that might be echoing around him in the voices of the departed.
"You're so sure that love is a lie," Justin continues, and Jack turns away, looks down at his feet, at the open grave. He tries to picture his coffin being lowered down there. Imagines himself looking up at his family as they look down: Joan and Clair and Brian. When he tries to picture them crying, he can't.
A square-cut piece of paper obstructs his view and Jack's eyes refocus on the photograph Justin's holding out. "Where did you get this?" he asks, reaching. He holds the picture in both hands, staring, surprised when a genuine laugh shatters the quiet. He's laughing. It feels foreign.
"This is me and my wife," Jack explains, shaking his head fondly. Him and Joanie when they were just two stupid kids who thought they could take on the world. They're dressed up, sitting on the trunk of Jack's convertible, his first car. Joan's laughing, her head tipped back and her smile broad.
Jesus, he forgot that she used to smile like that. In the picture, Jack's looking at her, smiling and laughing but his eyes are wide open and dazed, Jack looks at his expression in that picture and thinks, "Eureka", he doesn't know why.
"Christ," he says. "That was ages ago."
Young and smitten. As much as he wants to, Jack can't help the wistful smile as he looks at the picture. "We were just a couple of kids, going to some dance. She went to a stuffy Catholic girl's school, but she kept skipping classes and causing all sorts of trouble. She was a firecracker, my Joanie. I remember we danced three songs together and then we left. Drove out to some deserted little spot, and we fucked." The memory feels strong; full of fire and color and heat. He remembers rucking her dress up around her hips, remembers how she'd insisted they put the roof up for privacy, and how the car had steamed around them.
"We were so eager," he says, caught up in the recollection. "I didn't even bother to take her dress off, or that little vest-thing she wore." He'd dragged Joan right out of that gym, past the nuns with their disapproving frowns. He'd whispered in her ear and caught her wrist and tugged and she'd followed, laughing and trying not to trip over her pink chenille dress.
He falls silent.
"What changed?" Justin prompts.
"What do you think?" Jack snaps. He looks back down at the photograph. He doesn't want to talk about any of this, but the words spill out just the same. "We had plans. I was going out-of-state to school, and she was gonna take-over her mother's shop. She had a real head for business." He's not smiling any more. These memories are bitter now.
"She got pregnant near the end of summer … or she found-out then, how should I know? I tried to tell her to get the damned thing aborted, but she wouldn't." He huffs and shakes his head. "She told me that she'd take care of it herself, that I should go. What a bitch. That was her way of guilt-tripping me. So I fucking stayed and married her. Still trying every damned thing I could think of to make her change her mind, but she wouldn't. Stubborn old cow."
He flicks the photograph into the open grave, refuses to watch where it lands.
"That was your choice," Justin says.
His voice is inflectionless, but Jack hears the emphasis just the same. "Some fucking choice."
But now that Justin's said it out loud Jack can't fight the thought away. He'd never considered it a choice. There had never really seemed to be one. If there was a baby it belonged to both of them and was their responsibility. If there wasn't a baby, he was free. Leaving her alone with the kid hadn't ever crossed his mind.
He'd blamed her, rightfully, he thought. She should have got rid of the kid, because they had no business having babies at their age. But she'd said 'no' and that was her choice, and he'd stayed and that had been his.
He could have left her. He could have ended their relationship right there.
"Hey," he says, his hand wrapping around Justin's arm. "What are you playing at, here?"
Justin's gaze flickers down at Jack's hand briefly, then matches Jack's glare. "I don't think this is a game," he says. "Do you?"
Joan doesn't laugh anymore. Certainly never like she had back then, open and loud and careless. She has wrinkles on her face but none of them are laugh lines, and that was the one thing he'd teased her most about when they were young.
There's a gnawing heaviness in his gut, unnatural and all-consuming. Like a gaping, flopping fish is sitting in the pit of his stomach, gasping, desperate for space to breathe, sucking down every emotion in lieu of oxygen, until Jack's left empty. And like a fool, he just stands there and stares.
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Slowly, the sun creeps into the sky. The world comes awake in increments. Birds start to chirp, and Jack's able to blink out of his daze and realize that there's no sign of Justin anywhere.
He doesn't expect the sudden flash of vulnerability upon finding himself alone in the graveyard, standing by that open grave. It's only a few hours but suddenly it doesn't seem right for that kid not to be there.
Turning, Jack walks through the rows of markers and tries not to look at them. He distracts himself searching for that already-familiar blond head. The quest is futile but he refuses to abandon it. The morning's cool, the wind tinged with the bitter sting of winter, the air smells sweet and heavy with autumn decay. Jack's tired of being surrounded by death. He's had enough of that for one morning.
The pedestrian gate swings closed behind him with a creak and a clatter but he doesn't look back. He points himself in the direction of home, relieved to be ensconced once again in the noise and bustle of the street.
No sign of Justin, and Jack tells himself that he's thankful. That he's as tired of riddles as he is of death. Mostly, though, Jack finds himself thinking about the memory of Joan's laugh, of her smile. When he tries once more to morosely picture himself being lowered into the ground he imagines looking up and seeing her standing there, twenty years younger with her head tipped back, carefree once more.
The images make him stumble. Probably he shouldn't have had those glasses of whiskey so early in the morning. On an empty stomach, no less. That's why he's feeling like he is.
Passing the corner variety store, Jack turns down his residential street and realizes Justin's fallen into step with him. Jack wants tell him to 'fuck off', but what comes out is, "What am I supposed to do?"
And, because Jack's life is just cursed like that, Justin says, "I can't tell you what to do."
If Jack wanted this kind of useless insight he would've gone to a therapist but then again, he'd have to pay for this shit. Justin says, "Maybe your wife had the right idea."
Jack just stops walking. Just comes to a sudden and immediate halt because, well, seriously? "What?"
Justin carries on three steps before he stops too; turning around with his hands stuck in the pockets of his black P-coat. "When she said you should start by telling your kids."
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|<< { END CHAPTER ONE } >>|
masterpost
Author: lemon_bar
Chapter I:
Word Count: 4,994
Chapter I
_____________________________________________________
There's a draft in the main window of the master bedroom. For the longest time Jack hadn't believed it was actually there, but he got tired of hearing about its supposed existence. He'd given in and paid good money to have the windows in the house replaced but Joan kept bitching: "They didn't seal the window right. You'll have to call them back."
Jack never called anyone back to fix the windows and Joan had started sleeping on the other side of the bed. His side. That first winter with the new sleeping arrangements had been enough to convince him that the draft was real, that maybe Joan had a point. He never got around to making the call though, and now the cold air creeping into the room at night seems like a metaphor.
"What are you doing out of bed?" she asks, her voice low and rough with sleep.
"I'm looking out the window," he says, rolling his eyes.
The moon is full; low and bright and heavy enough that it feels as if any moment now it will drop right out of the sky and crush the house. Jack finds himself hoping for that. The cold air hasn't numbed him yet but the prickling chill's enough to distract him from the pain that had called him awake. It's almost constant now. Jack can feel the heavy weight of something, just there, so close and just waiting; barely kept at bay. He can't name it; doesn't want to put a name to the feeling because he's not ready to face it.
He knows what it is just the same. It's ever-present, lurking close in the corner of his mind.
There's a soft rustling behind him. Joan's shifted in bed, maybe turned around to face him. He doesn't look at her, keeps his attention on the moonlight, keeps waiting for that big bright sphere to come tumbling down on top of him.
"Are you coming back to bed?" She's awake enough now that her voice has smoothed out. Slick and imperious; he can practically hear her judgment of him.
Letting the curtain fall closed, Jack turns toward the bedroom door, starts walking. "No."
The house is quiet. Empty. He knows that it wasn't always like that. Knows that there was a time when Claire and Brian filled the space up with unbearable chaos just by being there, but he can't remember it. There must have been moments when they turned their stereos up loud, run down the stairs or raised their voices as they bickered. There must have been moments where Jack had to tell them, "Shut up, for the love of god!" They were teenagers after all, that's the kind of shit teenagers do. The memories are murky, at best.
What he does remember is the house swallowed up with the sounds of a baby crying, Joan clattering around in the kitchen as she cooked or cleared away. Always clattering, always busy. He remembers clicking the volume up on the television set, up and up. Watching the game and wishing that, for just one god damned minute, things could just be quiet.
The silence now is eerie. Haunting. Memories skulking around every corner, resurrected in his mind by the oddest of things and he finds himself moving through the house with the lights off, like he can maybe avoid them if he just sneaks around carefully enough.
Soon enough, he's twisting the key in the lock that Joan installed on the liquor cabinet all those years ago, in preparation for the new addition that no one wanted. "Christ," Jack mutters to himself. "What a time to become a good fucking Catholic."
Alcohol doesn't chase the memories away, but sometimes it helps him get beyond them.
There's a bottle of whiskey sitting in the cabinet but only enough remains in it for one mouthful. Jack takes a swig and carries the empty bottle with him to the kitchen. He's never understood why Joan hides her liquor when they have a perfectly serviceable liquor cabinet, but she keeps it in the damned kitchen cupboard with the peanut butter and the fucking cereal.
Shoving aside a box of frosted Mini-Wheats Jack's fingers curl around a familiar glass shape. The bitch has a full bottle of gin back there.
He replaces her gin with the empty bottle of whiskey, idly wondering if she'll notice. Whether she does or not won't make much of a difference he figures, because she won't say anything either way.
Uncapping his prize, he takes a long swig straight from the mouth of the bottle, washing down dreams in black-and-white: graveyards and dark pits and dirt and pain. Every step he takes these days is shadowed by a pressing imminence. He tries to find the humor in it but fails every damned time. All he's found so far is self-pity.
He's old, but not old enough to take the surprise out of the news that he's dying. He'd sat in that leather chair and laughed and rubbed his suddenly sweaty palms on his thighs. Jack remembers asking the doc for the prognosis. The answer had only made him laugh harder.
He hadn't been laughing when Joan had started to cry. No, he'd shut his mouth and glowered. As if his death would mean anything to her.
He's old and dying, counting down the days before his soul gets chased out of his cancer-riddled body, and there isn't a damned thing to be proud of. Not a damned person out there who he thinks might actually give a shit when his time's up.
"Well. That, at least, is a place to start," someone says.
Jack spins on his heel, turning to face the stranger. Even as he turns, his senses screaming at him that someone's broken into his home, into his kitchen, he can't find it in himself to be afraid. Somehow, it feels like he's been expecting exactly this. Like he's been waiting, and now he feels tangled knot inside him ease a little. Finally, a part of him sighs. Finally.
There are four chairs tucked in around the kitchen table and perched on the back of the one directly opposite where Jack's standing is a young man. Jack waits for the panic or the fear to kick in but it remains stubbornly absent. He feels as if he's known this kid all his life, like the presence of this stranger is absolutely right, is good.
It's been a long time since anything in Jack's life felt good.
"Before you ask," the kid says, raising a hand to forestall a question Jack didn't even know he'd been about to give voice. "I figure you need at least half of this before you actually believe me." He's holding out a bottle of Jim Beam Devil's Cut whiskey.
The hand proffering the whiskey and the arm attached to it and the whole of kid's body is glowing faintly, haloed in light. He radiates youth and innocence, his skin smooth and pale, his lips full and hair bright and blond, but Jack knows this isn't a kid when he looks into those blue eyes: deep and unfathomable as an ocean.
"Jesus," Jack mutters, forgetting the stolen gin in his hand and reaching automatically to uncap the offered whiskey.
The blond tips his head to the side, wincing. "Not quite." Then he pushes out one of the kitchen chairs with his foot. "Sit down, Jack."
Jack obeys. "What are you?"
The question earns him a teasing smile. "The first of three ghosts." The little shit even has the audacity to waggle his fingers like he's telling a fucking campfire story.
After a moment, the teasing expression eases, something soft and compassionate creeping across the stranger's face and he says, "You know who I am."
It's the first time Jack can think of where anyone's looked at with that expression. He doesn't like it. It leaves him feeling raw, exposed and vulnerable. He sets the bottle down the table with a clack, swallows thickly and can't help wondering, "It's time, then."
"Not quite." The blond slips off the back of the chair, striding confidentially over to a cupboard where he retrieves a glass, which he carries back to the table.
"What do you mean?" Jack watches the deeply amber liquid spilling over the lip of the bottle as the kid pours.
"Drink up," the stranger instructs, recapping the bottle.
Again, he obeys. Despite the kid's insistence and his own sense of familiarity, Jack's certain he's never seen this young man before. There's an answer that's niggling but he chokes it back.
Jack knows a thing or two about religion. Couldn't really avoid it given his heritage, to say nothing of who he married. Maybe he puts on a good front, voicing disdain for Joan's Sunday morning rituals and scorning faith as often as he curses it, but Jack's Irish born and raised and some things are just ingrained. Force of habit.
If he's drunk enough, and he usually is, he still catches himself muttering prayers whenever he passes a graveyard. But that doesn't mean … it couldn't mean…
"There's an ugly truth in here, somewhere," the blond murmurs, and when Jack looks he sees the kid running his fingers over the thick wood cross hanging to the left of the back door. It's a relic from Jack's childhood, one that he hates. Joan loves the thing.
When he glances around his kitchen trying to see it like a stranger might, he curses under his breath. Religion is everywhere. Even on the damned counter where he catches the kid flipping through a church pamphlet listing coming events.
For some reason beyond his understanding Jack can't stand to be associated with the annual children's spelling bee, the church choir performance, or the fall bake sale. "It's my wife's." He knocks back his whiskey and reaches for the bottle.
The blond's eyes unfocus and then, just as quickly, clear. "Joan."
Jack takes another drink, his eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"
"Jack. You know who I am."
"If I knew I wouldn't be asking!" He wonders what would happen if he took a swing at the kid. Frankly, he's a little concerned about the possible consequences.
"You do know," the kid tells him. "Just give yourself a second."
It's a struggle to keep fighting the answer, but Jack keeps at it. Sitting there and staring as the kid wanders around, calm as you please, tiptoeing his fingers along the green-covered book of psalms propped against the side of fridge, sandwiched between Betty Crocker's cookbook and a stack of bills.
What the hell is Joan doing, keeping a damned book of psalms in the kitchen?
The kid's eyes shift, meet his gaze with an infinite patience, and Jack gives in. The kid's right, Jack does know.
With a soft smile, the kid says, "You can call me Justin."
"Justin," Jack repeats, testing it. "Am I dying?"
"You know that you are."
"I mean right now," Jack clarifies. "Am I going to die right now?"
"Soon."
Probably the natural response to having his death confirmed so plainly should be fear. Jack isn't afraid. He feels calm, and maybe a little resigned. "Why are you here?"
That, at least, seems to take some consideration. Justin mulls that for a bit before he answers. "You're good at managing things, aren't you, Jack?" He retakes his perch, settling on the back of the chair and Jack's momentarily discomfited by the fact that, once again, the kid's perching on the two inch wide chair-back, feet tucked on the narrow ledge that the back of the seat leaves, and somehow managing not to topple the entire thing over. That's got to be breaking some science law or something.
"This is the one thing you can't 'manage'," Justin tells him.
"What?"
The kid shrugs, like the answer's obvious. "Your death. You can't avoid it. You have no choice but to confront it."
Jack plucks up his glass and takes another long swig. The stinging flavor makes him wince, but it feels good. Familiar. "You sound like my fucking wife."
"Like when she refused to tell your kids about the cancer for you?" Justin says, guilelessly. "I know more than you think."
"You're not going to lecture me about how I'm going to hell for using profanity."
"No, Jack," Justin says. "You're going to hell for a lot more than that." The answer, spoken so plainly, chokes the breath out of him. "Relax."
"Relax?" Jack snarls. "This isn't a fucking game! This isn't some feel-good goddamned Christmas movie! This is my life!"
Justin leans forward, his hand wrapping around Jack's forearm. "No," he says, unflappable. "This is your death, and it can end however you want it to."
"What are you talking about?"
"You made choices," Justin says, sitting back. "That's what people do. That's why humans were given free will, so they can go out and make choices, and make mistakes and learn from them. But those choices brought you right here to this moment, and the powers that be have decided to give you one more choice before the end."
"Which is what?" Jack scoffs. "To get a glimpse of what the world would be like if I never existed, and then everything will resolve itself and be perfect again?"
Justin's face scrunches up in apparent confusion. "No," he says, slowly. "They gave you me." Then he beams, like Jack should be grateful or something.
Jack doesn't feel grateful. "Stop speaking in circles, you little shit."
The good humor disappears off Justin's face in a flash and in a movement too fast for Jack's eyes to follow, he moves from his perch until he's leaning forward across the table, right up in Jack's face. "Then maybe you'll understand this: you fucked up."
Jack blinks. Shocked. "Are you allowed to swear?"
"You fucked up, and now here you are, and you have one more choice: you can keep ignoring your imminent death, tell me to piss off, and accept where you'll end up."
"Where's that, exactly?" Jack butts in, feeling a little frantic to know.
Justin's eyebrows jerk upward. "I can't tell you."
"Some kind of divine regulation?"
"No." There's something in the kid's tone that makes Jack's spine straighten, something resilient and unflinching, something to be respected and feared. "I'm not here to waste my breath talking to you about the afterlife. I'm not going to stand here and urge you to repent because, in my opinion, that doesn't do shit."
"What are you here to do?" Jack demands. "What? Just tell me!"
"I'm here to help. That's all," Justin says. "You want to give up, stick your head in the sand and pretend everything's okay, then fine. That's an actual choice you can make. I have better things to do than sit around and listen to you bitch and moan about the injustices in your life."
"I did have it hard!"
"Well, get over it! You want sympathy, talk to someone who gives a shit."
Jack shoves his glass away and half-stands, his fists braced on the tabletop. "You're supposed to give a shit!"
"How can you expect me to, when you can't even be bothered?"
"God dammit," Jack snarls. What the hell had he ever done to deserve this? All his life he'd made sacrifices for people, and now here he is and his own death can't even belong to him. This little prick of a kid has to come in stirring up trouble. "You don't talk to me like that!"
Justin gets right back in his face. "I'll talk to you however I want. I'll do whatever it takes to make you understand. I'm here to help you, Jack Kinney. But you have to want me to."
Just like that, all the anger leaches out of Jack's body, like those were the damned magic words or something. Alacazam. Jack slumps back down in his chair, his head dropping down into his hands and he sighs. "Okay."
After a moment, a warm hand drops down on his shoulder and squeezes once, briefly, the barest contact. "That's a start."
_____________________________________________________
When Jack asked Justin when he was going to die Justin had only said, "Soon". Jack was looking for something a little more specific but he figures it can't be much time at all because the moment Jack finishes his glass of whiskey Justin tells him to go upstairs, take a cold shower and get dressed.
"We're going for a walk," Justin says, when Jack refuses to budge without further explanation.
That isn't much of an answer at all but Jack takes it. He goes upstairs and follows his orders. When he's dressed, Joan follows him back to the kitchen and asks what he wants for breakfast.
"Nothing," Jack tells her. "I'm going out."
She's wearing that god-awful maroon colored robe that she always buttons right up to the neck. Last Christmas when Jack had been wandering aimlessly through a department store he found a whole rainbow of those robes and realized they aren't actually housecoats at all, they're nightgowns. His wife wears a fucking nightgown over top of her nightgown. He doesn't really know what that means but it irritates him.
One slender eyebrow cocks up, her mouth pinched and straight. Jack thinks that if he held a ruler up to her lips he'd discover that they really did hold a completely straight line. "Out?" she echoes. The disapproval's evident in her tone. "At this hour?"
"I'm going for a walk." He leaves before she can ask any more questions.
He marches down to the end of his driveway and briefly considers which way to turn because it's not like Justin bothered to tell him where they were going, and now the kid's disappeared.
Except not because there he is, hands tucked in the pockets of his jeans, standing casual as you please right there on the side of the road. When he catches Jack's eye Justin tips his head 'come on', and they fall into step.
"I'm not fucking 'making amends' or some bullshit," Jack says, because he feels that should be made clear. He hasn't done anything wrong.
"This way."
They end up walking in silence. Jack tilts his head down staring as his feet trudging through the brown, crunching leaves piling up in the gutter on the side of the road until they come to rest in front of a black wrought-iron gate.
Glancing up sharply, Jack's suspicions are confirmed. "This is a cemetery." Ignoring him, Justin pulls open the pedestrian gate and holds it, staring pointedly until Jack walks through. "Why did you bring me here?" Jack demands, but he doesn't get any explanation.
Instead, Justin leads him into the bowels of the cemetery, resolutely ignoring all of Jack's questions. In turn, Jack allows himself to feel deliciously maudlin.
There's an early morning mist filling in the gaps between headstones, the grass and dead leaves beneath his feet are stiff with frost. There's no color in the sunrise. The silence is almost suffocating, disturbingly sentient, somehow; Jack feels as if he's being keenly scrutinized by the dead.
Every now and again they pass a grave on which sits a single candle ensconced in colored glass, red or blue, sometimes green. Some tombstones have small flags, wreaths or fake flowers. The vast majority are unadorned. Forgotten.
When they come to a stop it's by a freshly dug, open grave. The diggers only just disappearing down the narrow black-tar road. Jack wishes he hadn't capitulated so easily. He doesn't want to be here, but all the fight left him in that moment, and now he can't bring himself to yell or tell the kid where he can stick whatever bullshit he's got planned.
Justin stands there, gazing down into the dirt depths and says, "Everyone just wants to be loved, don't they?"
Jack snorts. "Love's a bunch of crap. Everyone just wants to be free." This prompts a smile out of the kid, something wistful in his expression, and Jack finds himself continuing, "I keep telling my sonnyboy. I tell him, 'Don't you tie yourself down to one woman'."
Justin meets his gaze. "So, you're free?"
"I'm not free," Jack scoffs. "Not with the Warden watching me like a goddamned hawk."
The corner of the kid's mouth quirks up. Jack wants to tell the little sonofabitch to stop laughing at him, but his own sense of awe and respect keeps him mute. Apparently there are some lines even he isn't prepared to cross. "Hypothetically speaking," the kid says. "Say you're free. What happens when you reach this point?"
"What point?"
"Right here," Justin says, tipping his head back to look down into the open grave. Jack feels like a grade-school kid being taken to a museum so he can better understand the circle of life. Please refer to example A in the chart. "You get right here," Justin continues. "Then what?"
Jack narrows his eyes. "I don't believe in hell."
"Are you sure?" Jack keeps his mouth stubbornly shut, and eventually Justin's expression eases, humor seeping back into it, and he shrugs. "That's convenient."
Memories of long Sundays spent in church, fighting the urge to cling to his mother's hand as the minister spat images of eternal damnation down onto him flicker through Jack's mind. Like his faith, his fear is ingrained. He's almost scared not to believe.
Justin continues, "You don't want to make amends but you're angry and bitter because you don't think there's anyone who's going to stand by you when you die, and actually feel sorry to see you go."
"I did everything I could." Jack rolls his shoulders back. "I have nothing to regret."
The stretching silence makes him shift his gaze back to the blond. Justin's looking at him with an inscrutable gaze. When he catches Jack's look, he says, "I could show you things. Make you see." The offer sounds more like a threat than an offer.
Jack imagines the kinds of things that Justin might show him. Thinks about the things that might be surrounding them right there where they stand, the sorts of things that only someone like Justin could know. Jack doesn't want to see any of it. He doesn't want to hear anything that might be echoing around him in the voices of the departed.
"You're so sure that love is a lie," Justin continues, and Jack turns away, looks down at his feet, at the open grave. He tries to picture his coffin being lowered down there. Imagines himself looking up at his family as they look down: Joan and Clair and Brian. When he tries to picture them crying, he can't.
A square-cut piece of paper obstructs his view and Jack's eyes refocus on the photograph Justin's holding out. "Where did you get this?" he asks, reaching. He holds the picture in both hands, staring, surprised when a genuine laugh shatters the quiet. He's laughing. It feels foreign.
"This is me and my wife," Jack explains, shaking his head fondly. Him and Joanie when they were just two stupid kids who thought they could take on the world. They're dressed up, sitting on the trunk of Jack's convertible, his first car. Joan's laughing, her head tipped back and her smile broad.
Jesus, he forgot that she used to smile like that. In the picture, Jack's looking at her, smiling and laughing but his eyes are wide open and dazed, Jack looks at his expression in that picture and thinks, "Eureka", he doesn't know why.
"Christ," he says. "That was ages ago."
Young and smitten. As much as he wants to, Jack can't help the wistful smile as he looks at the picture. "We were just a couple of kids, going to some dance. She went to a stuffy Catholic girl's school, but she kept skipping classes and causing all sorts of trouble. She was a firecracker, my Joanie. I remember we danced three songs together and then we left. Drove out to some deserted little spot, and we fucked." The memory feels strong; full of fire and color and heat. He remembers rucking her dress up around her hips, remembers how she'd insisted they put the roof up for privacy, and how the car had steamed around them.
"We were so eager," he says, caught up in the recollection. "I didn't even bother to take her dress off, or that little vest-thing she wore." He'd dragged Joan right out of that gym, past the nuns with their disapproving frowns. He'd whispered in her ear and caught her wrist and tugged and she'd followed, laughing and trying not to trip over her pink chenille dress.
He falls silent.
"What changed?" Justin prompts.
"What do you think?" Jack snaps. He looks back down at the photograph. He doesn't want to talk about any of this, but the words spill out just the same. "We had plans. I was going out-of-state to school, and she was gonna take-over her mother's shop. She had a real head for business." He's not smiling any more. These memories are bitter now.
"She got pregnant near the end of summer … or she found-out then, how should I know? I tried to tell her to get the damned thing aborted, but she wouldn't." He huffs and shakes his head. "She told me that she'd take care of it herself, that I should go. What a bitch. That was her way of guilt-tripping me. So I fucking stayed and married her. Still trying every damned thing I could think of to make her change her mind, but she wouldn't. Stubborn old cow."
He flicks the photograph into the open grave, refuses to watch where it lands.
"That was your choice," Justin says.
His voice is inflectionless, but Jack hears the emphasis just the same. "Some fucking choice."
But now that Justin's said it out loud Jack can't fight the thought away. He'd never considered it a choice. There had never really seemed to be one. If there was a baby it belonged to both of them and was their responsibility. If there wasn't a baby, he was free. Leaving her alone with the kid hadn't ever crossed his mind.
He'd blamed her, rightfully, he thought. She should have got rid of the kid, because they had no business having babies at their age. But she'd said 'no' and that was her choice, and he'd stayed and that had been his.
He could have left her. He could have ended their relationship right there.
"Hey," he says, his hand wrapping around Justin's arm. "What are you playing at, here?"
Justin's gaze flickers down at Jack's hand briefly, then matches Jack's glare. "I don't think this is a game," he says. "Do you?"
Joan doesn't laugh anymore. Certainly never like she had back then, open and loud and careless. She has wrinkles on her face but none of them are laugh lines, and that was the one thing he'd teased her most about when they were young.
There's a gnawing heaviness in his gut, unnatural and all-consuming. Like a gaping, flopping fish is sitting in the pit of his stomach, gasping, desperate for space to breathe, sucking down every emotion in lieu of oxygen, until Jack's left empty. And like a fool, he just stands there and stares.
_____________________________________________________
Slowly, the sun creeps into the sky. The world comes awake in increments. Birds start to chirp, and Jack's able to blink out of his daze and realize that there's no sign of Justin anywhere.
He doesn't expect the sudden flash of vulnerability upon finding himself alone in the graveyard, standing by that open grave. It's only a few hours but suddenly it doesn't seem right for that kid not to be there.
Turning, Jack walks through the rows of markers and tries not to look at them. He distracts himself searching for that already-familiar blond head. The quest is futile but he refuses to abandon it. The morning's cool, the wind tinged with the bitter sting of winter, the air smells sweet and heavy with autumn decay. Jack's tired of being surrounded by death. He's had enough of that for one morning.
The pedestrian gate swings closed behind him with a creak and a clatter but he doesn't look back. He points himself in the direction of home, relieved to be ensconced once again in the noise and bustle of the street.
No sign of Justin, and Jack tells himself that he's thankful. That he's as tired of riddles as he is of death. Mostly, though, Jack finds himself thinking about the memory of Joan's laugh, of her smile. When he tries once more to morosely picture himself being lowered into the ground he imagines looking up and seeing her standing there, twenty years younger with her head tipped back, carefree once more.
The images make him stumble. Probably he shouldn't have had those glasses of whiskey so early in the morning. On an empty stomach, no less. That's why he's feeling like he is.
Passing the corner variety store, Jack turns down his residential street and realizes Justin's fallen into step with him. Jack wants tell him to 'fuck off', but what comes out is, "What am I supposed to do?"
And, because Jack's life is just cursed like that, Justin says, "I can't tell you what to do."
If Jack wanted this kind of useless insight he would've gone to a therapist but then again, he'd have to pay for this shit. Justin says, "Maybe your wife had the right idea."
Jack just stops walking. Just comes to a sudden and immediate halt because, well, seriously? "What?"
Justin carries on three steps before he stops too; turning around with his hands stuck in the pockets of his black P-coat. "When she said you should start by telling your kids."
_____________________________________________________
|<< { END CHAPTER ONE } >>|
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