Works and Days

Thanksgiving

Continued

At about ten o’clock, another motorcycle rumbled into the driveway followed by a knock at the door. Knowingly, Jackie answered and Chip kissed her on the mouth and squeezed her ass.

“So this is... Chip?” Kristen smiled out of the side of her mouth.

“Yes,” Jackie smiled back at her sister, “this is Chip.”

“Delighted,” Kathleen extended a hand. Chip smiled and mumbled something. Kathleen Lewis smiled and said, “Why, yes.” but Patti could tell that her mother-in-law was mystified and Sara whispered to her daughter, “I’m glad these aren’t my kids,” though, looking to Denise, she realized she didn’t have much room to speak.

“I’m going to introduce him to the men,” Jackie said.

“Doesn’t everybody know him?” said Patti.

“Just Thom and Russell.”

 Jackie navigated Chip into the next room.

“This is Chip,” she said, showing him to the ones who had never seen him. John, Frank, the three boys, Finn, Reese. They all said hello, but something thumped inside of her when John smiled and said, “Hey, Chip, good to meet you.” She didn’t exactly know what she’d expected to happen.

What she should have expected was Finn and Chip to start talking. They were mumbling and chuckling to each other about tits, bikes and weed, and soon Jackie shrugged and went back into the kitchen.

“It makes sense,” Kristen said, reflecting on Chip and Finn. “Fried minds think alike.”

 

“Jackie!” she heard her name hissed as she walked down Breckinridge, and she stopped.

John caught up to her, jogging and then chuckling as he stopped beside her and the two of them began to walk at a comfortable pace.

“I thought we weren’t going to ever get to talk,” John said. “And now you’re going home.”

“Well, the foundation for dinner’s been laid out. All Patti’ll have to do in the morning is take stuff out of the fridge and throw the stuff in the oven, and she’ll be finished. And now I’m finished. That was enough family to last me till Christmas.”

“Ah, God,” John rolled his eyes comically, “we gotta do it all over again in another five weeks!”

“I’m serious, John,” she laughed, and punched him in the shoulder.

“Me too,” John told her. They remained silent, turning down Goodwin.

“One of us had better say something,” John said at last. “I mean, I don’t come all the way to Geschichte Falls just not to talk to you.”

“You came for me?” Jackie pretended to doubt this, to be unimpressed, and asked herself why she always pretended with John.

“Yes,” he said earnestly, turning her around and looking at her. For a second there was almost no distinction between the fourteen year old boy she’d met at Patti and Thom’s wedding, and the thirty year old man standing before her.

“Jackie, I missed you so much.”

She sighed and smiled. “I missed you too, John.”

“I’m not getting to sleep tonight. It’s too many people, and Russell said I could have his room, but I think he wants it to himself. I didn’t want anyone in my room when I was growing up.”

“You had your own room?”

“I was the only boy.”

“I didn’t have my own room until Kristin went off to college.”

“Kristen...” John shook her head.

“She’s a bitch,” Jackie commented tersely.

“Poor Reese.”

“He should beat her. Wanna come to my place? We’ll make coffee and talk all night. Half the night’s gone anyway.”

“Yeah,” John said. “I think I’d like that. Is Chip going to be by later?”

Jackie stopped in mid stride. “Look, John, it’s not even like that. Chip lives at his own place and keeps his own genitalia in his own pants. Besides, he’s running around with Finn.”

“That is weird.”

“Not weird,” Jackie disagreed. “Appropriate. What’s weird is how I keep attracting men like Chip.”

“So whaddo you think about all this?” John asked Jackie, sitting down on the couch beside her, hands wrapped about his coffee mug.

“All of what?”

 “Do you know what Mom said to me tonight? She said, Patti too, that makes three strikes, the whole family’s out now.”

“Are you serious?” Jackie frowned, leaning forward.

John nodded.

“I’m sorry, how could she say that to you?”

“She didn’t mean it to sound that way. She was just trying to be funny, but Mom and Dad both have off humor.”

“It wasn’t your fault about Kim.” Jackie said.

“She left me,” John affirmed, “for a tennis instructor so tan he looked like luggage. But still... It’s like, what’s the point? The only married people I know are my parents, your sister and Reese, and Thom and Patti. We met each other at their wedding. We were kids then. Russell’s not even grown and their relationship’s dead. Mom and Dad are crazy and Reese and Kristen... who the hell wants a marriage like that?

“I mean... is it illusion? Is love and romance and all that shit... Is it just shit?”

Jackie, on the other end of the couch, watched John’s dark eyes watching something not in that room, his lips open.

“I worked on that marriage,” John told her. “I worked. Do you think it works? Marriage...? Love.... Sometimes it all seems so useless.”

“Did you ever love Kim?” Jackie asked.

“Of course—”

“Were you ever... in love with her?”

John looked at Jackie. He put the mug down on the steamer chest.

“I... I gave my virginity to her. We were together for a long time.”

“That’s not even an answer,” Jackie turned away almost in scorn and lit a Carlton.

“I don’t know that what you’re talking about exists, Jackie,” John said.

“That romance, that head over heels love, that... in love stuff. I dated Kim. I was committed to her, I saw the future in her. I had the future in her, and then she left.”

John stopped talking. He could see Jackie almost flint eyed, staring out of the window, but he knew she wasn’t looking at Royal Street.

“Well...” she spoke at last, “were you ever in love with me?”

Jackie heard John suck in his breath, and she turned back to him.

“I’ve been waiting for sixteen... almost seventeen years to ask you that. Did you ever... feel anything for me?”    

When John wouldn’t say anything, Jackie spoke. “I know what you’re talking about. In love. Because I know what it is to be in love, and I know what it is to settle.

“Chip is settling. That’s exactly what he is. I never found the person that I could do more than settle for. I never dated the person that made bells go off in my head, who excited me. And I’m thinking it’s halfway because I didn’t think I deserved it.”

“And now?”

“I’m starting to think...” she answered slowly, “that a lot of people complain about the bad shake life gives them, but it’s us... We give ourselves the shake, and I deserve the best shake I can get. I mean, if we’re all responsible for each other’s souls, then we’re all responsible for our own soul more than any other... and we’ve got to do right by ourselves... do the best thing for ourselves and... And I’m rambling.”

“No,” John smiled, and put up a hand. “Keep talking. I like it when you talk, Jackie. Jackie?”

“Yes?”

“I was twenty-two when it happened,” John said. “I think it’s really the reason I married Kim. You know how it is... or maybe you don’t. I was an altar boy and everything. We were a good Catholic family and I didn’t do things like that, so I figured that when I did I should marry the girl it happened with. But... I wasn’t in love with Kim. And yes, Jaclyn. I didn’t really have to think about it... I did love you.

“I do love you.”

 

Russell, who always slept lightly, awoke to John trying to open his door as noiselessly as possible. In the dark his uncle took off his ball cap, his sneakers and jeans, and then the large plaid shirt that Russell planned to make off with, and crawled into bed in his boxers.

“Your feet are so cold,” Russell hissed.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“I was.”

“Well take this.”

“Ow! I’m not joking your feet are cold! Stop jabbing me with your toes!”

“I never got to have a little brother,” John explained.

“Well you’re not gonna have one now, John. I wanna go to sleep.”

“You wanna talk?”

“I just said I want to sleep.”

“I just thought you might want to talk. About your parents.”

“I try not to talk about my parents.”

“Oh, Russell. Your mom’s my sister. She’s the best big sister in the world. And your dad’s like the big brother I didn’t get to have. I love them both, Russell, and I know you do too.”

“It seems to me,” said Russell, sitting up, “that it’s you who needs to talk more than I.”

“More than me.”

“That’s what I said.”

“No, you’re supposed to say more than me. Not more than I.”

“Really? Grammar at one a.m.?”

“It’s two-thirty, and you seriosuly don’t want to talk about it?”

“Not right now. John, I live with it. I don’t get them. I never even bothered to try to get Dad until a little while ago. I don’t know up from down. I don’t knoq what I’d say. The divorce is taking a long time. Mom’s dating some guy—”

“She is?”

“Yeah, and the thing is I like him a lot. He’s really great for her but I don’t believe anything’s gonna come of it right now. And Dad—” Russell stopped. His mouth was going ahead of his mind.

“Thom? Thom what?”

“John, you can’t tell anyone. And that means Mom. But the week after Mom threw him out he fucked this old flame of his. She came up to visit and he spent the whole weekend banging her. Like Mom didn’t even matter. And I’m not mad at him for it... That’s the weird thing. It’s like I’m starting to like him, and I never knew he loved me until recently. Now I know he loves me, and I’m not sure I like the feeling.

“So, now that I’ve gotten all that off of my chest, how ‘bout you tell me about you and Aunt Jackie?”

“Oh now, Russell. It was a nice time. We talked. That’s all.”

“Oh, fuck you! Don’t turn into Uncle John right now after you wake me up and make me tell you... stuff. Tell me. Are you all going to get together?”

“She’s dating someone.”

“Chip’s a loser and she knows it. Jackie can do better than Chip any day of the week. I bet she just has him so she can say she has someone.”

“Russell!”

“Am I wrong? Com’on, John, this is getting tired, the two of you pussy footing around. You’ve been divorced for almost three years now, and you didn’t have any business marrying Kim.”

“I loved her.”

“Bullshit!”

“Russell, wash your mouth out. You’re still a kid.”

“Bullshit, John. You married her cause you screwed her. I might not be that old, but I’ve known you my whole life. You drop a lot of hints. The two of you were never in love and, incidentally, I always hated Kim. Jackie did too.”

John stared at his nephew in the dark.

“Of course she did,” Russell went on. “Kim Bayle had moved in on her turf.”