‘No, I’m afraid you can’t speak to him. Not right now, dear.’
‘Because…because he’s…well, because he’s still in bed.’
‘Elisabeth said he invited you to dinner Friday?’ She frowned. Her daughter had always irritated her. The boys, never.
‘He invited everybody? No, you don’t need to bring anything. Just yourselves.’
‘Look, Sam. I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to say it. Your father’s dead. He died in his sleep. Can you swing by today sometime, help me sort it all out?’
Milly took to sleeping on Jack’s side of the bed, and with her head on his pillow she tried to imagine the dream that took him away so it could sneak her away too. She didn’t know about the diving board at the Sutro Baths, but the letting go – she could rehearse that. And wait for it. Boy oh boy, then he’d catch it.
A DECENT MARTINI
SEVEN YEARS EARLIER
Christmas Eve 2007
San Miguel, Marin County 2:42pm
What a week! Rain, rain, rain. Jack noticed newts and slugs everywhere suddenly. And mud – his car was a mess. Okay, they needed the rain. The hills were finally fully green, after a month of merely glimmering green, then retreating back to brown and gold. It was good to be able to flush the toilet again, any old time you wanted. But still – rain was annoying. It felt like he had to learn all over again how to keep dry – which shoes not to wear, which jacket was waterproof, and where the hell had he left that old umbrella ten months ago? Had he thrown it out? He’d forgotten how damp everything could get. Even the firewood.
Then that accident on Saturday. Idiot teenage boy, slowing down so quickly, before Jack had a chance to even think about finding the brake pedal. Between the physically painful sound of metal crunching and Milly’s hysterical yelling, he’d almost had another heart attack. Then Sunday afternoon they got home from lunch in Tiburon, and realised they must somehow have left her cane in the parking lot. Unless she’d thrown it out the window. He’d been too tired, too drunk to drive all the way back. He was hanging on to his licence by the skin of his dentures. And to top it all off, the Christmas card this morning from his sister, Ivy. Oh God, her infinitely sweet spider handwriting. It always reminded him of that endearing gap between her two front teeth.
Dear Jacko:
I been to a lot of funerals lately, and I don’t want to hear about yours. Or wonder why you haven’t written. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to say goodbye now, while we can both write.
Merry Christmas! And goodbye. You been a good brother.
Ivy
And then, scrawled at the bottom and up the margins:
PS. I’m 3 years older, remember. You don’t need to fret yet.
He knew it by heart. By God, that girl always knew how to get to him. Yes, Ivy, at eighty-three, remained that girl. The last time he saw her she was nineteen and climbing into the cab of a Mayflower moving van with her brand-new husband, bound for Summers County, West Virginia. Ivy had written to Jack all those years since. Short erratic letters full of dry humour and bad grammar.
Pithy snapshots of her life as it unfolded. She always seemed surprised by events, and reported new husbands and new dishwashers with equal amazement and many exclamation marks. As if to say: Do you believe it? This really happened to your sister, of all people!!! He used to imagine her one day writing: Do you believe it? I friggin died today!!! What a hoot!!! Her words in loopy curls, at first in fountain pen, then a black felt tip. Now and then, a typed letter. Never a word-processed letter, much less email, which Jack used all the time now. He wrote back about once to every dozen of her letters. His own tended to be longer, yet they never seemed to be getting to know each other better. Their relationship remained frozen, with him a sneaky shy nine-year-old, hiding her favourite hair clip so she had to chase him round the porch and tickle him till he damn near peed himself. Then she always pulled out something sweet from her pocket. Or beef jerky. They’d both loved beef jerky.
And now, this terse little message on a Christmas card of Santa hohoho-ing across the snowy sky. He almost wrote back to her, saying: Hell no, that is not fair – you got to keep writing! Whenever he thought of Ivy, his syntax went straight back to childish grammar. No more letters from Ivy? Life was just one annoying tragedy after another. He hadn’t realised how much space Ivy took up. What on earth would he do about it? Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, he pondered Ivy.
Everything was dropping away.
His sailboat, Sweet Epiphany, had been sold last year (or was it the year before?) to that whippersnapper with new money who couldn’t even sail. He’d felt guilty, because he’d never quite given Sweet Epiphany the attention she deserved, and now it was too late.
Then his beautiful Dulcinea Press, finally declared dead once and for all at the board meeting last spring. It was easy to blame Amazon and discount deals at the big chains, but the truth was he’d simply misjudged too many writers, and over-estimated the reading public’s good taste. He’d been planning on selling the business anyway; he was eighty years old for heaven’s sake. But still. Those daily ferry boat commutes, that third-floor office on Columbus. Last time he locked up, it was spotless and empty as if Dulcinea had never existed. He had not been able to throw the key away, or return it. It sat in his desk drawer along with his father’s watch, the one he’d received for thirty years of handling the Buena Vista wine barrels. Which, as Jack had been told countless times, was an art. There were right ways to empty barrels, fill them again, settle the wine, do the lees stirring and bung checking. Funny, Jack hadn’t had any respect for his father at the time, but now as he humbly bowed out of his own business, a belated appreciation filled him. Life came round and bit you on the ass sometimes.
Jack and Milly lived on less now: luxuries like vacations, cashmere sweaters, oysters – all out the window. He’d noticed the house looking shabbier – as if it, too, was giving up. Hardwood floors that needed sanding and re-varnishing. Window frames that needed replacing. His old ten speed and his newer mountain bike, covered with cobwebs. His tools still neatly arranged, but rusty. And today, looking at the shelves of new books lining their hallway, they suddenly seemed not so new. Teetering towers of proof copies and manuscripts still lined the floor of their bedroom, but they were softly padded at the base with dog hair.
Everything was dropping away or getting stale. They hadn’t even bothered getting a Christmas tree this year. After lunch, Jack announced:
‘The rain’s stopped. I’m off for a walk. Might pop by to see August, he said he’d be staying with his mom this week,’ in an overloud, defiantly jovial voice as he was putting on his jacket.
Milly asked, after a minute of marshalling her thoughts then forgetting to keep them inside her head:
‘Should I be worried?’
Jack froze, then pulled his jacket tighter and gave her shoulders a quick squeeze. Amazing how her radar still worked.
‘No idea what you mean, honey pie, but of course you don’t need to worry.’
‘Oh, I know. We agreed about that, didn’t we. Tell August…tell him I love him!’
‘He loves you too.’ It was true, thought Jack. Who would have thought that could happen?
‘Take the dogs, they need a walk too.’
‘Do I have to?’
‘Yes.’
‘I hate the dogs.’
‘No you don’t. You just think you do.’
He put on his new shoes, desert boots that were identical to the desert boots he’d worn fifty years ago. They’d stopped making them, so it was a happy day, spotting these in a shoe store window again. When he looked down at his feet, there was nothing visible to say he was not his younger self. Then Milly pulled his face down and kissed him three times. Quick, dry pecks on his lips. And off he went with Jaspy and King pulling on their leashes, down the road to Colette. His son August might or might not be there, but Colette would make him a martini, and a decent one at that. There’d been a time when he’d woken every day salivating for Colette’s martinis.
Jack felt naughty, though he’d not philandered for at least ten years, not since Tracey from the beach predicted correctly that he was a Leo and invited him to look at her vacation snapshots and they’d ended up on her ancient waterbed. Not a proud moment. Not his style, to sink as low as someone who believed in astrology, and water beds were so passé. He remembered Colette laughing over that episode, but also agreeing that it was humiliating. Then she’d told him about herself and the furnace maintenance guy, an equally undignified tale. They’d both agreed the only redeeming outcome was the relief of telling the stories to each other. And not telling another soul. They were confidantes. He was pretty sure they’d not been confidantes when they were sleeping together. Maybe the two kinds of intimacy didn’t mix.
It was a good half-hour walk to Colette’s, but the day was warm, or as warm as mid-winter could get here. Mid-fifties. Jack loved sunny winter days after rain. They made him feel young, energetic. Everything was rain-washed; his street glowed. The dogs stopped to sniff and dribble pee every few minutes, making Jack want to do the same. He knew more about prostates now than he cared to. Not a sexy subject. Sex, sex, sex. He reminded himself that not leaving Milly cancelled out all those old infidelities, but he still felt like Bad Jack MacAlister, walking to Colette’s house. That Bad Jack, Poor Dear Milly’s husband. So unfair that no one ever thought of him as Poor Dear Jack. Did they think it was easy being married to someone who took ten minutes to walk from the front door to the car? There he was, trapped in a house with a crippled wife who often made him feel cranky, sulky and sneaky. The Jack that Colette knew was light-hearted, affectionate, funny. Sexy, as well. Well, as sexy as an eighty-year-old man had a right to be. Colette knew the real Jack was a rat-pack kind of guy.
