‘Are you sad about your mom?’
‘What a question.’
‘Well, you haven’t said anything. Or acted sad. Have you cried? I haven’t seen you cry.’
‘It was just before Christmas.’ A second brandy was finally hitting that particular spot behind his ribs.
‘What was?’
‘When his plane disappeared. Over the English Channel.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. You are nuts. Where’s the remote? What are you doing now? Hey, I wanted to watch that!’
‘Oh shut up, Milly. Just shut the hell up, okay?’ Jack put on a record, lowering the needle carefully.
Milly opened her mouth, then closed it. Then opened it.
‘She was my mother-in-law for thirty-one years. I miss her too, you know.’
The opening notes of ‘In the Mood’ purred into their living room. And with it, those dark green shoes he bought to wear to the spring hop, and that girl’s perfume – like no flower on earth, just a sweet smell on a sixteen-year-old girl named…Doris! Doris Smithers was her name, and when he asked her to dance, her face lit up like a firework display spelling out YES. God, when was the last time a girl looked at him with such undisguised, wholehearted admiration? Well, aside from Colette of course. He’d stepped on Doris’s toes repeatedly, and each time he apologised, she giggled. Giggled as if she’d drunk a whole bottle of gin.
My throat hurts, he wanted to say. The words were in his mouth, as solid and sour tasting as lemon-flavoured hard candy, or unripe plums. If he could speak he would say: ‘My throat is so swollen I cannot swallow. Everything hurts. My eyes burn, my chest hurts with every breath, and my stomach. My stomach has something hard and sharp and painful stuck right in here, just above my belly button. Why aren’t we able to really talk to each other? Tell each other how we really feel? That hurts too. I’m lonely.’
He turned the volume up.
‘Fine!’ said his wife. ‘I don’t care. I am going to bed.’
He stood by the stereo, and stared at the record as if it needed him looking to keep going. He rocked on his feet a little, to the music.
‘Darn dog!’ she said, as she tripped over Scout. ‘Darn stupid leg!’ she yelled at her lame leg.
‘I agree. Stupid leg.’
‘What do you mean? I haven’t noticed you tripping over the dog. Haven’t seen you take ten minutes to walk up the hall to bed.’
‘You think your lameness has just affected you? It happened to me too, you know. Your being crippled happened to both of us.’
‘Oh, good night!’ she shouted.
He waved one hand a little.
Then from the hall, her hard flat tone: ‘I love you!’
Jack pretended he hadn’t heard. He was wondering why, despite his dad dying, losing Glenn had felt like the first proper death of his life. It had been crushing to think that there would never be another Miller record to line up to buy. That all there would ever be of Glenn Miller was already here. Christmas had been ruined.
‘Jacko honey, what on earth’s the matter? You haven’t touched your turkey.’ His mom’s voice, a little thick with sherry, but well meaning, warm. She’d even tried to touch him. The old mom hug, and he’d almost fallen into it, but then he caught her eyes and there was a definite laugh hiding there. Mocking him and his sadness! He’d pushed her aside and left the house, slamming the door. He took a long walk, that long ago Christmas evening, every step in time to the Miller songs in his head. Over and over again, ‘Moonlight Serenade’, ‘In the Mood’, ‘Everybody Loves My Baby’. Till he felt a humming personal connection. Glenn was right there, walking beside him – only him, because in this neighbourhood, only Jacko MacAlister understood and truly loved him. Jacko was walking his wake.
Till he suddenly stopped under a dripping sycamore – it was drizzling, of course – and remembered that Glenn Miller was missing over the English Channel, presumed dead. Not definitely dead. He could be alive! And this thought cheered him up so much, he dived into it with everything he had. Not a walking wake anymore, he practically skipped back home. Alive! Somewhere in Europe, in his army uniform. God, Glenn looked damned good in that khaki. Someone somewhere was probably cooking something nice for him right now. Maybe it was all a government plot to keep it secret. Maybe Glenn was being used as a spy now, or maybe he’d been injured by his own army, and they were so embarrassed they were nursing him back to health in secrecy. Or maybe Glenn had been kidnapped, or taken prisoner, or maybe he just had enough and bailed out himself. Met a cute French girl, and he wanted to be a normal guy for a while. No wife, no fans, no fame. Yeah, that would be like him. Had enough of all the fuss. Back to basics.
Just before high school graduation, Jack signed up with the army. All the way to the recruiting office, and all the way home, Jack kept beat with the music. His feet took the rhythm, and his head and shoulders took the brass, threading its sexual, sassy way through. War come get me!
When the record was finished, Jack tried to turn it over but he was too drunk and his hand was clumsy. The needle fell on the record and the noise was so awful, tears finally came. And because he was alone and drunk, and because there would never be another Glenn Miller record or cinnamon banana cake baked by his mother, and because his father was finally someone he missed, and because his wife was someone he could French kiss on the beach but could not confide in, he did not bother wiping the tears or blowing his nose. Just lay down on the sofa, fell asleep and carried on crying in his sleep. Deep shuddering breaths, snot and tears on the sofa pillows. Scout, who at six months was already a lumbering Labrador, contentedly licked Jack’s face.
A month later, into the world came the first grandchild. Not a dramatic entrance, more like the quiet departure of his mother. Just the usual sequence of small ordinary events, leading to a push in a darkened hospital room and another human, luckily with all the usual number of digits. Milly set about buying blankets and teddies. She felt the world turning on its axis, and everything was exactly as it should be. Her family was expanding finally. This was why she married, why she had children.
Jack didn’t give the baby a minute’s thought. He spent more emotional energy on wooing that young Asian lesbian novelist who won the Baker Prize for her unpublished novel. She had everything the critics would love. They’d eat her up. He had to sign her up before anyone else noticed her. And there was Ike, one of Milly’s dogs – he was twelve now and needed to be taken to the vet again about that alarming skin condition. And he had to get his mother’s house valued and on the market. Paint it first? Might get their own house painted while they were at it.
No, Jack did not open one of the bottles he’d set aside years ago for special occasions, but when this first grandchild was presented to him, at a week old, he smiled absent-mindedly and said:
‘Well, hello you.’
The symmetry was pleasing. Mother gone, grandchild born. And a boy too! Well, this was pretty good, really. And it was good, too, that he didn’t miss his old mother much, wasn’t it? She’d been alive, and now – incredibly, silently – she was not. His life seemed to have swallowed up her passing, quite painlessly. Her house had been cleared out in a day, a surprisingly easy task. She’d already shed so much. But instead of being relieved, her empty house had made his heart flutter in a mild panic. He would die one day and his having been alive would amount to nothing too. He would be missed only occasionally and then not at all, and everything that mattered to him would be regarded with the same cynicism and ignorance that he brought to bear on his mother’s belongings. Consigned to the Goodwill or the garbage.
He looked at his new grandson. A whole human being who recently was not, and now he was. He looked at the baby’s hands all curled up, and his downy eyebrows, his scrunched-up face.
‘Has he got a name yet?’ he suddenly asked, looking up at his daughter.
‘No. We had lots of girl names ready, but…’
‘Well, how about…’
‘Jack? Forget it, Dad. No offence.’
‘No! How about Glenn?’
COOKING WITH LEFTOVERS
THREE YEARS EARLIER
October 3rd 1982
