Fade to Black - Proof (4 page)

Chapter

4

Jack woke up refreshed and
content. Light streamed in through the two large windows, framed by yellow curtains.

Blue and yellow
curtains—of course.

He chuckled,
then stretched and yawned, squeezed his eyes shut, and reached behind and above
him for the reading lamp mounted in the wall. He smelled fresh coffee and heard
the chattering of his daughter and wife from downstairs. Jack lay in bed,
reliving the passion and comfort from the night before. Yesterday now seemed
like nothing more than a bad dream, the anxiety alien and far away. He heard
footsteps on the stairs and turned to see Pam come through the door holding a
large mug of coffee in her hand. Claire rested on her other hip.

“Morning, my
delicious man! Thought you might sleep all day,” his wife chided. She looked
radiant, gorgeous in the short-cut silk robe he had gotten for her in Okinawa…or…no?
Whatever. It didn’t matter. She was beautiful and twice as attractive with his
little girl in her arms.

Pam set the
mug of coffee beside him on the nightstand, sat on the edge of the bed, and put
down Claire, who scurried up and onto his chest. She lay there, resting on
outstretched arms, smiling.

“Daddy!” she
said clear as a bell.

“Hey there,
little buddy,” Jack answered, leaning forward and kissing her on her chubby
cheeks. She giggled the musical giggle that only comes from happy children. The
sound was rich in his ears.

“Kisses,
Daddy. Kisses!” She plopped down on his chest, her soft hands grabbing his
neck. She kissed his mouth with a loud and exaggerated, “MMMMMM  MMAAAAA!”

“Tickle bear!”
Jack exclaimed and tickled his little girl lightly. He was rewarded with
another wonderful, tinkling giggle.

“What time is
it?” Jack asked, looking over at his wife and placing a hand on her bare left
knee.

“Ten thirty,
Rip Van Winkle. Didn’t mean to wear you out, old man.”

“Oh, shit. I’m
late!” Jack exclaimed. He wrapped his arms around Claire and sat up in bed. “I mean
shoot,” he reminded himself sheepishly and placed his hands over Claire’s ears
playfully.

“Relax, my
absent-minded professor,” Pam said. She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Saturday,
big boy.”

Jack lay back
down and rolled on his side, sliding Claire onto the bed beside him and
tickling her again.

“Tickles,
Daddy, tickles!” she giggled up at him, with her big blue eyes.

Pam picked up
Claire and placed her on the other side of Jack. Then she crawled up beside her
in the bed. She leaned across their little girl and kissed Jack on the cheek.
Between them, Claire cooed.

“Kisses,
Mommy!”

Pam kissed her
forehead and smoothed the curls of red hair with her fingers.

“Two nights a
week like last night and I may just renew your contract, stud boy.” She winked
at him seductively, and Jack grinned an adolescent grin.

“Maybe I’ll
give you a down payment this afternoon during nap time in exchange for an off‐season
bonus.”

“Deal!” she
laughed and wrapped her arms around both of them.

“Hugs, Mommy!”

“Hugs, Claire
Bear,” Pam agreed, leaning her forehead against her daughter’s and rubbing
noses in an Eskimo kiss. “Your Daddy is an insatiable animal!”

“Amimimal,”
Claire repeated.

Jack reached
for his coffee on the nightstand, propping his head against the headboard and
taking a cautious sip. The liquid was hot and sweet, and Jack wrinkled his
nose.

“Uuuhhh.
What’s in this brew?” he asked.

“French vanilla
creamer and one sugar, Jack. Just like you drink it every morning.”

Jack wrinkled
his forehead, confused.

“I don’t drink
it black?”

Pam laughed
and rolled her eyes again. “No, Jack. Not in the seven years I’ve been with
you.”

“Huh,” Jack
replied, sipping his coffee again. Not bad, actually.

Pam gathered
up her daughter and slid off the bed, pulling her robe around her briefly
exposed hip as she did.

“Up ya’ go, baby.
Let’s have some coffee cake and get on with our family day.”

They listened
to some jazz and nibbled coffee cake in the living room while Claire crawled
around, exploring the myriad of toys strewn about the room. The jazz was part
of the Pam Parenting Plan, meant to stimulate their daughter’s ear for music
and make her more creative. Jack remembered fondly how Pam had rested a handheld
tape recorder on her belly during her last few months of pregnancy, playing
jazz and Mozart and Handel, stimulating Claire and expanding her creative
juices even in the womb.

She had read
about it in one of the dozens and dozens of parenting magazines she had
devoured during pregnancy. Pam seemed to love being pregnant, almost as much as
she loved being a mom. In the rack between the TV and stereo was a complete
collection of the
Baby Einstein
series DVDs. Included in their
collection were
Baby Mozart
and
Baby Beethoven
, which combined
music with lights and colors, fun animals and toys. Some had poetry instead of
music, or word games. They really did seem to stimulate Claire, as she would
sit enthralled in front of the TV, rocking to the music and delighting at the
animals and colors.

Jack chatted
easily with Pam, the way all happy couples do, he imagined. They talked about a
mix of nothing and the serious; the soft familiarity of it was comforting. He
talked to her about starting an educational IRA for Claire to plan for her
college. Jack agreed they should plan now, but he hated to think about anything
that implied Claire might actually grow up or, worse, someday go away. He
wanted her to stay just as she was right now forever, safe and happy in their
loving home. He remembered feeling that way about almost every stage of her
development, and then always being delighted that the next stage seemed even
better.

After some
time at the community party and another bout of lovemaking, Jack worked on
lesson plans for the coming week—more cell development, which he outlined from
The
Living Cell
, an old text from college. Pam and Claire read books and played
in the living room, occasionally coming upstairs to the study to say “Hi” to
Daddy. When Jack came down, they were just finishing up a video on colors and
numbers. Jack picked up his daughter and hugged her. She gave his nose a tug.

“Whatcha’
thinkin’ about for dinner, baby? My night if you like,” Jack said, as he helped
his wife up from the floor.

“How about pizza
from Dominick’s? Maybe you could get us a movie while you’re out?”

That sounded
perfect. Jack called in an order for white pizza with chicken and artichokes
(he could live without the artichokes but Pam loved them), and then grabbed his
jacket, kissing both of his girls on his way out.

Blockbuster
Video was a chore that Jack loathed. Too many choices for one thing, and
usually he would wander about, indecisive, until he finally settled on a title
which inevitably would be out. He had tried the Red Box but the only thing
worse than shopping through aisles and aisles of movies, was scrolling through
them on the little TV screen. At Blockbuster, he fought that by sticking to the
new releases so that he could lessen the frustration somewhat; but nonetheless
he still wound up watching the fascinating parade of people who passed by him,
picked up three movies in two minutes, and then headed to the check out.
Bastards!

Tonight would
be easy. He had decided to treat Pam to her favorite genre (with titles he
found annoying, though in the end he generally enjoyed the films): romantic
comedy. Since he knew nothing of these films, the selection became practically
random and thus fairly effortless. Jack parked around the corner (the throngs
who found exciting titles in seconds also had a confounding way of finding all
the up-front parking spots) and walked through the glass doors into the
painfully bright, fluorescent light and marquis posters found in every video
store in the world. He headed straight to the back, aiming for the hanging sign
Romantic Comedy, which was suspended over two rows of shelves.

An image from
a video cover, only half registered and caught out of the corner of his eye,
pulled him off course.

The shelves
labeled War Films were twice as long as and much fuller than those for Romantic
Comedy. Jack figured that the fascination with war was as ancient as mankind
itself. It seemed to him that man had written about the wartime experience with
a passion beyond that reserved even for love. In fact, some of the greatest
love stories of all time seemed to tie the plot to a backdrop of war. Probably
even the hunched apemen, who took rock and stick to wall to create cave
drawings, spent a great deal of time chronicling terrific battles between man
and beast—and all too often, other men.

Jack found
himself absent-mindedly wandering down the aisle between shelves packed with
volumes and volumes of war films. His eyes drifted slowly over the pictures on
the case covers—men battling enemies, guns blazing, flames surrounding them.
The men on the covers were grimacing and gripping weapons with amazing
strength. 

Not at all
what it’s like,
he
thought.
Not at all.

Jack picked up
Blackhawk Down
and flipped it over, looking at the pictures on the back.
He was staring solemnly at terrible scenes of destruction, a tear running down
his cheek, when a woman’s voice caused him to start. Suddenly his pulse began
racing and his mouth turned dry.

“Casey!
Casey!”

The blood
drained out of his face, and he felt the room pulling in on him. He heard the
clattering sound of the video which slipped from his fingers and fell to the
floor.

A woman moved
quickly down the aisle towards him, calling out his name. He was about to
answer when something bumped into his leg. He jumped back and nearly stumbled
into the video rack, looking down in terror—where all he saw was a boy, perhaps
four or five years old. The boy looked up and grinned, and then maneuvered
around him. But by then the woman had knelt beside him and grabbed the boy by
his hand.

“Casey, shame
on you! You know not to run off from Mommy.” She looked up at Jack. “I am so
sorry.”

Then she stood
up and turned away, dragging the giggling boy behind her.

“You stay
right here beside me, young man. No more horseplay!”

Jack steadied
himself with one hand on the video shelf. The color returned to his face and
his pulse slowed. He looked at his other, outstretched hand, which he saw had a
wicked tremor. He clenched the hand tightly into a fist and closed his eyes.

No!

He would not
let this ridiculous nightmare come back to him. He would not give up Saturday,
his Family Day, for this insanity. It was a nightmare. Nothing more. Jack
decided that his unhealthy obsession with it, and the war, could only be
rectified by him. He picked up the video at his feet and replaced it on the
shelf, angry and disgusted with himself. He then quick-paced down the aisle
towards the Romantic Comedy shelves.

“I am getting
a video and heading home to my family,” he said firmly, barely aware that he
had spoken out loud. Jack felt the stares of several people who no doubt looked
at him the way you might look at the disheveled man on the street corner
holding a sign announcing the apocalypse and muttering to invisible colleagues.
Jack ignored them and scanned the titles briefly, and then grabbed two videos
off the shelf without reading them. More random than he had intended, but he
marched to the register, paid, and then walked purposefully out of the store.

Jack drove
home slowly, determined to work through the ridiculous coincidence from the
Blockbuster before settling in with Pam. He stopped on the way and picked up
their pizza, even managing a genuine smile when he paid. By the time he pulled
into the driveway the time and the smell of pizza worked together with the
anticipation of a relaxing evening to push the fear and uncertainty almost
completely out of his mind.

I have to
decide to let this obsessive shit go.

He said
nothing of his anxiety attack (as he had decided to name it on the drive home)
and mostly succeeded at putting it out of his mind by the time he and Pam
curled up under the couch blanket. They munched on pizza (which Jack casually
thinned of artichokes) and watched the video Pam had selected from the two
choices. It wasn’t bad, actually. Yet another boy-meets-girl-blows-it-and-has-to-win-her-back-again
vehicle starring one of the guys from
Friends
and some hot, but unknown,
woman star wannabe. He actually laughed out loud more than once. And when the
credits rolled, he was again relaxed and happy. He smiled to find that Pam had
fallen asleep (as she almost always did at movies on the couch, a constant
source of teasing from Jack), so he covered her up with the blanket. He cleaned
up the kitchen, woke her gently, and checked on Claire while Pam “readied for
bed,” whatever that meant. Whatever it entailed was more involved than a leak
and a quick brushing of the teeth, which Jack still accomplished in time to
slip under the covers before his wife.