Falling From Disgrace (16 page)

“My dad died.”

“Oh, Jack,” Adrianna cried.  She reached a hand out to smooth over his hair, hoping to bring him some comfort.  “I’m so sorry.  What happened?”

Without looking at her he answered, “No one had heard from him for over a week so one of his friends went by the house to check on him.  He found him on the kitchen floor.  He had probably been there a few days.”

Adrianna choked back the bile that had risen in her throat and blinked back tears.  Her heart was breaking for Jack.  “That’s horrible,” she whispered.  “What can I do?”

Jack closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands.  He had known this day would come yet he didn’t feel prepared for it at all.  Before his emotions could get the best of him he needed to get away from Adrianna.  He didn’t want her to see him fall apart. 

Jack cleared his throat and steeled his nerves.  “Nothing,” he stated, rising from the bed and searching for his shirt.  “I need to get home, call Kenny, see if he can run the bar for the next few days.”

Adrianna nodded and watched as he pulled his shirt over his head.  She felt useless, not knowing what to do or say.  “Do you want me to come back to your apartment with you?”

“It’s okay, just stay here,” Jack told her.  “I’ll call you later.”

He leaned down and gave Adrianna a quick kiss and then hurried out of her apartment.

Jack literally felt as if he were having a heart attack.  Never in his life had his chest felt so weighted down and he struggled to breathe from it.  Cursing himself for not driving his car to Adrianna’s, he flagged down a taxi, needing to get home as quickly as possible.  When he finally made it back to his apartment, he went straight to his whiskey, taking three long pulls right from the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black.  Inhaling deeply through his nose, he waited for the liquor to take its calming effects.

Fuck, he had no idea hearing about his father would hit him like this.  Even growing up, Jack was never close to Jonathan Senior who was always disappointed in his son for being such a troublemaker at school.  Five years ago when he refused Jack’s pleas to get help and they got into a tremendous argument, Jack had sworn he wasn’t going to waste his time with his old man any longer, knowing full well that he was slowly killing himself.  He was right, but now instead of feeling relieved like he thought he would all he felt was pain and guilt.  He should have pushed more, should have insisted his father get help, maybe even physically dragged him to a doctor.  But he didn’t.  Instead he cut him out of his life and let him die alone.

“Fuck!”  Jack screamed at the top of his lungs, gripping the edges of his kitchen countertop so tightly his knuckles turned white.  He brought his head down, bending at the waist and screamed again at the floor below him until his lungs burned.  He pushed himself away from the counter, grabbed the bottle of whiskey and then drank what was left of it before passing out on his sofa. 

A
drianna was wrought with anguish.  After hours had gone by the night before and she didn’t hear from Jack she tried calling him, only to reach his voicemail.  She spent the night tossing and turning, worrying for him and feeling a little hurt.  Jack had taken care of her when she was at her worst and now that he was the one needing, he ran from her.  When she woke Saturday morning after only a few hours of sleep, she tried Jack’s phone once again to no avail.  After fretting over what to do, she decided to hell with it; she would go to his apartment.   She threw on a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt and scurried out the door to hail a cab.

Adrianna knocked on the door several times before she pulled out the key Jack had given her.  Her heart tightened when she found him passed out, face down on his couch, an empty bottle of whisky on the floor beside him.  She hurried to his side and knelt down, relieved that he was still breathing and hadn’t drunk himself into a coma.  She roused him from sleep slowly by running her fingers through his hair and kissing the side of his face. 

“Jack,” she spoke softly into his ear.  “Wake up, Loki.”

Jack shifted and finally opened his blue eyes that were watery and bloodshot.  Upon seeing Adrianna at his side, he grinned lazily and mumbled, “Hey, gorgeous.”

“How do you feel?” Adrianna asked him, still stroking his head and scratching his scalp.  Jack loved when she did that.

“Like shit,” he grumbled, feeling like something had made a racket in his head all night and then curled up and died in his mouth. 

Taking the empty bottle from the floor and placing it on the coffee table, Adrianna said, “I would imagine.  Are you okay?”

Jack nodded and then brought his hand out to pull Adrianna’s head to rest against his.  He closed his eyes again and breathed in the scent of her hair, letting it consume him until he felt he could sit up.  Adrianna helped him to his feet where he swayed and so she put an arm around his waist and ducked under his arm.  She helped him to his bathroom where she deposited him on the lid of the toilet and then turned his shower on.  As she helped him undress, Jack laughed, “The tables have turned, huh?”

“Shh,” Adrianna answered and then knelt down to remove his black Timberland boots and socks.  When she had him fully naked she helped him stand again to get him in the shower.  Before she closed the curtain, Jack, forgetting about his rank breath, pressed his lips against Adrianna’s.

“I’m sorry I took off last night,” he apologized.  “I needed to be alone.”

“It’s okay,” Adrianna assured him, not bothered at all that he kissed her.  She loved him.  As she collected his clothes from the bathroom floor she called out to him, “Did you want something to eat?”

Jack, who swore the cure to a nasty hangover was greasy food and sugary drinks, asked her to run to McDonalds to get him a sausage, egg, and cheese McMuffin and a coke.  Thinking he would have asked for just some toast and coffee, Adrianna wrinkled her nose but promised him she would be right back with his breakfast.

When she returned to his apartment fifteen minutes later, Jack looked much better.  He was on his phone at the kitchen table, his hair still wet from his shower, dressed in a pair of grey sweatpants and a white, sleeveless undershirt.  Adrianna went to sit in the chair at his side but he pulled her into his lap where she brought her knees up, curling into his body.  Her head rested against him while he spoke, his deep voice vibrating in his chest and Adrianna wondered sadly if they were cursed.  The majority of their relationship had been plagued by drama and she hoped, after this, they’d be free from it for a while.

“Kenny and Joe are okay with running the bar for another few days,” he told Adrianna when he hung up the phone.  “That was my sister again and she’s been taking care of all the arrangements this morning.  She gave me hell for not calling her back last night.”

“Are you and your sister close?”

“Not really,” Jack told her.  “My sister is kind of...cold.  She’s not very compassionate and she doesn’t have tolerance for weaknesses.  She stopped talking to my father long before I did.”

“That’s sad for her,” Adrianna mused.  She couldn’t imagine anyone related to Jack could be anything but understanding and loving.  It must have been a trait he shared with his mother. 

“Anyhow, there’s going to be a viewing Monday and then the funeral will be on Tuesday.  I’m going to drive down there later on today.”  Not having the words to comfort him, Adrianna just squeezed Jack around his middle and kissed his chest.  “Would you come with me?” he asked her.

Pain crossed over Adrianna’s features.  Now that Jack was asking her for something she couldn’t give it to him.  “I have my interview on Monday morning.”

“Oh shit, I forgot,” he breathed.  “It’s okay.”

Turning in his lap, Adrianna looked into his sad eyes, her heart breaking a little more.  “Maybe I can call them and reschedule for later in the week.”

“No,” Jack insisted.  “You can’t do that, you know it wouldn’t look good and this is important.”

Adrianna thought for a while and then said, “I’ll come down Monday after the interview.  I’ll take a train or a bus.”

“It’s a three hour drive, Ade,” he sighed, shaking his head.  “That means it could take up to five on a train or bus, I don’t want you to have to do that.”

“Then I’ll rent a car and drive myself,” Adrianna insisted.

“No, it’s okay.”

“Jack, I want to be there for you!  Please, let me do this,” she begged.  After all he had done for her she at least wanted to help him on the day he was going to bury his father. 

Seeing her distress, Jack smoothed his fingers over the wrinkles in her forehead and relented.  “Okay.”

They ate their breakfast in silence; the both of them too lost in their own thoughts to carry on a conversation.

J
ack sat uncomfortably in his navy suit and stared at the mahogany casket that contained the remains of his father.  Even though he knew he was dead, he stared at his chest, waiting for it to rise and fall with a breath.  Looking at a body, lying so still and pale, was unnerving no matter who it was, but being that it was Jack’s father disturbed him all the more.  He had been upset when he learned his sister had chosen to have an open casket; he wanted to remember his father as strong and lively.  Now when he closed his eyes and thought of his dad he would picture the waxy looking shell of a broken man.

When he arrived at his father’s house in his hometown just outside of Springfield, Jack’s sister regarded him coolly, reminding him of a Stepford wife.  Her hair that was much lighter than his was twisted up on the back of her head and even though they weren’t going anywhere, she was dressed in a pink skirt and white blouse.  She had flown in from Wisconsin alone, choosing to leave her two daughters at home with their father.  When Jack asked her why, she had said there was no point in bringing his nieces or brother-in-law to the funeral of a man they barely even knew.  She was going to fly home to them Wednesday morning.

Jack was comforted by his mother, who was also at his father’s house with her live-in boyfriend Denny.  She was really the one who needed comforting though, crying on her son’s shoulder and apologizing to him.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” she had wept, tears falling from eyes as blue as Jack’s.  “I begged your father for years to get help, you know that, don’t you?”

“I know, Mom,” Jack had murmured, rubbing his mother’s back soothingly.  “We all tried to help him.”

He sat in the front row of wooden, padded chairs reserved for the family of the deceased while his mother held onto his hand and kept wiping at her eyes.  For the last hour and a half, friends and relatives passed by them to offer condolences, while Gillian stood at the casket greeting the mourners.  Seeing her there in her black dress and pearls as she smiled sadly at the kind words being spoken to her, Jack wanted to punch his sister in the face.  How was he related to anyone so phony?

Looking at his watch, he saw there was another half hour left of the viewing and then another hour before Adrianna was due to arrive at his father’s house.  Man, he really wanted to see her.  He had missed her since leaving Saturday afternoon and even though he knew it was a bother for her to rent a car and drive all the way down there, he was glad she was doing it.

Finally, after what felt like forever, Jack sat down at the old patio set on the deck behind his father’s house.  He had shed his jacket in the living room and now loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top buttons of his white shirt, feeling like he was now able to take a breath for the first time that day.  Leaning back in his chair and relaxing a fraction, he took a sip of beer and was glad for some alone time before Adrianna was due to arrive.  Watching the setting sun disappear behind the line of trees, Jack finally felt a semblance of calm for the first time in three days.  The feeling didn’t last long, however, because Gillian joined him just a few minutes later.

“What do you want to do with Dad’s house and things?” she asked, cutting right to the chase.

With a heavy sigh, Jack told her, “I don’t know, Gillian.”

“Well, it’s something we have to think about, Jack, it’s not just going to take care of itself.”  Gillian kicked her heels off and put her feet up on a chair and then took a sip from the glass of red wine she had poured for herself.