House Rules: The Jack Gordon Story (2 page)

He
knew his grandma was not kidding. A giant greasy breakfast awaited him, and he
would be forced to eat every bite. He also knew he would have to stop hiding
out here soon. He had to get home to his own bed, his own house, and get his
sister, Maureen, back to her routine. They had made it through the funeral mass
and small wake. Jack had used all of his energy to ignore his father the entire
time while Mo tried to pull them together.

His
father was nothing if not resourceful. He had rallied, accepted the condolences
of many and ignored his son entirely. Even the bruising had faded, as if
already mocking Jack by reminding him he obviously had not hit the bastard hard
enough.

The
only person who paid Jack much attention at all was his father’s secretary, who
stuck fast to the man’s side, bringing him coffee and water and eyeing Jack
when she wasn’t attending to his father.

That
same secretary was the one Jack had caught straddling Gordon Senior’s lap in
the office, her skirt hiked up to her waist, one Sunday afternoon when he’d
wandered in to work on a school report on the construction company’s computer
and printer. He’d been simultaneously horrified and turned on by the sight of
the woman’s bare ass and the sounds she made.

It
only really just occurred to him at that moment that his own father was a pig.
Mean, emotionally abusive asshole defined John Gordon Senior. And Jack truly
hated his usually drunk guts.

He
let the water sluice across his back, then tilted his head up and opened his
mouth to drink some, not even caring that it was hot but needing the hydration
so badly it tasted like fresh, cool spring water. The flash-point images from
the funeral and wake kept coming at him. The sight of his mother’s calm,
beautiful face, finally at peace with herself after nearly twenty-five years
under the condescending boot heel of her husband, was something that he would
never forget.

He
sucked in a breath. No tears had been shed from him over the whole thing after
his breakdown in the kitchen, nor would any be. He was determined to stay in
complete control of his emotions now after that initial violent outburst.

“John
Patrick!” His grandma’s voice sliced through his reminiscing, a relief
actually. “Don’t be using up all an old woman’s hot water. I’m not a money
tree, ya know!”

He
rinsed off and climbed out, tiptoeing into the guest room where he’d been
living since his mother’s death. His grandma was a fastidious housekeeper and
would practically snatch his clothes off his body in her haste to get them
through the wash. He had a pile of fresh laundered and ironed blue jeans,
T-shirts, his basketball uniform, socks, and underwear all in a nice neat pile
on the military-crisp bedspread.

Cursing
his weak-willed self for drinking so goddamned much whiskey at that lame party,
he mentally blamed the girl, whose name escaped him, for pretending to put out
then yelling “stop” at the last minute—which he honored. He would never lose
his virginity at this rate, and he was ready, more than ready, but could never
seem to find the right girl combined with the right moment. A fact that would
come as a real shock to his teammates and friends, all of whom assumed he was a
master cocksman at eighteen, on the edge of graduating from high school.

He
was not about to dissuade them of that—no way. He was certainly a class-A flirt
who could talk to any girl any time, anywhere and loved doing it. But that one
last thing—the real deal, the home base act—it escaped him still.

After
tugging on jeans and a shirt, willing the pounding in his temples to stop, he
headed for the kitchen. His sister Maureen looked up at him when he appeared in
the doorway trying not to hold his nose too obviously at the smell of eggs,
sausage, and coffee. His queasy stomach made a slow roll. He gulped and sat,
keeping his eyes down.

The
young girl held onto her sullen silence as his grandma kept up her end of the
conversation with herself. His fork clattered against the plate but he shoveled
a few bites into his mouth, feeling the woman’s gaze boring into him.

“
Maimeo
says we are going home tomorrow.”

He
looked up, startled, to see his little sister’s bright blue eyes brimming with
tears. After swallowing the huge wad of eggs past his gorge, he sighed and
sipped some orange juice. He couldn’t fathom how he could possibly go back
there, to his mother’s house, where she would just…not be…anymore. He bit the
inside of his cheek and tried not to curse the old woman who sat taking tiny bites
of her breakfast and glaring at him.

“Um,
well,” he said, patting Mo’s hand and focusing on the little girl he’d been
more or less taking care of since she was a toddler when his mother dropped
into a booze bottle.

Mo
was no trouble really. He loved her, and never minded taking care of her. But
sometimes he wished he could just be a normal kid. A young man whose only
responsibility was to get up, eat food, go to school, play sports and go home,
lather, rinse, repeat. One whose parents did not get into scary screaming
fights which many times devolved into actual physical contact  rarely ending in
his mother’s favor.

Jack’s
father was a perpetually angry man who took out his frustration as the founder
and sole owner of a growing construction company on his family. Between snide
remarks, flat-out insults, and dark silences that took on lives of their own,
no one ever felt at ease in the Gordon house, and hadn’t since the moment
Bridget Gordon had announced she was pregnant with Jack’s little sister.

That
news flash had flipped some sort of Mr. Hyde switch in his father, sending him
into a frenzy of work combined with more work, as if he were terrified of
failing, or since he had fathered a second child he had a hundred times the
responsibility.

Jack
had a different theory. As he stared into his little sister’s trusting gaze, he
revisited it, his head still pounding, now with stress on top of the hangover.
He honestly believed that his mother may have had an affair with a man who had
lived next door to them for a while. The man had a wife, supposedly ill, whom
Jack never saw leaving her house. He remembered the guy vaguely. He’d been
tall, with light blond hair, Jack remembered. Soft-spoken and helpful when
Jack’s own father was absent in the evenings, which was pretty much seven days
a week. The guy fixed things, carried grocery bags, even mowed the grass a few
times—was in general sort of a substitute male adult in the house.

Something
about the way Jack’s mother and the man would stand, close but not quite touching,
in the kitchen while the elementary school age Jack ate his after-school snack
made him feel…funny. And then, the man was gone. One day a for sale sign
appeared in the yard next door, and his mother had locked herself in her
bedroom and would not emerge, not even when his father threatened to kick the
door down.

A
few weeks later, the blessed news was announced. Or not, depending on one’s
perspective. Jack’s life, already a little odd although he didn’t realize it,
got even stranger. Of course until he visited his friends’ houses, where the
parents loved each other and actually proved it by not fighting constantly, he
didn’t realize how “not normal” his own world was.

He
stared into his little sister’s eyes, forced the memory of his mother’s body,
face down on her own vomit, out of his head. “Yeah, Mo. Sweetie, we need to get
back to our own rooms, don’t you think?”

“No.”
She stuck out her lower lip and pulled her hand away. “I want to stay here.” Mo
looked down at her plate, tears plopping onto her uneaten eggs.

“Oh,
my darlings.”His grandmother sighed. “You have to. Your father and I talked and
we…he said he wants you home. So home you must go.”

“I
hate Daddy,” Mo declared, but in a whisper, as if afraid he might hear her.

Jack
stared at her, then dragged his gaze to his grandmother, the woman who had
raised the man in question and had declared her grandchildren “perfect” and her
daughter-in-law a “wee bit fragile but lovely.” She kept eating, sipping her
coffee, and not meeting his eyes.

“We
are going home,” he declared, pushing away from the table. “Today.” If the mean
old bitch didn’t want to help them, then he would be damned if they stayed here
another minute. “Finish your breakfast, Mo. Then pack.”

As
Jack sat on the guest bed, head in his hands, the mattress dipped as someone
joined him. His grandma put her arm around his shoulders. “It’s best this way,
John Patrick. Do you understand? You have to be the grownup in that house. I
can’t do it for you.” She pulled away, took his chin in her hand. “And stay off
the sauce. Addiction is in your blood, boy. Don’t fall to it. Be stronger than
that. I know you are. I sense it about you.”

Jack
nodded. And grew up a little at that moment, more than he wanted to, but
accepted it for what it was.

Chapter Two

“Here.”
His father tossed Jack a set of keys, startling him from half-hearted perusal
of his homework on the living room couch. The truce they’d struck a few weeks
ago when Jack had shown up at home, weepy little sister in tow was uneasy at
best. Jack had set his jaw and faced his father whose nose was still off-kilter
and his cold blue stare, which held nothing but neutrality when he’d opened the
door for his children.

Jack
stared at the ring that held a large car key with a Ford emblem and two nondescript
regular keys he had never seen before. He looked up. His father’s gaze was
blank but that was an improvement over the raw hatred residing there most days.

“Got
ya a truck; a used one but it runs fine.”

Jack
kept looking at him, uncomprehending. He had a car already. An old Mustang and
he loved it. He opened his mouth but his father cut him off.

“You’ll
be starting work. With me. Saturday. I found someone to take that rattle trap
piece of shit ‘Stang.” The man popped the cap off a beer. “Now that basketball
is done you have too much time on your hands. You need to learn how to make a
living like a man. Learn the value of the dollars I fling at you. Stop flopping
around here like a little kid. You only have a few more months in my house. I
want you to use ‘em better.”

Jack
blinked. Then glanced down at the keys resting in his palm. “Work.” A thrill of
something like dread lit his brain. “You sold my car?” He tried to process it
all.

“Yeah.
You will make your own damn money. I’ll pay you a fair wage, same as everyone
else. And a truck will be more useful and cost me less for insurance.”

“What
about….”

His
father raised his hand. “She’ll be fine. Your grandma said she’d stay here on
the weekends you were on a job site.”

“Job
site,” Jack repeated, like a dork, he realized. His father rolled his eyes.

“Yeah,
since when are you a dimwit, Jackie, huh? A ‘job site’ as in you will be
hammering nails, hanging drywall, mudding, sanding, and learning a real trade.
Make it through four weeks with the framers, then spend some time on the paint
crew, and I’ll put you with the electricians. You can get your journeyman’s
license then.” He sipped his beer, kept his gaze pinned on Jack. “Make yourself
useful maybe.”

“Okay,”
Jack said, still wrapping his head around it. “I, um, need to finish a group
project this Saturday, for my physics class.”

“When
you’re done, drive to this address.” He shoved a piece of paper across the
table, stood, stretched his long, lean body toward the ceiling then sighed.
“I’m not that bad a guy, ya know.” He looked down at his son.

Jack
bit his tongue, nodded. “I’ll be there.” He left the room lest he plant his
fist in the man’s nose again as he really wanted to do. Jack would work, sure,
make his own money. The prospect of that was the best idea he’d heard in a
while.

But
he would never admit that his father was “not a bad guy” because he was—a very
bad guy. A guy who’d berated his own wife for years until she’d killed herself
with booze. Who’d made his daughter feel like a bastard even though the fact
that she had her father’s hair and eyes, just as Jack did, had put an end to
his theory about the man next door.