Seed (12 page)

Any other night, Jack would have cracked a grin. Tonight he couldn’t lift the weight off of his shoulders for long enough to manage.

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Jack admitted after a moment.

Reagan suddenly looked uncomfortable. “What’re you talking about?” he asked. “What does that even mean?”

Jack sighed. He nodded at the waitress when she set his beer in front of him. His fingers wrapped around the bottom of the bottle if only to give his hands something to do.

“Things aren’t going all that well at home,” Jack said. “I don’t really know when going up to the Quarter would be appropriate.”

Reagan’s face twisted; a cross between horror and confusion.

“There’s something wrong with Charlie,” Jack heard himself say. It hadn’t taken long to get to the point.

“What do you mean ‘wrong’?” Reagan asked. “You mean how she’s been sick?”

“Sort of.”

It was Jack’s turn to pull at the corner of his label. His fingers fiddled at the corner, carefully peeling it away and trying at the some time to keep it intact.

“Jack, come on, man. If you’re going to ruin my fucking night at least be kind enough to be specific.”

Jack actually laughed. It was a short burst, a knee-jerk reaction. Reagan stared at him from across the table. He was freaked out.

“Okay?” he said, unsure of himself. “That was funny?”

Jack leaned back against the vinyl seat and shrugged. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “What’s your opinion on God?”

“God.” Reagan continued to stare. “My opinion? Like whether or not I think God is a good guy? Well I don’t know, Jack, we don’t exactly run with the same crowd. But if I had to take a guess, I’d say he’s probably a righteous dude.”

“About that,” Jack said. “Running with the same crowd.” He paused, squinting at the bottle in front of him. “If you don’t run with God’s crowd, whose crowd do you run with?”

“Well, there’s L. Ron Hubbard,” Reagan quipped. “But seriously, imagine going to a party where there’s one guy who can’t stop talking about aliens and volcanoes.”

“I’m serious.”

“That’s what’s freaking me out. Serious about what? What are you asking me?”

“If you don’t believe in God, what do you believe in?”

Stunned that he was having this sort of a conversation at a bar on a Monday night, Reagan gave Jack a what-the-fuck look. “I guess I don’t know.”

“Do you believe there’s good in the world?”

“Well sure, there’s good all over the place.”

“So then, do you also believe in an opposite?”

“Like what, evil?”

Jack nodded.

“I guess.” Reagan shrugged. “If there wasn’t evil, we would be seriously lacking in the serial killer department. And child molesters. And those angel of death nurses that run around hospitals unplugging people’s IVs.”

Jack chewed on his bottom lip, his gaze focused on the torn beer label curled atop the table. “So are those people born evil? The serial killers and the child molesters and the crazy nurses; are they just fucked in the head from square go or do they start out like everyone else and become that way over time?”

“It could be the Kool-Aid. Who knows? Where is this coming from anyway? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind existentialism, but you’re asking me about whether or not people are born bad… in a bar. And you haven’t even bought me a drink. This on the tail of telling me things aren’t going well at home, that you might have to take a break from the band…”

“I’m trying to be open here.”

“Well your openness is giving me a heart attack, man.”

“Do you believe there can be a Devil if there is no God?” Jack pressed.

Reagan slowly leaned back in his seat, his expression wavering from confusion to full-blown concern. He pressed his lips together in a tight line as he stared across the table at his friend—a friend who looked dead serious about the question he’d just asked.

“I’m not really what one would consider ‘worldly’,” Reagan finally said, “so my opinion on this might be completely full of shit, but…”

Jack looked up from the label on the table. He met Reagan’s eyes and waited, hoping the answer would be no, knowing it would be yes.

“I’ve never seen any miracles,” Reagan said, “but I sure as hell have seen my share of darkness. Does God exist? I don’t know. But I kind of hope he does. Because if he doesn’t? We’re probably fucked.”

Jack came home well after the girls had been put to bed. Aimee was in the master bedroom with the comforter pulled up to her waist, the washed out emblem on her mock football shirt peeking out from behind the spine of an old paperback. She’d given up on Les Misérables and picked up The Stand—another book she’d been trudging through for what seemed like the entirety of their marriage.

“You’re still reading that?” Jack asked.

Aimee flipped the book over, a finger hooked between the pages to keep her place, and studied the cover. It had been so long that the corners had rounded and softened.

“It probably makes me some sort of tasteless idiot,” she said, “but I can’t get into it.”

“But you keep trying.”

“It’s King,” she said. “Anybody who’s anybody has read this.”

Jack stood in the doorway of the master bathroom, peeling off his t-shirt and kicking his jeans off his legs.

“I haven’t read it,” he told her. She rolled her eyes at him like that was supposed to mean anything.

“You also haven’t read the Bible,” she said. “Which, if my mother knew—I mean, I don’t know… maybe she found out somehow and that’s why she kicked you off the porch.”

“Yeah, or maybe she’s tired of pretending she doesn’t hate me.”

Aimee glared at the ceiling with a sigh. “She doesn’t hate you. We’ve been over this.”

“Well maybe you should go over it with
her
one of these days. Maybe filling her in on the details would cue her in to not act like a vengeful old…” He paused. Aimee watched him steadily, waiting for him to finish his thought. “…mother-in-law.”

“Maybe you should ask her why she kicked you off of the porch.” Aimee fished her bookmark from the back few pages of that paperback and marked her place. “Because when I called her tonight to ask what her problem was, she denied the whole thing. Why would she do that?”

“Because she’s getting Alzheimer’s?”

Tossing her book onto the nightstand, Aimee settled into the mattress and watched Jack get ready for bed without another word. Patricia had all but insisted he was lying when Aimee had brought up the incident. She had laughed with a huff and said it was the most ridiculous thing she’d heard, but something about her tone—about the way she replied to questions a little too quickly, trying her best to stay on her game, assured Aimee that not only did the porch exchange happen, but that her mother was intent upon keeping it a secret.

Jack flipped the bathroom light off and slid into bed. Just a week or two ago, with the both of them still awake, they would have pulled the sheets over their heads and gone at it like a pair of horny teens. Now Jack stared up at the ceiling and Aimee peered straight ahead of her, both of them stewing in uncomfortable silence.

“Abby’s ready for her own room,” he finally announced. “She offered to move down to the basement—”

“What?”

“I told her no. At least to the basement thing.”

Aimee stared into the darkness.

“It’s damp down there,” he said. “And it smells weird.”

“That’s because it’s a basement. And what do you mean you told her no ‘to the basement thing’? Does that mean you told her yes to getting her own room?”

“She’s ten years old.”

“So?”

“So imagine not having your own room at ten years old. Imagine having to share it with a younger sister who’s obsessed with Spongebob.”

“So we should let her move into the basement and cover the walls with posters of glittery vampires.”

“Abby doesn’t even
like
vampires…”

“Like we have the room, Jack. Like this house is big enough for four people as it is.”

“You were expecting the girls to share a room until they were ready to move out of the house? They’ll move out at puberty.”

“Great,” Aimee said. “The way things are going that’s probably a fantastic option.”

“Cool,” Jack replied, “it’s settled then.” He rolled onto his side to end the conversation.

It took her less than thirty seconds to pipe up again.

“I can’t believe you’d get her hopes up like that. Now I’m going to have to be the bad guy and tell her she can’t actually have her own room because Daddy doesn’t think before he makes stupid promises.”

“I didn’t make her a stupid promise,” he countered, his back still turned. “I told her I’d work something out to what I personally think is a reasonable request.”

“Well, it’s completely stupid.” She turned her back as well, shoving the corner of her pillow underneath her head. “As soon as those two split up they’ll live in the same house but never speak to each other again, just like every other dysfunctional family.”

“Have you considered them hating each other if we
don’t
split them up?” Jack asked the wall.

Aimee was silent.

“I’ll fix up the basement,” he said after a moment. “It’ll be good to get it in order anyway.”

Aimee threw her side of the covers off and sat up as if struck by lightning—but instead of lightning it was rage.

“No you won’t,” she snapped. “I don’t care what you told Abby and I don’t care how disappointed she’s going to be; she’s not moving out of that room. Ever since the accident you’ve been taking everyone’s side but mine, and I’m sick of it, Jack. I’m sick of being told what’s going to happen, so now
I’m
telling
you
: Abigail isn’t moving out of her room, we’re not spending money to fix up a basement we never use, and Charlie isn’t going to be excused for her behavior because you swear there’s nothing wrong with her. Because I think something
is
.”

“Like what?” He watched her as she towered over him like the fifty-foot woman, waited for horror to creep across her face, waited for the idea of fire and brimstone to breech her anger and sway her toward terror. But none of that happened. Aimee squared her shoulders and answered plainly:

“I think she doesn’t spend enough time with her father. She needs your attention.”

Jack opened his mouth to protest.

“You’re too busy running around all of Louisiana with your buddies, playing bars and getting drunk and wandering up and down Bourbon Street doing God only knows what.”

His mouth snapped closed. His chest tightened. He was just about to argue when a sickening realization set in. Aimee was wrong about it being Jack’s lack of quality time with Charlotte, but she was right about it all being his fault.

Doctor Copeland’s oversized desk made Jack feel small. Even the chairs across from the desk, while comfortable, seemed huge. It seemed odd to Jack that a doctor who was supposed to make people feel better would choose to dwarf them first.

“So,” Copeland said, folding his hands on top of the varnished desktop. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

Gilda had met with Copeland alone a few days before, and Jack could only imagine the horrors she had told him. For all he knew, she had recapped The Exorcist, after having replaced the movie characters with their own family, exchanging that fancy brick house with their dilapidated trailer. Jack lowered his chin and looked down his nose at the doctor as if sizing him up, looking for signs of what Copeland did and didn’t know.

“Is anything bothering you?” Copeland asked.

Jack held his silence. It was never smart to make the first move, in case you ended up giving yourself away.

Copeland frowned at this lack of participation, but he was prepared to fight. Leaning back in his squeaky chair, he folded his hands across the slope of his round belly and watched Jack with earnest curiosity.

“You aren’t going to talk to me?” he asked.

Nothing.

“Are you afraid of what you might say?”

Jack narrowed his eyes, thinking it would make him look harder, tougher; but all it did was give Copeland a non-verbal answer.

“Okay,” Copeland said. “You obviously don’t want to be here, but your mother won’t let either of us off the hook until we get some work done, so why don’t we cut to the chase? Tell me about the cat.”

Jack stiffened.

“You know the one,” Copeland said. “The cat you strung up in the front yard tree.”

Jack’s fingers dug into the cushion of that fancy chair. He imagined his nails biting into the fabric, boring holes into the upholstery.

“Did that cat bother you?”

Jack flinched.

“Had it wronged you in some way?”

It had hissed and run. For no reason.

“Jack?”

He felt his breath catch in his throat. He felt hot.

“Jack, are you with me right now?”

He was sure that at any moment he’d lose the ability to suck in air, that he’d forget how to breathe.

“I didn’t want to do it,” he spit out. “I didn’t know.”

Copeland peered at him, contemplating Jack’s revelation. Then he leaned forward and scribbled a note.

“That cat had it coming,” Jack whispered. “He had it
coming
.”

Aimee hesitated outside the girls’ door the next morning, not wanting a repeat performance from the day before, but when she finally pushed the door open she was greeted by a sight that caught her off-guard. Abigail was still fast asleep, but Charlie—the night owl—was wide awake, sitting on top of her Spongebob covers, facing the bedroom door, waiting for Mom to come in.

Aimee’s muscles went tight. “Charlie?”

“Good morning, Mommy,” she said with a bright smile.

“Good morning,” Aimee replied, but her words were less than sure. Charlie was notorious for sleeping in. The kid had the ability to sleep for twelve hours straight if she was allowed—yet another trait she’d inherited from her father who, in his teens, had slept through an entire day and a half because he hadn’t felt like getting up. Seeing Charlie awake, let alone cheerful at seven AM, was more than a little disconcerting.

“Is… everything okay?” Aimee asked, giving her daughter a wide berth as she stepped inside the room. “Why are you up so early?”