Nowhere

Jack appeared in Jonah's living room on Sunday afternoon.   “I was listening to the game on the drive over,” he said.  “We are so hosed.”

“Yeah.”

“Got any beer?”

“In the fridge.”

Jack went into the kitchen.  When he returned he was carrying a beer in one hand, and the bag of Doritos Jonah had just bought in his other.  He opened the bag and set it on the table, so that it was within easy reaching distance of Jonah’s chair.  “This flavor is pretty good,” Jack said, crunching hard on a chip.  “Cool Ranch, huh?  I’ve never tried it before.”

“It’s been out for a while now.”

“No kidding?  Guess I’m clueless when it comes to new trends in snack products.”

“There are worse things to be clueless about.”

“Yeah, like stats.  My fantasy football team is getting crushed this year.  I just haven’t had time to keep up, you know?”

“My team is hopeless, too.  I’m in last place at work.”

“Your team is always hopeless,” Jack answered, grinning.  “But that reminds me—you wanna go bowling this Saturday night?”

“I thought Kelly didn’t like you to go out on weekend nights.”

“Oh.  Yeah.  Well, she filed for divorce.”

Jonah tore his eye away from the T.V.  “She did?”

“Yeah.  Yesterday.  She said she never meant staying with her sister to be just a temporary thing—she was only waiting to make things official until Mom died.”  Frowning to himself, Jack grabbed another handful of chips.  “She said I wasn’t ‘emotionally available,’ or some bull shit like that, but I don’t know what she’s talking about.  I was home every single night, just about, and, I mean, I wasn’t going to give up poker night.  It was only once a month, for christ’s sake.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you’ll find someone else.  You always do, right?”

“Not this time.   That’s it for me.  I give up.  Three strikes and you’re out.  I know I wasn’t married to Sheila, but close enough.  I’ll never understand women.  They could be locked up in a room and studied for a thousand years by the world’s leading scientists and we still would never understand them.”

“I don’t know."  Thinking of Deb and her dejected, pinched face, Jonah said, "I don’t think they’re all that different from us.”

“Maybe not,” Jack answered, and suddenly he sounded very, very tired.  “But if that’s true, it means we just aren’t marriage material.  You and me, I mean.”  Jack shot Jonah an uncomfortable glance before he took a swig of his beer and pointed at the T.V.  “Look at that moron—a loss of two yards, when there was a huge hole right up the middle.  The Heisman curse strikes again.”

                

In Here

Because when I listened to the 

silence in my head 

this music I kept trying to invent

it played 

Paradise Lost

Jonah's gaze drifted out the window.  It was cold even though the snow had ended and the sun now peeked out from behind the clouds.  In Wisconsin the coldest days were always the sunniest.

His father grunted next to him.  “Farmer’s Almanac says it’s going to be a wet spring.”

"Huh."

They both stood in silence for another minute or two. His father broke it with, “Have something to tell you."

Jonah looked over at him.  "What?" 

“I’m moving to Florida."

“You are?  When?”

“Heading to the airport now.  Just stopped in to let you know.”

“Now?  But the house-”

“Your aunt Louise is going to pack everything up and put it in storage.  The realtor says I’ll make a mint, and I already have that condo your mother and I bought down there.”  His father cleared his throat. “Be nice if you could visit.  The condo has a guestroom.  You’re welcome to use it.”

“…Yeah,” Jonah managed.   With a little smile his father patted his arm.  “Okay, then.  Tell Jackie I said goodbye.”

“You aren’t going to tell him yourself?”

“Didn’t get a chance to.  Give your Aunt Louise a hand if she needs it, all right?”

Jonah promised he would, and his father left.

For a while Jonah just stood there, staring at the snow-covered branches on the tree outside of his window.  He then picked up the telephone and dialed Jack’s number.

Fly Away

help me to turn my back from 
the open sky

help me to know

lovelorn and shorn of 
protection

what it takes to make you kind

Hindsight

“Who’s going to give the eulogy?”

Looking alarmed, their father said, “Not me.”  Jack turned to Jonah. “Then I guess it’s you.”

“Me!  Why me?”

“You were her favorite.”

As Jonah’s eyes widened in disbelief, Jack told him, “I couldn’t have a five minute conversation with her that didn’t begin and end with you.”

“She talked about you all of the time to me.”

“Don’t be selfish.  I’d be terrible at it.”

“You give seminars!”

“That’s different.”

“Boys,” their father interrupted, “that’s enough.  Jonah, you do it.  She would have liked that.”

“Why?”

“Well, you were the one who got to go to camp every year, weren’t you?” Jack snapped.  “I asked and asked but she said we could only afford to send one, and she always picked you.  She wouldn’t even alternate, you know, one summer for you and one for me.”

Trapped and miserable, Jonah said, “I hated camp.”

“A fine way to be grateful now that our mother is dead,” Jack shouted, and stormed out of the room. 

Tainted

You cannot keep what you 

forever have to

hide

Forgiveness comes cheaply outside

Here I stand within a million

miles of prairie grass

The storm is rolling in and I

am bankrupt once again

The Forest and the Trees

On Saturday morning she slipped into unconsciousness.   “It shouldn’t be long now,” the nurse told them.  Jonah's father cleared his throat.  “Need some air,” he said, and slipped out of the little curtained area.  Jack also drifted off, not offering a reason why.  The nurse gave Jonah a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.  "I'll check in soon," she said, and left him alone with his mother.

Jonah moved his chair closer to his mother's bed.  Her mouth hung open, and her face had a strange, vacant look to it.  He laid his hand on her arm and waited.  

A little while later his father pulled the curtain back.  "Where's Jackie?" he asked.

"I don't know."

His father shuffled over to the chair on the other side of the bed.  As he lowered himself into it Jonah saw the tears streaming down his father's face.  "Dad," he began, but his father waved him off.  "It's all right," he said softly.  "I always knew I would lose her someday.   I just thought someday was so much further away."