Saving Jack. Chapter Four

4

Both Kevin and Liz got the call from Trooper Sullivan, who informed them of their mother’s tragic death in a deep baritone voice, thick with practiced empathy. They’d both considered it a coincidence of cosmic significance that this night, of all nights, found them together under the same roof—something that normally only happened in Maine. Kevin had accepted Liz and David’s invitation to spend the weekend with them at their new townhouse in Philadelphia. His acceptance was a miracle in itself, especially considering his full awareness of being set up on a blind date. 

They had just finished dinner and were serving up tiramisu for dessert when the call came. David answered Liz’s phone since her hands were full with dessert. The decibel level was high in the kitchen after a couple bottles of wine, so David had stepped onto the balcony to take the call. When he returned a minute later, all the color had drained from his face. He spoke in a quivering voice, Liz? Kevin? You guys should take this. Liz felt the dagger of the news most acutely, collapsing into David’s arms when the Trooper identified himself on speaker phone. 

Kevin sat down quietly on a folding chair as the thoroughly professional Trooper Sullivan detailed their mother’s tragic murder. It had been a robbery gone wrong. The killer was being pursued and would likely be in custody before morning. Their father was safe but in great distress and wasn’t available to speak with them at the moment. While the Rigsby family listened in horror on the balcony, Kevin’s date was busy serving up tiramisu onto clear dessert plates in the kitchen, unaware that the worst blind date in the history of that troubled franchise was about to end horribly. Within an hour of receiving the news, the three of them were on 95 South in the grip of crushing despair. Their father had been admitted to Lynchburg General Hospital for the night, incapable of driving or anything else in his stricken state. 

“How horrible this must be for Daddy if he can’t even speak to us,” Liz sobbed, her eyes tired and bloodshot. “He couldn’t even make the call . . . and they’re admitting him to the hospital?”

David attempted reassurance: “Honey, I’m sure that’s probably normal in cases like this. It’s just a precaution. It would have been very difficult for your Dad to drive back to Richmond after something as horrible as this . . .” His voice trailed off to a whisper.

Kevin sat silently in the back seat, staring at the taillights of semi-trucks speeding by just feet from where his head lay against the cold window. Earlier, when David had suggested waiting until Jack was released from the hospital so they could meet him at the house, Kevin had insisted that they leave immediately for the hospital. He couldn’t allow his father to wake up alone. That was all he had said on the subject. But he had spoken with authority, so they left Philadelphia at 10:00 and into their father’s room at 3:00 in the morning (David having learned a thing or two about navigating the interstates of the northeast).

They found him asleep and heavily medicated. Liz never left her father’s side the rest of the night while Kevin and David took turns pacing the hall outside. Shortly before dawn, Trooper Sullivan appeared with news that the killer, a Robert Deloplane of Amherst County, had been killed in a firefight with officers at a roadblock. Mr. Deloplane was 25 years old and had a criminal record of mostly drug-related offenses. The working theory was that after their father had gone inside the store, he had approached their mother’s car, demanding money. He had stolen her purse, and, for reasons unknown, had shot her twice at point-blank range—once in the chest and another directly in the face. The purse was recovered, minus her wallet and cell phone. An autopsy on the killer would be performed and Trooper Sullivan felt certain it would confirm that Mr. Deloplane had been under the influence of a cocktail of drugs at the time of the murder. In addition, Trooper Sullivan wished to offer Mrs. Rigsby’s family his deep personal condolences. Ten minutes later, Jack woke up, and the worst day in the history of the Rigsby family got decidedly worse. 

Jack seemed confused when he woke, his eyes darting around the room trying to recognize his location. As soon as he saw Liz and David standing at the foot of his bed, the horror of the night flooded his mind, and he began crying uncontrollably. Kevin ran from the hall into the room and was stunned by the sight of his father’s body convulsing with wave after wave of anguished sobs, his face unrecognizably contorted by grief. There were no words spoken, no attempts to quiet him, not even a rushing to his side to provide whatever comfort they could summon. He was too consumed by pain to approach, his public display of despair too disturbing to watch. They had driven five hours through the night to be with him, but now, when the terrible enormity of the loss confronted them in their father’s face, neither of them knew what to do. 

Suddenly, a nurse rushed through the door and to his side, making a quick adjustment to his IV with one hand while cradling Jack’s head in the other. After a minute the sobs quieted down, and she slowly lowered his head back onto the pillow. 

In a hushed tone, the nurse explained, “The same thing happened earlier, just before you all got here. He’s dealing with a terrible tragedy and showing common symptoms of PTSD. Everybody deals with these things differently. Some people retreat into silence and show very little emotion, and then there are folks like your Dad here who just can’t stop crying. This won’t last long. It’s only been, what . . . ten hours?” Then she vanished as quickly and quietly as she had appeared, leaving the four of them alone.

Kevin pulled a chair up to the edge of the bed. Liz came around behind him and placed a hand on Kevin’s shoulder. David stayed at the foot of the bed, looking down at his father-in-law, feeling helpless. Kevin reached up and grabbed onto his sister’s hand, whispering to no one in particular, “. . . Jesus . . .”

* * *

After hanging up from yet another frustrating call with her brother, Liz resumed her battle with the resentment building up in her heart . . . against her father. She loved him deeply, possessed a limitless reservoir of compassion for what he’d endured the past seven months, and yet the resentment still grew. Had he been able to pull himself together properly, like the real man she thought her father to be, maybe the rest of the family would have been afforded the chance to grieve alongside him. His nervous breakdown had been so intense and so consuming, there wasn’t any emotional energy left for their mother. Instead, it was all hands on deck to pull Jack from the abyss. 

Whenever she allowed herself a few minutes to think these bitter thoughts, Liz immediately regretted it and felt like an inadequate daughter. What’s wrong with me? It’s not his fault that a crackhead murdered Mom, for God’s sake!! Still, there were days when she couldn’t help herself. Now, here it was seven months later, and just when she thought her father was turning a corner, he up and disappears. What she wanted to do, what she desperately needed to do was call her mom for advice. It had always been her mother who knew what to say, knew how she felt, understood the questions she hadn’t even asked. But now she was gone, and Liz was left with a grief-stricken, unstable father and a brother whose foreboding silence confounded her at every turn. 

Kevin had adored his mother. The two of them had shared an almost whimsical bond. Liz felt like they shared a truckload of inside jokes, the two of them. Even during hard times, in the middle of contentious arguments over heavy topics, they would exchange a familiar grin, make an indecipherably vague quip, then share an inappropriate laugh. Liz would look at her father, palms up, shaking her head in astonished confusion. Jack would raise his eyebrows heavenward, answering with don’t ask me resignation. Liz called her mother three or four times every single week. Kevin would go weeks without calling, but whenever he did, their conversations lasted hours. 

But Liz never resented it, always felt secure in her mother’s affections. Besides, she had David, and a pack of close friends who had always been drawn to Liz like bees to honey. Kevin was single, a natural loner with only a few friends whom one got the impression he could live without. But ever since her death, Kevin seemed set adrift, no longer moored to the world by his mother’s love. Now, his introversion felt dark and menacing to Liz. She worried constantly about him, yearned for him to find someone he could love and who would love him back. Her mother would have known what to do. Liz only knew how to worry.

Liz watched David preparing dinner, a dish towel draped over his shoulder, fiercely intent on mixing something in a large Pyrex bowl, and she wondered how she had gotten so lucky. David had grown up in a quiet, respectable family with good hearts and small personalities. He hadn’t been prepared for the loud, emotionally-charged drama of the Rigsbys. Though it had been overwhelming at the beginning, he’d found his place and grown to love them all, especially Evelyn. Through the madness of September and the troubling aftermath, he had been her knight in shining armor: always attentive, always willing to listen to her late-night ramblings. When he offered advice, it was consistently thoughtful and wise. 

Now, he looked up from the mixing bowl and asked, “So, what’s the latest with Kevin?”

“He thinks Dad is at the lake.”

“What do you think?”

Liz walked over to the refrigerator, grabbed a beer from the door, twisted the top off, and tossed it in the trash can in one easy motion like a frat boy. She had hated beer all through college, loathed the smell of it, detested the bitterness, until she met David her senior year. He was a connoisseur, and his influence had softened her opinion. Now she loved the stuff—the hoppier the better. Love had not only been blind, but deaf, dumb, and absent of working tastebuds.

“I don’t know,” she began. “Loon Magic was always Mom’s place, really. Dad would never have bought it had it not been for her. I wouldn’t think he’d want to go there by himself. Why would he do that? Wouldn’t it just make him miss her more? Why would he torture himself like that?”

David removed the dish towel from his shoulder and looked at his wife, pausing to pick his words carefully. Even though seven months had passed, she was still scarred and delicate. 

“Honey, he’s been torturing himself every day in one way or another since Mom was killed. Why would it surprise you that he’d venture to the site haunted by their most precious memories? That’s exactly where he is . . .”

“So . . . what should we do?”

“Nothing. He’s a grown man, Liz. Give him space. Let him deal with this his own way.” Just about the time he’d finished offering advice for the night, he hadn’t been able to resist adding one more thought: “Same thing goes for Kevin.”

Liz slammed the bottle down on the granite countertop, turned abruptly, and stormed out, leaving David alone with his mixing bowl.