Design Flaw?

So now this social distancing business will endure through April 30, we’re told. Might last longer than that. Darker rumors swirl. I understand it, the medical necessity of it, but I sure hope that the cure doesn’t end up being worse than the disease. But that is a problem for people far above my pay grade. I can only keep my hands busy with the task in front of me. In the meantime, I have a bone to pick with the Creator of the Universe, to wit...

What the heck is the meaning of this?? Every year its the same thing. It has literally been over two months since every other leafy tree has shed its leaves. It’s always these pathetic spindly oaks that hold out. The bottom branches hold on to their ugly, shriveled brown leaves like Scrooge McDuck holds on to his money. You cut your grass, it looks beautiful for less than 24 hours, then you wake up and the entire yard is covered with crunchy dead leaves and yet there are still more clinging to the tree. I mean, I hate to second guess the Almighty but doesn’t this qualify as a design flaw? More importantly, why does this irritate me so? Am I the only one who is disturbed by this phenomenon? Probably. 

7

Kevin parallel parked his Toyota Camry into the space on Miller Street directly in front of his townhouse with the practiced skill of someone who had lived downtown his entire adult life. The kind of money he was making meant he could live anywhere, but Kevin Rigsby wasn’t fond of change, so he still lived in the same townhouse he had rented with three others guys for three of the six years it took him to graduate from college. Once his buddies had all moved out, he had approached the landlord with an offer to buy the place, an idea which practically everyone he knew, especially his sister, had thought idiotic. Why in God’s name would you want to live in the same place you lived with three slobs from college? everyone had asked. It’s going to cost you at least ten grand to fumigate the place! But Kevin was persistent and finally prevailed with the landlord. And even Liz had to admit that once the place was his, he fixed it up quite nicely. But all the upgrades in the world wouldn’t change the fact that it was an old building in a sketchy part of town. 

During her first visit after Kevin finished the renovations, Liz had been shocked at what he had done to the place, knocking out almost every separating wall on the main floor to form one giant room that contained his kitchen, dining room, living room, and bedroom, all in one open space. There were no doors anywhere except the one that closed off the bathroom, thank God, she had thought during the tour. The other two floors of the house were virtually uninhabitable save for one guest room he had minimally appointed with a water bed, one yardsale night stand, and a flimsy chest of drawers from a thrift store down the street. All the other rooms functioned essentially as storage for all the minutiae he had accumulated over the quarter century of his life. Liz had noticed that no photographs or artwork adorned any of the walls. She added this troubling oddity to her long list of worries about her brother.

Kevin had been a computer geek since he was old enough to know what a computer and a geek were, and it started to pay off during his otherwise unfortunate college experience. He began making money buying and selling junk online, then discovered web design almost by accident when he stumbled into a chatroom of like-minded geeks. One thing led to another, and suddenly he found himself making six figures as a freelance web designer—work he realized could be done from anywhere with an Internet connection. But once Kevin finally earned his degree, he decided to stay put in Lexington. Within six months most of his college friends had moved away, and his family had begun incessantly badgering him to move back to Virginia. He had countered with the perfectly reasonable argument that he was making plenty of money, so he could fly home as often as he liked. Why, therefore, should he upend everything familiar to move back someplace he hadn’t lived in over six years? His parents had eventually stopped their pleadings, but his sister had persisted unrelentingly. He had finally slowed her advance with, Okay, sis—I’ll move back when you move back.

Kevin threw his jacket on the arm of the sofa, passing his unmade bed on the way to the kitchen. He made a quick stop at his desk, positioned to look out over the street. To the casual observer, this setup looked like the secure location of some rogue CIA operation, with three big screens, two keyboards, and a host of metal storage containers stacked randomly on the expansive work surface. He tapped out a series of letters and numbers on one of the keyboards, then walked back towards the kitchen. By the time he had twisted the top off his beer, the aggrieved voice of Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers filled his house with the travails of unrequited love.

He sat down at his desk and saw fifty unread email messages, all less than a day old. He marked the important ones to read later, picked up his cell phone and checked for texts from Angela. There were at least a dozen. In the minds of most, particularly Liz, Angela would technically qualify as his girlfriend. They had been seeing each other for several months, getting along reasonably well and enjoying each other’s company. But Kevin had no intention of informing Liz until he was absolutely sure it was an actual relationship, and with each passing day, she was beginning to annoy him more and more. It was mostly little things: the incessant texting, her inability to resist picking up after him around the house, her relentless optimism. But she was beautiful and engaging—a combination Kevin had thought himself unable to hope for in one person. Half the time he couldn’t believe his luck. He felt like the beneficiary of some grand cosmic mistake, and soon God would stop being distracted by man’s inhumanity long enough to realize his error, and she would be gone.

Although he would never admit it to anyone, Kevin had turned into a Facebook junkie. He had resisted the siren call of most social media platforms but found himself opening a Facebook account to learn as much as he could about Angela. She was a huge fan and had insisted that he would love it if he gave it a try. She had been right. He now opened his page and began browsing through his notifications. As usual, Angela dominated. Here was a picture she had posted of the two of them having drinks at O’Toole’s, and there she was commenting on something he had posted a few days ago. He looked at the smiling face of her profile picture. God, she was beautiful!

He had met her on one of the worst nights of his life. He had just flown back into town after the worst Christmas imaginable. His dad had been a complete mess. Liz and David were overcompensating with forced cheerfulness. It had been a dark, emotionally menacing week, even worse than September. At least then everyone was free to fall apart. Three months later at Christmas, nobody knew how to breathe around each other. Kevin had felt powerless and inadequate as both a son and a brother. When he landed back in Lexington, it dawned on him that it was almost New Year’s Eve, his lifelong least favorite day of the year. After this realization, he had driven straight to O’Toole’s to drink, the prospect of going back to his empty house seemed out of the question.

He saw her the minute he walked in. She was sitting in a booth with two other girls—two of the most plain, featureless females he had ever seen. Angela’s striking beauty seemed magnified by the proximity. He felt a bit guilty for thinking such thoughts. He was sure that these two girls were perfectly lovely human beings, and to punish them for not measuring up to this Hollywood angel was misogyny at its most piggish. Still . . . he settled in a booth across the aisle and tried not to stare. After an hour or so and several strong drinks, the girls looked close to calling it a night. Kevin had watched them walking toward the door, Angela hugging each of them and sending them on their way, then looked on in amazement as this stunning woman glided across the aisle to his booth, dropping herself in the seat across from him.

“Hello, I’m Angela . . . and you have been checking me out for over an hour now. Is there anything I can help you with?”

Kevin had actually started to feel drunk, but her miraculous appearance in his lonely booth sobered him up like a gallon of black coffee. 

“No, actually, I haven’t been checking you out for the past hour,” he had managed to say. “But, your two friends? Now, I have to admit . . . I might have been checking them out a little.”

It had been the most out-of-character, incongruous sentence he had ever spoken. Angela’s face had gone blank, as if she couldn’t believe what he had just said to her. For a moment, Kevin wasn’t sure whether she might suddenly slap him. But then, almost magically, her face relit with radiance, and she burst out laughing. Two hours later, he had a date for New Years. 

The problem with Angela was simple enough: he didn’t deserve her. Here was this beautiful, smart, well-adjusted woman with a promising future and a shining personality, free from any of the creeping darkness of his own. What did she possibly see in him? One night, he had asked.

“Well, for one thing, you’re adorable. But I guess what keeps me coming back is . . .”. She had paused dramatically, choosing her words with great care. “. . . I think you need me.”

“So, you’re saying I’m needy?”

“Well, maybe. Ha! I know that’s usually a negative thing, but from the first time I saw you at O’Toole’s, you looked a bit lost . . . adorable, but lost.”

Kevin had quickly changed the subject, worried that if they continued with this sort of examination, Angela might discover just how right she was. He had told her nothing about his family, but with each passing day the subject was becoming harder and harder to stonewall.

He flipped through her texts and read the last one: We need to talk. Then one from Liz: You see that email from Dad? We need to talk.

Kevin rubbed his unshaven face in his hands. The two most consequential women in his life both needed to have a word with him. Great.

A Resumption of Hostilities

Many people are taking advantage of all this social isolation to devote themselves to a whole host of self improvement projects, yet another unintended consequence of the Coronavirus. I’ve seen the pictures on Facebook and have been quite impressed with the vigor and industry on display. People are baking like never before. Cross-stitching seems to be making a comeback. Attics are being rummaged through, long-delayed yard work is being attacked with pent-up vengeance. It is all so creative and inspiring...so much so that I have determined to renew an old passion of mine as well...

Yes, I have for too long now neglected the menace that is the squirrel population in my back yard. During the winter, I usually cease hostilities due to the fact that there is nothing left for them to destroy. The temporary armistice starts around Christmas and ends around Mother’s Day. But, thanks to COVID-19, I am determined to open my Spring campaign early this year, hopefully catching them napping. Lucky for me, after four months of peace, the little tree rats have gotten extraordinarily cocky and as a result are over confident. My Daisy-35 is fully loaded and I am ready to once again turn my back yard into the squirrel killing fields. On a related topic, I certainly hope that the CDC is exploring what role squirrels may have had in the spread of this virus. Although I have no scientific data to back up this claim, anecdotal evidence is everywhere around us, not the least of which is the very expressions on their little pinched and drawn faces. Nevertheless I will do my part despite the lack of concrete evidence..out of an abundance of caution.

6

It hadn’t taken Jack long to figure out that coming to Maine without Evelyn had been foolish. The place was practically a shrine to her. What was he thinking? It was as if everything he did, every decision he made, revealed itself as perfectly ridiculous in hindsight. But this wisdom never manifested until after he’d executed some ill-advised plan. 

Jack sat in his recliner, staring across the lake at nothing, feeling worse than he had in months, when his cell phone rang. Bobby Landry. While ordinarily this intrusion would have provoked an eye roll, Jack found himself answering with surprising eagerness.

“Hey, Bobby. I suppose you want to schedule our ‘state of the cottage’ meeting . . .”

“You read my mind, Mr. Rigsby. How about I come over a little later this morning?”

Jack was about to agree when another oddball plan hatched, fully formed and of questionable origin. He heard himself saying, “Bobby, instead of you coming out here, how about we meet at the Midcoast Café in about an hour?” 

“Well, sure Mr. Rigsby . . . but we always meet at the lake so I can show you stuff I’ve done and stuff that needs doing, you know . . .”

“Yes, I’m aware of what we normally do, Bobby, but this year is different. So if you want to have this meeting, I suggest you meet me at Midcoast in an hour.”

“Okay, Mr. Rigsby, you’re the boss.”

“One more thing, Bobby. How long have you been my caretaker? Ten, fifteen years now? Enough with this Mr. Rigsby shit, okay? My name is Jack. I don’t call you Mr. Landry, do I?”

“No, you don’t. That’s a fact.”

“So from now on, I’m Jack. I’ll see you in an hour.”

Jack placed his phone on the coffee table and marveled at the words that had come out of his mouth. He marveled every minute of the twenty-minute drive into Camden, then parked around the corner on a side street by the library and waited for Bobby’s truck to appear. When it did, he briefly entertained the idea of bolting, standing him up, driving back to the lake. But then he found himself walking in the door and hearing the cheerful voice of Emmett Waller—owner of the Midcoast Café, home of the best pancakes in central Maine. Said so right on the sign above the door.

“Well, if it isn’t Jack Rigsby! What in the world are you doing in my place in April, for God’s sake?!”

“Hey, Emmett. I just had to have me some of your pancakes, couldn’t wait another day. You got any country ham?”

Jack spotted Bobby at a table in the back overlooking the bay, acknowledged him with a wave, and listened to Emmett complain about the price of ham or bacon or something. Exchanging a quick smile and a handshake with Emmett, Jack then pulled up a chair next to Bobby, who looked as nervous as he’d ever seen him. In that moment it occurred to Jack that he knew virtually nothing about the man he’d employed for over a decade, other than the superficial exterior stuff he’d picked up from other locals—his Social Security disability dodge, his epic gossiping powers, and his marginal skills with small engines and carpentry. Was he married? Did he have a family? As Jack sat down, he looked closer, saw the nervousness clearly now. 

“Bobby, relax. You think I’m going to fire you or something?”

“Well, it had crossed my mind.” Bobby glanced at the front door expectantly. “. . . Ms. Evelyn be joining us?”

“No Bobby. Evelyn is dead.”

It was the first time he had ever spoken the words. For the past seven months, it had been implied. But here he was, in a Café overlooking the Penobscot Bay, speaking those three words for the first time with a virtual stranger. Bobby’s face registered the shock with strained wrinkles and a quivering lower lip.

“Holy shit, Mr. Rigsby . . . what happened?”

“She was murdered by a drug addict while I was buying beef jerky . . . and remember, it’s Jack.”

More wrinkles, more lip quivering. Jack recognized sincerity in Bobby’s tortured face, felt his empathy, and it startled him. Still, he forged on.

“It happened in September. All of us are trying to recover from it, with varying degrees of success.”

Bobby leaned forward and cupped his hands around his coffee mug. “A drug addict, you say? A worthless piece of human scum like that killed your Evelyn? Mr. Rig . . . Jack, I don’t know what to say. Your wife was a beautiful person . . . I hope that punk rots in jail for the rest . . .”

“Nope, afraid not,” Jack interrupted, newly eager to share the story. “The bastard cheated the hangman. The police killed him in a shootout at a roadblock just a few hours after the murder. So, although he is no doubt rotting somewhere at the moment, it’s not in jail.”

Emmett placed three steaming pancakes on the table in front of Jack, along with a small plate stacked with fried country ham. He poured coffee into Jack’s mug, looked at Bobby, and asked, “Sure you don’t need anything to eat, Bobby?”

“I’m good, Emmett.”

Suddenly, Jack discovered that he had an appetite. He looked at the food in front of him and realized he was hungry enough to eat it—all of it—ravenously. He started with the ham, carving off a healthy piece and shoving it in his mouth, overwhelmed at its salty perfection. He hastily spread butter between each pancake, then smothered the stack with maple syrup—the real stuff, not the knockoff Aunt Jemima grocery store stuff. Mid-bite, he glanced up at Bobby and noticed his eyes, wide and brimming with tears. Jack put his fork down and picked up a napkin to wipe the syrup from the corners of his mouth, suddenly embarrassed by his own behavior. Apparently, there was more to Bobby Landry than met the eye. 

“I’ve never known anyone . . . never had a friend to get murdered.”

“Me neither, Bobby.”

“How are you holding up?”

Jack had been asked this question a thousand times and had answered each inquiry with something disarming and perfunctory like, “I’m hanging in there,” or the even more meaningless, “about as well as can be expected.” But sitting in the Midcoast Café, looking into the wounded eyes of his caretaker, Jack tried honesty.

“Actually, Bobby, I’ve been going through the motions. Most of the time it feels like I died along with her. Since she’s been gone, I’ve just gotten out of bed each morning and searched for a life to live—a new one, really, because my old life isn’t coming back.”

Jack gathered himself, sipped his coffee, surveyed the ancient, moss-covered rocks surfacing at low tide, watched the birds balancing on the rocks, sunning themselves, teetering in the morning breeze.

“I thought I might come up here early, recapture some magic from her favorite place in the world. But the thing is . . . this was always her favorite place. I had forgotten that part until I got here. That’s the thing, Bobby—I’m not thinking clearly when it comes to Evelyn. Any fool could have told me that coming up here was the worst possible move, since all it would do is remind me that she’s gone. But I didn’t think it through. It seems like I don’t think anything through anymore. So here I am, eating pancakes at Waller’s place in freaking April, having our annual ‘state of the cottage’ meeting at a café ten miles from the cottage. Ha!”

Bobby studied Jack Rigsby as if he were a total stranger. He had no idea who this man was. He preferred the old Jack Rigsby—the guy who held him at arm’s length, who patronized him a little but was fair, even generous. He liked to know where he stood with his owners, hated the ones who tried to act like they were old pals, who pretended to care about him, always asking about the family and whatnot. He never had to worry about that sentimental crap with Jack Rigsby. Jack was strictly business, with a sharp wit and a refreshingly sarcastic attitude. But what was Bobby to make of this new man across the table? He even looked different, his face drawn and colorless, his eyes bigger somehow and fixed on one thing at a time instead of darting all over the place like before. Now, after admitting how lost he felt, he’d attempted a joke? What the hell?

“ . . . So, what’s new with Loon Magic?”

Wait . . . what? Were they supposed to talk about the cottage now? After all of this? Bobby hadn’t even begun to comprehend that someone as sweet and lovely as Evelyn Rigsby had been murdered, and now he was supposed to discuss their leaky faucets? 

“Listen, . . . Jack, this is a lot to take in at one time. I don’t even know how to talk about cottage repairs after hearing this terrible news. I . . .”

“It’s okay, Bobby. I understand.”

Jack returned to devouring his breakfast. Bobby, more uncomfortable with each passing minute, desperately sought a way to excuse himself, but his brain didn’t work like Jack Rigsby’s. He wasn’t quick-witted, could never mitigate awkwardness with clever remarks. 

“ . . . Looks like you might have to put some new tires on the dock, the old ones have dry rotted.”

“You warned me about those last year, didn’t you?”

“I may have said something about them, yeah. They lasted what, twelve years?”

“Ten years. But if they need to be replaced, then replace them.”

Bobby took another sip of coffee, glanced out the window at the birds. “The kids planning on coming up in July?” It felt easier having this conversation while looking at something else . . . anything else.

“I imagine they will, yes. I haven’t heard from them definitively on the subject, though. What would you do if you were them?”

Bobby felt a strange wave of panic rising in his heart. How to answer such a question? Why was he even asked in the first place? 

“Oh, I don’t know . . .” Bobby began cautiously, ready to stop on a dime and deliver a new opinion if his answer distressed this suddenly bizarre man eating pancakes in front of him. “I would think that Liz and Kevin would want be at the lake, especially this year. I imagine it would be comforting, ya know?”

Jack picked up his napkin to wipe his mouth, then emptied his coffee mug. “See . . . that’s what I thought. I thought that exact same thing. I thought that if I came up here and spent some time at the lake, it would be just the ticket to get me over the hump . . . that being up here at that house surrounded by nothing but good memories would do the trick. But you know what I’ve discovered, Bobby?” Jack leaned forward, placed his elbows on the table, and redirected his glare from the birds to his mystified caretaker. “Those good memories don’t belong to me anymore.”

Jack snatched the check from the table, glanced at it, dropped a twenty-dollar bill, then stood and backed away from the table. He reached out to shake Bobby’s hand, muttering something about seeing him again before he left, and then disappeared out the door without looking back. Bobby lowered himself into his chair. He scanned the bay for the birds, but they had flown away. 

Bobby sat for the rest of the morning, trying to understand what had just happened. Poor Ms. Evelyn. Bobby had always had a soft spot in his heart for Jack Rigsby’s wife. She was everything that Jack wasn’t . . . kind, big-hearted, and approachable. He remembered the year when it had rained so much in July that one of the skylights in the master bedroom sprang a leak. Bobby had gone out on the first clear day and re-caulked it while the rest of the family was in town for lunch. He’d been surprised to find Evelyn there. She hadn’t felt well or something and decided to stay behind and oversee his work, greeting him with a characteristic smile and immediately offering to fix him something to eat. 

“No, I’m good, Ms. Evelyn . . . but I will take a cup of that coffee.”

They spent the better part of the afternoon chatting about everything that came to her mind, which was a lot. As he busied himself with his work, she expressed her adoration for Maine, the lake, and her wonderful house. She asked him all about his life—his family, his health, everything. Bobby remembered how easy it was to answer her questions, how little effort it required to talk with her. After an hour of conversation with Evelyn Rigsby, he would have confessed his deepest, darkest secrets if she’d asked. Then, her voice changed, became melancholy, as she began to talk about her husband.

“I just wish Jack could learn to love this place as much as I do. He bought this place just for me because he loves me, but he doesn’t love it like I do. He just can’t let go of things and relax, you know? His mind is never here—right here in the present. He’s always thinking about what’s next. For Jack, it’s always the next big adventure out there. I guess that’s why he’s been so successful. He’s really quite driven, my Jack.”

Bobby had been astonished at her honesty, but it wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable to hear. She was just discussing what she cared about . . . with a caretaker she hardly knew. When he had finished up, she walked him to his truck. 

Suddenly, the last thing she’d said to him that day resurfaced in his memory: You know, I’ve always said that I hope Jack dies first, because if I die first, he would be a disaster without me. Ha!

Bobby left a couple dollars on the table, glanced out at the bay one more time. The tide was coming back in. The rocks had disappeared under the sea. 

Wonderful News...and another Chapter of Saving Jack

There is great news to report from Chez Dunnevant on this Saturday morning. Last night I fell asleep at roughly 11:00 and slept without dreams or interruptions all the way through until 6:00. If you are keeping score at home, that comes to seven blissful hours of quality sleep, something that heretofore during this crisis has been nonexistent. This morning, there are birds singing outside, I’m starving, and the New York Times has put out yet another article explaining how much harder it is to quarantine oneself when one is poor...in other words...all is right with the world!! 

Now, since it’s Saturday, another chapter of Saving Jack to give you something free to read. This is chapter five in which it starts to become clear that Jack is losing his grip on reality...

5

The first night was rough. Even though the drive had been long and tiring, sleep wouldn’t come. He lay awake, listening to the strong winds battering his windchime. Bobby had warned him about a snowstorm coming through. In all the years they had come here, Jack had never seen a snowfall. He had hoped that the snow would be gone by April. Should have known better. Should have listened to Bobby. Jack closed his eyes and tried to imagine a different life.

The wind was still blowing in the morning when Jack staggered into the kitchen, feeling exhausted. He brewed a pot of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table with its view of Quantabacook’s open waters toward the southern, widest expanse of the lake. Evelyn had loved the house so much because of this very view, as well as the bright sunshine that splashed their dock all day during the summer. But today there would be no sun. Today the clouds were thick and expectant, the air frigid and angry as if they had been sent with purposeful malice toward this Virginian who had come up too soon. The lake was not for outsiders in April. In April, the lake still belonged to Maine, and this storm would seek to drive home the point with vigor. Life was all about knowing your place, knowing when and where you belonged at any given moment. There was a time to be in Virginia and a time to be in Maine. There was a right time to cut your grass and a time to leave it alone, a time to run off half-cocked to the mountains and a time to stay at home, a time to satisfy a craving for beef jerky, and a time to just let it go. These thoughts swirled in Jack’s head as he watched the first delicate flakes fall. 

He had not known what to call it, this cold-blooded murder of his wife. Whenever it became necessary to refer to it in conversation, he hesitated awkwardly. But it wasn’t just him. Everyone he knew stumbled over it, especially his children. From either laziness or lack of imagination, it became the agreed-upon pronoun: simple, unadorned. Shorthand for something unspeakable. 

After a cup of coffee, he opened his laptop. This device had turned into his primary way of communicating, banging out short spurts of information to Mitchell and everyone else back at the office covering for him since it happened. He knew that at some point he would need to get back to work. A small business, even one as well-run as his, could only carry on so long with half of its institutional memory AWOL. Mitchell had been an irreplaceable friend for most of the past thirty years, but never more so than since Evelyn’s murder. He had been Trooper Sullivan’s last call. He and Tricia had driven to Lynchburg the next morning to be with him, and ever since, they’d done everything in their power to make Jack’s recovery possible. Mitchell had taken all of Jack’s workload without complaint, given him all the time and space he needed. Seven months later, progress was being measured in how many hours Jack managed to show up at the office in a week, not days. Although Tricia had begun showing signs of resenting the imbalance in their business relationship, Mitchell was steadfast, refusing to even mention it to Jack.

Jack understood better than anyone just how much of a strain his prolonged absence was for Mitchell. In a newly discovered, dark corner of his heart, Jack actually found Mitchell’s inconvenience satisfying. Hadn’t he coveted her all these years? If his financial security hadn’t been so entangled with Evelyn’s husband, would he have acted upon his adulterous fantasies? 

When these sorts of thoughts began forming in his mind, Jack sensed himself detaching from anything solid in the world. He felt the rising tide of panic. When the panic rose still higher, Evelyn would drift through, calming the storm but pushing him further away from anything real. He possessed neither the discipline nor the energy to resist her appearances. So she would come and he would make no objection, choosing to drift with her further and further away from the moorings of the tangible world.

As he waited for his painfully slow Internet connection, he glanced up at the snow, coming down harder now, the flakes bigger and wetter. For a second he thought about Evelyn in their early days together, the fun they would have whenever it snowed. Then he glimpsed her on the deck, bundled up in her old sky-blue down jacket with the ugly red bomber hat she used to wear when they were newlyweds. She turned toward him slowly, her face perfectly pink . . . then a smile, then the throwing of a snowball . . . and then she vanished. 

The empty email draft split the center of his screen, his fingers poised above the keyboard. Hesitation. Fear. Anger. Then, the slamming down of the screen, and a second cup of coffee.

Later, he would send the kids an email letting them both know where he was. They would be worrying by now, especially Liz. He would try to explain himself. He would assure them that he was fine, there was nothing to worry about. It was a lie, and they wouldn’t believe any of it, but it had to be done. It would take him half the morning. He would read each attempt, and none of them sounded right. They sounded either too optimistic or too pathetic, too breezily nonchalant or ridiculously abrupt and stoic. No matter how many times he thought he’d stumbled upon a decent effort, he would read it and realize that it just didn’t sound like something he would write. It didn’t sound like him, sounded more like a perfect stranger, someone he didn’t know.

Finally, just before noon, he had a winner:

Hey guys,

Just a note to let you both know that your dad is up at Loon Magic for a week or so. I’ve never been here this early, and I’ve been missing your mother a bit more than normal lately, so here I am. It’s actually snowing while I’m writing this. So weird to watch snow coming down on Quantabacook. Ha!

I’ve been getting better over the past few weeks. I’ve been going into the office more, which makes Mitchell happy. I know how much you worry about me, but I am getting better. I already feel better just being here in this place, your mother’s happy place. Remember how she used to call this lake her happy place? 

We haven’t talked about it, but I assume that you both will be coming up in July, like always. She would want us to be here together this year, like every year. Especially this year, I think.

So, if it ever stops snowing, I might do some fishing. The ice is gone now. Bobby said I just missed it, actually. Might drive into Camden for some dinner if the roads aren’t bad.

Much Love,

Dad

He read it over several times until he felt comfortable enough not to hit delete. It was a good-enough effort and would pass as a reasonable facsimile of the man he used to be. He got up from the kitchen table, walked over to the sliding glass doors that led out onto the deck, and watched the snow. No trace of Evelyn—just swirling, fat flakes splatting against the deck, melting on contact, the surface too warm. It was April. The snow was late, just as Jack was early. Nothing knew its place anymore. 

Abruptly, the snow stopped. The clouds started to thin. The sky began to brighten. Jack saw the Escalade, the driver-side door swinging open, and then himself getting out, a broad smile on his face. He saw his mouth move but heard no sound. He saw himself walking into the Quik Stop with that old energetic gait—a manner of walking abandoned in that parking lot, lost forever.

As the first beams of sunlight broke through the rapidly thinning clouds, Jack remembered.                                                 

He raced over to the kitchen table, pulled the email up, and added a postscript . . .

I just this very minute remembered something from that night. I’ve been wracking my brain, not because it’s vital information but just because I wanted to remember, needed to remember. Anyway, you guys remember how none of us could ever win an argument with her? Remember how she was always right about so many things? Remember how frustrated we’d all get when she ended up being right all the time? Suddenly, I remember your mother’s last words to me . . . “Who says there’s going to be a next kiss?”

Right . . . to the very end.

It was the most honest thing he’d ever written, and before he even took the time to think it over, he pressed send. 

The sudden memory with its clarity and detail had surprised Jack. It was as if she was right there—three feet from him, teasing him, warning him not to get too cocky. It was the very last glimpse he’d ever have of her face, gleaming and beautiful, before it was blown apart by a handgun. Several weeks after the murder, Jack had met with the detective assigned to the case, a meeting which Liz and Kevin both adamantly opposed. What is to be gained by meeting with the detective, they had asked . . . an excellent question for which Jack had no coherent answer . . . except that he’d prepared a lockbox in his head to store all the horror, and he couldn’t close it until he knew everything.

He drove to Lynchburg by himself to meet with Detective Dan Powell, who treated Jack with the utmost care and understanding. He counseled against looking at photographs from the crime scene, especially those of his murdered wife, but Jack insisted and did so without emotion. When Detective Powell broached the subject of Robert Deloplane, his voice changed. Gone were the calm, solicitous tones, replaced by something from a lower register, filled with thinly disguised contempt . . .

“Here’s the firearm he used,” the detective said as he took the Smith and Wesson 38-caliber revolver out of a plastic evidence bag and laid it on the table in front of Jack. “Of course, it was stolen. Every nickel the son of a bitch had went to buy drugs, so . . .”

Jack looked at the gun before him with a mixture of anger and fascination. Jack wasn’t a gun guy, didn’t own one, hadn’t held one in his hands since he was a teenager shooting squirrels in the woods behind his house with a 22 rifle. He felt overcome with an urge to pick it up and hold it in his hands, to feel its weight and touch its shiny cylinder, but Detective Powell quickly picked it up with his gloved hand and placed it safely back into the plastic bag. 

Jack had been too overcome with grief in the time immediately after Evelyn’s murder to concern himself with the details of her dead killer. He knew his name, that he was a career criminal and drug addict, and that the police killed him the same night he killed Evelyn. But here in a sterile office with metal furniture, sitting across from a talkative officer of the law, he received an education. At this meeting, Jack learned that Robert Deloplane was one of three Deloplanes who entered the world on June 16, 1991. He was a triplet with a brother and a sister: Richard and Roberta, born to DeeRay and Starla Deloplane, DeeRay abandoning them soon after for their ill-equipped mother to raise and nurture alone. Somehow, Starla managed to meet and marry two more men through the years, both of whom followed DeeRay’s example and abandoned her to her unruly brood of triplets. Detective Powell considered it a miracle that it took this long for a Deloplane kid to end up murdering someone.

Liz and Kevin had been right. Nothing good could possibly have come from such a meeting. Jack knew it the minute he got back in his car to drive back to Richmond. Why had he needed to know all the details? Why couldn’t he have left “well enough” alone? Ever since his hour and a half with Detective Dan Powell, Jack determined to cast every thought of the Deloplanes of Amherst County from his mind by seeking refuge in the familiar . . . only to discover that nothing felt familiar any longer. The cliches from friends about safety residing in the familiar felt vacuous, platitudes only comprehensible to men with living, breathing wives. Nothing felt safe, and increasingly, nothing was known. Everyone had warned him against withdrawing from his routine, slipping away from his established life. What nobody seemed to understand was that his established life was unrecognizable. The reason he hadn’t poured himself back into his work was because his work reminded him of what his life used to be. His first day back at the office had launched him into a week of fresh despair. His office was the office he had built when Evelyn was alive, more specifically because she was alive. The photographs that lined his credenza were from another world. He simply couldn’t bear it. So, he had made up an acceptable excuse for his absences, hoping that with time he could ease back into something that resembled a routine.

He was told to take comfort in the friends and associations which had taken a lifetime to build. He was assured that his faith and church would be great comforts. They hadn’t been. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. His friends were supportive, his church caring and solicitous. But the harder they all tried, the more estranged Jack felt. With Evelyn dead, everything felt withered and old. 

He was counseled to draw near to his kids. They would need each other now more than ever. He knew in his heart that this was unequivocally true. He made every effort to remain available to them, to hold them close. It was his responsibility as a father to do so. But his efforts had been halfhearted. They felt obligatory and drenched in duty. It was this failure, this betraying withdrawal that hurt him the most. His visits with them felt forced, leaving him embarrassed by his inability to feel anyone’s pain but his own. Thus, each passing month found him further withdrawn, further isolated, and now alone in Maine watching the reluctant sun trying to break through a lonely haze.

Friday Rant

Ok. It’s Friday and time to rant.

Let’s get something straight. When we come through this Coronavirus in a few months—and we most certainly will—it’s going to be important that we remember who the stars were. Who exactly was it who saved our collective asses?? Here is a partial list of those who didn’t save anything:

Donald Trump

Nancy Pelosi

Mitch McConnell

Chuck Schumer

Bernie Sanders

Joe Biden (remember him??)

Any Celebrity 

Any Athlete

Any CEO

Any Hedge Fund Manager

Any political pundit or talking head on television 

Any Journalist

I’ll tell you who the heroes of this story were:

Emergency room doctors

Nurses

Hospital workers

Grocery store clerks

Pharmacists 

Truck drivers

Cops

Food banks

Teachers

Volunteers who kept free lunches coming for needy school kids

Moms and Dads who didn’t incessantly whine on Facebook about having to be cooped up with their kids for a few weeks as if they were living at Auschwitz

Pastors, Priests, and Rabbis who kept encouraging us via technology

Kind neighbors who looked after that old couple down the street.

Hard-pressed millennials who chose to tip extravagantly whoever showed up at their door with a delivery

Ordinary people everywhere who took the threat seriously without resorting to panic and fatalism

Everyone working in the trenches to see to it that our electricity and internet continued to work.

In other words, the heroes are those all around us who didn’t have time to fear monger, pontificate about the politics of pandemics, or grandstand on Social Media from the comfort of their 20 million dollar estates...because they were too busy working their fingers to the bone saving the day.

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.