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“Roll me over
In the clo-ho-ver,
Roll me over, lay me down and do it again.”
Da
(But 1 never put a hand on him! Goddammit, 1 didn't!)
“Jack?” The voice was timid, hesitant.
He was so startled he almost fell off the stool whirling it around. Wendy was standing just inside the batwing doors, Da
“I never touched him,” Jack said thickly. “I never have since the night I broke his arm. Not even to spank him.”
“Jack, that doesn't matter now. What matters is-”
“This matters!” he shouted. He brought one fist crashing down on the bar, hard enough to make the empty peanut dishes jump. “It matters, goddammit, it matters! “
“Jack, we have to get him off the mountain. He's-”
Da
Abruptly he stiffened in her arms. His back arched into a bow, making Wendy stagger. And he suddenly began to shriek, mad sounds that escaped his straining throat in bolt after crazy, echoing bolt. The sound seemed to fill the empty downstairs and come back at them like banshees. There might have been a hundred Da
“Jack!” she cried in terror. “Oh God Jack what's wrong with him?”
He came off the stool, numb from the waist down, more frightened than he had ever been in his life. What hole had his son poked through and into? What dark nest? And what had been in there to sting him?
“Da
Da
“Daddy!” he screamed, ru
He slammed into Jack's arms like a blunt arrow, making Jack rock on his feet. Da
Daddy, it was her.
Jack looked slowly up into Wendy's face. His eyes were like small silver coins.
“Wendy?” Voice soft, nearly purring. “Wendy, what did you do to him?”
Wendy stared back at him in stu
“Oh Jack, you must know-”
Outside it had begun to snow again.
29. Kitchen Talk
Jack carried Da
“Jack, I don't know what he's talking about. Please, you must believe that.”
“I do believe it,” he said, although he had to admit to himself that it gave him a certain amount of pleasure to see the shoe switched to the other foot with such dazzling, unexpected speed: But his anger at Wendy had been only a passing gut twitch. In his heart he knew Wendy would pour a can of gasoline over herself and strike a match before harming Da
The large tea kettle was on the back burner, poking along on low heat. Jack dropped a teabag into his own large ceramic cup and poured hot water halfway.
“Got cooking sherry, don't you?” he asked Wendy.
“What?… oh, sure. Two or three bottles of it.”
“Which cupboard?”
She pointed, and Jack took one of the bottles down. He poured a hefty dollop into the teacup, put the sherry back, and filled the last quarter of the cup with milk. Then he added three tablespoons of sugar and stirred. He brought it to Da
“Want you to drink this, doc,” Jack said. “It's going to taste frigging awful, but it'll make you feel better. Can you drink it for your daddy?”
Da
On the heels of that came an uncomfortable, even startling thought: Had she wanted to think Jack was to blame? Was she that jealous? It was the way her mother would have thought, that was the really horrible thing. She could remember a Sunday when her Dad had taken her to the park and she had toppled from the second tier of the jungle gym, cutting both knees. When her father brought her home, her mother had shrieked at him: What did you do? Why weren't you watching her? What kind of a father are you?
(She had hounded him to his grave; by the time he divorced her it was too late.)
She had never even given Jack the benefit of the doubt. Not the smallest. Wendy felt her face burn yet knew with a kind of helpless finality that if the whole thing were to be played over again, she would do and think the same way. She carried part of her mother with her always, for good or bad.
“Jack-” she began, not sure if she meant to apologize or justify. Either, she knew, would be useless.
“Not now,” he said.
It took Da
Jack put his hands solemnly on his son's shoulders. “Da
Da
“I want… to tell you everything,” Da
“Why didn't you, son?” Jack brushed Da
“Because Uncle Al got you the job. And I couldn't figure out how it was good for you here and bad for you here at the same time. It was…” He looked at them for help. He did not have the necessary word.
“A dilemma?” Wendy asked gently. “When neither choice seems any good?”
“Yes, that.” He nodded, relieved.
Wendy said: “The day that you trimmed the hedges, Da
Jack nodded. The day he had trimmed the hedges was very clear in his mind.
Wendy sighed. “I guess we didn't talk enough. Did we, doc?”
Da
“Exactly what did you talk about?” Jack asked. “I'm not sure how much I like my wife and son-”
“-discussing how much they love you?”
“Whatever it was, I don't understand it. I feel like I came into a movie just after the intermission.”