Jackie wishes she could sleep. After tossing and turning a few hours, she’s awake for good by six.
There’s a silver lining to her insomnia, however. On a Sunday morning, she’ll have the run of the house for several hours. Emma is sleeping at a friend’s, and Robert never wanders out of his room before noon on the weekend. Based on how much Rick imbibed, he likely also won’t show his face until afternoon.
Diana Matarazzo or somebody else last night must have gotten Rick all hot and bothered, because when they got home after the reunion, he was like a dog in heat. She didn’t protest, having long since realized that her resistance only revved him up more. And so she endured, thankful when he turned her over, so she didn’t have to look at his goddamned face. That he was drunk made him last longer than usual, which only gave her more time to think about how much she absolutely hated her husband.
After making herself a pot of strong coffee, she takes a seat on the corner of the living room sofa, staring out the large bay window onto Farmington Lake. Clasping the mug with both hands, she allows the coffee’s warmth to enter her.
Jackie knows that right now, clad in her flannel pajamas, taking in the view of the serene lake from the comfort of her home, she looks like an actress in a commercial depicting the idyllic suburban life. But her existence is far from a fantasy. As she does most mornings when she finds herself in this position, she wishes she were dead.
* * *
Jonathan doesn’t feel the same sense of dread when entering Lakeview for the second time. He walks through the hallways and says hello to the African American nurse from yesterday. Today he notices she’s wearing a name tag that says Yorlene Goff.
“I’m Jonathan Caine,” he says. “How’s my dad doing today?”
“I remember you, Mr. Caine,” Yorlene says with a warm smile. “He’s good, but why don’t you go on in and ask him yourself?”
As if he was expecting his son’s visit today, William Caine is sitting up in bed, watching television, when Jonathan enters his room. That it’s figure skating and not playoff football is enough for Jonathan to surmise that one of the nurses selected it.
“Hi, Dad. How are you feeling today?”
“Johnny!” his father says rather brightly, as if he hasn’t seen him for months.
“I was here yesterday, don’t you remember?”
His father looks lost for a moment. “You were?”
“Yeah. I told you that I’d be back today because I was going to be staying at the house.”
There’s no sign of recognition from his father, but he accepts the truth of Jonathan’s statement without further inquiry, and a silence falls between them as thick as any wall. Jonathan wishes his father would say something—anything—if only to prove that he’s still connected to the world. But by the way he stares at the television, Jonathan knows that, at least for the moment, there’s nothing for William Caine except figure skating.
Jonathan takes a seat in the recliner under the window. A Russian skater is performing to Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.”
“Do you like figure skating now, Dad?” Jonathan asks.
“I like the costumes. They’re pretty. Especially the ones with lots of colors. I don’t like the ones that are either all black or all white as much.”
Jonathan always found his father to be a weak man. Part of that was because for as long as Jonathan was sentient, he knew that his mother called the shots. But Jonathan pinpoints the exact moment when he lost all respect for his father to be during a Fourth of July barbecue when he was fourteen. It was a small gathering at their home. The guest list was limited to his one living grandmother, his aunts and uncles on both sides, and their kids, as well as his mother’s childhood friend Joan Samuelson, her husband, Barry, and his father’s closest friend, Phillip Levinson, and his wife, Gayle.
At some point, Jonathan went inside—he can never remember why—and went upstairs to his bedroom. At the top of the steps, he heard something from his parents’ room, and when he found the door open, he entered.
From behind the closed door to the master bathroom, he heard the unmistakable sound of his mother groaning. Even at fourteen, Jonathan knew why.
He ran downstairs, and then outside to the yard with the other guests, his stomach in knots. The first person he saw was his father, who was busy manning the grill, a stupid-ass grin on his face.
Jonathan figured out who was with his mother by a process of elimination, but he nevertheless kept a careful eye on the door. Not more than five minutes later, his mother returned to the backyard. A minute after that, Dad’s buddy Phillip Levinson exited the house.
Burned into Jonathan’s brain to this very day is the self-satisfied look on Levinson’s face. Like he’d just won a medal for valor or something.
The Levinsons were the last to leave the party. When they made it to the doorway, Mrs. Levinson air-kissed his mother and then turned to make actual cheek contact with his father, at which time Mr. Levinson moved in to kiss Jonathan’s mother good-bye. He most likely was planning to kiss her on the cheek, but at the last moment Jonathan’s mother’s head shifted so she caught him full on the lips, and then she lingered there. It couldn’t have been more than a tenth of a second, but it was long enough for Jonathan’s eyes to shoot over to his father. His gaze was still turned to Mrs. Levinson, however, so Jonathan was the only witness to the transgression.
And then the absolute worst part happened—the part that still makes Jonathan wince when he thinks about it. Phillip Levinson, his father’s best friend, turned and said, “Bill, as always, I thoroughly enjoyed your hospitality.”
Jonathan understood in no uncertain terms that for Phillip Levinson, cuckolding his supposed best friend was far more pleasurable than having sex with his supposed best friend’s wife. Jonathan also knew that the proper response would have been to direct his anger toward his mother. She was the one, after all, who had betrayed their family. And yet, since that day, he always laid blame solely at his father’s feet. None of this would have happened if William Caine had been more of a man. Able to satisfy his wife, and capable of putting the fear of God in the hearts of the Phillip Levinsons of the world, so that they knew they took their lives into their own hands if they even thought about interfering with what was his.
Jonathan was far from an introspective person, but even he knew that the experience was formative, not only in creating the distance between him and his father that persisted to this day, but in shaping the man he had become. In the end, it was Phillip Levinson—a man who took what he wanted—who became his role model, and Jonathan’s father was reduced to a cautionary tale.
When the skater’s routine is completed, the elder Caine turns away from the screen. Jonathan views it as his cue to speak.
“So I went to my high school reunion last night.”
“Yeah?”
“I told you about it yesterday. Do you remember?”
“Um. Okay.”
Jonathan assumes that his father has no recollection of the previous day’s discussion, and that rattling off names of his long-lost classmates will only confuse him. But when the next figure skater takes the ice, his father’s focus stays with Jonathan, as if he’s trying to engage and is looking for help.
“Do you remember Jacqueline Lawson?” Jonathan asks.
“No,” his father says. “Is she your friend?”
“I went to high school with her. We weren’t friends back then, but she was the prettiest girl in the class. Prom queen and all that.”
“Your mother was the prettiest girl in my class,” he replies.
This isn’t true. Jonathan’s parents didn’t attend high school together. He sees no reason to correct his father, however, so he continues about Jackie.
“She still lives in East Carlisle, so we may see each other for lunch while I’m here. She’s married to this guy who was a real jerk in high school and, by all accounts, hasn’t changed much since then.”
Silence ticks by, which Jonathan has by now realized doesn’t necessarily mean that a response will not be forthcoming. But this time, none comes. William Caine has since retreated into the black hole that is his illness.
* * *
Two hours later, Jonathan is back at his house—his parents’ house, more accurately—composing a text message.
So nice seeing you, Jackie (I remembered, not Jacqueline). Do you want to get lunch tomorrow?
He reads it again. His main concern is that he’ll frighten her away, and he almost mentions again that he’s married, but that’s protesting too much, he thinks. After checking his handiwork one more time, he presses the send button.
She answers almost immediately.
Love to. Just tell me where and when.
How about that? Love to.
He gives fleeting thought to waiting until later to respond, but then decides he’d just as soon not play such games.
1 pm. Does the Chateau still exist?
LOL Sure does. C u there.