Number 1

 

Number 1

            He had given his hand to fate. A simple gesture, passed among friends or even strangers. Yet this was a more significant encounter. Jack Randon was a man who held strictly to the belief that he controlled his own destiny. Yet, here he was giving it away. I can remember only parts of those months, quietly lit by the spark of metamorphosis. Other parts have grown fuzzy over the years, struggling to be forgotten. I’ve run the story through my mind, but one piece is always missing. It is categorized in my memories as the summer Jack Randon threw his values out the window; the summer Jack Randon forgot his responsibilities. In any case, it was the summer that determined the fate of Jack.

            Summer was always a busy time for the Randon family man. He was expected to plan camping trips, barbeques, business trips, and dates with his wife. In each of these areas, expectations came in greater quantities with the crazy belief that one has more time during the summer to do these things. Forget the expression summer vacation, summers were the busiest times. Jack Randon’s were certainly no exception.

            In the mornings, he would brush back his long dark hair, poke at his flaws in the mirror, and contemplate why he had to go to the neighbor’s house in the new orange swimming trunks his wife had bought him that given week. He would wonder why he always had to stub his toes on the plastic light sabers and toy trucks left helter skelter in the living room by his four year old twin boys. And he would wonder why the liquor cabinet was always empty and why the Jonas brothers would not shut up as he neared his daughter’s bedroom.

            There were many aspects of life to wonder about, as a father and a husband. It seemed as though Jack was always forgotten in the family moments and plans that were thrown on his shoulders to make. No one asked him if he enjoyed grilling hotdogs on the back porch or driving the twins to their various soccer camps throughout the hottest months. No one asked him how much he liked paying for the chip dips and swimming suits and sleeping bags that cluttered the shopping list every time they went to the store. No, it was always assumed that summer was the time to have fun and splurge, and that there was no possibility that Jack could not be enjoying himself as much as the next person, which is why it was surprising when, one morning, his wife left the bed and came back with a notepad and pencil and asked him, specifically, what he wanted to do this particular summer.

            He sat up in bed and told her Thanks for asking, but he would rather just lie in bed for a few more hours, and maybe do some other things, if she would please put the notepad away. After all, it was only seven in the morning. But later in the day he remembered her proposition and pondered what he would have said if he had taken it seriously. Surely Lydia hadn’t meant it- there were already too many things planned for the summer, and too many expectations to meet. He had a newly acquired raise at work, and this had to be sustained as well. Violet had recently had her wisdom teeth taken out, and there were dental expenses to pay. The boys too were always an expense, and when they weren’t costing him money they were costing him time spent away from his work. And although he loved all his children to the best of his ability, and his wife often enough, there was a considerable hole left inside him that was waiting to be filled with some other affection. Subconsciously, he was always on the lookout for whatever it was that could fill it. And he had the faint memory that at one time the hole had not been there at all, which led him to the belief that he had forgotten something very dear to him.

            Silently, and unbeknownst to any of his family, Jack began to formulate in his mind how he could change his present situation for the better. When he sat at the dinner table, absorbed in thoughts of hotel rooms and road signs, he would always be snapped back to reality by a request to pass the ketchup, please, or by his wife asking how Frank at work had been treating him since he had stopped bringing gourmet coffee to share with his co-workers. These conversations were, of course, of little to no help in his scheming. They only further frustrated his growing canyon of positive feelings toward his middle class existence. It was because of these conversations, so drained of real intelligence and importance to Jack, that one night, while Lydia had taken the boys to one of her girlfriends’ house for supper and Violet was at a slumber party in the next town over that he decided to make a phone call.

            There was a girl by the name of Connie Clyde that had been one of his only real friends in high school. He had taken her to the junior and senior prom, but they had never considered themselves to be “dating” or whatever people called it back then. He hardly considered his wife’s previous relation to him as being one of a girlfriend- she really had just seemed to be constantly around, and very agreeable to look at. But Connie had been a better friend to him than Lydia ever was, because he had met her at a time in his life in which he had been more open, more prosperous, and more easily influenced by silly hopes and dreams about the perfect adult life.

            He picked up the receiver and dialed her number, which he had looked up in the phone book only minutes before. He was anxious for a moment that it was perhaps not the same person, or that she wouldn’t remember him, but when she answered on the third ring and he introduced himself, she seemed amiable enough and asked him what had changed since they had last seen each other, twenty-five years earlier.

            Of course, much had changed.

            Connie and Jack had met at the eighth grade ice cream social, awkward and young as they both were. Back in those days, Jack had been quite the dreamer- a closet artist and hopeless romantic; he read on average a book a day and spent his other free time sketching human figures, nudes, and the occasional cat or dog.

            At the ice cream social, he had asked Connie to dance. Neither of them had ever danced before and neither was too eager to try again once the song had ended. They wound up in a darker corner of the gym talking about middle school things like the wrath of the science teacher Mr. Grenton, or how their parents wouldn’t let them watch MTV. Yet, they talked to only each other that night and it soon became apparent that neither had a better friend to turn to.

            In the winter of their sophomore year, Jack had entertained the thought of Connie as more than a friend, but she never seemed to notice his attempts at flirtation and he soon let it slide to the wayside. Already, she knew more about him than anyone else. She was the only person in the world who had seen his drawings, and he was the only person in the world to know about her abusive father and to have seen the bruises on her arms. Together, neither had to keep a secret trapped inside. Together, they could each be the other’s diary and their system worked well throughout the awkward years of puberty and ice cream socials.

            Jack asked Connie if she remembered how they met, and she replied that she did. He asked her if her favorite animal was still a basset hound, and she replied that she hadn’t thought about that for a while. So much has changed, he told her. He no longer sketched pictures in the dark or hid them in the back of his closet. Rather, he hid them in his mind. It had been years since he had had the time to think about art. He had been too busy at work, too busy with the twins, and too busy being the average adult male…

            Connie, on the other hand, said that she was doing remarkably well in comparison. Her father had been imprisoned ten years prior, and she now had someone she was dating who was taking good care of her. Jack congratulated her, with just a tinge of jealousy, and assured Connie that he was now happily married to a woman named Lydia, who, in turn, took very good care of him as well, and he asked her the name of her boyfriend.

            Girlfriend, actually, she told him. There was a brief moment of silence on either end of the line, and then Connie started again. Her name was Jennifer, and she was a record producer from New York. They had been together for seven months, that coming August. Jack was still silent, but one mystery of his adolescence was now solved. No wonder Connie and he had never been more that just friends. No wonder.

            This Lydia sounds lovely, said Connie. Tell me about her. Do you have any kids?

            Lydia was indeed a lovely woman, physically perhaps more than mentally, but he had done well for himself in the area of marriage and had married, probably, better than he deserved. She was a realtor in the city, and catered toward the richer business people in the area. She enjoyed dancing and socializing, and in all aspects of her hobbies and pastimes was the opposite of Jack, but didn’t know it. Jack told Connie about his three kids, the four-year-old twins Jasper and Jacob, and his wiry and favorite Violet, the seventeen-year-old. He told her about their plans for camping trips and soccer and swimming lessons for the boys. She replied that his life seemed right out of a magazine, the perfect family with a working dad, stay-at-home mom, and three healthy kids.

            All Jack could think of was how skewed this vision was. His life did appear to be perfect, but it was almost robotic, tainted. There was no emotion. It was lacking such a key element- something he couldn’t put his finger on. His family was perfect, his job was good enough, but his heart wasn’t in any of it.

            So Connie asked him what his plans for the summer were. She meant, aside from the soccer camps and barbeques. What was he going to do, just for him?

            And Jack replied as honestly as he could, he just didn’t know. He hadn’t really thought about it.

            So before they got off the phone, Connie made a request. She told Jack to do at least one thing for himself that summer. She wanted him to think about art again, and to give her a call if he wanted to sell anything he made. She said that Jennifer was always on the lookout for new art to put on CD covers, and that she liked to buy as much from amateur artists as she could.

            Jack thanked Connie and clicked down the receiver. And later that night, after Lydia had come home and the kids were all in bed, he found the notepad from that morning and wrote at the top of it:

What I Want To Do This Summer:

                               

                                1) Think about ART