Number 2

 

Number 2        

            Remembering Connie brought a flood of corresponding thoughts to Jack’s tired mind. He wanted to know more about his wife, for one. The love of Connie and Jennifer had seemed so simple over the phone, so free of the tangles and webs that held him to the lies and toleration that was his marriage. Jack Randon was a quiet man, but he certainly wasn’t self absorbed, and lately the antics of Lydia had been slowly driving him up the wall, bit by bit, as she failed to realize what a mess he really was.

            Jack wondered what had brought him and Lydia together in the first place. They had met at a pub at Rowan University during a dry spell in autumn that surprised all the students who had been wearing their winter coats and snow boots for almost two months by that time. He remembered her bare legs and dancing toes on the hem of his pants, and the drunken slur of words slipped between them. And he remembered taking her back to his dorm, and waking up without knowing who was next to him except for the memory of the bar and the beer and the strangely warm weather for that time of year.

            He had rolled over and tapped her naked shoulder and asked her what her name was, and when she opened her eyes she shrieked and rolled off the bed, achieving a small concussion for her troubles, and he didn’t actually learn her name until she finally came out of the hospital room and approached him in his confused state and asked him if he would like to please have some coffee with her, because she thought she owed him that much for the blood she got on his bedroom floor.

            Those first few hours with Lydia had doubtlessly been the unintentional, but nevertheless irrevocable seeds of love. For surely no one could object to a damsel in distress, suffering injuries that Jack had caused, especially since that damsel happened to be the infamously beautiful Lydia. Jack was such a shy man in college, without the comforts of home, that he was open to any invitation of friendship or contact, and Lydia had been the first to request a date in what had seemed like a long, long time. And from that moment on, she never left him alone. He accompanied her to various parties and outings, which always ended with Lydia having had too much to drink or smoke or whatever the theme of the night had been, and Jack being left to sober her up to get her ready for her classes in the morning.

            Business school was really much harder than he had expected, which was probably due to the fact that he was doing the work for two people: himself and his beautiful, wayward lady. But for as much trouble as Lydia caused him, she also brought him more pleasure than he had experienced before. She forced him to be social, even when it meant babysitting her and her irresponsibility. She also tolerated his oddities, and on the rare occasion, was exceedingly gentle and observant when it came to convincing him to be on her side. Jack was a very impressionable young man, and he was willing to fit to her mold in order to retain those few moments of absolute happiness she brought into his welcoming embrace.

            Yet, here he was now, tired of taking care of Lydia the socialite, and working to death to provide for his family. All he wanted was to tell her that he was going to leave for a few hours, to see how she could take care of things on her own. She always seemed to think that she didn’t need him, and was very vocal about that assumption on the rare occasion that he spoke his mind and started a fight. But, of course, he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t leave his children unattended to, even if their mother was with them.

            His hand itched to draw, to do anything to keep his mind off of his wife and his seemingly failed attempts at a marriage. He scratched his head, and then his elbow, and then went back to his room and changed his shirt a few times. He sat at the kitchen table and read the newspaper from front to back, even the obituaries, much to his disgust.

            And then, without further ado, he summoned Violet, protesting, from her room and sat her down at the recliner and set to work with his sketchpad and a poorly sharpened pencil for the better part of Saturday morning. Violet was confused and unhappy with his plans at first, but when he went into her room and emerged with her ipod and went into the kitchen to fetch her some ice cream, her mood lightened and she cooperated relatively well as his first model in twenty-five years. Jack’s hand was unseasoned and out of practice. The pencil smudged and he ran out of eraser in the first five minutes. But as time wore on, he began to remember what he liked so much about pencils and paper, and drawing in general.

            Violet kept leaning forward and asking to see him work in progress, but he would snatch it away from her sneaky gaze and tell her to wait until he was done, good grief, how was an artist supposed to work when his model wouldn’t sit still? And then she would shrug and sit back in the recliner and listen to the scratch of the graphite on the surface of the paper. She had never seen her father so intent on anything. His hands flew across the paper, rubbing and shading and smudging. His face was all wrinkles and frowns, but every once in awhile he would light up and look at the page from a different angle, look back at Violet, and start to work again with a hint of a smile. The room was warm and quiet. The twins and Lydia were at a soccer tournament in New York for the day, so there were no distractions. Jack would hum Beatles songs as he worked, while Violet hummed whatever bubblegum pop crap had invaded her MP3. Overall, the day felt close and tidy and right in the minds of both of the Randons in New Jersey on that fuzzy Saturday morning.

            The finished product, after two hours of drawing, not including the restroom breaks and ice cream stops and the decision that an actual breakfast might be a good idea, surprised them both. Jack looked at the figure on his paper and looked at Violet and saw almost the same person. The person on the paper, Violet pointed out, looked a lot like Jack. She looked reflective and satisfied with herself. Violet had never known that she looked like her dad. Jack was silently pleased. He was never one to compliment his own work, so he tore the page from the notebook and handed it to Violet, as payment for her modeling service. She winked at him and disappeared back into her room, and he was left standing alone, once again, to ponder what had just occurred.

            Violet was a shy girl, but when she was around her friends she voiced her opinion better than most. It had been a long time since Jack had spent any considerable amount of time with her, and the morning had been refreshing in that sense. It was also nice to know that she now knew something about him that no one, except for Connie, knew. That he could draw, and loved to draw, was something he didn’t want to make public. Not yet anyway. The idea that Violet might show the portrait to her mother didn’t strike him until later that day, but he felt like Violet knew that it was a sort of secret between them, and didn’t want to re-state the obvious if that was the case. And even if she did show it to her mother, Jack would be secretly pleased because it would mean that she liked it enough to pass it around.

            So for the rest of the day, his spirits were lifted considerably and he made a mental note to call Connie as soon as he remembered, so that he could tell her that he had taken her advice seriously.

            When Lydia returned home, Jasper and Jacob retold the tale of their epic soccer matches as loud as they possibly could, and he congratulated them on their wins and helped them brush their teeth and sent them to bed with a pat on the head for each.

            Lydia stood before him now, exhausted from a day full of toddlers and soccer balls and screaming mothers. He laid his hand on her shoulder and pulled her close to him. Her smell was and always would be intoxicating to Jack. For a moment, his high spirits allowed him to forget his frustrations, and he decided that they could wait until tomorrow, after all. And so he took her hand and led her to their bedroom, where he tried his best to prove that he still loved her, and she tried her best to do the same.