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Jack
He leaned in, examining his distorted reflection in the glossy finish of the mahogany coffin. Yellow carnations adorned the steps leading from the pews to this altar. A sacrifice of proportions not yet felt had been made without his consent. His last connection to heritage had finally been cut. This could not be the end.
So many steps had been made in the years since tragedy first struck their family. Bridges that had been burned were rebuilt with a new foundation of trust. They met as strangers and grew to be the family that biology dictated. It would appear that all that work was for naught.
He thought of a similar scene two years earlier when his mother had finally succumbed to the battle waging in her mind. She had not noticed her proximity to the steps when she ran from the fire she imagined in her room. She did not feel her bones break as she tumbled to the bottom landing - the grinding vertebrae of her neck were the last sounds she heard. When the doctors had found her three hours later, her lips were already blue. A few days later he had arrived to plan the funeral by himself. His sister would not come.
He could only assume she had received his calls and emails that time two years ago, and again now, but in reality he could not know for sure. Their father did not approve of her marriage three years earlier to the man they had never met. Frankly, neither did he. The wedding was supposedly beautiful. Had they not eloped, someone might have been there to agree. He finally met his brother-in-law in the early morning after he arrived on the red-eye. His sister's screams from the next room sent a chill through the house. After he heard her run to the bathroom, he ran to her room to see her husband sitting beside a small red stain on the bed. She assured him she was happy as the couple left that afternoon. She waved goodbye and he was sure the unease he felt was merely exaggeration. He had not heard from her since.
Now here he was again. Reliving events still too clear in his mind. He did not need to learn the lines. They were already committed.
He laid a hand on the surprisingly warm wood and watched the faint frost of condensation form a border around his fingers. A stray tear fell and rallied the dew to its ranks as it slid down the side of the casket. His display would have stirred a mix of emotion from the mourners had the pews behind him not been empty.
The last chapter of his family's history had begun, the pen thrust into his hand, and his death the only ending. He took a deep breath and said goodbye to his father.
Jack McPhee was now an orphan.
The cold biting breeze that blew through her hair revealed the onset of fall. Beyond her, across the gentle green hills of the cemetery, trees were already beginning to turn. Red and orange leaves danced like fire in the whistling wind. She could see him standing under a canopy of elm branches a few feet away.
She approached the somber figure with reservation. It had been nearly five years since they had last seen one another. She could think of no reason why he ignored her in the church and resolved that she had simply gone unnoticed. The thought churned her stomach.
Her hand settled on his shoulder and he jumped at the touch, but she could tell he was more surprised when he turned to see who owned the invading limb. His face was just as she remembered it, only now it held a confidence she had never seen before. Perhaps his change of address had agreed with him. She stole her hand back for a moment, and then with a comforting smile, reached out both arms to surround him. At first she could feel his body tense at the touch, but when she was close enough, he relaxed into her embrace. His smell brought her back five years to times when life was so much easier.
Of course that sense of ease was relative. At the time, it didn't seem so easy. The last time she saw him was in the week following her hellish fourth-year finals, graduation, and being dumped by Paul, her boyfriend of two years. She was devastated for months and closed herself off from her friends. By the time she was ready to reenter the world, Jack had moved away. An annual letter at Christmas was all they shared.
Years later she found herself living in a brownstone in Boston writing for two newspapers while trying to finish her second novel. She shared her house with Roger, a network technician for Proctor & Gamble. Technically they were a couple, but she felt more like another possession in his museum of artifacts that once he had them never looked at again. She was too involved in her writing to be bothered with moving out and being single again.
She watched the sun as it continued its low journey across the sky. The red and purple clouds looked so comfortable. She wanted to reach out and curl up in one. Sleep hadn't come to her in days.
Now she stood under the elm tree with Jack, and instinctively she reached her hand over to his. She expected him to pull away, but was relieved when he didn't. The human touch was almost unbearable as it heated her body.
She felt him turn to look at her. "Jen sent me," she answered the question of his stare. "She wanted to be here."
"Of course," he said trying to remove the contempt from his voice. "Look, Jo, there are enough memories dislodged in my head right now. That particular one can stay caged up."
She knew very little about his falling out with Jen. He never mentioned it in his letters, and Jack was not a subject Jen brought up on her own. And if it did surface, she made sure to gloss over it and move on. What Joey could piece together she did not understand.
Jack turned back to the clouds hovering over the crimson trees. It was almost as if the picture were melting the hatred she had surfaced. He tightened his hold on her hand and shook it slightly.
"I'm glad you're here," he said softly. "I'd forgotten how comfortable it was to be with you."
She looked at him, surprised at first, and then that small light sparked by his words grew within her, spreading to every inch of her skin, painting a smile on her face. It had been a long time since someone had paid her such a compliment. She leaned up and kissed Jack's stubbled cheek, then rested her head on his shoulder. She wasn't far from home, but for the moment it felt like there was insurmountable distance between her and the laundry, the bills, and Roger. For the first time in years, she felt free.
She heard the phone ring for a fourth time, but still she did not leave the bedside. She listened for any more noise from downstairs, but only the muffled voice of the television carried up the through the stale air. She folded the edge of the sheet down over her grandmother's chest as she heard the machine in the next room pick up the call.
"Hey Jen, it's Joey." She felt the red in her cheeks rush to the surface. Her heart leapt to her throat. "Just thought I'd check in with you," Joey continued. "It was great seeing Jack again. He looks great. He... well, you were right. He's not doing so well." The pounding in her chest was too great. She rushed to the next room to answer but Joey had already hung-up, but not before leaving the number of her hotel room in Providence.
She slumped the phone back on its cradle and stared at it a moment, wondering if she should call Joey back. The temptation was great. She wanted so desperately to be there for Jack like she had been in the days of innocence - to hold him in her arms and let him cry on her shoulder, to be his everything. She selfishly longed for the days when his suffering was greater than hers and she had a reason to care about someone else. Someone worth her energy. But then Jack met Sean and all of a sudden she was not the keeper of his feelings and secrets. Selfishly, she despised Sean, but couldn't help but love his dashing looks and keen intelligence. She knew she had two options, to break them up and live with the guilt or to find herself a boyfriend of her own. Luckily, she came across Brian, a clerk at the Boston Bay library, who happened to be in the right place at the right time when Jen fell from a stepstool reaching for an old book in the Rare Book Stacks. They hit it off immediately and suddenly school became a third priority, after Jack and Brian.
A few months before graduation, Jack was busy applying to graduate schools while trying to deal with the pain of Sean's sudden and unexpected departure. Everything was fine up until suddenly Sean became cold and distant and eventually, as far as Jen knew, he just left. Things were still going really well with Brian, or so she thought. Secretly, he was trying to understand why he was runner up to Jack with her attention. He suggested they take some time apart to figure things out. Jen assured him that she loved him. He told her he believed her but still felt that she loved Jack more. He left with a duffle bag of his belongings. She knew immediately this was not like their previous arguments. She went drunk and crying to Jack, who in his own drunken indifference said it was probably true. Jen threw a bottle, or something of equal weight at his head while words of bitter, jaded, and fag were voiced loudly. For some reason Jack laughed at the sight of his blood and then proceeded to push Jen out of his apartment. Three days later, Jen had cooled off and went to Jack's to apologize. All she found was an empty apartment. She tried to track him down, but dead ends were all she could find. She didn't hear from him until a year later when Andie disappeared and Jack was scared. She was relieved to know he was okay, but knew their friendship was beyond salvation.
She attended Mrs. McPhee's funeral two years later, but sat in the back of the cathedral and left before Jack saw her. She could not summon the strength to go again now. Caring for her grandmother was far too draining.
She walked back to Evelyn's room and continued what had now become her full-time job. She pulled the sheet all the way down to the foot of the bed, and then brought the wheelchair up beside it. "Okay, sit up now, Grams," she said while swinging her grandmother's legs off the bed. "Good." It was less encouragement than it was habitual. She then reached behind Evelyn's back and took hold of the waistband of her pants. In one swift motion, she lifted and turned and had her sitting in the wheelchair. Almost. Just as she leg go, the chair rolled back and her grandmother fell down to the ground.
"Shit!"
She stumbled to her feet and then ran out to the hallway and called downstairs for help. She walked back into the room and looked at the frail woman lying in a heap on the ground. She wondered why she gave so much to a woman who no longer remembered her.
He kicked off his shoes and threw his jacket on the chair in front of the television. He walked to the fridge and grabbed a beer. The phone rang, but he paid it no attention. He twisted off the bottle cap and threw it towards the sink. Whether it landed there, he did not know as he turned and walked over the couch. The phone rang a fourth time and the machine picked up. He couldn't hear the message being left from where he was downstairs. He picked up the remote for the television and began changing channels while guzzling the beer. He stopped, lifted his sleeve to his arm and grimaced at the traces of cigarette smoke left in the fibers. He knew he would be found out, but he no longer cared. She could give him the cancer speech all she wanted, he already had it memorized, but still it wasn't enough. The rush of nicotine and alcohol were all that kept him from jumping into the Charles River from the nearest bridge.
He heard steps on the hardwood floor upstairs. Shit. He finished his beer, set it down on the table and went to get another. He was halfway through it when he heard a large crash upstairs. Moments later her heard her call, "Pacey, get up here."
Climbing the stairs he found Mrs. Ryan lying on the ground, her right hand shaking, and Jen sitting on the edge of the bed a few feet away. He saw the wheelchair sitting off in the corner and figured out what had happened.
"Can you help me," Jen asked with an edge he couldn't quite place.
Without response, he walked over to Mrs. Ryan, and together, he and Jen lifted her into the wheelchair. He straightened her nightgown and patted her hand.
"Thanks, Jack," she said without looking at him. He looked at Jen who just looked away, shaking her head. Mrs. Ryan turned to him and scowled. "Who are you?"
He smiled. He'd been asking himself that same question for years. "It's Pacey, Mrs. Ryan."
"Pacey," she shouted, hoping it might rattle a memory locked somewhere in her mind. When it seemed she had given up, he saw the corner of her lip curl up. "Get out of my kitchen."
He laughed. "Okay, but only after I take a cookie."
"No you most certainly won't." She chuckled. Or coughed. "Not until you wash your filthy little paws."
"I will," he assured her.
Jen interrupted their banter by coming between them and rolling the chair to the window so that Mrs. Ryan could watch the leaves fall. She flipped the brake on at the side of the wheel and then stormed out of the room, making her anger very clear in her steps as she descended the stairs.
He followed her, knowing an argument was forthcoming, but was surprised when he found her in the kitchen finishing the beer he had started.
"She seems better," he said opening the fridge.
"Don't fool yourself. Not even Alzheimer's could rid someone of the memory of you. God's not that forgiving."
"Thanks, I'll remember that when I see the big guy." He slammed his already empty bottle on the granite counter and then took another before walking over to the couch.
"Enough with the suicide talk, Pacey." She wasn't mad. "If you were going to do it, you would have done it by now. It's not a weapon you can use with me anymore."
She was right, but he didn't know how to stop himself.
"I don't know what the fuck to tell you anymore. Stop drinking. Stop smoking. Stop hating Dawson for ruining your life. But it's always the same story, Pace. Nothing I can say will change a fucking thing. You have to do -"
"Do it myself. Thank you for saving me the money of buying a self-help book. Are you done?"
"Fuck you, Pacey. You know that I worry about you, and that a decade of friendship is important to me. But I don't have the time or the energy to let you pull me down."
"And the sex?" He had never seen more shame and exhaustion coupled with fear and guilt assemble in her eyes. He hit a nerve, and was immediately sorry for it. He was the one he wanted to beat up on, not her.
She wiped away the water that was beginning to well beneath her eyes. "Fuck. I haven't cried in months. I'll be damned if you're the one to change that."
"You're welcome to make me cry, if it'll make you feel better." Hell, it might make me feel better. God, let me feel something.
She looked up, her eyes piercing him. "Jack's father is dead."
Her words hit him unexpectedly. He thought of Mr. and Mrs. McPhee lying side by side under six feet of earth. He thought of Andie, lying somewhere in an unmarked grave or worse, with the knowledge that he could have saved her gnawing at his chest. He thought of Dawson living in his expensive Los Angeles condo, living his dream. He thought of Jen, confined to a life of solitude, caring for the very woman who had turned her life around. He thought of Joey, a published author trapped in a relationship that was draining her creativity. He thought of Jack, the one and only true friend he felt he ever had; a friend suffering from more pain than he deserved.
He had played the hero to so many people over the course of his own life, but now it all sat in ruins. And he stood there, feet away from Jen, and felt the tears streaming down his face. He had forgotten what they felt like, how they matted the skin as they crisscrossed undetermined paths. He tasted the salt as they drifted past his lips. For the first time in years he was almost happy.
Joey
Jen
Pacey