seen them every hour or so since his birth, they might have actually done what she wanted them to do—make him change his mind.
Sadly enough, his mother simply knew no other way to communicate. Honest conversation hadn’t worked with Jack’s father, so she’d relied on tears and emotional blackmail for as long as Jack could remember. His father had responded with prolonged absences from the house.
Dysfunctional did not begin to describe his parents’ relationship. It—and his sister’s three miserably failed walks down the aisle—had certainly been enough to sour Jack on the entire institution of marriage.
Relationships? Sure. He was all for romance. Dating. Companionship. From shared beer at a ball game, to candlelight dinners or walks along the shores of Lake Michigan on a windy afternoon, he thoroughly enjoyed spending time with women.
Not to mention good, frantic sex with someone who blew his mind but didn’t expect to pick out curtains together the next morning. Someone like his ex, or any number of other females he knew who would happily satisfy any of those requirements with a single phone call. Not calling any of them lately had nothing to do with his certainty that he wasn’t cut out for commitment or happily-ever-after. It had everything to do with his father’s death. Work and his obligation to his family had been all he’d thought about for several months.
“Why can’t you?” his mother prodded.
“I’ve got to wrap up the mall project I’m working on. You know I’ve planned some extended vacation time in July. I’ll come back and help you get things settled then.” Unless I get hit by a train or kidnapped by aliens…one can hope, after all.
Nah. Trains were messy. And after watching the “X-Files” for years, the alien thing didn’t sound so great, either. He really couldn’t get into the whole probing of body orifices gig.
So, a summer in Pleasantville it would be.
Thinking of how he’d originally intended to spend his long summer vacation—on a photographic big-game safari in Kenya—could almost make a grown man cry. Pampered poodles instead of elephants. Square dances instead of native tribal rituals. The chatter of blue-haired ladies sitting under hair-drying hoods instead of the roar of lions and the crackle of a raging bonfire. Small town, pouting blond princesses with teased up hair instead of worldly beauties with dark, mysterious eyes.
He sighed. “I think I’ll take a walk downtown. To walk off that great lunch.” What he really needed was to escape the stifling, decades-old, musty-rose-tinged air in the house.
“Just be careful, J.J.”
Jack cringed at the nickname that his mother refused to give up. No one but his parents had called him J.J.—or John Junior—in twenty years. Still, he supposed he could put up with it if it made her happy. She could probably use some happiness right about now; she’d taken his father’s death very hard.
“And it looks like it’s going to rain. Take your rubbers.”
He almost snorted. If she knew how badly he wanted to use a few rubbers—though, not the kind she imagined—she’d faint.
Kissing her on the forehead, he shrugged away a pang of guilt. He needed a brief break from her sadness to deal with his own. Besides, he wanted to get out of the house before his sister got back. With the three of them together, the absence of the fourth became all the more obvious.
His mother would sob quietly. His sister would wail loudly. And Jack would remain strong and quiet. He grieved for his father, too. But always alone, always in silence.
No, they hadn’t been on very good terms lately. His father had never forgiven Jack for accepting a scholarship and moving to California fifteen years before. Even after grad school, when he’d gotten a job with an architecture firm in Chicago, he’d managed to avoid all but a handful of visits. The most recent, four months before, had been to attend his father’s funeral.
He’d always figured there would be time to mend that fence, to try to make his father understand why he couldn’t stay here, couldn’t continue the family tradition and become king of Nowhereville. He’d never said that, of course, knowing the old man would have been cut to the quick at an insult to his town. He’d reminded Jack at least once a week growing up about his ancestors, who’d lived here since before the Civil War.
His mother’s roots ran even deeper, a fact she enjoyed bringing up whenever his father had started pontificating.
Funny. Walking past his father’s study, eyeing the brandy decanter and the old man’s favorite glass, he realized he’d have gladly listened to his father pontificate if it meant seeing him once more. Amazing how there always seemed to be time for one more conversation right up until time ran out. That realization had helped a lot lately in dealing with his emotional mother.
He considered it a new life’s lesson. Tomorrow might not ever come, so don’t put off what you want to do today. Grab it now or risk losing the chance forever. John Winfield, Junior…Jack to his friends…planned to stick to that mantra.
Starting today.
T HE FIRST THING Kate noticed during her walk downtown was the absence of the pungent odors of the Ohio General Paper Mill. The unpleasant aroma used to hang over the town, which had once seemed appropriate to Kate and Cassie. The mill had closed three years ago, according to her mother. That had caused the town’s bad economic situation. Kate couldn’t even conjure up any satisfaction about it. She felt only a sharp tinge of sadness, particularly when she saw the sorry condition of the town square and the courthouse. Pleasantville might not have been pleasant for the Tremaines, but it had actually once been pretty.
As she walked, she got a couple of curious looks. No one recognized her, not that she’d expected anyone to. She was no longer the pretty-in-a-quiet-way, nice girl she’d once been. That was one good thing about her move away from Pleasantville. She no longer felt the need to always be the good girl. Without Cassie around to be so flamboyantly bad, Kate had become free to speak her mind. She sometimes went out of her way to shock people, even if it was really only a defense mechanism to keep others from trying to get too close, as Armand claimed.
There were one or two people she wouldn’t mind seeing. Some of her mother’s friends had been kind. And Kate’s high school drama teacher, Mr. Otis, had been one of the smartest people she’d ever met. She imagined he was long retired by now.
Feeling hot, Kate went into the deli for a drink. She didn’t know the couple who ran the place, and they were friendlier than she’d expected. She began to relax. Maybe ten years of dislike had created an unrealistic anxiety about her trip back here.
After the deli, she continued her stroll. Heavy gray clouds blocked all but a few watery rays of sunlight and kept the unusual spring heat close to the ground. The soda helped cool her off, but her sleeveless silk blouse still clung to her body, and her ivory linen skirt hung limply in the thick humidity.
A few buildings down, in what used to be a record shop, she noticed a new business. A nail salon, judging by the neon hand in the window, which beckoned customers inside. From an angle, the middle finger on the hand appeared abnormally long, almost as thought it was flipping the bird to everyone on the street. Then she saw the name—Nail Me. “Well, now I’ve got to go in.”
“Pull up a chair, angel face,” she heard. “You want your fingers, your toes or both? I’m runnin’ a special.”
Kate had
