Rescue Fantasies (Conclusion) (1054 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 2 on 12 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by fried-green-potatoes (View user info) at 2006-01-22 07:42:04 EST
http://www.ubersite.com/m/72067 (Part 1)
http://www.ubersite.com/m/80255 (Part 2)
http://www.ubersite.com/m/80857 (Part 3)
http://www.ubersite.com/m/81155 (Part 4)
http://www.ubersite.com/m/69317 (Part 5)
http://www.ubersite.com/m/81435 (Part 6)
http://www.ubersite.com/m/81735 (Part 7)
http://www.ubersite.com/m/82005 (Part 8)
http://www.ubersite.com/m/82334 (Part 9)
http://www.ubersite.com/m/82357 (Part 10)
http://www.ubersite.com/m/82387 (Part 11)
http://www.ubersite.com/m/82562 (Part 12)
http://www.ubersite.com/m/82622 (Part 13)
http://www.ubersite.com/m/82686 (Part 14)
Boston and New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, all the great cities of the Eastern Seaboard put out a big welcome to travelers. Their skylines explode in concrete, glass and steel—but the drive south into Washington gives you nothing. City fathers long ago decreed that nothing could rise higher than the Washington Monument, perched by the Potomac River on the far end of town. The horizon is empty and the trip into D.C. is nothing more than a numb study in urban density, building mile after mile. Farmland turns to country estate turns to big-house-little-lot community turns to condo complex turns to rowhouse, office and retail-- of it dumping into a low-slung core of federal buildings fringed with liquor stores, topless bars and other diversions.
You're there before you know it, without a clue of how you got there.
It's a drive that makes your mind drift off, and John could have done without it as he crossed the Mason-Dixon Line again, heading into Maryland and points south. A few miles from the small town of Havre de Grace, he spied the dull glow in the rear-view mirror-- Our Lady of the Highways, a 20-foot-tall Blessed Virgin, floodlit and placed by the Oblates of St. Francis near the scene of one of the worst crashes in the history of Interstate 95. Years of travel along the highway had taught John to avert his eyes from the Madonna-Colossus, this intercessor for safe motoring who had failed him decades before. Just a look at the statue was all it ever took: Suddenly he was there again, a young boy standing alone with his father outside Fort Sam Houston in Texas, both of them staring into the fresh hole that was now his mother's eternal rest.
"You did all you could, son," Peter Gault softly spoke as they walked from the grave to the car. "Nobody tried to help her more--nobody."
John knew that his father was referring to the Easter egg hunts. To the man, they showed a dutiful son purging the house of the liquor that doctors said would kill his mother if she didn't stop. To the boy, the Easter egg hunts now meant something else. He remembered the look in his mother's eyes the day she died: grudging, irredeemable, a look that pushed back hard every time they exchanged glances. Her eyes were now empty and desperate, as if John had pinned her under water with his hunts and she just wanted to surface The woman ached for just enough drink to keep her comfortable through the day, but the boy had scoured the house dry. She managed to rouse herself from the bed just a few minutes after John left for school. An overcoat over nightgown and slippers was all his mother wore as she drove to the nearest package store. There, in the parking lot, she drank from the fifth of Smirnoff wrapped in brown paper, the bottle that her son would undoubtedly find and take after coming home from school. She drank hard and fast. Then she put the Chrysler in drive, pulled onto the two-lane highway and plowed into a car going the other way, killing herself and two others.
"You did all you could, son. Remember that."
Remembering was the enemy—his father could never figure that part out-- and it had doubled its strength once John returned from New York. He marshaled his will, determined to cultivate the numbness that sustained him for many years before Jan appeared. The dull chill was firmly planted in his heart by the time he reached his apartment, even before the key had been turned and the bottle had been poured. One day flowed into the next. He would struggle to his feet each morning, stiff and sore from sleeping drunk in an oversized living room chair. A few minutes to clean up, a day's work for a day's pay, and it was back to the apartment once again and the chair beside the small fireplace in the corner of the apartment. He would watch the flames in stupor and silence, waiting for sleep to take hold.
People would ask about Jan and he would shrug and say nothing. Their guess was as good as his. There was the first flurry of questions on his return from New York, a day or two after she had been fired for failing to report for work. There was a second wave of questions a few days later, when that quirky filler story hit the newswires about a missing persons case and a mix-up with a burial in Pennsylvania that sent authorities searching for a 36-year-old woman and her daughter. He became skilled at avoiding the subject of Jan. He ate at his desk or a nearby park each day. He generally avoided the haunts where old drinking buddies would press him about where he'd been those many months. "See, I told ya," a barfly acquaintance said to a friend one night as he nodded to John and smiled. "They always come back."
Seven weeks after his trip to New York, a small package sat at John's door when he came home from work. It was wrapped in brown paper, tied with string and addressed in Jan's hand with a Brodie, Idaho, postmark. There was no note inside. Just the end-table picture of Kylie .
John stared long and hard at the portrait that evening. The dark-haired girl stood frozen in time, decked out in the soccer jersey, her eyes a little too troubled for the moment. Ignoring the arm draped over her shoulder, she stared back at John-- just a little girl with a sweet mouth that favored her mother. His palms traced the fine mahogany frame and his fingers played with the black metal tabs holding the back in place. The back panel popped open. Inside was not the close-cropped photo of Kylie that John expected but a larger shot, one that had been carefully folded to fit the frame. John smoothed the picture to reveal Kylie and another dark-haired girl with an arm around Jan's daughter: same size, same build, same dark hair cut in the same way. But with a harder, slightly mischievous grin.
So this was Dee.
The fire felt warm and bright on John's face that night. Orange and yellow, it pulsed and reeled with delight at the man's generous tending and a bounty of paper and wood. By the time John opened his bloodshot eyes the next morning, the warm dance had long since ended. All that was left was a small corner of mahogany that somehow had lost the flame.
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Note: This story has been renamed "White Night"
User Reviews
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2006-01-23 11:17:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Rock the everloving fuck onwards. I liked this story.
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2006-01-23 01:40:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I was afraid you were going to say something like that!
If I was John, I'd need to know... but I've already had my whiskey for tonight,
which must mean it's time for bed.
Once again, excellent series. Thanks for calling it to my attention.
Submitted by fried-green-potatoes (user info) at 2006-01-23 01:29:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2006-01-22 23:09:06 (#)
Ranking: 2
So, was Kylie or Jan the trigger-puller?
---
Dunno, Coyote--and thank you again for your help on this story.
If you put a gun to my head (sorry), I'd say it was an accidental shooting just the way the girl described it to the grandfather. But the "whom killed her and why" is not resolved and doesn't really influence the larger piece: It drives John crazy that there's some part of this woman that he can't understand or possess (Part 4). That's what propels him, not any genuine concern about a dead girl. (After all, he runs to a bottle at the end, not the authorities.) The fact that Jan withholds a part of herself puts him on a reckless course that destroys several lives, including his. So I guess, in that sense, he's the trigger-puller.
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2006-01-22 23:09:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Nicely wrapped up...
So, was Kylie or Jan the trigger-puller?
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-01-22 20:14:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
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Submitted by Tubabuhst_01 (user info) at 2006-01-22 12:41:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by fried-green-potatoes (user info) at 2006-01-22 12:09:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Thanks to all who read this. She'll probably kill me for doing this, but special thanks to Circe, a very gifted writer who understood this project from the start and who, in very unfickle muse fashion, always was there give me a nod and an encouraging word or two in the review section.
Submitted by DCWoody (user info) at 2006-01-22 11:59:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Jebus, Snark has competition.
Submitted by pen_name (user info) at 2006-01-22 10:43:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2006-01-22 10:03:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by jack11058 (user info) at 2006-01-22 09:48:35 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
please tell me you're publishing this as a novella or some such
Submitted by Circe (user info) at 2006-01-22 09:24:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Email answered and random psychosis hastily apologized for and relegated to the "I changed my mind" category.
This story was amazing. You held up the pace and the intensity the whole time, and it never faltered.... there wasn't a single episode NOT worth the time it took to read it.... three or four times, usually, because your gift for dialogue and language is outstanding.
Congratulations, and I'm crossing my fingers hoping to see a lot more of your stuff.