Liderc

So here’s the thing about Jack and Diane.

Diane walked into Jack's malt shop back when bowling shirts were paired with creased pants held up to your actual waist. She was a shy brunette from downtown and his family owned most of the bricks in the city. He smiled at her when she would come in. He’d get lost in her arrival till the cold root beer overflowed onto his hand. She would laugh and find her seat in the red booth. Where her friends were already waiting. Laughing behind their menus. There was a lot of people visiting the Malt shop on spring street that day. It was 82 degrees, a record high for southern New Hampshire in September, and there was only one place to chill out and cool off. Tappy’s Pharmacy.

After months of courting and a year of dating, Jack took Diane’s father aside and spoke the words no father wants to hear. Will you let me take your daughter away from you?

He obliged and the two were married the following June. She wore her mother’s dress and her grandmothers sapphire necklace. Jack wore a simple black suit. After their I do’s they stole away to the Bahamas for their honeymoon.

The first child took his fathers name, the second, his great uncles, Samuel.

Together they lived rather uninteresting lives. They gossiped, they fought, they loved and ate as a family every night.

Until the morning of May 22nd, 1976.

The alarm clock was on Jacks side of the bed. It is set to go off every day at 0545. Jack gets up, heads to the bathroom and twenty minutes later he is out the door. It has been this way since 1952 when he took over Tappys.

Until today.

Diane hated having the juniper bushes so close to the house. Jack said they were to keep the nosy neighbors out of their business. So in they went, and within one day they became an apartment complex for the loudest, most inconsiderate tenants. Birds.

Even with the cotton balls filling her ear canals, partly for Jacks snoring, she can still hear them hemming and hawing as they bicker with one another. But there was something else wiggling its way through the plugs. It was Jacks alarm clock.

She rolled over to shake him awake when she felt his frigid, rigid corpse.

They couldn’t even wait till after his funeral to start proposing that she move here or there, she simply couldn’t be left to live alone. Diane smirked and buried her husband. She wore the cerulean sweater that he liked so much. Tradition be damned.

Hours were spent deliberating on what to do next, with Mother. Till the geyser of fury erupted from her pursed lips.

“I will not be treated as invilid simply because I am a widow. Samuel please take me home.”

That was the end of that.

The first year was the hardest, but it made the second seem easy. By the fourth, Diane began to decline. Her mind would run loops through her empty nest. Memories broadcasted in technicolor with full surround sound replayed constantly in her minds eye.

Diane does her best to avoid the front hallway. She looks up and out for a thousand miles every time she goes up and down the stairs. Hash marks climb the banister as a vine through time. Blue for Jr, and green for Sammie. She would keep them still while Jack ruffled their hair before seeing how tall they had gotten. Inches turned to feet rather quickly. All the men in Jacks family were tall, Diane just didn’t know it would start so early.

They got a dishwasher a couple years back, a Kenmoore. Top of the line. An anniversary present from Jacks father. She remembered the day it arrived. She spent the morning in the front window, knitting Jack III a blanket. He was due any day now. The house stood empty of people but was full of warm summer light. It smelled of oat bread and Shepard’s pie. Jacks favorite. Diane used the strawberries from her garden to make the jam. Only got a couple jars this year though, the birds busted through the chicken wire and wiped out a few plants.

As she loaded her two plates, two cups and two sets of silverware into the Kenmore, as she has for twenty years, she stood up too fast, the blood rushed out of her face, and she began to fall.

She knew it was Jacks hands that saved her. She would know them from any others. She could still feel his grip on her shoulders and arms. His cologne was in the air.

Diane slept on his side of the bed that night. She used his pillow and hugged her own. Diane was a proud woman. Especially when there was no one else around. When it mattered most. She refused to cry at the funeral. To be a matriarch was to sacrifice, so that she may provide the care that only a mother can to her grieving family. It was his Stetson that brought the first tear. It was not until she put on his favorite flannel and laid in bed that Diane finally grieved for the loss of her husband. That beautiful man that always brought her drink first and never once looked at the other girls.

There is a particularly restless slumber that occupies the night of a person who falls to sleep sobbing. It is filled with tossing and turning, the removal and application of blankets, hot an cold, awake, exhausted. Around three in the morning Diane finally closed her eyes and invited the sandman to work his magic.

It was this night that Jack came home.

Through the chimney he fell as a ball of flames. Landing in the soot with a crash. Using the downstairs shower he made himself presentable before quietly climbing into bed. Diane had shuffled back to her side, leaving his side warm and ready for sleep.

It was Jacks snoring that stirred Diane awake, just moments before the alarm went off. An alarm that hasn’t been set in years. Jacks arch reflex smashes the snooze button before he peels his face from his pillow. With a yawn and outstretched arms he gropes the air hoping to find the loving arms of Diane.

Diane was in the corner of the bedroom, using the bureau to put space between them. It wasnt possible for him to be here. To be in their room, in their bed. Using their sheets and his clothes.

“I dont know who you are, but you need to leave now, the police are already on their way!”

“Damnit Diane, what are you talking about? The police? Old Sandusky’s gonna have my ass for sending the boys out here for no good reason. Go call em off will ya?”

“Ill do no such thing! Get out of my house!”

Jack turned his shoulders and took his hand off the alarm clock. He slipped on his robe and turned to face his understandably confused wife.

“You, you.. you.. you you.. you look.. ju..just like him..”

“I’m home honey, I’m home.”

Diane put down the golf club and ran straight into his arms. She nestled the chest hair that pried its way through is V-neck. It was him. It was really him. His arms, his body, his face, his voice, his smell, HIM.

“How?” She whispers into his robe.

“I dont know love bug, I dont know.”

“Oh the children will be just thrilled! I must call them!” Diane dashes towards the door, Jacks strong arms reel her back in before she can get a way.

“Not yet bug, lets just enjoy this secret for now. We can tell them in the morning.”

The next morning became the next week, the next week turned into next year. Page after page fell from the calendar and still not a word to the family of Jacks return. It was better for the family. This wont last forever and they’ve already bore the burden of burying him once.

With her family spread across the country living their own lives, Diane fell into the the comforts of Jacks return privately. They played rummy and sipped tea, even shared the occasional cigarette over morning coffee. Just because. As the days blended into one another, Diane began to notice more and more wrinkles on her face, and spots on her arms and legs. Her hair turned gray seemingly over night and her voice turned down to a whisper. Jacks arms grew larger, and his hair black and full. Diane wanted to call for a Doctor, but Jack reassured her it was nothing but Father Time. No need to worry.

He would be there when she had a hard time getting out of bed. When she couldn’t make it to the toilet in time. When her bones creaked and her spine stiffened. He was there to comfort and smile at her. To kiss her forehead and push back her hair. So that he could see the most beautiful person he had ever seen.

Jack held Diane close as she took her final breaths. They sat together on the chaise lounge on the back patio. Wrapped in the blanket she intended for Her great grandson. The sun was just over the horizon the birds were all silent. Her Chamomile tea sat cold on the ottoman. Diane was gone.

In a brilliant flash, Jacks form vanished and a ball of light was all that remained. It flew in circles like a trapped bat before burning through the screen door and shooting up the chimney. Sending sparks of black flame from his tail. Sparks that would feed on the wood paneling and the cedar walls of their home. Sparks that would grow and engulf every memory and photograph. Every moment and keepsake.

It took three fire trucks two hours to put the fire out. The water splashed around the way it does when you douse flaming oil. They had to call in a truck from the next town, and another to be on standby. Everyone knew who’s house it was. They went there when they were kids for trick or treating. They were the family that always handed out full bars. They delivered their newspapers and went to school with their kids. This house was a part of the neighborhood as much as the town hall. They did everything they could to save it. But it wasn’t enough.

The fire marshal came after the last snipping flame was put out. He was the one who found her. The nylon blanket melted to her charred skin. Her mothers necklace draped, unscathed around her neck. Her wedding ring glistened in the steam.

He didnt want to report that she set the fire out of grief. That years of solitude had finally driven her mad. Instead he called it an electrical fire. Her hair drier malfunctioned and took the place like a tinder box.

Her legacy deserved as much.