Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
In the coming week, Jackson and I fell into a comfortable routine. He woke up early to work out. When I came downstairs, he had already made me breakfast.
I would work at the gallery or spend the mornings painting, while he worked on my car or disappeared to one of his standing appointments at the hospital. He never talked about his treatments. I was worried that something was seriously wrong with him, but I refused to ask. He was fiercely private about it, often not even telling me where he was going.
After lunch, we always ran some sort of errand together. With my car still in pieces, he acted as my chauffeur, and I used him shamelessly in helping me plan my wedding. Jackson was decisive, pragmatic and extremely good at coaxing decisions out of me.
Despite the fact that he was stupidly good looking, he was a lot of fun. He teased me into making decisions. We talked about safe subjects like art and travel. He told me almost nothing about himself, but we found our rhythm. He was nice, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel lonely. It didn’t matter when Matt didn’t come home for dinner because Jackson was there. Sometimes we watched TV together. Sometimes he worked on my car, and I sat on the steps and hung out. It was easy, and he kept his flirting to a minimum. Sometimes he teased me, which made me blush, but mostly he was pretty good about just treating me like a kid sister. Although Jackson was sincere, he wasn’t very forthcoming about himself. Despite his apparent reluctance to share, I did my best to ferret information out of him.
One night, we stood in the kitchen cooking dinner together.
“So, Matt told me about a fight you were in during elementary school.”
He glanced over at me and then focused his attention back to the salad he was making. “Sounds like me.”
“You don’t remember? Matt said you took on all these older boys, and you didn’t back down, and you ended up in the hospital with a bruised kidney.”
He momentarily stopped chopping. “Not sure.”
“How can you not remember this?”
“Ted and I shared many visits to the hospital, so it doesn’t stand out.”
“Matt said there were half a dozen boys and they were all bigger than you, but you refused to back down.”
A smile traced on his mouth. “Yup, then that was me.”
I turned to face him and crossed my arms. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Not back down. Matt said he ran to the lunch lady, but even though you were outnumbered, you stayed to fight.”
He glanced at me, his expression one of curiosity. His question was genuine. “Why would I back down?”
“Because you could get hurt!”
“That isn’t a reason to back down from a fight.”
“Why fight at all? ”
“I never start fights. I just finish them.”
I stood there thinking for a long moment. “Why did you have so many visits to the hospital?”
He continued to chop his tomato without speaking. I waited. Finally, he rewarded me with an answer. “Ted was a drunk. Either he was getting hurt, or he was hurting me. Hospitals were avoided, but sometimes they were necessary.”
I tried to hide my dismay at his words. Ted had hurt Jackson. This was the reason that Jackson had spent time with Matt’s family. The man he lived with had beaten him. And Matt’s parents had saved him.
“How were you hurt?”
His face concentrated as he remembered. “Broken leg, broken sternum, broken arms, broken collarbone…but only when he could catch me.”
I froze. “And when he did?”
“He just punched, but when he kicked, that’s when my bones got broken.”
I covered my mouth with my hand. “Jackson.”
How did a person’s soul survive such a travesty? Is this where his will to fight back came from? His determination to protect others? My heart ached for the little boy who was alone with an abusive alcoholic man who rained down on him with his fists and kicks, hurting him to the point that his bones broke. The images I conjured in my mind were almost bringing me to tears. How alone he must have felt. The fear and pain he must have endured ripped at my heart.
He moved to put the salad in the fridge. “Did Matt say he was coming home tonight?”
“How did the doctors not know about this?”
He started to walk out of the kitchen. “They knew. They called the cops.”
I followed. “Matt’s dad.”
“Yup.” His voice remained even. “I’m going to go work on the car. ”
I flung myself at his broad back, awkwardly wrapping my arms around him from behind. He stopped walking, and I tightened my arms around his solid waist.
“What’s going on?” he sounded amused.
I lay my face against the middle of his warm back. “I’m sorry.”
I felt him laugh. “For what?”
“That Ted hurt you.”
I felt his entire body go still. We stood there for a long moment, the side of my face pressed against the warmth of his back. I tried to inject light and happiness from my body into his. As if to heal his childhood wounds. To try and take away some of that pain.
I began to step back, but his hand reached up and pressed my hands into his stomach, preventing me from moving. I sighed and sank back into our hug. I matched my breath to his and concentrated on pushing all my positive energy into his body through his back. It might sound stupid, but I like to think that stuff like that worked. His hand remained on mine, trapping me against him.
Moments ticked by and we stood sharing our awkward hug. He made no motion to remove me. I squeezed him even harder. As if I could squeeze the pain out of him. My mom had taught me the value of hugs. She used to say that there was precious little in this world that a decent hug couldn’t fix.
I heard a car door slam and then the sound of Matt’s feet pounding up the stairs. I began to step back, and this time Jackson let me. I moved with haste back to the kitchen and bent over the island, staring unseeingly at my phone. All in an attempt to hide the emotion that I knew was fraying my expression.
“Hey,” Matt said. “How was your day?”
“Pretty good and you?”
Matt strode into the kitchen. “Good. Em, I can’t stay for dinner. I have to take some clients to a game.”
I glanced up. “Okay.”
“I just came home to change. ”
“Do you want me to save you a plate?” To my own ears, my voice sounded wooden.
“Nah. I'll eat at the game.”
I glanced behind me. Jackson had disappeared. A moment later I heard his truck roar to a start.
Matt left in a whirlwind, barely affording me a second glance. I waited until 8 PM to eat dinner, but Jackson didn’t return. I sat at the island, turning over the thought of Jackson in my mind. I was still trying to put the crumbs of information together that I could garner from Matt and Jackson.
Jackson had lived alone with Ted, a man who was not even his father. His mother had died. So where was his birth father? Why had Ted, a man obviously not interested in loving or caring for a small child, continued to keep Jackson in his life only so that he could abuse him?
And what about all the trips to the hospital? A seven-year-old who was at the mercy of a violent drunk was an impossible situation to imagine. I could not wash away the image of a small boy wary and alert, hiding and running from a drunk and menacing man intent on causing pain. Why hadn’t the authorities protected him?
Matt’s father had been a police officer and had taken Jackson into his home, but apparently not full time. Why hadn’t he called social services? Why had the system failed Jackson as a boy, to the point that he was riddled with broken limbs and probably unimaginable emotional scars? The whole situation made me so angry on Jackson’s behalf. I wanted answers, but the past was something that both Matt and Jackson preferred not to talk about. I had a weird feeling that they needed to talk about their history, to bridge the issue that hindered them now.
These days, Matt was almost never home. He avoided Jackson and myself like the plague. Jackson seemed more patient about the entire thing. His energy was very neutral when Matt did show up, but there was not a lot of warmth between the two of them. They were both on their guard and were excruciatingly distant and polite with each other. Matt had adamantly expressed to me that he did not want Jackson to leave and Jackson continued to stay which told me they both wanted to mend whatever had come between them. I got the sense neither of them knew how to fix it, so we were left in this uncomfortable impasse.
I sighed and dumped my half-eaten plate in the sink. The fact that Jackson took off indicated to me that maybe my hug had been a little bit too much. Yet he hadn’t wanted me to let go. The man was complicated.
I sat downstairs until 11 PM reading the same page in my book over and over again, but neither Jackson nor Matt came home. Finally, defeated, I went to bed.