Day Forty-One #2
Jesse had seen a therapist his junior year of high school, around the time he was becoming a man, and again when he and Norman began to discuss kids, as he had the same fears Lally tried to press upon him now.
It didn’t take Freud to see his anguish.
How could a man be a good father when he himself never had one to hold up (for good or for bad) as an example?
His therapist asked what made him certain he would be a bad father and not an overachiever in the parenting department, striving to give a child everything he’d missed out on and more.
That had not really occurred to Jesse, and the simple profundity of the suggestion made his time in therapy short-lived.
He’d had a question, his question was answered, and eventually he and Norman had embryos made.
Yes, it was Norman’s idea to ask Lally to donate the eggs.
But Norman had also been the one to back away.
It was confounding at the time; Norman had not been able to articulate any reason beyond the cliché.
They weren’t ready, the timing was off. There was, after all, a global pandemic looming.
But now it all felt like one more clue that Norman had always had an eye on the door.
He didn’t want to be tied down, committed to a child, a family.
He was always looking to the stars. But maybe this was something that Jesse could do without him.
One area where he could be a man of action.
McConnell’s Fine Ice Creams was a Santa Barbara institution and had been around as long as his mother had been alive, and the flagship store on State Street downtown was only a stone’s throw from where the original location stood; mother and son had spent many a Saturday there when Jesse was a small child.
The way his mother drove, Jesse knew he would arrive first, so he took his time cruising along the water with the windows down, taking in ocean air that was thick with salt and the scent of fried seafood from the string of restaurants along the shore.
The air was cool and almost wet, two things it never was this time of year in the desert.
Jesse inhaled deeply. It had been a long time since he’d called Santa Barbara home, but it reminded him of Venice Beach and his recent dream of first meeting Norman.
He lucked out with a parking spot and waited outside McConnell’s until he saw Gail Wyler’s hair (dyed chestnut as ever) bobbing in the crowd.
He watched as she glanced in a storefront window to adjust her signature pearls, which she wore over a turtleneck; no one had seen her neck in more than a decade.
She looked so much like every other wealthy woman in Santa Barbara, it was almost impossible to tell that her money was not generational, but new.
“Well, this is an unexpected surprise.” Most mothers would say pleasant, or wonderful, but Jesse didn’t make a fuss.
They hugged each other, each using only one arm, as two would be too intimate.
They exchanged pleasantries about the weather and books and the endless campaign Gail was waging to get her neighbors to remove their trash barrels from the street the same day they were emptied, before she thought to ask, “Where’s Norman? ”
“Oh,” Jesse said, scratching his head while looking over his shoulder like Norman might have just ducked out of sight.
The trip was such an impulse, it hadn’t occurred to him that she might ask.
“Abducted by aliens. Actually, I didn’t see any aliens, but there was a bright light and—” Jesse made a sound like shoop and gestured something being sucked into the sky.
He could have gone with the Minneapolis medical clinic line again, but there was no bullshitting his mother.
Gail pressed her tongue against the inside of one cheek and narrowed her eyes. But unlike Lally, his mother wasn’t one to press.
“I’m serious.”
“I believe you,” Gail replied in her most indecipherable tone.
Once inside, they were immediately overcome with the smell of cream and freshly made sugar cones and it transported Jesse back to his childhood.
Gail ordered her standard dish of Coffee, while Jesse opted to mix two flavors: Double Peanut Butter Chip with Sweet Cream Caramel Brownie.
His mother made a disapproving face but said nothing.
Instead, her ire was transferred to the poor kid who worked the counter when she went to pay and he flipped an iPad around for a tip.
“A tip for what?” Gail asked.
“For waiting on you,” Jesse said in his loudest stage whisper.
“He didn’t wait on me. I tapped my own credit card to the screen.
If anything, he should tip me.” She defiantly pressed No Tip.
When she saw Jesse’s horrified look she relented and pulled two dollar bills from her wallet and made a production of dropping them into a jar.
“If you’re going to make such a big deal.
” She then pointed at the young woman who actually served the ice cream so that the cashier understood the tip was for her.
“Gracias!” the young scooper enthusiastically replied, and Gail’s head nearly exploded. Jesse laughed. Intentional or not, it was perfect performance art.
When they were safely outside, Gail continued her rant. “A gratuity is a reward for service.”
“They’re just kids, Mother. They probably shopped at the Toybox not that long ago.
” Although Jesse had often joked to Norman that his mother ran the only toy store in the country with a No Kids Allowed sign, the truth was Gail loved kids.
Until they committed the unforgivable sin of growing up.
“Do you want to walk?” He pointed in the direction of the pier.
The limited seating in McConnell’s was always full, and a weekday afternoon was no exception.
“The sun’s out.” His mother detested the desert for its hot-oven wind and the fine grit that seemed to coat everything, but sunshine itself was the way to her heart.
Gail put on her sunglasses with her free hand and craned her neck at the sky, her face a solar battery recharging.
“Were you always this tall?” she asked while she was looking up.
For the first time in a while, Jesse felt self-conscious about his height. “I think I’m shrinking, actually.” He hoped soon Norman’s clothes might actually fit.
“That’s your posture, it’s always been bad. And what do you call those?” She pointed at his shoes.
“Moccasins.”
“You drive in those things?”
“They’re driving moccasins.” She nodded, and Jesse did his best to keep his cool. “Oh, hey. Let’s turn here. We could walk by the Box.”
Families of soldiers like Jesse’s father who are officially determined to be captive, missing, missing in action, a prisoner of war, interned in a foreign country, captured, or otherwise detained by a remote force on foreign soil were owed compensation.
In Gail’s case, her husband’s full salary and benefits.
She kept the name del Ruth long enough to complete the paperwork but didn’t see turning over her identity the rest of her life to a man she’d known only briefly.
Jesse Sr.’s salary allowed her to stay home with her son for a time, but it never really kept up with cost-of-living increases and the inflation of the Carter era, so eventually she took a job selling educational toys at Tupperware-like parties in people’s homes.
She was surprisingly good, becoming a top earner for the company, and young JJ was more than happy to demonstrate the toys in use.
Eventually she didn’t see why she needed to survive on commission while some unknown big shot gobbled the lion’s share of the profits, and she rolled the dice on a toy shop of her own, the Toybox, which became a destination for children and families; several locations followed, and when she sold them to a conglomerate, she made a killing.
“Oh, god. Wait until you see what they did with the storefront.” Gail stabbed her red plastic spoon into her scoop of ice cream so that it stood straight up. “Awful.”
They turned anyhow, and Jesse marveled at how much had changed while remaining exactly the same.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve heard from you. I saw on TV now it’s trendy for liberals to cut family members out of their lives for having a difference of opinion.”
“Just say ‘Fox News.’ You say ‘TV’ like they announced that on Wheel of Fortune.” Jesse allowed his ice cream to melt on his tongue.
He missed McConnell’s; occasionally you’d find a pint in the grocery store, but never his favorite flavor, and it always cost as much as a tank of gas.
“And I promise no one is cutting anyone out of their lives over a difference of opinion.” Morals, maybe.
“Fine. I saw it on the news. It’s our job to be informed.”
“My job is to teach college. And occasionally write books.”
“Very occasionally.” Gail pulled her spoon out of her ice cream like she was the rightful king of England. “Thank god they still make plastic spoons. I thought the turtles would insist we use paper.”
Whether she meant turtles as an insult for progressives, or turtles as in actual turtles, Jesse did not know, but he liked the idea of turtles gathered together to vote.
“We could make spoons out of turtles,” Jesse suggested.
“Little baby turtles. Glue sticks to their hollowed-out shells. The rest we could use for soup.” He hoped this registered as horrifying as he intended.
“And you only cut people out of your life when their presence is more painful than their absence. I don’t think we’re there yet. ”
They paused under an awning so their ice cream wouldn’t melt further, and he watched his mother trace one of the bricks in the sidewalk with her sandal, then stomp on it to make it level.
His mother grew inconspicuously quiet; that was the thing about her media diet—she could talk a mile wide, but only an inch deep. “How’s the brownie?” she finally asked.