Paul's Call

By John Gordon

The telephone call started it all; started that old anxiety, the bile rising in the throat. It brought back the fear, anxiety and insecurity that Jake had felt most of his life. That phone call pitched him back in time and propelled him on a cross-country trek that was sure to end in disaster. It ripped him from the family and the happy life he had built back to the unforgiving and manipulative family that he had left.

That phone call was so much more than a summoning for reconciliation. It was an order to dance again to the old tune that he had been raised listening to. It was a command to return to drama and dysfunction, to anger and a world of bitter resentment. Across the country the deadening roar of his motorcycle plays counterpoint and backbeat to the memories of the history of his life; a life of chaos, destruction and frustration playing in his head.

His motorcycle and his mind wander aimlessly into the Arizona desert, through the wilds of New Mexico and into the reassuring mountains of Colorado before shooting boldly across the plains with the focus of a bullet to face his appointment with an uncertain future, and to bury an unforgiving past.

Jake returns to the fold to set things right once and for all, but that call is much more than a telephone call. It is an insistence that Jake recognize a new order; to acknowledge a fundamental reorganization of role and rank, and ultimately to accept and embrace this novel dynamic.

People, places, and events spin out of control quickly upon Jake's arrival, and he is conveniently there to spin with them, or to finally put a stop to the twirling disorder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469146102

John Gordon

John Gordon has written and illustrated many children's books as well as worked extensively in most areas of illustration. When he's not writing or illustrating, he gives talks in schools and libraries and plays squash.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Dad’s had a heart attack.

I don’t have caller ID or call-waiting or voice-mail or any of that stuff. Usually when the phone rings, I just answer it. Sometimes I regret that.

Is he dead?

Paul had affected our father’s annoying habit of communicating contempt with long, drawn out silences. Comments unworthy of response were handled with a lengthy, pregnant pause.

No, Jake. He’s not dead. He’s in Somerset Valley.

I was the oldest son. I had worked for the prick for thirty years before he fired me. I could play the silent game too. Neither Paul nor I spoke for twenty seconds.

Finally, He wants to see you.

Too bad.

He’s probably going to die, Jake.

Good.

He asked for you.

Too bad.

I think it’s important, Jake.

Quit saying my name, I thought.

I was born Jacob Tecumseh Stirling, the second child and oldest son of Miller Angus Stirling and Kay Monroe Stirling. Paul was 19 months younger and a generation or two older than me. I was the rebel, the hippie, the black sheep, and now the family bum. I hadn’t married the right girl. I married a girl I loved. I was strong and fit and tough.

Paul was everything I was glad I wasn’t. He was overweight, slow, and uncoordinated. He was cautious, conservative, proper, and pompous. His nickname had been given to him when we were still little boys. The older kids started calling him Pompous Paul. It stuck. Forty years later he was still Pompous Paul.

I was Jacob to my mother and my kindergarten teacher. The rest of the world knew me as Jake.

Important for who? Excuse me, to whom do you think it’s important? I could do pompous too.

Please, Jake. I don’t want to argue. Your father is likely in the bed he’s going to die in and he wants to see you.

He disowned me, Paul.

Dad had taken over the family business after Granddad dropped dead at his desk at the age of fifty. Dad had been thirty years old, and I was only seven. I’m fifty now, and my heart was pounding so loud I thought Paul could hear it through the phone. I was having trouble taking a breath.

I don’t think this is about money or inheritance or his will. He just wants to see you before he dies, said Paul.

"Bullshit. It’s always about money in this family. That’s all it’s ever about. I’m sure Mary and Connie and Patsy and Alec and all of my adorable little nieces and nephews are standing in line politely waiting to pay tribute to his Highness, Lord God Almighty. Tell them it’s all going to the Boy Scouts, and dear old Andover, and see how fast they run out of that hospital.

I’m not going to argue with you. He asked me to call you. I did. I love you, Jake. Good-bye.

The asshole hung up before I could hang up on him. I hated that. I hated the I love you crap too. He always said that, the sanctimonious hypocrite.

Now what?

I wanted to punch something.

I wanted to take a deep breath.

I wanted a drink.

I hadn’t punched anything in ten years, and I hadn’t had a drink in five. I still couldn’t get my breath.

I needed Anna. I needed my wife. I had to hug her. I wanted to listen to her tell me whatever it was she always told me at times like this that made me feel better. She always held me until the dark clouds passed. Well, I had Chick and he always made me feel better too.

Chick was registered with the American Kennel Club as Prince Bartholemew of Bellhaven Loch, but we called him Chick. He was Prince for a day or two. Then he was Bart. He had been Abby’s present for her second birthday. She called him Bartie in the cutest baby voice, but he was such a shy, scared little guy that Anna started calling him Chicken Little. We had six cats then. We still have six cats. Chick was scared to death of them all, so he became Chick.

He’s almost eight now. He’s big and strong and playful and well-mannered and good-natured, and he is my best friend in the world. He barks more than most yellow labs, and he can run like the wind and swim like a duck, and everybody loves him. Chick is so happy to be alive it’s impossible to stay in a bad mood with him around. The cats adore him now, and he loves them back. He protects them, and they take turns sleeping with him. He is easily the most popular character in the neighborhood.

Our backyard is fenced in tight, but we can’t keep him in. It’s a nice post and rail with green plastic fencing, but Chick climbs over it, digs under it, or convinces a neighbor kid to open the gate. He will not be fenced in, and he gets out just because he can. He’s never far away though, and he never causes any trouble. Everybody loves Chick.

I made a cup of coffee and went out on the deck to sit in the sun with Chick. I had to think this thing through. I was more aware these days, though, that my best thinking often got me in trouble. I treated myself to an extra sweet mug with real cream for a change. I had recently taken to drinking it black with the boys on the mountain. Anna liked flavored coffees. She drank hazelnut, or vanilla, or mocha, and sometimes used cinnamon or nutmeg. She was a lot more adventurous than me. She and Abby loved going to the new Dunkin Donuts in the Exxon station in town.

I pretty much drank whatever Albertson’s had on sale. I liked it dark and rich, so Columbian and French Roast were at the top of my short list.

The old Esso station had recently been converted to a fancy new ExxonMobil Tigermart with a Dunkin Donuts and a Baskin Robbins inside, and it was a hit. Up in Flagstaff they had Home Depot, WalMart, and a Carl’s Jr. to go with the McDonalds and other old favorites. Corporate sameness had followed us from New Jersey to Arizona.

I stroked Chick’s head and looked out over our backyard. This house and yard were pretty much the same as the one we had left back east. We had mortgaged our souls for our first house in Hunterdon County back in the late eighties, and I thought we’d live there forever. Western Jersey was all farms back then. Ours was a modest little three bedroom, split-level ranch on two acres surrounded by sprawling farmland. Within two years, our neighbors, Leo and May, had sold off five hundred acres to pay the back-taxes on their farm, and we were surrounded by McMansions. They were huge six bedroom cookie-cutter monstrosities set squarely in the middle of each hay field where we had walked Chick’s parents every morning, and every night. We were told it would increase the value of our house and reduce our property taxes. It didn’t.

After I was fired, and no longer commuting into the industrial armpit of Hudson County and Newark Bay, it just didn’t make sense to stay.

Anna and I had met at the University of Colorado in 1973. She was from Southern California and I was from Western Pennsylvania. We were married in 1978, and moved to Pittsburgh. She was a good sport, but I knew she thought she’d died and gone to hell. We transferred to Jersey in 1985, and then she was sure she was in hell.

The first day I left her in our new condo, I came home to find her in tears because all the people in the grocery store had been mean to her. We moved around a little, and found a great place to live, and made wonderful friends, and that was it. We acclimated. I don’t know for sure, but I think we both still dreamed of living in Colorado. Life had not turned out the way we imagined it would, but now I was sitting in the Arizona sun with my best friend looking out over our desert backyard, and our new pool that stayed open all year, and I was digging it. Mount Thunder stood majestically in the distance. I was beginning to think that things were going to be okay, that life was good again.

Then Paul had to call. Dad would live or he would die whether I was there or not. I was getting used to the fact that the world didn’t revolve around me. This too shall pass, I thought. I can deal with this no matter how it plays out.

Rafer rubbed up against my bare leg. It felt good. Cat hugs feel good. She and her twin sister, Rosie, had been identical black kittens. We named them after the two men who stood at Bobby Kennedy’s side the night he was gunned down in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in 1968. They were grown now. Rafer had a little white crest on her chest and she was thinner than Rosie. She pretty much lived outside in this new climate, and had adapted well to the move. Her sister stayed in the air conditioning.

Mustard and Maisy were the same way. They were the other set of twin felines and looked like they were split from the same egg. Turd was the outside cat and Mayonnaise, the comfortably plump one, stayed inside.

This new house was another split-level, with three bedrooms, and a big backyard, and we knew it was ours as soon as we saw it. Leaving school and friends was tough, but getting away from my old man was a blessing.

Anna was renewed. She was young again. She decorated our new home with south western desert flair, got right back into the real estate world, found a terrific school, and a great barn for Abby to keep riding, and never missed a beat. The change in her was remarkable. The stress lines faded away with the anxiety. She missed her old friends but was making new ones, and she still spoke with her old gang, Olney, Maggie, and Marcie practically every day. Her relationship with her mother and sisters got stronger overnight. I had to admit, I was a little jealous.

The last couple years in Jersey had been difficult for all of us. I stayed sober, but hated my new job in Perth Amboy. I was lucky to have found it, though. A lot of people were out of work. I kept reminding myself of that every morning when the alarm went off at 4:00 am. My boss was a low-life Brooklyn crook without an ethical bone in his body. His third wife had been his secretary at some point, and she still came in to throw her prodigious weight around. She was a borderline psycho prone to unpredictable rages. The place was all about boredom and blame, little to do one minute, and total panic the next.

I was used to being my own boss and dealing with things honestly and directly. The thing that hurt me the most about losing my job in the family business was leaving the people that I had worked with for so long. I hadn’t had much of a social life. We went to church, and Anna had a lot of friends, but for me it was all about work. Over a period of twenty-five years I had hired almost all of the one hundred and fifty people we had on the payroll. I knew their wives and husbands. I knew their kid’s names. I bought the health insurance, and knew their problems, their challenges, and their joys. We operated a three shift plant, and I made it a point to talk to every single person at least a couple of times a week. I enjoyed it. We went to weddings and funerals and christenings. I wrote personal Christmas cards to each employee every year. I loved my job, and I was good at it. But I started drinking too much, and one day I couldn’t stop, and it just took over my life until I hated myself. I couldn’t look in the mirror anymore, and before they got me into the rehab, I was trying to figure out ways to kill myself without jeopardizing the insurance money for Anna and Abby.

The old man couldn’t deal with the rehab. He couldn’t handle the fact that his oldest son had a problem with alcohol and drugs. He taught us how to drink, but he was better at turning it off than I was. He was my role model, for better or for worse, and I try to believe that there were a lot more positive things that I learned from him than negative things. I try.

That was all water over the dam now. We were making a new life for ourselves and for Abby. Anna and I were good people and we were on our way to recapturing some of those good qualities.

The pressure and stress and bullying, year after year, had taken their toll. My addiction to alcohol and marijuana had sent poor Anna into a deep depression and a shame that manifested itself in her own dependence on opiates, and a nasty little spending compulsion that threatened to ruin us.

The old man used that against us too. We were trying to put it all behind us now. We were clean and sober, and we were getting along fine. We were happy for the first time in years. We were falling in love again, carefully. We were raising a beautiful daughter, and we were determined to devote our lives to her, and not screw it up.

Why did I answer that phone?

When Anna got home, I would talk to her about caller ID. When Anna got home I’d tell her about the madman in the hospital. I had to admit, I wasn’t looking forward to Anna getting home.

One of the first things I did when we moved to Arizona was buy a motorcycle.

After we were all moved in, and we had checked out Abby’s new school, I went looking for work. That was one of the positive things my father had instilled in me. I had a good work ethic.

I ended up window shopping at Grand Canyon Harley Davidson in Flagstaff. Maybe it was the lack of a helmet law that got me. This was motorcycle country, and I had seen hundreds of guys on bikes without helmets. I never skied with a helmet, and I never rode a bicycle with a helmet, and the fact that one wasn’t required in this sun-drenched state turned me on. I hadn’t grown my hair long again after it all fell out in ’96 from the Hepatitis treatments even though I secretly wanted to. I was seriously thin on top, but ready to let my freak flag fly as a young and reenergized fifty-something guy. The poison I took to kill the Hep hadn’t worked anyway.

I bought a white Sportster 1200. I didn’t take the free helmet that was part of the deal. That was dumb. Anna wouldn’t get on it, and I told Abby I was dangerous enough all by myself. Could I ride the damn thing all the way to Pittsburgh, I wondered?

Pennsylvania didn’t have a helmet law either, but I was pretty sure I would need one for every state in between.

Chick came up and dropped his leash in my lap. I hadn’t even noticed he’d left. Wasn’t I petting him? I didn’t notice that the coffee was cold either, or that the sun was so much higher in the sky.

Paul must have called about noon eastern time, and it was probably about noon here by now. So, we went for a walk.

I found work as soon as we had arrived in Sedona two summers ago; right after my detour to the motorcycle dealer. As soon as I got the plates on the Sportster, I drove it up to the Arizona Ski Bowl north of Flagstaff, and signed on as a Supervisor to a happy crew of young Mexicans. They were a great group of fun loving guys—teasing and bantering with each other all day long. They enjoyed the work, and they liked each other’s company, and they seemed to have a zest for life that I had been missing for a long time. Their happiness was infectious, and I looked forward to being around these guys every day. We cleared slopes, painted towers, repaired picnic tables, worked on the snow making equipment, ate home-made tortillas, and got paid for it all. When the snow came, I worked in the office, and out in the ticket hut, and on the mountain. I was patrolling, grooming, and giving lessons by the end of the first season, and the weather was so nice I could usually ride my bike to the base lodge every morning.

The sun felt good. My mind was digesting that call, and thoughts were sorting themselves out as Chick and I hiked along Dry Creek Road up toward Chimney Rock. It was late spring, we were still skiing up at the Bowl, and the weather was perfect. My morning commute up to Mount Humphrey was a far cry from my mornings on the New Jersey Turnpike. I realized that I had dreamed of this life ever since I was nineteen and I used to ride my Honda 350 on Saturday mornings from Boulder to my job at Digit’s leather shop in Idaho Springs.

Chick and I walked for a very long time. I couldn’t get Dad, or Paul, or the phone call off my mind. I knew some meditation tricks, and I kept looking for signs and trying to talk to God, but nothing worked. Sometimes the harder I tried to turn something over to my Higher Power, the harder I held on. This was not good. I saw a pair of eagles soaring high over Boyton Canyon, and I realized we must have been walking for hours. I remembered the old adage about walking ten miles into the woods which meant you had to walk ten miles back out. It’s odd to see two eagles together, and I wondered about the symbolism of that. My mind was still racing.

I love this country and these red rock formations and high sierra plains. Sometimes I thought wistfully of the lush green of the east coast and mid Atlantic states, but I didn’t really miss it. I didn’t miss dealing with the traffic, the congestion, the short tempers, and the rudeness. I certainly didn’t miss dealing with my father day in and day out. I tried to stay in touch with my sisters and Alec, but they lived busy lives, and I was content to be at peace in my new world.

What should I do? Soaring eagles didn’t seem to provide an answer. One thing at a time, I reminded myself. Prioritize. I should probably get an airline ticket. I should probably call Kay, but the old girl was likely still in Florida and I doubted if she was any more anxious to fly up to Pittsburgh than I was. Maybe he hadn’t asked for her.

Mom loved her little gulf coast nest, and the old man might not want to bother her, or be bothered by her. She’d been trying to convince him to take more time off and golf. He belonged to two golf courses twenty minutes from the house in Sanibel, but Mr. Type A insisted that Florida was for old people that had forgotten how to drive. He got bored down there. The man had to work.

Chick and I turned at our lane and were surprised that Anna’s car wasn’t there. I realized that I felt a little relieved. I was nervous about this whole situation. I wanted to present it to her carefully. I wanted her to know that I had received this phone call and had processed it in a mature fashion, and that I was prepared to handle this thing in a responsible way. I didn’t have to put a spin on it. The phone had rung, I’d answered it, and that was that. I was going to handle this latest Stirling crisis like a reasonable adult. We still didn’t know exactly how critical the old man was, and I was not going to get sucked into some overblown drama like an irrational child. I would make plane and car reservations as a precaution and discuss this matter with another adult before going off the deep end. We would deal with the facts as we knew them and try to get some more information and respond appropriately.

I was starting to feel better when the girls blew into the house. Abby was shedding her riding gear and talking a mile a minute about somebody’s new pony as she whirled into her room like a tornado.

Hi, Sweetie, how was your day off?

Anna looked radiant. I could tell she’d had a good