The Tale of Jack part 12
Jack woke up a little earlier than he’d have maybe liked, as was often the way when he was upset. Still able to feel the soreness in his eyes from when he’d been crying, he considered just pulling the pillow over his head and trying to go back to sleep. However, he then remembered the goose that was loose in the kitchen and decided that he had better things to do with his morning.
Stumbling into the kitchen, half-convinced he was going to find the place in a shambles, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the damage was minimal. There was a neat little pile of poop near the table and a bit of water was splashed on the floor, along with a few of the scraps of shredded newspaper he’d made the nest with. Goldie herself was sitting in the bowl of water he’d set out, and as he walked in she raised her wings and gave him a dirty look.
Probably hungry, Jack thought, and opened the cabinet.
Shit, what did geese eat?
He remembered feeding the ones on the lake bread, but that couldn’t be their main diet, right? They lived in water, so maybe fish? Or…wait, no didn’t they eat grass or something?
Shit.
Well, Mr McElgar had ducks on his farm, he might know something about geese. And Jack was pretty sure that Dr Prince down at the veterinary clinic wouldn’t be averse to giving a down-on-his-luck guy a bit of free waterfowl advice. And there was always the library too, though he doubted that their little branch would have anything so specific as a book on caring for geese, but there was bound to be some book with a few hints.
He ripped up some bread and put it on a saucer, then opened the back door and reached out to pull up a handful of grass. By the time he turned back around, Goldie was out of the bowl and heading for the bread, so Jack picked up and refilled the water, rinsing the grass under the tap while he was at it. Breakfast served, Goldie tossed crumbs and little bits of grass around the floor with gusto, while Jack sat down to eat his cornflakes. She was sweet, like a little kid trying to get to grips with something new.
Jack sat and watched her for quite a while after he’d finished eating, and it was only when he looked at the clock and saw that it was nearly time for his mama to wake up that he realised he hadn’t come up with a story to explain Goldie yet. Hell, maybe he’d get lucky and something would happen to distract her.
He gently scooted Goldie out into the yard, where she immediately started poking through the grass, then cleaned up and bleached the floor where she’d pooped. The broom took care of the bits of bread and grass, then he emptied out the water bowl and picked up the nest to find…
Wow.
There was an egg!
A big, perfect egg with a dimpled, tawny brown shell, still slightly warm when he picked it up. Easily twice the size of a chicken’s egg, if not more. He remembered Finn saying that she laid eggs fairly regularly, but the idea of it had seemed so abstract…yet here it was. The back door was open and Goldie was still pottering about outside, seemingly unmoved by Jack’s discovery. Well, it wasn’t like there was going to be a baby goose any time soon, right?
“Hey Goldie-goose,” Jack called softly. “You mind if I have this? You mind if I make some nice food for my Mama with it?”
Goldie glanced at him, honked, then went back to whatever it was in the grass that was so interesting. Smiling, Jack set the egg down, grabbed a saucepan and reached down a book from the little shelf above the fridge. The Cookery Course book, he had learned as a child, could tell him how to do pretty much everything in the kitchen, up to and including how to get rid of the milk he’d burned onto the bottom of a pan right after his Mama had told him not to…well, it was a useful book. And it didn’t let him down now, either. Goose eggs, fried, boiled or poached. Mama always seemed to prefer poached eggs, so Jack filled the pan with water and got it boiling, then carefully followed the instructions for breaking the egg into a bowl and stirring the water up before sliding the weirdly juicy looking egg in.
The yolk was a gorgeous colour, a really deep orange. Jack had never seen anything like it and in their dim little kitchen it almost seemed to glow. The egg cooked quickly, so Jack made some toast and buttered it, and had it and the egg arranged neatly on a plate by the time he heard his Mama’s alarm clock go off.
Perfect.
“Stay put Mama, I made you breakfast in bed!” he called to her, and heard her half-startled, half-surprised exclamation as he put the plate and some cutlery on a tray and carried it out of the kitchen.
She was sitting up in bed when he got there, smiling at him as she ran a brush through her hair, the brightest thing in the room in her pink and white pyjamas. He waited for her to arrange herself a little better, then carefully propped the tray on her lap.
“Here you go Mama, goose egg a la Jack.”
She giggled. “Oh sweetie, that’s so thoughtful. Where on earth did you get a goose egg from?”
Damn.
“Try it Mama, see if it tastes okay.”
Thankfully, she didn’t pursue it any further, instead picking up the cutlery and carefully cutting into the egg. The yolk oozed out onto the plate as she sliced through the white and she gasped.
“What a lovely colour. This must be very fresh.”
“Yeah,” Jack agreed, hoping like hell that Goldie didn’t choose that moment to start honking or something.
His Mama cut a modest bite of the egg and tasted it, working it around her mouth with care as he’d often seen her do when sampling the first forkful of a new recipe. Slowly a smile spread over her face.
“It’s delicious. I’ve never tasted anything quite like it,” she breathed. She cut a little more and held the fork up to Jack, ignoring his insistence that he’d already eaten breakfast and waiting until he sat down on the edge of the bed and took the bite. She was right though, it was really tasty. Apart from just the flavour of it, which was rich and surprisingly meaty, once he swallowed the bite, it felt like his mouth was…refreshed.
His Mama ate as much of the egg as she could then cut the rest up and fed it to him, chuckling as she did so. Then they shared the toast, using it to mop up the remains of the yolk. And it was so nice, so nice to just sit here with his Mama, both of them feeling well fed and grinning. She put his arms around his waist and squeezed him hard, making them both laugh. How long since he’d felt like this? How long since he’d felt cheerful?
Things weren’t great. He missed Finn, if he let himself think about it, and he still had no idea how he was going to get them out of this hole, but if this morning could go so well, after last night had seemed to bad, then surely…
“Sweetie, you never told me where you got that egg from.”
“Uh…”
Oh God, a distraction, anything, he’d take anything…
The doorbell rang.
“Hang on Mama, I’m gonna go answer the door.” Thank you!
She let go of him and he jumped up and ran for the hall. As soon as he got out of the bedroom he could see Dr Atieno’s face through the glass panel in the front door, and his heart jumped in his chest. He snatched open the door.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded, horribly aware that he was being rude but unable to help it. Dr Atieno’s face was worried.
“Jack, it’s not your mother. I need to talk to you. Is your mother in? Can you and I talk in private?”
Jack nodded tensely, as his stomach twisted into a knot. Oh God, what if they’d mixed up the test results? What if the blood tests had shown up cancer or something? What if something else was going to go horribly wrong?
He ushered Dr Atieno into the living room and pulled the door to, not wanting to disturb his Mama with the loud snap of the latch. Dr Atieno patted his shoulder comfortingly, but the worried expression on his face undid any positive effect.
“What is it?” Jack asked, shocked at how weak his own voice sounded.
“I can’t give you a lot of the details,” Dr Atieno began, his measured voice sounding like he’d rehearsed what he was going to say. “It’s because of patient confidentiality. But I found out that a local man has a very serious condition, and I’m worried that it might be one of your customers.”
“Oh God, does he have…”
Dr Atieno nodded, watching Jack’s face. “Now I know your tests came back clean, and they were, there’s no mistake. But I’m worried that this patient may be one of your…your customers. He was unwilling to discuss with me if he’d slept with anyone recently, but I want to ask you a few questions, see if I can find out if you’re in danger without…well, without breaking too many rules.”
“Sure,” Jack croaked, grateful and horrified in equal measure.
“Okay…have you had unprotected anal inter-”
“No, I always make them use a rubber, and I check it afterwards to make sure it didn’t break.”
“Good, that’s great news,” Dr Atieno replied, a little of the tension dropping from his shoulders. “Okay, I’m going to tell you as much as I can about this guy, and I want to know if it rings any bells, okay?”
Jack nodded.
“Since you had the tests, have you done anything - anything - with a Caucasian, blond man in his forties.”
Jack racked his brain and nodded, feeling his breath hitch. Every one of his customers was printed on his memories by habit, so he knew who to approach in the future. “That could have been either of a couple of guys I went with recently,” he added. Dr Atieno sighed and continued.
“Okay, I’ll think of more detail. Uh…he’s a short man, a little shorter than you maybe, and has freckles…uh-”
“No! No, I’ve not even seen anybody like that!” Jack cried, ebullient with relief. No blond guy that age and that short, at least not since his last round of tests, or even the ones before that.
He and Dr Atieno both let out whooping sighs, so fucking relieved. It was okay, it was all okay again…
And then the worst possible thing…
“Jack?”
His Mama was standing in the doorway. Both of them had been so focussed on each other they hadn’t seen her arrive, but she couldn’t have possibly heard…she couldn’t possibly have understood-
“Jack, why…sweetie, why are you both worried about doing s-something with this…this man?”
Jack opened his mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come out. He couldn’t think of anything to say. The only words in his mind were a horrible litany of this is it this is it this is it.
“Helena, I-”
“John…I’m sorry, but I think you should leave Jack and I to talk for a while. Please.”
Dr Atieno glanced from Jack to his Mama and back, clearly worried, clearly having come to the same conclusion that Jack had; it was time for everything to come out.
After a few abortive attempts to say something reasonable, Dr Atieno mumbled a request that he be called should he be needed, and left. Jack’s Mama didn’t even turn to see him out the door, she just stepped further into the living room and closed the door behind her.
“Jack what were…it sounded like you were talking about some kind of illness…” her words trailed off into worry, and even if it meant her knowing everything, Jack couldn’t bear to let her be so upset. There were already tears in the corners of her eyes.
“We were talking about VD Mama, he was worried I might have caught one.”
She nodded vaguely and eased herself into her armchair. “You were talking about several…several different people you could have caught it from. Weren’t you? I didn’t get that wrong?”
She sounded breathless. Jack opened the desk drawer and took out her inhaler, handing it to her and waiting for her to take a puff from it before he answered.
“You heard it right Mama.”
“Oh Jack,” she breathed, his name coming out as a sob. “What on earth have you been doing?”
It was too late to lie now, and for the first time, Jack realised how desperately he’d been wanting to come clean all along.
So he took a deep breath, and he told her. He told her everything.
He sat down in front of her and told her about how it all started and why he had kept doing it and why he lied, explained it all as best he could, except that he didn’t want to scare her too much and he couldn’t stop crying.
She was crying too, silently, her expressive face stilled by horror as the tears rolled freely down her cheeks. At any moment, Jack expected to be yelled at, lashed out at, pushed away…but he should have known better of his own mother, and when the retelling of it became too much, when he could no longer force words out through the tears, she crossed the room to him and gathered him into her arms, like she had when he was a tiny child.
She told him it was all okay, that it was all over.
He believed her. Oh God, it felt so good to believe her.
*
Jack did his best to explain everything, but by the time he’d told her as much as he could bear, he had begun to realise that it made no sense. Why had he gone on with this for so long? He’d been so stupid.
Once they had both calmed down, she had sent him to have a shower and get dressed, and to get copies of The Mirror and The Harrier, the newspapers of the City, so that they could look for an apartment and for jobs. In the space of a morning their future was decided. They’d sell their little home once and for all and go looking for an easier place to live.
Jack would be lying if he were to say he wasn’t upset. He wouldn’t just be leaving the town, the house, the home he’d known for all his life…he’d be leaving his father’s memory, his childhood.
He’d be leaving Finn.
And yes, the more distance between himself and Mr Golightly the better, but all the same he couldn’t suppress a sense of perverse pride at his success in supporting himself with his body for so long. It was dirty and shameful, but he’d done it. He’d kept their lives going.
His mama hated the city. She hated how busy it was, how the people behaved, the noise and the size of everything. But they were going. It was their only real chance now. Jack wasn’t sure what he’d do about Goldie, but he was pretty certain that if they couldn’t get a place that would let them keep her as a pet, then the city farm he’d visited a few years ago would probably welcome a tame goose, and at least he could go and visit her.
When he got home his mama was in the back yard, scattering something on the ground out of a paper bag and watching Goldie peck it up. She’d probably gone and begged a favour from Mr McElgar. Jack opened the papers on the kitchen table and found the jobs pages. Lots of stuff going, nothing that caught his attention, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“Are you okay sweetie?” his mama asked from the doorway, her voice far too serious for the words she spoke.
“Yeah,” he replied. “Just…planning.”
She nodded and walked over to put her arm around his back.
They both sat down at the table and planned, organised, made page upon page of notes, until it was late and they were both tired, worn out from work and worry. Both of them were still restless from the shocks of the day, but they sensibly abandoned their work on the table and headed off to bed.
For the first time since he was a child, Jack slept the night on the little sofa in his mama’s bedroom.