The Wheel: Part 9

A Way Forward

Previous installment: The Wheel: Part 8, Heroes are Heroes

Start at the beginning: The Wheel: Part 1, Jack Colby

Where we left off: Thad and Marcia left town after the funeral. Jack’s frustration with Justin’s constant clinginess boiled over, and he decided it was time to go back to work. Justin spent an afternoon at a friend’s house in the neighborhood as a dry run for the next day, when Jack will return to work.

Voiceover narration: Andrew Thomas

Art: Jenelle Thomas https://alovelygiraffe.com

A Way Forward

The next morning came early, and getting Justin up and moving was somewhat of a struggle. While Jack had been rising early most days since the accident, Justin was not used to waking on any sort of schedule. However, once he was awake enough to comprehend that getting his rear in gear would lead to playing with Trevor sooner, things smoothed out. In fact, Justin was nearly begging to leave as Jack gathered his things and poured coffee into an insulated cup. The dry run the day before had clearly helped, and Jack liked to think his post-game pep talk played a part.

When they arrived at the Iversons, Justin disappeared into the backyard with Trevor almost immediately. Jack called after him, saying he would check in around lunchtime, but this went unheard. Laura smiled and said she would be in touch if anything came up. He returned to his car, and the roar of small boys wafted in through the open windows. He smiled a bittersweet smile that hit his eyes in a much different way than his lips. Justin was moving on. Jack pulled away, marveling at how parenthood could take life’s biggest achievements and make them hurt.

The commute to work was fairly short, and while it seemed like it could be any other day of work, he knew it would not be. Once the car was parked, he walked to the nearby bridge, stared down into the Boardman River, and deeply breathed the summer air. After a minute, he exhaled forcefully and steeled himself for the reception he would receive in the office, hoping it would have at least some semblance of normalcy.

As he approached the glass doors of the bank, his stomach dropped a notch. He could already see Steve jogging across the lobby in his direction. “Normal treatment” did not include any sort of extra attention. Steve came out and met him on the sidewalk.

“Hey man, I didn’t expect to see you back so soon.”

“Yeah, I’m just looking to get back into a routine.”

“You sure you are ready?“

“Steve, I’ve been through all of this with Ryan. I just need to do this and stop being questioned for it.”

“Alright, sorry. I just wanted to make sure you are ok.”

“And I appreciate that. It’s just…this is hard enough already. I don’t need more reminders.”

“Ok, well, I can go back in and let the others know if you—”

“No, please don’t; I just want things to be normal.”

Steve looked at him for a moment, sizing him up. “Well, everyone is glad to have you back, I can tell you that.” He turned to open the door for him.

Once inside, Jack found the majority of his co-workers behind the counter, ready to greet him. Steve must have made some sort of forget about it hand signal behind him because he saw brief bewilderment flash across their faces in a wave. Several pairs of eyes dropped slightly while others looked briefly confused before settling on some weird sort of understanding. What followed was an awkward smattering of Hey Jacks and Welcome backs and It’s great to see you, Jacks. He looked from one person to the next and realized that for them, this was just another day of work. Standing there, untouched by the Colby family’s tragedy, they seemed to beckon him back into an alternate reality where nobody had died and his family—all three of them—were at home right now, perhaps getting ready for a beach day. Despite the facts on the news, the graves, the empty beds, Sheila and Megan may as well have still been alive to them.

At that moment, Jack’s friends and co-workers felt absolutely alien to him. They were quite literally from another universe than his own, where things were fine. Normal.

This all crossed Jack’s mind in the span of one long blink.

“Thanks, guys,” was all he could muster, and he fled to his office with a walk so controlled it felt awkward. He felt their bewildered thoughts pressing on his back, seeming to throw off his gait even further. His own legs felt foreign to him, and he couldn’t remember it being this much of a struggle to walk normally since his third-grade lunch periods when he had to walk past an entire table of staring sixth graders on his way to the bathroom.

All that his co-workers saw was a broken man walking away.

Jack almost passed his office before he realized his mistake and made a sudden change in direction that did actually look as awkward as it felt. He shut the door behind him, slumped into his office chair, and stared at the window leading into the hall. He considered getting up to shut the blinds, but decided that would only cause more unwanted concern. Instead, he allowed himself thirty seconds to hold his face in his hands and breathe, then began the muscle memory routine of firing up his computer and preparing his desk. As the minutes passed, he began to wonder why he hadn’t seen a single person walk by his window on the way to their own offices. Their whispers and muttered concern vibrated through the concrete, and he could visualize Steve leaning on the front counter, telling them to act like it was just a normal day.

Time passed, and Jack found himself alternating between staring into space and jumping from one menial task to the next until a soft knock imposed itself upon his door.

“Come in.”

It was Ryan. He shut the door behind him and sat on the other side of Jack’s desk. “Hey Jack, how are you holding up?”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure?” Ryan looked genuinely concerned.

“Yes, can’t a guy just come in and do his job?”

“Jack, I just want to help.”

Jack sighed. “I appreciate that, but right now, while I’m here, I just need to be allowed to do my job. I can’t handle the extra attention. I know it probably doesn’t make any sense.”

“I’m happy to listen if you want to help me understand. I kept the next hour open for this very reason.”

“Ryan, I can’t.” Jack was embarrassed by how his voice began to break. “I just can’t. Nothing you could go through, no matter how similar, could help you truly understand.” Jack reached for a Kleenex. “I’m sorry.”

Ryan leaned forward and rested one forearm on Jack’s desk. “It’s ok…are you sure you’re ready to be back? It’s totally okay if—“

“No, don’t do that. You are all making this so much harder than it needs to be! I can do this, I’m fine. Just give me a few minutes to sort myself out.”

Ryan sat back again in his chair, finally seeming to accept that the intimate, open approach wasn’t going to work. “Whatever you need, just let me know. Vic Sanderson’s coming in at eleven. I planned to handle that, but do you want to be there?”

“Yes, please. Thank you. Again, I just want to focus on work and get back in the groove.”

“Ok, I’ll see you in a bit.” Ryan shut the door behind him as he left.

Jack glanced at the cell phone sitting on his desk and wondered how Justin was doing. Was he getting anxious? Wondering when he would be picked up? He shook his head and got back to work, trying to remind himself that it had been all of half an hour since he drove away from the Iversons.

Eleven came quickly, and just beforehand, Jack had texted Laura for a status update. Minutes passed with no response, and eventually, he had to give up the wait and head to the meeting room where he knew Ryan and Vic Sanderson were already chatting it up. As Jack was shaking hands with Sanderson, the moment he had been dreading happened. His phone began to buzz urgently in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw “Laura Iverson” on the screen.

“Vic, Ryan, I’m so sorry, I absolutely can’t ignore this call. I’ll explain in a moment.” Jack didn’t have time to digest their responses—he was already answering his phone and stepping back into the hallway.

“Hello?”

“Hey Dad, it’s Justin.”

“Hey, bud, how are you doing?”

“Good! We have been playing outside all morning. We just came in to build Legos.”

“Great!” Jack hesitated, picking his next words carefully. “It sounds like you are having a good time. Do you need anything?”

“No, Trevor’s mom just told me to call you.”

Jack frowned. Why had she done that and not just texted? Was he being overly concerned, and she was trying to point that out?

“Ok, bye Dad!”

“Hang on bud,” Jack said, but Justin was already gone. He heard small fingers rustling over the microphone and then a “here you go” in the background as Justin presumably handed the phone back to Laura without hanging up. Jack quickly ended the call himself just in case she got on the line. He stood there, confused about what had just happened, then closed his eyes and took a breath before returning to the mundanity in the meeting room behind him.

The next hour presented a new challenge to Jack: how to act like you give two shits about how a millionaire developer is going to fund his next low-income housing project when you’re trying to hold your broken life together by its many disparate threads. He was glad for the distraction, sure, but wasn’t prepared for just how irritable the triviality of the conversation would make him.

“Alright, Vic,” Ryan said. “Thanks for coming in to hash this out.” He stood up and enthusiastically shook Vic’s hand. Ryan was your quintessential businessman. These sorts of meetings fired him up.

Vic turned to shake Jack’s outstretched hand. “I’ll walk you out,” Jack offered. “I could use some fresh air.”

On the way out, Vic made small talk between brief interactions with various employees. Jack realized right away that this was a mistake. The frivolous, uncaring, directionless conversation further soured his mood and made him feel more isolated than ever. He held the main glass door open for Vic and attempted to turn the topic to something more meaningful as they stepped out onto the sidewalk and into the heat.

“How’s Janet? Is she making progress with her writing?” Jack asked. Vic’s increasingly successful career as a developer had afforded his wife the ability to quit her day job and pursue the creative work she had been dreaming of for some time.

“No, she isn’t. It’s pretty frustrating, actually.”

“Is she struggling with ideas or?” Jack trailed off lamely.

“No, the ideas are there. I keep asking where she is at with them, but she’s just not putting the time into it.”

“Ah yeah, it can be tough to know where to start with that sort of thing.” Jack was beginning to regret this conversation and hoped Sanderson would simply agree with him here and move on. He wasn’t so lucky.

“That’s exactly what she says, but she is never home. She’s out the door early every morning, spending time in town or at the beach. I get home usually around six to find that she has eaten without me, or was expecting me to pick something up on the way home.”

“Man, I’m sorry to hear. Maybe it will improve this fall when it starts to cool down.” Again, Jack attempted to route the conversation to an easy exit. A knot was forming in his stomach, and the small of his back had begun to sweat. Vic barreled on.

“I’m not holding my breath. I’m going to be honest, Jack, it feels like we both have one foot out the door and neither of us wants to admit it.” Vic was peering up at the large commercial building across the street that was under construction, and paused seemingly for a response, but Jack didn’t know what to say. He didn’t like where this was headed one bit.

“In a way, I’m a bit jealous of you,” Vic said, almost in passing. “I wish I had a good excuse to start over right about now.”

Jack’s breath caught so violently that he half-coughed as if a bug—a stupid fucking careless bug—had flown into the back of his throat. Suddenly, he was aware of the heat of the sun pressing down on his neck. Cars passed unheard nearby. He stood there, mouth stupidly agape, blinking at Victor Sanderson for what felt like minutes, watching the man’s gaze drift slowly down from the building across Front Street to meet his own.

“Jack? You ok?” Vic was clueless, and that was all it fucking took.

Jack had never before hit a man, but that changed very quickly. The blow landed more or less on Sanderson’s left ear with a sickening crack and sent him staggering sideways. Jack felt half a moment of bewildered remorse before it hardened into white-hot fury.

“Fuck you, you stupid prick!” Jack roared before turning back to the door and flinging it outward so hard it bounced back and smacked against his heel on his way back in. “God dammit!” he yelled at the floor as he stormed to his office, violently shaking his right hand to disperse the pain from his knuckles. He was briefly aware of Ryan rushing past him in the opposite direction—damage control mode: engaged.

Jack stood in his office, shaking with rage; the single tear that his anger had allowed to creep out ran down his face. The predictable knock came several minutes later. He quickly gathered his few things and prepared to open the door and leave, but Ryan lurched in before he could.

“What the fuck was that, Jack?”

“Is Vic ok?” Jack asked.

“Yes, thankfully! He also said it was all his fault and wanted to apologize in person. I refused and said I would do it for him. Jack, what the hell happened?”

“He had the audacity to say he was ‘jealous’ of me!” Jack yelled, imitating Vic as if he sounded like some stupid ogre.

“Of what?” Ryan was bemused.

“Of my chance to ‘start over’!” Again with the stupid ogre voice.

“My god…” Slow realization rocked Ryan’s face.

Jack plowed ahead. “He and Janet are apparently having marital troubles, and he wishes he had an ‘easy opportunity to start over.’ What a fucking asshole.”

“Wow, I uh…I have to admit that whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t that.”

“Exactly.” Jack’s chin quivered with fury.

Ryan just now seemed to become aware of Jack holding his things. “Where are you going?”

“Home! Obviously, I can’t be here right now. I’m sorry. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“No, you won’t.” Ryan placed his hand on Jack’s shoulder, preventing him from passing.

Jack stood back and appraised Ryan with all the air of a bully who had just been talked back to. “Ryan, are you firing me right now?”

“No, I’m not, but you won’t be back here tomorrow regardless.” Ryan’s hand dropped back to his side and found a pocket.

“Why the hell not? I think we can both agree that this was an extreme circumstance. There’s no way anyone else would say something that shockingly stupid.”

“Yeah, but it’s also clear that you aren’t ready to be here. You hardly talked during that meeting, and you looked like you were on another fucking planet. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame you.”

Jack’s anger began to fracture, and another tear worked its way out. “Ryan, I can’t handle sitting at home with Justin any longer,” he pleaded. “The kid is a fucking magnet.” He stopped to wipe his eye. “I can hardly take a piss without him wondering where the fuck I am.” Ryan tried to interject, but Jack cut him off. “And then there’s the emptiness, the, I don’t know, the lack of direction. I need to be here.” The tears Jack wiped away stung with shame.

“No, you don’t.” Ryan reached out and laid a hand on Jack’s shoulder again, this time in a comforting way. “Here, let’s sit down.” Ryan shut the door behind him and took a seat. Jack was embarrassed to realize the door had been open all this time. Once Jack was seated behind his desk, Ryan continued. “Ok, I have an idea. This just popped into my head and I need to run it by the wife, but I think it should be ok.”

“What are you talking about?” Jack was caught off guard by this change in tack.

“You know my place in the U.P.?”

“In Munising?”

“A bit east of there, but yeah. I want you to take Justin up there. Head up tomorrow, and you can have almost two weeks there if you want.”

“Ryan, I can’t…”

“Yes, you can.”

Jack was taken aback by Ryan’s forcefulness.

“You are great at what you do, and I want you here, but you need more time,” Ryan emphasized these last three words. “What you’ve been through was…it was just horrific, Jack. I honestly can’t believe you are still sane.”

Jack half chuckled, half grunted mirthlessly. “Is that what you call this? Sanity?”

Ryan ignored this and looked at him a moment longer before continuing.

“A change of pace, some downtime in nature; it has to help.”

Jack could see the logic. “But it’s your place, I wouldn’t feel comfortable—“

“I insist.”

“I can’t afford to take that much more time off.”

“I bet you can,” Ryan said, almost sarcastically. “You had a decent life insurance plan for Sheila, right?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to start piddling that away right off the bat.”

“Piddling away?” Ryan sounded incredulous. “Jack, I can’t think of a better way to use it! Take some of it now to open up your options for a bit and invest the rest. Shit, we’re bankers, man. You know you will make the money back and more! And what about the lawsuit? Money’s not what this is about.”

Jack sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, you are right.” He felt resigned and embarrassed, but also hopeful for the first time in weeks. “This might be a really good escape.”

“I think it will be great for you. And Justin.” Ryan added.

Jack nodded soberly and thought about their conversation on the phone the night before—the one where he claimed getting back to a routine was best for him and Justin. And what was it had he just told Laura Iverson? A change of scenery usually helps. Yeah, something like that. Ryan was right: if Justin needed anything, it wasn’t his dad going to work to run from his issues.

Jack exhaled through loose lips. “You’re right. It could be the best thing for us.”

“Great. Now get out of here.” Ryan smiled.

“Do you think everyone—”

“Yes, they saw it all, but it’s ok. Everyone will understand and probably want to punch him themselves once they hear what he said.”

“Ok…”

“Go home, don’t pick Justin up until you have to. He seems to be doing fine, yes?”

Jack nodded.

“Great, take some time for yourself. Do what you need to do. I’ll talk to the wife over lunch in a few and let you know the details. I’m sure she will be fine with it all.”

“Are you sure?” Jack still hung on to a thread of apprehension.

Ryan stood up. “One hundred percent. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Thanks so much, Ryan.” This time, it was out of relief that Jack teared up.

The two men hugged and Jack left, avoiding the looks of his co-workers as deliberately as they avoided his.

Continue to Part 10 now!

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