Phoenix Fire (17 page)

There was an empty seat at the bar.

Chapter Twenty-six

Jenny went back to Jason's house the next day and night. The note was still where she had placed it on the bed. She left his house with a heavy heart. She could only assume that Jason had gone out of town.

She had returned to work but she found it difficult to concentrate. She worked on her projects with forced focus but with little excitement.

She called Grandma Myrena in the early afternoon and Wardley told her that Mrs. Wimsley was lying down and in a great deal of pain.

“It appears that the new medication is not sufficient to relieve the pain. The doctor is stopping by later today.” Wardley sounded as though he, too, was in great pain.

“Has there been any news from Jason?” Jenny asked.

“No, I'm sorry to say. I could be wrong but I think her pain is more intense because she is so worried about her grandson.”

“Do you think it would help if I came over after work to spend some time with her?”

“Oh, yes, Miss Mason, indeed I do. She would not wish to put you out. That's her way. But I know she would be so pleased to see you. She talks of you so often.”

“Then I'll be there between 4:30 and 5:00. Bless her heart. We cannot let her suffer alone.”

After disconnecting Jenny tried very hard to focus her attention on a project that was scheduled soon for completion. Her boss was more than fair in his demands on her time, but she was aware he could not remain so charitable for too long.

Jenny did manage to complete her work on the project by 4:15 PM. She had left for approval all of the relevant material with her manager's secretary.

She was out of the building by 4:30.

*****

Grandma Myrena looked so shrunken, so weak and pale. It shocked Jenny to see that Myrena seemed to have aged considerably since she had first met her, even since their last visit. Jenny would have thought that impossible because Myrena had looked so bad the last time they were together. The skin on Myrena's face and arms had lost color and it sagged loosely over sharply defined forearm bones, more so than Jenny remembered. She moved slower, too, as though she distrusted her mobility. With each small step she took, a corresponding wince and twitch came to her eyes. It took all of Jenny's concentration not to show her sadness.

When they were seated in the sun room, Myrena was eager to talk. When she did speak her words came in a slow measured monotone with a barely audible slurring.

“The new medication that Nelson gave me helps to relieve the pain but it makes me feel so sluggish, so out of sync with my body functions. If my words sound funny to you, my dear, please be patient with me.” Her sad smile and eyes appeared so vague, vacant, and remote.

“Oh, Grandma Myrena, don't worry. You're just fine. I'm happy the new medication is helping to ease the pain.”

“It's difficult for an old lady to lose control of mind and body, particularly when her life has been spent in such an orderly and active structure. Well, maybe not just for old ladies, but, surely, for anyone with this kind of ugly affliction.” Myrena gave a faint chuckle and weakly waved a hand as if to disdain her words. She seemed to be carefully assembling her thoughts.

After a few seconds she went on. “There is something I need to tell you, Jenny, something you should know. It's something which you may have to deal with.

“Some years ago, for a brief but agonizing period during his late teens, Jason had a near mental breakdown. He had severe depression and tearful moments of anxiety. We were quite concerned about him, obviously, and we were afraid of what he might do to himself.” Myrena paused, took in a deep breath of air, noticing the pinched lines of dread on Jenny's face. “Jason had a delayed reaction to his parents’ deaths, that and the subtle demands of adolescence. He could not see his future beyond his own inner pain. He felt that his life was somehow meaningless and without purpose. There was a paralysis of will, an inner suffocation. Carlton had handled his grief and pain in more overt and hateful ways. Jason had allowed the grief, the pain, to slowly accumulate and fester until he had himself backed into a corner of his mind. It was so sad to see his moods of despair and hopelessness.”

Myrena stopped talking, took a tissue from a box on the side table and wiped her eyes.

“Can I do anything, Grandma Myrena?” Jenny squeezed together her hands.

“No, it's okay, child. It's just those memories flooding back.” She smiled weakly.

“How did Jason come out of it?”

“Strangely enough, it was Carlton who came to the rescue, unwittingly. He supplied the antidote for Jason's recovery. I say 'unwittingly' but that could be a misnomer. Perhaps Carlton knew exactly what he was doing. Perhaps he knew more about what he was doing to help his brother than anyone ever gave him credit. In retrospect, it really does seem that way. As I look back, Carlton began to stay around Jason more, to guide him out of the dark pits of depression. In fact, it was a rather devious and splendid plan that Carlton must have put together. Well, actually, I don't believe it was calculated or even inspired by some youthful 'do good' intentions. Now, after all the years, it's like I'm seeing all of that in a different light. It occurs to me that Carlton's actions at the time were motivated by some sense of sibling love.

“Oh, Carlton was still rough and petty mean in his ways, but he did spend more time with Jason. Carlton kept putting oblique obstacles in Jason's way, obstacles that forced Jason away from his obsessive depression and anxiety. It was like an eternity then, but, actually, it was no more than seven or eight months.

“The boys were never before, or since, as close as they were toward the end of Jason's awful anguish. When Jason was clearly back to some normal place, when he again showed signs of his old energetic self, Carlton became less and less available. Carlton resumed his own isolated and mean tempered ways.

“It was a strange time. I'm sure the doctors helped Jason in some ways, but now, in this old befuddled mind, I do believe that it was Carlton who really helped Jason the most.”

Myrena stopped again, her thoughts lost in time, her gaze wistful and plaintive out the sun room windows.

Jenny looked lovingly at the pale sunken face of Myrena, not wanting to interrupt her thoughts. She did, though, want to know if there was more to the story of Jason's long ago period of depression.

“Many adolescents go through bad periods, Grandma Myrena. Guess I had my days as well. The newspapers are reporting almost daily about teenage depression and suicide. Perhaps it was just a rite of passage for Jason.” For a moment, Jenny was not sure Myrena had heard her comments.

Myrena's gaze was unaltered but she heard Jenny's words. She allowed several seconds to pass before turning back and responding.

“Yes, I know that must be the case. Watching Jason in his business world, his organized and aggressive penchant for perfection, like with 'Apple Brown Betty,' it is hard to think of him during those dark days of youth. Yet, with all of his good and noble achievements, I've noticed in Jason an inclination toward emotional blackout. Over the years, when an emotional event interrupted his orderly life, like John's death, a romantic breakup, something that brought intense emotion, I noticed that he just slips away, escaping the realities of the moment. It's like he is returning to those awful days. I worry that in these moments he could become irrevocably lost to us.

“Oh, I know other people go through emotional crises and become temporarily immobilized, with rational thoughts blocked by some dark panic. With Jason, though, I worry that he is reverting back to that black depression of years ago. There is too much to admire and to love in Jason. There is so much potential in him for greatness. I've always been there for him. I've been able to eventually bring him back from depression. It distresses me that with my passing and with Carlton's death he might just emotionally disintegrate. I'm now convinced that he knows I'm dying. Do you see, Jenny? Carlton has gone. I soon will be gone. Jason is at sea, his mind doing awful things to him.” Myrena stopped and dabbed at her eyes.

Jenny tried to console her. “Bless your heart. I wish that I could ease your worries. Can it be enough for you to know that I love Jason very much and will be there for him? If he will only let me be there. I can't believe that the Jason I know could be lost to us for long. He is ultimately too strong for that to happen, Grandma Myrena. He has so much of your strength inside him to be lost too long.” Jenny went and knelt at Myrena's side, putting a frail liver dotted hand into her own. “It will all work out, I promise you. I will find him and he will be all that you want for him.”

“You are a dear sweet and thoughtful woman. I pray that you do. If only Carlton had. If? Oh, I pray that you do, Jenny. I'm certain that Jason has found out about my cancer. That knowledge coupled with Carlton's death has triggered that long ago depression. If you find him after I pass, please don't let him think that I didn't know how much he loved me. Don't let him think that he let me down. I just … I must ...”

Myrena stammered, could not talk, her mouth open, gaping, fixed there in pain and terror, her eyes unmoving like marbles set in tiny balls of mottled snow.

Jenny felt a cold hardness to Myrena's fingers and shuddered. The fingers were contracting inward toward the palms. Jenny stood abruptly, stammering herself in a near paralysis of shock and fear. She put her hands on Myrena's shoulders.

“Grandma Myrena! Please try to breathe deeply. Grandma Myrena! Please ...”

Jenny saw Myrena's body stiffening, saw the shudders and spasms of pain rocking her body. Myrena's mouth still agape, words trying to come, with only 'ack' sounds issuing forth. There was a whitish buildup of saliva in the corners of her mouth and along the lower lip. There were panicked guttural gasps as she fought to breathe. Her facial pallor deepened and gripped more tautly the bones of her cheeks and forehead.

“Wardley!” Jenny screamed into the console on the side table. “Wardley! Please come! We need you! Wardley! Wardley!”

Jenny lifted Myrena's taut body from the chair, half carried, half dragged her to the nearby sofa, still screaming for Wardley as she stumbled along.

“Oh, God, Jason!” she pleaded. “Please come to us!”

Chapter Twenty-seven

He remembered.

With his recall came an involuntary shiver. He knew where his car was. He could account now for the night that was lost to him. There was shame in remembering and more fuel for his fits of gloom that was raging inside of him. But, there was also a shallow victory. There was some satisfaction as he recalled the best part of the previous evening. That was when he had slipped away from his free-loading drinking 'buddies,' on a pretended mission to the men's room.

After he had abandoned Hal and Roy, he had driven his car for some time and found himself in downtown Phoenix, unaware of how or why he had ended up there. He had gotten lost. Lost! In a metro area where he had spent a lifetime? During his slow meandering drive to downtown Phoenix, he had passed a police cruiser, its red lights silently flashing off the street curbs and the high rises. The police officer was giving a sobriety test to a comical citizen, the latter's shirt partially out of his pants, hair mussed, eyes glazed and vacant. Jason was just barely alert enough to realize that he could easily be that sorry wretch of a man wavering and stumbling around on one foot.

It was that droll street scene that had caused Jason, in his own drunken mist, to pull into a parking lot and check into a seedy hotel. There was some inner awareness, some internal security system working on his behalf. There was some comfort in that.

It was funny how a few drinks could loosen the knots of memory. He could even remember now putting his money and clip into his wallet after he had taken out enough cash for the hotel room. That recall brought a smile to his face. Comic relief, he thought. That act was some clumsy attempt at protecting his assets. Very funny, as he looked back on it.

He emitted a short high chuckle that caused the bartender to look his way. Jason simply waved a hand in the direction of the bartender and lowered his head, as if to say, 'don't mind me. I'm stupid.'

The three drinks had brought back some balance to his system. The darkness of mood was there just below the edge of his consciousness.

The dark and seedy bar was nearly filled with heavy whiskered, foul smelling, shabbily dressed people of the streets. The air was filled with an ugly amalgam of odors, cigarette smoke, spilled whiskey, and hastily wiped away vomit. When Jason walked into the bar, he felt like he belonged to this unfortunate mass of human debris. As the drinks brought some nascent relief, he began to feel uncomfortable with the stares and whispers of his unlikely peers. This discomfiture and the black, hovering depression roused him to movement. He could not face another drink. He had his balance back and he also had his fill of booze. He did not try to understand the minor shift within him. He accepted it and was grateful for it. He knew that he must get away from this foul-smelling place. It was an urgent need within him.

Jason left the bar and went to his car.

Aimlessly he drove north on the North Central corridor, along the high rise condos, restaurants, and buildings of commerce.

Further north, beyond the high rises, he passed the first home he could remember living in. The memories flooded back:

Carlton and Jason in the backyard swimming pool, playing Marco Polo; Carlton and Jason at bedtime, kneeling by their beds with their Mom and Dad, praying 'Now I lay me down to sleep;' Carlton and Jason on their first bicycles; Carlton and Jason playing chess in the library, their favorite room where the beautiful gloss of the dark mahogany bookshelves gave off their reflections, where the great books seemed to beckon them, where there was the faintest hint of pipe smoke; Dad, Mom, Grandma Myrena, Carlton, and Jason piling all their camping gear into the large station wagon, laughing, teasing, eager to be on their way to the high country.

At some point he turned east for some blocks, then north again on Cave Creek Road. As he drove the familiar streets and passed the landmarks he knew so well, he had more flashes of memory:

There was the first church he attended when his parents were alive. He remembered Carlton pulling the hair of a little girl in front of him at Summer Bible School; remembered Carlton looking over at him for approval and giggle confirmation of his childish deed; remembered Carlton pulling a bully off of his pinned body on the play field next to the church.

On he drove, facing the poignant mind pictures of his past. Unconsciously, he reached and wiped away tears that were flowing down his cheeks.

            On he drove as if by an autonomic will. The miles slipped by like unremembered dreams until he found himself out in the high desert beyond the town of Carefree, out among the cacti, the Palo Verde and Mesquite trees. Great black birds of prey wafted on the desert thermals, circling effortlessly, patiently, and in graceful confidence.

Jason stopped the car. He was on a winding dirt and gravel road, high above the vast expanse of valley to the south. He had wandered farther west and north. He was not exactly sure where he was, but the terrain looked vaguely recognizable, like a déjả vu flash of the mind. There came a vague and fleeting twitch of subliminal recall, there and gone in a shutter frame of time.

He left the car and walked along an animal trail for a short distance until he came to a small clump of rocks. The rocks were stacked into a grave-like mound. The heap looked secure so he decided to sit. He barely noticed the heat of the rock on which he sat. He also seemed oblivious to the intense heat of the high desert sun.

He sat and looked out at the burnt brown space around him. The giant saguaros stood stoically and regally, some with arms hundreds of years old, some with arms charred and gouged by some previous lightning bolt. Ants and bugs crawled at his feet. A soft wind blew in his face, and he inhaled deeply the hot dry breath of the zephyr. Jason watched as one of the large hawks dove low into a mesquite bush and flew away with a snake clutched in its hooked talons, cawing triumphantly to a waiting mate.

His thoughts bored relentlessly on, bleak and somber stabs of shame and self-loathing. His depression was consuming him and he had dwelt so long now in these dark corners of his mind, had fueled the abasement so long now with alcohol, that he could find no hopeful gap in the black procession.

His brother was dead. So much was left undone with his passing. Jason now could never make right the unsettled business with Carlton, could never now find atonement for having given up on his brother, defaulting on his sibling loyalty.

Gone.

His brother was gone. Inexorably, irrevocably gone. Jason sat on the clump of rocks and cried in great moaning heaves, a lone effusive speck among the surrounding primal space.

His Grandma Myrena was dying.

She needed him more now than at any time in his life. Yet, he felt an irrational fear so gripping that he could not face her. It was a fear emanating from somewhere in his past. Perhaps it was the sudden shock of his parents deaths that he had never put away, had never resolved or settled. Perhaps it was the total and abiding love that his grandparents had given at that awful time of death which he had accepted and had so thoroughly engulfed himself, without sufficiently dealing with his loss of parents. Perhaps it went beyond all of that, back to some atavistic space and time, where the conclusions to life's riddles had already been ordained.

His promise of love had come: Jenny, his promise of 'then,' that magical place in time and space where love was all absorbing and enough. Jenny, sweet Jenny, had somehow been lost in all the stark and foreboding events of 'now.' Her face came to him through the blur of his tears and it lingered there so poignantly, so sad and beautiful, that he felt weak with the weight of his hopelessness. Perhaps it was the thought of Jenny which sealed together the totality of his twisted despair.

He wept for his brother, for his Grandma Myrena, and for the only woman he had found in life to truly love. He cried, too, for his weakness and his inability to think beyond this depression in his soul.

His thoughts then dwelt on other times when this mental and emotional darkness had overtaken him. In high school, he had thought of suicide because he simply could not cope with the depression, could not dispel the thick and overpowering bog of anxiety, could not see any hope. While in some faint recess of his brain he could fleetingly acknowledge that the darkness would pass, he was nonetheless held captive by it. He was unable to change the focus of his thoughts, unable to control his mind, and this awareness added to his anxiety. He had in life been master of his fate. He was envied in the business community for his acumen, aggressiveness, and rectitude. Yet, he sat here in this desert desolation in this mental and emotional wasteland, incapable of salvation.

A constrictive band pressed tighter around his mind and soul. His breathing was impeded and he felt an overwhelming urge to run from this claustrophobic place, to snap the wretched band, to feel a fresh clean spatial clarity.

He rose from the rock mound. He fought within himself, hyperventilating in his panic. He looked off to his right, to his left, to his front and rear. His eyes were unfocused, deep in their sockets, pulsing in harmony with the growing hysteria.

It was an awful place.

He stumbled like a newborn foal in his first steps and increased to an unsteady gait, running wildly off into the shimmering heat, nearly falling on the scrub brush and the jumping Cholla cacti, scattering pebbles, sand and the critters of the barren land. His fevered brain carried him on through a delirious and weaving transit, his mouth opened wide in a fight for air, his throat parched and burning.

Finally, he stopped running. He could not say how long he ran, how far his blistered feet had taken him.

His pants were covered with foxtails and bits of cactus. He bent and put his hands on his knees, gasping for sultry air, the sound of his wheezing reverberating eerily in the hot stillness. He stayed bent over for several minutes, until the heavy breathing subsided. Then, he raised himself and began to walk.

He walked for a long time, unmindful of direction or purpose, led on by his demons that promised no relief. The sweat poured from every pore and his clothes stuck to his rapidly dehydrating body. He could smell the booze of the past days coming out in his perspiration.

Soon he became aware that he was wearing the same clothes for two days, a strange intrusion into his black thoughts. He felt ludicrous when he saw that he still wore the dark blazer. The temperature was near one hundred. Must be. Yet, he only now considered that fact. He managed a manic and sardonic smile as he shed the blazer and threw it over his right shoulder, his right thumb booked into the loop on the inner collar.

He walked on.

The anxiety attack had passed. The black thoughts lay quietly coalesced just on the edge of consciousness. The physical exertion had brought an uneasy peace.

He was now confronted with a new physical reality. Mentally, he must truly be in ‘la la land’. He was walking in the desert, in a very hot inhospitable desert. He still wore his watch, though it had stopped working back in that dingy hotel room. From the position of the sun he guessed it must be mid-afternoon, between 2:00 and 4:00 PM.

His face felt flushed and his throat was scratchy. It hurt when he swallowed. He was thirsty, another odd and underwhelming discovery. He must truly be insane. When he ran his tongue over his lips he discovered a hard, cracked surface and sharp pain. His lips were sunburned, cracked, and bleeding.

He stopped walking.

Suddenly he was very tired. He looked around his immediate environment. To his left was a slight rise in the desert floor. To his right, rear, and front, there were more rises. The land undulated in all directions and he appeared to be in one of the low areas. He was surrounded by desert as far as his eyes could see. He saw no cars, no buildings, no stirring thing that resembled human activity.

His thirst was growing.

He saw another pile of rocks off to his left. 'Left' was to the north, he reckoned, since the sun was low and behind him. He walked to the rocks and sat. He dropped his blazer onto another nearby rock. Bent over, his arms resting on his knees, he closed his eyes and took a few deep intakes of hot air.

Eventually, he opened his eyes and looked around. There was some modest shade between two of the larger rocks.

He was so tired, so terribly thirsty. It was difficult to swallow. He felt weak and wasted, like somewhere between a drug addict's incredible high and abysmal low. He would rest for just a few moments. His black thoughts must let him rest.

He got up and went to the small shady spot between the rocks. He rolled his blazer into a pillow for his head and lay down. He closed his eyes.

He would only sleep for a few minutes. Then he would get back to his car. He licked his cracked and bleeding lips.

He was so thirsty.

He was so tired.

Nearby in the shade of a small boulder a Mojave rattlesnake checked the air with its flicking tongue. Other small desert denizens lurked nearby in their holes dug in the sand and under the rocks.