All the Waters of the Earth

Chapter 19: I'm Interested in Real

Later that night, after Rob had gone to bed, I sat outside with Jake on my little loveseat. He had taken off his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. There was a slight chill in the air and we huddled under a blanket, my feet in his lap.

"You could go change out of your work clothes," I suggested.

"Good idea." He lifted both of my feet over back to me, stood up, and muttered, "I'll be right back." And then he leaned over and gave me my first kiss of the night, a light one. And then he kissed my nose and smiled at me. "Thanks for dinner, Lucy. It meant more to me than you know."

He went into to my house though the patio doors, and I heard him open the front door and close it. A few moments later, he stepped out onto his patio, wearing blue plaid pajama bottoms and a black t-shirt. He vaulted the low gate between our patios and sat down next to me, rearranging my feet over his lap again, putting his arm around my shoulders. I cuddled into him.

"I like you in your business suit, but I also like that I get to see you out of it."

He groaned and squeezed me with both arms. "You can't say sexy things like that to me when your son is in there sleeping."

"I meant it in a couple of ways, Jake. Not just the, you know, naked way, but also the private side of you."

Very slowly, he turned to look at me. His eyes darted up and down my face.

"Gah. If I kiss you now, I'm not going to want to stop."

"So talk," I responded. Frankly, though, the self-imposed restraint on affection was hard on me too. I couldn't get enough of him. But I was enjoying his physical, comforting presence, and for now, that would have to do. He put his chin on top of my head and held me.

After a moment, he started talking.

"I don't know everything about my parents because I wasn't around for some of it, obviously, but also as a kid, you don't know all that is going on. So I know this. My mom was from a wealthy family back east, in New York."

"Manhattan?"

"Westchester County. Back then, my dad was an artist. He did weird shit. Sort of post-Jackson Pollack throwing paint on canvas and seeing what happens. Mixed media too. They fell in love and when my mom announced to her family that she was pregnant by the stereotypical poor, starving artist, they threw her out."

"No!"

"I have never met my grandparents," replied Jake. "On either side. So I guess that there was something about my dad that my mom loved and my grandparents couldn't stand. They eloped and had me almost immediately."

I liked the idea of Jake being a love child, born from passion, but his background was incredibly dysfunctional.

He continued. "Three years later they had my brother, Ethan. I think at first, it was very romantic for my mom. Here she was, married to this artist, you know, who was unpredictable. He would do things, like bring home a monkey, which was fun for us kids, but there was bad stuff too, like him not coming home for three days, leaving her with us. And that got old real quick.

"The poverty also wore her down. My dad didn't seem to care, but since she had grown up used to being surrounded by things, it hardened her. When I was little, she was so soft. And then she got rougher and more brittle, like she was going to break if we touched her. We eventually made it out here to California and you know, Santa Barbara is both great and tough if you are poor. The weather makes it so that you can live outside for most of the year. But it's expensive."

Didn't I know it. Santa Barbara was a place where people walked over the homeless to open the front door to Saks Fifth Avenue, not that I shopped at Saks. I had never seen such a dichotomy between the rich and the poor as I had seen in Santa Barbara.

Then I thought of something. "I thought you had said that your dad was a workaholic."

"He wasn't when I was really little. He just did his art and he didn't make much money from it. He was obsessed with all these weird, creative ideas. Meanwhile, I thought it was a good day when I got dinner."

I took his hand and squeezed it. What could you say to that?

"We got evicted a lot and I stayed in shelters sometimes. When that happened, normally I'd be with my mom and my brother; my dad had to stay in a different building, with the men. But the thing is, he had artist friends, so he would just leave us, sometimes for days. He'd come back and I'd hear my parents fighting, and it was always about the same thing: why wouldn't he work more and make some money so that we could have food and a home."

"Did your parents use drugs?" I asked, not able to comprehend people who would not sacrifice everything to take care of their children and thinking that was the only explanation for this behavior. But maybe it wasn't.

He nodded. "My mom especially. It was her way of coping. So I basically took care of my brother when she was out of it."

His story just kept getting worse and worse.

"So when my brother was killed in a car accident — a freak thing, coming home from school — everything collapsed. My mom went into this zombie state, where she was almost catatonic. When she came out, she left us. She went back home to her parents. I talk to her every once in a while, but she has a new family now, with two kids. She lives in Arizona. We're pretty much estranged."

"And your dad?"

"He couldn't paint any more after Ethan died. With my mom leaving, he checked out too, but he checked out by working. Finally, for the first time in his life, he got clean and held a steady job, working as a copy machine salesman in Ventura. But the thing is, he does nothing but work now. I barely saw him in high school. I never saw my mom. So I got the fuck out of there as soon as I could. I got a job at a grocery store bagging groceries the minute I was old enough, and worked from there, making money to go to school, to go to law school, and to just—," he paused.

"Yeah," I said quietly. "To get some security."

"So since I was old enough, I have spent almost all of my time working."

It had to be a refuge for him. A safe place where this awful, unsafe, hungry childhood didn't come to haunt him.

"Do you think you could work less?" I asked tentatively. "I mean, if there were a reason to come home?"

He looked at me for a long time. "Yes," he said finally. "Growing up like that, the only dream you have, really, is to have enough money for a home and food and a family. The traditional shit. When you don't have it, you want it because it looks so nice that everyone has it."

"But no family is perfect," I started, but he interrupted,

"I'm not interested in perfect. I'm interested in real."