Purgatory Blues (2013), page 31
Jack turned into a driveway and rode up to the house that it belonged to. He threw down his kickstand outside the garage and dismounted. The well-manicured lawn looked great with that weather and he paused to enjoy the smell of the freshly cut grass. He pulled off his gloves and stuck them in his jacket pocket as he walked up to the front door, it was already open and he could see clear in to the living room.
“Hey”, Jack called out as he approached.
Melissa was inside sitting on a couch, cradling a three month old baby boy. She’d heard the bike coming up the driveway but didn’t turn to greet Jack just yet. “Look who it is! Look who it is! It’s uncle Jack!” She spoke to the baby, shaking her head from side to side using that amusing voice that people can’t help going to when they talk to infants. She heard Jack chuckle before she came over to the front door.
“Hey!” Melissa said to Jack with a big smile.
“Let me hold my godson”, he said after he’d given Melissa a kiss on the cheek.
“Here you go”, she said and carefully handed the baby to Jack, “he loves your voice, tell him a boring story and he’ll pass out in no time!”
“Hey, none of my stories are boring”, Jack replied, accepting the baby in his arms.
“You hungry? I just made some lasagna”.
“Nah, I had a big breakfast. I’ll take a coffee though”.
“Sure thing”.
Jack followed her in to the kitchen while they talked. “So, how’s everything going with you?”
“Pretty good, I’m thinking maybe I’ll go back to work, I feel like I’m ready”, Melissa answered
“Well there’s no shortage of babysitters”, Jack said with a smile.
Melissa paused, holding a coffee filter in her hands, “you know, I can’t believe how fast things have changed. I wake up at night sometimes and I think that I’m dreaming…but all of this is really happening. It’s weird huh? Remember what we were doing a year ago?
“Yup”, Jack answered knowingly with a raised brow.
“Now we’ve got this house, a baby, Page is moving to Berlin, Dennis is getting married, Eddie and Cat are pregnant…so much happened so quickly…and to think how differently things could have gone. We’re really very lucky”, she said thoughtfully.
“That’s one way of looking at it I suppose”, Jack replied.
Melissa patted Jack’s arm, noticing the solemn look on his face, “here, give Andy to me”, she said, taking the infant back. “I was going through some of the stuff from the old apartment, go see what’s on the desk in the study”.
“Alright”, Jack said and turned in to a passage leading to the other rooms of the house.
He walked to the study and found the door ajar. When he entered he saw an open guitar case on the desk with a red Stratocaster inside it. “Nice”, he said to himself.
Knowing that Andy had had a lot of guitars, he wondered what made Melissa think there was something so important about this one. He picked up the instrument to examine it and that’s when he found the inscription on the back. It read:
“To my first born, love Dad”.
Jack turned away, finding it hard to look at the words. “Idiot”, he said as though his friend were in the room with him, blinking away a single tear.
He put the guitar down and stared at the words, feeling an overwhelming sense of regret. “If you’d only waited. If you’d just fucking waited for me”, he said and looked away once more. “Well I guess you got what you wanted”, he added, nodding to himself, “too bad you’re not around to see it”.
Jack placed the instrument inside its case and secured all the latches, eager to be rid of the pain that it caused him, but as he was leaving the room, he stopped for a moment before he turned back to give the case one last look.
A half smile came to his face suddenly and he shook his head, “I should’ve known you’d put this all on me. Don’t worry brother, I’ll teach him how to play”, Jack said and closed the door behind him.
Richard X Ellison, Purgatory Blues (2013)
