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If it weren’t for the feeling that he was paying for his eighteen-year-old son’s life with it, he could enjoy the lodge atmosphere and the waterfront view from the window.
There are a few tells, of course. Not least of which is how the place can never get warm enough. Having to wear a jacket indoors for Christ’s sake, he thinks in low-level agitation.
The floral arrangement in the hollow of the shut-up fireplace seems to hover at the corner of his vision every time he is there. Bob doesn’t consider himself at all a poetic man but even he thinks it’s unnecessarily funereal.
Sat right there for him to stare at every morning and every night.
He crosses the room with decision and snatches it up just to throw it into the garbage basket two feet away, fully aware of how hysterical the action would seem to an outside observer. Defiant, he moves to stand in its place on the smooth stone hearth.
A striking memory of his own father occupying a space so similarly comes to Bob’s mind. He remembers being a boy and wondering how his father could look so belligerently out of place when he was brought indoors. How often had he wanted to yell, Would you just sit down! Look at Maman! Look how tense we all are. Can’t you just relax?
Stood so tall and broad in the small disused fireplace, it twists his insides a little to think that his own father’s presence had expanded over a lifetime of working in fields and a God-fearing duty of providing for his family. Bob’s own outsized imposition is nothing more than growing accustomed to being treated like a god.
He breathes out a sigh when the door opens.
Jack pauses at the sight of him before entering the room. His hair and sweats are slightly damp from a shower, a towel draped over one shoulder. His eyes stay on Bob as he moves around, body all loping athletic grace beneath a weakened frame and strained attention.
“You’re so early. I’ve got IGT in fifteen.”
Bob tries for a grin. “I asked Dr. Sidana if it was alright for me to have unscheduled time with my son, and she seemed to think it would be safe.”
It isn’t really a joke and he isn’t surprised that Jack doesn’t react to it.
“I spoke to Riggs this morning, actually.” He watches Jack carefully, inching closer as if he might spook. “I told him how well you’re coming along here and he practically begged me to send you to him for a meeting once you’re out. That is,” he hesitates, trying not to loom when he stands next to where Jack is sat on the bed and staring out the window, “if you want to. It’s his hard luck if you don’t. No pressure.”
His son’s shadow of a smile at the emphasis placed on ‘no pressure’ is enough that Bob could live on for a month.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll meet him. But I ah, I don’t think I want to talk about me playing again. Not yet.”
Bob feels intense shame at the drop of disappointment in his gut.
“Sure, sure. Anything you want.”
Jack glances quickly up at Bob and begins to knead the edge of the bed with his hands.
“I think I’m gonna coach peewee for a little while. I mentioned to Mairead how I want to get back on the ice but I don’t feel ready to go back into all that pressure. She said how a lot of the stuff I’m learning here could sink in better if I’m... ‘helping others.’”
Bob sees the implied inverted commas around the words. Hell, even he and Alicia are starting to feel a little institutionalized and they only spend half their time here.
“I’m pretty good with kids, so I thought... And yeah, she agreed it would be a good start.”
“Jack, you’re not pretty good with kids, you’re great with kids. They know a natural leader when they see one.”
Jack looks up at him directly and returns his father’s smile. Bob can’t help but reach out and tap a finger against Jack’s chin, settling onto the bed beside him.
“There’s something else I wanted to mention, and I didn’t want your mother here because, well. You know she’s never been a big fan of Kenny.”
A rawness breaks across Jack’s blue eyes but he nods, indicating that Bob can continue.
“He wouldn’t stop calling and the other day she seemed ready to really give it to him. So, I waited for her to go to that Vogue perfume launch thing.”
He waves his hands dismissively as if he hasn’t posed for photo shoots in said magazine multiple times. Jack snorts lightly and ribs Bob in the side.
“Anyway, he practically pushed me over trying to get to your room. I’d told him you weren’t back home yet but well, you know Kenny.”
“I know Kenny,” Jack murmurs at the same time.
“It took a couple beers and letting him knock a few pictures off the wall, but I eventually sat him down and got him to listen. Now, I’m not going to tell you everything that came out of him. At least not until you’re out of here. Because if any kid needs therapy more than any other, boy is it that one.”
Jack makes an expression of sad agreement.
Bob clears his throat. This is the difficult part.
“I’ve been able to guess that certain things have gone on between you two. And God knows you’ve been into things you were too young for, no matter how much we tried to keep you from that crowd. But this is the first time I've known you to be with a boy, and Jack,” he reaches a hand up to Jack’s shoulder when he senses the tension in the room rise. “I’m not gonna ask you anything invasive. And you know I trust you, I know you’ve been taught the right things. But as your father I have to ask: did Kenny ever push you into anything? Did he ever force himself on you?”
The smile of bewildered relief that forms on Jack’s face is so close to his old self.
“No. God, no. Papa. It’s… I don’t know how to say it. Uhm. He wasn’t the one who was, uh,” he trails off on an awkward laugh. “Kenny talks a big game but he really isn’t, you know. It’s all for show.”
Realization dawns on Bob’s face at last. “Aha! You’re saying you taught him everything he knows, eh?”
Jack ducks his head. He’s always embarrassed by how frank his father can be about this stuff.
Bob drops his hand and leans a shoulder into Jack’s.
“Tell me if I’m way off here, son. But I think maybe it isn’t a bad thing that you and Kenny take a break from each other. Maybe once you’re out of here and settled into a new pattern, around new people-- Jack?”
What he had thought was quiet laughter is crying.
Jack has his head twisted away and a teardrop clings to his eyelashes. It extinguishes when his eyes screw up in pain.
Bob feels his heart miss two beats. He reaches out to hold his son’s face, but Jack flinches away. He turns just enough to let his father see him but can’t meet his eyes.
“Some of those parties… the shit we all did… Christ, I’m so embarrassed when Maman acts like Kenny led me astray .”
He begins to lurch under the roiling shame. Bob holds him by the shoulders now, trying not to look at the way his son is vacant in the eyes but his face is taut with pain.
“I could never tell her any of it. And she hates him because she thinks,” his breath is ragged now, forming into sobs, “she thinks he screwed up her perfect little boy, I… fuck, Papa, I just … ”
His body slumps as if invisible wires had been holding him up and Bob has to slide both arms around him. He presses their faces close, searching for the soft cheek of the little boy he used to hold long ago. But there are only the bony edges of Jack’s lean face, the child gone and the young man barely there at all.
In the darkening reflection of the window Bob sees ghosts of himself; young and old.
“What do I tell him, Papa?" Jack grits out, and it takes Bob a moment to shift to where Jack is headed. “How do I say that I’ll always hate him for never having to be on medication and getting to do everything I’ve wanted since I was a kid? The draft... the contract... ”
Jack lets himself list towards his father’s embrace at last, head cowed under Bob’s chin as he weeps.
“How the fuck do I say that to someone who told me he loved me three weeks ago?”
They cling to each other in pain, perhaps the only bond Bob can imagine they share now that hockey has proven itself to be the force tearing them apart.
“I should be able to tell you, Jack,” Bob swallows thickly. “I should be able to tell you, because I’ve been in that position far more times than is forgivable. Each time, I’ve dealt with it horribly and been ashamed of myself. And the last time I let someone down like that, it was you.”
He expects Jack to pull away with an expression of fury or betrayal. He inwardly curses this damn place for making him give up his secrets so easily.
Instead, he feels Jack shift until his arms wind around Bob’s middle. Bob could howl at the undeserved forgiveness he’s receiving, but he can only be grateful.
“You were waddling over to say goodbye to me, and you fell. Not hard, but it shook the wind out of you and made you cry. In my head I heard myself think how annoyed I was because you were still learning to walk and every five minutes you would fall over or hurt yourself. I was this close to handing you over to Maman because I was already late heading out and… “
Bob wipes at his eyes briefly before clinging to his son again.
“God, I have never hated myself more than when you caught me looking at you like that. Like you were an annoyance. Eleven months old and you’d never seen your Papa give you that look, but somehow I could tell that you knew. Jack, I’ve done some terrible, awful things to people in my life but if Saint Peter turns me away at the gates because of anything, I would have understood that as unforgivable.”
“Oh, Papa,” Jack whispers. Turning his head, he presses a kiss to Bob’s cheek quickly and looks away when he knows his father almost loses composure entirely.
“I’m not… I’m not saying that to get you to forgive me or to pretend that you and I share anything like similar blame in how we live. God knows I’m not, Jack. I’m saying it because I’ve had to climb out of a similar hole before and I want to help you any way I can. The people here, they’re good people. Fine professionals. But they’re not miracle workers. You’re going to need to find somewhere to put your love until you’re ready to give it to yourself, sweet boy.”
He pauses to press a kiss to the side of Jack’s head, brushing his fingers through long dark hair.
“I still love it, you know,” Jack answers hesitantly. “Hockey. I love everything about it, except maybe not the competing. Not right now.”
Bob holds himself back from saying, ‘that will come back to you someday soon as well.’
“I think you’ve got the right idea. There are a lot of kids out there who would love to have Jack Zimmermann as their coach. And take it from me, children can be incredibly forgiving and kind.”
Their eyes meet at last and they share a soft smile before there is knock at the door. A voice murmurs Jack’s name, reminding him of the time.
Jack stands and Bob rises as well, pulling his son into a tight hug.
“Your mother says she can be here for dinner, if you don’t mind?”
He pats Jack on the side as they walk to the door.
“Good for me.”
Jack pauses with his door on the handle.
“Do I need to be worried about Kenny? Do you think… “
“No. Not at all, son. He’s angry and upset for sure, but it’s just because he misses you. You don’t owe him… any of us, anything. He’ll be fine.”
“I hope so.” Jack’s voice is barely a whisper.
“We’re hard to get over, son. But they always do.”
Jack smiles a little wryly, fear only evident in his eyes.
“What about us?”
“Oh, well now,” Bob ambles over and opens the door for Jack. “We may feel like heartless assholes a lot of the time, but when we do finally fall in love…” He makes a soft whistling sound. “We never get over it.”
Jack can’t say why that piece of information out of the entire rehab experience remains his strongest source of consolation. But it is.