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Six Questions

John Sheirer

January 7, 1971

    “Am I going to have to pull this car over?”
    The shiver Jack felt came half from the winter air rushing in through the car’s gaping rear window and half from the tone he recognized in his mother’s gravelly voice. Jack’s two older sister beside him in the back seat huddled deeper into her winter coat and stared at the front seat head rests a foot from their faces, familiar with this repeated drama since Jack had learned to talk a decade ago.
    “I’d rather freeze than choke,” Jack said.
    “Bob, please talk to him,” his mother implored.
    Jack’s father turned from the driver’s seat to look at him. His father’s cigarette clung to his lower lip with dried spit glue, dangling and disregarding gravity.
    “Can’t you just ignore it, Jack? It’s just a little smoke,” Jack’s father said, turning his gaze back to the highway as tiny bits of ash fell onto the shoulder of his thick canvas jacket. He brushed the ashes away, leaving a thin charcoal streak.
    Everyone hunched into themselves for a few seconds before Jack’s mother broke the silence.
    “I can’t even enjoy a simple cigarette without you making a big production out of things,” she said, crushing hers out in the ashtray. Jack’s father cracked his window and tossed his out.
    “Are you happy now?” Jack’s sister asked through chattering teeth.
    “Not really,” Jack answered as he rolled up his window.

September 22, 1979

    “Why not her?”
    Gary pointed to a slender brunette three tables away in the crowed cafeteria. Even three tables away, Jack knew who he meant.
    Her name was Heather. Jack only knew that because a guy named Jerry in Jack’s biology class told him her name and said that she told him she thought Jack was “cute.” Jerry and Heather went to the same high school.
    Jack had only been in college for two weeks, and he hadn’t really met any girls yet. He hadn’t really been trying. After going to a tiny high school where he had been labeled “homely” since first grade, it was hard to get used to being at a college where girls might think he was “cute.”
    Heather and some of her friends got up to leave. Jack liked the way they looked in their sorority sweat pants, a Greek letter stitched onto each half of their rear ends. Jack liked watching the Greek letters move when Heather walked toward the doors. But he didn’t like the ways she reached for the bulge in the side pocket of her sweat pants when she and her friends reached the cafeteria door. He didn’t like the way she drew a wrinkled, shiny package to her mouth.
    “Why not?” Gary asked again.
    “She’s a junior,” Jack replied. “She wouldn’t be interested in me.”

June 18, 1989

    “Is this your grandson?”
    The nurse massaged her fingertips into the blooming bruises at the crook of Jack’s mother’s arm. “I’m sure we can find another vein here somewhere,” she said.
    Jack leaned forward and kissed his mother’s cheek. She smiled and readjusted the silk scarf he had given her yesterday to cover her bald head. She didn’t like the wig that the hospital had supplied.
    “My son,” Jack’s mother croaked. “My youngest. My baby.”
    “Oh,” said the nurse.
    Jack’s mother glanced up at the television suspended from the wall near the ceiling. The sound was turned off. A game show was in progress, and someone had just lost a large sum of money that was never really his anyway.
    “Here we go,” the nurse said, sliding the new IV needle into Jack’s mother’s arm.

February 14, 2000

    “Smoking or non-smoking?”
    The waitress looked familiar, but Jack couldn’t tell where he had seen her. She was smiling at him and completely ignoring Amy. Their third date happened to fall on Valentine’s Day. The sitter was with Amy’s daughter Linda at home, and they had the whole evening ahead of them.
    Before Jack could speak, Amy waved the rose Jack had given earlier in the evening through the waitress’s line of vision. She blinked and turned her head.
    “Smoking,” Amy said.

June 4, 2003

    “Does my mom smoke?”
    Linda usually sounded confident, so Jack was surprised at how small her voice sounded in the front seat of his car. In the three years he had been dating Linda’s mother, she had never sounded so small. It was just the two of them, gliding along through the nighttime rain on the way home from her violin lesson. The wipers ticked three times before Jack could respond.
    “What makes you ask that?” He glanced over and saw Linda looking directly at him. Even in the poor light, he could see the intensity in her gaze that he couldn’t hear in the voice.
    “Well,” she said, not taking her eyes from his face, “I’ve been wondering for a long time. I keep finding used-up cigarettes in the toilet and the trash can. I’m not looking for them or anything, but they’re hard to miss. And sometimes her bedroom smells like ashes.”
    Involuntarily, Jack took a sniff. Amy had borrowed his car last week while he took hers in to have the brakes serviced. Jack glanced at the ashtray and wondered what surprises it contained.
    “Plus, my dad says she does lots of bad things,” Linda continued. “But I’m never sure if I should believe him.”

June 8, 2003

    “What did you tell her?”
    Amy leaned forward from her hiding place behind Jack and peered over his shoulder toward the lake. Linda splashed with two of her friends in the shallows just beyond the edge of the beach. Suddenly the three of them sprinted out into the water until it reached their thighs. They dove and began swimming toward the dock with the diving board near the center of the lake. Linda was the best swimmer of the three.
    Amy relaxed behind Jack and took a long draw on her cigarette, now that Linda could not possibly see her. He could hear the hot crackling and feel the ember’s heat near his bare shoulder as she inhaled. He leaned forward.
    “I told her how much it bothered me that my parents smoked when I was a kid,” Jack said to Amy, not turning to look at her. “I told her that sometimes people have a very hard time quitting, even when they really want to.”
    Amy ground her cigarette into the beach and covered the butt with a few handfuls of sand.
    “You could have just told her that I didn’t smoke,” Amy said.
    Linda was already on the diving board when her slower-swimming friends reached the dock and scampered up the ladder to join her.
    “That wouldn’t have been true,” Jack said.
    Linda ran down the diving board and let out a long squeal as she flung herself into a cannon-ball that showered her friends with lake water.
    “I wish you had told her that ...” Amy started but didn’t finish her thought. “I wish I didn’t ...” she began again, and then she rose from the blanket and walked toward the car.



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