Page 11 of Phoenix Fire

Now, Jenny sensed that Jason was irritated, perhaps with her for some reason. She could not find sense in her own mind's reckoning. She felt that she was acting irrationally and naively. She tried to push the thoughts away. It could simply be that Jason and Carlton were clashing in some way. Siblings did that.

The signals were mixed and misunderstood by Jenny Mason. The real reason for Jason's abrupt mood change was two-fold. He was wary and weary of his brother's rude and arrogant goading, a not so unfamiliar scenario when he was around Carlton for any period of time. The more compelling reason for Jason's moody behavior was his accidental discovery of Grandma Wimsley's poor health condition and prognosis.

Innocently enough Jason had gone to the guest bathroom at the completion of dinner. The phone had rung just as he left the dining room table. It had all been so coincidental. Unaware that Jason was using the guest bathroom, Myrena had taken the call in the hallway adjacent to the guest bath. Jason had overheard the ensuing conversation between his Grandma and her longtime friend and physician, Dr. Nelson Paige. It was obvious that they were in a discussion over diagnostic lab tests that had detected widespread cancer. Jason had heard the words, 'death and terminal,' and he had felt a terrible pang of anxiety. That feeling had persisted on into the night and had effectively altered his personality, and his heart had sunk to an awful place of despair.

While Myrena had talked to Dr. Paige with no apparent panic in her voice, it was clear through the remainder of the evening that she was having periodic pain. It was only obvious to Jason because he was privy to the telephone conversation. As Jason glanced at Myrena through the night, he could see when the pain hit her. There would be a slight wrinkle at her brow, a stiffness that came to her lips, and her eyes would register a momentary spasm.

It was evident to Jason that his Grandma did not wish to divulge her condition to the family, and he would honor and respect her wish. The reality of her cancer overwhelmed him in a way he could not have expressed. Oh, he knew that Myrena was in her late seventies, that she had lived a full life, and that her fierce independence would not let her encumber her grandsons with the terminal aspects of the disease. Jason had considered his beloved Grandma indestructible and indefatigable, a matriarch who might outlive all of them. He was both saddened and unhinged by his innocent discovery.

He found it difficult enduring Carlton for the remainder of the evening, and, for the most part, he was totally uncomfortable in his forced mask of amiability. Except for his one eruption of pique at Carlton's comments about Jenny, he was able to stay even keel and tolerate the mindless barbs. What he wanted more than anything else was to be alone, alone to handle the awful truth that had come to him. When he looked at Jenny he could not hold their gaze. There were moments that he thought he might begin to weep. How ironic, this business of fate and serendipity! He had met the woman that could possibly be his love and soul mate through life and eternity, only to discover that he was soon to lose a major piece of his heart.

Jason held together for the remainder of the evening, staying beyond the departure of Carlton and Sheila, trying valiantly to maintain his composure. The large parlor became for him a stifling cavern that threatened to cut off his breathing. Finally, when he felt that he could no longer hold together, he pretended the need for sleep because of a pending full day of activity.

Jason was conscious of his curtness in his leaving of Jenny at her apartment door. For him it had to be that way. He knew that if he remained too long in her company that he would break. He cared very much for this new and special lady in his life, but the tragic discovery of his Grandma's illness had filled him an awful apprehension and depression. He would need soon to explain it all to Jenny, but not this night. He did not wish to drive her away by exposing his tender emotions. It was too soon in their relationship. Hopefully, she would later better understand.

He walked late into the night, unmindful of the fulgent moon and stars in a cloudless sky, deep into a darkness of spirit which he felt might never leave him. His dear Grandma was dying. It was a reality that should have not been so alien, not so devastating, not so soul wrenching. But there it was, a truth he had to accept; a truth he had to know was coming; a truth, despite its natural relevance and its simple rite of passage, a truth that became a sodden and heavy weight upon his heart.

With dawn and the fire of the Arizona sun he thought again about living.

He thought of Jenny.

Chapter Eight

It was 'as lonely as Sunday.'

Mark Twain had written that line in Connecticut Yankee. Funny how it came to her now so vividly, years after reading the book. The lightning had apparently cleaned out her recall circuits. She usually could not remember much of what she had read.

“As lonely as Sunday.'

The words, the feeling, embraced her like a gray soggy memory of an afternoon in Lawrence, Kansas, sitting at her bedroom window seat, looking out at the ceaseless patter of raindrops. That day, she was sure that her life was a tragic crossroad, that her heart was surely about to break. The tears were overflowing and becoming a syncopated blur with the noisy falling rain. She had a major fight with her steady boyfriend, the star quarterback of the high school football team. He had wronged her in a cruel way, sneaking behind her back, leaving their date early on a pretext, to spend a sex evening with the school harlot. It was the most devastating and humiliating experience in her young life.

'As lonely as Sunday.'

It was like that now but in a less tumultuous way. It was Monday evening and she sat in the dark listening to a taped Bach symphony, watching the moon track its way across the starry eastern horizon. She was not devastated as on that distant rainy day in Lawrence and she had no concern about a fragile heart. She was not without hope but she did sense another crossroad in her life.

She was lonely, lonely for Jason Prince.

Why had he not called? What had she done to upset him? Had she been too premature in her school girl glow? Had the lightning made her more susceptible to anticipation and yearning? Was she expecting too much too quickly from a fateful rainy day meeting?

Jenny thought about their last night together at Grandma Wimsley's house. Something unexpected had happened there that night to cause a change in Jason. Was it something she had said or done? She thought back carefully and could not remember an utterance or faux pas which would have caused his shift in mood. Was it something that happened out of her earshot when Jason had talked to Carlton? What had happened?

She wanted to scream!

She was so sure that they were evolving into 'something,' a very 'special something.' She could not have been so wrong about that. A person knew when a feeling was special, when the heart was pumping faster, when that feeling was being shared. She could not have been so wrong about that. She was sure that she was falling in love with Jason Prince, and, that he was falling in love with her.

It was several days now since the dinner. Why had he not called? Jason was not the coy type. He would not play silly macho games with her. Why had he not called?

The moon had left her window. She could no longer see its slow rising arc. The stars, though, were there in a crystal clear and deep night sky.

Bach was now repeating the regal, tranquil movements of his symphony 101. Jenny sighed and curled deeper into the old familiar stuffed chair. She understood a rather spectacular notion that weaved itself in between the lapping folds of loneliness. She felt somewhat peculiar in her understanding. There was no despair. Actually, there was an intelligence now in her loneliness, an almost caressing awareness that these moments were but a linking part of a larger passage. It was nearly contradictory in its message, but it was there, and she was sure of its communication.

“Wow!” she uttered aloud. “This is crazy! I'm lonely and miserable but I'm enjoying it! Nuts!” She again thought of the lightning episode and her out of body experience.

In spite of herself she smiled up at the stars outside her window. She must be in some kind of delirium. She finally rose from the chair and made her way through the strewn advertising papers on the floor. She exchanged the Bach tape for Puccini's La Bohème on the way to running her bath.

When her bath was ready she poured a glass of Gallo Chablis, turned up the volume on Puccini, disrobed, and sank tentatively into the hot water. Soon, the water's heat brought a languid concession to her loneliness. She lazily soaked and sipped her white wine. The image of Jason Prince's face came to her softly etched on the steam rising from the tub. A wistful smile played upon her lips. Without fully knowing why, she felt a deep sense of contentment. She felt at peace and her earlier feelings of emptiness and solitude dissipated into the evaporating mist.

She remembered their first kiss, his lips like a warm dewy sweetness on her own; the gentle stirring within her body as he held her close; his eyes, intense, sparkling with something like devotion. She purred in the hot water and gave herself to the romantic imagery floating around her, purred and languished in the ecstasy of thought. The hot silky water soothed her, and the imagery swayed to and fro on the melodious arias of Puccini.

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