Lifeblood - Chapter Six
Feb. 13th, 2021 01:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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i_read_whatSo last time, in Lifeblood, Jack made it back to Chicago, hung out with Bobbi and got some plot relevant information from Charles. Also, Jack may be officially living in Charles's basement, which delights me.
This chapter begins with an unexpected and amusing bit of domesticity. Jack wakes up, heads upstairs to find Escott in the parlor, reading the newspaper. Jack is surprised that Escott's not on a train right now, but apparently, Jack's tendencies are rubbing off on him and Escott had overslept.
Did you guys get married when I wasn't looking?
Anyway, Escott is the best husband ever. He's decided since he woke up too late to head to New York (...I feel like there are trains that run into the evening, but ok), he'd like to find out more about this Gaylen Dumont woman. She may have information that will save Escott some effort in New York. He does make a point to say that if Jack would rather meet her alone, he'd be more than happy to wait here for his return.
Awww.
Jack really does have the most understanding partners ever.
And to his credit, he appreciates that. In fact, he could use the moral support. (Which makes Escott relieved. AWW.) He'd also shuffled all of the newspapers into organized stacks, each one folded to the personal ads. All the same papers that Jack himself used.
So Jack calls the number in the ad, and immediately has a jolt, because the woman who answers sounds exactly like an older Maureen. She's apparently had a few prank calls already (the perils of publishing your number), so she has Jack prove who he is by describing the color of Maureen's eyes. She asks him to come to see her.
“She wasn’t too talkative,” I told Escott.
“Some people don’t like to use the phone.”
I was more inclined to think some people don’t like to deliver bad news on the phone. Maybe I could have stayed on longer and tried to get more information. I was vulnerable to making mistakes because of my emotional involvement and was very glad Escott was coming. He might help me to think straight. As we drove over, half-formed thoughts and questions and alternatives to what I should have said were running through my mind like insane mice.
Aww.
There's a great moment too where they're going into the hotel, and Jack hesitates and "Escott noticed my nerves. “Steady on,” he said under his breath."
I love supportive ships. <3
So Jack knocks, and Gaylen answers. Jack can hear her heart and lungs and realizes she's either very excited, very ill, or both. She walks with a cane and there's a wheelchair in the room for bad days. She greets both Jack and Charles warmly. (For his part, Charles makes "a little bow that only the English can do without looking self-conscious".)
Gaylen invites them to sit in the light so they can see each other clearly:
We did as she said and sat down. Maureen’s eyes looked back at me, but the dark hair and brows had faded and gone white. The angle of her jaw was the same, and there were a hundred other similarities too subtle for immediate definition. Her face was scored with wrinkles, the skin puffy and gone shapeless with age—a face like and unlike Maureen’s. It was an agony to look at it.
Gaylen explains that she'd only seen Jack's own ad a few days ago. She lives mostly by herself in upstate New York and doesn't tend to read papers. Her housekeeper had one though, which is how Gaylen spotted it. Maureen's name caught her eye, and she remembered that Maureen had said she knew someone named Jack. So she called the paper to find out where Jack went.
Jack asks if Gaylen knows where Maureen is. No. Unfortunately. Gaylen hasn't heard from her for nearly five years. It had been a phone call: she'd told her that she was going on a long trip and not to worry if Maureen didn't write for a while. Gaylen had sought Jack out because she'd wanted to see someone else who had known her. And of course to see if Jack had heard from her.
We learn how they're related: Gaylen is Maureen's younger sister. Seventy-two to Maureen's seventy-six. Maureen had never mentioned her to Jack. Maureen hadn't talked about her past at all.
Gaylen notices of course that Jack is only a little startled, not shocked, by Maureen's age. She wants to ask some questions of Jack. Charles asserts that he is acquainted with the facts, and Gaylen agrees to let him stay if that's okay with Jack as some of her questions might be personal.
She asks the nature of the relationship and why they separated. Noting Jack's apparent youth, she asks if he was in school at the time. Jack isn't sure how much to confide in her, and Gaylen pushes a little more.
The tone of this fascinates me:
She saw it and leaned forward. One of her small bony hands closed over mine, light and cool. “Jack, I’m old enough now to understand these things, and I hope wise enough to accept them. You can tell me, you loved each other… Were you lovers?”
The words got stuck in my throat so I nodded.
She smiled. “Then I’m glad that she found some happiness. Could you tell me why you stopped the ad? Had you given up or was there another reason?”
“It’s been so long. If there had been word, a single word from her, I’d have waited forever, but there was nothing. I had to get out of New York to try and start over, so I came here.” I stopped, wanting to get up and pace. She patiently waited me out. “Well, I met new people and have new friends. I thought it was time to let the past go. If Maureen’s alive, if she wants to find me, I left word at my old paper; they’d send her here.”
“You don’t think she’s alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jack, I must ask you just one more question: you were lovers… did she change you?”
Gaylen sounds like a parent asking a virginal young girl how far she and her boyfriend went. Or something. And it's fascinating because it seems to be working. Maybe because Jack's got his own unresolved shame about the whole thing.
Anyway, she asserts that she still loved her sister, she'd become different but not in any way that matters.
Jack changes the subject here and asks about Maureen and Gaylen. Gaylen doesn't mind. She has Jack bring her a photo frame from a nearby table: it's seventeen year old Gaylen and twenty-one year old Maureen, taken in 1881.
Both women were spinsters, alone together after their parents died. They kept busy with charity work, the church, the literary club and the sewing circle.
It was at the literary club where Maureen met a man named Jonathan Barrett. She was in her thirties, while he was in his twenties (or so they thought) and they had a whirlwind romance.
Jack isn't surprised but finds it painful to hear nonetheless. I'm not sure if the pain is more about jealousy or just that Maureen had never told him any of it. I'm not sure Jack knows either.
Anyway, apparently they had an eleven year courtship, only at night. Until 1904, when Gaylen and Maureen were crossing the street. Maureen had pushed Gaylen out of the way of a firewagon and ended up trampled. A few days after the funeral, Jonathan had come and asked if Gaylen wanted to see Maureen again, and that's when she walked in, young and beautiful.
Maureen left with Jonathan that night, but continued to write to Gaylen. She'd hoped Jack might know more than she did about where Maureen went, and they share a mutual grief and disappointment.
Charles, cooler-headed, asks what happened to Jonathan Barrett, the man who made Maureen a vampire. Gaylen doesn't know. She thinks they must have drifted apart, but Maureen didn't want to talk about it and Gaylen didn't want to pry. Gaylen says that she and Maureen did still see each other but not very often.
Gaylen turns the conversation back to Jack. She asks if he can confide in her. She's observed that he has "the same look about [him] as Jonathan." Jack doesn't deny it, but he definitely doesn't want to tell her the story about how he died. Good call, old ladies don't need to hear mafia torture-porn.
Charles saves the day again though, with a story about food poisoning. Jack got sick, passed out, and woke up in a morgue according to Charles. Nice. Just embarrassing enough to explain why Jack prefers not to talk about it.
Gaylen expresses sympathy and asks after Jack's family. She also asks about Charles, and how he came to know Jack:
Charles explains: he saw Jack's lack of reflection and became curious. He doesn't mind that Jack is a vampire, and instead finds it interesting. Jack explains that he brought Charles because Charles wants to help find Maureen.
They ask if she knows James Braxton. She's never heard of him. And this gets interesting:
A stray thought occurred to me. “You said you had some crank calls; could you tell us about them?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Just tell us.”
My insistence was not what she wanted to hear, and I felt frozen out for a moment. There was also a quality about her, a kind of authority that made me very much aware of our age difference. She swallowed it and decided to answer.
One of the callers, a man who asked a lot of questions that weren't his business, does sound like it could be Braxton. They fill Gaylen in on who he is, and since she's saner than these two idiots, she is horrified at the thought of a vampire hunter. They're mostly able to reassure her. Charles gets some more details about Maureen from her before they head out. Jack gives her Bobbi's number as a way to leave a message for him.
And here, the chapter ends.
This chapter begins with an unexpected and amusing bit of domesticity. Jack wakes up, heads upstairs to find Escott in the parlor, reading the newspaper. Jack is surprised that Escott's not on a train right now, but apparently, Jack's tendencies are rubbing off on him and Escott had overslept.
Did you guys get married when I wasn't looking?
Anyway, Escott is the best husband ever. He's decided since he woke up too late to head to New York (...I feel like there are trains that run into the evening, but ok), he'd like to find out more about this Gaylen Dumont woman. She may have information that will save Escott some effort in New York. He does make a point to say that if Jack would rather meet her alone, he'd be more than happy to wait here for his return.
Awww.
Jack really does have the most understanding partners ever.
And to his credit, he appreciates that. In fact, he could use the moral support. (Which makes Escott relieved. AWW.) He'd also shuffled all of the newspapers into organized stacks, each one folded to the personal ads. All the same papers that Jack himself used.
So Jack calls the number in the ad, and immediately has a jolt, because the woman who answers sounds exactly like an older Maureen. She's apparently had a few prank calls already (the perils of publishing your number), so she has Jack prove who he is by describing the color of Maureen's eyes. She asks him to come to see her.
“She wasn’t too talkative,” I told Escott.
“Some people don’t like to use the phone.”
I was more inclined to think some people don’t like to deliver bad news on the phone. Maybe I could have stayed on longer and tried to get more information. I was vulnerable to making mistakes because of my emotional involvement and was very glad Escott was coming. He might help me to think straight. As we drove over, half-formed thoughts and questions and alternatives to what I should have said were running through my mind like insane mice.
Aww.
There's a great moment too where they're going into the hotel, and Jack hesitates and "Escott noticed my nerves. “Steady on,” he said under his breath."
I love supportive ships. <3
So Jack knocks, and Gaylen answers. Jack can hear her heart and lungs and realizes she's either very excited, very ill, or both. She walks with a cane and there's a wheelchair in the room for bad days. She greets both Jack and Charles warmly. (For his part, Charles makes "a little bow that only the English can do without looking self-conscious".)
Gaylen invites them to sit in the light so they can see each other clearly:
We did as she said and sat down. Maureen’s eyes looked back at me, but the dark hair and brows had faded and gone white. The angle of her jaw was the same, and there were a hundred other similarities too subtle for immediate definition. Her face was scored with wrinkles, the skin puffy and gone shapeless with age—a face like and unlike Maureen’s. It was an agony to look at it.
Gaylen explains that she'd only seen Jack's own ad a few days ago. She lives mostly by herself in upstate New York and doesn't tend to read papers. Her housekeeper had one though, which is how Gaylen spotted it. Maureen's name caught her eye, and she remembered that Maureen had said she knew someone named Jack. So she called the paper to find out where Jack went.
Jack asks if Gaylen knows where Maureen is. No. Unfortunately. Gaylen hasn't heard from her for nearly five years. It had been a phone call: she'd told her that she was going on a long trip and not to worry if Maureen didn't write for a while. Gaylen had sought Jack out because she'd wanted to see someone else who had known her. And of course to see if Jack had heard from her.
We learn how they're related: Gaylen is Maureen's younger sister. Seventy-two to Maureen's seventy-six. Maureen had never mentioned her to Jack. Maureen hadn't talked about her past at all.
Gaylen notices of course that Jack is only a little startled, not shocked, by Maureen's age. She wants to ask some questions of Jack. Charles asserts that he is acquainted with the facts, and Gaylen agrees to let him stay if that's okay with Jack as some of her questions might be personal.
She asks the nature of the relationship and why they separated. Noting Jack's apparent youth, she asks if he was in school at the time. Jack isn't sure how much to confide in her, and Gaylen pushes a little more.
The tone of this fascinates me:
She saw it and leaned forward. One of her small bony hands closed over mine, light and cool. “Jack, I’m old enough now to understand these things, and I hope wise enough to accept them. You can tell me, you loved each other… Were you lovers?”
The words got stuck in my throat so I nodded.
She smiled. “Then I’m glad that she found some happiness. Could you tell me why you stopped the ad? Had you given up or was there another reason?”
“It’s been so long. If there had been word, a single word from her, I’d have waited forever, but there was nothing. I had to get out of New York to try and start over, so I came here.” I stopped, wanting to get up and pace. She patiently waited me out. “Well, I met new people and have new friends. I thought it was time to let the past go. If Maureen’s alive, if she wants to find me, I left word at my old paper; they’d send her here.”
“You don’t think she’s alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jack, I must ask you just one more question: you were lovers… did she change you?”
Gaylen sounds like a parent asking a virginal young girl how far she and her boyfriend went. Or something. And it's fascinating because it seems to be working. Maybe because Jack's got his own unresolved shame about the whole thing.
Anyway, she asserts that she still loved her sister, she'd become different but not in any way that matters.
Jack changes the subject here and asks about Maureen and Gaylen. Gaylen doesn't mind. She has Jack bring her a photo frame from a nearby table: it's seventeen year old Gaylen and twenty-one year old Maureen, taken in 1881.
Both women were spinsters, alone together after their parents died. They kept busy with charity work, the church, the literary club and the sewing circle.
It was at the literary club where Maureen met a man named Jonathan Barrett. She was in her thirties, while he was in his twenties (or so they thought) and they had a whirlwind romance.
Jack isn't surprised but finds it painful to hear nonetheless. I'm not sure if the pain is more about jealousy or just that Maureen had never told him any of it. I'm not sure Jack knows either.
Anyway, apparently they had an eleven year courtship, only at night. Until 1904, when Gaylen and Maureen were crossing the street. Maureen had pushed Gaylen out of the way of a firewagon and ended up trampled. A few days after the funeral, Jonathan had come and asked if Gaylen wanted to see Maureen again, and that's when she walked in, young and beautiful.
Maureen left with Jonathan that night, but continued to write to Gaylen. She'd hoped Jack might know more than she did about where Maureen went, and they share a mutual grief and disappointment.
Charles, cooler-headed, asks what happened to Jonathan Barrett, the man who made Maureen a vampire. Gaylen doesn't know. She thinks they must have drifted apart, but Maureen didn't want to talk about it and Gaylen didn't want to pry. Gaylen says that she and Maureen did still see each other but not very often.
Gaylen turns the conversation back to Jack. She asks if he can confide in her. She's observed that he has "the same look about [him] as Jonathan." Jack doesn't deny it, but he definitely doesn't want to tell her the story about how he died. Good call, old ladies don't need to hear mafia torture-porn.
Charles saves the day again though, with a story about food poisoning. Jack got sick, passed out, and woke up in a morgue according to Charles. Nice. Just embarrassing enough to explain why Jack prefers not to talk about it.
Gaylen expresses sympathy and asks after Jack's family. She also asks about Charles, and how he came to know Jack:
Charles explains: he saw Jack's lack of reflection and became curious. He doesn't mind that Jack is a vampire, and instead finds it interesting. Jack explains that he brought Charles because Charles wants to help find Maureen.
They ask if she knows James Braxton. She's never heard of him. And this gets interesting:
A stray thought occurred to me. “You said you had some crank calls; could you tell us about them?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Just tell us.”
My insistence was not what she wanted to hear, and I felt frozen out for a moment. There was also a quality about her, a kind of authority that made me very much aware of our age difference. She swallowed it and decided to answer.
One of the callers, a man who asked a lot of questions that weren't his business, does sound like it could be Braxton. They fill Gaylen in on who he is, and since she's saner than these two idiots, she is horrified at the thought of a vampire hunter. They're mostly able to reassure her. Charles gets some more details about Maureen from her before they head out. Jack gives her Bobbi's number as a way to leave a message for him.
And here, the chapter ends.