When he was young and his mother died, it had the effect you expect when they're sixteen and their mother dies and maybe they could've prevented it if they'd called me at work, damnit -- at least, that's what his father liked to tell him when he'd burn the chicken and undercook the noodles and he would come in like he always did, waiting for something.
He'd like to say it when they'd sit down and his father would spit the dinner into a napkin and ask him why he couldn't get it right and make sure to remind him that his mother used to sit in that empty chair next to him and maybe if he hadn't watched that stupid show it wouldn't be this way.
His father was always nice about it of course, you see, because he wouldn't yell, he'd just tell him these things in a calm, rational voice like they were immutable truths.
Jack started finding reasons to keep away from that house, that house with too many memories. He'd find ways to be after school until it was dark so he could slink into the house and avoid the questions, get out of cooking the dinner he could never make just right; just the way she used to make it, perfect in every way. Dinners were never too hot or too cold when she cooked them, and they always had the perfect coalescence of ingredients that all compounded into one little taste of Heaven.
The quintessential Italian housewife, Doris Malone could cook a lasagna on Sunday nights for the whole family, whip up some canneloni, ravioli, spaghetti, ziti, manicotti, and tortellini, filling the house with warmth and aromas you could smell as you fidgeted in your seventh period class -- the one with all that Algebra and Trigonometry and foregin gibberish you knew you'd never need.
So he had to leave, and he did, as soon as he graduated. He joined the Rangers and there happened to be a war being fought in a country overseas that he'd talked about in school as though it was something he could detach from until...well, he couldn't, and he was in the thick of it.
Too young too understand, as he guessed they all were, and too old perhaps to just leave in the way he wanted to. So he fought and he made it out and he considered himself lucky, save for a few injuries that just never left, like his aching knee.
The day it happened, they were routinely doing a search of the outlying jungles and he could've sworn it seemed too quiet somehow to be real. And it was. Because then the gunfire started, and the sound came that you couldn't forget; the sound of the popping bullets meeting air and flesh, the sound of your friends screaming for life and death, and the sound of silence as both came.
He took a hit and fell to his stomach, praying he would be spared, and as he lay there, a guy he knew fell down beside him and they both watched each other for a while until it stopped. But they laid there for a while, neither moving, just watching the other take a breath and suddenly, his chest stopped its rhythm and he was all alone.
Maybe, he thought now, everything wasn't as perfect when his mother had been alive all that time, but he'd allowed himself, in the years since her death and his time in Vietnam, to create in his mind the life he may not have necessarily had, but the life he wanted and needed. So, things had gone wrong, right? Bad things happened. Very bad things. Things maybe he could've stopped, but see, that was where the beauty of illusion lay.
Because Jack Malone, in his mind, could fix the things that weren't perfect. He could fix his mother's death, he could pretend he had saved her and it would feel good on the nights he could believe it. He could pretend he had saved his friends in Vietnam.
He could pretend he had a happy marriage, and sometimes, in his mind, those things felt good, so good...they were real for a split second.
But then, then he would know of course that those things, those things of make believe were just that. Some things were never meant to be imagined, like his mother dying -- because it would never change -- and other things, like his marriage, were never meant to be reality, because it could change, he just wasn't sure if he had the strength to do that.
*
In retrospect, she should have realized he was leaving before he spoke the words.
As her two worlds, her past and present, merged in thought, Samantha Spade folded her notepad under her arm, tossed her pen onto her desk, and fell into her chair with half-hearted abandon, thinking of the day 26 years ago when her life changed irrevocably.
As her hands touched the old wood of her FBI desk, running slowly along the smooth contours and grooves, she could again feel that half-ass excuse for a screen plastered on their door beneath her childish fingers; it felt as it always did, beginning to peel away from the door. She remembered the feel of each curve, the mesh of it implanting tiny squares against her hand. She remembered the thought that entered her mind, the thought that her father might be home, be mad that she had touched the already damaged screen and contributed to its decrepit state.
She felt, sitting at her desk, the way she had 26 years ago when her little legs stumbled up the concrete steps, her shoes each a step ahead of the other as her untied laces strung out against the dirt and her nimble hands had decided to wait before entangling themselves in the technique of tying she hadn't yet mastered. She had walked home carefully, counting the cracks in the street, cradling the library books preciously in her arms, anticipating the worlds they would open for her in mere minutes. Matthew would tie her shoes and Matthew would read to her and she would settle into that comfort once more.
She felt the way she did all those years ago when she finally entered that house and saw two packed duffel bags in the corner, too young to fully understand why they were there and why her clothes weren't in them as well. She could've gone, she really could've. All she needed was a book or two, a doll, and a few clothes, and then -- and then she could go and she wouldn't be any trouble, her adult mind promised as it merged with the child she had once been.
But she hadn't gone, and...he did write, she did draw, and for a while they had this between them. She would draw pictures of their house, her school, her dresses, birthday cakes, Christmas trees, the sun of spring, and the dead leaves of winter.
She would remember sometimes the sound his bed made across the silent hallway on late summer nights as he would roll over fitfully, needing a sleep that wouldn't come because of nightmares in reality that wouldn't go away.
Time passed, and the letters still came, but there was a greater length of time between them. She thought of it sometimes, but she saw the news as well, and knew of course that he would write when he could. Then, one day...the letters stopped. And little Sammy kept drawing pictures; pictures of faces and people that had changed since he was away. Pictures of the life he once had, so when he did come back, he would have these things and then she could tell him a story.
Little Sammy kept drawing and little Sammy grew up too.
You like to draw, Sammy, huh? Draw your little trees and houses...
Twenty-six years and she could still hear his voice too, her father's. Sometimes he would play poker late at night, stumble up the staircase and crash into the hallway and she could hear him out there. Her mother would be away sometimes for work and he would come in and tell her he had lost the money and she should keep quiet about it.
Don't tell your mommy what happened to that money, Sammy, you keep quiet now...
She flinched.
Keep quiet...
She could hear Danny behind her, dropping a folder onto his desk.
Keep
"Samantha?"
...keep...
"Samantha?"
...quiet...
His hand on her shoulder broke her from her thoughts with a slight jump, and she covered up her surprise in a laugh, Danny returning the false smile.
"You okay?"
"Fine."
He walked away and she searched her drawer for a pen, pausing just before she closed the drawer back up, an unconscious voice reminding her not to let it slam.
We don't slam doors in this house, Sammy...
Right, Dad, sorry.
Keep quiet...