CHAPTER ONE: COME FOR DINNER
Ed Vallone wasn't looking forward to the sudden re-appearance of his former best friend on the opposite side of the dining room table. Since second grade he and Jack Bauer had been inseparable. They'd done everything together, from playing with Transformers and Batman's Cave, to t-ball and up through all the various levels of Little League, with time out for backyard campouts and, one memorable summer, when they'd learned to surf.
Despite that, about eight or nine months ago Jack had dropped out of his life without one word of explanation. They would be seniors in the fall, and Ed was pre-occupied with guilty thoughts about what he hadn't done about college, and hanging out with his friends, and his plans for improving the school newspaper, thereby winning the Pulitzer Prize. But by the end of the academic year Jack was barely showing up for school three days a week. He'd dropped the friends they'd shared about the same time, just as abruptly as he'd dropped Ed. He'd broken up with his girlfriend, after chasing after her for the preceding four years. Ed felt that he didn't know who Jack Bauer was anymore. Nor was he that interested in finding out who he'd turned in to.
He quickly gathered, however, that either his own parents hadn't seen fit to tell him what was going on, or he hadn't been paying attention. Apparently what prompted this particular dinner invitation was the fact that Jack's mother was back in the hospital, and had been for two weeks. He'd been on his own since she'd gone in. Just as he'd been on his own for most of the last year when, in between chemo and radiation treatments, Mrs. Bauer always seemed to be going into the hospital for an operation, or because her "count" was too high, or too low. Ed's mother had been trying to get Jack to agree to come over since the day his mother had gone in this last time, and Jack had finally relented. Mrs. Vallone had made it clear that she was not going to leave him alone until he'd shown up at least once. Or maybe Jack had run out of excuses for not coming over.
What struck Ed most during that meal was the way his own father spoke to Jack. When he arrived they actually shook hands, like they'd just been introduced five minutes earlier. During the meal Ed noticed that Jack visibly alerted when Paul Vallone asked him a question, or sent a comment in his direction. There was an understanding, a communication there, which was somehow different from the way his father spoke to Ed. Something more formal but also more equal.
It made Ed vaguely jealous, that Jack was talking to his father in a way he couldn't. Like there was something going on between the three of them...Ed's mother, Ed's father, and Jack...that Eddie wasn't privy to. It was like he and his thirteen-year old brother Donnie were visitors at the adult table, allowed there on probation pending maintenance of good behavior. Whereas Jack, even though he was six months younger than Ed, was sitting at the table where he now belonged.
It was awkward between them during dinner but didn't stop his mother from shooing them up to Ed's room afterwards, just as she'd done hundreds of times before. He leaned uneasily on the doorframe as Jack idly pulled on Eddie's mitt and used it to catch the hardball he tossed back and forth to himself.
"How'd the team do this year?" Jack asked, and immediately regretted it, wincing inwardly. It was the type of question an uncle who barely knew you would ask if he were visiting from out of town.
"What do you care?" Eddie replied immediately, seeing through the falseness of Jack's feigned interest, just as Jack knew he would. "The season ended three months ago, in case you hadn't noticed." Ed sat down on one of the twin beds. When he'd slept over, Jack had always had the other one.
"We lost in the first game of sectionals," he continued. "Our fielding was a disgrace. They stole second on us three times. Hager couldn't catch a ball if his life depended on it." Ed's whole body said 'You weren't there, Jack. We lost because you weren't there.'
"You try working after school every day, and hold down another job on the weekends, and see how much time and energy you've got left," Jack shot back.
"After school? When was the last time you actually showed up for a full week? That you passed anything this year was a gift and you know it as well as I do. Besides," he went on angrily, "you had more than enough time, and energy, to meet up with your friends Vinnie and Pittz.
"Do you know what they do with the weed you sell them, Jack? They turn around and sell it to the seventh graders who hang out around the basketball courts in back of the middle school. Those kids are younger than Donnie, Jack."
A pained expression crossed Jack's face but he shrugged it away like what Ed had said to him didn't matter. Ed was surprised at how sad he felt when he realized Jack hadn't done anything to deny the accusation.
"You used to care about school, Jack. You used to care about playing baseball, and cross-country, and you would have kicked the butt of anybody you caught doing what you're doing now. What the hell happened?"
You used to care about me, Eddie wanted to yell at him. But he had too much pride to say it.
Jack gave him a bitter, disgusted look.
"You really have to ask me that question? Where the hell have you been?
"Here's a news flash, Eddie. This may be something you've never thought about. But, guess what? Things actually cost money. Everything costs money. And here's another tidbit. Somebody has to work if there's going to be any money.
"I do what I have to do. Every day, I go out, and I do what I have to do. Don't ask me to apologize to you because I haven't got any interest in playing high school any more. I couldn't care less about some team, or the theme for this year's prom, or who got the lead in the spring musical, or what's going to be on the fucking geometry quiz. I have other things I have to do, that have to be taken care of.
"I have to do it because there's nobody else in this goddamned world who will."
"If you've had so much to deal with, why didn't you at least come and tell me that?" Eddie countered. "Friends are supposed to talk to each other, Jack. You check out, people miss you. For a while they wonder what they did to tick you off. They don't know what to think. Then they move on, and they forget about you. I can barely figure out my own life. How the hell am I supposed to just know what's going on in yours?"
"Ok, sport, try this one on for size. Here's what's happening in my life." Jack said, smiling at him like this was actually fun.
"In less than two weeks, I'm going to need a couple thousand to get her buried. That's another thing you have to pay for, by the way. The life insurance is already spent. The doctors and the hospital will scarf that up. I have no idea where that money's going to come from. I can't work anymore hours, because there aren't any more hours.
"So the fair haired boys and girls of Santa Monica better get out their roach clips, and the money Daddy forks over every Friday night, and get ready to light up. Because I need the money.
"And you want me to feel sorry because I didn't play baseball this year? Don't make me laugh."
They glared at each other.
"No, I just wish you had remembered that we were supposed to be friends. And that I would have done anything to help you out," Ed said quietly.
Jack put the ball in the mitt and placed it back on Eddie's desk.
"Once I get past this..." Jack stopped for a moment. Then he continued. "Maybe I can cut back on work this fall. I've got to get my grades up."
Eddie was startled. He sounded deflated and bone tired, completely different from the way he'd sounded just moments before. Like he couldn't jump all over Eddie any more because he'd just totally run out of steam.
"You still thinking about college?" Ed asked him, surprised.
"I'll probably go to UCLA" Jack said calmly. Now he was fiddling around with the bindings on the catcher's mitt.
"How can you say that? You haven't even applied yet."
"A friend of my Dad's from the Bureau knows the admissions director. The District Director knows a couple of people on the Board of Trustees. If I can get my grades back up, that should do the trick. And I'm getting an ROTC scholarship. So after I sell the house..."He shrugged again. "We'll see".
Eddie was stunned. He'd barely started thinking about what he wanted to do with his life and had vague ideas about applying to approximately thirty different schools. But Jack had not only worked out where he wanted to go; he had a back door strategy for getting in, and a way to pay for it once he got there. And he'd also settled on what he'd be doing in five years, after he graduated from college. Eddie didn't even know what he'd be doing next month.
"We should go down," Jack added. "I have to thank your mother and I have to get over to the hospital."
"Isn't it kind of late for visiting? Its almost ten."
"They don't hassle me about that too much, now. They let me see her pretty much any time I want."
As Ed stood on the porch with his Dad, watching Jack drive off, his father struggled to light his pipe.
"Don't envy Jack his freedom," his father advised, his face illuminated in short bursts as he puffed on the pipe to get it going. "His mother's dying and he knows it. It won't be long now. The doctors say it could be a matter of days, no longer than a week or so at most. After that, he's on his own."
"He keeps doing what he's been doing, he won't have to worry about his freedom much longer." Ed leaned against a porch column, trying to look as non-chalant as he could manage.
His father looked him up and down for a moment before answering.
"Jack's growing up fast, probably too fast. That's not his fault, that's not anybody's fault, with the possible exception of the thief who murdered his father." Mr. Vallone paused to let that one sink in. "Don't blame him for feeling separated from the rest of you, you and Matt and Greg and Charlie. He's dealing with things that, hopefully, none of you will have to face for quite some time."
"Yeah, well, if even half the rumors are true, the next thing he's going to have to face will be a judge, and it won't be for a traffic ticket, either."
Eddie's father sucked on his pipe for a minute.
"Do you know something specific, something you've seen with your own eyes? Or is that comment based on the latest round of juicy high school gossip?"
Eddie shifted uncomfortably. The only thing he'd seen wasn't exactly illegal. It was much closer to being every teenaged boy's dream. It involved an empty house, a total lack of adult supervision, a pretty blonde who liked 'guys who surfed,' and parents who didn't seem to care too much if their daughter came home at night or not. He couldn't rat Jack out on that one.
"Well, no, but..."
"About what I thought," said Mr. Vallone. "Ed, if you really think Jack's in trouble, that he's doing things he shouldn't be doing, and you want me to try and do something about it, I can. But you have to come to me seriously and you have to tell me, specifically, what you've heard or, even better, what you know to be a fact.
"The way he is now," Paul Vallone continued "I can't talk to him about some vague generalities. Jack would end that conversation in about two seconds flat and he'd never talk to me honestly again. At least now I can approach him about some things, and sometimes he actually listens to me. But that's a slender thread and it has to be treated delicately.
"The worst thing would be if he reaches the conclusion that I'm going to let him down, just like every other adult in his life has let him down. If that happens then I don't know what's going to happen to him."
Ed was puzzled.
"Dad, his Mom hasn't let him down. She didn't ask to get sick, any more than his Dad asked to get shot. What do you mean?"
"I'm talking about how he feels, Ed, not what he knows. There were two people that he had every right to expect would take care of him until he was ready to be on his own. For whatever reason, they can't do that for him. And what that feels like, to Jack, is that they just up and left him."
Paul Vallone looked at his son and continued, speaking very gently.
"That's what Jack's so angry about, Edward. Only he can't get angry at his parents because he knows, with the logical part of his mind, that this situation is the last thing they wanted to have happen. There are a number of reasons why he won't let himself get angry at them. At least, he won't admit to himself that he's angry at them. But he still has to do something with all that anger.
"So he's sent it in your direction. He's cut you right out of his life: you, Ginny, and all his other friends as well. The most dangerous part is that he's directing a good deal of that anger at himself. A very young part of him, a part that's left over from even before he started school, is wondering if maybe he didn't do something to make all this happen; if it isn't somehow all his fault.
"He's not really angry at you, son. He's just full of anger about getting the short end of the stick. And I, for one, don't blame him."
They stood together for a while, just listening to the crickets and thinking.
"Did any of that make any sense to you?" Paul Vallone asked.
"Yes, but I have to think about it some more."
"Nothing wrong with thinking about things and reading about them before you express an opinion about whether they're true or not." Mr. Vallone said, "The world would be a lot better place if people bothered to engage their brains before they opened their mouths."
Ed smiled to himself. That was one of his father's favorite profound statements.
He liked talking to his father this way, like they were working together to make sense out of something that was complicated and important. It kind of made up for feeling shut out of things earlier. His Dad was pretty smart, underneath it all. He seemed to know what Eddie was wondering about or confused about, even before he got around to actually bringing it up. Right then it felt surprisingly good, that his Dad was standing next to him, ready to talk with him about anything that was on his mind. Or that they could just stand there together and listen to the night sounds.
"If you're interested," Mr. Vallone added, after they'd spent some minutes in a comfortable silence. "I've got a book or two that might make these things clearer."
"How do you know all this, Dad? I mean, you're a lawyer, you're not a doctor, or a shrink, or anything like that."
"Oh, I do some public defender work on the side, its pro bono. That means the firm doesn't get paid for it. Its like charity work. And a lot of the people I defend are kids, young people, who come from some pretty horrendous family situations. Families that make Jack's situation look like a walk in the park.
"To defend them effectively, I have to understand my clients, why they're acting the way they act. And reading about how kids grow up, and what happens to them when something goes wrong, helps me to do that.
"There are even moments when knowing about these things is actually useful when it comes to living in this house," he added, dryly.
"I'm just trying to make sure," he added, as he knocked the spent pipe ashes down into the shrubbery, "that Jack doesn't need my professional services in the near future."