Jean-Paul
a short story by Tom Blaise Shepherd
Copyright
© 2001, 2010 by Thomas Mitchell Blaise Shepherd
Jean-Paul was real moody, surly at times. His mother had made him
feel real bad about himself for what his father had done to her. He’d left her
with two infant sons to rear, and had run off with a redhead, who also bore him
a son, so he’d heard. Jean-Paul secretly wished he were that son.
“Which one of us looks
the most like our father?” Jean-Paul’s brother, Jack Jr., a year older, had
asked their mother while the three of them were at the breakfast table.
Jean-Paul was then fourteen.
“Jean-Paul does,” their
mother replied. “He scares me sometimes, he looks so much like him. He even
acts like him. He has his little effeminate mannerisms.” She then added, “You
notice how Jean-Paul tilts his head to one side when he talks? Your father did
the same thing.” She then added, “Jean-Paul, you really should try to hold your
head straight when you talk. Tilting your head to the side looks kind of uh . .
. effeminate.”
She had probably said
that to his father. That’s probably why he left, Jean-Paul thought. He’d studied
his father’s pictures in the family album. He looked cool, standin’ by his
horse with his head cocked to the side, like he was talkin' to his horse. He
looks like Jean Gallant, Jean-Paul decided. Jean-Paul had been to see nearly
every one of Gallant’s westerns when they played at the movie theater. Jean
Gallant wasn’t effeminate. And his father probably wasn’t either. However,
Jean-Paul thought, If that is what is called ‘effeminate’ then I’m gonna be
effeminate. Jean-Paul didn’t understand the meaning of a lot of the words
other people used. However, it seemed to Jean-Paul that his mother had a way of
devaluing and humiliating just about everyone Jean-Paul took a liking to.
Everyone he admired.
Jean-Paul wrote lots of
letters to his father. But he never mailed them. Never knew where to mail them.
Finally he addressed one to his grandad’s office in Tulsa, saying, “Please
forward,” which was a long shot, Jean-Paul thought, since Grandad had told
Jean-Paul and his mother, when they went to visit him at his oil company, that
he didn’t know where his father was. But then maybe he’d just said that because
he didn’t want Jean-Paul’s mother to know, Jean-Paul thought. Anyway, after he
put the letter in the mailbox on the front porch, his brother, who liked to get
him in trouble, retrieved it, and gave it to their mother. His mother insisted
he open the envelope and let her read the letter. After she read it, she
reminded Jean-Paul that his father was a crook and a skirt-chaser, and that he
had taken everything she had and run off with a tramp, a little tramp. She
also told him that if he ever had anything to do with his father no one else
would want anything to do with him and that he would never amount to a dime.
That’s how she’d often described his father, as never having amounted to a
dime. Jean-Paul didn’t know what to believe. However, he hardly believed
anything his mother ever said anymore.
A couple months later,
she discovered another letter Jean-Paul had written to his father. “I want your
bags packed by the time you leave for work this afternoon. And you are to take
them with you. From now on you’re on your own,” she told Jean-Paul.
“Where will I go, where
will I live?” Jean-Paul asked.
“You’re always saying
you’d like to be out on your own. . . . . Go to Mexico. Go live with your
father . . . if you can find him! I don’t really care where you go, as long as
it’s far away from me! I’ve lost my love for you! You have betrayed me!” When
Jean-Paul tried to give her a hug, to reassure her that he loved her, she
turned her head away from him, then pushed him away.”
“Don’t ever try that
again!” she threatened.
* * *
Jean-Paul tilted his
Stetson back on his head. He then awkwardly lugged his suitcase off the Transportes
del Norte bus in the Mexico City depot. It’d been a three-day journey from
Missouri. The air was cool for the month of June. A cabbie took him to Pensión
Anita, where he rented a sparsely furnished room with board for $3 a day. The
next morning he took a bus to Maximilian 26, the address where he’d been told
his father lived, and rang a buzzer at the gate. A tall, attractive,
middle-aged redhead in a bathrobe stuck her head out the front door of the
handsome stucco house about twenty feet from the gate. Nervously, Jean-Paul
asked for Mr. Blais, surmising the woman was Allie, the little tramp his
father had run off with.
“He’s not here now, but
he’ll be home from the office at noon, if you’d care to come inside and wait.”
Her openness puzzled Jean-Paul. After the woman walked out to the gate and
opened it, Jean-Paul followed her inside the house.
“Care for a cup of
coffee, Jean-Paul?”
“Actually, I don’t
drink coffee. I was told it would stunt my growth. How’d you know my name?”
Jean-Paul asked.
“You look just like
your father . . . and my Eric. You even tilt your head to the side the way they
both do. You know, Jean Gallant does the same thing. Have you ever watched Jean
Gallant’s movies? Eric will be downstairs in a minute. He has a ball game this afternoon.”
Finally, noon arrived.
Jean-Paul’s father came in and gave Jean-Paul an abrazo. After that, the two of
them hardly said a word to each other. Dad was what Eric called their father.
Eric and his father constantly talked about baseball. Jean-Paul felt sort of
left out. Jean-Paul went to a baseball game with them and watched his father
coach Eric’s team. Eric pitched a shutout. Jean-Paul’s father later made
Jean-Paul feel self-conscious about himself ‘cause he didn’t play baseball as
well as Eric.
I’m pretty good with a
hammer and saw, Jean-Paul thought to
himself. And I’m pretty good with a pen or pencil. And I can create architectural designs. And I can plant a good vegetable garden. And I can fish, ceptin
I’ve never really caught a fish . . .
never had a dad to fish with!
Jean-Paul went by his
father’s house a couple more times for dinner, then asked Allie to take a
picture of him and his father, before returning to Missouri. He didn’t have any
more money left to be able to stay at the pensión.
On the morning of his
departure, Jean Paul’s father picked him up at Pensión Anita and drove him to
the Transportes del Norte station. Hardly a word was exchanged between the two
of them. However, Jean-Paul felt good just sitting in the front seat next to
his dad, the only time he’d ever been alone with his dad. He hated the idea of
even getting out of the car and getting on a bus that was gonna take him back
to his mother. Jean-Paul’s father gave Jean-Paul a polite handshake before
Jean-Paul boarded the bus. After
seating himself, he waved to his dad out the window. A man sitting next to
Jean-Paul asked him who the man was. “He’s my dad.” Jean-Paul said, with mixed
feelings.
* * *
Jean-Paul’s mother was late
meeting his bus. Disheveled, she gave him a scowl as he opened the door of her
car and got inside.
“Yes, I received the
letter you mailed to me from Mexico City and have read it and reread it . . .
You have betrayed me! . . . I’d always hoped that if you ever met your father
you would be man enough to punch him in the nose. But no, you had to sit down
at his dinner table with him and that little tramp . . . and break bread with
them!”
A month later,
Jean-Paul’s mother found another letter he was writing to his father under his
desk blotter. “If that letter goes out of this house, you can go with it!”
Jean-Paul didn’t finish the letter, nor did he mail it.
* * *
Just before leaving
home for Key West, where he’d planned to get a job on a fishing boat,
Jean-Paul’s mother asked him if he had a picture of her in his wallet. After he
responded “No,” she asked if she could see the photos he had in his wallet. He
figured she’d already gone through his wallet while he was sleeping or while he
was in the shower and had seen the picture of him and his father, the only
thing that mattered to him in the whole world. He reluctantly handed her the
wallet. When she saw the picture of his father, she wanted to know why he
didn’t also have a picture of her in his wallet. He didn’t answer her. However,
she demanded he hand over the picture of him and his father to her. Instead, he
removed the picture from his wallet; then he tore it up into little pieces and
handed her the pieces.
Jean-Paul then thought
to himself, I never really liked that picture, anyway.
It wasn’t the type of
picture he could really treasure. It
was a picture of his father – with Jean-Paul – the outsider –on one side and
Eric – the star pitcher – on the other side. Allie, the photographer, was very
careful to see to that – an everlasting reminder to Jean-Paul of the painful
reality that existed.
I’d just like to
disappear, Jean-Paul thought, after he boarded his bus for Key West, from
where he planned to sail on to Havana. That’s where his mom and dad had gone on
their honeymoon ‘fore Castro ever came to power. He tilted his Stetson forward
on his head, took his paperback copy of The Old Man and the Sea out of
his hip pocket and tried to get his mind off things. Finally he dozed off. He dreamed about a different kind of dad –
a much older man – just the two of them – alone on a fishing boat – far away
from the madness – from the intruders.