The Passion of Jazz and Other Short Stories

Rob. Please. Just, drive us there safely,” Jill said, holding back tears.

  The four sat in silence until Rob slowly picked up the speed again and drove a steady 70 mph. Rob switched on the radio and put on his MP3’s of Frank Sinatra.

  “Oh please,” Jill said, “Do we have to listen to that?”

  “What’s wrong with Frank Sinatra?”

  “We don’t want to hear that, that’s your grandparents’ music for God’s sake.”

  “Yes and I like it, too. Whatever happened to that rule that the driver gets to set the music?”

  “We’re just suggesting…”

  “You’re suggesting. The kids like Sinatra just fine.”

  “Fine, you win.”

  “I don’t want to win.”

  “Yeah right.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Yes you do.”

  “Okay, so I do then,” Rob said and floored the gas pedal.

  Billy looked at Laura in fear at Rob’s yelling and speeding. Laura comforted him, whispering, “He’s just upset now, he won’t be like this once we get there.”

  After another hour of driving, at around 6:30 p.m., Rob turned in to a secluded campground near the Grand Canyon. He started backing the SUV into a dirt parking space.

  “Be careful backing in,” Jill said.

  “I’ve got this,” Rob said.

  “You’re getting too close to that tree, you’re too close.”

  “It’s fine, damn it.”

  “I guess I was wrong,” Laura whispered to Billy, “he’s still mad.”

  Rob shut the car off and everyone jumped quickly out.

  “Let’s get cooking, I’m starving after that drive,” Rob said.

  “I’ll get out the buns and hamburgers,” Jill said. “Kids, why don’t you put out the potato salad and soda.”

  “Okay, Mommy,” the kids said.

  After they laid everything out, Rob stood over the barbeque pit, cooking the hamburgers. Billy and Laura sat at the nearby picnic table.

  “So, how has school been going?” Rob asked, trying to make some casual conversation.

  “Fine,” Billy said. “I finished the Rome project for history class.”

  “The what project?”

  “You know, the one on Rome, the one I’ve been working on for the past month?”

  “Oh.”

  They paused awkwardly, Billy full of disappointment for Rob not having paid attention to what he was doing in school, and Rob chagrined for disappointing him. Rob tried to tell a joke to lighten their spirits, asking, “So do you know what you call a man on the walls of the Grand Canyon?”

  “I don’t know,” Billy said, his affect flat.

  “Cliff.”

  Billy tried to laugh, but his mind was still on the missed Rome project, and on all the fighting between his parents. Laura sat silently nibbling at some potato salad.

  Rob took two of the hamburger patties off the grill and handed them to the kids. They began eating them, and Rob asked, “How are the hamburgers? Did I cook them well enough?”

  “They taste good,” Billy said, without elaborating.

  “What about you, Laura?” Rob asked. “You’re being awfully quiet. How do you like the food? Why so quiet?”

  “What’s the point of talking, if there’s no one there to listen?” Laura asked.

  Rob was floored for a moment, shocked by the profundity of her comment and hurt by its implications. “No one to listen? I’ll listen, I’m listening. What, you don’t think I’ll listen?”

  Laura gave up, saying, “I’m sure you’ll listen, yes.”

  “You don’t,” Rob said. “You don’t think I give a shit about you, do you?”

  “Rob, watch your language around the kids,” Jill said.

  “They’re old enough, they can hear their old man curse once in awhile.”

  “No, they can’t. They’re children, Rob. You’re influencing them, they look to you as a role model.”

  “Well, I’m not perfect, I’m a little rough around the edges, they need to know that.”

  “They need to know you care enough about them not to talk with profanity around them.”

  “I give up,” Rob said, standing up quickly. “I’ve got to get out of here for awhile.”

  “Good, why don’t you, give us a break.”

  “Yeah, right, you take a break. I will too.”

  Rob stormed off alone, marching rapidly over to a trail that disappeared into the forest. As he walked, he said angrily to himself, “No one there to listen, like I really don’t care enough to listen to her. Like I don’t listen, after thousands of dollars on violin lessons and soccer and traveling. Yeah right.” He punctuated the word “right” by kicking a rock off the trail into the bushes, the dust flying up around his feet.

  Rob looked ahead and in the dim evening light he could just make out the trail winding downward. But he wanted to go up to the top of the mountain he was on. He looked around and spotted a shortcut side trail that led upward. It looked a little small and poorly maintained, but he thought maybe it just appeared that way because of the fading light. He started walking on the shortcut trail, pushing the many bushes out of his way.

  As he walked, he realized the trail was at the top of a steep embankment, looking down a cliff. Ordinarily this would have made him wary, but now he was so wrapped up in his anger that he did not care about the danger. He marched along, angrily shoving aside more branches so he could pass through.

  All of a sudden, he stepped on some shrubs that gave way. They appeared sturdy, but they actually hid underneath them a steep drop. Rob slipped through and just had time to grab some of their branches as his feet and body fell downward, suspended over the cliff.

  “Shit,” Rob said. He tried to struggle upward, but he could not find a grip on the dirt. The dirt was all slick and hardened, with nothing to hold onto. He tried to pull himself up by the shrubs, but they were flimsy and threatened to give way at any moment with use of any greater force.

  “Help,” he called, but he was far away from the campground. “No one’s here to hear me. What’s the point of talking? Wasn’t that what Laura was saying? How ironically true, there’s no one here. How am I going to get out of this?”

  Rob struggled, making another lunge at the shrubs, but they just continued to tear loose from the soil. He became more terrified, saying aloud, “I could die here. I could die. Man, I didn’t mean to leave Jill and the kids like that. Jill, I love you, you know that. I get angry sometimes, but that isn’t how I really feel towards you. Anger is just like a wave that washes along the shore, leaving the underlying rocks and sand even smoother than before. It’s there, but it doesn’t have to define who we are. Who we are is love.”

  As he spoke, the shrubs broke more, ripping and hanging by only a couple thin branches. “Oh God, she can’t hear what I’m saying. No one can. What’s the point of talking, if there’s no one there to listen? Oh Laura, you were right, there’s no point, and now this is all going to be forever lost, you’ll never know, never know…”

  At that instant, the last branches of the shrubs snapped, and Rob fell a hundred feet to his death.

  When Rob failed to come back to the campground that night, Jill thought he was just being stubborn. But when he did not return the next day, she began looking for him. She hiked a little ways on the nearby trails and found nothing. Back at the campground, she called 911 and reported a missing person.

  It only took a couple days for a helicopter to find Rob’s body after a search of the area. After Jill identified the body, his remains were taken to a funeral home and placed in a coffin. In a couple weeks, Jill and the kids went to his funeral.

  As people were leaving the funeral, Betsy, a family friend, walked by and said, “My condolences. I know you two weren’t getting along, but his death is hard nonetheless.”

  “Yes,” Jill said, unsure of what else to say. “We’ll manage.” br />
  “You’ll manage, certainly,” Betsy said stiffly.

  When Betsy walked away, Jill wiped a tear from her eyes. She continued standing with the kids at the grave. There was a long pause, as if none of them knew what to do, what to say.

  Finally, Jill said, “He loved you kids, you know. It may not have always seemed like it, but he did. You can tell that, sometimes, if you listen hard to the universe. Just listen, listen, listen.”

  Grandfather’s Gift

  On February 18, 2027, Carl said to the customer service representative on the phone, “I’m begging you, you’ve got to make the payments stop.”

  “As I’ve told you, there’s nothing we can do. Your grandfather was very clear in his intentions.”

  “But—”

  “He hired us specifically to provide the traditional check and card service. He wanted you to feel cared for not just during his life, but for the rest of your entire life.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Let me finish. I want you to understand that is where we are coming from, a place of genuine concern for you, your family, and of course, our client, your grandfather.”

  “It’s not concern. It’s an automated payout of $500 at every holiday and birthday, couched in a pretty card with a facsimile of my grandpa’s handwriting, saying ‘Love you, have a good one,’ as though he were still alive. But he’s not alive, he died two years ago. Two years. All I want is closure. I don’t want to have to see another card and check from him at Christmas, forever reminding me of his death through this pseudo-concern of your company.”

  “What do you have against his showing his love to you beyond death? Why should death be the final expression of care? We believe the