John Irving - Until I Find You

Krung, the Thai kickboxer from that long-ago gym on Bathurst Street, had told him once: “Gym rats always gotta find a new ship, Jackie.” Well, Jack was a gym rat who would soon have to find a new ship, but now he was a gym rat with a ghost.

Jack found that you don’t sleep well when you’re living with a ghost. He had meaningless but disturbing dreams, from which he would awaken with the conviction that his hand was touching Emma’s tattoo. (That perfect vagina, the not- a-Rose-of-Jericho, which his mom had tattooed on Emma’s right hip—just below the panty line.)

Jack took his real estate agent’s advice and moved out; this allowed her to empty the house of all the old and ugly furniture, most of which Emma had acquired for their first apartment in Venice, as well as the rugs and Jack’s gym equipment; the floors were sanded and the walls were painted white. The house became a clean and spare-looking dump, at least—and Jack moved into a modest set of rooms at the Oceana in Santa Monica.

It was a third-floor suite with four rooms, including a kitchen, overlooking the courtyard and the swimming pool. He could have chosen a view of Ocean Avenue, but the Oceana was a moderately priced residential hotel that appealed to families; Jack liked the sound of the children playing in the pool. Some of the families were Asian or European; Jack liked listening to the foreign languages, too. He accepted the transience of staying there, because Jack Burns was transient—impermanent, almost ceasing to exist.

He kept next to nothing from Entrada Drive. He gave three quarters of his clothes to Goodwill and his Oscar to his lawyer for safekeeping.

Jack kept his most recent Audi, of course. The gym at the Oceana was a joke, but there were two gyms in Venice that he liked—and, from the Oceana, Jack was even closer to Dr. García’s office on Montana Avenue than he’d been on Entrada Drive.

Jack registered at the Oceana as Harry Mocco; as usual, the few important people in his life knew where to find him. Somehow it seemed fitting (to a man in limbo) that Jack would hear from Leslie Oastler shortly after his move. Mrs. Oastler called because she hadn’t heard from him in a while—which was all right with her, she added quickly. And just fine with Dolores, no doubt.

Dolores had made such a fuss about the ongoing presence of Jack’s clothes that Mrs. Oastler had donated them to St. Hilda’s, where Mr. Ramsey had happily accepted the clothes as costumes for the school’s dramatic productions. Mr. Ramsey and Miss Wurtz had called to thank Leslie for the unusual gift. (“We never have enough men’s clothes for the dramatizations,” Caroline had explained.)

Jack’s former bedroom, Mrs. Oastler told him, had been converted to a studio for Dolores. (Leslie’s blonde must have been a poet or a painter—some kind of artist, surely—but Jack didn’t ask.) As for Emma’s old bedroom, it was now the official guest room. The wallpaper was different—“more feminine,” Leslie said. The furniture and curtains were “more feminine,” too. All this was Dolores’s doing, Jack guessed, but again he didn’t ask.

“When you’re back in town, you’ll probably prefer to stay in a hotel,” Mrs. Oastler said.

“Probably,” Jack replied. He couldn’t tell why she had called.

“Any new news from or about your dad, Jack?” Leslie asked.

“No. But I’m not looking for him,” Jack explained.

“I wonder why not,” Leslie said. “He would be a man in his sixties, wouldn’t he? Things happen to men at that age. You might lose him before you find him, if you know what I mean.”

“He might die, you mean?”

“He might be dead already,” Mrs. Oastler said. “You were so curious about him. What happened to your curiosity, Jack?” (This was what Dr. García was always asking him.)

“I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist,” he half explained.

“I’m glad you’re seeing somebody !” Leslie exclaimed. “But you used to be able to do more than one thing at a time.”

“What Mrs. Oastler may mean, Jack,” Dr. García would soon tell him, “is that seeing a psychiatrist is not something you necessarily do in lieu of having a little natural curiosity.”

But Jack was guilty of an indefensible crime. He’d not only had sex with a fifteen-year-old girl—he had acquiesced to it. He carried an awful secret, and—provided Claudia’s daughter let him—Jack would bear its burden to his grave. Shame had robbed him of his curiosity. When you’re ashamed, you don’t feel inclined to undertake another adventure—at least not right away.

The thank-you letter from Claudia and her husband (whom Jack would forever imagine as a bearded, betrayed king) came with family photographs—among them one of Sally as a little girl and one of Claudia when she was noticeably thinner. There was also a photo of the husband and father of four when he was clean-shaven; Jack could understand why the king had grown a beard.

“ Should you ever be inclined to return to the theater, ” Claudia wrote, “ just say the word! ” A month or six weeks in Vermont in midsummer, a stage so small it would seem his very own, his pick of the play and the part. Under the circumstances, Jack was both touched and repelled by the offer.

“ We’re all so grateful to you, Jack, ” Claudia went on.

“ And we’re so proud of Sally for having the temerity to approach you! ” Claudia’s husband (Sally’s father) wrote.

Jack would write back to Claudia and her husband that he was glad to have helped, in what modest way he could. But he lacked Sally’s temerity; Jack wrote that he no longer had the nerve to stand alone on a stage. “The out-of-context moments of filmmaking, which I’ve grown used to, allow the actor room to hide.” (Whatever that meant!) But Jack would think of their little theater often, he wrote—and every summer he would regret the missed opportunity of an idyllic month or six weeks in Vermont. (In truth, he would rather die !)

Jack felt Claudia’s ghost watching over him; she was all smiles when he mailed that letter.

Immediately following this insincere correspondence, Jack experienced contact of another kind. There was nothing insincere about Caroline Wurtz’s phone call, which woke him early one August morning from his umpteenth dream of touching Emma’s vagina tattoo. A family from Düsseldorf, with whom he’d been testing the limits of his Exeter German, were already up and swimming in the Oceana pool.

“Jack Burns, as Mr. Ramsey might say,” Miss Wurtz began. “Rise and shine!” The Wurtz, of course, had no idea of what a shameful thing Jack had done. (That he would rise, and go on rising, seemed likely; that he might ever shine again seemed unthinkable.)

“How nice to hear your voice, Caroline,” he told her truthfully.

“You sound awful,” Miss Wurtz said. “Don’t pretend I didn’t wake you. But I have news worth waking you for, Jack.”

“You’ve heard from him?” Jack asked, wide awake if not exactly shining.

“I’ve heard of him, not from him. You have a sister, Jack!”

Biologically speaking, if his father had remarried—as it appeared that William had—it was conceivable that Jack had a half sister, which was indeed news to him and Miss Wurtz.

Her name was Heather Burns, and she was a junior lecturer on the Faculty of Music at the University of Edinburgh, where (some years earlier) she’d also completed her undergraduate studies in the Department of Music. Heather was a pianist and an organist, and she played a wooden flute. She’d done her Ph.D. in Belfast.