Nicholas Bridgman

The Story of a Story

What moral should we draw from the downfall of Jack Chester, a man who hid from his wife both his illegitimate son and fraudulent insider trading? I never planned on answering this question. You may think you’ll find the answer by reading this story over twice, three times, or more. You may think you are clever and can discern the answer from well-hidden literary clues. Or you may not care much about a made-up character in a fictional story, except that something about the story’s conclusion fills you with a nagging feeling of wanting to know, of needing to understand—a desire to seek insight even from earlier passages.

So, at this point, it is only fitting that I help you out: the moral, as best I can describe it, revolves around how I made up Jack Chester to embody psychological ideas I find interesting. He exists only in this story as a tool for me to express the nature of secrecy and, more specifically, to provide a vessel to highlight how easy and shocking it might be to live a double life. Now that you know the moral, you have a choice: you can see if reading this story further fleshes out this concept, or you can stop reading now, reasoning that I have already laid my secret bare, exposed the tricks of my craft, given away the point and, thus, made pointless the act of reading on. To proponents of the latter, I would say, give my tale a chance, let the magic of fiction carry you someplace, and you might just find yourself here again, reading until you feel satisfied you have uncovered my true secrets. (But when it comes to comprehending another’s reality, are we ever truly satisfied?)

**

Geoff was a nine-year-old boy who lived five houses down from Jack on Guava Street, located in an upper-middle-class Southern California suburb. Why did I start by talking about Geoff? What is the significance of his living on Jack’s street, precisely five houses away? You will find the significance intensified when I tell you Geoff was homeschooled, so for his whole life, almost no one ever saw him out among the neighborhood kids, and he never waited at the bus stop to go to school. The fact that the suburb is upper-middle class also brings to mind stable jobs and law-abiding citizens who raise wholesome families. If all these facts are true, what connection could Jack have with Geoff, other than perhaps being a friend of his mother, Regina?

Actually, Jack was a friend of Regina, a little too much of a friend. She had lived in that house her whole life. After her parents passed away when she was twenty-six years old, she kept living there and working odd office jobs to make a little money. When Jack and his beautiful wife Tara moved in a couple of years later—about a year before Geoff was born—they already had two kids and appeared to be a tight-knit family. But for some reason, perhaps because of a lifetime of scars from one trauma after another, this did not make Jack happy. No matter how much his family loved him, his mind was stuck in the past—stuck in the rough, inner-city life of his childhood, before he made his way to college and a white-collar bank job, before he became presentable enough to have friends who were not druggies or gang members, before he found himself in the unfamiliar position of being considered attractive to women. Tara could have made an alligator cry with the intensity of her feelings for Jack. She saw things in him that could only be seen by someone truly in love. But even this could not shake Jack out of his lifelong depression.

Why did I contrast Jack’s positive family life with the negativity of his youth? It builds sympathy, sure, but you do not have to be that insightful to see that this backstory explains why Jack was screwing around with Regina. It started casually. Jack was walking their dog one evening when he noticed Regina tending the big garden in her front yard. He said hello, and they chatted a bit about his having moved in recently, about the weather, and about other matters of small talk. While speaking, Jack paid attention to her thin waist, something he really liked about a woman. Tara’s waist was thin, too, but not in the same way. There was something about Regina’s waist he found very alluring, tempting. He said good night and went home.

But their talks did not stop there. Whenever he walked his dog, he looked for Regina, and more often than not, she was gardening at that same time. Once, a few weeks later, she said, “Why don’t you come in? I’ll give you some lemonade—it’s spiked, but I bet your old lady won’t mind, right?”

“I really shouldn’t. Tara’s making dinner. I just wanted to get Ronny out for his walk.”

“It won’t take long. I’ve already prepared it. I’m all alone in this big house. Won’t you keep me company for a little bit?”

“Okay, well, maybe just for a little.”

They drank their lemonade, sitting at a small dining table off the kitchen with just two chairs. From where he sat, Jack had a very clear view of her waist.

Regina said, “It’s got gin. Do you like it?”

“I do. It’s very full-bodied but still petite…”

“Petite?”

“Yes, petite… like you…”

Regina slowly moved her lips to Jack’s, and they brushed mouths ever so slightly.

“I should go,” Jack said.

“If you have to,” Regina said.

The flirtation probably does not appear intentional on Jack’s part. Was this intentional on my part? Perhaps—because it builds sympathy that Jack is not just a jerk. He is acting in a way that appears reasonable to him. He is holding back, trying to resist the temptation. And to him—a tired, middle-aged man whose marriage never satisfied him and who never really felt happy, even during life’s happiest events—this is praiseworthy behavior. To the rest of us, it appears bad, but just how bad remains to be seen.

Despite that Jack swore off Regina and began walking Ronny a different way, in a short time, lust drew him back. They started talking again, and spiked lemonade turned from an innocent invitation into code for a quickie. He did not intend to cheat on Tara, but he did not feel much loyalty to her either. That is how his casual relationship with an attractive neighbor turned from harmless admiration to unintentional pregnancy. Regina did not want to have an abortion, suddenly becoming religious before telling Jack she loved him and wanted to have his child, consequences be damned.

Did it have to go this far? Am I being dramatic? How many affairs actually end in a love child? Regardless, this provides a counterpoint to Jack’s other criminal behavior, which you will learn about soon enough. But to fully understand why that is important, you first must remember the significance of Regina’s homeschooling their son Geoff. This helps establish that despite her mad love for Jack, Regina was willing to go to elaborate ends to conceal Geoff from Tara. Regina kept Geoff in the house for almost his entire life, so much so that some neighbors were unsure if she actually had a child or not. She made sure no one saw him when he had to leave the house, dressing him in baseball caps and baggy clothes, and whisking him from the front door through the shelter of her large garden along the hedge to their SUV, which itself had tinted windows. Jack visited his illicit family as often as he could without arousing suspicion, which was not as much as he would like, given that he found he loved Geoff just as much as his other children.

But this was not the only illicit behavior he participated in behind Tara’s back—he also established a massive system through his work at the bank, defrauding investors through insider trading. His position gave him inside information about when companies were to be bought and sold, which told him when their stock values would increase. He sold this information to investors, making hundreds of thousands of dollars over several years.

Sure enough, as you have probably guessed by now, I am going to combine the effects of these two realms of bad behavior. Imagine the worst possible exposé of Jack’s wrongdoings, then subtract a bit of drama to make it plausible, and you have this: an FBI agent receiving a tip about Jack’s inside deals and posing as a new investor. When the sale went through and they traced it to Jack, the agent and a detective went to Jack’s house and arrested him.

This brings us back to where we started in the present when Geoff was nine years old—old enough to begin defying his mom’s attempts to keep him indoors. He ran up to the FBI agent who was speaking with Tara outside while the detective was busy putting Jack in the back of the squad car. Regina called for him to come back, but he disobeyed her and instead asked the agent, “What happened to Jack?”

Tara looked at him and realized of the few times she had seen him, she had never seen his face without his baseball cap. She felt startled in an almost otherworldly way to see in his mien the same curly brown hair, the same charming yet slightly wan half-smile, the same look of depressive determination she could see in Jack as he ducked into the car. After a few seconds, the detective shut the car door and came back, asking Tara, “Is that your son? Could you have him wait inside, please? We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Tara said, “No, that’s not my son.”

“Why are the police here?” Geoff asked. “Where’s Jack?”

The detective said, “Jack’s not going to be here for a while. He is going to jail.”

“Why? Where is he? Where’s my dad?”

“You sure he’s not your son?” the detective asked.

“My son is in school right now,” Tara said.

“I knew this would happen,” Geoff bawled. “You made him stay with you when he was in love with my mom—he never loved you. And now he’s going to jail. You’re a witch.”

A raging tension swamped Tara, but she managed to spit out, “What’s your name? How old are you?”

“I’m Geoff, and I’m nine years old.”

Tara felt floored, realizing Jack had a love child for nine years, and she had never known. “I have to step inside,” she said and ran into the house.

The detective followed her, saying, “Ma’am, I understand this is difficult for you. But would you mind speaking with us for a moment? The FBI caught your husband participating in insider trading, selling his knowledge of the market for profit. We need to talk to you about what you knew of his business dealings.”

“What? As if I knew? I didn’t know anything. If he could hide from me his illegitimate son for nine years, he could certainly hide his insider trading,” Tara screamed.

“Of course. I must inform you you have a right to have an attorney present.”

“Yes, I’d like an attorney.”

“That’s fine, ma’am. We’ll be in touch once you have an attorney,” the detective said and left.

Later that night, Jack called Tara from a holding cell in jail. He said, “Tara, you probably don’t trust me right now, and I can understand that. But just listen to me, please.”

“Jack, how could you?” Tara said, both crying and angry. “How could you keep that boy a secret from me for nine years? And meanwhile, defraud your clients? What were you doing with all that money? Starting a college fund for Geoff? It’s like I don’t even know you.”

“Please, Tara, don’t abandon me now. I know everything I did seems really bad, but it just kind of happened. I didn’t mean to do all that. I was a victim of unfortunate circumstances.”

“Yeah, right. No one does all this by accident, Jack. It’s obvious I’ve never been enough for you. Your family has never been enough for you. You’ve made that clear by your affair and your white-collar crime. I loved you, Jack. But I can’t anymore. This is too much. Goodbye.”

After hearing her click off, Jack hung up the phone and returned to his bunk. He became overwhelmed with fear of how long he would be incarcerated. Would he ever see his family again? Or Geoff and Regina? Would any of them want to associate with a white-collar criminal and adulterer? Would his fate be to grow old and die alone in prison? If only he had not thought he could keep up a double life forever, he would never have ended up in this cell.

* * 

Now that you have read this story, you are probably wondering the answer to the initial question: What moral should we draw from Jack Chester’s downfall? Is it the precipitous slope that emerges when small missteps combine? Is it the enduring influence of his rough early life that refuses to let him go? However, I have no intention of revealing the moral at this point. Why should I confess my motives for telling the story if you cannot discern them from reading it alone? You may accuse me of hiding something, just like Jack—of living the double life of an author and some kind of propagandist. In truth, I am hiding nothing as serious as Jack’s wrongs, and yet, I feel drawn to make one clarification: I did not put the conclusion at the end of this story. I know, treachery, right? If you are looking for the point of the story, the grand finale, the tying up of ends, you will not find that here. If you feel I have cheated you, I am truly sorry, but in an effort to extend an olive branch, may I suggest you try reading this story over from the beginning? That might help answer your questions and maybe even make you rethink your preconceptions of where morals belong anyway.

Nicholas Bridgman holds two bachelor's degrees from U.C. Berkeley in rhetoric and ecology. His fiction has appeared in The Headlight Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, Please See Me, Indiana Voice Journal, and Pilcrow & Dagger. He currently lives in Southern California.