Work Text:
When Jack Kelly was three years old, he had the perfect family. He had a mother who cared for him and a dad who always seemed to be there. He hadn’t been old enough to understand how lucky he was to have a dad who lifted him up on his shoulders or spun him around until his heart was pounding and he felt like he could fly.
Jack’s father was the working type – their family was never rich enough to afford large, fancy apartments or prim and proper new clothes, but they got by. Jack didn’t know there was any other way to live – he didn’t care that he sometimes looked a little shabbier than the other kids, or that his father didn’t have a shiny new pocket watch like all the other dads.
For the first three years of Jack’s life, his father did his best for him and his mother and he never let on that his job was working him to the bone or that he could hardly stand when he came home some nights. Jack hadn’t yet learned any of life’s hardest lessons.
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When Jack Kelly was six years old, his father lost his job. He hadn’t seen it coming, nor had he expected to be called “too old” as a man in his early thirties.
Jack was just old enough to understand what was happening. He began following the older boys around the city and watching them sell papers, but he was too scared to join them at first. He knew they didn’t have enough money to get by, let alone to send him to school – the books alone would cost far too much.
Instead, Jack’s father sat him down every night after spending hours searching for work, and taught him how to read and write well with the paper from each day. Jack studied as hard as he could with his mother in the daytimes, in hopes of making his father proud when he returned home every day.
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When Jack Kelly was seven years old, his mother fell ill during the influenza pandemic. Even if his father had been working a good enough job to pay for medical care, there was nothing they could do for her. Jack wasn’t allowed in the same room as her for the last week of her life, for fear of him catching it as well.
As 1890 turned the corner, Jack’s father began to drink heavily after working days. He had found a job in an iron factory, and Jack began to see less and less of his father. He found camaraderie in the newsboys who took to the streets each morning, and from them he heard fantastic stories of places far away – like Santa Fe.
Not being able to go to school, Jack turned to art to pass the time. He would work on painting or drawing with what limited materials he could chalk up enough money to buy.
At first, Jack’s father praised him for it, but as time went on it his dad got home later and later, and often in a foul mood. Jack learned to leave his work on the table in front of the door for his dad to see, even if he didn’t get to hear him say he was proud. Jack’s dad began to leave a note for him every morning before he went to work.
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When Jack Kelly was nine years old, his father didn’t come home one night. It took Jack almost four hours of searching for Jack to find him, passed out in an alleyway with a sheet of paper crumpled up in his hand.
Termination of Employment, it read, with the name Elias Kelly circled in red among perhaps two hundred other names. Jack helped his father to his feet and said no more about it. Yet when his father left for work, Jack took to the street to sell the morning paper, even if he didn’t earn nearly enough to support the two of them, let alone his father’s drinking habit.
Jack’s father lost another job not five months after that, but Jack would never have known from the hours his father was away.
At nine years old, Jack began missing what he’d had with his father when he was younger – the joy of his father seeming like a perfect being, of knowing when he was going to be home, of not being afraid that his father was going to disappear again. Yet he still clung to his father with as much loyalty and love as he could muster – Elias Kelly was still his father, and he still left the kind notes each morning on Jack’s artwork.
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When Jack Kelly was ten years old, his father found a job in a textile factory that paid better than any job he’d had before. He quit the alcohol cold turkey and vowed to Jack that he would never start up again. He came home every day after work, often with a gift for Jack – candy bars, toys he found on his way home, that sort of thing.
Things felt like they had when Jack was very, very young. He stopped having to sell papers every morning, and he even went to school for most of the year. He grew larger and stronger from not having to ration food, and he could guarantee he’d see his father smiling at him from the doorway when he returned home. It seemed their fortunes were reversing.
Jack wasn’t blind to his father’s struggle – he could tell from the way his fathers’ fists clenched and his jaw twitched that sometimes quitting like he had came with its own set of consequences, but Jack’s father stayed strong.
Six months after he’d gotten the job, it seemed like it was all a bad dream – Elias Kelly hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol, and he seemed healthier and happier because of it. That didn’t, of course, mean his job was easy, but they made it work, even with the twelve hour shifts.
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When Jack Kelly was eleven years old, the textile plant closed, leaving thousands of workers without jobs. The alcohol returned to the Kelly household, and Jack began to dream of running as far as he could – maybe even as far as Santa Fe.
Still, Elias Kelly tried to be a good father. He put what little money he had towards putting food on the table, but it seemed to be running out more quickly than was possible. Jack knew from the smell of it on his father’s breath that each night was accompanied by a trip to the bar and another bottle.
Jack’s father grew careless. He would come straight home and bring the alcohol with him – he no longer stayed away, though sometimes Jack thought that might have been better. At least Jack always knew where he was.
That was the year Jack Kelly had to grow up. He dropped out of school and began selling papers again. He knew most of his earnings went towards the alcohol, but he didn’t know what else to do.
On the rare nights when Jack’s father was sober, they drew together. Jack taught his father what he’d learned, just like his father had way back when he was learning how to read. Jack’s father never let him see what he was working on, claiming it to be a surprise.
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When Jack Kelly was thirteen years old, he found his father sprawled across his bedroom floor, a bottle in his hand. This on its own was not an uncommon occurrence, but normally by suppertime he’d be up or off drinking.
It took Jack far too long to check his father’s pulse, hoping there would be something there, only to be greeted by a resounding emptiness. He couldn’t help but feel like if he’d just stopped funding the habit, if he’d tried to get help, if he’d… if he’d done something.
It wasn’t Jack’s fault – it had never been Jack’s fault, but there was his father, lying there, just as his mother had six years before. He understood why he hadn’t been allowed to see her then.
Jack’s father’s funeral was nothing but watching the coffin being lowered into the ground. Jack found he couldn’t go back to the apartment. It smelled too much like his father, and too much like what his father had become. He hated the alcohol and he hated his father for being so reliant on it. He wished for his mother back – she would have known how to get him to stop.
Yet there were things to collect – the few belongings that Jack had were in the building. It was strange, not to feel his father in the room any longer. He expected him to slur a drunken greeting, or even to see him lying on a chair, only half-conscious.
Instead, he found a pile of notes written on old paper piled in the corner of his room – all of the encouragement his father had written about his art. He found a folded up envelope with his name on it – For Jack. Don’t open until you feel ready.
Jack Kelly gathered these and the rest of his things, and didn’t give the apartment so much as a parting glance.
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When Jack Kelly was seventeen years old, he grasped the envelope that had sat in his pocket for four long years. He didn’t know what his father meant by “ready,” but if there ever was a time, it had come upon him.
There was no replacing Jack’s original family, but he’d found something that made him feel the same love and acceptance and general feeling of “home” that he’d had before his mother died, and even on those sober nights with his father. With Davey, Crutchie, and Katherine there to support him, he thought he might be prepared to open the envelope.
Dear Jack, it read,
I have not been the father I wish I was. I wasn’t able to give you the support you needed, and there are nights you were more a father to me than I was to you. But I drew you this, on all those nights you were patient enough to show me how to make something beautiful out of nothing. The drink took a lot from us – from you – but I want to show you how I wish it could have been. I’m sorry it never got to happen this way.
Inside the envelope was a drawing of three people – his father, as Jack had last seen him, himself, from five years earlier, and a woman, his mother, with a few more lines than had been on her face last time Jack recalled seeing her, and not a bottle in sight.
That was the life Jack’s father had wanted to give him. It was the life Jack had wanted for a long time, but had forced himself to forget the moment he found his father’s body. The life Jack had finally found it in himself to let go of.
For the first time, Jack found that he was able to forgive his father for the alcohol, and forgive the alcohol for the life it had taken from him. He was also able to forgive himself for the anger and guilt he’d carried for four years since it happened. It was difficult, but the positive memories of his father sober far outweighed the ones he had dwelled on for so many years.
Those still existed, of course. It wouldn’t be right to remember his father while denying the bad parts of him, but the alcohol wasn’t who his father was. For so long it had seemed like it was. It was still hard to remember the nights his father couldn’t get a word out, or didn’t even make it home, but there was more to it than that.
For the first time since the funeral, Jack Kelly visited his father’s grave and left something at the foot of the stone: a note, just like the ones Elias Kelly used to leave on Jack’s art. I forgive you.
After all, he may not have gotten the life he’d dreamed of, but he was still pretty grateful for the one he had.