Few Kinds of Wrong (21 page)

“Bryce is pissed off with me?” I bang my chest on the word “me,” harder than I want to. “Well, fuck him and fuck my mother too. Oh, right.” I slap my forehead. “He's doing that already, isn't he?”

“Come on, let's get you to bed.” Jamie puts his hand under my arm as if to help me up but I push
him away.

“You are my little ray of sunshine, my little ray of sunshine,” I sing.

“What?”

“That's me, Jamie.” I burp and continue talking. “Don't you remember? You sang it to me.” I point to him, hit his shoulder by mistake on the word “you” and hit myself on the word “me.”

“I remember.” He stands up and looks down at me.

“I think that's funny. Don't you? I mean I must be the world's littlest fucking ray of sunshine. You must need a magnifying glass to see me.”

“Stop swearing. You never swear.”

“No, the little ray of fucking sunshine doesn't swear.”

“Jesus.”

“Ooh, now you're swearing too. Only you're taking the Lord's name in vain. That is some serious shit, man.”

Jamie just stares at me, looking down.

“Don't do that. Don't look at me like that,” I scream, and try to push him away. He moves in the second before I reach him, and I fall out of my chair onto the floor, rum tumbling after me, pouring onto the hardwood floor. I grab the bottle and hold onto it like a drowning man holds a life preserver.

“Like what?”

“Like you're mad and like you're pitying me. Don't fucking pity me.”

“I don't pity you. I pity the rest of us that have to put up with you.”

I'm lying on the floor hugging the bottle. My shirt is getting wet from the puddle of rum that's spread its way over to me.

“You're sucking us all down into your darkness. Your grandmother is dying and all you care about is yourself and your bottle.”

“Aww, Jamie's mad. You hardly ever get mad, Jamie. Why are you so mad?” I know how much he hates to be pushed, to be made fun of, and I push the button.

He walks out of the room and I hear the bathroom door close.

“Jamie fucking perfect Flynn is mad. Call the newspapers,” I shout to no one. “Jamie's sooky. I'd say Jamie came home tonight figuring he'd get some. Figuring good old Jennifer would go down on him. A good screw maybe. Ha. Oops. I shouldn't use ‘Jamie' and ‘good screw' in the same sentence.”

I start to laugh. I'm laughing for a couple of minutes and still no Jamie appears. No rise out of him.

I lay my head back on the floor and start to sing, “You're my little ray of sunshine, my little ray of—”

I'm being lifted off the floor. The bottle falls out of my hand and I hear it crash on the floor, an explosion of glass. I start to kick, but in what seems like three strides, Jamie has me in the bathroom.

“What are you doing?” I scream and start hitting him with my fists. He's carrying me in a fireman hold, at least until he plops me in the bathtub.

“My ribs,” I call out as Jamie turns on the cold water in the shower. I kick out at him but he moves away and I miss. I try to stand up but he easily pushes me back.

“Jamie.” I start to cry, shivering, my clothes soaking through. He is wet too, his hair down in his eyes until he slicks it back with his hand. He starts shivering with me and with his hair out of the way I can see again his eyes, the pity still there, mixed with rage and determination. He holds me and I sob into his chest, hitting him at the same time.

“I used to be a ray of sunshine, Jamie. How did I get here? How did I get here from there?”

“Something broke,” he says over the water pounding us. “Something inside of you broke. And you haven't tried to fix it yet.”

“How do I fix it?”

“I don't know. You just have to let it go. Let it go, babe.”

It feels like we're back in the parking lot and all I want is him not to say the words that will change everything. Only this time I want him to say something that will make it all right, will heal this part of me.

Jamie turns off the water and slowly takes off my clothes. I'm quiet, letting him hold me and dry me all over. He winces at the now purple shoeprint on my side.

“Sorry,” he mouths.

“I know.”

He wraps the cotton robe that hangs on the bathroom door around me and starts to gently dry my hair. After a couple of moments, he lifts me up again and walks me to the bedroom where he lays me on the bed. I reach up to him, to his lips, but he pulls away.

“Good night.” He doesn't wait for me to say anything. He closes the door before I can think of what I want to say.

In the silence and the darkness of my room I find myself feeling sleepy. It surprises me after a cold shower.

As I nod off, I hear Jamie in the bathroom and I know he is cleaning up the mess in there. My last conscious thought is that of all the wrongs in my life right now, without even trying, somehow, he's the only right I have.

16

O
NE NIGHT, ALMOST
seven months after Dad died, I worked extra late, picked up a bottle on the way home, dropped by the cemetery, and was ready to collapse when I walked through the front door of my house. Jamie greeted me with a scowl. He was waiting on the couch, sitting in his pyjama bottoms.

“What is it?” I asked as I put my keys down on the little table next to the door.

“What is what?”

I pointed at him. “The face. Did something happen? You look … pissed off.”

“I'm surprised you noticed.”

“So, I'm the one you're pissed off with?”

He wriggled on the couch, moved over a little, pulled his hand through his hair. It was only then that I looked behind him and saw the table, set with silverware and candles burned down to nubs. I searched my mind and found the date I had been writing on work orders all day.

“Shit.” I tapped my forehead with a closed fist. “I'm so sorry. I don't know how I forgot.” I walked toward him, stopped by his stare.

“I emailed you to make sure you came home at a decent time. I know better than to expect you for supper without a special invitation.”

I started to walk toward him again. “I said I was sorry.” I could smell candle wax and food I couldn't quite place.

“It's not like it was forty-seven years or anything. It was five years, for God's sake. Five years.”

I walked to the kitchen, opened the oven and looked in. Steak and baked potatoes in a casserole dish, looking like they'd been there for hours. It was 10:12 at night. I'd had two bags of potato chips and four coffee all day but still didn't feel hungry. Something told me to take the food out anyway.

“I didn't forget. I knew all day that there was something about the date. It bugged me all day.”

I tried unsuccessfully to pick up the dried-out steak by attempting to stab it with a fork. I gave up and dumped the contents of the casserole dish onto a plate. There was silence and when I turned around Jamie had one arm crossed and his jaw clenched.

“That makes it worse, Jen. You knew and tried to think of it and couldn't.”

I sighed and shook my head. “Jamie, I'm tired. I don't have—”

“You're tired? You're tired. Well, maybe it's because you worked sixteen hours today. And yesterday and the day before that and the day before that.”

I pulled the bottle of Bacardi out of the paper bag I'd laid on the counter and poured a large glass.

“Maybe you're tired because every night you come home and lower down that shit before you pass out. Well, I'm tired too.”

I sipped on the drink and turned away from him.

His hand grabbed my arm and made me spill some of my rum.

“Don't you dare touch me like that,” I shouted as I wrenched my arm away.

“What other way can I touch you? Like this?” He pulled me close, his face an inch or two away from mine. “Like this?” His left hand groped my right breast.

I brushed his hand away, tried to push him away from me. “Don't.”

He pulled me close again, his breath in my ear, his hand gentle on my shoulder. “I want you, Jen. I want to be with you.”

I pushed him away again, harder this time, with the force of the sudden anger that rose up in me. “That's what it's always about with you, isn't it? Is that what this poor, angry man act is about? Not getting it enough? You're horny, is that it?”

“No.” He raised his voice enough to make me jump. Jamie never raised his voice. “That isn't what
this
is about. I want to hold you, to be your … your husband, your partner. I want to be there for you. I haven't held you in months.” He touched my hand.

I stared at him, seeing how much he meant it. I watched his sad eyes look into mine and I tried to find any part of me that wanted to be held by him.

“Let me go,” I whispered.

“I don't know why I thought you'd remember today. Or why I thought you'd want to spend it with me. I mean I'm alive so I'm not worth your time.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Are you mad at me because my father is dead?”

“No. I'm not mad. I'm so frustrated.” He shook his fist at nothing. “It's like you've cut me out of your life. All you do is work all the time and then you go to the cemetery and then you get drunk.” He looked away then back to me. “My therapist says that you—”

“Your what?”

“My therapist. I'm seeing a therapist. About you, about us.”

“Oh my God, you're not serious.” I put my hand up in the air. “You make everything into such a big deal.”

“It is a big deal. You are stuck in this grief. And your work. Dr. Morgan says that you—”

“I don't care what he says,” I screamed. I pointed at his face. “Do not talk to him about me. I'm none of his business. If you think you need to talk to some shrink then you can but it has nothing to do with me.”

“It's everything to do with you. You're a workaholic, and that and your grief are destroying us.”

“I am not a
workaholic
. I just work a lot.”

He stabbed the air with a caustic laugh, a sharp “ha” that made me jump. “That's a good one. Like you're not an alcoholic, you just drink a lot. Like your nan doesn't have Alzheimer's, she just forgets a lot.”

“Get out.”

“What?”

“Get out of my house. Now.” The words were out before I had a chance to think.

“Your house? Our house.”

“Oh no.
My
name is on the mortgage and always was. This is
my
house.”

He stared at me a long time, and I watched him. He went from livid to composed to sad, his face morphing into something that made me feel bad about myself, that made me wish I could ask him to stay. But I wouldn't.

After he went to our room, I heard the slamming of drawers and the squeak of coat hangers moving along the rod in our closet. I poured myself another drink, gulped it down and poured another before I sat in front of the TV and turned it on. I knew he wouldn't leave. He was in our bedroom, making those noises, the sounds of leaving, so I would go in and tell him I was sorry and ask him to stay. Like we hadn't argued before, like he hadn't threatened to leave half a dozen times in the past couple of months.

The glass was up to my mouth, the television on a repeat episode of
House MD
when he walked out of the room, accompanied by another sound. The glass stayed against my lip but I didn't drink from it. I didn't move. I didn't even turn my head toward him, just heard that squeaky wheel on the bottom of his suitcase as he rolled it across the floor, heard the front door open, felt the cold wind blow inside. I knew he was standing there with the door open, waiting for me to turn my head and, as surprised as I was that he was leaving, I wouldn't give him that satisfaction.

“I'll wait for you. I'll wait forever, if that's what it takes. Just get yourself straightened out and I'll be waiting. You just need to call.” He spoke those words and then finally closed the door, leaving a sad, aching silence behind him.

For two months I did not speak to him. Even after he sent me Dr. Morgan's card and the key to his new apartment with the note:

I mean it. I will wait forever.

Love

Jamie

I did not even try to speak to him until that day I heard a song on the radio. And something cruel that Saturday morning told me I should go to him, that I should use the key to his apartment and surprise him; told me it was okay to feel again and to want to be held again. Something softened in me that day, and before I could remain that way, Jamie hardened it again.

Henrietta's snoring when I enter Nan's room makes me grateful poor Nan is drugged enough not to hear it. If Nan woke up, she wouldn't be confused about why she couldn't speak or move but why a train was roaring through her room.

It's four in the morning and after waking up at home to find Jamie not there, I couldn't get back to sleep. I wanted to make up for the previous day so I decided to go to the hospital. Henrietta would be able to get Sarah off to camp. I drank a couple of big glasses of water when I woke up. Between that and the previous night's cold shower, I'm not feeling too bad.

Henrietta is in the extra bed in Nan's room. I try to wake her with a gentle shake as I whisper her name. She snorts but does not wake. I shake her a little harder and say her name louder.

“Oh Jesus, what?” Henrietta shrieks as she sits straight up in the bed, hand to her chest. “Mom?”

“No. It's me, Jennifer. You can go on home now. I'll stay here.”

“Chuck got the car. I'll have to call him.”

I dig around in my knapsack and pull out a twenty. “Get a taxi.”

“I got my own money.”

“I know but I should have been here last night and I wasn't, so take the taxi on me.”