War (30 page)

“No meetings after five,” I heard him say to her one day. “I have dinner with my kids at six every night. Can’t miss it.”

Dinner with my kids. She’s noticed that Winnie’s name hasn’t been mentioned. But Sandi is a professional, the wife of a Navy captain. She’s both attractive and skilled, a woman who could double as a secretary on Mad Men. Jake admits that they first time he saw her, his mouth dropped open:

“Black girl. Pretty a
hell
,” he told me.

But he also knew she wasn’t about the bullshit. She’s called him Attorney Blair from the moment she met him and to this very day. She keeps her smiles to herself. She’s in the office a half hour before him and leaves ten minutes after him. She notices that he’s busy and then orders him lunch. She sends flowers to his mother on her birthday and brings the birthday card in for him to sign. And she sees that his wife isn’t calling, and hasn’t called in two months, so she brings in his brother-in-law, Trent, the doctor. Within ten minutes, Trent gave Jake a diagnosis.

Jacob’s depressed.

JACOB

They’re called Lexapro. They’re the anti-depressants that my brother-in-law, Trent, prescribed for me. Thank God for a surgeon in the family.             

“You’re depressed,” he said as he sat in my office four weeks ago.

              “Oh, okay,” I said with a nod. Didn’t matter. That’s what my kind of depression is. Nothing matters.

I knew I was likely depressed when I woke up after four weeks in my condo alone and thought ‘how much longer until it’s night again?’ I woke up each day already exhausted. I couldn’t imagine working for ten hours. Not even my newborns gave me this feeling. I sat on the edge of the bed each morning, praying the blue notification light would be blinking on my phone. That’s the color I assigned to Winnie’s calls and texts. But it never was. This usually produced a reaction in my stomach that resembled the feeling you get when it’s lunch and you still haven’t eaten—that nauseated, stomach turning, acidic feeling. I took a shower each morning, yawning the entire time, feeling like it was a chore to raise my arms. I sat on the edge of the bed with a towel wrapped around me, staring, unblinking, the thought of finding a suit, shirt and tie to wear exhausting.

I drove the truck to work with no music, no news station. The noise would have been enough to make me run the truck into the Boston harbor. I got to work realizing that I was on autopilot. I had no recollection of making the trip; my thoughts were focused on Winnie and Jasmine. I had my secretary, Sandi, cancel all my face-to-face meetings. I didn’t have the energy to look someone in the eyes. I sat at my desk, glancing at my files, wondering:
Why does this even matter?
In the grand scheme of life, who gives a damn about any of these files, these people, their mistresses, their wayward kids, their tax problems? When we die, or get ready to die, this won’t even matter. And there it was.

Death.

Depression was biding its time, just waiting to bring the subject around. Death. Death. Death. I don’t even care, I thought to myself. If I make it another day, fine. If I don’t, that’s fine too. Depression doesn’t care that I have kids. They’ll be fine, it told me. People’s parents die every day. It’s life. Life goes on. And there it was, this overwhelming thought that, in the whole scheme of things, I am nothing.

I am
nothing
.

If I wasn’t born, Mac and Nat would have found another partner. They would have hired Cadence if they were dead set on being a firm of three. If not, they would have each other. My cases, those military clients that I rack up, could easily be split between Nat and Mac. Sure, Mac handles politicians, Nat handles entrepreneurs and investors and I handle Boston’s military set, but my load could be easily be divided between them both. I do exactly the same thing as the two of them. None of us are any better or worse than the other. I’m not exactly irreplaceable. So why am I here?

Why am I here?

Death.

I am nothing.

Why am I here?

I had no idea that I was behind my desk with my head in my hands for four hours, dozing in and out, thinking, dozing, pushing back a random need to bawl. I had no idea I was spending my whole day like this until Sandi walked in.

“Attorney Blair, I went ahead and called Dr. Primm.” I looked up and saw Trent standing there, a set look on his face. “You’ve been seeming a bit ill,” was all Sandi said before she walked out.

Thank you, Sandi.

“You’re depressed,” Trent said as I tried to tell him how I felt. He wanted me to talk to someone, but of course, I couldn’t. It would be all over the news. “Somebody, Jake. Anybody. I can prescribe meds but you can’t take them forever. You need to talk it out with someone and take the meds at the same time.”

And so I did.

“Father,” I said to Father Harper that night. I no longer needed to sit in the Confession
Box
, he and I were in his office and I told him everything. I gave names. I gave dates. I told him
everything
. This wasn’t just about Winnie, though she was eighty percent of it. This was about Jocelyn. This was about Jasmine. This was about how everything I’ve been thinking these past thirteen years has been wrong. Now that I wasn’t clouded by infatuation for Jasmine, why had I forgotten the things she did that bothered me? Like her need to call me every morning before the sun came up and ask who I was in bed with. And the way she called me back after back after back if I didn’t answer my phone because I was asleep. Her need to find her toothbrush sitting in the holder next to mine, and heaven forbid if I washed my bathroom counter and accidentally left the holder in the cabinet. And the time she squirted toothpaste all over my laptop when I left the toothbrush holder in the bathroom cabinet. What was I trying to hide? How about her obsession with beauty pageants? And that time she wanted me to help her sue her hair stylist just for canceling the appointment. Was that a little off? I had to be the only nineteen-year-old guy who knew who Mary Kay was. What was her obsession with perfection? How had I forgotten that half of the reason that I liked Winnie was that she was a relief? She wasn’t obsessive or melodramatic. How had I forgotten that I felt this way about Jasmine? Within two short weeks of our affair, New Jasmine turned back into Old Jasmine again. The back-to-back calls and messages w
ere
the first sign. Her coming to my condo, after I denied her a date, was the Toothpaste-All-Over-My-Lap-Top Incident again:
Why are you trying to ruin this, Jasmine? Don’t you know that my whole life is in here?
Why had I regarded her as the essence of perfection for all of these years?

“Mallow Cups,” Father Harper said to me. I nodded my head in agreement. “Jacob,” he said as he adjusted in his chair, “I first want you to realize this: in life, there can be no wisdom learned without mistakes made.” I nod my head in agreement as he silently looks me over. “So how do you
feel
, Jacob?”

“I don’t feel like I could take my own life, but I do feel like if I do die, so be it.”

“What medication are you on?”

“I was put on Lexapor today.”

“And you aren’t seeing a psychiatrist?”

“No.”

“Okay.” He nodded and then started tapping on the keyboard of his computer. “Each day, at one, I want you to call me. If only for fifteen minutes, I want to talk.”

“Alright.”

“Each night, before or after you have dinner with your children and father, I want you to come by here. Got it?”

“Yes sir.”

“So what time will our evening meetings be?”

“Eight?”

“Very well.” He began typing into his computer.

Four weeks later, I’m struggling like I was the day Trent prescribed me the pills.

“It takes at least eight weeks for antidepressants to kick in,” he tells me. “Trust me, they’ll start working.” But I’m secretly convinced that the only way those pill
s
will work is if they can erase your past, raise the dead and get your wife to move back in with you. If they can’t do that, then I’m in trouble.

“Jake, you want the ketchup?” my father says to me now as he, the kids and I sit in a burger joint in Cambridge. I forget the name of it. Actually, I don’t even think I looked up at the sign when we walked in. I only know that it’s near Harvard because all the college kids are in here wearing Harvard hoodies. Some are coming to our table to say hi to my dad, the mayor of this town, some are asking for us to take a picture with him. The burger joint is playing Motown music and the energy in the place has Ralphie and Harlow excited. They’re currently trying to compute their Harvard graduating class.

“Thanks,” I say as I take the ketchup bottle from my father with my right hand while Jaden clutches the index finger on my left.

“And Harlow, Ralphie, you may want to think twice about Harvard. Your dad’s a Yale man.” My father’s voice is filled with humor. I try to smile as I squirt my ketchup.

“Oh yeah!” Ralphie slaps his forehead. “Yale it is.” He and Harlow then start computing the year they’ll graduate from Yale.

“Jake,” my father whispers. I look up at him as I put the ketchup bottle on the table. “You take your pill today?”

“Yeah.” I reach over and wipe ketchup from Beckett’s cheek.

“It was a statement, Daddy,” she tells me. “I was standing up for my rights.” I have no idea what she’s talking about. I give her a smile and a nod. She picks up a fry, dips it in ketchup and smears it on her cheek again.

“How long before they kick in?” my father whispers again.

“In a little bit. Shouldn’t be much longer.” I take a bite of a fry. Only my father, Trent, Father Harper and I are supposed know about the pills. I won’t be naïve enough to think that my sister, Trent’s wife, doesn’t know. I’m sure she does. I’m sure she’s told our sisters. I’m sure they’ve told my mother. I know this because my mother had been crying when we met for lunch yesterday. I could tell by her eyes. Yet she said she was fine and didn’t want to talk about herself, she wanted to talk about me and whether I knew that after having three girls, she just about gave up on having a boy. But, after praying as hard as she could, and bartering with God, I showed up. And though she loves all of her kids equally, not only am I the baby of the family but I’m also her only boy. And, yes, she knows that my sisters and I have our own families but we, my father and she will always be our
own
family. Just the six of us. And so, yeah, I’m the baby. And did I know how proud she was of me? And she knows for a fact that every mother on earth wished they had a son like me. And did I know how much she appreciates me taking her to lunch on her birthdays, and how much she loves the roses I send to the house? She knows I’m on the pills. She knows that I don’t care if I wake up each morning or not. It’s killing her. And my father.

“I’m trying my best here, son,” my father says.

“I know, Dad. It’s not you.”

“I’m talking to Winnie every day.”

“I know.”

He lets out a deep breath and picks up a fry. “It’s just that…you’re my only boy…out of all the girls, it’s just you and me. Four of them, two of us. Ya know? And if something…if something happened to you…” He places the fry back on the plate and stares at it. “I just don’t want anything to happen to you, Jakie. Alright? You’re my only boy. You’re all I’ve got.” He looks up at me, his eyes watery.

              “It’ll be okay, Pop.” I pick up another fry, bite into it and look down at my plate. God…I need help.

              “Oh darling Daddy,” Beckett says as she leans over and rubs my back. “Don’t look so glum.”

              “Thanks, ba-”

              “I’m going to be a butterfly for Halloween.”

              “Oh, yeah?”

              “Yep. Last year I was a caterpillar, this year I’ll be a butterfly. Get it?”

              “Yeah. I do.”

MARLA

              Wedding bells will never ring for me. I’ve cried about it. I’ve called home about it. I’ve called friends from Philly about it and everyone’s said the same thing:

Maybe it’s time to move on.

Jon’s been yanking you around for years, Marla.

Didn’t you get the hint when he married that Rouge?

When will you stop settling for second best?