“Nope, I went downtown, had some coffee, and shopped for a while before I came back. I gotta go, ‘cause if I don’t, then I’ve missed two this week, and I don’t wanna hear about it from the doctor.”
“Your doctor isn’t going to say anything,” she told him, trying to keep her voice light.
“Not to my face, but it’s still there when I go see him. I have to tell him that I missed, and then I have to talk about why I missed, and why I shouldn’t miss, and…”
“I understand.” She did, after a fashion; she had never been as completely cognizant of what she needed to know regarding all of Jay’s post rehab doings. For a while, she went to meetings with him, which was encouraged, but considering that she had no problems with her occasional drinking and casual drug use she found the meetings repetitive and dull, and had soon stopped going. Al Anon, for the friends and family of abusers, was even more deadly boring, often fraught with more tears and recriminations than the AA meetings, and she had stopped going to them after only four or five sessions, preferring the company of her girlfriends who had seen her through the ups and downs of her life and knew her better than a room full of strangers. She encouraged Jay to go to his meetings, though, particularly in the beginning, when they seemed so pertinent to his day-to-day emotional state. In recent months, though, Jay had slacked off some weeks, missing several meetings and making only the minimal effort. Sarah wondered if that might have something to do with Jay’s changed state of mind, and thought that perhaps it did. Some of the anger and frustration she had been feeling about him ebbed away, for if that was the case, if his missing meetings had anything to do with the withdrawal she was sensing in him, any enthusiasm to go to a meeting might be the much needed antidote for it.
“This is a new group, so I might be kinda late. I don’t know how long they run and stuff,” he told her. Even as he said the words, he knew they were only half-truths. The group would be new to him, but it didn’t have anything to do with how long the meeting would run. That was standard, fluctuating about fifteen minutes from meeting to meeting. It was the afterwards, the mingling portion of it, that could go on until the wee hours of the morning. They were typically off site, either at coffee shops or diners, or sometimes at people’s homes. Leaving the timing open ended left him room to maneuver and he wouldn’t feel rushed or reluctant to join in on any after meeting festivities.
Sarah continued to talk to him and he made noncommittal conversation with her as he dressed. Jeans and a t-shirt were fine, there was no dress code, but he didn’t want to look grungy tonight, nor did he want to stand out too much, either. He chose carefully, picking a pair of jeans that he would never wear to a club, but ones that were better looking than what he might wear to hack around downtown on a Saturday morning. He had scores of t-shirts to choose from, those with mottos and logos on them, and those that were plain. He opted for a plain one tonight, not wanting to represent anything else but himself. Casual, he wanted to seem casual and calm; the two things he was feeling most unlike at the minute.
He looked at himself in the mirror, that cockeyed mirror that always seemed to be at a wrong angle, and saw Sarah in the background, sitting on the bed and not really looking at him at all. She was letting her eyes roam all over the sparse, white room, her disapproval registering when she saw the dream catcher on the wall and the small one nestled in the disheveled heap of blankets. For some reason, he didn’t want her touch either of them, so he moved quickly around the bed in a pretense of fishing his cigarettes from his discarded clothes on the floor, and plucked the smaller catcher from the sheets.
“Where did you buy these?” Sarah asked him, pointing a manicured finger at the wall.
“That place downtown where you get your books and stuff,” he said.
“Oh.”
“They were in the window and I noticed them when I went for coffee,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t know, I thought they would help.”
“Are you having bad dreams?” she asked him, and Jay felt a pang at her question, because her voice was the voice that had lured him to her, the sweet sounding, mellow toned voice that had been full of concern, of genuine concern, and that had anchored him throughout most of his ordeal with himself. He looked at her, really looked at her instead of the typical glance, and saw that her face was looking strained, and that she appeared older than her twenty-six years. Her eyes were in that angry squint, but now he saw that perhaps it wasn’t anger that made her eyes look that way, but fatigue.
“I wasn’t having any dreams at all,” he admitted. He stroked the soft leather of the catcher, then put it in the drawer of his bedside table, an area that was sacrosanct to each of them. Sarah wouldn’t go in there, just as he would never help himself to her drawer.
“So it helped?”
“I slept,” he said with a small grin, and he shut the drawer with a flick of his wrist that allowed him to check the time on his watch. “I have to go, or I’m gonna be late.” That same hand that had shut the drawer reached behind Sarah’s neck and tilted her head up to his so he could kiss her. When he pressed his lips to hers, it seemed as if years had passed since he’d last kissed her, although he was sure he had kissed her earlier in the day. He was positive of it, but still couldn’t recall exactly when it had been. There had been a time when he had counted their kisses in his head, a silly game he played, as if he could capture the love he felt for her in each memory. Now he felt himself hard pressed to remember the last time their lips had touched, even in the casual way they touched now, and it gave him another pang that was more poignant than the last. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he assured her, his lips still hovering close to hers.
“All right.”
He heard promise in her response, the subtle suggestion of sex in her breathy reply. It brought on another pang that made him very uncomfortable. For a moment, he looked into her eyes, studied her face, and couldn’t remember why he wanted her. It came as a shock to him, even though they had been drifting apart over recent months. He still went through many of the motions that he had in the past, still brought her little gifts, still deferred to her whims and wishes, still couldn’t imagine his life without her constant presence, but his desire for her, that had been strong to the point of unhealthy, was like a shadow of a memory. Guilt and sadness mingled inside of him, and he found that he was unable to stand there and hold her cheek any longer without those emotions being visible. Jay didn’t want her to see that. In his own way, with his own reluctance to let go of a set pattern or alter the fabric of his life, he believed that perhaps his feelings were a passing phase and that there was no need for him to share his doubts. Why stir up trouble where there might not be any trouble at all?
“I’ll see you later,” he told her, and he walked out of the bedroom without looking back, leaving Sarah to deal with his clothes on the floor and the tangled blankets on the bed. The distasteful task of sorting his personal feelings out was too tremendous for him to worry about domestic details.
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One by one, Sarah sorted through the items in the shopping bag from “The Rising Phoenix”. One by one, she placed them on the freshly made bed until they were lined up in a row. With each discovery, she became more confused and didn’t know what to make of the assortment of books and objects. The only thing that made her smile outright was the small gargoyle, because it harkened back to Jay’s sense of playfulness, which she missed. The books ranged from topics on aroma therapy to past lives, making no sense to her for several reasons, one of them being that some of the books were already in the house. She had urged him to read them, but he had never shown the slightest interest. It was odd, too, because his mother was interested in some of the subjects she was to the point that Sarah had thought that it might be common ground for her and her potential mother-in-law to share. She had made two wrong assumptions in that area, the first that Jay would have some understanding of the non-physical universe because of his mother’s leanings, the second that Denise, Jay’s mother, would enjoy sharing her beliefs and interests with her.
Sarah picked up the incense burner and studied it. This was more like Jay, the burner being in the form of a nude, reclining woman, her mouth carved into an “O” to hold a stick of incense, her belly broad to hold a cone of scent or even loose herbs. She placed it on his bedside table along with the gargoyle and the jar of sage she found among the purchases from the shop. The books she put in a neat stack beside the bed, under the table. Now Jay’s side of the bed resembled hers to a degree, but for the dark, leather dream catcher that hung on the wall over his pillow. The incongruous shape disturbed her more than his hanging it without discussing it with her first. It was uneven and oval, which didn’t match the spare décor and straight lines of the room. She wanted to go with her first instinct and take it down, but something about Jay’s behavior earlier warned her not to.
Living with Jay the past few months had been like walking on eggshells. It was beginning to take its toll, too. The constant having to be on alert to mood swings and temper was sucking the vibrancy from her; it was something she sensed in a tangible way. They were out of sync with each other, and she wasn’t sure when that had happened. After the whirlwind of touring, with all the extra ups and downs they experienced during that time, they had come to California together to begin planning their lives. He was in love, she was in love, and life was good. For once she wasn’t scrimping, Jay was feeling renewed, or so she thought, and they started looking for houses in some of the better neighborhoods in the area. Jay began to rely on her knowledge of Los Angeles and she took great delight in showing him the places she knew, introducing him to her friends, and being taken to the events that Jay’s celebrity afforded them. They found one house, moved into it, then found another one they liked better; the one they eventually bought outright. They leased cars, they got dogs, and life fell into a comfortable pattern for the both of them. Sarah was wary of patterns, though, and knew that patterns could lead to ruts. She tried to keep things fresh in any way she could, but she trusted her instincts as to the limits of how far she could push Jay.
Thinking about the recent past, she thought that she might have missed some signals. She could clearly recall that after three months of living together she had become anxious for what she thought was no reason. She had tried to hide it behind a flurry of activity, but had sensed that Jay felt her anxiety and became nervous himself. When her birthday passed, and the gift she had been expecting didn’t arrive wrapped in the requisite ring box and delivered on bended knee, when Jay began spending more time at meetings and on the golf course than he spent at home or out with her, her nervousness escalated. She still felt that it transferred to Jay; she had lived with other men before, for longer periods, and was savvy to emotional transference, although she couldn’t have described it if called upon to do so, it was something she sensed more than understood.
The holidays approached, and just before Christmas Jay took her on a weekend getaway to the mountains. She had cried when he presented her with the ostentatious ring, and he had gotten teary eyed, too. At the time, she believed that all her worry had been for nothing, and that what she had perceived as his pulling away had simply been him holding himself in to surprise her with the engagement. Later, when his mother arrived in California to visit with him for his birthday, Sarah revised her thoughts, believing that Jay actually had been nervous about asking her to marry him because of the cool reception Denise had given the both of them on her arrival. Apparently he was privy to things that she was not, because no matter how warm and welcoming she tried to be, Denise was unresponsive to her; a shock considering how grateful Denise had previously been to her for the time and effort she had given Jay in the time leading up to and after rehab.
Sarah found herself standing in front of the bedroom mirror, staring at herself in disbelief of her own obtuseness. That was the moment, of course; it was after that particular visit that everything changed. It was then that Jay began slipping away from her again, only this time he had slipped further, even in the midst of the complicated and elaborate preparations for their wedding. He had become uncooperative with her when it came to anything that he, and he alone, needed to do for the event. One thing in particular was rankling her on a daily basis. While her gown was chosen and being made, while the bridesmaid’s gowns were also at the seamstress’s, and the tuxedoes for the groomsmen were settled on and paid for, Jay had yet to get his own tux. In fact, he had been putting it off for months. It wasn’t that he needed to have it right at the moment, but he was the lone holdout in the entire wedding party. He kept claiming that either he had no time or that it wasn’t a good time for him to get to the tailor, and the excuses were always at the ready when she asked him about it. Short of taking him to the tailor herself, she had slacked off on questioning him about it, only because she knew that it was a lesser detail in a sea of details that had to be addressed immediately. Still, she knew he was balking, and now, at this very moment, she felt she finally understood why. Denise. It had to be Denise, because nothing else had changed in the months since the engagement. Their lives had remained constant, with only the addition of the wedding plans. To the best of her knowledge, Sarah had no indication that there was any friction between Jay and his mother prior to their engagement, and it wasn’t until after that turning point that Denise displayed such coldness towards her.
Sarah stepped back and sat on the edge of the bed, eventually leaning back until she was supine on the down comforter that covered it. The last thing she needed was a problem with Denise, because of all the people in Jay’s life, Denise was the least likely to allow him to live independently of her. It was another assumption that Sarah had gotten wrong, the assumption that Denise would be more than happy to have Jay become an independent person after rehab. The indications had been in place, and Sarah had based her decisions on those indications. There had never been any negative talk about her involvement in Jay’s rehab at the clinic, about his eventual relocation to California, or about anything else Sarah could think of, but now that she had given it a moment’s thought, Sarah realized that things must have been going on that she had no knowledge of, or perhaps even intentionally ignored.
Closing her eyes to the room around her, Sarah began a battle to push the thoughts she was having from her head. Harboring negativity wasn’t going to help her, or get her anywhere. She ran a list of all the positive things in her life, and although the list was still short of her dreams and expectations, it wasn’t a list to be ignored. Financial security, even in the midst of emotional instability, was nothing to be laughed at or pooh-poohed. She had watched her mother struggle with that, struggle at jobs, struggle with men, and never reach that place where she could breathe easy about her future. Her sisters, as well, had worked hard at menial jobs to buy themselves the luxury of pursuing fame. That had been her life, too, but she had found out early on that she didn’t care for that battle, that she always seemed to take the fork in the road that always offered the easier ride, despite the cost. She gave one last thought to Jay and his mother, pulled herself up off the bed, and decided, then and there, that she was going to stick this out until the end, no matter the outcome.
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© 2004 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2004 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
