don’t know what to do but I can’t allow you to go on like this.’
Jack’s mind was not prepared to wrap itself around such an unwelcome emotion; he didn’t know what to do. He had been trying to put me back together but now he realized he was finally out of options. You shatter into a couple of pieces, Jack can put you back together again. But when I shattered, the pieces were too many to count. It wasn’t even a matter of how many, but how much. Like sand. Uncountable.
His decision to get married because I was pregnant had backfired on him. Not only was I not keeping up my end of the bargain, but at the same time I kept him from fulfilling his. There was work to be done, lots of work. An infinite workload of case files, preparing witnesses, and interviews. And even though he was exhausted, I knew that the pressures of his job felt perversely comfortable to him compared to what awaited him at home every night. I threw my head back and burst into an overly animated gesture of joy.
‘This whole marriage was a mistake. Come on, Jack, this is your way out.’
Jack walked towards me as if to grab me. ‘Just listen to yourself … you’re irrational. You follow me to work, you come to my office, embarrass me? That’s not rational. I don’t know what’s going on, but you need help.’
I just stared at him as I watched him pause just long enough to shake his head.
Then his voice turned to ice. ‘I find you here, in my closet, while Mia is screaming her head off. Does that strike you as rational?’
Mia stirred, her little hands reaching for something invisible, sounds of distress escaping her lips. Jack’s eyes were darting left and right. When he finally spoke, his voice was down to a whisper.
‘You’re irrational and I no longer trust you with my daughter. This stops tonight.’ He kept switching Mia from one arm to the other while she was growing visibly upset. Tears started to well up in her eyes and short of a bottle nothing was going to calm her down. ‘Estelle, this can’t go on any longer. Why can’t you just—’
‘Just what? Be normal? Is that what you want me to be? Normal?’
He stood there, didn’t say a word. A normal woman is all he wanted. And I was everything but. Cha ching, you lose, Jack.
‘You need to get help,’ he said. ‘I’m taking tomorrow off and we’ll go see somebody. You need professional help.’
I stood there, waiting until he left the closet, cautious not to turn my back on him. I went to the kitchen and, while the bottle warmed in the microwave, I slid the gun into the back of the junk drawer.
I fed Mia, put her in her crib, and went into the study where Jack was perched over a case file. He looked as if nothing had happened at all. When he saw me, his demeanor changed. He looked agitated.
I sat in a chair in front of his desk and crossed my legs. I managed a smile and hoped my face didn’t seem too contorted. I wanted to appease him, to seem as rational as possible.
‘There’s something we need to talk about,’ Jack said.
I took in a deep breath, then I exhaled. ‘This is when you’re going to tell me about your girlfriend, the one from your office earlier?’
‘There’s no girlfriend. I … I wanted to tell you when the moment was right, but hell, no moment is right lately.’ He paused for a second. ‘The woman at my office was Victoria Littlefield.’
The name sounded familiar but I couldn’t quite place it.
‘She’s from the DA’s office and we were discussing a position.’ He got up, stepped closer and lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Until you barged in like a maniac that is. I can’t even blame her that she didn’t offer me the job once she found out I have a lunatic for a wife. This job is all I ever wanted. Ten years from now I could be DA. But that doesn’t matter anymore now, does it?’
His eyes communicated what he didn’t say out loud. That the way I acted earlier was the wrecking ball that tore a gaping hole into the walls of our already fragile marriage. And his career. Jack wasn’t an adulterer, affairs are messy and unpredictable, no, Jack wanted to become DA and I had busted yet another dream of his; no happy family, no career.
‘You’ve no idea what I’ve been going through,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I drive an hour out of my way just to get gas. That hour in the car, by myself, is the closest I’ve come to normality in months.’
I held back the tears. He was a trapped man. A man trapped by a woman who didn’t measure up.
‘I know you do more, you have more responsibility with Mia, but I get up in the middle of the night and feed her and I still go to work the next day. And it’s not like I’m just shuffling paperwork. I can’t come home every time you call. I’ve been working my entire career for this job and you …’ He paused, deflated. ‘It stops tonight. Tomorrow you’re going to see a doctor.’
When I arrived at the clinic, I was late. Jack was waiting by the door, looking impeccable in his suit, dark gray, Hugo Boss – his favorite – stylish and simple, he wore it, as usual, with a white shirt and a gray tie.
When he spotted me, he looked tired. And irritated. I could tell by the way he raised an eyebrow as I walked up. His forehead was deeply wrinkled, furrows I hadn’t noticed before.
‘Sorry I’m late.’ I raised my face and he lightly brushed his lips across my cheek. I felt guilty. After all, Jack’s time was precious.
Jack was all business during our appointment. His lint-free suit, his starched shirt, all signs that he’d made a success of his life. He told the doctor how I was obsessing over ‘minute details’ and how I didn’t want to ‘accept colic as a diagnosis’ and how he’d been able to ‘hold things together’ all by himself.
I watched him steal a glance at me while he spoke, probably wondering how we arrived at this implausible moment when all he’d ever done was ‘provide and support.’ He was the perfect husband and father yet here I was, frazzled and sunken in.
At the end of our appointment I realized the doctor wasn’t a psychiatrist or therapist, just a family practitioner. Because specialists cost money, and Dr Wells is capable of prescribing an antidepressant.
Dr Wells took one look at me, got out his prescription pad and scribbled on it. ‘If nothing’s happening we’ll just adjust the dosage.’ Then he told me to come back after a month so I could tell him all about the improvement. ‘Once the baby sleeps through the night, life will be different. Some new mothers need adjusting. Give it some time.’
You poor sap, a bit of time and a good night’s sleep is what I need?
‘Right,’ I said, smiled, and cradled my purse. It was heavy. Inside was Jack’s gun, vibrating joyously.
On our way home, in the car, Jack seemed appeased. In his world you solved a problem by coming up with a remedy and the fact that the bottle of pills in my purse would make everything okay was just the way he knew the world to be. An orange bottle with three refills and his life was back to normal.
‘Tell me you’re going to be okay.’ His voice was soft, fragile almost.
He sounded caring but I knew Jack, he never remained concerned for long.
