The thing was, Sybil had never even had a serious boyfriend. She had ideas about what she would do in Jackie’s situation: call the police on him, or burn all his things. Sometimes she’d ask Jackie questions she already knew the answer to just to get her riled up.
Did he even call you on your birthday, Jackie? What kind of man can’t remember to celebrate his own wife’s thirty-second? And you’re the one stuck with the baby while he’s out doing God knows what.
But her commentary didn’t work. It was true that Jackie felt overwhelmed—reading to the baby at night, making sure she stared at him while she spoke so he could see her lips moving, choosing the stroller, the car seat, the pediatrician. Making every goddamn single decision alone sucked every drop of energy out of her core. But Jackie knew Terry couldn’t help that crack had eaten up his mind, that if he had been himself, he would have sent her favorite flowers, petunias, just like old times, or taken her to dinner at Dooky Chase’s, and maybe a part of her was slumped in on itself, pricked free of air, but she couldn’t transfer that feeling into full-fledged anger.
In fact, standing here now beside her sister who had never laid beside a man in bed, listened to his dreams, then saw them dashed at every turn, who had never become so entwined with someone it was impossible to kick him out without feeling like a part of herself had been rejected, she had a sudden urge to defend Terry. Jackie wanted to tell her sister that she’d run into Terry’s white coworker a few months earlier, the same one who’d started Terry using, and the man had bragged to her that he’d been promoted. She might tell her too that both of Terry’s grandfathers had been alcoholics, that Terry’s daddy was one too, but he had abandoned Terry when Terry told him he was going to rehab, told Terry a real man would be able to stop on his own; she wanted to explain that Terry had been captain of the football team, president of their class, valedictorian of his pharmacy college, and though she hated his new track, she understood his sudden need to just breathe.
She didn’t say a word though, just turned the water off, reached for the baby, kissed her parents, and walked out.
The closer she got to her apartment, the stronger her anger grew. In the car, other instances of Sybil’s audacity sprang up for recognition, examination. Sybil had been the one to tell Jackie Terry was on crack in the first place. It was an absurd accusation. Terry had been valedictorian of St. Augustine and Xavier. Then with three offers in his hand, he’d accepted a job at the VA. He fell right in with his coworkers, the white boys from Brother Martin, who’d all gotten the job through connections. Jackie didn’t mind that he went out every other night with them. It was part of acclimating, he’d said, but even if he hadn’t said it, Jackie liked her alone time. As many friends as she had, there was something intoxicating about not having to rehearse every word before it left her mouth, revisit them once they drifted out. Then Reagan got elected with his tax cuts and spending bans, and it wasn’t long before everybody she knew knew somebody who was standing in the unemployment line. Right after Thanksgiving, it was the VA’s turn, and by Christmas, Terry was out.
Jackie didn’t think it was a big deal—he’d had so many offers he could just go back to one of the pharmacies he’d rejected. But that’s not the way it works, Jackie, Terry had snapped in a tone that was not of him, not of their relationship. He started staying out every night. Those same friends from work had kept their jobs and they were schooling Terry in how to get another one, he’d said. Still she noticed that his lips were cracked when they kissed, that he was never home, and when he was, he was sleeping, that his jeans sagged around the crotch, and that Sewerage and Water Board called her to say their bill was two months late. She just chalked it up to the new pressure of unemployment, even suggested she try to get work again. But he’d snapped at her then too. It wasn’t until Sybil came over for dinner. Terry had burst in their house, all jabber and quick moves, and after he left, Sybil turned to Jackie, said in a pitying tone that she’d seen the same signs in some of her clients, the emaciation, the restlessness. Jackie asked her to leave, threatened to call the cops when she wouldn’t budge. Even though she didn’t believe Sybil, Jackie confronted Terry when he got home. He cried, told her he had a problem, he wanted help, but didn’t know how to get it. He admitted that he started with the friends at work. First pills, then cocaine, and now he was running their savings dry chasing after crack. She vowed to stay with him. She didn’t understand the drug then. He went to rehab in Northwest Louisiana for two months and he came back with a light in his eyes and a calm about him. But it was still a tight market and nobody was hiring.
After the first relapse, her parents urged her to kick him out, but it was impossible to leave the man she had become an adult with, the captain of the football team who had chosen her for reasons she couldn’t explain. She waited it out for a few years, tossed between his bouts of renewed sturdiness and his collapses. She was ready to defer to her parents until she found out she was pregnant. She told him, hoping the child would be the motivation he needed, and he was clean for the first few months. Terry came home every night, he was the father she’d always imagined he’d be, then one day without warning, he left for coffee she had in her own pot on the counter and didn’t come back.
With him gone, she didn’t think about the hollow ghost who’d occupied her house the last few years, just the way her sixteen-year-old self would lean into the phone receiver for hours, twiddling the cord around her thumb, the way he’d press his hand into her back and lead her into a room, the way he’d soothe her when someone talked down to her, If they don’t see you as who are you, that says more about them than you, Jackie Marie, and even now she’d repeat that to herself when she needed strength. But it seemed as though she still couldn’t regain her footing. His addiction had blindsided her, and she’d been looking down at the ground while she walked since then, on the verge of falling off a cliff that she wasn’t sure existed.
She pulled up to Stately Grove, got out the car, lifted the baby. The elevator wasn’t working, so she braced herself for the walk. She opened her apartment door, walked inside, shut it, and slumped against it; she could hear her neighbors upstairs fussing already.
“You been calling bitches? Answer me, mothafucka, you been calling bitches?”