Jackie thought about what Sybil would say. It was what her father had told her to do in high school if she was having trouble deciding whether to accept the drink at a house party or stay out an hour later because the music at a concert had gotten good. And it had been good advice, the answer always came to her so clearly, but it was following it that had been the problem. She didn’t answer right away, just sat down. Not asking him to leave seemed to be response enough, and he sat too, not next to her but on the opposite sofa, on the only patch not covered by unfolded laundry. She noticed a cereal bowl of dried milk on a television tray in front of him and she waited for him to say something about the apartment, which looked like Hurricane Betsy had blown through it. Her family had long since started to comment.
Girl, is there a free inch of carpet in this house? That from her mother the week Jackie paid a mover to place her bed in her living room—her fear of intruders seemed to subside the closer she slept to the front door.
Or, You ever thought about hiring a housekeeper? That from her sister the week Jackie cooked a pot of gumbo, a whole roast, potato salad, and rice and gravy but never got around to the dishes.
The questions haunted Jackie even weeks after they’d been asked, because after everything with Terry, she was still the same woman at heart, the one who, though she nearly always came up short, aimed to please, the one who used to paint her nails and scrub her baseboards and shave and douche her honey pot, and every week she was on a diet, like the one where she ate the same food as everybody else but dished it out on a saucer instead of a real plate.
But he didn’t seem to notice. He only turned to her and asked, “Baby asleep?”
She nodded.
“That’s good. That’s good. You need a break.”
“I’m so tired, Terry,” she said, but she hadn’t meant to. It was what he called out of her, the truth, when she had been so comfortable covering it for everybody else, her mother, her father, her sister; she had learned to smile first thing when people saw her so they wouldn’t have the burden of joining her in her despair. She had learned to stretch her cheeks out for thirty seconds, not that she was counting; to answer their questions according to what they might want to hear, not what she was really thinking. I’m good, she’d say, but it had to be with the proper lilt, with the last word stretching up so that it tinkled out like a wind chime. The only one she hadn’t had to fake with all this time was her baby: It seemed like the soft coos, the warm embraces, and the patience to get up and grab him even when she’d just gotten to sleep herself came to her through a sort of grace. But his father was here now and she was so, so tired.
Terry walked closer, sat down next to her, holding his head down, seeming to know he had caused this pain. He reached out and held her. And for the while that she cried, really sobbed into his chest, she didn’t care if Sybil was right, if this was just another temporary lull—and of course it was, she wasn’t stupid—she was just glad that he was there now, because she’d needed this release more than she could have known.
When she was done, she wasn’t embarrassed. She wiped her face with her shirt, and he got up to get some tissues from the bathroom.
“Excuse the mess,” she said when he returned.
“Please, you got enough on your plate to be worrying about housekeeping.”
She shrugged. “I always kept a good house,” she said, sniffling again. “It was what I was known for. Remember, people would come over for some of my gumbo and pound cake? It didn’t matter what time of day it was, I always had something to offer them, gumbo or biscuits or sweet potato pie, something. Now I’d be embarrassed to let somebody in here, much less serve them something out of that God-awful kitchen.” She nodded to the back of her apartment, where she hadn’t done dishes in days. The refrigerator was empty as a ghost, and even if she tried, the cracks between the linoleum would never be free of that grime.
He sighed, shook his head, held his hand out. Jackie had small hands, and his were nearly twice her size. Often they’d press them against each other to marvel at the discrepancy. She had an urge to do that now.
“Don’t take that on as your fault, baby,” he said. “It’s me, I know it’s all me, but I’m—” he stopped himself. “I was going to say, I’m going to do better, but I won’t make any promises. That’s what my sponsor always says, that there’s another side to promises, like a coin, and it’s called disappointment, and well, they tell us just to take one day at a time, one moment really, moment by moment, and that’s been working for me.”
Jackie sat with that for a while. She had heard most of his lines a million times before, but this one was new. No promises. Moment by moment. That’s what she didn’t want, uncertainty—that’s what made her feel so out of control, so desperate. She’d do her best to manufacture conviction during times like those. Last time she had sworn to her parents that it was different, she had bragged to her friends that any minute they’d be back in their house on Rosalia Drive, and if not that one, something better. She’d believed herself when she spoke like that, but when she thought about it now, that belief never led anywhere, did it?
The baby fussed, and she stood to see about him. She beckoned for Terry to follow her, but when they arrived at the bedroom, T.C. had already quieted. Jackie collapsed at the head of the bed, her cheek on her pillow. She hadn’t made it up that morning and Terry had to move a twisted sheet to the side to find a clear space on the edge. Jackie closed her eyes, just for a minute. She knew she wouldn’t do anything with him tonight. He looked good. She’d had a chance to study him when he walked to the bathroom, and she’d seen the months with his mama had not only fattened him up, but reacquainted him with his normal stride, settled his mind so his words came out steady. Still he had broken her heart too many times for her to manage anything but talk.
The last year was off-limits for them both, so they traveled backward. High school for one: Did she remember their first date, when he brought her home ten minutes after curfew, and he’d moved the time back on his car and pretended he thought they were five minutes early?
She laughed. Of course she remembered. “I stayed up all night that night, reliving the date, driving to the daiquiri shop, then stopping at St. Claude Seafood for crawfish.”
“Eating it at the Lakefront on top of our car,” he joined in.
“I didn’t even brush my teeth or take my makeup off,” Jackie went on. “It was like I was too high to follow the regimen of the regular world.” She regretted that word after she used it, high, but he didn’t seem to notice. “It was like if I did something ordinary, I’d fall back down.”
“That’s right, I sure did take you to the daiquiri shop,” he said. “I had to pat myself on the back for that one. That was pretty good right? For a seventeen-year-old? You and them tight shorts and pink pumps. Them rollers in your head.”
“It was awright,” she said, smiling though. “Not like Commander’s for my birthday.” She still smiled.
“Oh, well, yeah, that was later when I got a little dough.”
“Those were the good days,” she said.
He nodded. “Real good.”
“Remember when we took Sybil to Dooky Chase’s for the first time?” Jackie asked to stoke the glee of nostalgia. “She ordered so much food and after the waiter left you asked her, ‘Sybil, were you ordering or reading the menu?’”