Second Best Fantasy

by Angela Kelly

  “Where the HELL IS THAT AMBULANCE?!”

  * * * *

  I was standing outside the ER doors smoking when Dean and Sheila arrived. Sheila came to me and put her arms around me and I broke down sobbing. Dean went on inside and Sheila held me saying, “It’s going to be okay, Maggie. Whatever it is, it’s going to be okay.”

  After a few hours in the waiting room with no news from anyone, a doctor finally approached us. “Who is her family?”

  We just looked at each other. Dean got up, ushered the doctor aside, and had a quiet conversation a few feet down the hall. The doctor turned to me and said, “Miss O’Leary, will you come with me please?”

  He said nothing until we reached an office. He waved me to a chair and closed the door behind us.

  “Did you know she was pregnant?”

  My heart sank.

  “No.”

  “Did she know she was pregnant?”

  “I don’t know. I mean…I don’t know. If she did, she didn’t tell me.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss O’Leary. Listen, I’m talking to you because Dean explained to me who you are. And I know who she is. Look…I’m a doctor, I’m not here to talk to you about your relationship with Janine. I’m here to give you the facts because you are considered her primary caregiver since you live together.

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  Janine was pregnant. If I had to guess, I would say she didn’t know either. This isn’t a miscarriage, really, it’s what we call a chemical pregnancy, which means it was less than five weeks into gestation, that means no gestational sac had fully developed yet…it means her body won’t pass anything else… do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “Janine is going to be fine. Some women have these and never even know they were pregnant. In Janine’s case, her body behaved as if the pregnancy were further along, we’re not sure why, there are any number of reasons, the most likely cause is an elevated level of estrogen, which she should be tested for, she might have some sort of hormonal imbalance. In any event, we were able to stop the bleeding and give her pain medication for the cramping. You will be able to take her home tonight. Just make sure she gets plenty of rest the next day or two, and she’ll be as good as new.”

  “Okay. Thank you, doctor. Can I see her now?”

  “Yes.”

  He left me alone in the room. I did not know how to feel. I was, of course, relieved Janine was okay, not sick, not dying. But she’d gotten pregnant. And, unless I had performed a biological miracle, it meant she had cheated on me. We had never actually stated that we were monogamous with one another, and, in the beginning, I hadn’t been either. But after we’d been together for about three months, I had no desire to be with anyone else, and I didn’t think she did either. The fact that she cheated on me with a man was, of course, much worse. Maybe since it was a man, she didn’t consider it cheating. I was very confused. I always assumed “real love” implied exclusivity, and I thought that’s what we had. Had I been wrong to never actually declare it out loud? I wondered which gig it had happened at, and if anyone else knew about it, if on top of being betrayed I had also been humiliated in front of the rest of the band. Did Dean know? Would he have told me if he did?

  I ran down the hall to the ladies room and vomited. I washed off my face with cool water, sank down on the floor, and 83

  started bawling. Sheila came in and found me.

  “Oh, Maggie. Are you alright? She’s asking for you.”

  “I don’t know what to do, Sheil.”

  “Well, she needs you right now. You can fight about it tomorrow.”

  “How could she do this to me?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sure she didn’t do it to hurt you. She made a mistake.”

  “That’s a pretty big fucking mistake,” I sobbed, sniffling.

  “I know.”

  She came over to me, helped me up off the floor, and wiped off my nose with a paper towel. “Come on.”

  She walked me down the hall back past the waiting room to the ER bed where Janine was and everyone else was crowded around her. When I walked in the room went silent.

  Cindy spoke up and said, “Come on everyone. It’s been a long night. I’ll take everybody home.”

  One by one they filed out of the room. Dean kissed Janine on the forehead and squeezed my hand on the way out.

  She looked at me and tears welled up in her eyes. My heart was breaking, I loved her so much in that moment. I knew I would forgive her and that made me feel weak and foolish. I went and sat down on the edge of the bed and took her hand in mine.

  Soon we were both crying, and neither of us said anything, we were just there looking at each other with tears running down our faces. A nurse came in with a clipboard. “I’m sorry. I’ll need you both to sign these discharge papers, then Miss Jordan is free to go.”

  * * * *

  That night I slept on the couch with Sebastian and Joplin.

  I tried to go to bed with her but I couldn’t sleep. Every time I rolled over I knew I woke her up, and every time I even glanced at her I got angry. That combined with knowing she’d been through a trauma and I knew she needed her rest. I could be considerate, even when I was mad.

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  Around 11 AM on Sunday morning, I heard her shuffling down the hallway toward the living room. I got up and went into the kitchen because I didn’t want her to come sit by me and start crying again, it would dissolve my anger and what I had to say along with it.

  I stood at the kitchen island and drank my coffee while she slid into the breakfast nook. We had argued about the damn nook for a week, we couldn’t agree on the tone of the wood.

  Janine won and we got the pine. She always won. God, I hated myself.

  I poured her a glass of apple juice, I knew that’s what she would want, it’s what she always wanted when she was hung over, so I assumed her body was feeling very much the same as it would under those circumstances.

  “Thank you.”

  I sat down across from her and said nothing.

  “I don’t know how I got pregnant.”

  “Really? What are you, five?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant…I thought he wore a condom.”

  I glared at her.

  “Maggie…I don’t even know what to say. I know 'I’m sorry'

  doesn’t do the trick. I know you’re angry, and you should be. I have no excuse.”

  I glared at her some more.

  “I assume next you’re going to tell me it didn’t mean anything.”

  “It didn’t.”

  “Of course it didn’t. Does anything?”

  “Of course. I love you. I made a mistake. I was…loaded.

  And I was lonely.”

  “Lonely?”

  “Yes, lonely.”

  “Usually, when people get lonely and they are in a relationship, they call their partner to feel better, not go fuck some guy.”

  “I’m sorry Maggie.”

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  “You were right; sorry isn’t going to cut it.”

  “Well what is?”

  “I don’t know. I just…can you at least tell me what happened? When it happened? According to the doctor, it could not have been that long ago.”

  “It was the show at Roseland. You were away for those couple of days, at that book expo down in Atlantic City.”

  “I was away. So now this is my fault?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Glare, glare, glare.

  “The show at Roseland had some problems. Me and the guys weren’t getting along, we argued about the set list right up until we went on stage. There was a lot of fighting in the audience, a rowdy crowd. It was one of those shows where I felt like I was singing out all my emotions and no one was listening.”

  Oh, the poor, misunderstood artist, I thought to myself.

  “I was a wreck, and I drank a lot during the show, there were these girls in the front that kept handing me shots. After the show I was
backstage and this guy, a stagehand, walked right up to me and said, ‘They didn’t appreciate you, are you alright? It looked to me like you were having a hard time, like you could use a hug maybe.’ He was so sweet, and I was so…”

  “Horny?”

  “No! It wasn’t like that, Maggie. I didn’t plan on it happening, it just did.”

  “At the club?”

  “No.”

  “You went home with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus Christ. Did you even think about me?”

  “Of course I did. There were a couple of times I almost told you, but the more days passed, the harder it got, and then I felt so guilty, and you’ve been so content lately, I didn’t want to ruin everything.”

  “So you were just never going to tell me?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  “Have there been others?”

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  “No. I was still having sex with other people when we first started dating, I know you were too. But after a while, maybe not even quite a month, I stopped seeing anyone else.”

  I decided not to tell her I kept fucking other women for about three months, not one. I was having sex compulsively because I was so afraid of falling in love with Janine. They meant nothing, so I wanted to believe this guy meant nothing to her too.

  I softened a little.

  “You really hurt me.”

  “I know.”

  “Did you miss men?”

  “No. It wasn’t about that at all. I promise.”

  I softened some more. “Are you feeling okay? Do you need to rest more?”

  “I feel fine. Tired, but fine. The cramps have stopped and there hasn’t been anymore bleeding. The doctor said there might be, but there isn’t.”

  I sighed. I wanted to be angry enough to leave her, or at least to threaten to leave her. Deep within, my heart could not deny it would forgive her even if the mind didn’t want to follow.

  Things, a lot of things actually, would be different if I didn’t believe she loved me. In my own history there had been a fair share of cheating on both sides, so it wasn’t as if I didn’t understand why she had done it. And I knew the remorse, the shame, the self-loathing that came afterward. Dammit. I got up and went over to her side of the nook and pulled her up into my arms. She cried on my shoulder and I did my best Otis Redding, “I’ve…been…loving you…too long…I don’t wanna stop now…” We danced into the living room and she went and pulled the Greatest Hits CD off the shelf and popped it into the stereo. He sang it much better than I did. She dragged me onto the couch and made love to me slowly, passionately, apologetically. We fell asleep intertwined among the cushions, I heard a soft rain on the windowpanes and the rooftop, and slowly drifted into peace once again.

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  Chapter 7

  Someone was shouting from very far away, at least it sounded far away, fuzzy. And there was another noise, some sort of wolf howling, where the fuck was I?

  “Do you hear me?! You fucking asshole! You almost killed my dog!”

  I blinked and I was on my front lawn and Janine was yelling at me at the top of her lungs.

  “Wait, what?” was all I could say. I had heard about this.

  Coming to in the midst of a blackout. It had never happened to me before, and I thought it was funny.

  “What, what about the dog?” I started giggling.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

  I was still laughing. “Um, I’m sorry baby. You’re going to have to forgive me, it seems I’ve just arrived,” I slurred.

  I was so busy entertaining myself I didn’t realize she had walked away from me. There was a commotion and I turned to see her with the neighbor’s twenty-something son. I realized in a horrible instant what must have happened.

  The son, Jack I think his name was, was frantically talking into his cell phone and shouting out instructions to Janine.

  “Go get something hard, flat, like a broken down cardboard box or something!”

  I followed her into the garage, “Here, over here.”

  We pulled out some sturdy boxes and she chose one and went back outside. I watched as Janine and Jack slid the cardboard box under Joplin and then lifted him into the flatbed of Jack’s truck. In a moment he was peeling away and I stood there until the tail lights faded in the distance.

  I looked around at the scene. My Toyota Corolla was in the grass. Broken bits of plastic from the turn signal housing were on the ground. The mailbox was tilted and it looked like I had sideswiped it. There was a small patch of bloodied grass where Joplin had been. The door to the car was hanging open, with the “bing, bing, bing” noise telling you so. On the passenger’s seat there was a brown bottle bag and a case of 88

  Dos Equis. I couldn’t remember anything.

  I was grateful none of the other neighbors were outside, although for all I knew they all were earlier. But it seemed quiet, if I was lucky no one else was home on the cul-de-sac, and it appeared that way from the amount of empty driveways and darkened windows, thank God. And I vaguely remembered that Jack’s parents, Darrin and Lisa, were out of town. Lisa had come over to ask us to keep an eye on the place, make sure Jack wasn’t throwing some wild party in their absence. Apparently, the party had been at my house, and I was the only guest.

  I moved the car off the grass and into the driveway. I opened a Dos Equis and sat on the front porch, wondering what to do. Pulling my cell phone out of my pocket, I started to cry before Cindy even answered.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I killed the dog.”

  “You killed the dog?”

  “Well, maybe not, I mean I could have killed the dog, I almost killed the dog, Jesus Christ, I don’t know. I need help, Cindy. Like real help. I need to quit drinking, can you, will you come over please?”

  I was sobbing now and wasn’t sure if Cin understood a word I was saying. “Hello?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. Listen kiddo, we’ve needed to have this talk for a long time.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. I’m coming over. And I’m bringing someone with me.”

  * * * *

  I had no idea when I crossed the line from heavy drinker to blackout drinker. It baffled me, I was so convinced I had my shit together and everything was under control. Janine and I were having a rough patch so I was drinking more to calm my nerves, she kept complaining about it. I thought she was just bitchy because the new record wasn’t doing very well. ‘Too Much 89

  Trouble’ and ‘Serenity Speeches’ were still being played on the radio, but the Blue Is had lost their momentum, the record industry seemed to be changing daily along with mainstream demand, and Wolf Creek Records was struggling.

  We’d been living together almost two years by then, which seems to be the point for most couples when the novelty wears off. It hadn’t for me, I was still captivated by her and my heart still flip-flopped when she walked through the door. It certainly wasn’t a honeymoon anymore I had to admit, but it was still good. We fought sometimes, but we were mostly at peace, in love with our life and with each other. The best thing was sharing the intimacy of our art, we wrote songs and poems and prose together, sharing what we each cared about deeply seemed to bind us.

  Sometimes I did not know where one of us ended and the other one began.

  I was writing more and more by the time the second album had been released, and I finished an entire novel while Janine was on the road to keep myself occupied. The book was even doing a little bit of business in the underground LGBT

  publishing world and surprised me with its financial reward.

  Although modest, I was surprised to have a return on it at all, I really just wanted to publish a novel, it had been a long time dream. Janine inspired me, she had been my muse after all.

  There had been fights. Nothing serious, though. I was reviewing all the information and still couldn’t find the answer to why I was now sitting on m
y front porch wasted, having almost killed my own puppy, my lover gone and very angry with me.

  Some of our fights were about drugs and alcohol, mine and hers, but not too often. Could that really be the one and only problem?

  * * * *

  “This is Daniel,” Cindy said.

  Okay. I didn’t know who the hell this guy was or why Cin had brought him to my house.

  “Maggie, Dan’s in recovery. He’s been sober for sixteen years.”

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  Now I understood.

  “Oh. Is this really necessary?”

  “Well, your girlfriend is at the emergency vet with your dog you nearly ran over. Every time I’ve seen you in the past three months you’ve had a drink in your hand and were either already drunk or well on your way. There’s an open case of beer and a bottle of Johnny Walker in your car you don’t remember driving to go buy. I’d say it’s necessary.”

  She had a point.

  For the next hour I said nothing at all as Dan told me about his own drinking, how he got sober, and all about recovery. I was humiliated but, somehow, what he was saying to me made sense. I’d declared myself an alcoholic a very long time ago, and had been back-pedaling ever since, trying to find a way to not give up something I loved more than anything in the world, even more than music, or art, or books, or even Janine.

  Imagining my life without alcohol was impossible.

  “Don’t think of it as forever, that’s too overwhelming. Do you think you can not drink for the next 24 hours?”

  “Yeah. I can do that.”

  “If I come and pick you up tomorrow, will you go to a meeting with me?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. That’s a good start, Maggie. I know you don’t know me from Adam, but believe me when I tell you I know exactly how you feel.”

  I did believe him, although I wasn’t sure why. Cindy obviously trusted him, she brought him to my house on what was perhaps the worst night of my life, and she knew I wouldn’t like that one bit. Quitting drinking, and even going to twelve-step meetings, had occurred to me in the past. But then I’d dry out for a few days and feel better, and that plan dissolved. But now I was being “twelve-stepped” (a term I would learn over the next several days) by Dan, and, from where I sat, it didn’t seem like there was a choice in the matter anymore.