Second Best Fantasy

by Angela Kelly

  I was back in the kitchen again making a sandwich when she arrived. She walked up behind me and sang high and sweet into my ear,

  “Sleep, little darlin’…things always come around…it’s day by day… that keeps me from…my safe and sound…”

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  She had to choose that one. I loved that song. I closed my eyes and felt the enormity of her presence. Just being alone in a room with her still felt like a transcendental experience in and of itself. People talk of their loved ones and say things like, “When he/she touches me, it’s like the earth moves.” I think with Janine everyone felt it, whether you were in love with her or not was irrelevant. Of course, I still was, very much so.

  She kept singing to me and came up behind me, put her arms around my waist, her chin on my shoulder, and clasped her hands around my belt buckle. She still had an overwhelming affect on me, I felt myself get wet and my knees went weak. For just a moment, I forgot about my anger, about the box, about the drain of this relationship I’d begun to feel after a year or two, I couldn’t quite remember when it started feeling that way. I turned around into her embrace and looked into her eyes, hoping my anger was still visible in my own.

  “Sit down baby. I want to show you something.”

  I left her in the kitchen and went to retrieve the box from the living room. When I returned she was smoking my cigarette and drinking my glass of wine. So easily she would do this, I found it to be one of the most sweetly endearing things about her.

  When I got up to pee in the middle of the night, I’d return to find her on my side of the bed. In any social setting, if I left the room she’d take my seat. If I attempted to bring her her own drink, light a cigarette for her, anything at all, I’d somehow wind up with the new one and she’d finish the old. I asked her about it once and she’d said she felt like she always wanted to be nearer to me then she was so it just became a habit. I was so enraptured with her and everything about her, how much closer could she get?

  When I put the box on the counter she opened it, examined the contents, and avoided my glare. A long silence passed between us and resentment bubbled up within me because all I could think about was how much I wanted her. Still.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to say…oh, fuck, I don’t know what I want you to say. Did you use it? I mean, have you done it? When was the 111

  last time? Today? Yesterday? Say, baby I’m sorry, it’ll never happen again? Oh, no, wait, wait, I’ve already heard that fucking lie! Wanna try a new one?”

  “I’m trying,” she said.

  “Try harder.”

  I’m trying? That’s what I was expected to accept? She wasn’t my troubled teenager failing a class, and I wasn’t her fucking mother. I’m trying. I could not believe that was all she had to say.

  She looked scared though. She was afraid I would walk.

  This both pleased and troubled me. I was glad she at least showed some concern about losing me, who wouldn’t be? It fed my ego. I thought about how hard it was to be with her, to be with anyone. But deep in my soul, in those darkest corners I had tried to drown with the blood in my own veins, she lived, tethered to me, a part of me. This is what troubled me so and often ripped me from peaceful sleep in the middle of the night. I was terrified of my desire to spend the rest of my life with Janine. At the end of each day it all came down to this one thing. Regardless of drugs, drink, her status as a famous or not famous singer, her annoying attachment to define herself as bisexual; my last vision of each night overcame all of that. I ritually looked at her face each night before I drifted off to sleep, and when I did, it was impossible to imagine my life without her in it.

  If Janine were to vanish into thin air at that very moment, I would remember every single attribute of her face, every curve of her body, every tone of her beautiful voice, and every single word she had ever so much as whispered to me. There are no words to describe the terror that accompanies that kind of love.

  Still, if I was going to be effective at all I had to act.

  “Janine, I’m not sure if I can do this anymore. I’m going to stay somewhere for a few days and get it together. I suggest you do the same.”

  Like any lover reluctant to leave, I hesitated by the door, hoping she would protest. But before she could say anything, there was a knock at the door.

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  * * * *

  Kerry Washington didn’t wait for an answer. He opened the door and walked into my house as if he belonged there. He didn’t. I knew who this prick was, a dealer who scored for nearly everyone we knew, and I suspected had been Janine’s supplier both for the times I’d caught her and for the times I hadn’t.

  Without warning, a rage gripped me that I probably hadn’t felt since the last woman I’d caught red-handed in another woman’s bed. Not really knowing what I was doing, I snatched the needle off the counter from Janine’s box and charged at him.

  With the element of surprise on my side, I threw him up against the living room wall. With one arm I held him under his chin, and with the other I gripped the needle in a fist ready to plunge it into his throat. Never in my life had I done such a thing, like a fucking action hero in a movie, and my subconscious was frantically watching wondering if this was really me.

  The punk, and he was just a punk, was terrified. He thought I was out of my mind and just crazy enough to stab him in the jugular. I stood poised and spoke clearly and slowly, “If I ever, ever catch you here or anywhere near her, I will fucking kill you.”

  I let go.

  “Fucking bitch! You think you’re some goddamn super dyke or something? Why, ‘cause you’re getting a piece of that?”

  He jerked his head in Janine’s direction.

  “Let me tell you something, baby, everybody’s had a piece of that! And as far as who’s taking who out, I’m the one who could get away with it, you don’t know who you’re fucking with!”

  And that was it, he turned and left. The whole incident couldn’t have lasted more than five minutes. I wasn’t afraid of Kerry Washington, he was exactly what I said he was, a punk.

  He knew a few people who introduced him to a few other people and band members of all different ranks called him by name only because he had something they wanted.

  I couldn’t recall the last, if any, Arnold Schwarzenegger film I’d seen, so my action hero self wasn’t quite sure what to do next. Stupidly I stood there with the front door hanging open and 113

  watched Kerry peel out of our driveway in a Trans-Am. Not only were we in an Arnold movie, but one that apparently took place in a heavily Italian populated area of the Jersey shore. Clearly my love for Janine had, in fact, driven me out of my mind. Why else would someone like me, a thirty-six year old lesbian author, with a nice house and cool job in Manhattan, think it was an everyday occurrence to go around threatening the lives of drug dealers? Insanity was the only plausible explanation.

  “Maggie, look…”

  There was Janine, bringing me back into the blinding light of reality. The sound of her saying my name weighed on me like lead. Then she was near me, the soft hand of obsession and passion gently on my back. Words were always followed by touch, it was how she operated. In all this time, I couldn’t recall even one conversation with her at one end of a room, or even a couch, and me at the other.

  “I don’t blame you for being angry with me. I’m angry with myself. The last time was about a week ago, I won’t lie to you.

  Frank was here (a colleague from Sam’s recording studio) and he was really depressed. He asked if I’d get high with him and I did. It’s hard to say no, Maggie. You don’t understand because you’ve never done it.”

  Apparently this was a great flaw of mine. Because I’d never indulged in a drug that scared the hell out of me, I was unable to commiserate with her as I could with other drugs. I knew how hard it was to become a functional person who was still a heavy drinker but wouldn’t cross the line anymore into the behavior of a ragin
g, maniacal alcoholic. And I knew how it felt and what it meant to continue with a woman I inherently understood would destroy me, but that didn’t seem to count either.

  “That was the first time since Florida. I swear. Please look at me.”

  I was still standing at the front door. I’d closed it, but stood staring at it, wondering what miracle of strength would allow me to walk through it and never return.

  “Baby, Maggie, please…”

  She slipped between me and the door. There were tears 114

  on her face, little wet spots on her shirt. I noticed because it was a light gray color, then I thought it was strange to notice such a thing at such a time. Never would I need heroin, or any drug, even liquor, because life with Janine was mesmerizing and intoxicating enough.

  It was so strange, even after four years together, to be face to face with her like this. To know I was the only person in the world to touch her the way I did. Gently she buried her face in my shoulder and wept. I brushed her hair back from her shoulders and took her face in my hands. She told me she loved me and I believed her.

  Sometimes I hadn’t been so convinced, but in that moment I was, which seemed strange since she had just betrayed me. But something in her I had been waiting for to change finally had. It was almost a noticeable change in the air, or weather, some little piece of her that had been un-surrendered to me gave way.

  “I love you. So much,” she repeated.

  She kissed me as she often did after a fight, testing to see what I would do, if I were still angry, if I’d resist her or hold something back. I didn’t. We made love in front of the living room door, an irony that had not escaped me. It was a door to the outside world, which after all meant so little to me in comparison to this woman, this hold on my being who had stepped off a merry-go-round and into my life. As we laid there not speaking, not having any desire to get dressed, or even get off the floor, I had a crushing feeling of something inside me, screaming, that turned to a soft whimper, defeated again. Janine lay with her head on my shoulder, an arm strewn carelessly across my waist.

  I stared at the faint scar of a pinprick and the moment lasted a long time, an eternity, and I finally knew and understood. I would never leave her, and she would never stop using.

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  Chapter 10

  Jesus, she’s not even trying to hide it anymore.

  I had awakened in an empty bed. When I went to go find Janine the house was empty and there was a small, mostly empty bag of dope and all its accoutrements on the coffee table in plain view. The night before we had argued, and it seemed to me we argued every day now, and had been for two months, maybe three, maybe six, I couldn’t even say. We argued about money, about drugs and alcohol, about appliances and grocery shopping and sex and the pets. The list of things we did not argue about was much shorter.

  I told Cindy as much when I arrived at the coffee shop to find her already there with a double shot espresso waiting patiently for me. Gracious Cindy, the epitome of a best friend.

  She had never abandoned me, or judged me for anything I had ever done. I knew her patience had grown thin with the Janine and Maggie story though.

  I sat down saying, “I don’t know what I can ask or what you can tell me that haven’t already been said.”

  “Actually, I do have something new, something I haven’t had the courage to say to you before.”

  It was difficult for me to imagine Cindy not having the courage to do anything, let alone say something to me.

  “Okay. Go ahead.”

  “Maggie, I love you, you are my dearest friend and have been for many years. But in the past three months, you have turned into someone I barely know. And whenever we get together, all I ever hear about is negative talk about Janine, what she does and doesn’t do, what she will and won’t do, I’m astonished at how self-centered you have become.”

  I said nothing.

  “I’ve watched you be sober and not sober, alive and enjoying life and in the blackest depressions. You have thrived and you have struggled, but you have always known who you are and where you stand, at least, until now. I know you better than anyone, even Janine.”

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  Agreed.

  “Maggie, how on earth can you expect her to give up her favorite drug when you refuse to give up yours?”

  In that instant, I had a moment of clarity unlike any other.

  It was so simple, but I had run from the truth for so long it was unrecognizable to me until it was laid on the table in plain sight.

  Oh, how I wished I could take back the last year, even the last month. To have done things differently, to stop blaming others and take some responsibility.

  Since I had managed to become a “controlled drinker” I thought my problem was solved. But it wasn’t, not even close.

  The truth was I spent most of my time planning and thinking about and anticipating the next drink, all day, all night, all the time. I denied those 12 step people because they insisted I admit my powerlessness, and I could not. Until now.

  And then there was Janine. My beautiful, sweet, tortured Janine, who I had claimed to love more than anyone, or anything. But that wasn’t entirely true if I would never choose her over liquor, was it?

  I had been staring into the bottom of a glass for so long, trying to drown out my fear of losing her to heroin, when in reality every drink I took pushed her closer into its comforting arms, just as every fix she had pushed me back in the bottle. At one time we only wanted to run towards each other, but somewhere along the line our addictions and habits had won out over love.

  I wasn’t sure when they had become more important to us than each other but clearly they had. Alcohol and heroin had been building a wall between us, and as the walls of our own lives crumbled, that structure had become bigger and more solid, like invisible demons had been picking up the debris on the outside and carrying it into the middle of what we were, or, at least, what we could have been. With absolute certainty, the kind you feel way down even into your bones, I knew what I had to do. And I also knew it might very well be the end of us, that if I changed, there was no guarantee Janine would too.

  “Maggie?”

  Through a veil of tears I saw Cindy, a living testament to 117

  the kind of woman I had always wanted to be.

  “Take me to a meeting.”

  * * * *

  “Janine, are you listening to me?”

  “Yeah. I am. Believe me, I am.”

  Dean and Sheila had been sitting with her for nearly two hours. When she arrived at the house, she was just coming down from her last fix, so the first hour had been dedicated to alternately vomiting and having Sheila mop her brow with a wet cloth. But the shakes had now passed, and the shame and guilt had returned. Janine sat there and thought, how did it come to this? Maggie, my darling Maggie. We were so in love once, so happy. I’m so, so sorry.

  “Dean, do you think if I get clean she will stop drinking?”

  “I don’t know, honey. I really don’t. But that can’t be what makes your decision for you.”

  “I know. I have said for years now I can’t imagine my life without her, but the truth is she hasn’t been in it for a long time now, not really. Not fully present. Neither of us has. I love her so much.”

  “We know you do,” Sheila said. “But this isn’t about the two of you anymore; it’s about you and your life, your choices.

  With or without Maggie.”

  Janine recalled all her snapshot memories. Seeing Maggie for the first time at Avenue A Records. How it killed her to leave Maggie when the tour brought her far away from home.

  How it felt the first time Maggie had said, “I love you” and how terrified she looked to even think it, let alone say it.

  But then she thought about her accidental overdose last week Maggie didn’t even know about. She thought about the increasingly seedy places she’d been visiting these past few weeks in search of more connections and cheaper supply. She thought ab
out the men, and the things she had become willing to do with those men in order to get her next fix.

  “My God. What have I done?” she said out loud.

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  * * * *

  In my brief visits into recovery, I had sometimes heard others talk about the experience of sitting in their 3rd, or 25th, or 100th meeting, and suddenly everything that was said made perfect sense. That day, I had that very experience. Listening to words my brain normally formulated response to like, “Bullshit,”

  or “Yeah, maybe for you” was suddenly a vastly different experience. I didn’t know what was different exactly, it was the same meeting I had been to before, with largely the same people I had seen before, espousing all the same wisdom they had said before. But now it had changed.

  Miraculously, I could see myself in their eyes, hear my life in the stories they told, a warm feeling of kinship washed over me. I hadn’t felt anything like it since my very first gay pride parade when I was eighteen. Then the realization came of what the feeling was, it had been so long since I had felt it that it seemed foreign. But at the end of the meeting, holding hands with strangers on either side of me, I knew what it was. Hope.

  * * * *

  “Yes. Yes, J-O-R-D-A-N, that’s right. 7 AM tomorrow?

  Okay then, I’ll be there.”

  Janine hung up the phone and fought the urge to call the receptionist back at the treatment center and say, “Never mind.”

  “We’re very proud of you,” Sheila said, and hugged Janine.

  “Should I call Sam?”

  “I’ll talk to Sam. Don’t you worry about that. And I’ll make sure he makes the right calls to our insurance company.”

  “Dean, you have always been like a father to me. Do you know how much I appreciate that?”

  “Well, kiddo, you’ve been like a daughter to me too. An ungrateful, out-of-control teenage daughter, but a daughter nonetheless.”