by LS Hawker
“Tobacco flavor, please,” she’d said.
“But we have so many—”
“I don’t want to smoke limes or vanilla ice cream cones. I want to smoke tobacco, and this is as close as I’m going to get to the real thing.”
“Old school, huh,” he’d said with mild contempt, but sold it to her anyway.
Now she sat pretend-smoking in the dark, looking out at her beautiful property, deep dark green in the moonlight after the heavy spring rains. She and John had bought the house, buildings, and sixty acres after two things: Nessa’s music blog, Unknown Legends, had attracted its first major sponsor, and Altair Satellite Radio had offered her a twice-weekly overnight deep-cuts show. John was working at the time, at the job he’d held the longest—two years as a maintenance tech at the Manhattan Regional Airport, so they were able to get their first mortgage.
They’d had big plans when they bought the land and house nine months ago. She and John had agreed to quit his job and become a stay-at-home dad and tend the hops vines. He’d renovate the outbuildings and add on to the house. They would have another baby. But John became depressed and irritable. Picked fights with Nessa. Started disappearing, saying he was shopping for farming equipment, but he somehow never came back with anything.
And then she’d caught John in their bathroom with his pipe and his rock. He’d brought that poison into their home where their son slept, the poison he’d sworn he’d never touch again after relapsing almost four years before. So she kicked him out for the last time.
“I’d rather see Daltrey dead than with you,” John had screamed, standing by his truck as Nessa loaded garbage bags of his clothes into the bed. This was the drugs talking, using John like a ventriloquist’s dummy, because he worshiped his son, adored him, would die for him under sober circumstances.
“You’re a shitty mother,” John ranted on. “It’s your fault he doesn’t speak. You let him get vaccinated.”
Not this again. The drugs made him buy into every conspiracy theory circulating on the Internet, especially the anti-vaxxer movement.
“It’s your fault,” he said. “You’re dirty inside and you infected him with your filth.”
She hadn’t come back with what she’d wanted to say—that her filth was far behind her, and John’s was teeming now, this very minute, his cells and brain full of toxic evil.
“You’re my wife,” John shouted. “You can’t keep me out of my own house, away from my son.” He’d gestured about. “All this is mine. Everything you see is mine.”
Listening to him rant, Nessa was reminded of her mother. She was always talking about her stuff, was fiercely protective of what was hers. “You broke my glass. You ruined my blouse. You can’t use my car.” Mine, mine, mine.
And in that moment, she had a revelation. Instead of marrying a man like her father, the way most women did, she’d married one like her mother.
“You will be sorry you did this,” John had screamed. “You will pay for this.”
Nessa couldn’t help herself. “Of course I will,” she’d said. “Because I have to pay for everything.”
She’d gone in the house and locked him out.
Now Nessa sat at her desk and booted up the ancient Windows XP computer she used for her AA personal inventory blog. It wasn’t connected to the Internet so no one could get at the password-protected journal except her.
She got out her Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book and turned to page sixty-four, the beginnings of the resentment inventory, and read the text as she always did, although she had it memorized: “In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper.” She sighed and started typing.
Chapter Three
5/31
Hi. I’m Nessa, and I’m an alcoholic. I have been sober for six years, four months and twelve days.
Here are just a few of the things I need to hand over to my Higher Power: At the top of my hit parade is imagining my Higher Power as my mother, Joyce Gereben, standing behind me looking over my shoulder, watching everything I do with disapproval. Hilarious, all things considered. My sponsor Marlon W. tells me that modeling God on a critical and/or absent parent is common to people like us, although for most it’s their father. I can’t model God on my dad, because I hardly remember him. He left us when I was five or so.
Sorry, HP. I know you’re not actually Joyce Gereben.
First, a confession. When Officer Michaels opened the door to the boathouse, I had hoped John was actually inside with a gun, and the cop would have no choice but to shoot him in self-defense. Then all my problems would be solved. What kind of fucked-up human being wishes another one dead?
At the same time, an irrational, ridiculous fantasy erupted: that the real John, not crackhead John, was hiding in the boathouse with balloons and an I’m Sorry and I’m Done with Drugs Forever banner, and that I’d run into his arms and . . . I can’t pine away for something that doesn’t exist, that does real harm to my psyche, my spirit, my sanity. I have to go forward one day at a time, stay sober, and raise Daltrey.
Which I don’t know how to do without John. Parenting comes so naturally to him, where to me, it’s a struggle. I love that boy with all my heart, of course, but the only reason I have any idea what to do with him is because of John.
I wouldn’t have guessed this of him when we met, which was after I moved to Denver and got a job at Wax Trax, the record store. John didn’t seem like father material, not that I was looking for a baby daddy. He used to hang around the store, and he was this huge presence. He had these big beautiful brown eyes—Daltrey’s eyes—and longish hair. He was from Russell, Kansas, and had been a crack addict. But he was as addicted to Narcotics Anonymous as he’d been to crack, which should have been a red flag for me. Still I had the biggest crush on him right from the start. I’ve always ignored my instincts when I’m in love. That’s probably pretty common.
We’d been married less than two weeks the first time he relapsed. We’d had an argument, and he hadn’t come home from work. By two A.M., I was frantic, driving all over Denver through the night. I searched for him for five days until I got a call from Denver Health saying that John had been found naked in a park, high on crack. He was arrested and wound up in the psych unit. The doctor there explained that John was bipolar, a fact that John had never mentioned to me. The doctor said the stress of getting married might have triggered a manic episode, making him delusional. And then he’d gone looking for crack to take the high even higher.
After his stay in the hospital, John was medicated and contrite, and things settled down. John swore he was done with drugs—the illegal kind—for life. But then I got pregnant with Daltrey and we moved to Manhattan, Kansas, so John could take a job at the airport.
Then just days before my due date, John disappeared again. He was gone for nine days, only reappearing after he got out of jail for a DUI, when Daltrey was two days old. John had gone off his meds, he said, because he felt too flattened out to want to go on living.
After that episode, I felt differently about John, but I had no intention of leaving him because I knew what it was like to grow up without a dad, and it would probably be even tougher on a boy. So no matter what happened, I was determined to stick with it.
“You can’t only think about yourself anymore,” I told John. “You have a wife and child now. I’m sorry that the meds make you feel tired. But I can’t have you disappearing.”
He took his meds faithfully for three years, and I confess I was lulled into a false sense of security. Now I know better, and I can’t believe I let myself become so complacent. I guess I thought in a little town like this, drugs would be harder to find. But that’s stupid—it’s a university town, so of course there are drugs.
The truth is, I thought having Daltrey and me would be enough to make him want to stay sober, but I’m pretty sure Marlon is right—John couldn
’t handle my success. Not that I actually blame my professional accomplishments for his relapse. If the radio gig and the blog had never happened, he still would have found an excuse to use.
Would I do it all again? Yes, I would, because I got Daltrey. I just wish John could remember what the Big Book says: “Time wasted in getting even can never be used in getting ahead.”
Chapter Four
Wednesday, June 1
NESSA WOKE TO the sounds of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony out back. She got dressed, then went downstairs, poured herself a cup of coffee, and looked out the window above the sink. Daltrey stood on a pallet in the backyard conducting an invisible orchestra using a wooden spoon as a baton, all dressed and shiny clean. Nessa walked out the back door and found Isabeau Revie, her freshly hired nanny, playing air violin on the grass in the morning light, heedless of the heavy dew soaking her jean shorts. She wore a Firefly tank top, her long blond hair in a careless ponytail.
Daltrey ran to Nessa and hugged her knees before returning to his conducting post, waving the spoon in the air, a look of concentration and seriousness on his face.
“You need to get him a cardigan and a pipe and a subscription to The Economist,” Isabeau shouted over the music, which came from portable speakers connected to her phone.
A burst of pure laughter overcame Nessa, the first natural one she’d experienced since John’s departure. Isabeau sat there grinning, looking pleased and surprised, and Nessa realized Isabeau probably thought she was a grim, humorless harridan.
“Maybe a little paste-on beard until he can grow one himself,” Isabeau added. “Which should be any day now.”
Nessa laughed more, and Daltrey smiled. She knew he hadn’t heard her laugh much lately either. She needed to make more of an effort to lighten up for his sake.
“We already had breakfast,” Isabeau said. Always smiling and enthusiastic, Isabeau was an engineering grad student from New Mexico who was four years younger than twenty-five-year-old Nessa and six inches taller.
She hadn’t been what Nessa thought she was looking for when she was first compelled to hire a nanny. Marlon had recommended Isabeau, one of his research assistants at Kansas State who needed a summer job. Nessa had wanted an efficient, impersonal warm body who would be in the house while Daltrey slept and Nessa was working.
But Daltrey had foiled this plan. He’d fallen in love with Isabeau at first sight—with her wide-set brown eyes and ever-present smile, coltish energy, and soft musical voice. He wasn’t interested in anyone else, so Nessa was stuck with a warm, engaging personal-space invader who obviously believed they were all going to be besties. Luckily, she hadn’t yet noticed that Nessa never offered up any personal information. Isabeau shared everything about herself without reservation. Even worse, Isabeau had mad organizational skills that made Nessa’s life easier in ways she never could have imagined.
Isabeau’s laptop sat open atop its case on the ground in front of her, one of her long legs extended out to the side, against which Declan MacManus had been lying until Nessa appeared. Now he trotted to her and presented himself for a good butt rub.
“Let’s go over your schedule for the rest of the week,” Isabeau said. She typed on her keyboard. “Okay, so here’s what I’ve got. Daltrey has a doctor’s appointment at eleven this morning. Is it for vaccinations, or—”
“I told you you don’t need to do this stuff,” Nessa said, setting her coffee cup down on the steps and leaning over to pull some weeds from the flower garden. She didn’t want to talk about why she was taking Daltrey to the doctor again. She was embarrassed by her frantic worry over Daltrey’s muteness.
She suspected it was because of all the turmoil in their lives, the violence he’d witnessed when John was in a manic phase of his bipolar disorder. She also suspected that her past addictions and risky behaviors had something to do with it, although she’d never mentioned these things to the doctor. She knew she should but, to her shame, she’d hoped a more mundane explanation would come to light.
“But it’s easier for me if I know exactly what’s going on and when.”
Isabeau had gone from nanny to personal assistant while Nessa was preoccupied with grief over the end of her marriage. There was no point in fighting it. Isabeau was a force of nature.
She continued reading from her screen. “I fact-checked your blog post on Wanda Jackson. She was amazing! I’d never even heard of her before that—surprise, surprise. I’ll send you a text when that’s done so you can look it over one last time before it auto-posts at nine tomorrow. Then I’ll work some more on cataloging your music library.”
Nessa went on pulling stray shoots of grass and weeds from the flower bed.
“I’m a little more than halfway through the A’s,” Isabeau said, stretching her arms above her head. “Arcade Fire, I think. Seriously. I’ve never met anyone with such a huge collection. I always thought my sister had a pretty good one, but hers was like a drop of water compared to your ocean. How did you get started collecting like this?”
“Actually, it was my older brother who got me started in high school.” Ack. It popped out before she could even think about it. She should never multitask. Why would she mention personal information so casually? This was the effect of Isabeau’s constant presence. Nessa needed to be more careful about what she said. She’d been completely tight-lipped about the extent of John’s problems, and she needed to keep to that standard for all other areas of her personal life.
“I’m kind of in awe,” Isabeau said. “What did you—”
“I want you to take off early today,” Nessa said. She needed to cut this off. Enough talking about herself. “You’ve been working too hard.”
“Okay,” Isabeau said brightly. “We made some blueberry muffins if you’re hungry. Didn’t we, Daltrey?” She turned the music up and returned to playing first-chair violin with renewed vigor.
Attitude of gratitude, Nessa reminded herself, watching this paragon of efficiency, who’d seemingly dropped out of the sky when she needed it most, engage her son. Nessa headed for the door, then turned back.
“Isabeau,” Nessa said. “Could you call the locksmith? I need to change the locks again.”
She looked up from her computer. “Why?”
Nessa checked to see that Daltrey wasn’t listening. She lowered her voice.
“John broke into the boathouse while we were gone.”
Isabeau’s eyebrows bounced up. “Well, that explains it,” she said.
Nessa felt a prickle of apprehension. “Explains what?”
Isabeau stood and walked toward Nessa. “All the splintered wood. I saw it when I got here this morning. I didn’t want Daltrey to handle it and get splinters, so I was picking it all up when I found this.” She reached into the pocket of her shorts and held out a flat, black triangle.
Nessa took it. It was a Fender medium guitar pick. What was this doing out here? She turned it over and saw that it had been signed in silver ink: BIG.
Big and Rich? Big Bad Voodoo Daddy? Was this one of John’s mementos? It must be. Maybe it was one of the things he’d intended to try to sell. What a laugh. She shrugged and put it in her own pocket.
Back in the kitchen, Nessa washed her hands and topped off her coffee while checking the clock. She had thirty minutes before she needed to get ready for their doctor’s appointment, so she brought her laptop to the kitchen table and logged in to her blog.
She’d started writing the music blog for fun, as an outlet for her when they’d first moved to Manhattan after Daltrey was born, to a tiny, dark one-bedroom apartment on Anderson Avenue they’d called the Cave. It had started with tentative little reviews of shows she and John had gone to see, often small regional bands; memories of shows she’d seen as a teenager; and explanations of obscure vinyl records she’d picked up at yard sales, rare 78s of old blues and marc
hes, acetates and wax cylinders from the early twentieth century. But soon after, she’d started to say what she really thought. And with that had come two things—Internet fame and vitriolic remarks via her comments section. Thank God she’d avoided the whole social networking thing, or there would have been even more of that.
She usually only answered the positive comments, composing retorts to the trolls in her mind. It had taken her a while to understand that engaging trolls was always a mistake. When she’d started the blog, she’d thought if she explained herself clearly, calmly, and rationally, they’d apologize and everyone could be friends. But that wasn’t how it worked. They were like schoolyard bullies—probing for weakness, looking to destroy. Lucky for her and unfortunate for them, it would take more than words to destroy her.
Nessa took a look at the most recent comment posted.
a professional jeweler resized my cock ring
and he made it bigger
Posted by Anonymous | June 1 8:17 AM
This made her laugh harder than it should have. Sometimes it seemed a twelve-year-old boy lived inside her brain and took over from time to time. How many closet comedians were out there, just using the comments section to ply their wares? And how many guys were out there just dying to show the world their junk or at least talk about how big it was?
The narrow spectrum of comments always amazed her. Interestingly, before she’d gotten her radio show and people had discovered she was a woman, she’d never received any personal comments. Before that, when readers assumed she was a man, the comments had been restricted to variations of “idiot.” Since then, she’d begun to believe she’d been spelling whore wrong all these years, for how often it was spelled hore. Why music was assumed to be a masculine interest and area of expertise, she would never know.
Her brother never believed that, and he would be nothing but proud of her if he only knew people were paying her for knowledge he’d helped her accumulate. She cracked open her personal inventory blog, keeping an eye out for her son and nanny.