by Mary McNear
“Marty called me,” he said.
“Marty?” She frowned. “Why would he do that?”
“Because he’s an old friend of mine. I ran into him the other day at the gas station, and I gave him my cell-phone number. So when you came in here, hell-bent on getting drunk, he called me and asked me to come over here. He was worried about you, obviously, and now so am I.”
“Humph,” she said, irritated by Marty’s and Jack’s meddling. “He shouldn’t have called you, Jack. But you know, it’s funny, I thought I might see you here tonight. I remembered how much time you used to spend in bars like this one.”
“I haven’t been to a bar in two years, Caroline,” he said, running his fingers through his hair.
“Why not, Jack?”
“Because I’m an alcoholic, Caroline. A recovering alcoholic. And bars are generally acknowledged as bad places for us to be.”
Alcoholic. That word, somehow, cut through the fog in Caroline’s brain. She tried to focus now on what he’d said. Tried to, but couldn’t. But it didn’t matter anyway, she decided, because she didn’t believe him.
“You’re not an alcoholic, Jack.”
“No, Caroline? You lived with me for almost five years. You never noticed how much I drank?”
“Oh, you loved to drink Jack. No doubt about it.”
“I did love to drink, Caroline. But more important, I needed to drink.”
“Needed to drink?” she repeated. “I don’t know about that, Jack.” She tried to think clearly. “I mean, you drank all right. Don’t get me wrong. But it just sort of went with the territory, didn’t it?” Shaking her head at the memory, she went on, “You know, the drinking, the fighting, the women—they were all just part of the Jack Keegan package.”
He started to interrupt her, but she ignored him. She was just getting started.
“My God, you were trouble,” she added, almost to herself. “The first time my mother met you, Jack, she said, ‘That boy is trouble . . .’” Caroline’s mind seemed to slide away from her then, away from Jack and away from the bar, and back to the memory of bringing Jack home to meet her parents. It had not gone well, as she recalled. She hadn’t cared, though; she was crazy in love with him by then. So crazy, in fact, that—but Jack broke into her thoughts.
“Caroline, you’re dead wrong about me. I wasn’t just some rabble-rouser, if that’s what you’re thinking. Some guy who liked to stir up trouble. I was a drunk. And everything else I did,” he said, waving his hand, “that was all a part of it, too. The collateral damage, I guess you could say, of my alcoholism.”
Caroline frowned, trying to accept this. But she shook her head. “No, Jack. You weren’t an alcoholic. You never drank during the day, and you always had a job.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Caroline,” he said, exasperated. “Haven’t you ever heard of a functional alcoholic?”
She looked at him blankly. She’d heard of that, but it didn’t seem to fit Jack either.
He sighed impatiently. “How can you know so little about this, Caroline?”
She shrugged, a little helplessly.
“I mean, haven’t you ever seen one of those shows on cable about addiction and recovery?”
“I, I don’t think so . . .” she mumbled.
“Not even when you were changing the channels?”
“Oh, I guess I saw them,” she said, a little befuddled. “But I didn’t watch them. They always seemed so . . . depressing.”
He sighed. “Well, mostly, they are depressing. But sometimes, if you stick around until the end, they can be uplifting, too.”
“Is that what your life is like now, Jack? Uplifting?” Caroline asked, as she tried to bring him into focus. But he still looked a little blurry, as if his edges had been ever so slightly smudged.
“No,” he said, closing his eyes for a second. “No, my life isn’t uplifting, Caroline. I haven’t gotten there yet. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to get rid of this.” He gestured to her half-drunk glass of vodka on the table.
“I don’t mind,” Caroline said softly, and when he whisked the glass away to the bar, she was left to try to make sense of what he had said. Jack, an alcoholic? Was that true? And if it wasn’t true, why would he lie about it? Still, it didn’t jibe with what she knew about alcoholism. Or at least with what she thought she knew about alcoholism. Granted, that wasn’t a lot. But still, Butternut, like any small town, had had its share of drunks, and living here all her life, she’d known them all: the sloppy drunks, the loud drunks, the sad drunks, the secret drunks (or at least the ones who thought their drinking was a secret), the dangerous drunks, the belligerent and angry drunks.
The trouble was, Jack didn’t remind her of any of those drunks. Back when they were married, when they were both in their early twenties, she’d thought of Jack as a man who liked to drink, liked to drink a lot. But then, so had most of the men in their social circle. And Caroline had assumed at the time that it came with the territory. After all, they were all young. And they had all worked hard, by day, at the mill in Butternut or at the snowmobile factory in Ely farther north. It had seemed like their due, somehow, to go out to a bar at night and blow off some steam. Eventually, of course, it was assumed that they would settle down into marriage, and children, and the routines of family life.
Jack, though, never settled down. He seemed, in fact, to do the opposite. He didn’t go out to bars less often; he went out to them more often. And he didn’t come home from them earlier; he came home from them later. Eventually, of course, he stopped coming home from them at all, even after they’d closed. At first, this had led to frantic phone calls on Caroline’s part. But gradually, as the extent of Jack’s womanizing became clear, she’d stopped trying to track him down all the time, and instead, she’d waited at home with their young daughter, a silent fury building steadily inside her.
She looked back at him now, standing at the bar. He was talking to Marty as Marty filled two glasses with a clear, carbonated liquid. Was Jack an alcoholic then, she wondered, when they’d still been married? But again, she resisted the idea. He just wasn’t like the other alcoholics she’d known. His personality, for instance, didn’t change when he drank. He was almost always easygoing and fun loving, rarely dark or bitter. That was what had drawn Caroline to him in the first place. Unlike her friend Jax’s father, an alcoholic who’d been famous for his explosive temper, Jack had never gotten angry when he drank. He’d never gotten angry when he didn’t drink either. Even when Caroline had tried to start an argument with him, as she often did toward the end of their marriage, he wouldn’t take the bait. More often than not, in fact, he’d just leave, something that had always driven Caroline crazy.
She looked back at him now, a little blearily, as he left some money on the bar, and she tried to see some sign of what he’d been through, or of what he’d had to overcome, but she couldn’t see it. All she could see was Jack. And Jack looked . . . well, Jack looked like himself, like his old self—not like someone who was struggling with inner demons, not like a dark or troubled soul. Unless, unless . . .
Caroline sat very still now, trying to force herself to think clearly. There was one thing about Jack back then that she’d found worrying, disturbing even. After they’d started dating, she’d discovered that he’d never wanted to take his shirt off, even when they were at the beach. She’d thought that was strange, since there was nothing wrong with Jack’s body that she could see. It appeared, in fact, to be pretty amazing. But when she’d finally coaxed him out of his shirt once, when they were alone, he’d asked her not to touch his back. Only later had he let his guard down far enough to let her see, and feel, the red, puckered scars that ran in parallel lines across it. Caroline had been shocked by them. But Jack wouldn’t talk to her about how he’d gotten them, not then, not ever.
The only insight she’d ever had into the situation had come when she and Jack were making the guest list for their wedding, and Caroline had chided Jack
for not wanting to invite his aunt and uncle. She’d never met them before, but she knew that after Jack’s parents had died in a car accident when he was very young, they’d raised him on their farm a couple hours south of Butternut. Jack, though, had been adamant about not inviting them to their wedding, and when she’d pressed him on it, he’d lost his temper. She still remembered it vividly, because it was one of the few times she’d ever seen Jack angry. Caroline, just drop it, okay? I said no. They’re not coming to our wedding.
“Here you go,” he said now, setting a glass down in front of her and forcing her back to the present. “It’s club soda. Drink it.”
Caroline sipped it obediently, and she had to admit, it tasted good—clear and cold and fizzy—but even so, her head was starting to spin a little. And her stomach, which was churning uncomfortably, didn’t feel like it was doing much better than her head.
“What’s wrong?” Jack asked, watching her from across the table.
“I don’t feel that well,” she admitted.
“No? When did you last eat?”
She thought about it, and she honestly couldn’t remember. It wasn’t like her to skip meals, but Pearl’s had been especially hectic today.
“What time did you have dinner?” Jack prompted.
“I didn’t,” Caroline confessed.
His jaw tightened. “Lunch?”
She shook her head.
“Caroline,” he said with a groan. “Come on. That’s the first rule of drinking. Never drink on an empty stomach.”
“Too late for that.” She sighed.
He studied her speculatively for a moment. “Let’s go,” he said suddenly. “I’m taking you home, and I’m not leaving until you’ve got something solid in your stomach.”
Caroline wavered, not sure whether Jack coming home with her was a good idea or not. But he overruled her misgivings.
“We’re leaving,” he said, standing up. “Now.”
“Oh, all right,” she grumbled, and she followed him out of the bar.
CHAPTER 10
Here you go,” Jack said, setting a cup of coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich down on the table in front of her. “I told you I still knew my way around this place.”
Caroline, sitting in one of the red leather booths at Pearl’s, looked down at her plate and frowned. “Jack, that is, bar none, the ugliest grilled cheese sandwich I have ever seen.”
Jack chuckled and slid into the booth across from her. He had to admit, this slightly scorched grilled cheese sandwich would never be served at Pearl’s. But he figured it would do the trick. “Just eat it,” he said. “And drink your coffee, too. Drink it black.”
“Will that sober me up?” she asked, taking a sip of the coffee and wrinkling her nose at its harshness.
“No, not really. That’s a myth, by the way, that drinking black coffee can counter the effects of alcohol. It can’t. Neither can taking a cold shower. But sometimes, what we think something can do is more important than what it actually can do. So drink your coffee, and eat your ugly sandwich.”
Caroline sighed resignedly, but bit into her slightly burned sandwich anyway. “It’s pretty good, actually,” she said, taking another bite. “Where’d you learn to cook, Jack?”
“Um, I don’t know if you’d call that cooking. But living alone for eighteen years, you learn how to make a few things.”
She paused and looked at him thoughtfully. “Did you though, Jack? Live alone, I mean.”
“Most of the time,” he said evasively. Because of course there had been women, over the years, who’d come to spend a night and ended up staying longer; some of them, much longer. He didn’t want to talk about that now, though, so instead he asked a question of his own. “So why, exactly, were you trying to get drunk tonight, Caroline?”
“I wasn’t trying to get drunk,” she said, eating her sandwich and not looking at him.
“You’re a lousy liar, Caroline.”
She glared at him, but then relented. “Oh, all right.” She put her sandwich down. “I was trying. I just didn’t know it would be so hard.”
He smiled. “Oh, I’d say you did all right for yourself. You were slurring your words pretty well by the time I got there. You sound better now, though. You look better, too.”
“My head still feels funny,” she admitted a little sheepishly. “Like it’s buzzing or something.”
“That’ll go away,” he said. “But I want to know what sent you running for a vodka bottle tonight.”
She studied him for a long moment, and he knew she was trying to decide whether or not to tell him the truth. Then she shrugged, a tiny shrug. “For the record, Jack, it’s none of your business. But . . . Buster and I ended our relationship.”
He looked at her sharply. He hadn’t seen that coming, not so soon. But he’d be lying if he’d said he hadn’t wanted it to come.
“Oh, don’t look so pleased with yourself,” she said. “It had nothing to do with you, Jack, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“No?” he challenged.
“No. It had to do with Buster and me. We decided we’d reached some kind of . . . natural break point, I guess, and that it was time for us to move on. That’s all. We’re both mature adults, Jack, and we made the decision together.”
She looked down at her plate. The woman couldn’t lie to save her life, he thought. So it hadn’t been a mutual decision; she’d ended it, obviously. And thinking about that, Jack felt a tiny, welcoming flicker of hope.
“And now I have a question for you, Jack.” Caroline looked him directly in the eyes and seemed, for the first time that night, to be completely sober. “Why’d you come back here? Why’d you really come back here? And don’t say you came back here because Wayland left you his cabin, because you’ve already tried that one out on me.”
Jack leaned back against the booth, watching her and weighing his options. He hadn’t meant to tell her this yet, so soon after moving back here. But he wondered if now wasn’t as good a time to tell her as any; after all, timing was everything. But perfect timing? That was rare.
“I came back here,” he said, finally, “because I wanted to be with you. I’ve always wanted to be with you. I just . . . I just lost sight of it for a while.”
Her eyes widened with surprise. “Jack,” she said softly, questioningly. But after a moment she recovered herself, and her wonder was replaced with cynicism. “Lost sight of it for eighteen years,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
He shifted again and thought about how to respond to her skepticism, her justifiable skepticism. He decided to just go for broke and tell her everything. It seemed simpler, somehow, than serving the truth up to her one spoonful at a time.
“Okay, I didn’t lose sight of wanting to be with you,” he said. “Not exactly. I just didn’t think there was anything I could do about wanting to be with you, not while I was still drinking. So I just, I just put that hope away, I guess. Or I tried to. But it was always there, Caroline. Every single second of every single hour of every single day. And then, a couple of years ago, I got a phone call from Wayland. We’d lost touch, by then, but he was sick, really sick, and when he asked me to come visit him in the hospital, what could I say?”
He rubbed his eyes now, trying to erase the memory of how Wayland had looked in that hospital bed. “Anyway, I drove out to see him. He’d told me on the phone he wanted to reminisce about old times, but by the time I got there, he was too weak to talk. So I . . . I just sat there and held his hand, until . . .” He shook his head. “It was a hell of a way to die. Nobody there but me, and I hadn’t even known he was sick until a few days before.”
“I’m sorry it had to be that way for him,” Caroline said quietly. “But he’d burned a lot of bridges by then.”
Jack nodded. If there was one thing drunks did well, it was burn bridges.
“But, Jack, I still don’t see what this has to do with us,” Caroline said.
“I know. I’m getting to that.�
�� He sighed and rubbed his eyes again. “I stayed with Wayland until he died, and then I drove straight to Elk Point, straight to my first AA meeting. And that was it. I haven’t had a drink since.”
“So you were afraid if you didn’t stop drinking, you might die that way too? With only an old drinking buddy to hold your hand? Or worse, maybe all alone, with nobody to hold your hand?” And her skepticism, he saw, was back.
“No, Caroline. I wasn’t afraid I’d die alone; I was afraid I’d die without trying to get you back—you and Daisy. So I dragged myself to an AA meeting every night, and I sat in some musty church basement, wanting a drink so badly that I could only measure my sobriety in minutes, and I told myself that if I could stay sober for a year, I could get back in touch with Daisy. And if I could stay sober for two years, I could come back here, to Butternut, and be with you. Or try to be with you, I should say. Because I knew, even then, it wasn’t going to be easy. And you, Caroline, have not disappointed me.” He smiled at her, a little nervously, not knowing how she’d react.
For a moment, she didn’t react to it at all. Then Caroline pushed her plate with the half-eaten sandwich on it abruptly away from her and said angrily, “I don’t believe you, Jack. I believe you, I guess, about the getting sober. But I don’t believe you when you say you spent eighteen years pining away for me and Daisy. Do you remember how you left here, Jack? Do you?”
He nodded, ashamed at the memory.
“You woke up one morning,” Caroline said, her face flushed with anger, “and you threw your clothes in a suitcase, and you were gone. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers for emphasis. “And you never said good-bye. Not to me, not to Daisy. You called us from the road, Jack, from some gas station. You said you needed a ‘break,’ and except for our divorce, and your child support checks, I didn’t hear from you again until this summer. So either you’re a liar, for saying you cared so much, or you’re a complete idiot, for caring so much and waiting almost two decades to do anything about it.”
“The second one,” Jack said quietly.