by Carr, Suzie
Activity filled every moment of her day, and to keep that smile blazing like it did, she relied on me to take care of the “business” end of things: to pick out her clothes, to prepare nutritious snacks and meals, and to motivate her to exercise and rest in between her wild romps at the clubs.
Without me, she would have fallen victim to the abuse of such a demanding life. She needed me. I loved being needed. Being needed by her was my elixir. It breathed life into my day.
Jessica treated me like a princess. She treated me to Tiffany jewelry, to gorgeous artwork, to romantic dinners, and to a life where she wanted to show off my knack for things like public speaking at social events, for negotiation skills, and for my sense of style.
We shared a sweet spot for each other. This sweet spot swaddled us in the kind of love where no words needed to be spoken. Back in the early days, I would look into Jessica’s eyes and get lost in them. This woman loved me so much more than Sasha’s fiancé loved her. This woman placed me on a pedestal higher than the one my father placed my mother on. I became that woman she looked at and whispered into the deepest recesses of a winter’s night, “You’re the love of my life.”
I loved this moment of our relationship. I would’ve done anything to keep it intact. Whatever she wanted, I would’ve done. In our early days I learned that Jessica loved to drink. Alcohol livened up her spirit like nothing else. She smiled, laughed, and added charm to a room when sipping on alcohol.
She claimed to have her drinking under control. As we started to become more serious, I’d ask her straight out why she needed to drink so much. She laughed this off saying she didn’t need it. She just enjoyed the taste like I enjoyed the taste of coffee. She laid out a deal. “You stop drinking coffee, and I’ll start drinking orange juice instead of alcohol.”
So, I gave up coffee and suffered mega headaches for weeks. I didn’t mind. Jessica drank orange juice instead of beer. She still wore her radiant smile and joked about the funny things that happened the night before while she danced at a party with strangers. My Jessica was still Jessica without the alcohol.
Shortly after, we got married. We hosted a huge wedding filled with family and friends who supported us and our love.
For our honeymoon, we trekked to the mountains. We set out like two wild spirits on the verge of something incredible. We drove through valleys and up mountainsides singing Billy Joel and Eric Clapton songs, hooting and laughing. The sun shined all over our life. I had everything. I couldn’t imagine living without her by my side.
This rosy, cheerful halo hung around us for the first year of our marriage. I had stepped into a life others only dreamed about living. My wife and I hosted parties, vacationed on yachts, enjoyed season tickets to the Giants thanks to an adoring fan, ate at fancy restaurants, and lived a life full of laughter and spontaneity.
On our anniversary, we drove to the mountains. We laughed and joked the entire ride up to our mountain getaway. A smile as natural and beautiful as the wind blanketed me in a peace I didn’t want to share with anyone. I owned it. I was whole. Life danced with me.
Then, as we unpacked the trunk of our car, reality hit me like a bomb. I reached down for the containers of orange juice which were sandwiched in a crate between a gallon of milk and water. I cradled the crate, even though Jessica insisted she should carry it because of the weight. “It’s a good workout,” I said, swinging the crate from the trunk and wrestling my way towards balance. Well, my balance caved and the crate tumbled out of my arms and smashed onto the concrete driveway. Milk and orange juice exploded and spilled into a gooey mess at my feet. Jessica dropped to her knees fighting to control the carnage that ensued. Her face sunk as the orange juice and milk spilled from the crushed containers onto the gravel. She gasped like someone had punctured a life-giving bubble, like someone had murdered her child, like someone had reached down from the mountaintop and yanked her heart right out of her chest. I’d never seen a grown woman cry like this.
My life changed in that moment. That pivotal moment would forever be etched in my history as that moment when my wife plucked the keys from my front pocket, climbed into the front seat and drove away muttering, “I can’t do this trip without my juice.”
I stood under a ripped veil, as I watched our sedan hug the curved driveway and settle into the steep decline. Jessica wasn’t talking about orange juice. My wife, the woman everyone loved, was a woman unable to house a smile without first dousing her liver with alcohol.
I decided standing on that mountaintop that I would help her. I would blend-to-mend if that’s what it took. That’s what married people did. She’d do it for me. Whatever it took, we’d get through this. No one would have to know. No one would ever know. I would guard this with everything I had in me. This would be our secret. We’d deal with it quietly. Yes. That’s how I planned it. A quiet descent from a new hell into the arms of safety, of protection, of peace. I’d sweep away the perils that laced into our life and polish it best as I could.
Jessica eventually turned the car around and came back for me. We decided on that mountaintop that she’d check into rehab.
Throughout those first two weeks as a sober person, her spirit crashed. Her dancing suffered. Her mood swings were unbearable. I missed her smile and her laugh. “Life is boring without alcohol,” she said to me one night as we sat by the fire sipping tea. “It’s like I have nothing to say, nothing to look forward to. Life isn’t fun anymore.”
This new side of her depressed me. I wanted the old Jessica back. “You’ll get through this.”
She stared at her tea. “I hate tea.”
I placed mine down, too. “So do I.”
“Let’s just have wine.” She scooted up to me. “Please. I promise. I won’t go overboard.”
I eyed her.
“Was I ever obnoxious? Did I ever pass out?”
I shook my head.
“Did I ever slur my words and embarrass you?”
She never did. She controlled herself, always. I took her hand in mine. “Please let me continue to help you.”
She nodded, looking so sad that I wanted to hug her. Instead, she climbed to her feet with her tea in hand. “I’m going to toss this, then go to bed.”
The next day, Jessica came home full of smiles and laughter. She swung me around with romantic flair under our living room chandelier. “Have I told you lately how beautiful you are?” she whispered.
I loved this side of her. I missed this side of her. So I chose to ignore the faint smell of alcohol on her breath and just let her lead me to our bedroom where she made passionate love to me under the comfort of our four-hundred thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, thanks to another fan.
So, I blended to mend.
Jessica didn’t fall all over herself, walk around with bloodshot eyes, or crack obnoxious jokes. No, Jessica smiled, laughed, and remained in control. Truth of the matter, drinking kept that smile dancing on her face. Why would I ever take that away from her? The day she started passing out and slurring her words like a fool would be the day I would call her on her secret and insist she enter rehab again.
About two months after our first anniversary, my brother-in-law hired me as his regional hotel sales manager. I got to travel all over the east coast and stay at the different hotel chains. Jessica and I both hated being apart, although, I did enjoy traveling on the open road, just me against a brave, new world. For the first time ever, I ate alone in a restaurant, read a book in the stillness of the night, and cuddled up in a bath filled with soapy fragrances all by myself. I was me, not Jessica’s wife, not Cal and Marg Chase’s daughter, not Sasha’s sister, but Nadia Chase, an independent woman with a purpose all of her own now.
This tickled me, which also scared me.
Each time I had to travel, Jessica spoiled me. She’d pack my luggage for me and place love notes in between my undies. She’d also call ahead and order flowers and candies to be waiting for me upon my arrival.
She was the perfect
wife, and I loved being the center of her world.
Aside from her secret drinking, our life sparkled just like a gem.
Then, one night Jessica didn’t return home.
By the morning, the unthinkable happened. I got a call from her.
“I’m going to need you to come and get me.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at the county jailhouse.”
My blood ran cold.
“What did you do?”
“They say I killed someone.”
I couldn’t find my tongue. “They say?”
“The police.”
I couldn’t draw a breath without first punching my chest. “And you didn’t, right?”
She didn’t answer.
“Jessica?”
“It was an accident.”
I dropped to my knees. “What did you do?”
“I crashed my car into this other car. I didn’t set out to kill anybody.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to dull the stab to my heart. “Were you drunk?”
“Fuck, Nadia. What the fuck?”
She was still drunk. I hung up and ran to the bathroom and vomited.
I didn’t go to Jessica’s rescue. She arrived home with her club owner friend who posted bail for her. She walked straight to the kitchen and cracked open a bottle of wine.
I treaded out of the front door and drove to the inn down the street. I booked a room, ordered room service, and drank a bottle of very expensive wine before calling my brother-in-law and telling him I’d be taking a few days off to get over a flu. Then, I braved the call to a defense attorney.
My darling wife fucked up our lives for eternity. She went out for happy hour with some friends and hopped in her car after drinking twelve beers and three shots. About five miles from our home, she crossed the center lane and smacked headfirst into a car traveling in the opposite direction, killing the woman who was driving her eighty-year-old friend back home after a dinner to celebrate her birthday.
My wife was not only a drunk, but she was now also a murderer.
* *
I couldn’t figure out how people didn’t see the news report when it aired. After they splashed Jessica’s picture all over the television the days after her arrest, I braced for the phone calls from friends, from family, from work.
Part of me just wanted to get the criticism over with. I wanted people to start the judgments and just let them coat me in a few hundred layers of embarrassment so I could start the process of dealing with this ugly fiasco.
Not even my parents called me. I hovered over the call button many times in those first few days to call them, but stopped myself. How do you tell your parents your wife is a drunk and a murderer?
Sasha called me three days in and asked if Jessica and I wanted to go out with her to see her husband’s friend play acoustic guitar in a pub in the city. She had no clue Jessica had just killed a woman. “I’m sick with the flu still,” I said to her.
“You sound strange. Do you need me to bring you something?” she asked.
My chest crushed my lungs when I attempted a deep enough breath to clear room for words. “I’m fine,” I managed. “I just need a few more days to rest.”
I hung up and cradled my head in my arms, rocking back and forth.
Chapter Three
Ruby
I loved the word fuck. I loved how that four-letter word tickled the tip of my tongue as it dove free. Those four little letters wielded such power. Nothing could get in its way once it leapt from the tongue.
I wished my mother would’ve said the word fuck more often and meant it. Maybe she would’ve amounted to more in life than someone who served as a punching bag to a man with a dick for morals.
I sounded angry still. I hated that after two decades he could still offend me, still get under my skin and scratch at it. No matter how much you cleansed a soiled past, the stench still emanated through from time to time.
As a kid, I hated the yelling, the fighting, and the frightening nights I’d spent huddled under layers upon layers of blankets to muffle the sound of my stepfather taking out his frustration on her. The mornings after were especially difficult because I expected to find her crying, but instead found her doting on him like he was the fucking king of the new world order, like he hadn’t impressed upon her milky skin the lashings from his belt, like he hadn’t covered her legs in purple. She’d prance around the kitchen with her spatula, singing happy songs, wearing her blue belle apron, and stopping mid flip of the eggs to pour the bastard more coffee and to kiss my forehead.
She allowed him to treat her like a doormat, and I hated that about her. Relationships sucked. I promised myself back then that I would never grow up to be a wife. I planned a much more untethered life. I would live in a cute apartment with lots of plants and sprinkle potpourri throughout so it would smell fresh and flowery. I would hang out with fun friends and host movie nights and feed them buttered popcorn and ice cream. I’d also open my apartment to shelter cats and maybe a ferret. I would commit to no one but me.
Back when I was a kid living under their rules, I’d whisper to my mother after my stepfather planted himself in front of the television, “Are you all right?” She’d shush me and tell me to stop talking such nonsense. She’d remind me that mommies and step daddies argued at times. They said silly things to each other and made up.
Silly things. Huh.
My mother lived to please that man. She stood in high heels far too pointy to be comfortable and wore skirts far too tight. She also catered to this man’s ideals before her own, before mine even.
I would never be like her.
My best friend Catherine admired her mother. I could see why. Her mother didn’t fake her way through life. Her mother smelled like spring rain and walked with a bounce in her step that told me she didn’t spend her nights fighting off a rough man’s fists. I even heard her lecture to Catherine’s dad a few times, and her dad chuckled and surrendered right away. She exerted the upper hand, and I admired her for that. I wanted to be Catherine’s mom one day. Pretty, lovely, and unrestricted to speak her mind in any way she deemed right. I just wouldn’t get married. That never added joy as far as I could see.
Misery had killed my mother’s spirit. Freedom never tickled her soul.
When my mother died in a freak accident from falling down a flight of stairs while carrying a basket of laundry— a basket of my stepfather’s laundry, no less—I took comfort in Catherine’s mom’s arms. My Aunt Sherry told me to go sleep at Catherine’s house for a few nights while she figured out what to do. So I did. I ran. I ran across the street so fast my feet barely hit the pavement. When she opened the front door, she scooped me in her arms and squeezed me telling me everything was going to be all right.
I prayed to my mother for many nights after that, whispering to her restless soul in the darkness of Catherine’s room. I asked her over and over again why she didn’t just pick up and leave with me. I wanted her to answer me. I wanted her to sweep into those dark nights, pick me up in her arms, and carry me away with her to a place where daisies and dandelions grew wildly and the sun never failed to shine. I didn’t want to live with Catherine and spend the rest of my days slumbering in a sleeping bag on her floor under her Mickey Mouse lamp. I wanted a life with my mommy where we each slept through the night in beds all our own, dreaming with smiles on our faces and never waking to hear the sounds of fists or muffled screams. I wanted to wake up and cook pancakes and eggs with her, sing songs together, laugh and dance around the kitchen in our aprons, never fearing that the big, bad man would steal the joy away from under our feet.
I wanted this life. I prayed and begged God to help me out.
Help me out he did.
My grampa showed up at Catherine’s house two weeks after my mother fell down the stairs. I hadn’t seen him in three years. I still recognized his sweet, twinkling eyes, the roundness of his nose, and his Old Spice smell.
He came to re
scue me, to take me away to live with him at his bed and breakfast in western Massachusetts. The Rafters was a huge barn, turned into eight private bedrooms and bathrooms. He ran the place alone, cooking breakfasts for his guests, taking them on tours of surrounding historical areas, and serving them home-baked cookies every night by a roaring fire.
Peace and simplicity couldn’t even begin to describe the beauty. The Rafters, with its endless supply of muffins, cookies and comforting fires, filled in the voids and empty nooks of my heart.
This man taught me to open up my arms to life by spoiling me with an overabundance of warmth, spirit, and love.
His love and lessons smoothed over the hurt of being left alone in this world at such a young age. A few months into my new life, I started to see the shimmer of sunlight on the edge of leaves again. I inhaled the garden-fresh breeze that blew across the rolling fields outside of my bedroom window. This renewed air tickled my lungs and cleansed my hurt. By the time I blew out my birthday candles at nine years old, daily life at The Rafters had shaped and molded me, filling me with wonder.
As I approached ten and met new school friends, I began to grow lonely for my mother. My friends talked about how their mothers sewed clothes, sang songs, and read books with them. I’d see them sitting down to dinner with their families, a mom on one end of the table and a father at the other end, and a jealousy would rip through me. I loved my grampa, but I missed my mom. When I brought her up, his wrinkles creased more. So, I rarely spoke of her.
Then Grace came into my life much like a warm spring breeze whispering in after a bitter winter. Her tender smile, her tall and regal walk, and her soft command created an arc over our life. She had walked up to my grampa and asked if he had any rooms available for three nights. He peeked up from his Boston Globe with a glow in his eye, rubbed his bristly chin, and told her only if she didn’t mind sharing her room with Tommy, our tabby cat.
I, being of almost eleven by then, jumped to her rescue and told her Tommy could stay with me if she’d prefer.