by M. C. Cerny
Chapter Twenty-One
Edith
My life is getting worse. First, Jack rejects me. Second, I am supposed to get up on the stand and testify against the scum who attacked me in my own home. I feel the pressure burst within me. Some fissure cracks, leaving me feeling outside of myself, a hazy vision of who I used to be. Do I even know myself anymore? I get out of the bed we share, slamming the bathroom door behind me. My whole body itches for something to numb the pain.
I look at the mirror and nothing is out of place. Each curl is as it should be, my mascara slightly smudged from the night out. I’ve been on a tight leash since Miami. Hell, we watched the ball drop New Year’s Eve on the television with a two drink minimum. Alcohol wasn’t really my thing, but those pills Jack takes for his migraines made me forget how much I hated parts of myself.
Searching the cabinets and behind the vanity mirror, I find nothing to appease the devil on my shoulder. If I could go to bed and sleep the whole night, I would, but there’s no real hope for that now. Upset with myself for being so weak, I push everything on the counter to the floor. Broken perfume bottles, toiletries, and other items crashing to the floor reflects the chaos inside. I don’t even hear myself cry out, nor do I stop myself from throwing the ceramic soap dish at the mirror, shattering it.
Jack yelling and banging on the door are not nearly as loud as the cacophony of voices inside my head telling me how worthless I am. I hear the door fly open as I sink to the floor. “Edith? Dammit, baby. What did you do?” Jack kneels on the floor next to me, cradling my hand. Looking down, I see the bright flash of blood, the cut stinging as he opens my hand to expose it to the air. “Shit. This looks bad.”
Jack picks me up and sets me next to the bed. I hear running, then Aiden bursts into the room. I don’t hear what they say before Aiden kneels down in front of me.
“Goddammit, Edith. Stop looking at your hand like you fucking enjoy how it feels. Don’t you dare!” Jack is pissed and, with his outburst, I got a flaming reaction. The worthlessness I feel finally has justification. Mission accomplished He storms out of the bedroom as Shelby comes upstairs with the first aid kit.
“You certainly like to keep it interesting, girlfriend.” Shelby pulls out gauze, and antiseptic handing the items to Aiden.
“Luckily, you won’t need stitches.” His glasses perched on his nose, Aiden picks out a small fragment of glass.
Snorting, I sarcastically reply, “What are you? A doctor?”
“Not yet. However, I didn’t realize you were a boxer, Ali,” he utters, cleaning out my cut.
Jack doesn’t come back until morning.
Jack
By the time Aiden comes downstairs, I’ve sobered up enough, making the decision to leave. I can stay at my apartment downtown. I need some serious clarity if I’m going to be able to deal with the unexpected amount of problems Edith keeps sweeping under the rug. He lets me know that Shelby will stay with Edith to make sure nothing else happens. She has good friends, a nice place to live, one semester left of college, and me…but I guess it’s not enough to keep her from going down this destructive path. I’m an emotional wreck over the girl I was never supposed to be with, and I’m starting to wonder if this is all a sign.
I’ve got one option left. I decide to call Fleur in the morning. I guess it should bother me that I’m about to open up Pandora’s Box with an ex, but Fleur was a gem back then and is a brilliant psychologist now. While I’m all kinds of messed up, I know Fleur’s only motivation would be to help.
***
After a long shower and a cup of the strongest coffee I can find, I get to Fleur’s office. I’m hoping we can figure out what to do next.
“Still looking as beautiful as ever. I like your office space.” Looking around, I see Fleur Durand has set up a swanky office to cater to the out of pocket, slightly neurotic clientele.
“And still quite cheeky in your old age.” We hug and she pats my arm, motioning me to sit down on her cream-colored, velvet sofa. The bright, calming room invites one to spill their darkest secrets.
“As I told you over the phone, this is really about my girlfriend, Edith.”
“Ah, the student you seduced.” Fleur takes a sip of her tea and I sit back, wondering if this was such a good idea after all. “Ah, Jack, I’m teasing. I know you wouldn’t knowingly do so, but I find this situation very interesting. You say she was attacked by a teacher’s assistant before finals?”
“Yes. Physically, she’s fine, but mentally? Oh, god…” I break down and actually cry, telling Fleur all the details. There is no one else I would trust with knowing all of this. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.
“There now, Jack. A good cry is healing, and you’ve been holding so much back.”
“What do you mean?” I know I’m holding back sexually and emotionally because I’ve got my own trust issues, but this is for Edith’s own good, not to hurt her.
“Jack, given the situation and trauma she has been through, you need to think about what’s best for Edith.”
“I am, but she won’t talk to me.”
“Jack, I know how you are.”
“Fleur, don’t do that. Don’t analyze me. This is about Edith.”
Smiling, she shakes her head. “I did just that for months after we broke up, but no worries. I’m not. This just explains so much.”
“Look. I came to you because I trust you. We aren’t revisiting whatever past we had.”
Smiling slightly, she nods. “Of course not. Jack, I know you care about her, but you, my dear, are enabling her.”
Scoffing, I move to get up, but she taps my knee and I sit back down. “This isn’t about me. Don’t go there, Fleur. I’m serious. I want nothing more than the last few weeks to go away.”
“That’s just it. You can’t make this go away. You’re conceding to your white knight complex.”
Annoyed, I continue, “Then I’ll make it better.”
“Jack…” Fleur draws my name out. I know I’m being defensive because a tiny part of me recognizes she’s right. I do whatever it takes to be the white knight who rolls in and makes it all better. “You can’t make it better…just different.”
“What do you expect me to do? Break up with her? Leave her? I’m not doing that.”
“Of course not, but you need to let her do this on her own.”
“I tried that, and you see how well that’s worked out so far.”
“It’s not your battle. There are treatment programs available. I can make some calls today.”
“Fucking hell.” Edith will find that the ultimate betrayal, but what choice has she giving me? She’s taken my pills, destroyed the mirror, and cut her hand.
“Jack, you remember that Halloween party we went to as undergrads?”
“Don’t make this about some unresolved issues or our breakup.”
“I’m not. We decided to go in matching costumes and you picked them out. You decided we would dress as a hot school girl and the nerdy professor.”
I lean over, resting my head in my hands, somewhat embarrassed. Fleur was always good at emasculating me when she felt like it. “You’ve made your point.”
“No, I haven’t. Let me finish. Do you remember what happened that night?”
“We drank a lot.” The residual hangover still haunts me when I see pumpkin-flavored vodka and tequila.
“The tequila did a number on us, as I recall, then we were intimate.”
“I didn’t come here to reminisce.”
She brushes me off. “Let me finish. Even back then, you called me by her name.” I’m shocked. Fleur never told me this. “You said, ‘Edith, I want you so bad, even if it’s wrong…’” Her eyebrows rise as if to challenge me to discredit her statement.
“A month later, you broke up with me by taking the internship in London.”
“Because even then, I knew your mind and your heart were otherwise occupied, Jack. I know you never cheated on me, so I wondered if she had
been the one who got away. It’s okay. I get it.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m really sorry. That was wrong of me.”
“I didn’t say it to get an overdue apology. I’m telling you this to make a point. You care about her deeply, and that’s why you’re so invested. If you want to make this work, don’t smother her, but don’t make it easy for her, either.”
“Tough love is your suggestion?”
“Not quite, but what about an intervention? I’ll call a rehab facility if you want. I have connections to a good one in Cherry Hill. It’s a residential, minimum stay of two weeks. I assume she doesn’t need to detox?”
“I don’t think so.” I take a deep breath. “Yeah, make the call.”
After thanking her, I leave Fleur’s office, more conflicted then before. However, I know Edith needs this, so I’m not going to give her a choice. I won’t make her testify, but she will get treatment to make sure she doesn’t hurt herself again, making her face some of the demons that have come between us. I just hope I don’t lose her in the process.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Edith
Jack has been distant since our trip to Miami and my drinking binge to seduce my way back into his pants. Where once I had been the distant one, confused and hurting, I now knew what the receiving end felt like…and it was pretty shitty. Shelby had been exasperated and told me I needed to grow the hell up. I’ve been embarrassed since my drunk ass puked all over the beach house, ruining our trip. Aiden was still my rock, but his quiet disappointment cut me to the core. I hurt my friends, wallowing in my pain, and Jack is still trying to get me to come back from the dark side.
They are right.
I need to power through this, put on my big girl pants. I just don’t know how. I feel worthless, common, mundane, mumbling as much as I sit on the front step of the house, watching the scant few birds eat from the feeder on the lawn.
“Never something as mundane as normal, baby. You are incredible.” Jack pulls me from the steps of our home, dragging me towards the driveway. We bypass my red Prius and head for Jack’s blue BMW.
“Jack, where are we going?” He hauls me along, buckling me into his car.
“For a ride. I need to think, and you can’t be alone right now.” Jack gets into the car and backs out of the driveway, heading for the highway. Of course I can’t be left alone. The last time I was, I consumed enough alcohol and migraine pills to poison myself into oblivion. Isn’t that what addicts do? His words hurt, but it is a truth I can’t deny. I have a problem, and I know exactly from where that problem stems.
“Tell me where we’re going,” I whine, looking out the window and swallowing the lump in my throat when he maneuvers the car onto the turnpike, heading south. Jack briefly glances over at me, then looks back at the road. As we pass the first exit, a dread begins to loom over me like a thick, dark cloud. “Stop the car, Jack.” At first, I wasn’t sure he heard me say it, but I knew he did. “Stop the fucking car.” My whisper chokes me, saliva pooling and threatening to drown me. I have a strong urge to vomit, but I know all that would come up are dry heaves of anxiety.
“When was the last time you saw them?” Jack continues driving, placing his hand on my knee, gently squeezing.
“The morning of my high school graduation. I walked out the door of that shitty little trailer, seeing them both passed out drunk on opposite ends of the couch. I can still smell the sour air of piss and vodka. Is that what you wanted to hear?” My anger is simmering like a slow, steamy volcano.
“Baby… No, of course it isn’t.”
I push Jack’s hand away from me, the pain being the only rational thing I can feel at the moment.
“I put my torn up bag and a box of my things in my shit of a car and, after I collected my diploma, I drove straight to New Brunswick.” I couldn’t look at him. Had it been hard? Of course. It was also incredibly lonely until I met Shelby and Aiden. These were things I hadn’t even shared with them. Everyone assumed I just showed up for freshman orientation from South shithole Camden, New Jersey, with a silver spoon in my mouth like everyone else.
“Where did you live?” The churning of my stomach rolls like waves crashing on rocks. Chaotically painful.
“In my car, in a shelter, in the park… I fucking lived wherever I didn’t have to pay a dime for it because I was working so hard to maintain the façade that first day of classes. I left this life behind. Why the hell are we driving back to it?” Tears blind me to the passing green exit sign as we get closer and closer to the door of my past I’d kept firmly under lock and key for the last several years.
“We’re driving back to it so we can put it to rest, Edith.” Jack is silent the rest of the way there and it feels like an uncomfortable chasm I don’t know how to breach.
The trip down the turnpike is surprisingly and disappointingly void of traffic. All too soon, he pulls the car up to my old development…I mean, trailer park. Long metal boxes sit on each of the streets. The one at the end of Sheffield Lane, number 104, is the one I grew up in. It’s a faded white trailer, a horizontal tan stripe cutting through the middle. The cement steps are still cracked, precariously signaling the entryway to my childhood home.
Jack’s hand slips over mine and I realize I am methodically rubbing my left knee. I look down and watch Jack finger the black leggings I am wearing right over the small scar that sits on the edge of my knee.
“I always wondered where you’d gotten that scar on your leg.” Jack gently squeezes my hand, bringing it to his lips to kiss my fingertips.
“Well, now you know,” I mutter softly, extricating my hand from his, folding my arms over my chest. I’m not cold, but yet I am. It makes no sense, yet it perfectly makes sense. I hate the jumble of emotions flowing through me right now.
“Shall we?” Jack opens his door and I patiently wait for him to come around to my side. He helps me out and we stand, staring at the trailer.
“Well, you are insisting, so let’s get this intervention over with,” I grumble.
Jack tucks a loose lock of hair behind my ear and nudges me forward. I walk up the steps with no railing to the screen door, the bottom still ripped. I stop, caught in a memory. I turn around to look at Jack, but decide to keep this one to myself. With my luck, Jack would end up stopping at the nearest pet store to purchase two of whatever he thought I might need.
We had a cat once. This was after my dad eventually got rid of the dogs. My mother found his litter near the docks and he was the sole survivor. He was a tough little beast I could identify with, and she had given him to me to care for. I guess this was my first attempt after the dog bit me to socialize properly. His name was Leafy, a peculiar brown tabby with a torn ear that preferred the outdoors to my parents’ loud arguments. I couldn’t say I blamed the cat. One evening in particular, I couldn’t open the door quickly enough. Leafy tore open the screen and squeezed his skinny body out the door. He never did come back. When a pet leaves you, it’s a cruel sort of abandonment. I thought animals loved unconditionally, but not Leafy. That little shit probably made himself a home at a nearby horse barn south of the city, living out the rest of his days increasing the feral cat population and eating plentiful mice. After that, I couldn’t bear the thought of having pets. In terms of my tolerance for abuse, I felt like that damn cat was the last straw.
Jack clears his throat. Standing here is prolonging the inevitable. “I’m going. I’m going.” I knock on the door and take a deep breath because when the door opens and I step inside, I know I won’t be breathing clean air for a while.
The door cracks open and a head with greying hair peeks out. “What do you want? The mister ain’t here right now.”
The woman is hunched over, so I can’t rightly say I know it’s her. It has been a good four years since I’ve seen her. “Mom?”
“Edith? Edie, baby? Well, look at you. All grown up, and with a man, too.” Mom clucks her tongue, assessing us both. I watch her lick her lips, cracked pink wi
th cheap lipstick, as she looks Jack over.
“Mrs. Willows, I’m Jack, Edith’s boyfriend.”
“Ah, now, don’t be all fancy. Me and Mr. Willow’s ain’t never got married. No time for that nonsense. Come on in.” Mom opens the door and I wince at her admission. I never told Jack that fact. Most people just assume they are married.
“How’s Dad?” I hesitate to ask.
“He’s out. Got work painting today so he’ll be catching a ride back with Landon…unless the bastard drinks it all watching a game tonight.” Nodding, I follow her to the ugliest Formica table ever produced. Sitting in the corner, it’s chipped white and yellow, those silver-gold sparkles inlaid in the top. I’d forgotten what it looked like. While my parents were out hitting the bars, I spent many hours doing my homework at this table…provided the electricity was still running. Sometimes they forgot to pay the bill. Imagine that.