Margaret Sexton - A Kind of Freedom

Sybil smiled that smug smile again, then headed for the door. A few minutes later Jackie heard her sister’s BMW engine start, but it was as if Sybil were still there. Her doubt had rubbed off on Jackie, and she stood in the hallway for a while after the door closed, feeling dashed. It was only after a few minutes that she remembered she should congratulate her husband.

She smiled the way she would before he’d come back and she needed to convince the world she was handling his absence okay. She spoke in staccato, her volume rising and falling in big loops.

“I’m so proud of you,” she said, and she supposed she was, or she would have been if her sister hadn’t come over and transplanted her mind into Jackie’s, if Jackie had time to just sit with the news and process it according to her own values and dreams.

“You don’t seem excited,” Terry said over dinner. “What is it?”

Jackie didn’t know how to respond, so she focused on her plate, fumbled with the napkin in her lap. She had added too much salt to the greens, but the chicken was tender and the rice wasn’t overcooked.

“What is it?” he repeated. “I know it’s not what we’re used to, but the pay is all right, it’s something, and it’ll get me started. My sponsor says it’s important for me to have a routine. It’ll help set me back where I was before all this.” He waved his hand in a broad swoop, seeming to indicate the apartment, the neighborhood beyond it.

Hearing him express so much pride over a job he wouldn’t have considered a year earlier filled Jackie with a guilt that she didn’t think she’d be able to discard, it wrapped so thoroughly around her insides. Still she tried.

“No, baby,” she said, grabbing his hand, “it’s not you, it’s me; well, it’s my goddamn sister.” She heard her voice stretch, rise. “I didn’t invite her over here, you know; she just came. She just let herself in, she just took over like always, and now — well, we’d decided we’d wait to tell my family, that it would just add another layer of pressure, a group of people waiting on you to fail.”

“I don’t think they’re waiting on me to fail,” Terry said softly.

Jackie didn’t respond.

“I don’t think that,” he repeated. “I think they want me to do well, I think they want us to do well, but they feel like they can’t trust me, understandably so.” He paused. “Sometimes I think I can’t trust myself.” He dropped her hand.

“She didn’t seem upset though,” Jackie went on, not noticing Terry had turned away from her. “Maybe she won’t even mention it to my parents.” Jackie had barely got the thought out before she realized how ludicrous it sounded. Sybil had told on her for smoking a cigarette outside the mall when she was fourteen. She had told on her for scamming the liquor store into delivering beer by ordering it alongside her pizza. She had told on her when she found a condom wrapper in her wastebasket when she was seventeen. So there was no way Sybil was keeping this to herself. “Maybe my parents won’t care.”

“Goddamn it, Jackie,” Terry shouted. He threw his napkin against the table with such force Jackie expected it to make a sound, but it just fell flat. “You’re not fourteen years old anymore, girl. It doesn’t matter what they think; this is about us.”

She was startled by his outburst, but it leveled her, brought her back to where she was sitting, the man she was sitting beside.

She shook her head. She knew he was right, but it wouldn’t have occurred to her if he hadn’t mentioned it. She had always been young-minded, leaned too hard on her family’s opinion of her, but there was more to it now. She had a reason to rely on them, to care what they thought. For the last few months, they’d been all that she had.

“What do you want me to say?” she belted out. “I have to think about what they want, what they care about, because if this doesn’t go well, they’re all I have to depend on.” She paused. She wondered if she should have let him into her worry, if it would infect him, send him back on those streets. She kept going. “I’m afraid, Terry. I’m terrified. I’m trying to stay in the moment, but I told myself I’d never let you in again, and here I am, looking forward to you coming home, letting the baby warm up to you.” She started crying when she thought about her son. “I didn’t think it would be this easy to fall back into where we were.”

“I didn’t think so either,” he said. He reached for her hand again. “I’m scared too,” he added. “I’m scared too.”

The next morning Jackie woke up with a new resolve. Nothing had happened in the night. She and Terry hadn’t said much after their conversation at dinner, just drifted off into sleep at different times in front of MacGyver . But she woke up as if they’d had a healing discussion, as if she’d been shown a reel from their future, a future she’d designed with her decision to accept him, and in it they were impenetrable to threat.

“I’m so sorry about yesterday,” she said as she dressed.

“Don’t be sorry.” He was still waking up and he grunted more than spoke. “I get it. I’m the one who should be sorry.”

“No, really, listen.” She hobbled over to him, her legs only halfway inside her pantyhose, hot rollers clipped in her hair. “I want to celebrate you. You deserve to be celebrated. Two months without—” she couldn’t even say the word crack, she didn’t think she would need to say it again. “That’s something. I don’t know how hard it is, but I can imagine, and then you got this new job too.”

She looked for him to smile but there was nothing. He seemed to still be waking up.

“Will you be home tonight?” she asked.

“Nowhere else I’d be.”

“Okay, I’m going to come up with a plan at work then, and I’ll give you a call.” She said it as if it were a question.

He propped himself up on his elbows, seeming more engaged now, trying to pull her back to bed. They still hadn’t had sex, and she wanted to, now more than ever, but she was running late.

“Tonight,” she said, kissing his forehead. “I promise, tonight.”

When she got to work, her excitement diminished only a little at the thought that her parents might have spoken to Sybil. She told herself she didn’t care if they did, and she believed it. She didn’t have anything to be ashamed of; she was taking a chance on her family. Anyway, when she’d said those vows, she had meant them. In sickness and in health, and wasn’t this a form of sickness? There were people like Sybil who believed his behavior was willful, but she’d seen him battle those cravings in the beginning. Sometimes it was all he could do to sit on his hands to keep them from shaking. She’d seen him stand up, head to the door, place his hand on the knob dozens of times, then force himself back to the sofa before finally acquiescing and slamming the door behind him. And now he had come so far.

Jackie’s mama spoke in a normal bouncy voice, all, “Hey, baby, sleep okay? You look rested. How do you feel?”

Jackie hesitated before responding, but her mama just picked up her slack, answered her own questions, filled her in on the babies who were sick, and the mamas who’d be late.

“That Bradley boy has wet himself five times today. Five times and it’s barely nine. I told his mama he’s not ready but she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get it. She said her daughter was potty trained at three. I said boys are different than girls and she accused me of being sexist.” She shook her head. “These modern parents, I’ll never understand them. And I don’t want to,” she added.

Jackie shook her head as if to say me neither . She set her purse in her cubby, looked through her sign-in sheet — all her kids had already arrived. They were still scattered throughout the room, a handful at the Play-Doh table, some at the art station, and a couple outside on the trampoline. For a moment she just watched them, suspended from the day’s requirements, from the previous night’s tension. Terry was satisfied; her mother still approved of her choices; and more than that, Jackie believed in her own decision. Normally she couldn’t order a meal without questioning herself. Even deciding which movie to watch pained her; suddenly each future minute would feel too worthy to undermine with an imperfect choice. But now she was at peace; something close to surrender settled inside her, more fulfilling than surrender because she was certain of the outcome.