Margaret Sexton: A Kind of Freedom

“What was I going to say, Jackie?” He was getting worked up again. “That I couldn’t handle it? That I didn’t know if I had the strength? I spent all that time working with those guys trying to feel like I was as good, and what was I gonna do? Admit that they had me whooped?”

She didn’t say anything to that. She understood him, and she felt for him even, but it was almost as though it didn’t matter.

“Michael’s tried cocaine, you know,” he went on. “He had some on him tonight, but he never fell into it, and what does that say about me? That I couldn’t resist? What could I say that wouldn’t make me look weak?”

You could have said you’re human, Terry , she wanted to say, but she kept quiet. She didn’t see the use in going on. He tried to cuddle her and she refused him. Then he turned from her fast to face the wall as if she had been the one to break her word. A part of her wanted to console him, but she didn’t know the answer to the question. What did it say about him that he didn’t know whether he could trust himself? What did it say about her that she was hanging on to a man who was barely upright himself? She found no relief in the fact that he’d gone in and fared well this time. Instead it made her more wary, as if the fact that the temptation still lived inside him necessitated its coming out, its unfurling into something hard and mobile, something that would carry him away.

Terry woke up the next morning even more apologetic than the night before. He swore it all off, drinking, that group of friends, and Jackie let on that she believed him. They settled back into their routine, but she stopped being able to sleep altogether. They’d moved T.C. back to his bassinet, and sometimes she’d walk over to him, stare at him with tears in her eyes. She didn’t know why she felt so certain tragedy lurked in his future. Everything was fine now, and she tried to remind herself of that. She’d grip the edge of the bassinet and wipe her eyes, but the early grief wouldn’t budge.

She’d wake up late and frazzled and barely make it to school before group playtime was over. One morning during circle time she realized she’d left the assessments she’d need for the parent-teacher conferences in her kitchen. She told Mama to feed T.C. a bottle and she hustled back home during her lunch hour. She remembered where the pages were; she’d been reviewing them as her pasta boiled and when it was done, she’d stacked them in a pile on the counter. She had only an hour before her kids woke up, so she’d run into her apartment, grab them, and be on her way. She was rushing so hard she didn’t notice the front door to her place was unlocked, and she wouldn’t have noticed that the television was on either if she hadn’t seen Terry sitting directly in front of it. His white jacket with his name tag, lewis, pharmacist inscribed on it, lay crumpled on the carpet beneath him.

He started talking as though he’d been expecting her.

“I lost my job,” he said, but his words came out fast and frenetic, as if he were telling a good joke and if she just listened a little while longer, he would get to the punch line.

“What?” The word came out flat though. Jackie wasn’t as angry as she was resigned, as though the doubt she had been warding off had won the final battle and could now take residence in her heart.

“They have a pool of company cars. On the days I didn’t drop you at work, I’d borrow them, take them for a spin during lunch, just to get out of the office more than anything. I wasn’t used to sitting in a cubicle all day. I had more interactions with the patients at the VA. That made it more fulfilling. This was just clocking in more than anything, and I’m not complaining, it felt good to hand you a check every two weeks, it felt… normal, but also not normal at the same time.”

“So, what?” Jackie asked. She sat down across from him and sighed. “They found out you were taking their property?”

He shook his head, sighed. “No, not at first. I’d take the car out to Bourbon Street, park if I could. I’d even see some people I used to score with. I didn’t speak or anything like that. I didn’t even get out of my car. I felt stronger somehow for being able to stay inside it. I felt like I was locking in my sobriety, if you will, and it helped me to face the rest of the day. I’d get so caught up in being there, in the rush of knowing I could be there without using, I’d lose track of time, get back to the office ten, twenty minutes late.”

“So, what, they got rid of you for being a few minutes late, Terry?” Jackie asked as if she was bored by the story, and in a way she was. She already knew the ending.

“Nah.” He waved her question away. “Nah. It wasn’t that. Most times they didn’t even notice.”

“Then what happened, Terry?”

He shook his head.

She heard her voice rising. “Goddamnit, Terry, what happened?”

“I took the car again a few days ago. It was after we had that argument, and I was on edge. I’d been at the bar the night before and you were right, I never should have gone there, it was like it unlocked something in me, woke a part of me up that I would have sworn was dead.”

Jackie couldn’t bear to hear the rest. She sat there, she listened to half the words he said, smatterings of phrases, like my friend from the VA, not Michael, but the one I was closest to , and I didn’t expect to see him on Bourbon Street, that’s not where he used to go, and I was so surprised I just got out of the car. I didn’t even lock it.

She sat forward, but she didn’t let it seep inside her. Instead she thought about the time, that she had ten minutes before she’d need to leave to make it back to the nursery, that she still didn’t know how she was going to tell the Bradley mother that she might want to have her son tested for speech delay.

“When I caught up with him, he was so happy to see me, he just passed me a pipe. I didn’t even have a chance to say hello, how are you , and it was in my hand. I hadn’t held one in months, but it all came rushing back, that buzzing in my ears that I’d get right after a hit, that sense of being outside myself in the best way possible; even the paranoia, I could sense it would come too, but I wasn’t afraid.

Jackie stood. “I’ve heard enough of this bullshit.”

But he followed her, gripped her wrist. “Let me finish, Jackie. I didn’t do it. I held it, I put it up to my lips, I closed my eyes, and I imagined how good it would feel to just let go, not even for the high itself, but so I could stop fearing another relapse. I was so close to just walking back out to the other side.”

“You expect me to believe you didn’t smoke it?” She was shaking her head, trying to reach the door, but he caught her, held her in place.

“I didn’t, Jackie, I swear I didn’t, I turned around, and I headed back for the car. But.”

“But what, Terry? But what?” she repeated.

“But it wasn’t there. I thought maybe I had forgotten where I parked exactly and I retraced my steps for an hour, but it wasn’t there. Finally I called the police, waited for them to arrive and take a statement, then I took the bus back to the office. When I didn’t show up with the car, I had to hand them the police report. They saw where I’d been, knew I didn’t have any business in the French Quarter, and fired me on the spot. I got a call just now when I got home. The car is back, no damage to it either, but they don’t care. They can’t trust me anymore, they say. It wasn’t a good fit.”

They were still standing in the hallway now, her back arched and pressed against him, his hands around her chest. She stood up, wiggled him off of her, sat down again. She figured she had five more minutes. She would get back to those babies on time. After everything he’d taken from her, he wouldn’t take that. He walked to the sofa opposite her and sat too. Then he folded his hands on his lap, bent his head into them and began to weep. She watched him for a while before she got up, then she walked over and rubbed his back with the palm of her hand, up and down, up and down, the way she’d seen her mother rub her father’s so many times over the years. Mama had told her once that Daddy had wanted to be a doctor like Jackie’s grandfather, that he never got over the fact that he didn’t make it happen. No matter how much success your father grabs, he’ll never feel like a man, not all the way, she had said. And that was the way Jackie felt about Terry now, as if the blank look in his eye at this moment preceded this firing, as if he’d lost a part of himself when he started those drugs and it wasn’t a part he could simply restore again.