Lisa Gardner - Touch & Go

The promise of pleasure.

The taste of my pain.

I fell to my knees on the hard tile, and let the pills bury me.

I JERKED AWAKE, my eyes momentarily blinded by the overhead lights. I blinked, feeling my heart race in my chest. Justin was standing in front of the cell door. I must have made a noise for he was staring at me.

“You okay?” he asked.

Funny question coming from a man whose face looked like a badly beaten side of beef with one eye still completely swollen shut.

“Ashlyn?” I asked.

“Asleep, top bunk.”

I gave him a look, and Justin double-checked. He nodded, confirming Ashlyn was definitely sleeping. Seemed like lately our daughter had become very good at faking it.

I got up, crossed to the stainless steel sink and attempted to get a sip of water.

“Why is the water pressure so lousy?” I asked, if only to break the silence.

“Big building, demanding many miles of pipes to bring the water from there to here. Installing a more efficient system would cost more money, except, for what?” Justin shrugged. “Inmates got nothing better to do than wait.”

He crossed to me, rubbing the back of my neck, like he used to do once upon a time.

“I dreamed of a shower,” I murmured. “A long hot shower with unlimited soap.”

He smiled. “I smell that bad?”

“No worse than me.”

“It’ll be over soon, Libby. This time, tomorrow, you can be showering all you like.”

I wanted to believe him. Could use the reassurance. And yet…

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” I asked. “You know, conserving your strength?”

“Tried. Can’t get used to the narrow bunk. Or maybe it’s the tight walls.”

“You’re not cut out for hard time?”

“Nope. I just build ’em. Me, I’m all about wide-open spaces.”

He was. Cold, rainy, snowy, miserable, it never mattered to Justin. He was always happiest outdoors.

“Has Ashlyn been sleeping?” I asked.

“Like a baby,” he said, then, a second later, the irony of the comment hit him, and he grimaced, stepping back.

I looked away. If it was hard for a mother to realize that her teenage daughter was sexually active, it had to be excruciating for a father. Especially for Justin, who’d placed her in an ivory tower from her first moment of birth. Daddy’s little princess. His perfect girl.

I wondered which was worse, his horror or his hurt.

“Did you know?” he asked now, voice hushed. “I mean, even suspect?”

I shook my head.

“She hasn’t mentioned a boy’s name? Been spending more time out, buying new clothes… I don’t know, doing what teenage girls do when being stupid about a boy?”

“What are you going to do, Justin? Load a shotgun?”

“Maybe!”

“I didn’t know.”

“But—”

“Did you?” I kept my voice even. “You’re her father. Did you suspect anything?”

He scowled, shifted uncomfortably. “Of course not. But I’m the dad. Fathers… We don’t get these things. We can’t look at our daughters that way.”

“What’s the name of her best friend?”

“Linda.”

“Lindsay.”

“Lindsay! I was close.”

“Are you?” I shrugged. “Ashlyn’s fifteen years old. According to her, she’s spent the past six months spying on us, given that we’ve spent the past six months no longer speaking to her. She’s lonely, she’s vulnerable and we…we checked out on her. And by we, I mean we , Justin. You’re her parent, too.”

He didn’t like that assessment, his displeasure showing in the tightening of his jaw. But he didn’t immediately refute the argument. Instead, being Justin, he went on the offensive.

“When did you start popping pills?”

I kept my gaze as level as his own. “When did you first cheat on me?”

“It’s not the same. You’re the primary caretaker and you know it. Meaning you’ve spent the past six months impaired on the job.”

“Versus spending your lunch breaks on booty calls? Do you really want to have a competition about which of us sinned worse?”

“You confronted me, Libby. You demanded an explanation—”

“I caught you once. Clearly there’ve been others—”

“I feel I have the right to know. Do you have a dealer? Are you inviting criminals into our home? Maybe one of them took an interest in Ashlyn. Maybe, one of them knows Mick or Z or Radar.”

My mouth hung open. I could feel my temper rise. My first instinct was to scream no, how ridiculous of him. I got my drugs the honorable way—by lying to any medical professional who carried a prescription pad. Instead, I heard myself say, “AIDS, herpes, syphilis, gonorrhea. Did you invite them into our home? Blackmail, drama, extortion. Maybe, one of your lovers knows Mick or Z or Radar.”

“Libby—”

“Justin! It’s not right. You betrayed my trust. And not once. But multiple times. And somehow, that’s okay? You said you were sorry, so now I’m supposed to just move on? I don’t know how. I loved you, Justin. You weren’t only my husband, you were my whole family. Except, my father couldn’t wear a helmet and my mother couldn’t stop smoking and you, you can’t keep it in your pants. They failed, then you failed and I don’t know how to rebuild this time. So, yes, I started taking pills. Because while you might be sorry, I still… hurt .”

Justin’s battered face, set in stone: “So it’s my fault? You’re an addict, and it’s my fault.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Do you think it’s your fault I slept with that girl?”

I couldn’t take it. My gaze slid down. I wanted out. Out of this conversation, out of this damn cell. Out of this life, really, which explained the gratuitous use of painkillers.

“Do you think it’s your fault I cheated?” Justin continued relentlessly. “That if you just looked different or behaved different, or maybe were more adventurous in bed, I never would’ve strayed?”

I covered my ears with my hands. “Please stop.”

“I love you, Libby. I never loved her.”

“But you gave yourself to her. You took a piece of yourself away from me, and gave it to her instead.”

“Do you want to know why?”

“No.” Yes.

“Because she looked at me the way you used to. I went down to make a damn plane reservation and she… The way she looked at me… I felt important. I felt the way I used to feel when we first met and all I had to do was show up on your doorstep and you would…you would light up. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you smile like that. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt…like you saw me that way.”

“So it is my fault you cheated.”

“No more than it’s my fault that you abuse painkillers.”

“I don’t even understand this anymore!”

Justin shrugged. He no longer appeared implacable, just tired. “Of course not. We’re married, Libby. We’ve spent eighteen years with our lives all tangled together. To say I don’t affect you, or your actions don’t affect me… How can that make any sense? A marriage is greater than the sum of its parts. At a certain point, that’s what we forgot; we stopped doing the math, tending the whole. We became selfish. A pretty girl smiled and I behaved selfishly. And you were hurt, in need of a quick pick-me-up, so you behaved selfishly, too. We forgot each other. Which is what selfish people tend to do.”

“You’ll cheat again,” I whispered. “It’s what cheaters do.”

“And you’ll find a new source of painkillers,” he said, just as quietly. “That’s what drug addicts do.”

I hung my head, feeling the shame that was six months overdue. I had been right before; it was easier to hate my husband. To avoid the obvious, such as that eighteen years did take its toll and both of us had stopped making the time for our marriage. Until one day…