Rescue - By Anita Shreve Page 0,43
I could ever put our money than to see you and your family have an easier time of it.”
“Thanks for offering, but it’s something I have to think about.”
“You’re a fucking lush,” Webster said to Sheila in the bedroom while Rowan was watching television in the living room. He tried to keep his voice down, but there was too much anger behind it. “At your daughter’s birthday? Are you shitting me? Did you see the way the children clung to their parents when you got close to them? My God, Sheila, can you imagine what they think?”
“I knew it,” she said, looking smug. She took a pack of cigarettes from the bedside drawer and lit one. “You care more about what the neighbors think than about what’s happening to me.”
“I know what’s happening to you. All I have to do is look at you.”
She tucked her hair behind her ears and tipped her chin up, as if she didn’t care. “What are you going to punish me with?” she asked. “No more birthdays? That’s super. Then Rowan gets punished, too.”
“She’s already being punished,” Webster argued.
“Was she embarrassed by her mommy today?”
“You bet she was. She knows when you’re drinking. She pulls away from you. I shudder to think what’s going on when I’m not here.”
“You ‘shudder to think.’ Jesus, Webster, when did you turn into such an asshole?”
“I think you should go into a rehab program.”
“Who made you king?” she asked, standing. “And not that AA shit again. The meetings make me sad. I have nothing in common with those people. Besides, you exaggerate my drinking, like you exaggerate everything. Does Rowan look hungry or unhappy or dirty to you? You think I don’t love her as much as you do?”
“I think you love Rowan as much as I do. You just love drinking more.”
“I don’t.”
“Sheila, stop. Just stop.”
The defeat in his voice made her bow her head.
“Can’t we just get through the night?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said. “ ‘One day at a time,’ right?”
They had one good month followed by a bad month. Then they had three good weeks followed by a horrific week. During the bad weeks, Webster began repeating a single phrase over and over, like a tune he couldn’t get out of his head: My family needs to be rescued. It galled him that he could prevent heart attacks, minimize injuries, and reverse overdoses when he couldn’t suture the simple lacerations in his home life.
Just opening the door after work made Webster anxious. He might find Rowan, tired and sullen, on the sofa watching TV, with Sheila asleep in the bedroom. Webster had to fix it. Once he found Sheila cooking with a half-empty bottle of wine beside the stove. “One for the pot, one for the cook,” she said, smiling, as if she’d forgotten all that had gone before.
“Where’s Rowan?” he asked in a panic.
“I sent her outside. She’s making a snowman.”
Webster ran down the stairs. He had to fix it.
Webster made Sheila promise she would never drink and drive. Twice she forgot to pick Rowan up, and the owner of the day-care center had to call Webster at work, the message put through to his radio. Go get your daughter.
Webster searched the house, inside and out, again and again. One morning, he found a white plastic bag in the ice-cream shop’s trash that contained several dozen airplane-sized bottles of vodka and whiskey. He closed his eyes. To have gotten all those bottles would have required Sheila to make any number of stops at different liquor stores so as not to draw attention to herself. He wondered if Rowan had been along on those trips.
Webster did everything he knew how to do, followed every procedure in the book, but still he was afraid that his patient—their marriage—would flatline.
One night in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, Webster arrived home from work and saw that Rowan was asleep in the crib they’d tucked under an eave. A Christmas tree took up all the remaining space. They’d had a good Christmas together, Webster taking pleasure in watching his daughter’s face when she woke to the sight of presents. Webster’s only difficulty had been finding a present for Sheila. In the beginning, all he wanted to do was give her presents. Now he felt worn out, his imagination dulled. Anything romantic or pretty felt false. He settled on a Crock-Pot, which Sheila had asked for. The present depressed Webster.
They needed a bigger apartment, and they couldn’t