Things We Didn't Say - By Kristina Riggle Page 0,11
drinking. Michael doesn’t often drink, himself. I don’t go to parties, or restaurants. My old life feels like a dead skin I’ve shed along with the old boozy friends, and the small company where we all worked.
But there are times . . . when my palms start to itch and my heart feels tight and pinched. I can taste the velvety bite of it, and I can feel the uncoiling of my tension and hear my own carefree laughter, and I know that the liquor store is just blocks away and no one will be home for hours yet.
Tony’s always telling me, “One drink is too many and a hundred’s not enough.”
I don’t think it’s like that for me. I bet I could have one, maybe even two. But then I think of all the energy I’d expend wondering, Should I have this one? Is this one too many? But I’m feeling fine and not driving, but maybe I shouldn’t . . . Or the next day, Did I have too many last night? And then guilt would crash over me, I know it would. It was simpler, cleaner, simply to break off that piece of my life and set it adrift.
Then I met Michael, and he was so glad I didn’t drink that I treasured up his gladness and decided that was worth more than any drop of Jack ever could be.
These days, though, Michael hasn’t seemed glad about much of anything.
I try breathing from my gut. This attempt at breathing simply reminds me what I’m trying to avoid.
I seize my purse with its cigarettes and both the cordless house phone and my cell, and brave the snap of the November air on the back patio.
The first puff makes my head feel swimmy, and my heart slows down almost immediately.
Hurrah for self-medicating.
Michael’s disapproving stare rises up in my memory. If he only knew what I’ve already given up. But he can’t know, because he wouldn’t love a woman like that. Never again, he said. But that “never again” speech came late, after I already loved him. Otherwise I might have saved us both the eventual agony.
It’s like scratching at a scab to think of this now, our first meeting. But I’m too weary to keep pushing it out of my head. Here at the end, I can’t help but think of the beginning.
I was sick that day. Feverish, pale, shaky. My head throbbed, and my sinuses were so backed up I thought I might suffocate in my own skull.
I had no friends anymore, because they were all drinkers and I was clinging to the fragile threads of a different life. So I dragged myself to the urgent care clinic alone. I actually perked up a bit in the cold, it being January, then. Nearly two years ago.
At the clinic, I saw a little girl curled up on her daddy’s lap, her arm clutching a stuffed cat gone threadbare at its paws and belly. Her hair hung limp and tangled, and she wore Hannah Montana pajamas and bedroom slippers. She had round glasses with pink frames. She was asking, moaning, really: “Daddy? How long?”
Her father was rubbing circles on her back. “Soon, baby. As soon as they can see us.”
“I don’t want to blow up again,” she moaned into his shoulder.
A wincing expression flashed on his face, something with shades of both pain and amusement. “I hope you won’t throw up again, honey. But if it’s going to happen, you tell me and we’ll get you to the bathroom.”
Her dad noticed me looking at her. He met my eyes and tightened his jaw. It was all there, right on his face. I hate that I can’t fix it.
She was too old for peekaboo. I got out my phone, a fancy phone in those days before I completed my belt-tightening. I found a funny video of a monkey scratching his butt, sniffing his own finger, and falling off a tree branch.
I glanced at him, eyebrows up. Do you mind?
He shrugged.
I said to her, “Hey. Wanna see something funny?”
She raised her head a fraction of an inch off his shoulder. I leaned across the aisle separating us and showed her the short video. She smiled. I sat back, and she said, “Can I see it again?”
I sat on the chair next to them and found every G-rated silly video I could.
When they called “Jewel Turner,” her father stood up and scooped her gently onto his shoulder. I stood up as if I