The Achilles Heel (20 page)

“Okay, its two-thirty, and I’m done. Who’s coming with me?” Claire asked. Little mother
hen trying to round up the chicks and herd them inside for a respectable bedtime.

Perfect timing, Claire.
I could have kissed her.

ANNIE

T
he quiet house and thick fog of my hang-over made it difficult to remember if my friends
had arrived yesterday or if I had drank myself into a dream. The familiar caveman
walk to the bathroom to puke up an entire bottle of Pinot Noir‌—‌which I’m pretty
sure had permanently stained my insides purple‌—‌took me back to the mornings in Kansas
City after Jack’s funeral, when a hang-over was as routine as a morning cup of coffee.
I drank too much, too often, and justified my drunkenness with the pain of a tumultuous
summer. I needed to get a handle on it. With each body-wrenching convulsion that watered
my eyes and left me too short of breath to prepare for the next, I felt like Alice
tumbling down the rabbit hole. Crying wasn’t helping my situation, but like the wine
from last night, the tears kept coming.

The moment when your conscience supersedes any previously successful internal bargaining
methods used in talking yourself into a bad idea, you’re toast. All bad choices after
that ah-ha moment are made with malice, there’s just no way around it.

Sitting on the edge of the bed with my eyelids thumping and continuing to water, I
stripped off my sweaty and sticky clothes that reeked of my former self and threw
them in a pathetic clump in the corner. I was a master at self-criticism‌—‌almost
enjoyed it‌—‌but I was tired, not sleepy tired, just so goddamn tired of who I had
let myself become, and needed something substantial to mark the occasion of this reckoning.
I drew a cold water bath and forced myself into the tub. The icy water was physically
painful but sickly exhilarating on my skin, all the way into my bones, and it awakened
me on a spiritual level. There would never be another time in my life when cold water
didn’t instantly slap my mind and snap myself back to this bathroom, where I witnessed
my rebirth. I promised myself this was the start of a purge of toxicity from my life,
and the last of the leftover wine, begging to escape my stomach, was the first to
go.

Having emptied my insides into a lovely porcelain toilet, I dried off and dressed,
then went into the living room to see Leslie sprawled out in a lounge chair on the
patio, smoking.

“Oh, my God! Honey, are you okay?” she gasped, wide-eyed at my jaundiced skin and
overall frightful appearance.

“Ugh,” was all I could muster as I fell into my own chair beside her.

“The girls took a ferry into St. Thomas to shop for the day; they should be back around
four,” she told me. “They didn’t want to go without you, but I gave them the go ahead
and hope that’s all right.”

“Lord, thank you for doing that. Shopping sounds like the threshold of hell right
now. Why didn’t you go?” I asked in whisper.

“Carl would flip his shit if I spent the day blowing money, and they were excited
to go to the Nicole Miller store. Even if I could spend six hundred dollars on a dress,
I wouldn’t have anywhere to hide it when I got home, so it’s less heartbreaking not
to know what I’m missing. Besides, the quiet is priceless, and I wanted to make sure
you were okay,” she said. “So are you okay?”

“It’s just a hang-over. I’ll be fine by the time they get back,” I said, keeping my
epiphany to myself, not wanting to mark the occasion with anyone else.

“I wasn’t talking about your hang-over. Smoke?” she offered.

“Sure.” I accepted, pulling a Camel out of her pack. Smoking was on the purge list,
but one thing at a time. “Can we please not talk about me? I’m sick of thinking about
myself. Let’s talk about you,” I begged.

“We can talk about me, but only if you agree to switch the subject back to you when
we’re done,” she pestered.

“Man, you’re tough.” I sighed, cracking a smile.

“Yes, I am. My clients in group call me the Dragon Lady. It’s so frustrating to work
with addicts. Shifting through the bullshit to move past the addiction and uncovering
the real reason they started using in the first place. It usually takes months before
a breakthrough, but sometimes the stories can be inappropriately amusing. I have a
new client‌—‌a battered woman‌—‌who takes revenge on her husband at dinnertime,” she
said with an inept giggle.

“What do you mean?” I asked, my head beginning to pound again.

“She has put everything‌—‌and I mean
everything-
disgusting and harmful to the body into his dinners. Cleaning products, potting soil,
shaved metal; you name it and she’s sprinkled some in. She once told me, after her
husband spent the day beating her severely, she doused his drinks with Ipecac syrup
and watched him spend the weekend wriggling and thriving on the bathroom floor, but
she still accepted all the blame for instigating the beating. Her genius bought her
three full days free of beatings from that asshole, since he was too sick to barely
get out of bed,” Leslie bragged, airing a quiet sense of pride.

“God, that’s awful, and it also sounds like a lot of work. Why doesn’t she just leave?”
I asked.

“Annie, if I could figure that part out, beating a woman wouldn’t be considered a
syndrome anymore. Humans are creatures of routine, no matter how unthinkable that
routine is. A woman may leave her abuser an average of seven times before she leaves
for good. She just continues living the hell over and over, and when you throw in
years of degradation at the hands of the one you once loved, but don’t have the resources
or safe haven to make the break, you eventually just succumb to that routine. Let’s
take you for example. How devastating was it for you when Jack died and your routine
for the last decade ended? Did you have a hard time finding a new routine?” she asked.

“That’s different. Jack wasn’t beating me. Jack died,” I said.
Jack’s dead. Was it getting easier to say or was it my hang-over? Not sure; can’t
analyze that right now.

“It’s no different, Annie, not for these women. Leaving the life and the routine they’ve
been living is equivalent to a death. In some cases, an actual death, whether it’s
his or hers, is easier than leaving.”

We sat in silence, smoking and pondering the logic and ludicrousness of the subject.

After a time, I admitted, “Yes, Jack’s death turned me into the cliché of a tragedy.
It’s not just the sadness of losing the man I had pledged to love for the rest of
my life, but everything that defined my life was also about Jack. After ten years
of marriage, the lives of husband and wife are completely intertwined; separation
seems impossible. When I first came home from the funeral, it was comparable to the
feeling a first time mom has when bringing a newborn baby home from the hospital.
‘Now, what?’ was my only thought. Everything had changed for me mentally, but physically
the only thing different was Jack’s absence. Everywhere I looked and everything I
touched resembled a different time, taking me back to a place where I was married
and happy, but now living a completely different life, someone else’s life. For some
reason, I couldn’t remember who I was before he died, and had no idea who I was supposed
to be going into the future; but each day kept happening, the sun kept rising despite
my disgust for it, and like you said, a routine was born.”

“Believe me, we could spend weeks on the complexities of women scorned, but I just
wanted to get you talking,” she confessed. “Now, are we going to talk about your neighbor
or are we still pretending that nothing’s going on there?”

“Is this business or pleasure for you? Will I be getting a bill in the mail for your
psychoanalysis of my mental stability?” I asked with a crooked smile.

“Nope, no bill; especially since you’re dodging the question. As your friend, I say
go get ‘em; you only live once. Since you said his friends were a lot of fun, there’s
a good chance he isn’t a psychopath. I saw how you looked at him, and quite frankly,
it’s the only time I’ve seen life in your eyes since Jack died. You’re hiding, Annie,
probably a number of things I haven’t figured out yet. It’s okay if you aren’t ready
to talk, but no one can hide forever; even dead people can’t always keep their secrets.
Kess seems to be a gentleman, and God knows the world needs more of those, but I’ve
got to tell you, I feel like I’ve met him before. He just looks so familiar,” she
said.

She always nails me, even if she doesn’t know it at the time. I want so much to let
this volcano of information erupt from inside of me; spewing facts and feelings among
the people interested, like ash raining down on a village, but I’m just not ready.
I’m secretive, and I’m a liar. When did this happen? Why can’t I just let go? If I
actually thought Jack died in a freak car wreck, I might have played the grieving
widow role perfectly, but there’s so much shame attached to being the wife of a man
who took his own life, who chose death over me.

As tears brimmed my eyes, I wanted to run to my room and hide, but instead chose to
confide in my friend.

“Leslie, I do want your help,” I said, wiping the corners of my eyes. “I would love
it if you would just lie down with me. My head is throbbing, and my body desperately
needs sleep, but I don’t want to be alone. It sounds childish, but I just really need
someone right now.”

“Okay,” she mused with a motherly smile. “Let’s take a nap.”

I drifted off to sleep with drying tears crusting around my eyes and a full heart,
along with a promise of reform, which I intended to keep.

The girls returned from shopping and performed a fashion show of all the clothes they’d
bought. We took our time getting ready for a nice dinner out and maybe Kessler’s show
at the Soggy Bottom. Leslie and I shared my bathroom, and while primping, she gave
me an umbrella wink; letting me know, as far as she was concerned, I’m covered.

***

There was nothing particularly special about La Noche on the outside, but once we
entered through the one-hundred pound wooden door, we were hooked. The interior of
the restaurant felt like a luxurious Spanish adobe; not a right-angled wall in the
entire place. The cryptic décor coupled with chestnut furnishings enveloped us into
the darkness‌—‌the lighting, the wood, the tile, everything seemed to smolder. This
restaurant was a hidden little inland gem to which only the sexy people were privy.

“Who wants wine?” Claire asked.

“Count me out. I’m still shitting purple,” I grumbled, forcing a laugh.

“Nice, Annie. Can we just pretend to be fancy for one night?” Jenna begged.

“Sorry, love. Since you’re the professional chef, I think you should just order for
all of us,” I said.

“A step in the right direction,” she agreed.

The waiter wheeled out the contents for our Caesar salads on an antique bar cart and
made an impressive display of assembling the salads at our table. Claire, being in
the antique business and having an eye for fine furniture, used what little Spanish
she knew to find out absolutely nothing about the cart or its origin; apparently our
waiter knew about the same amount of English.

“Hey, how’s death cat? Is he still torturing your clients?” I asked Claire.

“Oh, God, that cat!” we all chimed in.

Claire has this very beautiful black and white Persian cat with a real shitty attitude.
On our last girls’ trip to Charleston to visit Claire, it attacked each one of us
randomly throughout the week and actually drew blood on Tori. The cat lures you in
with soft purring and gentle weaving throughout your legs, but once you lower your
hand within striking distance, it goes bat-shit crazy on you.

“He’s banned from the store. One afternoon, he bit a little girl who thought he was
a stuffed cat and reached out to touch him; that was his last bridge to burn. I still
love him though, and if you had ratted hairballs stuck to your ass, you might be grumpy,
too,” she pouted.

“Why don’t you take him to a groomer?” Jenna asked.

“Well, he’s banned from there, too,” Claire said, as we all erupted with laughter.

It was typical of Claire to unconditionally love something that kept hurting her‌—‌even
making her bleed‌—‌and it was reminiscent of my feelings for Jack. How long was my
love for him going to make me suffer? When was it enough?

As dinner wound down and we paid our tab, I put out a feeler to see if anyone wanted
to make Kessler’s show. Leslie was the only one who wanted to go, but I’m smart enough
to know she was just keeping me company, and I loved her dearly for her dedication
to our friendship. We dropped the girls off at the house and made the short drive
to the Soggy Bottom.

His second set was almost over by the time we arrived, but just hearing the roughness
of his voice and catching the smile that swept over his face when our eyes met instantly
made me feel better. Leslie was smiling too, watching us fall all over each other
in our minds, and she genuinely looked happy for me; normality was a possibility in
my life again.

I’d promised we’d only stay a half hour or so. When it was time to go, Kessler grabbed
my hand, gave it a light squeeze and walked us to the Jeep.

“Thanks for coming by tonight. I really appreciate it.” He beamed.

“I’m really impressed with your music. How long did you say you’ve been playing?”
Leslie asked him.

“Well, pretty much all my life, at least as far back as I can remember anyway,” he
told her.

He leaned his face in close to my ear, parting my hair back with his nose and whispered,
“You look beautiful tonight.” He lingered long enough for the warmth of his breath
to cling to my neck, and trickle all the way down to my toes.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, Leslie asked with more of a statement than a
question, “You like him, don’t you?”

This time I didn’t lie. “Yes, I do.”