Now and Forever (30 page)

"Want me to drop you off at home, so you can relax for a while?" She smiled as they came to a stop on Broadway where the freeway poured them back into the city traffic. Two blocks later they drove past Enrico's.

"Nope. And that's where it all began."

"What?" Astrid hadn't noticed, and she turned to see Jessie staring at the tables clustered on the sidewalk under the heaters. It was cold now, but a few hardy souls still sat outside.

"Enrico's. That's where he met her. I wonder what she's doing now." There was a haunted look on Jessica's face, and she spoke almost dreamily.

"Jessie, don't think of that."

"Why not?"

"Because there's no point now. It's over. Now you have to look ahead to the other end. You just have to trot on through the tunnel, and before you know it ..."

"Oh, bullshit! You make it sound like a fairy tale, for Chrissake. Just what do you think it feels like to look at your husband through a glass window, not to be able to touch him, or ... oh, God. I'm sorry. I just can't stand it, Astrid. I can't accept it, I don't want this happening to my life, I don't want to be alone. I need him." She ended softly, with tears thick in her throat.

"And you still have him. In all the ways that matter. Okay, so he's behind a window, but he won't be there forever. What do you suppose it felt like when I looked down at Tom in that stinking box? He would never talk to me again, hold me again, need me again, love me again. Ever, Jessie. Ever. With you and Ian, it's only an intermission. The only thing you don't have is his presence in the house every night. You have all the rest."

But that was what she needed. His presence. What "rest" was there? She couldn't remember anymore. Was there a "rest"? Had there ever been?

"And you've got to stop taking those pills, Jessie." Astrid's tone brought her back again. They were a few blocks from her house now.

"Why? They don't do any harm. They just... they just help, that's all."

"They won't in a while. They'll just depress you more, if they aren't doing that already. And if you don't watch out you'll get so dependent on them that you'll have a real problem. I did, and it was a bitch to get rid of. I spent weeks down at Mother's ranch trying to 'kick,' as it were. Do yourself a big favor--give 'em up now." Jessie brushed off the suggestion and pulled a comb out of her bag.

"Yeah. Maybe I'll just go straight to the shop."

"Why don't you at least go home for five minutes to unwind first? How would that be?" Lousy. Painful.

"Okay. If you'll come in for coffee." She didn't want to be alone there. "I have to pick up Ian's book and get it Xeroxed for him. He wants to start working again." Astrid noticed the strained tone in her voice. Could she be jealous? It seemed almost impossible. But these days, anything was possible with Jessie.

"At least they'll let him work on the book."

"Apparently." Jessie shrugged as Astrid pulled into the driveway.

"It'll do him good."

Jessie shrugged again and got out.

There was a look of slight disorder in the front hall, of jackets and coats tried on and discarded before her visit to Ian that morning. Astrid noticed Ian's coats crammed to one side of the closet and the now predominantly female clutter here and there. He had only been gone for five weeks, yet it was beginning to look like a woman's house. She wondered if Jessie had noticed the change.

"Coffee or tea?"

"Coffee, thanks." Astrid smiled and settled into a chair to look at the view. "Want any help?" Jessica shook her head and Astrid tried to relax. It was difficult to be with Jessica now. There was obviously so much pain, and so little one could do to help. Except be there. "What are you doing for Christmas?"

Jessica appeared with two flowered cups and laughed hollowly. "Who knows? Maybe I'll hang myself this year instead of a stocking."

"Jessica, that's not funny."

"Is anything anymore?"

Astrid sighed deeply and set down the cup Jessie had given her.

"Jessie, you have to stop feeling so sorry for yourself. Somehow, somewhere, you're going to have to find something to hang on to. For your own sake, not just for his. The shop, a group of people, me, a church, whatever it is you need, but you just have to grab on to something. You can't live like this. Not only will your marriage not survive, but, much worse, you won't." That was what had been frightening Ian: Astrid knew that Once or twice he had looked at her, and she had understood.

"This isn't forever, you know. You'll get back what you had before. It isn't over."

"Isn't it? How do you know that? I don't even know that. I don't even know at this point what the hell we had, or if it's worth wanting back." She was shocked at her own words but she couldn't stop herself now. She gripped her shaking hands together. "What did we have? Me supporting Ian, and him hating me for it, so much that he had to go out and screw a bunch of other women to feel like a man. Pretty portrait of a marriage, isn't it, Astrid? Just what every little-girl dreams of."

"Is that how you feel about it now?" Astrid watched the hurt on Jessica's face and her heart went out to her. "From what I've seen, there's a lot more to your marriage than that." They had looked so young and so happy when she'd met them, but she realized now that there was a lot she didn't know. There had to be. She met Jessica's eyes now and ached for her. Jessica had a lot to find out in the next months.

"I don't know, Astrid. I feel as though I did everything wrong before, and I want to make it right now. But it's too late. He's gone. And I don't care what you say, it feels in my gut like he's never coming home again. I play games with myself, I listen for his foot-steps, I wander around his studio--and then we go up and see him there, like an ape in a cage. Astrid, he's my husband, and they have him locked up like an animal!" Tears and confusion flooded her eyes.

"Is that what really bothers you, Jessie?"

She looked irate at the question. "Of course it is! What do you think?"

"I think that bothers you, but I think other things bother you just as much. I think you're afraid everything will change. He'll change. He wants his book now, and that frightens you."

"It does not frighten me. It annoys me." At least that was honest. She had admitted it.

"Why does it annoy you?"

"Because I sit here by myself, going crazy, dealing with reality, and what does he want to do? Doodle around on his book, like nothing ever happened. And ... oh ... I don't know, Astrid, it's so complicated. I don't understand anything anymore. It's all making me crazy. I can't take it I just can't take it."

"You can take it, and so can Ian. You've already gone through the worst part. The trial must have been hell." Jessie nodded soberly.

"Yeah, but this is worse. This goes on forever."

"Of course not. And Jessie, you can take a lot more than you think. So can Ian." As she said the words, she hoped she was right.

"How can you be so sure? Remember how he looked today, Astrid? How long do you think he can take all that? He's spoiled, spoiled rotten, and used to a comfortable life with civilized people. Now he's in there. We don't see what it's really like, but what do you think will happen when some guy pulls a knife on him, or some jerk wants to make love to him? Then what? Are you really sure he can handle it, Astrid?" Her voice was rising to an hysterical pitch. "And you know what the real joke of this whole mess is? That he's in there because of me. Not because of Margaret Burton. Because of me. Because I castrated him so completely that he needed her to prove something. I did it. I might as well have put the handcuffs on him myself."

The tragedy of it was that Astrid knew she believed that. She went to her and tried to put her arms around her as Jessica sobbed.

"Jessica, no ... no, baby. You know ..."

"I know. It's true! I know it. And he knows it. And the fucking woman even knew it. You should have seen how she looked at me in court. God knows what he told her. But I looked at her with hatred, and she looked at me with ... pity. Dammit, Astrid, please give me some of those pills." She looked up at Astrid with a ravaged face, but her friend shook her head.

"I can't."

"Why not? I need them."

"You need to think right now. Clearly. Not in a fogged state. What you just told me is totally crazy, and a lot of what you're thinking is probably pretty crazy. You might as well get it all straightened out in your head now, and have done with it. Pills won't help."

"They'll get me through it." She was begging now.

"No they won't. You've lost all perspective about what happened, and they'll only make it worse. And I can tell you one thing for sure. If you don't straighten out your thinking now, it will only get worse, and you won't have a marriage left when Ian comes out. You'll eventually wind up hating him, maybe even as much as you hate yourself right now, if that's possible. You owe yourself some serious thinking, Jessica."

"So you're going to see that I get it, is that it?" Jessica's voice was bitter now.

"No, I can't do that. I can't force you to think. But I won't give you anything to cloud your thinking anymore either. I can't do that, Jessica. I just can't." Jessica felt an almost irresistible urge to stand up and hit her, and then she knew that she must be going crazy. Wanting to hit Astrid was very crazy. But also very real. She wanted those goddam pills.

"You'll have to face it sooner or later anyway." And then suddenly there were tears in Jessie's eyes again.

"But what if I go crazy? I mean really crazy?"

"Why should you?"

"Because I can't handle it. I just can't handle it."

Astrid felt out of her depth and wondered how her mother had stood her when she had been in similar shape after Tom's death. It gave her an idea.

"Jessie, why don't you come down to the ranch with me at Christmas? Mother would love it, and it would do you good."

Jessica shook her head even before Astrid had finished her sentence.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"I have to spend Christmas with Ian." She looked mournful at the thought.

"You don't 'have' to."

"All right, I want to." Christmas without Ian? No way.

"Even with the window between you?" Jessica nodded. "Why, for God's sake? As a penance to absolve you of the guilt you're heaping on your own head? Jessica, don't be ridiculous. Ian would probably love to know that you're doing something pleasant, like going down to the ranch." Jessica didn't answer, and after a pause, Astrid said what she had really been thinking. "Or would you rather torture him by letting him see how much you can suffer on Christmas?"

Jessica's eyes flew wide open again on that one.

"Jesus, you make it sound like I'm trying to punch him."

"Maybe you are. I think you just can't decide right now who you hate more--him or yourself. And I think you've both had enough punishment, Ian at the hands of the State, and you at your own. Can't you start to be good to yourself now, Jessica? And maybe then you'll be able to be good to him." There was more truth in Astrid's words than Jessie was ready for.

"You can take care of you, Jessie. And Ian will take care of you, even at a distance. Your friends will help. But most of all, you have to see that you're much more capable than you know."

"How do you know?"

"I know. You're scared and you have a right to be. But if you'd just calm down a little, and take stock of yourself, kindly, you'd be a lot less scared. But you're going to have to stop running to do that."

"And stop taking pills?"

Astrid nodded, and Jessie remained silent She wasn't ready to do that yet. She knew it without even trying.

But she did try. Astrid left without giving her any, and Jessica went to the bank with Ian's manuscript--with trembling hands and trembling knees, but without taking another pill. From there she went to the post office, and from there on to the shop. She lasted at Lady J for less than an hour, and then she came home to pace. She spent the night huddled in a chair in the living room, nauseated, trembling, wide-eyed, and wearing a sweater of Ian's. It still had the smell of his cologne on it, and she could feel him with her. She could sense him watching her as she sat in front of the fireplace. She kept seeing faces in the fire--Ian's, her mother's, Jake's, her father's. They came to her late in the night. And then she thought she heard strange sounds in the garage. She wanted to scream but couldn't. She wanted pills but didn't have any. She never went to bed that night, and at seven in the morning she called the doctor. He gave her everything she wanted.

At Christmas, Astrid spent three weeks at the ranch with her mother. Jessica was swamped at the boutique. She was falling into a routine now with her visits to Ian. She drove up two weekday mornings and on Sundays. She was putting four hundred miles a week on his car, and the Volvo wasn't going to take the wear much longer. She almost wondered if she and the car would die together, simply keel over at the side of the road and die. In the Volvo's case it would be from old age; in Jessie's, from strain and exhaustion. That and too many pills. But she functioned well with them now. Most people still couldn't tell. And Ian hadn't yet confronted her about them. She assumed that he simply didn't want to see what was happening. It was fine with her.

She couldn't send him a Christmas present this year. He was allowed to receive only money, so she sent him a check. And forgot to buy Christmas presents for the two girls in the shop. All she thought about was putting gas in the car, surviving the visits with Ian on the opposite side of the glass window, and getting her prescriptions refilled. Nothing else seemed to matter. And whatever energy she had left she spent figuring out the bills. She was making some headway with them, and she would wake up in the morning figuring out how to cover this, if she borrowed from that, if she didn't pay that until ... she was hoping that Christmas profits would put her back in the black. But Lady J was having its own problems. Something was off, and she couldn't bring herself to care as much as she'd used to. Lady J was only a vehicle now, not a joy. It was a means of paying bills, and a place to go in the daytime. She could hide in the little office in the back of the shop and juggle those bills. She rarely came out to see customers now. After a few minutes, the now familiar rising wave of panic would seize her throat and she'd have to excuse herself ... a yellow pill ... a blue one ... a quick sip of Scotch ... something ... anything to kill the panic. It was easier just to sit in the back and let the girls handle the customers. She was too busy anyway. With the bills. And with trying not to think. It took a lot of effort not to think, especially late at night or early in the morning. Suddenly, for the first time in years, she had perfect recall of her mother's voice, her father's laughter. She had forgotten them for so long, and now they were back. They said things ... about each other ... about her ... about Ian ... and they were right. They wanted her to think. Jake even said something once. But she didn't want to think. It wasn't time yet. She didn't have to ... didn't want to ... couldn't ... they couldn't make her ... they ...