Love's Illusions: A Novel (23 page)

Hmph, yeah
I thought, I was going to have to ask him where that crock of shit came from – he had never said anything to me about going back to school. Of course it wasn’t an entirely bad idea… nice if it were true
.
Whatever the case, it was the perfect answer for my father who was forced to quit in the 8th grade when his crazy relative got locked away. But most of all, it was a relief not to have to lie or avoid mentioning Michael or The Canteen or the divorce whenever I spoke to them on the phone from now on. My parents left for St. Louis in the morning.

“How come you’ve never brought me flowers, and where the hell did you get those clothes?” I asked when Michael showed up at the bar that evening instead of saying ‘hello’.

“Jealous?” he asked, then burst out laughing.

“Absolutely! Who was that person? How much of what you were saying was true?” The questions flew out of me in rapid fire succession while he smiled from ear to ear.

“That was me, all me, just the part I don’t show much anymore. Like it?” he shot back, “but more importantly, what did they say about me after I left?”

“Ha, well you did it,” I told him. “Between you and Charlie and his grandfather’s Medal of Honor, they left here more or less happy. At least I doubt they’ll try to force me back to Boston. I owe you guys!”

“I like the sound of that… you can pay off your debt to me when you get off work,” he purred in my ear as he leaned down to give me a kiss. “I’ve missed you, beautiful.”

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Everything I read, be it in self-help or text books, or trashy magazines (my favorite source), all said that time was supposed to heal all wounds. To my way of thinking that meant I should be feeling better each day, but I wasn’t – most days I felt like a pile of shit. I passed all my courses – how I’m not exactly sure, but I did, through sheer will power, forcing myself to somehow function through the fog. Three years down, one to go.

I was going to spend the summer in Chicago again instead of going home. My parents had suggested it when Mary Beth told them she would be coming home for the summer while we were at dinner, but I shut down that idea saying I had to be here for the divorce. In truth I knew I couldn’t live in their house anymore, the constant criticism I felt – my inability to live up to their expectations, whether that assessment was self-imposed or was the way they felt didn’t matter – it was still there in my mind. Besides, I didn’t want to take the chance that I’d somehow get sucked into staying after the argument we’d had, and if I was being honest with myself, I didn’t want to leave Michael for three months. Even though I had given him a pass on his ‘fling’ over Christmas, and I had no suspicions at this point, there was no need tempting fate.

My mind never stopped – not while I was awake, or from what Michael told me, not while I was asleep either. I tossed and turned, waking up frequently, not able to get back to sleep for hours, causing him to lose sleep too. It was getting so I couldn’t fall asleep without Valium; however, getting them was now also an issue as Michael’s normal supplier had been busted. He was making new connections, but just in case it took a while, I was splitting pills, and swallowing them with gulps of SoCo, a lot more than usual. All I wanted to do was sleep, to stop my brain. Nothing else I did let me find that joyous place where all the ghosts, demons and fears fell away, I wanted to stay in Never Never Land as long as humanly possible.

Time did not pass, it
crawled
along. Time was not on my side; it worked against me with every fiber of its being. Each monotonous, mundane day terrified me – I had no idea what I was afraid of, I just felt like
something
was going to happen. Sleeping was the only thing that made the hands of the clock actually move. When I was awake minutes ticking by were imperceptible – I hated it. What I couldn’t figure out with any certainty was why the hell I wanted time to pass. Did I think that once the divorce was final, the world would be fine again – who the hell knew – but I wanted to be done with it and done
now
.

I felt worthless – nothing, no accomplishment felt worth the effort. Was I just ungrateful for all the good things in my life? I was healthy; I had friends – not a lot, but friends nonetheless; I had a bright future; I had a nice apartment, food, clothes. All the things a person was supposed to want I already had, and most of all, I had Michael’s love. What more could I ask for? What the fuck was the problem?

Mornings were the toughest, especially when Michael wasn’t around. On those days, I’d be lucky to get up before noon. First of all, I hated sleeping alone. If he had stayed the night, it seemed easier somehow. My thoughts were less likely to devour me while falling asleep – I was safe nestled against his chest, his fingers tangled in my hair, holding me, keeping the world at bay. When daylight illuminated the red drapes, I didn’t mind opening my eyes as much. Michael loved making love in the morning – “the perfect start to a perfect day,” he’d say with a grin on his face – but even when we didn’t have sex, the days when he was there in the morning turned out better for me. When he got up, I got up. I rattled around the kitchen, pretended to be domestic, making him breakfast – usually nothing more than scrambled eggs and toast or bagels with cream cheese and coffee, but it was enough to get me out of bed – and most days I even stayed up.

Unfortunately, the crappy days were coming closer and closer together, and try as I may, I couldn’t figure out why they happened. There didn’t seem to be a pattern. My divorce was going smoothly: John had sent copies of all the paperwork to Virginia’s address as well as publishing it, so I was sure Stephen knew I had filed. There was no response to any of it, and that was good news; he wasn’t going to contest it – nothing to be upset or depressed about.

Ever since John mentioned the word ‘depression’ a couple months before, the idea haunted me – was it possible? I tossed the idea around, over and over, in my mind. Depression equaled crazy to me. It was not culturally acceptable. My mother thought being divorced would ‘mark’ me for the rest of my life, what the hell would she think if I went to a shrink – now that would be a real stigma. But my mind seemed boundless in its ability to make me miserable.

I read everything I could find on depression. I became an avid reader of self-help books and trashy magazines like
Cosmopolitan
and
Seventeen
, (or in a pinch, even respectable ones like
Time, Newsweek, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, McCall’s
), whose writers professed to be able to solve any problem in 10 easy steps. I even read serious books on psychology, philosophy, mental health and the causes of suicide. A 16th Century philosopher and mathematician named René Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” To me he hit the nail on the head with those five little words; the only problem was, he didn’t give a solution, a way to stop thinking, and still live at least. But serious literature like that made my head hurt – I didn’t feel smart or educated enough to understand the in-depth theories – so my favorite sources of information remained the trashy magazines that all had articles on the subject in one issue or another. The word depression started to loom up everywhere I turned. I took one trashy magazine test after the other trying to diagnose myself – always hoping for a different result, but never getting it. The questions were almost always some variation on the same thing, just restated depending on the angle the author of the article wanted to take. Did I have:

1. Difficulty concentrating, remembering details, and making decisions?
   SOMETIMES – depended on what I was thinking about.
   
2. Constant fatigue and decreased energy?
   YES
   
3. Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, hopelessness and/or helplessness?
   YES – well it was my fault, so what the fuck was wrong with admitting it?
   
4. Insomnia (early-morning wakefulness, difficulty sleeping) or hypersomnia (sleeping too much)?
   YES, YES, YES!
   
5. Irritability and restlessness?
   MAYBE – sometimes the people I got irritated at deserved it, sometimes they were idiots. That wasn’t all my fault and certainly didn’t mean I was depressed.
   
6. Persistent sadness, anxiety, or “empty” feelings?
   YES
   
7. Overeating or appetite loss?
   NO, I wish, I could stand to lose a couple pounds.
   
8. Persistent aches or pains, such as headaches, cramps, and digestive problems that do not ease with treatment?
   NO
   
9. Thoughts of suicide or actual suicidal attempts?
   YES, if exploding brains counted.
   
10. Decreased libido, lack of interest in sex?
    NO, in fact I couldn’t get enough - I had Michael and he oozed sex appeal, at least to me.
    

The one thing none of these articles didn’t do was to give me a way to resolve the problem on my own. What was I supposed to do with all my new-found self-knowledge anyhow? The instructions said if you answered ‘yes’ to four or more of the questions, then you should seek professional help. Well that was
not
going to happen. I was stronger than that. I just needed to find a way to ‘pull myself up by my bootstraps’ like my father said. Besides, I was positive everyone in the entire world would answer ‘yes’ to at least four questions. I expected a lot more of myself than that – for me to think of myself this way I would have to answer ‘yes’ at least eight times. Besides, if the world was depressed, then it was just part of life, some kind of innocuous bullshit, something whoever was writing these articles was making money from and not serious.

“So how long have you known,” I asked Charlie?

“Hmph, did you really think you fooled me?” he answered with a satisfied grin on his face.

“Well, yeah, yeah I did. So how long… Who told you?” I chirped back.

I was very stoned by that time – it had been a wonderful night, one I was not at all expecting when I showed up at work. It was the night before my 21st birthday. I had this little scenario all planned out in my head of how I was going to tell Charlie that I was only 19 when he hired me – hoping he wouldn’t be pissed off at my deception. I was so proud of myself for managing to keep it from him, but was also happy I could now tell him the truth and not get fired – at least I didn’t think he’d fire me now.

I never got the opportunity to play out that conversation in real life because just before midnight, some of Michael’s friends from his neighborhood showed up at the bar. I had met all of them for the first time at Thanksgiving, and again many times since. Then Ashley, Lisa and a couple other friends of mine from SAIC showed up. I wandered over to Michael who was sitting at his usual place near the corner at the far end of the bar with Jeff. “What a coincidence that all these people would show up here on the same night,” I said eyeing both of them. Jeff’s face flinched – he was not as good at hiding expressions as Michael. But then, at that moment, Bernie showed up with his latest girlfriend, and I knew something was up – this was not a coincidence.

Whirling around, from the corner of my eye, I saw a couple of the regulars unfolding a string of multi-colored letters saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY along the side wall, tacking it up between the Budweiser and Smirnoff neon wall signs; Charlie was pulling a huge sheet cake from somewhere in back of the bar – it had gobs of white and yellow frosting in the shapes of roses, the words ‘
Happy 21
^st
Birthday Jackie’
scrawled on top, and 21 candles. The next second, everyone there, including the people I didn’t know, were singing as Michael made a show of kissing me, whispering “Happy Birthday beautiful,” in my ear. “Surprised?” he asked.

My eyes were wide open; I was speechless. “Yes! How the hell did you pull it off? I had no idea!”

“Good, that’s the point of a surprise,” he replied, very pleased with himself.

The answers Charlie gave me to my questions were even more surprising than my party. “From the beginning. No one told me,” he said, then paused and continued, “Well I suspected you were young when you came in the bar that first day asking for a job, but I didn’t know for sure until a few weeks later, after I ran a background check.”

“You ran a background check? If you’ve known all this time, why did you let me keep working here?”

“That’s easy, you’re the best cocktail waitress I’ve ever hired. I made up my mind to keep you when I saw how much the customers liked you, and besides, you’ve never broken my rules,” he retorted as he gave me a quick pat on the back.

“But couldn’t you’ve gotten into trouble for having an underage waitress?”

“Why do you think I always paid you in cash? No proof you work here,” he laughed, and shook his head in what seemed like amazement. “Damn Jackie… Fifteen months working in this joint, and you’re still as naïve as you were on day one. Haven’t you ever noticed that we don’t get any cops around here?” He started to walk away then hesitated and said, “Oh, and by the way, you’re done working for the night – go hang out with your friends, get them to buy lots of drinks.” He winked, grabbed another piece of cake, and made his way across the room to greet a group of people who had just come in.

Michael and Jeff were busy moving tables around to accommodate everyone, making introductions, and buying the first round of drinks. “It’s perfect, thank you,” I said putting my arm around Michael as I pulled up a bar stool to join them, “Charlie gave me the rest of the night off provided you guys buy a bunch of drinks,” I announced looking around the table.

“I’ll get the next round,” Bernie called out. It was a wonderful evening.

I was fucked up when we left The Canteen, but not a falling down, throwing up, sloppy kind of fucked up; it was the euphoric, happy, body-tingling kind, the kind that allowed me to let go of any inhibitions, but not cross over into making a fool of myself. As we walked by the Mustang parked on the street, Michael stopped, and pulled a blanket out of the trunk. “What’s that for,” I asked, “don’t I keep you warm enough at night?”