Chapter 14 The Sixties Joint
The Sixties Joint
I was fidgeting, and Will was next to me driving, looking highly amused.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Yeah, of course. Perfect. Just kind of wondering whether Jack will be happy to see me.”
“Well, keeping in mind he was the one who wanted you to come…so I’d say yes.”
Jack had been in rehab for two and a half months.
This visit had to be a step forward for him, because a few weeks before, he’d kept insisting he needed space and time to think every time I brought the subject up.
He finally told me one day he’d put me on the visitors’ list, and I was over the moon, but I’d been so busy with exams that I’d had to put it off until now.
It felt almost like I was meeting him again for the first time.
Will dropped me off at the entrance. I was nervous as I turned and waved goodbye to him. I hurried up the path, and almost as soon as I opened the door, an employee came to greet me. I was glad. If I’d had to wait too long in the vestibule, I’d probably have had a heart attack.
Still, the wait wasn’t over. I was taken to a hallway with plastic seats, yellow walls, and a white linoleum floor.
It was depressing the way hospitals always are, and looked nothing like any of the photos I’d seen in the brochure.
I was wearing a sleeveless shirt and was self-conscious because I was sweating.
It was hot for May. Or maybe it was my nerves. Or maybe both.
I heard steps approaching and looked up. The man who had brought me there was now returning, with Jack a few steps behind him. I stood, full of anticipation.
Jack had put on a little weight, but he was pale.
His hair was cut neatly, and he was dressed like a jock in knee-length shorts and a grey zip-up sweatshirt.
He had his hands tucked in his pockets. He smiled when he saw me, and in that moment, I learned all I needed to know: one, that he was fine, and two, that he hadn’t forgotten me.
We walked toward each other and met in the middle of the hall, and I couldn’t stop myself from jumping into his arms. I was lucky I didn’t knock him over. I felt him laughing as he said, “OK, fine. I missed you, too.”
“I’ll leave you two alone,” the attendant said, and walked back to where he and Jack had come from. Jack set me down, and as I held his hands, I looked at him more closely, trying to make sure he really was OK. He seemed to find that amusing.
“Did I pass the inspection?” he asked.
“The physical part. As for the behavioral part, that remains to be seen…” It was hard for me to joke just then, and I dropped it right afterward. “I know you wanted me to come earlier, Jack, but I had so much studying, and…”
“Relax,” he said. “It’s not like I came to see you, either!”
“That’s different!”
“It still counts…” Guiding me toward a glass door, he asked, “You want to see outside?”
I hadn’t imagined the grounds were so big.
There was a soccer field, a pool, stables…
it looked like some millionaire’s estate.
We didn’t go far, though: Jack wanted to sit on one of the stone benches on the patio, under a wooden gazebo-like structure covered in ivy.
All around, I could see other residents stretched out on the lawn.
It was hard to know what to say, and I found myself sticking to the obvious at first. “You’ve put on some muscle, it looks like. I guess they have a gym here?”
“Yeah,” Jack replied.
“Maybe you’ll start running with me when you get out.”
“Sure.”
“It’s prettier here than it looks in the flyers. What’s your schedule like? Do they give you enough time to enjoy all this?”
“More now than before,” he said. “At first, I was under lock and key. Now, I have meetings and therapy in the morning and then I’m free the rest of the day.
In the afternoon and evening, there’s activities: meditation, yoga, swimming.
I tried yoga, but I’m not what you’d call flexible.
What I really like is the animal therapy, that contact with another creature is something beautiful.
Art therapy on the other hand is lame. Speaking of art—”
“Yeah,” I cut him off. “I’ve been using the paints you gave me.”
“And…?”
“They’re incredible. Like I said, school’s killing me, so I’ve had to restrain myself.
The art is my getaway, my happy place. Of course, Sue’s bitching because the apartment smells like paint and turpentine, but I can’t help it, I keep the balcony door open constantly and it doesn’t help!
I even tried covering up the scent with Mike’s disgusting body spray.
Thankfully, Will and Naya are cool about it. ”
“Those two…” Jack responded. “Will told me about it. It doesn’t even seem real.”
I smiled and said, “I’ll bet it does to them.”
He nodded. “Will’s over the moon. I’ve always known he’d be an amazing dad.”
I couldn’t say I had as much faith in Naya.
I wanted to believe she’d be a good mom, but I’d been trying to work on stuff with her, and the results were disastrous.
All she had to learn was how to change a diaper, rock a child to sleep, give it a bath, feed it, but of the four dolls I’d bought her to practice on, she’d stomped on two of them in a fit of anger and thrown another one out the window, so… I wasn’t especially confident.
I said that they were lucky they had friends to help them out, but it felt…
not insincere, but beside the point, because we both knew I wasn’t there to talk about Will and Naya.
I was there to talk about him. But to do it, he’d have to make the first move.
The ball was in his court, but he still didn’t have the courage to open up to me.
And I didn’t want to pressure him, but I also didn’t feel we could keep putting it off.
To try to ease him into it, I reached out and touched his hand, and when he met eyes with me, I asked him, “How are things going here?”
He shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure if I’m ready to go back to the real world.”
I hadn’t expected that response. And though it hurt, I told him, “If you need time, Jack, take as much as you need.”
“It’s not that, Jen. I’m better. I can leave, I know I won’t be in danger.
It’s not that, it’s that I don’t want to think about what’s waiting for me on the outside: the movie, promotion, interviews.
Just the thought of all that is, I don’t know…
almost irritating. Like, if I’m being honest with you, it makes me want to throw up. ”
He sighed and bent forward, resting his elbows on his knees. I tried to process what he was saying. “You want me to take the wheel?” I asked. “I can be your secretary. Trust me, I’ll tell every last one of those people to go piss up a rope!”
He giggled. “That would be nice, actually. But no. I can’t put my life off forever. At the same time, I want to ask, is it really too much to be able to come out of here and just take care of myself without having to worry about all those so-called obligations?”
No, it wasn’t too much to ask. Not to me.
I didn’t know what his colleagues and manager would think, but I also didn’t care.
And if Jack was talking to me about this, it meant that he cared more about my opinion than anyone else’s.
The glitz and glamour, all that could come in due time. What mattered now was that Jack was OK.
“I’ve got two ideas,” I told him.
Looking so small, so vulnerable, he rested his chin on his balled fist and asked me, “Which are…?”
“Number one: we could lock you in the apartment all summer and pretend you’ve been kidnapped. Number two: we could wait until my exams are done and get the hell out of here. Just you and me.”
That made him think. Intrigued, he straightened up and asked, “And escape to where?”
“I don’t know. Your lake house, maybe. Or if you’re feeling adventurous, we could go overseas. I’ve never even been out of the country. I’m sure you find that hilarious, but whatever, there’s a first time for everything.”
“That could be nice,” he admitted. “Traveling, I mean, not the lake house. I’d like to put a little more distance between this place and me, and obviously, I need to get away from my parents.”
“We could go to my parents’!” I joked.
“Yeah, they’re probably dying to have me show up there.”
“I doubt that, but I am kind of dying to see the look on their faces if we did do it.”
“Who are you, and what have you done with the sweet, innocent Jen I used to know?” he asked sarcastically.
“My sweet and innocent days are over.”
He laughed and hugged me, smiling mischievously. “Tell you what. Make a list of places you want to go. We’ve got a whole summer to start checking them off.”
“And then the little shit goes and throws up all over me!” my sister complained.
I rolled my eyes. I’d had one hell of a day: running back and forth, cramming between classes, and as soon as I made it home, with just five minutes before I had to leave again Shannon called.
I was trying to hold my phone to my ear with my shoulder while I adjusted the strap on my bag, which was in danger of spilling all my stuff out onto the floor.
“What do you expect?” I asked her. “He’s a child, he’s not old enough to control himself.”
“Whatever. It’s not my kid, he’s just some friend of Owen’s, I agreed to play chauffeur, I didn’t sign up for some little snotnose to puke on me five minutes into the drive.”
“You did, though, Shannon. You did it as soon as you joined the Mommies and Daddies Facebook group I warned you about.”
“Don’t remind me.”
Her talking about Owen made me think of Spot, the little stuffed horse he had given me, and I looked over to find him wedged between my pillows.
I straightened him up and interrupted her: “Listen, all this sounds very dramatic, and I’m sorry to cut you off, but I need to go.
We’re going to pick Jack up from the clinic. He’s finally coming home!”