Jackson
I’m not entirely sure how long I’ve been home, but it’s been at least two weeks. And in that time, I’ve rarely left bed. Not because I’m not physically capable. Staying here, wallowing, rather than inserting myself into a life and family that don’t feel quite right is just…easier somehow.
Being here feels a lot more like a five-star hospital stay than being home.
The bed’s better. The food is incredible.
But in the hospital I had a steady flow of people coming to visit and therapy appointments to go to, and as exhausting as that was, now my days are filled with nothing but watching TV and staring out the window.
And without any recollection of my life before a few weeks ago, I’m left with a lot of bleak thoughts.
Life is carrying on outside of this bedroom, and I’m not part of it.
It’s fucking depressing.
Shortly after breakfast, Kate strolls into the room and pulls the curtains open, to my chagrin.
Morning sun streams through, filtered by the thick leaves of a maple tree outside the bedroom, and something about the way it falls over the white duvet feels oddly familiar.
Though I can’t pinpoint why, melancholia weighs on my heart.
I watch her pick an outfit for the day. I don’t understand why we have two separate dressers when she typically wears jeans taken from my drawers.
A pair of light-wash blue jeans draped over her forearm, she steps into the walk-in closet and shuts the door.
A moment later, she reappears fully dressed for the day, tucking the front of her drapey beige shirt into the jeans.
It’s adorable how my jeans fit her hips but need to be rolled up multiple times at the bottom to keep them from dragging on the ground.
“The kids and I are heading to town. Want to come?”
I huff. “No.”
She frowns, obviously frustrated despite my answer being the same every time she asks if I want to get out of the house, but she’s quick to swipe the look away with a lick of her lips. “I figured as much, but thought I should ask…just in case.”
Just in case today’s the day I decide to start being Old Jackson again.
I expect more of a pushback, given how quick she is to bully me when it comes to everything else, but instead she quietly steps into the bathroom.
Presumably to put on makeup and do her hair, not that she needs to do either.
I like her when she’s in my jeans and an old T-shirt, her hair falling out of a messy bun, and her complexion colored by the brisk spring air.
Unsurprisingly, when she turns back up minutes later, she’s stunning.
Kate heads for the extensive jewelry collection spread across the top of her dresser, reaching for a pair of beaded earrings and a simple necklace.
The last step of her routine, as it is anytime she’s leaving the ranch, is to slide her simple diamond engagement ring onto her left hand.
She wiggles it around next to the gold band, then turns to face me.
“You look pretty,” I blurt out.
“You think?” She looks down at her outfit. “Hot enough you want to stay married to me? Or do I need to grab my push-up bra?”
This woman really does love to make me blush.
She laughs and runs a hand through her silky hair, letting it slowly fall over her shoulders and down her back. “Sorry, I made a joke a while back that if you didn’t remember me, I’d put on my hottest outfit and make you fall in love all over again.”
She looks as far from sorry as a person can get.
“You think a push-up bra will be enough to do the trick?” It will be. It absolutely will be.
“It worked pretty damn well for me the first time.” She moves in to kiss me gently, platonically, on the cheek. “We’ll be back in a bit. Take advantage of the quiet, kid-free house, and get some rest before the occupational therapist comes this afternoon.”
“What are you doing in town?” I ask, mostly to get my mind off the thought of Kate in a push-up bra. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with trying to picture that, since she’s my wife, but it feels perverse.
“We need supplies for Odessa’s birthday party. Her uncles got the bright idea to do something extra special since…you know.” Her wrists limply gesture to a whole lot of nothing, but she’s clearly talking about me. “So, yeah…I have to pick up princess tiaras and dresses, the whole shebang.”
“Forgot her birthday is coming up. Eight…right?”
“Yep.” Kate inhales the word. “Somehow. The years went by scary fast. Feels like yesterday she was small enough you could hold her entire body in your hands. You used to sit in bed like you are now, and she’d nuzzle right into your chest to sleep.”
Unable to contribute anything to the conversation, I take to clenching my fists around balled-up sheets, lean back against a tower of propped-up pillows and shut my eyes. Waiting impatiently for Kate to take the hint that this isn’t something I want to hear about.
When she leaves, I spend an indeterminate amount of time begging and bargaining with my brain to remember Odessa on the day she was born. Reaching into thin air and turning up with nothing time after time.
I can’t hear her first cry, can’t picture the room, can’t remember holding her in my hands the way Kate described. That should’ve been the best day of my life. And it’s just…gone.
An uttered curse leaves my lips, and I slam a fist down.
A creaky floorboard outside the bedroom announces the arrival of someone.
“Kate?” I croak.
Maybe she came back because she forgot something, then I can apologize for being a dick and ask her to tell me everything about that day.
The door slowly opens. It’s Denny. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“Go away.”
“Rude.” He sighs, but doesn’t leave. “I brought peanut butter cookies and this is how you treat me? They’re your favorite. Well…probably. Do you think maybe your tastes in things have changed since you don’t know what your favorites are anymore?”
“Denny, I swear to God—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go away. You’re too sad and tragic for visitors.
Beryl warned me.” He walks across the room to plop a handful of cookies onto the bedside table, then shoves my legs toward the middle of the bed so he has room to sit.
The mattress dips under his weight. “Thought you might like some cookies and company while you sulk.”
“I’m not sulking.” My voice wavers on the edge of breaking. “I’m trying to remember the day Odessa was born.”
His face falls.
The room’s silent except for the droning buzz in my ears that’s been unrelenting since I woke up in the hospital.
“I’ve been trying, but it’s not there. I don’t remember holding her. I don’t know what Kate looked like, or what we said to each other after Odessa was born—and did we always know she’d be named Odessa, or were there other names on the list? Did I cry when I saw her?”
I squeeze the bridge of my nose between my finger and thumb.
“You caught her,” Denny says. “The doctor asked if you wanted to step in and help catch your baby, and you were all about it, apparently. For months, you wouldn’t stop talking about how that was the greatest thing you’d ever done.”
I squeeze my eyes shut again, trying to force an image. I need to see that moment. Feel it. I want the thought of catching my newborn daughter to matter to me the way it’s supposed to.
Yet nothing comes.
It’s like I know the lyrics to the song but can’t hear the music.
“Fuck.” My fist strikes the mattress beside me.
My brother’s hand quickly grabs mine midair as I go for a second strike. “Bud, the memories will come when they come. You can’t force this shit.”
“I can’t even remember meeting Kate,” I admit. “I look at her and the kids, and they feel like…like someone else’s life I got dropped into. And everybody keeps acting like I’m going to wake up one day and be the man I was. What if that doesn’t happen?”
Denny doesn’t hesitate. “Then you’ll make new memories because the people matter more than the stories, and we’re all still here.”
“You’re all out there, and I’m in here.” I suck cool air through my teeth, grappling with the pressure building behind my eyeballs.
“Everything fucking hurts, and the drugs make me feel so hopeless and despondent, I want to die. Consider yourself really goddamn lucky you don’t know what this is like and leave me alone. ”
I roll to my side, facing the window and the big maple tree.
A distant mountain range leaves only a sliver of sky in my field of view, snowcapped and blanketed by the same sun that warms my bed.
The brightness exacerbates the throbbing in my skull.
I should get up and close the curtains, but I can’t be bothered.
“Leave, Denny.”
The mattress shifts, and a second later the door hinges gently whine.
“You don’t have to be okay, but don’t shut us out while you aren’t,” Denny says before leaving.
The pain climbs until my vision blurs. Unable to make out the leaves or the curtains bracketing the window, I roll to my other side and pray for sleep or death, whichever comes first. Press my face to a pillow and breathe through the searing pain and accompanying nausea.
Let the day pass without me, just like all the others.