A Piece for the Road

Janine was tired. The kind of tired that says give up or get out. It was the sort of tired that broke you, smashed your world into tiny pieces, then laughed as you scurried to put them together again. A jigsaw puzzle life that would never be complete, because the missing piece, that crucial bit, the piece with three distinct tabs, had been knocked into oblivion, and no matter how hard you twisted and bashed what was left, nothing looked right, nothing fit. It was that sort of tired. Tired, like you didn’t fit into your life anymore.

One promise. Another promise. A whole string of promises. If promises were pearls, she’d have a necklace, a really long one from the 1920s, knotted and slipping between barely there boobs. God, who was she kidding? Her boobs were no longer barely there, just barely distinguishable from the other rolls of useless fat wrapping her torso, extra padding protecting her pathetically fragile heart.

He was a good man, a kind man, a gentle man…until he wasn’t.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t know. Years of living with an alcoholic wore edges smooth, as she tried to coax him with desperate words and admonitions to fit into the life she needed. If you smoothed the edges enough, bent reality just a little, the pieces could fit, just as long as you never looked too hard at the bigger picture.

She’d learned to stay small. Small enough to fit into the gaps he left and hold the jigsaw together. Be the glue. But she’d also had to be big. Big enough to manage the world within and without so that she could present the correct picture in every situation. She got good at juggling. If you kept it in motion long enough, smoothly enough, quickly enough, nobody noticed the missing bit.

But she was tired. Tired of living small and living big. Tired of knowing everything and knowing nothing at the same time. And so damned tired of the lies. The ones he told, but also the ones she told in his defence. Everything is ok, everything is alright. Nothing to see here. All the while her marriage was slowly burning to the ground.

So it was with eyes that contained bottomless exhaustion that she condemned him. His own eyes red-rimmed and focussed just behind reality, like he was looking at a stereogram, seeing in three dimensions where there were only two.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she said. Her voice was flat, just two dimensions like her jigsaw puzzle life. “I can’t have you lie to me.”

“I haven’t lied,” he slurred slowly, his voice wavering in three dimensions: up and down and through.

“Lies by omission are still lies.”

“What? What… have I omitted?”

“Have you been drinking?”

“No!” Again the stereogram voice wavered through tones and pitches and frequencies of emotional manipulation. How could she accuse him? He was innocent. All defendants are innocent until proven guilty.

“Liar.”

“You can’t know what it’s like to be me.” He twisted the picture to present himself as the victim. “You’re all… this… and I’m… a nothing in your eyes.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I’m not.” He was. He couldn’t understand, but she always knew it. Sometimes it was easier to believe him. It hurt less that way. Wilful blindness, but not anymore.

“You’ve been drinking.”

Silence. Unsteady eyes blinked heavily as if the weight of the accusation dragged them down.

“How much have you had to drink?” She needed to know, but knowing wouldn’t change anything, except to prove that she was not blind.

“Why?” Deflection. Batting the question away like a cat strategically swatting stray puzzle pieces off the edge of the table.

“Don’t answer my question with a question. Just tell me, how much have you had to drink?”

“Seven point five.”

“What? Bottles? Glasses?” he didn’t respond. “My god.” Knowing never made it better.

“It’s not that much.” It was always the same: deny, deflect, defend.

“You said that you were quitting. You saw the doctor and went to rehab. For God’s sake, you promised you wouldn’t drink again.” So many times, so many promises.

“You don’t understand…”

“You’re right, I don’t. I don’t get it, you promised.”

“I just need to not feel, not think. It’s my brain. It won’t stop. Like a train that just… The only way to… just to numb it.” Fragments, like scattered puzzle pieces, flowed from his lips.

“You are not making any sense.”

“You can never understand. You’re not…”

“You’re right, I can never understand. But I can’t do this anymore.” It had been a long time coming. Years of realisation condensed into one single moment.

“Do what?”

“This. Everything. Every day the same argument.” Around and around. It’s always the same. Years, decades, Millenia and still nothing changed. The argument remained the same. “Do you even want to be sober?”

“Of course, but it’s not easy.”

“Nothing worth having is easy. But you have to want it.” It didn’t matter how much she wanted it. He had to want it. Surely he wanted it? Deep down? “Can you imagine your life sober? Never to drink again?”

“Drinking makes my brain make sense. There’s too much, it’s the only way…” his words words jumbled to an incoherent halt, before finding his thread of thought again. “It’s the only way I can live in the world.”

“Your drinking is driving us apart. It’s either the drink or your family.”

“Why do you have to be so black and white? There’s no grey...”

“Because you are an alcoholic. There is no middle ground. You either drink or you don’t. It’s that simple.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Alcohol or your family. Choose.”

“I can’t.”

That was the truth. The emptiness of those two words echoed in the stillness. Hearts beat, yet stopped still as reality ripped the blindfold off. The puzzle was devastatingly clear.

“Then we’re done. It’s over. I’m out.” Her pulse hammered between the words as fear and failure made their unwelcome cocktail in her chest. The bitter taste of regret lingered. Regret for years of hope and faith and love, that now sat like sour fruit in her stomach. “I’m too tired and I can’t keep going over the same argument. I won’t believe your lies anymore. The kids and I will go to my mother’s place.”

Anna and James would enjoy that, preferring the quiet calm at their grandmother's house to the quiet tension at home.

“Then I may as well die.”

And that’s how she left him. Finally mustered up all the broken and mismatched pieces, bundled them into a duffel bag along with the children’s clothes and toys, and walked out the door.

Or at least she would have…if he hadn’t run.

While her back was turned, as she packed her bag, he slipped out. Gone into the night with no shoes on.

A double-time heartbeat pounded in the back of her throat, beating down the bile that churned upward from her gut. Leave or stay. There was no air; what little oxygen she could drag into her lungs felt like treacle, drowning her in the sticky moment of indecision. Her shaking hands grabbed the car keys.

She found him after she drove down shadowy back streets, directing her headlights over empty parks. It was the honking that alerted her, car horns blasting into the night. On the edge of the highway he stood, playing chicken, daring them to take him out. Cars swerved as he stepped out, standing like a crazed scarecrow in their high beams.

She called the police. “I have an emergency. It’s my husband…”

They took him to the emergency department where he admitted to alcohol misuse and mental health problems. When he sobered up, he assured the doctors that he would seek help. They believed him. Why wouldn’t they? He was remorseful, said all the right words. Once again, they believed him, handed him pamphlets for helplines and community groups he never intended to contact.

She cried when they discharged him back into her care. Somehow everyone assumed that she was supposed to care, simply because she never wanted him dead. And so the jigsaw puzzle was back. Jamming pieces any which way to make a whole. Except that now there were more pieces missing. Lost along the road.

And she was still tired. The kind of tired that comes from another betrayal. This time, she had betrayed herself. Lost herself in his missing pieces. Damned to put him back together when none of the pieces look like they belong in the same puzzle.

Damned to hear a promise that this time… this time it will be ok.