It had been a pretty good day before the
voicemail. Tara had been productive at work. Nothing bad, nor overly
good, had happened, and now she was home. The kind of day that was as
mundane, and as joyful, as a warm breeze in your hair. Besides having to
deal with the occasional detail of a bankruptcy and a divorce, life was
fine.
After nine years, a
few of them happy, she and Rich had called it quits. Actually, she had
moved out. For a couple months, she had quietly moved things into a
little storage unit across town, planning for the day it got bad enough
or she got brave enough to just leave. Rich's drinking had made the last
three and a half years or so excruciating. She had tried everything;
screaming and yelling, crying and begging, supporting and caring.
She
had managed to get him into counselling a couple times and there was a
helpful psychologist at the hospital. Helpful to her perhaps more than
to Rich, but help anyway. Rich had been in the emergency room in medical
danger from the booze several times that summer. The hospital didn't do
rehab, but they would keep him for a week or so to dry him out. While
Rich was there he had people to talk to and things to think about. Each
time, what first seemed like a new beginning quickly dissolved into the
same old hell.
Tara had
moved out three months ago. Rich had racked up tens of thousands of
dollars of medical bills, even after insurance. The last three years had
been enough, she wasn't going to take care of the co-pays too. She had
talked Rich into doing a bankruptcy before a divorce. She knew that he
had gone along with the former to possibly prevent the latter, but
lawyers abounded in her life. The bankruptcy had just gone through and
the divorce was coming next.
Then
this morning, the voicemail. By lunchtime, she had gotten brave enough
to listen. Rich had simply asked her to call. He sounded healthy, if
that was possible to determine in the span of a short message. He had
even been sober when he called. It was just that she dreaded returning
the call. Hopefully it was just some detail about the divorce that
wasn't quite complete. She couldn't imagine what he wanted or why he
hadn't elaborated. Rich had simply said, "Hey, Tara. Rich. Could you
call me when you get a chance?"
Tara
could almost detect a false optimism in Rich's voice. It hung on her
phone like fresh paint on a dirty wall. She hoped he was just healthy
enough to purposely try and sound positive. Still, a little echo of
something else hung on in the silent moment before he had hung up the
line.
She'd been home more
than an hour. After the grocery store, she had laid out all the
ingredients for supper on the counter, but hadn't begun to prepare
anything. Twice she had hit the button, lighting the little screen, but
both times she just stared and let the the phone go dark again. The
thick paste of dread on her fingers prevented them dialing. The thought
of talking to Rich gave her stomach a sticky, acrid feeling.
Nevertheless, like tearing off a band-aid, on the third try, she dialed
in a rush as soon as the screen lit, just to get it over with.
Rich
had moved back in with his family. His parents and two brothers, none
of them were particularly healthy or well adjusted themselves. They were
not equipped to help the prodigal Rich. Tara worried that his drinking
would just continue unabated. Rich's father answered the phone.
"Hang on I'll get him." The father had said.
The
abandoned handset collected the familiar sounds of her soon-to-be-ex
in-laws' house. There was a rustle in the kitchen; that would be Mom. A
television was on, that would be brother Geoff. Dad's boots clomped
across the dining room floor and Tara heard him call upstairs to Rich.
The
rhythm of Rich's ambling gait approached. The phone would be laying on
the desk in what used to be the dining room. There wasn't room for a
table any longer, just two desks and a bench. The house was so small,
especially now with five people living in it. Tara heard a scratchy
fumbling as Rich picked up the phone.
"Hello, Tara?"
Tara
couldn't speak. Rich was more than obviously drunk. His dad hadn't even
warned her. Had it become so normal in the tiny house that it hadn't
occurred to him to mention? She stood in her own kitchen, not able to
decide whether to throw the phone against a wall or collapse on the
linoleum and cry.
"Tara?"
She
took a jerking breath, fighting against the weighty dread. In his
stupor, Rich held the phone too close to his face. Tara sensed the heat
of his stale breath against her cheek. He was miles away but she could
smell the whiskey, and his dirty teeth. With a strained hollow gurgle,
he drug air down his torpid throat. His alcohol addled breath thrummed
against moist curtains of saliva in his sickeningly drunk mouth.
"Tara," he repeated. "Are you sure you want to go through with this divorce thing?"
He
had practiced the line for days, she was sure. Rather than a dramatic
flourish, however, the words had come out like junior high theater - one
part Broadway come on, three parts primal fear. Her brain could not
catch up to the audacity of his drunk question. The phone line went
silent as an ancient temple. A lone pebble skittered from the cave wall
of her soul and ticked randomly down a bottomless crevasse. Anger,
confusion, even loneliness, ached in her throat as if she had swallowed a
glowing coal.
"Yes," she finally said. "Yes, Rich, this is something that I have to do . . . for me. For my own survival."
Just
then she heard a faint puffing whoosh as the pilot light of her heart
re-lit. There was a little spread of warmth inside her chest and she
hung up the phone. Her own life had begun again.
