for the baby at home since her office job paid better. She’d planned meticulously when he’d wanted to wing it. Now he’d give anything for her to come back, to give him focus. His aimlessness leads him to drink and his drinking leads to him failing.
He calls his boss to say he’ll be back at work by Thursday.
‘You’re ready to come back?’ Kris asks. ‘You don’t need more time?’
‘No, I need to keep busy.’
‘Right. I’ll see you Thursday. Just call me if anything changes.’
‘Sure.’
Kris is the closest thing Jeffrey has now to a friend, someone who tolerates these instances of failure. Someone who leaves the door unlocked for the idiot roommate who forgets their keys all the time.
He needs to try harder. He needs to stop screwing up.
Sleep eludes him as his stress overwhelms him. Breathing to calm down doesn’t help. Around midnight, he requests his pro re nata: a valium. This is his level of giving up. He needs rest. He needs his brain to stop.
As a consequence, he wakes late, well past ten. His new nurse, a girl he’s not seen before, gets around to giving him his medication for the morning. He drinks coffee, smokes, fails to gain an appetite. He’s pretending not to wait for Carolyn, pretending not to keep an eye out for her.
He doesn’t recognise her when she at last appears. Her hair is in a ponytail, her shirt is tighter, and she’s in jeans and nicer shoes. And she’s smiling, being gracious.
He sees through this act. If she pretends to be happy — she’s reasoned, thinking she’s a genius — they’ll let her out. As if it’s that simple. But he won’t piss on her parade to make things worse. He’d rather see the experiment play out, see how long it takes before she’s in a shitty mood again, cruel as it is inevitable.
Much to his amazement, the veneer doesn’t crack. She ignores any negativity thrown at her. She has blinkers on and the other inmates don’t exist to her. Including him. He hasn’t helped her do this. He’s stayed for nothing. He goes to his room to finish packing.
Group is at two. Carolyn is there, early for once. There isn’t an impatience coming from her. The other inmates make coffee and chat amongst themselves, sort of catching up, forcing themselves out of isolation. Relating.
The therapist running the group is a much younger guy, positive and softly spoken. Non-combative. He’d have been called a pacifist if he’d been born in another time. The boy brings the court to order: two middle-aged women who’ve become friends in the last week, a weedy, sinewy addict in his mid-twenties and another thirtysomething woman who’s suffering from post-natal depression. Jeffrey knows the older women have secretly accused her of just wanting a vacation from her newborn. The schoolyard bullying exists here too; the judgements they face on the outside invade the inside, so no one’s immune here. This microcosm works perfectly in conjunction with the real world. All the affirmations and motivational posters on the walls won’t change these assholes and their misgivings.
These two women cast aspersions on Carolyn from a distance as well. Too young to be depressed, too young to want to die, as if her age alone disqualifies her from having any negative emotions. What could she possibly have to be sad about? She hasn’t lived.
She was born into this world, he mentally argues. What other reason should there be?
Jeffrey listens to one of these women drone on about her life. She has fewer problems than Carolyn. She’s rich, kept even. She’s just bored. So many assume to be depressed when really life hasn’t brought them enough to be interested in, and they’re simply bored as hell. Dissatisfied, disillusioned… but not depressed. Not clinically.
Carolyn’s aware of this. She sees through it. The woman is thanked for sharing what is ostensibly a complaint, a misgiving about her husband who’s never around since he’s working to maintain her opulent lifestyle. He won’t go to marriage counselling, that’s the worst of her problems. If anyone’s taking a vacation, it’s her.
The young mother speaks next, quick to be brought to weeping as she recounts her last attempt to breastfeed her child. Nature has betrayed her twofold: she’s been driven suicidal from her hormones and she can’t even provide milk for her child. She’s considered a monster for having the gall to give her baby formula. She’s been branded a failure already and this is her first child. This is what Jeffrey considers cruelty, and he’s moved by her story, though he doesn’t show it. He knows it’s not her fault.
It’s not fair.
The sisterhood across from her, the two elders, they’re not convinced. Not sympathetic. She’s a shit mother, as far as they’re concerned. Not only that, she’s most likely birthed another useless member of society. Like their own children are any better. She’s scorned by their eyes while being offered false smiles and gratitude for her sharing.
He wants to punch them and call them inhuman. They’re part of the problem, far more than he is.
Now it’s his turn, and the bile in his throat from his anger means he has to cough into his fist before he speaks. ‘I’m going into outpatient treatment,’ he announces. ‘Tomorrow.’
‘Think you’re ready?’ the therapist asks.
‘It makes sense. There’s not a lot else I can achieve in here. And I’ll go back to my meetings. Make more of a commitment.’
‘Do you feel you’ve made peace with your loss, Jeffrey?’ the boy asks like he really cares. Like he’ll ever give a fuck one way or the other.
‘In some ways… But how do you really make peace with losing your pregnant girlfriend to a drunk driver?’ His arms are folded and he’s slouching again: classic defensiveness. Sometimes body language is the only language people respond to. Other days, they’re oblivious.
Carolyn’s reaction is one of shock, however the therapist stays neutral. The others in the room, not all of them knew this, and Jeffrey takes note of their varied expressions but doesn’t apologise for his bluntness.
He’s feeling passive-aggressive now, going on to say, ‘I know if she’d lived to have the baby, I’d never have blamed her for anything that went wrong.’
Carolyn starts to cry out of nowhere, deeply enough to have to excuse herself. He can’t follow after her, and she isn’t the one he’s attacking. The young mother gives him the smallest smile, her gratitude conveyed by her eyes.
The therapist excuses himself to tend to Carolyn and find her nurse. Class is dismissed. The tweaker rolls his eyes, not that he had much to contribute, just his time was wasted, he could’ve been smoking or watching TV.
Out in the hall, Carolyn leans against the wall as the therapist speaks to her in hushed tones.
Jeffrey watches, and she catches him, storming at him and pushing him in the chest with her open hands.
‘Do you even care, Jeffrey?’ she shouts in his face. ‘Are you some kind of sociopath? What the fuck is wrong with you!’
‘I care,’ he says, sounding helpless suddenly. ‘Of course I care.’
‘You’re just a boozehound,’ she snaps at him. ‘You’re just a worthless alcoholic now.’
The boy tries to get in her way and she’s having none of that.
‘I’ve nothing to learn from you that I can’t teach myself.’
Jeffrey accepts this and leaves her to her anger. It’s not something he hasn’t been accused of before.
But she’s wrong. He cares so much some nights he’d rather be dead than be in that amount of pain. He gets it. He gets her. But he can’t help her.
He doesn’t see her again that night; she’s in her room, tucked away with her books and her music. He pictures her more determined than ever to get out. She’ll beat them at their own game. She’ll get parole. She’s smarter than them.
The discharge process the following morning takes longer than an hour. Though he’s ready at ten as instructed, the pharmacy is backed up and he’s stuck there until eleven waiting for his meds. His doctor speaks to him briefly before signing him out. His room will have already been assigned to th
e next new inmate.
At the front desk, Jeffrey leaves a note he’s folded carefully and marked with Carolyn’s name. It’s a feeble apology for not showing more heart for what he’s lost, along with an explanation he believes she’ll instantly dismiss. He apologises for the world being the way it is. He expresses hope she’ll find a way out of her misery, and he leaves her with a simple turn of phrase another inmate in another place offered him long ago:
We’re not exactly free as eagles, are we?
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