Free Jack & Jill by Kealan Patrick Burke Page B

try alternatives, and as it stood, any of them would be better than being unable to get through a day not populated by hallucinations and nightmares, or the expectation of same.
    I turned off the light, and exited Jenny's room.
    I did not look back.
    Just in case she was there again, sitting at her chair, whispering.
     
     
     
     
    SEVENTEEN
     
     
    When I came downstairs, I found Chris sitting at the kitchen counter, a bottle of beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other.
    "Smoking?" I asked him, with half-hearted disapproval. Once upon a time, we'd both shared the habit, but I'd quit on my thirty-first birthday, and Chris had followed suit six months later. Still, we kept a pack in a drawer in the garage just in case events conspired to make having one seem a good idea.
    He shrugged. "Just felt like it. Got tired of talking to myself."
    "Sorry about that." I poured myself a glass of orange juice, and as I rounded the counter to look upon him directly, I saw to my dismay that he'd been crying. Looks like the window of good cheer has closed and the skies have turned gray again , I thought. "What's the matter?"
    "Not sure." He looked with fierce intensity at the cigarette clamped between the index and middle finger of his right hand. "I had a good night tonight."
    "Me too."
    He sighed shakily and took a drag on his cigarette, exhaled smoke. "Is it going to stay like this?"
    "Like what?"
    He gestured at himself, then me. "This."
    "If we want it to, it will, sure."
    "Good." He drained his beer. "That's good."
    I noticed he wouldn't meet my eyes. "What's eating you?" I asked, suspecting that it was something other than just our present situation.
    "Nothing," he said, frowning. "It's nothing." Then he did look at me, if only briefly, and gave me a tired smile. "I'm just drunk. You know me when I've had one too many."
    "Or nine," I said.
    "Yeah. Maybe I'll go to work tomorrow, after all."
    "What made you change your mind?"
    He stubbed out the cigarette in his bottle cap. "The money, I guess. Like you said, the shrink isn't gonna be cheap."
    "True," I agreed. "But we'll figure it out. And it'll help when I'm back to work too."
    He nodded, stood. "You staying up for a while?"
    "I wasn't planning on it, no."
    "Okay. Think I'm gonna turn in."
    "I'll be there in a minute," I told him. "Make sure you brush your teeth and spritz yourself with some deodorant when you go up."
    He gave me a quizzical smile. "Why?"
    "If you don't, the kids will smell the beer and cigarettes on you when you kiss them goodnight." And don't you clearly recall Daddy reeking of those very things? a voice inside me whispered unkindly.
    "Yeah, you're right." Chris looked disappointed. I knew why, but waited until he turned and started for the stairs before I alleviated that feeling for him. "And because I don't much like the taste of it myself."
    He smiled, uncertainly at first, until I mirrored it.
    "See you upstairs," he said.
     
     
     
    * * *
     
     
    "I'm sorry," Chris said later. He was sitting naked on the edge of the bed, lit only by the sulfuric glow from the streetlight outside our bedroom window. His face was a mask of blurred and jaundiced shadows. "I don't know—"
    "It's all right," I said, releasing his flaccid cock after a good half hour spent trying in vain to get him hard. As I rose and tugged on my panties, he leaned forward and put his head in his hands.
    "Fuck," he said with such ferocity that spittle speckled my bare belly.
    I put my hands in his hair and hushed him. "It's not a big deal, Chris. You're drunk, and it's been a while."
    He made a startling sound then, an odd strangled noise I had never before heard from him in all our years of marriage. Alarmed, I tried to take a step back, but he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me closer, pressed his face hard against my stomach. In an instant, I felt dampness against my skin as he wept.
    So many tears lately , I thought. From everyone I know.
    "What's wrong?" I asked and stroked