Jack couldn’t keep track of his cellphone if his life depended on it. I would find it in the oddest places: jammed between two books on the bookshelf, or under our mattress, or in the toilet tank. I once found it in the freezer, in a baggie filled with half-frozen chicken breasts.
I cultivated the habit of buying him burner phones, which I kept in a drawer in our dresser. Whenever I wasn’t able to find the one he had been using, I’d hand him a new one, knowing it was only a matter of time before we did it all again.
Jack was like a child. I had to stay one step ahead of him at all times. I grew to know the spots he frequented: the dive bars, the decks, the gardens and cemeteries. I knew all of his friends and had saved all of their numbers. I stayed on top of where he went and how he had gotten there. I drove him around, or walked with him, carefully counting the hours we were apart, knowing when I needed to check in on him.
One night, he had been gone for too long. It was just after two in the morning, and I hadn’t heard from him since ten the night before. I called, letting it ring until I heard his voice, asking me to leave him a message and he’d get back to me as soon as he could. I hung up and dialled again with no reply.
I climbed into the car and began my routine. First, I went to the bar on the corner, asking the boys when they had last seen him.
“Oh, he left a few hours ago,” the group assured me. “Figured he’d be home by now.”
I thanked them and, downing a glass of bourbon the bartender had placed in front of me, headed out. The barkeep never asked me to pay, and I was uncertain whether it was a gift or if he added it to Jack’s tab. I wondered how big that tab was right now.
I drove to the deck downtown. It was grungy and loud, littered with cigarette butts that had been stomped into the wood, the dried tobacco leaves spread everywhere. No one had seen Jack since that afternoon. I smoked a cigarette, trying my best to block out the scream-singing of some local punk band.
When I arrived at the city garden, it was empty and damp. The flower beds were designed with symmetry in mind, peppered with tulips and roses, with ivy and pothos clinging to the rock face walls. The benches were vacant, shimmering with droplets that reflected the yellow street lights. I wiped a space with my sleeve and sat, doing a bump of cocaine with my car key before continuing on toward the graveyard.
The witching-hour air was bitingly bitter. I walked along the paved path, the whistling of wind and my heels clicking created the only noise in the vicinity. I examined the headstones, covered with moss and barely legible wording that had been flattened by time. I stopped in front of a small headstone that was encased in a rectangle of wood. I ran my fingers along the tomb, making out the date: 1876–1877.
I was on edge, spooked and half-cut, driven by my desperation to find Jack. It was always stronger than any of my other emotions. It was carnal, compulsory, illogical. My eyes scanned every nook and cranny as I periodically peeked over my shoulder to ensure no one was following me.
Then I heard a groan. I knew that groan. I followed it until I found Jack, lying between two headstones, wearing his navy-blue cashmere coat and pleated brown trousers. His hair was damp, his forehead gashed, his hair caked with dried blood. I ran toward him and dropped to my knees, shaking him furiously. “Jack?!”
He writhed on the ground and continued to moan. I repeated his name, shaking him.
Then, as if nothing had happened, he opened his eyes, green and dewy. “Grace?”
“Yes, baby.” I smiled, forgetting the entire night in that moment. My anger and desperation melted, and I was filled with relief and warmth. “It’s me. I need you to get up.”
“Gracie, tell me a story.”
“Okay, but I need you to get up first.” I tried yanking him to his feet, but he just flopped.
He groaned and chuckled, chanting, “Story, story, story.”
I immediately remembered one of the nursery rhymes that William would recite whenever I had misbehaved as a child. Knowing that Jack wouldn’t comply until I told him something, I began:
Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.
Up Jack got
And home did trot,
As fast as he could caper;
Went to bed
To mend his head
With vinegar and brown paper.
Jill came in
And she did grin
To see his paper plaster;
Mother, vex’d,
Did whip her next
For causing Jack’s disaster
Jack’s forehead creased, the lines of dried blood separated and lifted from his skin. He repeated “Jack’s disaster, Jack’s disaster, Jack’s disaster” until I got him onto his feet, out of the cemetery, and into the passenger seat.