LOST MOMENT
SOMETHING’S SHAKING ME. Groggy, dazed, and drug impaired, I want to ignore it. I tuck the covers over my head and try to return to that zeroness of a Clonopin coma.
“Wake up!”
“Go away,” I mumble. My head throbs and my arms feel like lead.
“Jeremiah! For God’s sake, will you wake up?” Jessica’s voice. She sounds excited.
Am I dreaming? I’m rocked back and forth, like a boat in heavy seas.
“God! You’re intolerable! Get up!!!”
I peel one eye open, still unsure if this is real or a dream.
Jess grins at me and starts to dance around the living room and our makeshift bed.
What the hell?
“Jess, you look like a hummingbird on crack!”
“Are you awake? You’re not going to believe this!”
“What? What’s going on?” My voice sounds like I’m talking from a bathysphere four miles under water.
“I’m pregnant. Jeremiah, you’re going to be a father.”
What?
Did I hear my wife right?
No way. No … way.
“Baloney.”
“You misread it.”
She skips out of the room and returns a moment later, waving some stick-looking thing at me.
“Ahhgh! Get that thing away from me. You peed on it!”
“Look! For God’s sake, see for yourself! It’s blue!”
Yes, blue. Yes it is.
Somewhere deep inside of me, I know I should react. At the core of whatever I am, I feel something stirring, something big. Then the Clonopin, Saraquil, and Zoloft all conspire to slam that door closed.
I feel nothing, just that empty numbness my crazy-man’s cocktail provides.
“You are going to be a father!” Jess repeats. She’s so excited she can’t sit. She leaps off the bed to her feet and starts dancing around again. “And all because of a dream I had my freshman year!”
A teenage prophecy.
I roll over and stuff a pillow over my head. A small kernel of concern forms in my gut, but I don’t have the capacity to care. The drugs have lobotomized this life-changing moment, and I’m okay with that.
In seconds, I’m out cold again. The Clonopin coma. It feels all right.
At ten, I’m released from its grip. The living room’s empty. Jess has long since left for school. She’s going through our local beauty school, learning how to style hair and whatnot. She’s good at it, and has excellent fashion sense.
I rise from the sack, feeling hungover and sluggish. As usual. I begin another morning as a drug-induced zombie. God I hate this feeling. Every morning—nothing. Just slow dopiness, like I’m some sort of junkie addict.
Well, maybe you are.
No, we won’t go there this morning.
A vague memory slaps me around. Jessica dancing. Waving a white stick and telling me she’s pregnant.
—That was a dream, right?
Fuck all. On this stuff, I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not.
I chalk it up to a dream. A shave and shower later, I head upstairs for breakfast, where I find Von and Alma in the kitchen.
“Morning, Jeremiah!” Alma says excitedly. That’s strange. Dim alarm bells sound in my mind.
Von nods his head. He looks concerned.
Oh hell, have I done something again? I wrack my brain. Any crazy fragmented memories?
No. Just Jessica dancing around the bed.
“How’s it feel?” Alma asks.
“How’s what feel?” I ask in a flatlined voice.
“Why, Jeremiah, you’re going to be a dad!” Alma bursts out, all smiles and a delighted look in her eyes.
“That wasn’t a dream?” I ask.
Von shakes his head. He’s the yin to Alma’s yang. He’s looking into the future—which contains what for his grandchild?
Another upwelling of emotion stirs inside me. A thousand thoughts dump into my brain simultaneously.
You’re not fit to be a parent right now.
Guess I’ll have to get fit.
A stab of panic pierces the drug cocktail’s zombie-cloak. It recedes as quickly as it came, and I’m left feeling nothing again, but sensing a raging sea somewhere way inside.
“Aren’t you excited?” Alma asks, a demi-frown now etched on her face.
“Sure! I’ve always wanted to be a dad!” It feels forced and overly happy; the zombie does Broadway. She doesn’t look convinced. Von’s frown deepens.
I grab a quick bite to eat before retreating to the basement living room. I spend the day trying to think. But I’m swimming upstream against the meds, and I find no clarity, only a muddy mess.
Jess comes home in the evening. She hugs me so hard I fear she’ll crack her back.
“What do you think?” she asks, eyes bright. I know her. Underneath the excitement, she’s worried, too. Terrified.
“I think I’ve got one more reason to get my shit together.”
“Good. That’s what I want to hear.” She pauses, kisses my cheek, and adds, “You’ll be a great dad if you aren’t a depressed asshole.”
“There’s an endorsement. Thank you.” I can’t help grinning.
It’s late, and the edge is off the meds again. I’m in that wonderful trough, becoming human again with all the frailties and emotions that go with it. The more my system flushes this crap out, the more I feel.
“If we have a son, will you let him play football?” I ask.
“Of course. If we have a daughter, will you promise not to cheat when we take her out golfing?”
We both bust out with our first real laugh of this leave.
Back in high school, Jess played on the school golf team. She has a killer swing, powerful and accurate, and whenever we played, she mopped the green with my ineptitude. The truth is, I’ve been programmed to win at everything I try. Getting my tail kicked by my girlfriend inflamed my inner Cro-Magnon chauvinist. So, I used to cheat.
One time, I had fallen many strokes behind. She enjoyed her dominance thoroughly, and as she teed up on the next hole, she flashed me a quick, sidelong glance. Her lips were curled in an I own you, Bub sort of smile. I couldn’t suffer that, even if the glance made me want to sweep her into my arms and kiss her right there on the fairway. As she prepared to swing, I sidled over to our golf cart and hit the horn. The unexpected noise caused her to flinch in mid-backswing.
She looked up at me in mock anger. “Stop that!”
“My bad. Sorry!”
“Yeah, right.”
I tried my best to look hangdog and apologetic. “Okay. I’ll be good.”
She settled back into her stance and concentrated on the ball. Just as she lifted her club, I threw the golf cart in reverse and went speeding off. Then I switched gears and raced back up to her.
She waited for me, hands on her hips, club at her side. She let out a long, exasperated hiss and said, “You only do this stuff because I’m better than you and you can’t handle that.”
With just the right amount of humility I let her be the alpha dog, at least for a second. “I know.”
“You’re a bad actor, Jeremiah,” she scolded.
“Just take the shot, Jess.”
She returned to her stance, lifted the club into her back swing, and just as she came down on the ball, I coughed.
Sliced it. Furious, she stared at me.
“Sorry! Had something in my throat.”
“The hell you did!”
Her face glowed crimson, but even in her anger she looked absolutely stunning.
I chuckle at the memory, but then it recedes and vanishes.
“What makes you think I’ll let our daughter golf?” I ask.
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Well, I doubt they’ll have a golf team at the convent I’ll send her to when she hits puberty.”
“Oh, you think?”
“Yeah, that way she won’t run into the likes of me.”
“You were once so suave.”
“Well … it worked on you, didn’t it?”
She turns serious. “You’re going to be a father.”
“You’re going to be a mother,” I echo.
“Yeah. A mom. That’s hard to get my mind around.”
“Tell me about it.”
She curls her arms around me and puts her head against my chest.
“Is this what you want?” she asks.
“Well, it’s a little late to ask that, isn’t it?” I say.
“Okay, the timing isn’t the best. Still …”
We fall silent, holding each other next to our makeshift bed in her parent’s basement.
“What do you see in our future now?” she asks.
I’m on the far side of my drug-free trough now. The first twitches of my Clonopin craving start to kick in.
“Not sure,” I say honestly.
A ditch. Ira Hayes died in a puddle of blood and vomit.
The thought sends a shudder through me. Jessica hugs me harder.
My arms come up to her back. I caress her hair.
“What do you see? You’re the one with the prophetic dreams,” I ask.
“What I want is barbeques on lazy summer days. Softball games. Christmas trees and birthday parties.”
“I’d like that.”
“I don’t want things, Jeremiah. Diamonds won’t do it for me, even if we could afford them.”
“What do you mean?” The craving’s crawling and scratching around in my head now. I’ve got to take the Clonopin soon.
“That BMW you owned? That’s so not me. I just want us happy and healthy. An all-American family.”
“And I want you to be my best friend again.”
I kiss her hair. I realize she’s dodged my question and laid out instead what she wants our future to be. She’s just as scared as I am. Maybe more so.
“You’re my Angel,” I say. That was our song, “Angel” by Aerosmith.
A moment later, I break our embrace and disappear into the bathroom. My hands shake as I search for the Clonopin bottle. I pop a tablet in my mouth and suck water straight from the sink’s faucet. The trough is getting shorter and shorter. The cravings are getting harder and harder—and more physical.
I brush my teeth, and return to the living room. Jessica’s already tucked in bed. I slip in beside her, the Clonopin starting to kick in. A sheet of drowsiness enfolds me. The world goes round, edgeless. Emotions fade to nothing. No corners. No worries. A dark tunnel of dreamless sleep looms on my horizon.
Vaguely, I feel Jess snuggle close. She’s warm against me. I’m limp, clutched in the dead embrace of a Clonopin high.
“Tell me it’ll be all right?”
“Jessica, I’ll do my best. That’s all I have for you.”
The last thing I hear before the tunnel engulfs me is Jessica’s voice, tinged with trepidation, “Just make sure your best is good enough, okay? There’s two of us depending on you now.”
Darkness. A void. No concern. No worries. Just a placid faux emptiness that leaves me sated. I drift away …
… To nothing.