Also-Ran

I found no note, thank God. Enough self-recrimination bounced around in my head without additional help from a tortured apology or confession. Of course, I had to tell my parents what had happened, and her father; those conversations fueled my guilt even further, but they all pledged to offer whatever help we needed. Unfortunately, none of them lived nearby, so that support would mostly be moral.

That night, I tossed and turned; neither the physical nor emotional exhaustion could overcome my anxiety, anger, and fear to lull me to sleep. I couldn't sleep in our room, that was for certain. She had almost died there. Would have died there, if I had come home when I'd told her I planned to. How could she do that to me? To us? In her drug-addled state, she said she was trying to free me, but how could living with her ghost be freedom?

When I last looked at my phone before slumber overcame me, it was well into the early morning; when I woke, only a few hours had passed. I dragged myself from bed and showered; I probably should have the night before, but I wasn't thinking clearly then. I chuckled to myself; I wasn't thinking clearly now, either. But I still had to face the day. Face the day, and face my wife.

I didn't see Jeanne's doctor when I arrived at the hospital, and there were no signs forbidding entrance. She was awake but hadn't noticed me walk by her window, instead staring off into the middle distance. I wondered if she was still feeling the effects of the drugs. But when I pushed the door open and stepped inside, she glanced up, then turned her head towards me and smiled; she was as clear as I'd ever seen her.

"Scott, I'm so sorry. I--"

I shook my head. "Don't. We can talk about that later."

"No, Scott. No. I need to say this. Please. Come sit with me?"

Sighing, I pulled up a chair next to her bed. "You need to focus on getting better, Jeanne. And- And I need to... to..." I stopped. She needed to focus on getting better, like I said. We could have it out once she was in a place to--

"Oh, Scott." She reached out and caressed my face. Her hand felt so warm on my face. It felt like home. A tear spilled down my cheek. "Scott, baby, I'm so sorry. For everything."

"Don't." I choked out one word, just one. It was all I trusted myself to say.

Her tears joined mine. "I have to. I love you, Scott. I mean that. I told you before that I've always loved you, and I have. I just..." She bowed her head. "I need... I need help, Scott. I see that now. That... What I did yesterday, it wasn't a cry for help. I wanted to end it."

"Jeanne--" My voice cracked.

"I'll be better, Scott. I promise I will. I am, a little, already. I... The doctors talked with me some. They're going to talk to you, too. They want to put me some place where- where I can get better. Where I can think clearer. It'll probably be for a few weeks. I'm sorry, Scott, I know that I'm asking even more from you; you're going to have to watch the kids and--"

I laughed. I couldn't help it. She looked up sharply; not angry, just confused. I had several cruel retorts in my head. 'I was going to have to watch them a lot longer than that if you had succeeded.' 'Hey, just one more way you've let me down.' 'So you're crazy now? That's your excuse?' But as angry as I had been, nearly losing her had made me think clearly for the first time in almost a week.

I couldn't forgive her yet, though. Her near-death had made me focus on how much I loved her and how much I feared losing her. It didn't redeem her. It didn't heal the hurt. But my kids needed their mom, and I wanted to try to find a new 'us' from the rubble of our past. We could only do that after she mended.

So I took her hand in mine, steadied myself, and said, "Whatever it takes, Jeanne." She stared at me, almost uncomprehending, then pulled me close--as close as the awkward way we sat allowed--and cried into my neck for a good long time, sobbing over and over, "I love you. I'll be better."

Jeanne's prediction of "a few weeks" was short by about a month. The month and a half she spent in the psychiatric facility was one of the most miserable times of my life. Her absence didn't hurt that much, if I'm honest. It gave me time to process how I'd felt about everything I learned.

I tried to keep the details from my parents. I didn't need the embarrassment, and it wouldn't help her heal. Every time I went over the theoretical conversation in my head, I wanted to book a flight to Buenos Aires and change my name. Her father suspected, I think, but didn't say anything. The closeness to her "friend's" death was too much of a coincidence.

The kids came home on schedule. Maybe that was a mistake, but I missed them. I wanted a reminder of why I was trying so hard to repair my marriage. Trying to repair Jeanne, for that matter. While she was away, they were my anchor. Unfortunately, that proved true in both senses of the word.

Having them around gave me strength and purpose. Rachel and Nate's presence brought me joy at a time when very little else did. But they also presented an enormous logistical problem. I had to tackle the roles of both father and mother, while also reassuring them this wasn't a permanent change in status. It didn't help that I wasn't entirely sure of that as the weeks wore on.

I had almost no help close by. My mother and father still worked, as did Jeanne's dad. "Uncle Hank" came by a few times to give me a little time to myself, as did Bobby and Warren, but that represented maybe two or three hours a week. The rest was me, the kids, and the juggling of my work and their school to meet their needs.

The constant demands meant I didn't have much time to think about Jeanne's betrayal or her meltdown; unfortunately, the time I did have was stolen from my sleep. Within a few weeks, I knew that I needed a professional to talk to; maybe not as much as Jeanne, but I still needed it. But what I needed didn't really matter when there were two kids to take care of and bills to pay.

"What I needed didn't really matter." That phrase rattled around in my head more and more as I awaited my wife's return from her treatment. I visited her a few times, but not much; the doctors felt she needed to work on her issues in a safe, controlled environment away from stressors. Fucking bully for her.

"What I needed didn't really matter." I needed help: with the kids, with my pain, with the feelings of helplessness and betrayal. I didn't get it. Jeanne got what she needed, and I didn't. It was our relationship writ small: she needed, she wanted, she got. I was given enough to keep me happy, but not the things I really needed. I hadn't realized it before, but it's true what they say: the problem with rose-colored glasses is that all the red flags just look like flags.

"What I needed didn't really matter." Instead of healing, I festered. My love for my kids masked the pain so they couldn't see it; I hoped it did, at least. I missed their mom just like they did; that's what they saw. But that wasn't it. I missed her less and less as the weeks went by and resented her more and more.

And then the day came: Jeanne was released from the hospital with a clean bill of health and a new lease on life, risen like a phoenix from the ashes. The kids almost knocked her down when she came through the door, and she clutched them tight to her chest, crying and telling them how much she'd missed them. These weren't the despondent sobs I'd seen before when she sank her dagger into my heart, though. They were pure joy, at least until she looked up and saw my blank stare.

She hugged and kissed me, too; I made it look good for the kids. "Yay, Mommy's home! Why don't you go show her what you've been up to while she was gone?" Anything to have her out of my presence for a little while longer, to see the backside of this hated, loved, needed thing that I had married. Jeanne turned to look at me as she went with them, and I smiled as best I could. It wasn't nearly enough to mask my ambivalence towards her.

Her behavior during the following weeks felt off. That was my most immediate impression. I couldn't put my finger on how exactly. It was just wrong. At first, I thought she was simply happy to be home, but it was more than that. On the surface, she acted the same way toward the kids, towards me, towards our friends and family. Better, I thought, but in a way that unsettled me. I couldn't decide exactly why, though.

I might have figured it out sooner if I hadn't kept her at such a distance. Yes, I loved her. Yes, almost losing her had terrified me. Yes, I wanted us to find a way forward together. But the time spent holding the line after her breakdown, staying constantly on the go with no rest, giving her the time she needed to heal while I could only hurt: these demands blunted my love and fear and hope, leaving me only with a sharp, biting, painful resentment.

She had abandoned me. That was how it felt. Yet again, I made sure her dream of a loving family stayed intact, while mine--that of a wife who I felt safe sharing my life with--had stayed on the back burner. Once again, we hadn't been partners. Not really. Once again, I had been slotted in where I was needed, an interchangeable cog in her dreams. A valuable one, maybe, the best one she could hope for, but a cog nonetheless.

Was I being unfair? Possibly. Definitely. I even knew it at the time. But other than the few days between when she went into the psych hospital and when I picked Rachel and Nate up from my folks' farm, I had had no downtime of note. I wasn't thinking clearly. And the truth is that even if I had been, there was a kernel of truth at the center of my resentment, a grain of sand that irritated and irritated until it turned into a great black pearl of seething anger.

Jeanne told me about her time in the hospital and how it helped her, how it made her see things more clearly, how she was going to show me that we could get through this together. She told me how deeply she loved me, that her heart had shifted, that I was the great love of her life, and that she had needed the time clear of everything else to see it.

But when she talked like that, in the back of my head I could only think, 'what if all it did was give her time to perfect her lies?' Before, she thought she had me entirely fooled. Now, she knew she didn't. Twelve years together hadn't been enough for her to give the asshole up. Did she expect me to believe that a suicide attempt and six weeks of getting her head shrunk would manage it?

So, yes. I kept my distance. I still doted on the kids--and, yes, they were mine, courtesy of Crick and Watson--still kissed her when I came through the door each day, still acted like the devoted husband. But that's what it was: acting. I loved her, but I did it almost in spite of myself. I resented my love for her, because of what it represented: my own complicity in the abuse of my trust. My damned fool heart couldn't let go of its dream, any more than hers could. It rankled me that she was right, that if she had cut me loose I almost certainly would have pined after her like she had for James.

At night, we shared the same bed, but that was all. Jeanne tried to cuddle, and I allowed it. She knew that's what it was, an allowance, but she took what she could get. A small, vicious part of me thought, 'that's always what she's done, isn't it?' That part, sadly, still drove so many of my actions.

We didn't make love, didn't have sex, didn't really share much of anything in the way of physical intimacy. Jeanne tried to initiate a couple of times, but I couldn't get the image of her fantasizing about James all those times before out of my mind. My body wouldn't respond. I felt inadequate. Impotent. Irrelevant. She spooned me from behind afterwards, trying to be a comforting, loving presence. It didn't work.

She gave me space, and I turned it into distance. She gave me love, and I eyed it with suspicion. She reached out to me, and I withdrew. The pattern repeated over and over for months; I hated it, but I didn't see a way out. I loved her, but I hated her.

I hated my love for her. I hated my own weakness. I hated her lies, and I hated the truth. Therapy helped a little once I was able to start, but only as much as a band-aid plastered over bullet holes. I was bleeding out, and nothing could staunch the flow.

Until she did.

I got drunk; I rarely do. Hell, I rarely drink at all. But the kids were in bed, I'd had a bad week, and... well, just my life in general at that point. I sat at that damned kitchen table--I never had found time to get rid of it--and drank until things seemed better. That was the plan, anyways. But they never seemed to get better, just blurrier.

Jeanne touched my shoulder; I'd fallen asleep there, slumped over the scratched surface and still gripping a bottle of whiskey in one hand. "Scott." Her voice came soft but insistent, as if she'd repeated herself a number of times.

"What." Even to my ears, the words felt slurred.

"Come on, love. Let me take you to--"

I laughed in her face. "'Love.' That's a good one." She frowned. "Your love is worth about as much as--" I tried to rise, but stumbled. Jeanne caught me under one arm; I tried to shake her away. "Geroff! Don't need you to- you to- to help me."

The room spun. She gripped me tighter. "I said, 'OFF!'" This time, I tore myself loose, staggering away from her and into a wall. I pressed my back to it, trying to stay upright. Gravity won. I slid down, ending up seated only marginally upright on the floor.

Jeanne moved to my side, kneeling down with concern and sadness on her face. "Scott. Please, let me help you to bed."

"Why?" I scoffed. "James isn't there. That's- that's who you wish I was. And I can't even get it up now, because of what you've done. Just go finger yourself while you fantasize about him. You don't need me. Never did." The room spun faster, and my stomach couldn't keep up. Like I said, I almost never got drunk, and I'd never gotten anywhere near this drunk.

"Honey--" was all she got out before I threw up, drenching me, her, and the floor. She stopped, looked down at herself, then at me, and froze in horror. Then she laughed uproariously while I stared at her, confused.

All the fight had gone out of me--along with the liquor--and when she pulled at me, I stood. Jeanne supported me as we staggered to our bedroom, then into our bathroom. After propping me up against the counter, she started the shower and began to disrobe.

I hadn't seen her body in months. "Gorgeous." It just slipped out, a single mournful word. More followed it, tumbling from my mouth. "So gorgeous. Is... Is that why? Why I'm not enough for you? Because--"

Her hand covered my mouth. "You're drunk and covered in vomit." Yeah, no shit. "Let me get you out of these clothes and into the shower, and you can say whatever you want in there." I nodded; that was a mistake. My eyes went down to the floor as I tried to regain my equilibrium, then stayed there as she stripped off my filthy shirt and pants. Then she once again all but carried me, this time into the shower.

I let her soap me up while I swished water around in my mouth a few times and spat. The cool tile felt good against my skin as I leaned against it, eyes closed. Her hands felt even better, lathering my chest and neck, my arms, then my stomach. I felt a tingling in my groin. As long as I didn't look at her, I could imagine she was someone else. I could still feel like a man then, as long as I didn't look into those beautiful green eyes and know how they found me lacking.

As her hand moved lower, I opened my mouth to make another crack about James, but she beat me to the punch. "You've always been enough. God, you've always been way, way more than enough. You've been everything, and I've just been too stupid and too blind to accept it. Really accept it, I mean."

I opened one eye, trying to focus on her. "You saved me, Scott. Not just with the... with what I did that day. I was so locked into what I wanted that I missed what I had. What you gave me. Not just my dream, but that too. You gave me a love that no one else could ever measure up to."

She kissed my chest. "Even once you learned what I'd done, how I'd treated you, you still were going to take care of all of us. You were going to stay and pretend I hadn't ripped your heart out, and you'd do it for our kids, and... and I think for me, too. You were enough of a man to try to love someone who had proved herself so unworthy of that love, because it meant you could keep your family together. That's..." She leaned her head against me. "That's when I decided to... to end it. Because you deserved a woman that could commit to you the way you'd committed to me."

"Yeah. Yeah, I did. I do." The water hid my tears, or at least I hoped they did. "I deserve better than being your fucking--"

My wife's arms went around me, squeezing me tightly, squeezing the air from me. "I know. I know you do. You saved me from my stupid fantasy with that stupid asshole. You were the man I needed, but I couldn't--" Her voice cracked. "I didn't treat you like that. Didn't treat you like the treasure you are. But I will, Scott. I will. I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. I love you."

Both eyes opened, and I looked down at her, the bleariness abating somewhat. Jeanne looked up and said again, "I love you." The difference I had noticed since she came home from the hospital, that 'wrong thing,' suddenly seemed right. "You are first in my heart. I'm sorry it took this long. But you are, and you always will be. For the rest of my life."

That was the difference, or part of it, at least: the way she looked at me. It wasn't exactly the way she looked at James; this was more intense. Hungrier. Desperate. There was love there, profound love, but alloyed with something else: the pain of loss. She had lost me, and we both knew that. The revelation that day had ripped my heart out, and her confession stomped all over it. And still, she fought.

I knew the look in my wife's eyes. It was the older sibling of the one that haunted my face in the days after our wedding and after James' visit, when suspicion nagged at me. The twin of the one that stared at me in the mirror that night at the hotel when I questioned my children's parentage. It was the look of a person that had everything they wanted right in front of them, but who feared that it was just out of reach, who feared they'd never bridge the gap to make the person they so desperately loved love them, too.

It broke my heart, but only in sympathy. "Jeanne--"

"Shh." She stood on tiptoes and silenced me with a kiss. "I know. I have so much to make up for. You don't trust me. That-- it hurts, but I deserve it. But I'll spend the rest of my life showing you. I will put you first, ahead of anything except our kids, always. I've tried to do that, but it was..." Her lip quivered. "It was for show. It was. I thought it was enough, enough to make up for lying to you, but it never was."

Jeanne kissed me again. "Anything, Scott. I'll do anything to prove it to you. I'll give anything you ask, do anything you desire, sacrifice anything you need to prove it to you. If- if you want, I'll sign a post-nup that gives you everything, that gives you primary custody of the kids, hell that indentures me to you, with no preconditions. You can divorce me, and I'll be your servant."

"I don't- Jeanne, why would I want that?"

She smiled sadly. "I know you don't. But I'd do it. And I won't lie and say it's for you; it's for me. I need you, Scott. I need to- to see that love in your eyes again. To know that I'm the center of your universe. I've heard that hell isn't the flames and the torment, but no longer being under the eye of a loving God. That's how it feels, Scott. I didn't know. I didn't know how much the absence of your love would hurt."