I Still Love You (2 page)

“I can’t wait ‘til he’s older and he can do it, I am gonna love it.”

“Believe me you are going to be the best Mom at this, you will be springing all sorts of tricks and have us dressed up bigger and better every year.” I was thinking of the old Rach, though.

She threw me a smile. “I hope so.”

I gave her shoulder a squeeze, the sweetie-bucket now swinging in my other hand. “I know so.” I didn’t but I wanted to give her confidence. That was what she needed to win back most. She had lost all her confidence.

When we got to Aunt Helen’s driveway we stopped and I slipped my jacket off Rach’s shoulders, then put it back on. “Here, you hold the sweetie-bucket, I’ll take Saint, I want to get him to play his trick on them.”

Rach smiled at me, in an,
oh-go-on-then
, way.

“Come here, sleepy head.” I lifted Saint out of her arms. He woke up and smiled at me. I loved it when he did that—woke up smiling. His face said,
oh, it’s you, l like you, I’m happy it’s you
… Kids must be able to see beyond Zombie make up.

I pulled the can out of my jacket pocket, “Here it is, and when we open the door you are going to pull the lid off with me and we will pop the worm out at Auntie Helen.”

We walked up the drive quietly. Most of the trick-or-treaters had started drifting off home now, and the street wasn’t so busy.

I had Saint balanced between my chest and my elbow, as one hand held the can against his little pumpkin leg and the other one held his hand on the lid. Rachel rushed past me, a little of her old energy back, and knocked on the door.

“Trick or treat!” we both called brightly when Aunt Helen opened the door. Then Rach leaned toward Aunt Helen, putting her hand up to one side of her mouth, and she whispered behind it, loudly. “Say you won’t give him a treat.”

Uncle Mike, and my younger cousin Kirk came out of the living room probably because they’d heard it was us.

“Well I am sorry, we don’t give treats from this house.” Aunt Helen said, as Uncle Mike walked up behind her.

“And certainly not to little pumpkins,” Uncle Mike added, smiling at me.

Kirk had come closer too. He was laughing at me.

“It looks like it’s going to be a trick then, Saint, let them have it!” I pulled the lid off the can, moving Saint’s hand within mine, and the long, green fluffy worm popped out and flew at Aunt Helen. She squealed, ducking out of the way.

Then oh my God, the most awesome thing… Saint laughed, I mean proper giggle laughed.

Rachel turned, her eyes wide and her mouth open. “That’s his first laugh!” she looked at me, tears sparkling in her eyes. Saint was still laughing. “That’s his first laugh.” She said it more quietly. It had shocked her.

It had shocked me. “I didn’t even know babies could laugh.” He’d stopped now.

“See if he does it again.” Kirk, bent down to pick up the worm. “Here.” He held out his hand for the can and he pushed the worm back into it, then he looked at Saint.

Saint was watching everything he was doing, and when Kirk popped the lid so the worm flew across in front of Saint. Saint broke into laughter again.

“Oh my God.” Rach grasped him from my arms and hugged him hard, he was still laughing over her shoulder, I think it meant more to her than just him laughing.

“Come in and have a coffee, or a hot chocolate. Would you like a hot chocolate, Rachel? You two must be freezing.”

“Coffee, please, Helen.” Rach answered, stepping in. My hand touched her back.

Kirk bent to pick up the worm again as I came past.

“You two do look good. Very good. I suppose the make-up is your work, Rachel,” Uncle Mike said. All my family were treading carefully around Rach, afraid of saying the wrong thing. They had hated her when we’d gotten together, then when I’d told Mom she had bipolar all of a sudden everyone loved her, and then she’d had an episode of really bad bipolar and now no one knew how to deal with it—with her. And I guess I was just as bad. Worse. Because I was way more emotionally invested in who she was, and bipolar defined that, and then constantly changed it, and then her meds had come along and smothered it.

“Hey, Saint!” Kirk called.

Saint was looking around Rach’s shoulder watching Kirk anyway.

Kirk fired the worm, and it flew over my shoulder at Saint, who immediately burst into another round of the cutest giggles. I laughed. “Saint, we got that to scare people, it’s not meant to make you laugh, you are ruining our trick or treating credibility.”

Kirk laughed, and bent to pick the worm up again. He was good with Saint. Kirk was still in high school, and I think he thought it was cool having a married cousin with a kid.

“Is Rich not in?” I looked at Uncle Mike.

Aunt Helen sighed. “He came in at some time in the early hours last night, then went out again this morning. Hopefully to work, but I have no idea if he actually goes there, and he has not come back since. I have no idea where he is half the time, or what trouble he is getting himself into and he just looks at us like we are crazy, and mean, and talk nonsense, if we say anything…he won’t listen.”

“We had to bail him out of jail again a fortnight ago,” Uncle Mike said. “He’d gotten into another fight.”

“He is going to end up in a jail permanently… ” I said in a low voice. I didn’t understand Rich, he’d been hanging around with the wrong people, and it was like he’d turned blind. He couldn’t see how bad the guy he’d gotten friends with was. But I had enough of my own problems, he’d have to sort out his.

“Hey, Saint!” Kirk called again, and fired the worm. Saint laughed again, and I laughed too. God that was a good sound.

“Helen, do you think it would be okay to give Saint just one little white chocolate button. It would be cool if he could have his first taste of chocolate tonight,” Rach asked.

“I’m sure that one little piece is not going to do him any harm.”

Rach turned and handed him to me smiling. I could see his laughter had really pulled up her mood too. She set the sweetie-bucket down on a side table and found the buttons, tore them open and pulled one out.

She smiled at me. Yes, I could see another little glimpse of the old Rach, there was excitement in her eyes that said,
I am about to give him his first taste of chocolate!
“Here, Saint.” She broke it in half and popped one half in his mouth.

He sucked it rather than chewed it, and his eyes were full of,
what is this
, thoughts.

I laughed and grinned at her as she gave him the second half.

Awesome. This had turned into the special night she’d wanted. I was really glad for her.

It was nearly seven after we’d drunk our coffee and time to get home and get Saint tucked in. Uncle Mike gave us a ride back home so we didn’t get cold. Saint fell asleep in my arms on the drive back, even though it was only minutes.

Mom was at the door to welcome us home. “Now there are my ghoulish wanderers. ”

I smiled at her as she smiled at Rach. To be honest they were the best people with Rach; Mom had endless patience, and she was not as emotionally involved as me. She could be a little more dispassionate and the sensible presence. I just tended to cling to Rach and ride her rollercoaster of emotions with her. But I had got used to that, and now the ride had stopped and stupidly I was unsure what to do.

Mom reached out to take Saint from Rach as we stepped in. “I’ll take him, and give him a wash and get him ready for bed, you two can go straight out if you want to.”

“No.” Rach said immediately. “I want to put him to bed.”

“We have plenty of time,” I said to Mom. “It’s too early to go out now anyway.”

She smiled at me, as Rach wandered off along the hall with Saint.

“He laughed for the first time ever.” I said to Mom, as I shut the door. “When we fired that worm thing off, and then Kirk kept doing it and Saint laughed every time.” Mom smiled. “I’ve never heard anything so sweet in my life.”

“I forgot to say!” Rach turned at the end of the hall. “Oh my God, Granny! It was amazing!”

I smiled at her. Her meds made her thoughts a bit mixed up into a pickle; she would be annoyed with herself that that had not been the first thing she’d said to Mom. She would be down on herself and tell herself that mothers bragged and if she didn’t brag then she was not good enough. I knew a lot of the constant shit that went on in her head now… when her down voice was speaking anyway. But when her up voice was speaking, well that I could not predict… but that had been the addictive thing, and her up voice hadn’t spoken in a long time.

Shut up brain—you married her in sickness and in health—for better or worse.

“Jason, would you run some water in the bath for him, while I get him undressed!” Rach shouted from the end of the hall.

I smiled at Mom.

“Do you want some coffee?”

“No, we had some at Aunt Helen’s.”

“Are you going to stay out tonight?”

“I don’t even know if we’ll go yet, it depends on Rach, she hasn’t really committed to it at all yet.”

She patted my arm. “Give her time, sweetheart, she’s been sick, you don’t expect someone to recover from a broken leg overnight. ”

“It’s not that… I just… I feel like I miss her.”

“And she is missing herself too. Just be there for her.”

“I am. You know I am.”

“I know, but what I mean is, don’t beat yourself up over the fact that that is all you’re doing right now. That’s the right thing and it’s enough.”

I nodded. I knew what she was getting at, that what we had right now may not be what it had been a year ago, but for the moment, I should stop looking for anything else and just accept that.

“Yeah.”

“Go and run that bath for Saint.”

I nodded again and when I walked off I took the worm trick out of my pocket and left it on the side, smiling at the memory of his laughter. I wish I could can that.

Rachel

Jason gripped my thigh briefly as he drove. It was a gesture that said,
it’s gonna be okay
.

I looked over at him, but he wasn’t looking at me, he was watching the road as he drove toward Portland and Billy’s and Lindy’s. He looked good as a Zombie groom. But it was bit bizarre driving looking like that. I laughed suddenly, it broke out of my throat for no reason—or not for no reason; I’d thought of Saint’s laughter.

That had been the most precious thing I’d ever heard.

Jason glanced over at me. He knew I didn’t want to go tonight, I found noise and lots of people a bit too much at the moment and there were people I didn’t like going. But he’d been imprisoned with me in the house for weeks, and I knew he wanted to go; I was going for him. But I hadn’t decided if I could cope with sleeping over there yet.

I smiled at him. He was getting worn-down by me… by my sickness. “Hey, I am going to try to get Saint to laugh again tomorrow and you have to get it on video on your cell.”

Jason winked at me, “and he’ll be glad that we did not film that first moment when he was looking like a pumpkin.”

Another laugh slipped out of my throat but it was tamer.

God my meds were making me feel so empty inside. I’d been to hell and come back, but now I felt like I was in limbo, still not really living at all, and there was a new threat over us that I hadn’t shared with Jason yet, because I didn’t know how the hell to tell him.

His hand reached over and squeezed my knee again. He must have seen the thoughts in my eyes and realized they’d turned sad.

“I won’t drink if you want to go home.”

“We could have brought Saint with us, then it would have been okay to sleep over.”

He looked away from me and gripped the wheel. “Rach, it is going to be noisy and busy, he wouldn’t have been able to sleep; he’s fine with Mom and Dad, and don’t you think we need a break… ”

That punched me. I did not want a break. I did not want to be without Saint. He was mine. It also pissed me off a little that Jason was happy to leave him.

But I didn’t argue. I just stared ahead. I felt like things had gotten broken. That Jason and I had gotten a little broken when I’d been sick. That was what was making it so hard to tell him about what I needed to tell him.

“Rach, you can be a good mother and have breaks. It’s fine to have breaks. It doesn’t mean we don’t love him, and… ” he took his eyes off the road and glanced at me. “You need breaks.” He looked back at the road. “You need to just be able to chill out and be yourself sometimes.”

“I don’t even know who me is anymore.” I’d been to such extremes in the last few months. “I’ve lost her somewhere.”

He sighed and glanced at me quickly, then looked at the road. “I know. That is exactly why you need some time to not worry about what Saint wants or needs and just be you, so you can find her again.”

I wasn’t sure I’d ever find her again.

“Give that person a chance tonight. Let’s stay over. Please? You need a break, I need a break. I want to spend some time with you.”

It was said because he cared, but my head shouted at me that it meant he didn’t really want Saint.

He does want Saint!
My sanity shouted back at my stupid bipolar brain.

I shut up and looked at the road, not answering. I still wasn’t sure. We spent the rest of the drive into town not talking. Things were definitely a little broken between us, and I was not a person who knew how to fix stuff. Jason was the fixer. I was the breaker. So if he didn’t want to fix things—then we were broken.

But wasn’t that what he’d been trying to say, that he wanted to stay over tonight because it would be good for us.

But things needed to be good for us with Saint.

The letter I’d opened yesterday rammed its way into my mind. I shoved it out again.

I was a good mom. I was good for Saint. I was the best thing for him. I was.

When Jason pulled into the street, where Billy and Lindy rented a place, the street was crowded with parked cars. “How many people did they invite?”

He smiled at me “A couple of dozen I think. Oh, come on, Rach,” he said to my expression of doubt “You’ve met some of our old school friends now. You know half these people. Don’t be a coward. You were never a coward.”

He parked up. Then turned off the engine freed his belt and looked at me. “So are we going in?”

I laughed but it sounded a little nervous. “You do know you look stupid trying to talk all serious to me when you are made up like a Zombie. ”

A smile parted his lips. A proper smile, that was trying to speak to me, not the shallow acknowledgement of my existence he’d been giving me a lot lately. “Rach. Let’s just go in and try to have a good time.”

“Okay.”

“Well sound a little like you want to have fun. Let’s go and have fun.”

“Sorry. Yeah.” I didn’t think I really knew how to right now.

He got out, and slammed the door, and I got out, and shut the door. I didn’t ever really get mad now, my meds were like this heavy weight on my emotions that pinned down extremes, my brain was too full of drugs to get angry, or excited…

He was waiting for me on the sidewalk a few feet away, and when I walked toward him he opened his arms and then he hugged me. He didn’t say anything, just held me as I wrapped my arms around his waist and held him too.

I didn’t know what to say. He was the fixer.

“No crying,” he whispered over my head, “you’ll ruin all that awful make-up.”

“I’m sorry, Jason.”

“It’s okay.”

It wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t okay. He was struggling to cope with me, and I didn’t know how to help him because I couldn’t cope with me either, and now there was more to hit us… How was he going to deal with that?

His mom had said to me, a couple of weeks ago, when I had told her I was worried about Jason falling out of love with me, that he’d married me knowing I was sick… But he hadn’t. I hadn’t told him I had bipolar until the day after we’d got married.

“Come on, my Zombie bride.” He gripped my hand, then lifted his free arm Zombie like. “Let’s go in like Zombies.” I knew what he was trying to do, he was trying to just push everything that had happened in the last couple of months aside.

“I feel like a Zombie on my meds anyway.”

He grinned at me. “You’re perfect for the part then.” He pulled me on.

We walked up their short driveway, and up the steps onto their porch, the place was small but cute. It was one floor and four rooms, two bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room, but it had its own backyard.

“Ready…Act Zombie,” Jason whispered.

Billy opened the door, dressed as superman. We lifted our arms and started moaning like Zombies as we walked forward, hands raised.

“Oh my God! There’s a Zombie invasion!”

He backed up and let us in, and Jason was still playing Zombie, so I did too as we walked into the living room. I saw Lindy and she smiled at me, lifting her hand. She was with her old school friends.

“You look good!”

“Wow you two look amazing!”

“They are awesome costumes!”

“Who did your make-up?”

“It’s all Rach’s genius,” Jason said, as we were surrounded.

This is why I hadn’t wanted to come. All the girls he’d been at school with still fancied him, and when I was feeling vulnerable, I didn’t like him being around them. To half of them I was still the out of town girl that Jason had weirdly attached himself too in the scary big city. I think they thought I was a toy he was going to get bored of.

“Rach,” Lindy gripped my arm and pulled me aside. “You look awesome!”

“Thank you.”

“Come into the kitchen and I’ll get you a drink, and you can tell me all about trick or treating.” She knew I wasn’t comfortable about being here; she also knew I didn’t get on with their old school friends all that well. Some of them I did, but a lot of them I didn’t, because they all had years of friendship on me, and they used it like a weapon, talking about the past.

“What do you want to drink, are you sticking to soft drinks?” Lindy looked over her shoulder.

“I should do, but can I just have a little dash of vodka in a massive glass of OJ.”

“Sure.” Lindy started making it.

“How are you?” I leaned on the counter watching her, it was still only a few months ago she’d lost her mom to cancer. It was crazy really, she had hated me when Jason and I had got together, but as she’d been engaged to him she’d had a pretty good reason to hate me, and now she was the closest girlfriend I had.

My meltdown had pushed Jason away and instead made his ex my friend. But seeing as she was now with Jason’s best friend, there would have had to have been some relationship between us otherwise life would have been painfully awkward for Jason, so this was probably really convenient for him. But it had come out of the fact that both of us were suffering. She’d been supporting her mom, and working out where Billy fit in, and I knew more about hardship than all the people in this house put together, and so Lindy and I had started talking.

“I’m fine.” Lindy answered as she put my OJ down. It would just look like orange juice if Jason saw it.

She sipped from the glass she’d poured for herself.

“Not really, though,” I said to her smiling.

“I miss Mom,” she whispered. Looking at the door like she expected Billy to walk in. “Don’t tell Billy, I’m trying to be happy for one night. He needs to have fun. But I feel guilty for having fun, I feel like it’s too early. I feel–”

I reached over and gripped her hand. “It is okay to feel down. You have a good reason to.” I didn’t. “You thinking of your mom is a good thing. Keep her with you. She was precious. Keep every memory safe. Did she take you trick or treating?”

“Oh yeah.” She laughed, “She was the queen of Halloween make-up. I used to get a ton of sweets. We were eating them for months. But you’d be good competition for her. You and Jason look amazing. God you haven’t even told me yet how you got on; what did Saint have on?”

I smiled. “A pumpkin suit. But you won’t believe this, Saint laughed at the trick. He really giggled, it sounded amazing. I didn’t want to leave him but Jason wanted to come out.”

It was Lindy’s turn to grip my hand. “Are you okay?”

I straightened and shook my head, then stupidly I started crying. She came around the counter and hugged me as the tears ran down my face ruining my make-up.

“What is it?”

I pulled away and reached to rip off a bit of kitchen roll, and blew my nose. “I should be really happy, and I can’t be. You have a good reason to be unhappy, I don’t, and yet I can’t pull myself out of it.”

“You’re sick. You can’t help it.”

“But Jason is getting bored of it.”

“He isn’t.”

I looked her in the eyes. “He is, Lindy, he isn’t the same… ”

Maybe she wasn’t the best person to say that to, but she was the only girlfriend I had, and anyway, she knew her and Jason hadn’t been right—because she and Billy were right—
and Jason and I were right
.

We had been right.

We’d just gotten broken.

I looked at Lindy. “Sorry; it’s your party and I’m ruining that now. I told you I shouldn’t come.”

“You should’ve come. Jason’s right, you two need to go out more.”

“Will you sort my make-up out so people can’t tell I’ve been crying?”

“Sure, come here.” She pulled me around to the sink, used some kitchen towel to clean my face up and then smear what make-up was left over the tracks of my tears. When she finished, she handed me my OJ and a bottle of beer for Jason, then picked up a beer for Billy. “Come on, let’s go and face the music, literally, we’ll put some songs on, and we’ll dance and we’ll force the blues away. We’ll just keep giving the boys beers and they’ll get so drunk they’ll never realize we’re depressed.”

“Yeah.” That was why I had come to like Lindy, because Lindy and I had been doing a lot of pulling each other up out of the blues.

“Come on, let’s go party, and remember Jason loves you lots, after all he left me for you, and that is saying something for a guy who avoids conflict.”

“And Billy is praising the Lord that Jason did, seeing as Billy has always been in love with you. So even if Jason and I split it is all for the best; at least we brought you and Billy together.”

“You two are not going to split up.” Lindy said looking back at me as we walked into the living room. She couldn’t say more because the boys saw us.

Jason was in a knot of girls with Billy. He smiled, looking beyond the girls, at me. I poked my tongue out at him. His smile lifted higher, and then he held a hand out for his beer as I got closer.

“Billy! We need some dance music!” Lindy yelled. “I vote line-dancing! Is anyone up for line-dancing?!”

I looked at Jason when most of the people in the room cheered. He hated line-dancing. He rolled his eyes at me as I planted the beer bottle in his palm. He gripped it as the girls around him turned to start helping decide which song they were going to dance to. I moved closer to him. The arm holding his beer came around my neck, and he leaned over and said into my ear. “You were ages, you okay?”

I nodded, biting my lip, refusing the lump of tears at the back of my throat, then I sipped my orange juice and felt the vodka burn my throat a little. It slipped into my bloodstream in moments. I really was not meant to drink with my meds.

With his arm still about my neck, Jason squashed me as he lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long swig from it. I pulled away, as Billy put on some country slash pop music album for them to dance to.

Jason took another swig from his bottle then looked me in the eyes. “Are we dancing?”

“If you want… ”

“If I want? Is this the girl who used to drag me literally shouting onto dance floors?”

“Yes we’re dancing.”

“Put your drink down then and come up close to me. I don’t fancy orange juice all over my best suit.”

“You have make-up all over your suit anyway.”

He smiled. “Am I allowed to take the wig off, this thing is itchy.”

“Yeah, I’ll let you.”

He pulled it off, and tossed it into the corner of the room.