NOVEL EXCERPT

I knew I was in love with Jack the summer he drowned.

An off-duty paramedic noticed him in distress. She screamed, ‘Call 911,’ then jumped into the water. When she reappeared she had Jack from behind, Heimliching him furiously. We knew he was all right when he screamed for her to stop.

I was never sure whether it was the idea of losing Jack forever that urged me over that line of friendly discretion or if it was the idea of another woman thrashing about with him in the water. I discussed it with my best friend Phillip who also happened to be Jack’s younger brother.

His take on the situation was simple.

He said, ‘You’re the most insecure egomaniac I know.’

I wouldn’t disagree.

But things aren’t always what they seem. As for myself, I’ve only been certain of one thing in my entire life: Jack. I’m still certain. I’ve just changed my mind.

Jack said our relationship failed because I refused to let go of a preconceived notion about love. I think it had more to do with him marrying somebody else. Either way, when I got a taste of life without him, there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do to get him back.

* * *

I never thought I’d be the kind of person who could say things like, ‘Yes, I’ve spent a little time in jail’, or, ‘If you count second cousins then, yeah, I’ve had sex with a relative’. I also never thought I’d be married and divorced enough times for it to be financially sensible to invest in a courthouse parking permit. But, there you go.

I didn’t set out to become a serial monogamist. Decisions seemed to make themselves although it’s more accurate to say that I let go of the reins (if indeed I ever had hold of them) and things just happened. I married and divorced four times, toyed with addiction, lost my job, and developed an unhealthy interest in collecting state spoons.

I also had three major car accidents in the span of seven weeks. My insurance company wasn’t pleased. One of those accidents involved my unmanned vehicle and a house.

When I realized the car was moving, I tried to get back inside but the door was locked and, with no time to remedy that, I did what I thought was the most logical thing: I jumped behind the car, planted my feet and tried to stop its backward progress. I’ve never been any good at math but, as I leveraged my weight against the ton and a half of steel and moulded plastic, I had time to work out a few simple equations. None of them were in my favour. I stepped out of the way.

When the policeman arrived, I said, ‘I can’t tell you how stupid I feel.’

He said, ‘Try.’

‘I considered getting in the car and faking a heart attack.’

‘Well, that plan has flaws.’

‘Yeah. I couldn’t get the door open for starters.’

He was pleasant enough after I passed the breathalyser. His expression said it all: amused condescension. He had me pegged. If I wasn’t legally drunk, he assumed I must be one of those people that wander around perpetually flabbergasted by life.

I wouldn’t say he was wrong.

The officer managed to pry open the passenger side door and told me, ‘Try to drive it home, a tow truck will be a waste of money.’

It made for an unfortunate scene what with the trunk horseshoed into the back seat, two flat tyres slapping against the pavement and sparks flying from the remains of a mailbox wedged underneath.

* * *

Sure, divorce is a bastard but hanging around the courthouse wasn’t all bad.

The building itself was impressive. It was built in 1891 by a wealthy Prussian named Alfred Minuit. Minuit wasn’t an architect but what he lacked in training, he made up for in palatial overstatement.

One might assume that Minuit’s penchant for French Baroque and Romanesque Revival fit right in given the south’s antebellum tendencies but people in Alabama were sceptical. That scepticism became full-blown hostility when Minuit imported in his own workers.

There has been some form of bloodshed every year since the courthouse opened. The most significant was when Walter Little dressed as a mailman and delivered a pipe bomb to Judge Benjamin Tolbert.

Judge Tolbert had dropped the gavel on Little’s son who was serving eighteen months, minus good behaviour, for rape and, in an unrelated trial, was sentenced to a consecutive term of five years for tax evasion. Walter Little could not be consoled nor could he be convinced that his son wasn’t the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice.

The bomb killed Judge Tolbert and his secretary. I learned this from reading a brochure which was printed by the Historical Society.

Courthouse security was tightened. Bags were checked by hand and weapons were banned. Any item construed as a potential threat was confiscated. Gone were the days you could bring your gun, knife, or axe (yes, axe). But it was a subjective process and visitors were forced to part with such things as curling irons, fingernail clippers, jars of jam and wooden rulers. Authorities eventually installed a metal detector that looked like something from a low-budget, science fiction film.

The guards had to physically search me because I kept setting off the alarm. The culprit was most often a metal spoon I used to secure my hair in a twist. I wore it like that a lot during the divorce decade. I also boycotted make-up, undergarments and the practice of shaving smooth my underarms and legs. Showers fell by the wayside as well, not because I didn’t want to be clean but rather, some undeterminable childhood fear resurfaced and I decided that I didn’t like getting my shoulders wet.

I landed somewhere on the spectrum between dishevelled and ripe hobo. I was still somewhat acceptable for work but rough-and-tumbled never came together for me as a fashion statement. There was no mistaking me for cool. Strangers felt comfortable asking me if I had a safe place to sleep at night and reminding me that Jesus looks after all his sheep, even those that have lost their way.

My self-esteem was like a bruised peach. Going out in public brought on panic attacks that made my blood run thick and hot, while my skin remained perfectly crocodilian. And that was just on a trip to the grocery store. Imagine what it was like when I went to the courthouse where I not only was legally acknowledging the abject failure of yet another relationship but also faced the very real possibility of running into Jack. He was an attorney in Birmingham and, although Phillip had assured me that Jack avoided family law like, ‘a bag of itchy assholes’, I couldn’t help but be on constant look-out. I waited for the moment I’d hear his voice, half-questioning, half-astonished, ‘Rachel is that you?’

Phillip suggested that’s why I got divorced so many times, just so I could force a seemingly chance encounter. He said, ‘I bet you walk around with a soundtrack playing in your head. Envisioning Jack scooping you up from the tobacco-splattered floor, a chapped, threadbare shadow of your old self.’

I told him to stop being so dramatic. ‘They don’t allow people to spit tobacco on the courthouse floor anymore.’

But of course I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t spend time fantasizing about meeting Jack as I waited at the courthouse. And anxious though I was about seeing him, I admit, I even ventured down the halls pretending to be lost while looking for him. I’d come early and stay late, wandering the marble corridors which were lined with portraits of governors and judges. I recognized the more recent paintings. They were done by a local artist named Jim Yancy. I knew Jim. He lived with us for a while.

Jim was a half a bubble off plumb. He had a tendency to lend these officious, serious-minded men a rather demented, comedic look. I assumed they were all thinly veiled self- portraits.

During our first meeting, he sprawled on a yoga mat, in an impressive Hanumanasana, the monkey pose, an advanced position in hatha yoga, while explaining the extrapolative art of reading eviscerated chicken innards.

‘Don’t use roosters,’ Jim said. ‘They’re unreliable, shiftless and have their own agendas.’

Many of Jim’s upper-crust friends tolerated his eccentricities, thinking it made them chic by association. They tolerated him because he was a Democrat-voting artist who had the nerve to go unbathed and still expect the best table in a restaurant. They attributed his odd behaviour to his highly-tuned cultural sensibilities. I think Jim’s odd behaviour had more to do with conspicuous consumption of pornography and PCP.

* * *

One of the judges that Jim captured on canvas, Judge Malcolm Hollister, presided over all four of my divorce proceedings and wasn’t shy about expressing his disapproval.

As my fourth divorce drew to a close, Hollister said, among other things, ‘Connor Lloyd McMann and Rachel Elizabeth Bennett McMann, will you both please stand and approach the bench. One of you, at least, knows the path very well.

‘Your divorce is granted by leave of this court on the grounds of those handy irreconcilable differences. And I have to ask, Rachel Elizabeth Bennett McMann, which of these words from your wedding vows do you have trouble understanding? Love? Honour? Sickness and health? God? Until death do us part? They seem fairly straightforward to me, and yet here you are, standing before me for the fourth time seeking to revoke your sacred vows.

‘Young woman, you are a stain on the fabric of God-fearing Christians. You have no respect for the holy union between man and woman. I pray that the Lord delivers you from the hands of the Devil and shows you the righteous path.’

I said, ‘Thank you.’

Hollister added, ‘Mister McMann… you have the sympathy of the court.’

Hollister was involved in a Supreme Court case, fighting for the right to display the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. He said these were rules from which everybody could benefit, ‘Especially hedonistic, non-believing trash.’ If Hollister had his way with me, I’d wear only frocks and would never dance, vote or masturbate (you can sell a gun in Alabama but not a sex toy). I would have spent my days obeying my husband, making babies and, if the rumours concerning Hollister’s Pentecostal practices were true, taking up serpents.

In the end, Judge Hollister was forced into early retirement. During an arraignment he used a racial slur to address the defendant then added insult to injury with his only public statement before strolling into exile, ‘Right is right, no matter how you say it.’

* * *

I did make one acquaintance during the ‘I’m in the middle of a divorce’ decade: Bailiff Eddie Walker.

Our first conversation began in the snack bar after I chipped a tooth on a frozen jellybean. Eddie was sitting at the table next to me.

He asked, ‘Are you all right?’

I had virtually my whole fist in my mouth trying to assess the damage.

‘I just chipped the hell out of my tooth.’

‘I thought you might be having a seizure.’ He handed me a napkin.

Eddie finished eating a junkyard slaw dog while I explained the ways in which a divorce is worse than a root canal. He tried to be sympathetic, but he wasn’t buying it. Eddie was a self-professed family man: one daughter, one son and one chocolate-coloured Labrador Retriever. He had been married to the same woman for eleven years and claimed not only to love her but to like her.

When I asked how they met, he was reluctant to say. But he eventually mentioned something about the internet and a singles chat room. The courtship consisted of instant messaging and emails. A cyber ballet ensued: ‘You show me your jpeg, and I’ll show you mine’. After a few months of virtual dating, they shared the expense of a cruise to Bridgetown, Barbados. They ate a bad batch of curried goat and were glad to leave the West Indies, raring to get back home to the United States where you get ice in drinks and Coke ‘tastes right’. The suffering brought them together.

* * *

After we got to know each other better, Eddie asked, ‘Why do you keep putting yourself through this?’

I said, ‘Everybody needs a hobby.’

‘Take up knitting.’ He looked around and asked, ‘Is he here yet?’

I pointed. ‘That’s him.’

‘Geez, you can pick ’em. This one doesn’t look like he could fight his way out of a wet paper bag.’

‘Why do you think he brought three attorneys?’

There was an awkward silence, and I said, ‘I better find a seat, looks like it’s going to be standing room only today.’

‘Hey, wait a minute. Take these.’ Eddie gave me two tickets to an open air concert at the municipal park.

For the briefest moment I wondered, is he interested in me? The rush of curiosity came out in an exaggerated, ‘How thoughtful.’

‘Not really. It’s free. The city’s on a big public relations kick. My boss told me to hand them out to anybody who’d take them.’

* * *

I never did see Jack at the courthouse.

All that worrying, whether or not my hair was washed or my shirt was egg-splattered or if I smelled like a fairground, for nothing. Well, I won’t say it was for nothing but I was worried about those things for the wrong reasons. I suppose it was like taking a fistful of all the wrong vitamins.

I did see Jack’s car in the parking lot one day. My lawyer had asked me to meet him because my then soon-to-be ex-husband was holding me in contempt of court for shouting at him over some mail and a thin gold necklace.

I knew it was Jack’s car because Phillip told me, ‘He’s gone out and bought a red, two-seater sports car. The man has a family of four. I mean, his wife drives a minivan for Christ’s sake. You’re not gonna believe what he put on his vanity plate.’

‘Shut your mouth. He has not got a vanity license plate.’

‘Oh but he does and it reads: JACKIN.’

And sure enough, it did.

I moved my car to a more desirable spot; one better suited to watching than being seen.

Owning fast, fine cars had been a passion of Jack’s for as long as I could remember. When we were kids he used to cut out pictures of cars, glue them to poster boards, and hang them from his bedroom ceiling. I felt genuine excitement that he had finally got a toy for himself and yet there was a tightening in my chest because the circumstances under which his dream had been delayed were severe and involved me.

He had tried to be happy for me when I turned sixteen and my father bought me a new 300ZX. It was a sweet ride, no mistake. And, in truth, Jack drove it more than I did. I loved that he loved it. Sometimes, with the radio blaring, the windows down, and the asphalt gripping the tread at over a hundred miles an hour, I thought he could go fast enough to forget that the car didn’t belong to him.

But all of that was before Jack and me and his springer spaniel, Winston, went for a drive to the lake one Sunday afternoon during my junior year of high school and Jack decided to show a guy who was riding a Harley Davidson along I65 just how fast my car was.

When it all went wrong and we started spinning great circles, first on the pavement and then into the median, I tried to hold onto Winston but I couldn’t make my arms work against the centripetal force and when the car started to flip, I remember that first lick as the back of my head broke a window but after that, I don’t remember anything for many days.

Winston died.

We should have.

Jack had a hard time with what he’d done because it was excruciating for both of us and heartbreaking for that precious dog that looked to us for love and treats and protection. He cried and told me later, ‘I’ll kill myself if you tell me to. I can’t stand to live knowing I’m this weak and stupid.’

I was very young then. All I knew to do was hold him and tell him that I loved him and I asked him, ‘Will you please just give me your pain? Give it to me and I’ll hold on to it. And we’ll both be all right.’

As I sat there looking at Jack’s car that afternoon in the courthouse parking lot, my heart filled up with something heavier than blood. I wanted to take it out of my chest, wring it out and use it to wipe the sweat and tears from my face. I felt ashamed and sorry that he’d picked such an awful vanity plate for his beautiful, special thing. And most of all I wanted to think that the tag didn’t represent him. I didn’t want that to be his sense of humour.

I thought of Winston and how we all used to play in the yard. I thought of those long, suspended split seconds with my mouth wide and my eyes wide and my fingers gripping trying to claw his fur into my palms, trying to pull him to safety.

But me, I’m no hero.

I looked back to his car and took the spoon from my hair and let it fall down my shoulders. I mouthed, ‘Where are you?’

I thought of all the stages of our lives that we’ve shared and how Jack and I have loved each other in many different ways. He promised that he’d love me forever.

But Jack wasn’t around forever. He married another woman. When it came down to telling his Jewish mother and father that he wanted to marry me, he wouldn’t do it.

He told me this not long after I graduated from university, not long after he graduated from law school, and not long before he married a good Jewish girl named Joanie Hefetz.

He said, ‘Rachel, you know I love you. Don’t throw our life away.’

‘I can’t understand the words coming out of your mouth. Explain to me how I am throwing our life away?’

‘Nothing has to change. I don’t want to lose you because of this. Everything can stay exactly the same.’

‘So, let me get this straight. You want somewhere nice to hang your mezuzah and raise good Jewish babies but you still want to come around here and fuck me? What would the Rabbi say about that?’

‘Please, don’t do this to us.’

I said, ‘It’s already done.’ So, I waited in the courthouse parking lot all afternoon just to get a look at him but between the warmth of the car and the weight of my memories, I fell asleep. When I woke up, two hours were gone and so was Jack’s little red car.