Butternut Summer (22 page)

But halfway through the second, she realized she was still disappointed by the result. The vodka blurred the edges of her sadness, and made her worry feel a little further away, but the sweet release she was waiting for never came. Besides, it was making her mind wander dangerously, and when she found herself thinking about Jack's long, slow smile, she decided it was probably time to stop drinking. She was about to leave, in fact, when the actual Jack Keegan walked up to her table, pulled out a chair, and sat down across from her.

“Jack? What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here? I was going to ask you the same question,” he said, with the same disapproving expression that Marty had had when he'd poured her drink.

“I'm having a drink, Jack,” she said. “Would you like to join me? Oh, that's right, you already have.” She was trying for sarcasm, but she didn't quite succeed. Maybe because her tongue, which felt clumsy and heavy in her mouth, was having trouble enunciating the words she'd said.

“No, thank you,” he said. “I'm not drinking, Caroline. And, frankly, you shouldn't be either.”

“Why shouldn't I have a drink if I want one?” she said indignantly.
And who the hell are you to tell me not to drink?

But Jack only shook his head and said patiently and a little wearily, “You shouldn't have a drink because you're not a drinker, Caroline.”

“Says who?” she shot back, but the effect was undercut, again, by the fact that her voice sounded thick and slurry.

“Says me, Caroline.” Jack sighed. “Trust me. I know something about this. The world is divided into two kinds of people. Drinkers and nondrinkers. And you, Caroline, are a nondrinker. Don't question your destiny, all right?” he added, with a bleak smile.

She thought about what he'd just said, but it seemed unnecessarily complicated to her, and when she couldn't quite untangle it, she dismissed it. Then something else occurred to her.

“How did you know I was here, Jack?”

“Marty called me,” he said.

“Marty?” She frowned. “Why would he do that?”

“Because he's an old friend of mine. I ran into him the other day at the gas station, and I gave him my cell-phone number. So when you came in here, hell-bent on getting drunk, he called me and asked me to come over here. He was worried about you, obviously, and now so am I.”

“Humph,” she said, irritated by Marty's and Jack's meddling. “He shouldn't have called you, Jack. But you know, it's funny, I thought I might see you here tonight. I remembered how much time you used to spend in bars like this one.”

“I haven't been to a bar in two years, Caroline,” he said, running his fingers through his hair.

“Why not, Jack?”

“Because I'm an alcoholic, Caroline. A recovering alcoholic. And bars are generally acknowledged as bad places for us to be.”

Alcoholic
. That word, somehow, cut through the fog in Caroline's brain. She tried to focus now on what he'd said. Tried to, but couldn't. But it didn't matter anyway, she decided, because she didn't believe him.

“You're not an alcoholic, Jack.”

“No, Caroline? You lived with me for almost five years. You never noticed how much I drank?”

“Oh, you
loved
to drink Jack. No doubt about it.”

“I did love to drink, Caroline. But more important, I
needed
to drink.”

“Needed to drink?” she repeated. “I don't know about that, Jack.” She tried to think clearly. “I mean, you drank all right. Don't get me wrong. But it just sort of went with the territory, didn't it?” Shaking her head at the memory, she went on, “You know, the drinking, the fighting, the women—they were all just part of the Jack Keegan package.”

He started to interrupt her, but she ignored him. She was just getting started.

“My God, you were trouble,” she added, almost to herself. “The first time my mother met you, Jack, she said, ‘That boy is trouble . . .'” Caroline's mind seemed to slide away from her then, away from Jack and away from the bar, and back to the memory of bringing Jack home to meet her parents. It had not gone well, as she recalled. She hadn't cared, though; she was crazy in love with him by then. So crazy, in fact, that—but Jack broke into her thoughts.

“Caroline, you're dead wrong about me. I wasn't just some rabble-rouser, if that's what you're thinking. Some guy who liked to stir up trouble. I was a drunk. And everything else I did,” he said, waving his hand, “that was all a part of it, too. The collateral damage, I guess you could say, of my alcoholism.”

Caroline frowned, trying to accept this. But she shook her head. “No, Jack. You weren't an alcoholic. You never drank during the day, and you always had a job.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake, Caroline,” he said, exasperated. “Haven't you ever heard of a
functional
alcoholic?”

She looked at him blankly. She'd heard of that, but it didn't seem to fit Jack either.

He sighed impatiently. “How can you know so little about this, Caroline?”

She shrugged, a little helplessly.

“I mean, haven't you ever seen one of those shows on cable about addiction and recovery?”

“I, I don't think so . . .” she mumbled.

“Not even when you were changing the channels?”

“Oh, I guess I saw them,” she said, a little befuddled. “But I didn't watch them. They always seemed so . . .
depressing
.”

He sighed. “Well, mostly, they
are
depressing. But sometimes, if you stick around until the end, they can be uplifting, too.”

“Is that what your life is like now, Jack? Uplifting?” Caroline asked, as she tried to bring him into focus. But he still looked a little blurry, as if his edges had been ever so slightly smudged.

“No,” he said, closing his eyes for a second. “No, my life isn't uplifting, Caroline. I haven't gotten there yet. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to get rid of this.” He gestured to her half-drunk glass of vodka on the table.

“I don't mind,” Caroline said softly, and when he whisked the glass away to the bar, she was left to try to make sense of what he had said. Jack, an alcoholic? Was that true? And if it
wasn't
true, why would he lie about it? Still, it didn't jibe with what she knew about alcoholism. Or at least with what she
thought
she knew about alcoholism. Granted, that wasn't a lot. But still, Butternut, like any small town, had had its share of drunks, and living here all her life, she'd known them all: the sloppy drunks, the loud drunks, the sad drunks, the secret drunks (or at least the ones who thought their drinking was a secret), the dangerous drunks, the belligerent and angry drunks.

The trouble was, Jack didn't remind her of any of those drunks. Back when they were married, when they were both in their early twenties, she'd thought of Jack as a man who liked to drink, liked to drink
a lot
. But then, so had most of the men in their social circle. And Caroline had assumed at the time that it came with the territory. After all, they were all young. And they had all worked hard, by day, at the mill in Butternut or at the snowmobile factory in Ely farther north. It had seemed like their due, somehow, to go out to a bar at night and blow off some steam. Eventually, of course, it was assumed that they would settle down into marriage, and children, and the routines of family life.

Jack, though, never settled down. He seemed, in fact, to do the opposite. He didn't go out to bars less often; he went out to them
more
often. And he didn't come home from them earlier; he came home from them
later
. Eventually, of course, he stopped coming home from them at all, even after they'd closed. At first, this had led to frantic phone calls on Caroline's part. But gradually, as the extent of Jack's womanizing became clear, she'd stopped trying to track him down all the time, and instead, she'd waited at home with their young daughter, a silent fury building steadily inside her.

She looked back at him now, standing at the bar. He was talking to Marty as Marty filled two glasses with a clear, carbonated liquid. Was Jack an alcoholic then, she wondered, when they'd still been married? But again, she resisted the idea. He just wasn't like the other alcoholics she'd known. His personality, for instance, didn't change when he drank. He was almost always easygoing and fun loving, rarely dark or bitter. That was what had drawn Caroline to him in the first place. Unlike her friend Jax's father, an alcoholic who'd been famous for his explosive temper, Jack had never gotten angry when he drank. He'd never gotten angry when he
didn't
drink either. Even when Caroline had tried to start an argument with him, as she often did toward the end of their marriage, he wouldn't take the bait. More often than not, in fact, he'd just leave, something that had always driven Caroline crazy.

She looked back at him now, a little blearily, as he left some money on the bar, and she tried to see some sign of what he'd been through, or of what he'd had to overcome, but she couldn't see it. All she could see was Jack. And Jack looked . . . well, Jack looked like himself, like his old self—not like someone who was struggling with inner demons, not like a dark or troubled soul. Unless, unless . . .

Caroline sat very still now, trying to force herself to think clearly. There was one thing about Jack back then that she'd found worrying, disturbing even. After they'd started dating, she'd discovered that he'd never wanted to take his shirt off, even when they were at the beach. She'd thought that was strange, since there was nothing wrong with Jack's body that she could see. It appeared, in fact, to be pretty amazing. But when she'd finally coaxed him out of his shirt once, when they were alone, he'd asked her not to touch his back. Only later had he let his guard down far enough to let her see, and feel, the red, puckered scars that ran in parallel lines across it. Caroline had been shocked by them. But Jack wouldn't talk to her about how he'd gotten them, not then, not ever.

The only insight she'd ever had into the situation had come when she and Jack were making the guest list for their wedding, and Caroline had chided Jack for not wanting to invite his aunt and uncle. She'd never met them before, but she knew that after Jack's parents had died in a car accident when he was very young, they'd raised him on their farm a couple hours south of Butternut. Jack, though, had been adamant about not inviting them to their wedding, and when she'd pressed him on it, he'd lost his temper. She still remembered it vividly, because it was one of the few times she'd ever seen Jack angry.
Caroline, just drop it, okay? I said no. They're not coming to our wedding
.

“Here you go,” he said now, setting a glass down in front of her and forcing her back to the present. “It's club soda. Drink it.”

Caroline sipped it obediently, and she had to admit, it tasted good—clear and cold and fizzy—but even so, her head was starting to spin a little. And her stomach, which was churning uncomfortably, didn't feel like it was doing much better than her head.

“What's wrong?” Jack asked, watching her from across the table.

“I don't feel that well,” she admitted.

“No? When did you last eat?”

She thought about it, and she honestly couldn't remember. It wasn't like her to skip meals, but Pearl's had been especially hectic today.

“What time did you have dinner?” Jack prompted.

“I didn't,” Caroline confessed.

His jaw tightened. “Lunch?”

She shook her head.

“Caroline,” he said with a groan. “Come on. That's the first rule of drinking. Never drink on an empty stomach.”

“Too late for that.” She sighed.

He studied her speculatively for a moment. “Let's go,” he said suddenly. “I'm taking you home, and I'm not leaving until you've got something solid in your stomach.”

Caroline wavered, not sure whether Jack coming home with her was a good idea or not. But he overruled her misgivings.

“We're leaving,” he said, standing up. “
Now
.”

“Oh, all right,” she grumbled, and she followed him out of the bar.

H
ere you go,” Jack said, setting a cup of coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich down on the table in front of her. “I told you I still knew my way around this place.”

Caroline, sitting in one of the red leather booths at Pearl's, looked down at her plate and frowned. “Jack, that is, bar none, the ugliest grilled cheese sandwich I have ever seen.”

Jack chuckled and slid into the booth across from her. He had to admit, this slightly scorched grilled cheese sandwich would never be served at Pearl's. But he figured it would do the trick. “Just eat it,” he said. “And drink your coffee, too. Drink it black.”

“Will that sober me up?” she asked, taking a sip of the coffee and wrinkling her nose at its harshness.

“No, not really. That's a myth, by the way, that drinking black coffee can counter the effects of alcohol. It can't. Neither can taking a cold shower. But sometimes, what we think something can do is more important than what it actually can do. So drink your coffee, and eat your ugly sandwich.”

Caroline sighed resignedly, but bit into her slightly burned sandwich anyway. “It's pretty good, actually,” she said, taking another bite. “Where'd you learn to cook, Jack?”

“Um, I don't know if you'd call that cooking. But living alone for eighteen years, you learn how to make a few things.”

She paused and looked at him thoughtfully. “Did you though, Jack? Live alone, I mean.”

“Most of the time,” he said evasively. Because of course there had been women, over the years, who'd come to spend a night and ended up staying longer; some of them, much longer. He didn't want to talk about that now, though, so instead he asked a question of his own. “So why, exactly, were you trying to get drunk tonight, Caroline?”