Page 1 of Jessica and the Jarhead
Chapter 1
Jess
My grandmother’s headstone was clean and white and new. Betrayal wormed its way through me as I stared at it.
“It’s not going to work,” I said to her grave. Thunder rumbled in the background. How dare she be gone? How dare she expect this from me?
“I know what you were thinking, making Charles and I both owners of that cabin and putting that stupid clause in your will,” I said as I paced in front of the grave as if she was there and could hear me. “Making us spend a weekend there together. Alone.”
“I messed things up too bad with him,” I argued. “It’s been too many years. He’s probably moved on. Even if he hasn’t, who’s to say that I even feel the same way?”
I sat down in a huff on the ground. There were fresh flowers in the vase that was attached to her headstone and I wondered briefly about who would have put them there. Someone from one of her clubs, undoubtedly.
“Who am I kidding?” I asked the nearly empty graveyard. “I saw a picture of him recently. He looks somehow the same, but better. Different. More mature. I don’t know.”
Thunder rumbled again, closer to me than before, mocking me with its agreement.
I picked at the grass and tore pieces of it up as I sat there. “I don’t think I could stand it if he doesn’t like me,” I admitted.
Here I sat at my grandma’s grave, pouting over whether a boy liked me, like I was that teenage girl who fell in love with him instead of the grown woman I had become. I wished she was here to talk to in person. She always had an opinion and wasn’t afraid to say it.
“He makes me a fool. I can’t think straight around him. It’s been ten years!” My voice rose in volume until I shouted into the oncoming storm. A couple standing at a nearby grave turned and stared at me. One man was crying profusely, and the other had his arm around him, pulling him in close as they turned away from me. Loneliness crept in, and I wished I had someone here. Someone to hold me while I grieved. It was all too much. I was the dutch boy with his finger in the damn trying to hold it all back. The dam would break, and I didn’t want to be here when it did.
“I miss you,” I said. My voice was small now and I could feel tears beginning to spill over onto my cheeks.
The sky released its hoard just then and rain came down in torrents. The drops were heavy as they fell from the sky. I let the rain wash over me and soak me through. My shirt and pants clung to me, but I still didn’t move. There was no point in trying to hide from nature. It was determined to strip me bare, regardless of my opinion.
I wasn’t sure how I would manage this — this time with Charles. I could still back out. What would happen if I didn’t get on the plane tomorrow? My stomach simultaneously sank and fluttered at the thought of going to Colorado and seeing Charles, like it couldn’t decide if I was excited or scared or both.
I sighed and rose from the ground. I couldn’t put it off any longer
The flight to Denver was uncomfortable. Flying was always uncomfortable. I didn’t fit in the seats. Every time I flew I got that look, the one that said “great, I have to sit next to the fat chick,” like most straight sized people didn’t complain about how small the seats were all the time. I spent the entire flight scrunched up, hoping to forget the proximity of my neighbors.
One of those neighbors had ordered a drink and slipped a little white pill in his mouth before take-off. He nodded off onto my shoulder and I had to keep moving him away from me. It didn’t take long for the stench of alcohol to overwhelm me and plunge me into the past. I tried to fight its pull, but it was determined to drag me under like a riptide, hoping to see me drown.
We hit a bit of turbulence and I lost myself completely.
I was seven years old again and my dad was driving over a dip in the road too fast, swerving all over the road home. He shouldn’t have been driving. Even at seven, I knew that much. He smelled like beer and sweat. Mom asked him to pick me up from dance practice, but he was late.
The drive ended in a crunch when my dad drove into our neighbor’s car.
“Dammit, Jessica,” Dad slurred when he realized what he had done. “Why did you have to have a class today?” I jumped out of the car, ran home, and went straight past my mother into the closet. My tears were falling fast and blurring my vision by the time I got to my room. I messed up again. I should have asked for a ride home.
“You can’t keep doing this,” Mom yelled as I slammed the closet doors.
“I’ll do whatever the fuck I want,” Dad yelled back as I grabbed the doll I kept hidden in here and buried my head in the soft neck. It smelled like cinnamon and Christmas, just like Grandma.
“Baby,” My mom called out to me when the yelling stopped. I didn’t call back out to her, but she still found me. “Sorry baby, I should have had someone else bring you home. Your dad doesn’t mean it. He just gets so stressed about providing for us that he needs to let off a bit of steam after work. I should have known he would need to relax today. Next time, just make sure to find a ride home from dance.” I nodded my head. I didn’t even want to go to dance now, but I couldn’t tell her that. She sold her favorite bracelet to pay for it. She would be so sad if she sold it for nothing. Mom was already so sad all the time. I didn’t want to make it worse.
“Just remember,” she would say to me often, especially after times like this, “what happens in this family stays in this family, ok? Someone might get the wrong idea about your dad and then he’ll be taken away from us. We don’t want that.” I would always nod along and keep my mouth shut. Even if he was mean sometimes, I didn’t want to lose my dad.
I wouldn’t realize until I was an adult that none of that was healthy or good, that it was abuse and alcoholism; that my dad was shifting blame. I’ve spent years in therapy trying to figure out what the hell was going on in my fucked up head.
My heart raced at the thought of having to see Charles again. I hadn’t even started to process everything that had happened with him. It took two years just to understand that what I had experienced really was trauma and to stop blaming myself for everything that had happened.
My therapist took a vacation at the wrong time. I couldn’t even talk to her about all this before I had to be on the plane. It seemed so sudden. Of course, it wasn’t. I had enough notice.I just wanted to pretend like life was continuing on as usual. Processing all this was for Future Jess. Well, here I sat, Future Jess, and I couldn’t do that. I was stuck in a plane, however many thousands of feet in the air and I couldn’t breathe, and the passed out drunk’s head was on my shoulder again and I wanted to shout and scream and cry and run away from it all.
I hated flying.
