Since the shit hit the fan about a week ago Joey found himself talking to Julia a lot more. Out loud. Maybe he was as crazy as Craig was.
"I don't know what to do," he said to his empty kitchen, pouring another glass of wine. He was drinking alone. At least he saved his drinking until Angie went to bed. He didn't want her to see him sucking at the weak salvation of alcohol. He knew it wasn't helping anything. It just made his head hurt in the morning.
Julia didn't answer him, he wasn't that far gone. But when he spoke to her he sensed her near, and maybe it was just his imagination. Maybe it was just his own mind trying to comfort him.
Who did he have? He had his seven year old daughter who was too young to understand, she just knew something was wrong with Craig, again. He had his girlfriend Caitlin who suddenly had so much more work to do at her office. But she chose what work to do, to a large extent. He didn't even think she was avoiding him and Craig and the whole mess consciously. She was escaping into her escape, what had always been her escape, work. He was trying to drown himself in a bottle of wine.
"I'm just not sure how to help him," he said, as though Julia had said something to his first statement, titling her head like she used to, putting her hand on his arm. He covered his upper arm with his hand, the place she always touched when he was upset. He had his ghost wife, maybe something real or maybe just his memories knitting themselves together for him so he could see the faintest reflection of her in the dark glass of the kitchen windows. Julia.
Craig had lost it just two nights ago, he had come home from Ashley's dad's wedding while he had been out searching for him. Shit was hitting the fan, alright. First he got a call from the hotel about the trashed room and the thousands of dollars worth of damages. That explained the missing credit card. Then Snake had said something was going on with Craig and that he might be like his dad. And off he had went, everything he had tried to ignore and deny about Craig crashing down around his ears. Something was wrong.
He knew Craig's mother. She had been the love of his life. He loved Caitlin, had loved Caitlin off and on for years and years, but she wasn't what Julia was. Julia had been his reason for getting up in the morning, his reason for taking air into his lungs. She was the mother of his child. And he knew her, her sense of humor and her sense of honor, her quirky funny side and her deadly serious side, her bright creativity. And he saw how Craig was like her, how creative and smart he was, funny in an off the wall, quirky way.
Then there was Albert. He had hated that man, and how Julia could ever have married him was beyond him. But she had. Maybe his latent jealousy and anger had prevented him from seeing anything positive in Albert. He was a successful surgeon so he must have been intelligent, that was all he could give him. He had seen Craig's despair that night in the cemetery, he had seen a kid who had been willing to stand in front of a train and let it kill him, Sean had been right about that. What had Albert done that drove him to that point? What beyond violence? And the violence and abuse was bad enough, but what psychological stressors had Craig been under? What had happened to his sense of self and self worth and self esteem, all those things a parent should nurture and protect in a child, not destroy.
So he had brought Craig into his home, a damaged and abused kid who flinched and jumped at every sudden movement and who had nightmares and who stuttered when he was nervous or upset, and that had never gone away, although the flinching and nightmares had gone away. Just at the beginning of the school year he had heard that stutter again, the night he had asked him for rent money.
"W-would you ask Angie th-that?" he had said, his eyes squinting as he pushed the words out. In the cold garage, the 4000 dollar guitar between them, he had wanted to hang his head in shame. The bills were piling up around him, creditors were nipping at his heels like little dogs with white sharp teeth and he was drowning. He was about to lose it all.
That Craig could be like Albert was not in his realms of possibilities. So he had ignored the anger that Craig had displayed since the moment he walked into his house, or he blamed it on the situation. Craig was angry due to the abuse and the loss of his mother. He had reasons to be angry. He wasn't angry in the same way Albert had been angry, and Albert's accident/suicide was nothing like what Craig had done standing in front of the train. So Albert had had no one to pull him back from the edge.