Knock knock knock. "Jane?"
Knock knock knock.
"Jane."
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.
"JANE! Open this door, or I swear, I'll break the window and let myself in."
The inside lock slowly slid open, and the door swung quietly inward, exposing the inside of the apartment. "Bet you would, too," Jane said quietly as she turned, not bothering with the formalities of asking Maura to come in. "You know the drill," she said, words slightly slurred as she plopped back down on the sofa and picked the whiskey bottle up to refill the glass in her hand. "Won't do any good to tell you to leave me the fuck alone, will it?" She threw the whiskey down her throat and poured another, eyes glued to the muted game flickering across her television set.
"None whatsoever, since I intend to invade your space all weekend," Maura quoted Jane with determined cheer as she made for the kitchen for two glasses of ice water and to serve up a bowl of fettuccini from the plastic container she'd brought. While waiting for the microwave to reheat it, she checked the garbage can, noting, "These newspapers, tin cans, and whiskey bottles can be recycled. I'll take care of that in the morning."
Maura served Jane the bowl of pasta, noting, "You're not eating, need to eat. Mangia." Deliberately she used the Italian, aware that Angela had often done the same thing. Perhaps it would put a little authority behind the suggestion; perhaps Jane would be too drunk to object to a best friend who claimed that authority.
Jane said nothing. She simply continued to watch the game and take sips of her drink. When a commercial came on to break her concentration, she turned her dulled eyes to the woman next to her. "I'll vomit if I eat now. Too much," she tilted the glass in her hand up. "You know." Her eyes ran over the various items sitting on her coffee table. "You do know, don't you?" Disgust ran across her face as her gaze settled on the whiskey bottle.
"I know," Maura confirmed. "Eat what you can without getting sick. If you want to get sick, you've got whiskey for that. No need to waste your mother's good cooking." She settled back as if completely comfortable, slipped off her shoes, and propped her feet on the table.
"You shouldn't be here." Jane set the empty glass down beside the now empty bottle. "No one should be here." She stood on unsteady feet and made her way to the kitchen. She glanced to Maura and saw her watching, thought for a moment about what she was about to do, shrugged, and pulled out another bottle from her stash in the cabinet. "Pass out before I'll get sick," she slurred as her numbed fingers fumbled with the bottle top. "S'okay, doc, I know to sleep on my side so I don't drown," she almost formed a smirk before her face fell into a slackness that only comes with too much alcohol. Maura felt a pain in her heart. How had she let her best friend get to the point at which she had ever had to learn that lesson? "Go home, baby, I got this." The top came off with a mighty twist, and a little of the brown liquid sloshed onto the counter top. Jane didn't notice.
She didn't bother with a glass. There was no point.
"You know," she said, leaning against the counter to steady herself. "I almost," another drink, "I almost hit a minivan driving home tonight? Did you know that? Bet you didn't know that." She took another long pull. "First thing I said to myself was I had to stop this shit," she held the bottle up. "Second thing I said to myself was, 'Fuck,' because my flask was empty. Did you know I have a flask hidden in the car? Bet you didn't know that either. I'm pretty good about that stuff. I've got rules, you know." She frowned, glancing from Maura to the bottle in her hand.
"Fuck, I'm breaking a whole crap ton of them right now, though." She shrugged. "Oh well. Whatever. You know," she took another drink, letting the thick glass hit the counter top with a clinking thud, "Doesn't matter. You know, and, you know, there was a little girl in that van? I almost killed a whole family. What the fuck kind of homicide detective am I, that I almost murder an entire family? Crappy one, that's what. I'm just fucked up, Maura," she said gesturing toward her bathroom. "The mirror's right. The mirror's always fucking right." She sighed, hanging her head, letting her forehead rest on the cool space on the counter's top.
Without a word, Maura stood up to go have a look at the bathroom mirror, where she was confronted with Jane's self-assessment in stark, black dry-erase marker. FAILURE. She could not stop her face from crumpling, but she did stop the tears from falling. With a hastily-yanked square of toilet paper, she erased the hurtful word and wrote another one in big, black, bold letters that Jane would not be able to avoid. It covered the entire mirror at the exact height ofJane's eyes. "And stop hurting my best friend," she ordered the mirror, as if it could pass the message on to the woman who would peer out at Jane from its glassy surface the next time she looked there.
Moments later, she returned from the bathroom. "It wasn't right before, but it's right 're not a failure, Jane. You're a person who's making some big mistakes right now." There was no judgment on her face. "Do you want to fix them?"
"I don't even know anymore, and I'm pretty sure I'm too drunk to figure it out if I did." Jane let her head fall back to the counter. "I think I'm about to pass out." She stood and made her unsteady way to the bedroom.
She fell onto her bed with a grunt, and placed one hand on her nightstand to steady her as she leaned much further than she needed to pull open the nightstand drawer. "Stopped being able to sleep," she slurred as she pulled the locked journal out, its matte black cover giving off a dull shine in the dim light of her beside lamp. "Had to find a way to make it stop. Tried all sorts of crap." She looked down at the journal in her hands. "Crappy read," she held it up to Maura. "If you're going to invade, might as well be thorough about it." She tossed it in Maura's general direction, grunting in satisfaction as it hit the floor by the other woman's feet with a loud whacking sound. "S'all I got," Jane mumbled as she fell back onto the bed, rolling reflexively onto her side as she slipped into welcomed unconsciousness.
For the next few hours, Maura read Jane's journal. Each entry began with fairly neat printing, which later devolved into sloppiness as her hand got tired and, likely, the whiskey started taking its toll. At least, that was the pattern at first. Later journal entries began messy already, gradually becoming a barely legible scrawl. Sentences started but were not completed, ideas abandoned halfway through. Throughout each entry, common themes sprang up again and again: loss, abandonment, failure, confusion, fear, inadequacy.
After the first two hours, Maura put down the journal to shower, clean up the cold ignored food, and dress for bed. Then she came right back to the journal, unwilling to abandon Jane in the smallest particular: she had opened her journal, her thoughts, and Maura would take and cherish each one, hurt though it did to read them all.
Weeks, months of anguish poured off of every page, glowing with pain. Maura finished her own glass of water, then Jane's, then refilled another, just to replenish what she lost in crying for her friend. She had known there were problems, but had not truly known they ran this deep.
Because she couldn't tell me. Not even when I asked. Her mind readily supplied the logic, but it helped not a whit to alleviate the blame she began to place on herself. I should have sensed this.Some genius I am, if I couldn't see this happening till a month ago. Some best friend, to not be able to confront her and offer help until now. She's not the failure. I am.
When she had puzzled out the last word written, Maura allowed herself to continue crying until she couldn't anymore. She took a second shower to cool her hot, pounding head and get rid of the salty tracks of tears down her cheeks and neck.
She fetched one more glass of water as well as a painkiller and moved through the darkened bedroom to set them on the nightstand by Jane's head. In her day, Maura had observed many sorority sisters and dates in the throes of hangovers, and hoped to spare her friend from the worst effects.
Then she crawled into bed and pulled Jane's inert body close to hers, draping one arm around her waist so that Jane would wake her if she got up for any reason. As Jane stirred and fussed a little at the repositioning, she whispered soothingly, "I'm here. Sleep, little spoon." Kissing Jane's shoulder to comfort whichever one of them she could, Maura closed her eyes and finally slept.