Break up advice - Chapter 3
by Kadi
Rated: T
When Ricky left much later that evening, Sharon walked down with him. There hadn't been much opportunity to talk following the incident. She curled an arm through his. "You could stay. You know that you don't have to stay at the hotel." It wasn't the first time since his arrival in town that she attempted to dissuade him from renting a room for the duration. In the past, he'd have stayed with her. As she'd told Rusty, the spare room was for when her children visited, although it wasn't exactly spare any longer. There was still room enough for Richard. They would make the room.
"I know." He smiled down at her, an amused twist of his lips. "You've mentioned it. More than once." His look was completely indulgent. "I'm a fan of hotels, and while I know you're willing to cook at the drop of a hat, there's just something to be said about room service. They don't expect me to do the dishes."
Sharon rolled her eyes at his teasing. "Point taken. I'll stop fussing. Are you going to be okay?"
She was rather incredible at times, and this was one of them. "Shouldn't I be asking you that?" Ricky stopped beside his rental car and leaned back against it. "Mom, I'm not eight anymore. I'm fully aware that the world isn't made up of giant, cheerful, high-pitched mice and all their equally cheerful friends. Far more disappointing than that was the severe lack of giant, talking, robot cars, but hey… I'm coping. I'm pretty acquainted with dad's many shortcomings. There's only so much you can shield us from, and at some point, you've got to stop and let us deal. Besides, we were only ever just disappointed. You were the one that had to deal with all the fallout. Are you going to be okay?"
"Oh baby, I'm fine." She leaned against the side of the car beside him and pushed her hands into the pockets of her jeans, which she had changed into earlier, shortly before their dinner had arrived. "I'm sorry that the evening didn't go as planned. It certainly wasn't what I had in mind. I'd like nothing more than to just be able to put all of it behind us, but I'm afraid that it's just part of who we've become. Your father…"
"You don't have to explain," he said quietly. "And, you know, maybe it turned out better than you had planned. The evening, I mean. It was bound to be awkward anyway. You were going public, and it's pretty obvious. Besides, Shannon has a big mouth. Andy is last month's news. I already had the scoop. Don't sweat it, okay?" He nudged her with his shoulder. "We're all grown up now. We can read the writing on the wall. I'm just glad we were here, and don't give Rusty too hard a time, okay? I know you like to be the big protector, shield the kiddies from all the nasty, but I get the feeling he could teach me a thing or two about the big, bad world. Give the kid some credit. He's a bit of an awkward spaz, but he's okay."
Sharon sighed. She drew her hands out of her pockets and wrapped her arms around his, to lean into his side. "When did you get so grown up, hm?" It seemed like not so long ago that he was every bit as sullen and awkward, and working his way through all the stages of teenage angst that she was still facing with Rusty - albeit with a lot less worldly knowledge. "Don't worry about Rusty. Our routine is well practiced by now."
Ricky pushed away from the car and grinned down at her. "Growing up was the easy part. I had this really awesome mom. She just doesn't worry enough about herself, is all. Always too busy worrying about everyone else." He pulled her into a hug. "Even when she really doesn't need to. I'm good. Shannon is the drama queen, remember."
She rolled her eyes at his comment, but hugged him back. "I love you. Now go, it's late. Enjoy your room service." Sharon stepped back from him, and pushed her hands back into her pockets.
Only she could make room service sound like a bad thing. Ricky shook his head. "I'll call you tomorrow. I might love room service, but you're not off the hook. I was promised a home cooked meal."
"That you were." Sharon agreed. "You'll get it before you leave, I promise." She backed away from the car and watched as he got inside. When he pulled away, she waved, and watched until she could no longer discern the tail lights from the rest of the evening traffic.
Richard didn't immediately drive back to the hotel. He had one more stop to make. Jackson Raydor was a creature of habit. On those occasions when his wife wouldn't allow him to stay with her, he could always be found in the same place. It was a cheap motel out on the highway, eastbound, which made it only that much simpler for him to disappear when he didn't get what he was after. Richard drove out to the highway side motel before he could change his mind. He found his father's beat-up old Corolla parked outside the motel, and sighed. He supposed it was too much to hope he would have already left town, but then, he was pretty wasted.
Ricky parked his rental and strode toward the room the Corolla was parked in front of. After only a moment's consideration, he knocked. He heard the muffled sound of someone fumbling around inside, and then the door opened. The bleary-eyed face of his father stared back at him. If he wasn't disappointed enough already, the stench of stale booze coming out of the room was enough to get it done. Ricky didn't know what he was expecting really. He gave the man in front of him a bland look.
"Richard William Raydor." Jack leaned heavily against the door frame. "Well, well, well. I suppose your mother sent you. Her supreme highness could not be bothered to lecture me herself, of course not. She has such wonderful little guard dogs to do it for her. Well, you can go back and tell her that I'm not interested. I heard everything that Baker had to say, and it's going to serve her right when I sign those papers. She really believes that her Catholic guilt will be able to stand it, but Sharon forgets that I know her almost better than she knows herself."
"It isn't about Catholic guilt anymore, Dad." Ricky sighed, a little sadly. "Mom doesn't know that I'm here. She'd never let me get within ten feet of you while you're like this. Almost, that's the part that I know you're having trouble with. You almost know her. Maybe if you hadn't left, you would understand what's going on with her, but it's way too late to have that talk. No, I just came by to see if you were even going to bother to dry out this time. It doesn't look like it. Do you ever feel guilty about it at all? We made a big deal about how you acted today, and about how you acted the last time, but those are isolated incidents. It was horrible, but it was the entirety of your marriage that was cruel, not just a couple of drunken missteps." Ricky shoved his hands into his pockets and looked at his feet. "One day you're actually going to regret all this. That was the part that always made her feel the most sorry for you. But she's stopped feeling sorry for you. She's stopped waiting on you, and it's no one's fault but yours."
"You think that woman ever waited on me?" Jack's cheeks flushed red. He gave his son an incredulous look and then laughed, bitterly. "I've spent my entire adult life—-"
"I don't care." Ricky cut him off, and realized that he was speaking the truth. At some point, it stopped mattering. "Really, dad, I don't. I've heard it all. The thing is, I was there. Shannon and I saw a lot more than either of you thought we did. What we didn't see, people talked about. We just didn't bring it up with mom because, unlike you, we didn't want to hurt her. We didn't feel some insane need to punish her. That's why you left. You thought that you would really show her. You really thought that she couldn't live without you, and that in the end, she'd beg you to come back, and you'd have everything how you wanted it. The joke was on you." Ricky shrugged. "Mom was stronger than you thought. She outlasted you, and then she moved on with her life. We all did." He ran a hand over his hair and took a step back. "I guess that's all I really wanted to say." He gave the man that had caused so much pain in their lives one last look, and turned his back on him.
"Ricky." Jack took a step out of the room, but his son didn't stop. Instead, he got back into his car and started it. "Richard."
He heard it, but Ricky found that he truthfully didn't care anymore. It was a chapter in his life that he could close now, for good. They had never really needed him, it was an illusion they created out of his absence. They had always managed just fine on their own, and could continue to do so.
Jack stumbled back into the motel room and slammed the door behind him. He made his way to the small, corner table, and picked up the half empty bottle that was waiting for him there. He lifted it to his lips, but stopped. A roar echoed off the walls of the room as he twisted, throwing it. The glass shattered against the far wall, and the cheap, brown liquid ran down the ugly, yellow wallpaper.
His own son had turned his back on him. It wasn't any great surprise, but he never expected it to actually happen. He always told Sharon the kids didn't want him, and it looked as though he was right. Jack shoved his hands into his hair and stumbled toward the bed, where he sank heavily onto the thin mattress. He hung his head and allowed his shoulders to slump. His own son had shamed him. It did more to push through the fog of cheap booze than any of the lectures he could have gotten from Sharon or that lawyer of hers. When he thought about it, it wasn't the first time it had taken his son to get through his booze soaked brain.
He had used his old key to get into the house. Jack was surprised that it actually still worked. He had only meant to have a drink or two, just enough to celebrate that he'd won the poker tournament. The money would be enough to pay back some of the debts that Sharon had struggled to deal with on her own. She had done some rearranging, though, and he had tripped over a new table near the stairs. It was enough to bring Sharon downstairs.
At that point, Jack had laughed. "What kind of cop carries an old baseball bat instead of a gun?"
She hadn't appreciated that. Sharon glowered at him. She shoved her hair back from her face and tugged on the hem of the old Berkley t-shirt that she had gone to bed in. She leaned the bat against the wall near the stairs. "The kind that has two small children and didn't want to take the time to get it out of the lock box. Jack, what are you doing here? It's the middle of the night, and…. Oh my god." Sharon drew back from him then, a look of disgust on her face. "Are you drunk?"
"Not so very drunk baby." Jack stumbled around to sit on the last few steps of the stairs leading to the second floor of the house they'd bought when she was still pregnant with their first, and reached for her. He slipped an arm around her hips and drew her to him. "I always liked you in that. It's hotter than that little blue thing you got after we had Ricky."
"Jack, get off…" She twisted in his arms, but even drunk and clumsy, he wasn't a small man. Not very tall, by any means, but he was always a little broad across the shoulders and chest. The drinking hadn't been very kind to him, neither had the gambling, she supposed. He wasn't as lean as when they'd first married. "Jack." She wrenched his grip away from her waist when he drew her down. The smell of cheap liquor turned her stomach. Sharon shoved him back from her, hard, and stood up. "I think you may have forgotten, you don't actually live here anymore," She said coldly, voice dropping an octave. "I'd also appreciate it if you would keep it down. The kids, although you only recall their existence when it is convenient, are asleep upstairs." She folded her arms over her chest and huffed. "What do you want?"
"So now a man has to want something to want to see his wife?" He continued to grin, crookedly, up at her. "Oh come on, don't be so depressing, Shar. I told you that I would come through for us, and I did. Hit it big this time, well, not too big, but it's enough. We can pay off a few things, put aside some funds for the kids. You know, like we talked about."
She couldn't really believe that she was hearing this. As though he thought a little money would fix all of their problems. "Eight years ago. Like we talked about eight-years-ago Jackson. A lot has changed since then. You've been gone for three years, Jack. Three years. You've hardly called at all, and suddenly, you think that you can just waltz right back in as if nothing's happened? It doesn't work that way. Before that, you were gone a year before I had even so much as a single call, it was six months before we saw you again, and then you were only here long enough to ask for money." Sharon told herself that she wouldn't cry, she really would not. When her voice hitched, she pressed her lips together and shifted where she stood, shuffling her feet nervously. He'd left her with only a note, two small children to care for, and barely enough in the bank to cover the mortgage, much less anything else.
She was forced to make compromises, to do things which left a foul, bitter taste in her mouth. Such as asking her parents for money when she thought she might actually lose the house. It hadn't seemed to matter that all she was asking for was her own trust fund, the fund they'd frozen when she married Jackson because they didn't agree with the choice. After it was done, they expected her to make the best of it. They believed that she was marrying much too young, that she was making a mistake. That Jackson for all his big talk and even bigger dreams wouldn't be able to care for her the way she deserved. Sharon hadn't wanted to hear it. So she married Jack, despite her parents freezing her trust fund in an attempt to dissuade her. They wouldn't take the embarrassment of having her run off to marry the interloper, so she'd had the wedding, in front of their friends, family, and priest. Then Sharon took a job they did not agree with so that she could help pay Jack's way through Law School. Her parents were big on expressing their disappointment. They were even bigger on learning from mistakes. They weren't cruel about it. They expressed their opinions, and then allowed their children to make their own choices. They just expected that their children accept those choices, live with them, or learn from them.
After Jack left, Sharon tried very hard to pretend as though nothing had changed. It was difficult, with a toddler and a first grader, and a job that demanded long hours which could sometimes be unpredictable. She relied on friends as much as she dared, and in the end, it just wasn't enough. Admitting that she needed help was a bitter pill to swallow, it hurt almost as much as Jack's leaving. She made the transfer into Internal Affairs first. The position offered hours that were far more stable, and the promotion had come with a bump in pay that helped, but didn't exactly plug the dam. There was more going out than coming in. Jack left her with a mound of debts, and they were behind on the mortgage. Her car was barely holding it together. Naturally, he had taken their decent vehicle when he left. He certainly had to make sure that he made it to Vegas in one piece. Forget that she needed to get their children to and from school and daycare.
The more Sharon thought about it, the angrier that she became. It was humiliating, admitting that her parents were right all along. Of course they were. She took only enough out of the trust fund to get caught up, and pay off the house. If nothing else, she would never fear that her children wouldn't have a house over their heads. She got the car repaired, it had a few miles left in it, and then she'd opened savings accounts for the kids. The rest, she left in her parents hands. She couldn't trust Jackson, that was the most humiliating part of it all. She never thought she'd have to admit that, even if it was only to herself. Now that Jack was here, she couldn't even muster the slightest bit of excitement at the prospect. Instead, she just kept wondering what he wanted this time.
Sharon shook her head and turned away from him. "Go away, Jack. It's late. I don't want you waking the kids, and I'm really not in the mood to fight with you. I'm exhausted. Shannon has a cold, and it's just not a good time."
"Come on Shar, don't be like this." Jackson pushed himself up from the stairs and walked after her. He caught her arm and pulled her back to him. "Look, I screwed up. Is that what you want me to say? I'll say it. Come on, baby. Didn't you miss me, just a little?"
Her brow arched. She glanced at his hands, again holding her waist, and looked up at him again. "At first, maybe. Then I stopped. That's the thing about people when they're gone. Sooner or later, you get used to it. What were you expecting Jack? You'd show up here with a little money, and I'd be grateful? What am I meant to do here? Swoon? I am neither desperate for your time nor your money. Nor am I the least interested in having your drunken hands on me." She shoved them off, again.
"Who is he?" Jack stood back and straightened his tie. "You're pretty damned desperate alright, to get me out of here. So which one of those bozos from the station are you screwing? That's what's going on here, isn't it? What's the matter baby, did you get lonely? Maybe you're forgetting a little something, aren't you? This is still my house. Those are my kids, and you're my wife."
She laughed. It was the most ridiculous thing that she'd ever heard. "Now you want to be married? Now you've got a house, kids, and a wife? Convenient isn't it, how we exist when you choose for us to. Otherwise, what do you tell people Jack? How do you justify the fact that you left us. Or do you actually admit that? Have you ever actually told anyone that you walked out, or is it just one wild justification after another. Being married certainly hasn't stopped you from sleeping around, I don't see why it should stop me. Like you said, it gets lonely."
He wasn't sure if it was the words, or the sarcasm. Or that she'd laughed at him. Jack felt the anger snap, and this time when he reached for his wife, his hands curled around her arms. He held her tightly, and the pounding of his own blood in his ears drowned out the sound of her head thudding against the wall when he slammed her against it. Then he shook her, until her eyes opened. "You think I wanted to leave?" He yelled at her, spittle dampening her cheeks. She blinked and turned her face away, and he shook her again. "What was I supposed to do, Sharon, with you nagging me all time time. Always with the constant nagging. Do you really think anyone would blame me? Who would want to live with that? Huh? Who!"
She inhaled sharply. His fingers were biting into her arms, and she was beginning to see stars. The smell of the liquor on him made her stomach churn, and pitch violently. Her eyes were wide when she looked up at him. They'd had their share of yelling matches when the drinking and the gambling became too much. He'd never touched her like this before. Throw things, slam doors, but it was relegated to inanimate objects, never her or the kids. Not that they fought in front of the kids to begin with, not when she could help it. "Jack," she could barely manage an astonished whisper.
"Daddy?" The sleepy voice at the top of the stairs almost made her panic.
Sharon cast a frightened look at the stairs and drew a worried gasp. "Ricky, go back to bed, baby. I'll be right there to tuck you back in."
He came halfway down the stairs, rubbing his eyes with one hand, and yawning widely. "Mom? I heard yelling."
At ten, Ricky stood almost at her shoulder. He was well on his way to being tall, like the men on her side of the family, rather than stocky like his father. "Richard. Bed. Now." Sharon's voice shook, but she tried hard to keep him from coming further down the stairs.
"Did I hear dad?" He stopped, still far enough up that he couldn't see beyond the bottom of the second floor landing. He had to stoop, to see into the living room. What he saw would stay with him for years, but the pale, frightened look on his mother's face indicated this wasn't just another argument. They weren't just yelling at each other again. His mom was trapped against the wall, with her feet barely even touching the ground. "Dad?" He looked at them, wide-eyed.
It was the shock that loosened his grip. Sharon shoved against him when she felt his fingers go slack. She stumbled at first, but strode quickly toward her son. "Dad can't stay, pal. Come on, let's go back to bed." She grabbed Ricky's shoulders and turned him. She cast a look back, over her shoulder, and there was promise enough in her gaze that if Jack wasn't gone when she came back down, he would wish that he'd never considered coming by there tonight.
He left. The moment she disappeared up the stairs with Richard, he left. He wasn't sure if it was the ice in her gaze, or the fear in his son's. Jack left money on the table beside the door, where Sharon kept her keys, and left. He'd come here, to this motel, that night. It was where he went when he couldn't go home. He'd drowned his sorrows in more liquor, and the next morning he left. He drove back to Las Vegas, where he stayed. The papers found him there. His wife had filed for legal separation, severing him from her life in every way that she could without taking that one, final step. It was a line she wouldn't cross. For twenty years they'd lived on that line. He came and went as he wanted, never staying long. Sharon wouldn't let him. She never looked at him the same after that night. It was years, really, before she started offering him the use of a sofa, or a spare room. Jack couldn't say that he'd stayed sober after that either, he'd slipped, more than once. He always slipped. Whether it was the booze or the cards, it always happened. But it never mattered, something had gone cold in her that night, and it stayed cold. At least where he was concerned.
Something had obviously changed. Twenty years, without even a hint to the contrary, and now she was filing for divorce. Now she was crossing that line. Jack figure that he probably could have dealt with it if it had to do with the kid, or the job, or even the fight they had last time he was in town. Finding out it had something to do with another man… That turned out to be more than he could accept. He'd crawled into a bottle for the first time in years. It wasn't as easy on him as it used to be, he wasn't as young as he used to be, and the booze hadn't been very kind over the years. He knew before taking that first drink that he would regret it, for more than just the hangover that would set in once he stopped. Now, he had other reasons to regret it.
He could blame his wife, but was there really any point in that now? Soon enough, she wouldn't be his wife anymore. Then he would have only himself to blame, and really, he supposed he always had.