Uncontrolled Substance

Chesterfield. What the hell is he doing in Chesterfield?

Bridget swallows back some bile. She has a habit of becoming nauseous whenever she's nervous. The acidity makes her eyes water so she closes them.

And sees fast food wrappers scattered on the floor. Most of the food is still in them, the ingredients simply mangled and rearranged by hands that are shaking much too hard.

Bridget opens her eyes. Google maps is open on her computer screen. The flashing dot that is her husband remains on Chesterfield, a town that is about 20 minutes away. The dot is a question now, a WHY? that hammers at her skull. Or is that the blood rushing through her body?

Bridget grabs her car keys.

A large, white, decorative stone sits cozied up to the front porch. She passes it on her way to the driveway. Again, she tries not to look at it. Again, she fails. Her eyes glance off its sparkling surface and into a black night.

"I love you so much Bridge."

It's 8pm on a Tuesday in November. The air is frigid and windy. Robbie is outside in shorts and a tank top. He is sitting in a chair on the front porch when Bridget gets out of the car, work laptop in one hand, her coffee thermos from that morning in the other. She tastes acid as soon as she sees him.

Robbie gathers himself and uneasily gets to his feet, bottles clatter in response.

"I was waiting for you to get home," he says, one of the bottles is still in his hand.

"What are you doing?" Bridget says slowly, cautiously, paused halfway out of the car.

Robbie also pauses. "I just said. Waiting for you babe."

"No, what are you doing?" Bridget asks again, looking meaningfully at the bottle in his hand.

"Oh this?" Robbie raises the bottle and starts walking towards Bridget again. "I had a hard day at work is all. Thought I'd relax a little."

"You're wasted."

"So?"

 "On a Tuesday."

"So?"

"We both have work tomorrow."

Robbie stops a few feet in front of Bridget and squints at her.

"Stop being such a buzzkill. I waited outside for you because I love you so much."

The toxic scent of alcohol swirls in the heavy black of the night and suddenly Bridget feels like she is going to vomit.

"Don't you love me Bridge?"

Bridget looks up into the night sky. So many pin pricks of light look back down at her. She imagines that each one represents a moment like this. She closes her eyes.

"Say you love me!" Robbie screams and throws his bottle at the decorative stone.

There is a sound of shattering glass when Bridget opens her car door. She gasps and jumps. Her coffee thermos is in pieces on the concrete. She must not have placed it correctly in the cup holder on the car door.

I'll clean that later, she thinks and starts the car.

On her phone, she pulls up the app she uses to track her husband's vehicle. It's a GPS tracker used mostly by parents to track their children's whereabouts. Under the nausea, there's a sliver of guilt. Robbie doesn't know about the device she planted under the dashboard of his car.

He has taken one too many drunken car trips. This is necessary. It's for his own good. She reassures herself and backs out of the driveway with her eyes on her phone. She is mesmerized by the beating dot on Chesterfield.

Why. Why. Why.

10 minutes pass and Bridget drives by a catholic church. It's average and unassuming in every aspect and it's where Robbie should be. There's a sign outside the church that hasn't been changed in months, it reads "He gives power to the weak, and strength to the powerless. Isaiah 40:29."

"Oh is that so? Well then I should be pretty damn strong," Robbie says from the passenger seat. "But I'm not."

Bridget puts on her turn signal and pulls into the church driveway. It's a Thursday and there's a few other cars in the parking lot.

"Would you knock it off with the self-deprecating attitude and give it a chance?" Bridget snaps.

"I'm here aren't I?"

She glances over at him with a snarky response on her tongue but it dies in her throat when she sees how nervous he looks.

"Thank you," she says instead. "For doing this."

They meet eyes for a moment and Robbie averts his.

"I owe it to you. Besides, it's only one AA meeting. It's not like you're asking me to commit myself right away. I'm trying it out."

"You're trying it out," Bridget echoes. "Maybe you'll love it."

She parks the car and offers Robbie a quick smile. They both notice how awkward it is.

"As long as I don't have to sit through too much hail Jesus, kumbaya shit," Robbie cracks a joke. Both of them reaching for normalcy, for the comfortable ebb and flow their relationship used to have.

"I think you'll survive," Bridget says.

"Right well here I go. Wish me luck." Robbie opens the passenger door but lingers in his seat a moment longer.

Bridget's hand flutters towards him for a moment. To touch his shoulder? Caress his cheek? She's not really sure and she lets it fall back down on the seat. Robbie notices. He gives her one last timid smile and closes the passenger door.

Near the driver door there is the sound of squealing tires, followed by a honk. Bridget looks up and catches a passing glimpse of the red light she just ran before she's out of the intersection.

Shit.

She listens for the pursuit of sirens and exhales slowly when there aren't any. She furrows her brow. No more day dreaming.

About 3 miles away and the dot that is Robbie begins to migrate. It moves further north and Bridget's heart quickens.

"Now where are you going?" She murmurs under her breath and increases her speed.

The dot pauses once again not too far from where it was before. A small bridge arches over the road. Hanging from it is a sign welcoming Bridget to Chesterfield, home of the Cheetahs. It's not surprising the city's only boast is their high school mascot. Only a Meijer, a Shell gas station, and a small dentist office greet her on the other side of the bridge. She's right next to where Robbie was before he decided to move. On the steering wheel, her hands feel slick and clammy.

"Please stay. Please stay. Please stay." Bridget finds herself pleading with the Robbie dot as she turns down the road it's sitting on.

Part of her wants him to keep moving so that the confrontation she's been replaying in her head will never come to fruition. As a general rule of thumb, she avoids confrontations. Ironically, the silent treatment is her go-to method for voicing disagreement. She's been practicing her response to a variety of scenarios that might unfold when she and the Robbie dot finally meet. She suspects he's at a bar. She fantasizes about intimidating him, of marching up to him and glowering over him with such fury that he never so much as looks at alcohol again. The emotion that constricts her throat at the mere thought of Robbie at a bar makes her fear she may end up puking on his shoes instead.

She's nearly upon the dot now. There is an Aldi grocery store up ahead and as she draws closer she can see Robbie's white Ford Taurus in the parking lot. The concrete here is riddled with cracks and potholes and Bridget directs her car through a series of complicated maneuvers to avoid them as she pulls into a spot a few rows away from Robbie.

It's not too busy for 11am on a Saturday. There's a woman pushing a cart besides an elderly woman and a man walking hand in hand with a little boy towards the store entrance. She's chosen a parking spot that's behind a large, roofed, cart return and sandwiched between a pickup truck and a dark blue minivan. From this position she's sure Robbie won't be able to see her until she wants him to. When she turns the engine off she realizes how frenzied the beating of her heart is. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She does this ten times. When she opens her eyes Robbie is there.

He is squinting in the sunlight. She always nagged him about that.

"You'll get crow's feet before you're 30," she'd say and try to wrestle sunglasses on to his nose.

"I don’t like sunglasses, they mess with my perfect 20:20 vision," he'd joke and smack her hand away. Normally, the memory would make her smile. Now, Bridget's mouth forms a tight, thin line.

In one hand Robbie is holding a grocery bag with the heads of some bananas poking out of the top. In the other hand he carries a 6-pack.

Before she can process what she's doing, the car door is open and Bridget throws herself into blindingly bright sunlight. He doesn't see her at first as she strides past the young and elderly woman. The blood is rushing in her head and the cold whooshing reminds her of a Tuesday night in November.

How could he.

It's a statement, not a question and it pounds her gut, pushing her body forward with its force. She clutches her phone still, the pulsing dot erodes a hole in both her hand and her heart. Robbie sees her now. He's paused beside his car, his hand makes a 'C' over his eyes to shield them from the sun; there isn't any recognition in them.

She's not sure what she's going to do. Slap him? Scream at him? Nothing at all? Her eyes follow the 6-pack in his left hand and suddenly she can make out the packaging.

Iced tea.

6 of them. Bottled.

Not alcohol.

Bridget stops and Robbie stares. His eyes screw up into the deepest, messiest squint she's ever seen. He drops the 6 pack and the grocery bag. Bridget sees that there's only bananas and carrots in the bag. She glances into the back of his Taurus and sees more grocery bags, this time from Meijer. She doesn't want to look at him. Every non-confrontational bone in her body screams at her to keep her eyes on the Taurus, Robbie is reaching for her phone though and she has to look at him as he takes it from her.

"You weren't at AA," she explains.

"It got out early," he says, he is processing the image on the phone screen.

"Oh." It's such a simple explanation that Bridget can't think of any other way to respond. Of all the scenarios she had rehearsed in her head, this was not one of them.

Robbie looks up from the phone screen, his face smooth as marble.

"You don't trust me," he says and it's a statement, not a question.