Morning Routine

I jumped in the river and what did I see?

Brett exits the bathroom and walks towards the stairs. His eyes adjusting to the morning rays breaking through the window above the foyer's light fixture. He stops at the banister and looks at it. The fixture is swaying ever so slightly. Indetectable to an impatient eye.

He hits the button on the single cup coffee machine he bought Jess this past autumn. It whirs to signal its start. He's listening to it but not, trying to solve a work problem while also pleading for the noises to annoy him enough that he forgets it. Coffee machines, the old pots that sat below and brewed through filters and not single-use pods, didn't sound like this, did they?

Brett continues his morning routine to distract himself from his jumbled thoughts. Their scatter bothers him and he isn't in the mood for bother this early. He grabs the creamer from the fridge and then slightly adjusts it — the entire appliance — as it looked a bit off-center. He wipes dust from the now exposed inch on the floor and calls to his wife.

"Hun," he shouts. "Are you guys up yet?" Her response answering the question either way.

"What?" she shouts back.

"Are the kids up —"

"Yes," she answers as she descends the stairs. "Stef is brushing her hair and Mike already left for his paper route."

"Got it. I'll get the cereal out."

"I'm gonna pop in the shower," she says. "Could you get my coffee going next, please?"

Brett is on the way to the machine before she finishes the question.

"Also," she says, popping her head back around the corner. "Could you pull out the flour," she asks with a wink. "And two sticks of butter and —"

"Four eggs. I got it," he winks back to her.

Black-eyed angels swam with me

He puts just a dash of creamer in his favorite mug as his wife exits the room. The whirring begins again as he moves towards the sun shooting through the bay window. Sipping in the light of god as he feels that kind of peace that only comes in the early hours. He forgets about the work issue for a few brief moments before his vibrating phone brought him out of it. Not work, but a text from an old friend about an upcoming weekend away. He looks out the window again, and then to the rest of the house. A nanosecond of comparative pride as he thinks about his friend's life versus the one he and Jess have built.

They'd always done right by each other. In love and in life. Happy marriage, happy kids, since the beginning. Brett still remembers the first time he saw Jess. A normal night out in college. A packed bar, floors sticky, overloud music, stale beer, university red everywhere. But not her. At the railing, laughing to her friend, wearing green. Not because she was rooting for another school that night. Not to be punk rock. Not even to stand out. She was wearing green because she wanted to that Saturday night. And he could not stop staring at her. The emerald girl with no name. Several pint glasses — for him — and rejected suitors — for her — later, Brett mustered the courage to say "Hi". She felt tired before they started talking, but when she turned and noticed his modified bear shirt, she perked up. She looked at the logo and said, "I love them." He was in.

A moon full of stars and astral cars

Typically, they were inseparable from then on. Walking to classes, waiting outside the lecture halls for one another, studying leg-to-leg on the library couches. The librarian came over to separate them many times. Private school prude, he'd think. On weekends, they'd go downtown to see concerts and visit coffee shops. They talked about everything, anything. She'd spent her first few years in school with her head down, trying to get as far ahead as possible. Her late aunt was her godmother, and she was the best person in the world to Jess. Aunt Liz was in social work, and her goddaughter always looked up to her. Towards the end, when she was in the hospital with tubes sticking out of her, she told Jess that the greatest thing a person could do wasn't to change the world, but to try. She cried. The two of them and Jess's mother sat there those final days, laughing a lot, crying more, and sleeping little. Mother and daughter held her hand as she closed her eyes that final time. For what felt like forever, they didn't move.

So when she got to school years later, "It felt like I knew what I was meant to do," she said, weeping in a coffee shop. Brett didn't have any story like that. He got to school and chose lawyer because it was his favorite of the two options his — and everyone's — parents suggested. He was neither a hard worker nor a lax one. He had good grades and already begun studying for his LSAT in the summer. He'd meant to start networking for internships the week following meeting Jess, but fate seemed to have other ideas. Life tends to stall plans, he'd think some time after.

Eventually he networked and got a good internship. A few of his professors really liked Brett and had contacts at good firms. He and Jess went on spring break together, and hung out at bars with friends, and studied for finals on the library couches. In the summer, Jess got a job waitressing and Brett one giving nature tours outside the city. She even helped him study for the LSAT, often refusing to let the pair sleep until he got just a little bit farther. She didn't push as much as nudge, but it payed off when he passed. He remembers getting the results and walking to the restaurant to tell her, adrenaline in his veins rushing like a flood. He sprinted in panting and they caught eyes, smiling. So much joy, so much relief. Jess even made a cake that night, as her aunt always made one when she felt truly happy. "It's just the beginning," Jess toasted with her wine glass. They ate half a cake and slept on the floor.

All the things I used to see

When they have a date night or engagement with friends, Brett often finds himself thinking back to these times. Normally he tries to be as present as possible, avoiding this photo book of nostalgia, but it can't always be avoided. He is elsewhere even before he dreams: in that restaurant, on those couches, feeling her soft hands as they walk in autumn.

They rushed through the rest of that summer and into senior year, repeating their cycles of togetherness and losing none of the buzz from it. Midterms, friends, finals, meeting each other's parents over the holidays, and repeat come the new year. A flash before they were both in cap and gown, having a sketch of the future with one thing drawn in pen.

How lucky was I, he would often question. At such a turning point in their lives, to have something so good. That first year out of school, being so busy forming the bedrock of their careers while not losing sight of one another. Getting their first apartment, which was a dump. Waking up and preparing for the day together, the pair of them a tornado of synchronicity before they rushed out the door. Brett at law school, unpacking his lunch to find a love note every single day.

All my lovers were there with me

But eventually it started. The stress of his future and what he will be was eating at him more and more. Looking around during those late nights in the library and thinking: are these the people I want to be around? The type of people I want to compete with? To think like?

Brett began drinking. At first just an extra one or two for a Friday night release, but it got worse quickly. During lunch, ignoring his food and walking to a pub. On the fourth floor of the library where he knew nobody went. Any place that kept the knowledge to one. It was odd, he thought, because he knew the gene was in his family. His grandfather was an alcoholic for years, and later the same fate set upon two of his uncles. But it never really occurred to him that he could get hit with the hereditary flaw. They were all sad people, he'd think, and I am not sad.

It was moreso like a fraction of him went missing. A chunk of iceberg cracked off the mass. The piece only reobtained when alcohol-warmth swam in his veins. Where did it go? Was it back at undergrad? Lost eating that cake in joy? Or in that bar staring at green? Or was it sooner and he never realized it, slowly dissolving since he was playing with lettered blocks? He knew he'd never know. The fractured chunk into the icy blue abyss, and the ocean is so deep.

It got worse when Jess finally noticed. A couple late nights turned into numerous, and the smell of booze under Brett's breath became an everyday occurrence. She offered to help, pleaded even, but his shame almost made it worse. A multiplier to his problem.

All my past and futures

One night, Brett went out of his normal bar route, as even the bartenders started to worry at his usual spots. He stood at the rail, in a place he'd never been before, and his brain only knew the word "Go". It was a pace he'd never drank at before, a whirl of clear and brown liquids set before him as he talked to the strangers around him and his phone buzzed until it died. At least that's what he recalls. The rest was on a police report. Two male bar patrons in altercation, it said. Both inebriated, witnesses at the scene couldn't reliably substantiate who started the altercation. Multiple witnesses said the men were shouting about which of the two bumped into the other, before one of the men struck the other. Witnesses again couldn't reliably substantiate who struck first. The fight escalated before a 9-1-1 call was made by the bartender and police arrived on the scene minutes later. At that point, the men had stopped and were separated. Both appeared to be hurt in some manner with blood on their face and clothing. After numerous interviews with all involved, and due to how unreliable witness/perpetrator testimony would be, assault charges weren't filed and the men were sent home.

A secret kept safe. But even Jess, crying and screaming as she picked him up, would be shielded from what actually happened. Because when the fight ended and the adrenaline was fully pumping, Brett came to and turned on the lawyer building inside him. He talked his way out of it. Both with the patrons and the police who arrived after. Deep down, he knew he'd got away with something, and maybe that shame is why he always assumed he started the fight.

AA meetings followed. Jess, a pillar of strength, worked while supporting Brett in any way she could. How lucky was I, he questions again, still looking out the bay window. He smiles. Grabbing Jess's coffee and reloading his, Brett looks at his AA chip in the bowl of car keys. Never without her, he thinks. Opening the fridge and nudging aside the kids' milk (whole, as Jess says it's better for their bones), he grabs the creamer again and adds it to his wife's coffee. The chalky liquid spilling into the middle of the dark coffee. Disappearing into the contained puddle until a swirling spoon brings it back to the surface.

Brett shuts the fridge. He looks to his second, full mug and then back to the door. Michael's baby picture under a school-made magnet. Fathers always remember: Brett leaving his umpteenth AA meeting, drinking controlled but still feeling listless, getting picked up by Jess. The pouring rain didn't help matters as he sprinted to the parked car. Jess looked at him, and he could tell there was a hint of sadness to her smiled hello. When she said the word "pregnant", they embraced. The image of her holding a newborn stuck in his head while rain droplets slid down the sides of it. She played their song as they pulled out of the parking lot. Brett cried, and then Jess did, too. What the hell am I doing, he questioned to himself.

And we all went to heaven in a little row boat

From there on, every second not reading a book on how to be a father was spent studying and setting up job options after school. He still felt the emptiness from time to time, but the meetings and his newfound sense of duty pushed it down. Jess was an angel through it all, and he tried in any way possible to return the favor. Getting home late from school, putting together a crib until the wee hours, falling asleep on the floor. Brett knew what she had gone through was worth far more praise. That sense of duty made the darkness much easier to ignore.

He did his absolute best and never slipped up, but it wasn't until Mike was born that he truly felt he saw the light. The immediate and overwhelming pride he had for his family that night in the hospital. When they got back to the house and he returned to AA, his sponsor asked him if fatherhood had given him anything in regards to his addiction.

"Clarity," he said.

Months passed and Brett took time at home with Mike and networked for jobs. His young son and wife's drive to do better inspired him to make a difference in his work. He turned down more money to do so, and could tell Jess felt seen for it. A partner in fulfilling her promise. They worked hard and helped each other through those early days, all three of them, as toddler Michael picked out a mug for his father's birthday. "Best Dad Ever!" it read. The kind of thing that's corny and stuffed into cupboards to collect dust, but it wasn't to Brett. It became his mug, even if it sometimes gave him pangs of guilt for what he felt was his selfish abandonment of his wife at a time she needed him most. The bill always comes, is something his father would say to him as a child.

Maybe I'll be dragged away like Dorothy, he thought, tapping the fridge photo of Stephanie Elizabeth on her first Halloween, dressed as Toto. He chuckles to himself before heading back again to the bay window, sipping out of his mug. The new construction cul-de-sac they lived in wouldn't stand a chance against a tornado. He thought about how improbable a twister would be in this part of the country, nigh impossible, and how they still scared him. Millions upon millions of data points stacked against it, and yet he still had that fear.

How odd, Brett thought. Just as his neighbor, Mr. McCall, walked out to his front lawn. He left his bay window perch and opened the door to sticky humidity.

"Morning," Brett says while closing his front door.

"Good morning, Brett," he answers politely. "Another heatwave?"

Brett looks up to the blank canvas of a sky.

"Seems so," he replies. "Did you have a chance to think about those tickets for next weekend? I know it's short notice, but it's already sold out and it sure would mean a lot to Mike —"

"Sorry," Mr. McCall interrupts. "What time is it?"

"About quarter to seven," Brett answers, confused.

"Isn't Mike usually through this section by now? I need to see what sort of nonsense they're saying about that development today," he says pointedly.

"Yeah...You're right," Brett returns as he squints down the winding, cookie-cut streets.

Mr. McCall continues talking, but Brett is slowly walking away. By the time he tells his junior neighbor the tickets will be there for him at will call, Brett is halfway down the block.

Before long, he's power walking down the serpentine sidewalk, passing houses getting more and more of the beating, unblocked sun. The neighborhood is still awakening, but a few are outside waiting for an answer to the same question as Mr. McCall.

"Mike?" Brett finally calls after it simultaneously feels like he's gone a mile and ten feet.

The street is quiet, so his voice booms. It's the only thing soundtracking the morning other than his increasingly frantic steps.

"Mike...Mike?" he repeats as he rounds a corner, coffee spilling over the sides of his mug. He's moving so quickly now that his pants are making noise. The swish, swish of his khakis intercutting his short question.

"Mike," he says breathless, before seeing a roll of newspaper at the Springer's, where his son begins each route. "Mikey?"

He follows along the street, trying to remember where they turned when he joined his eldest on the first few routes.

A woman comes outside, gripping her newspaper as Brett stops in front of her sidewalk.

"Sir?" she questions. "Is everything alri—"

"Michael!" Brett screams as he sprints away from her. His mug shattering on her sidewalk as he approaches a driverless bicycle two houses down.

There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt