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The longer Marsha looks at him, sprawled out on her couch in days-old clothes, his eyes half-lidded and his hair a mess, watching the show playing on the TV while he sips mindlessly from the bottle of bourbon between his legs, the more she sees herself.
It’s a comparison that almost makes her sick.
He came to her, days after Dean’s parents had totally cleared out the place he had called home and stranded Jack with nowhere to stay, explaining that he had been sleeping on the floor in an empty house with no heating or running water or electricity and shyly asking if he could sleep in her spare room until he found somewhere else to live. “I’m really sorry for putting you out like this,” he apologised again and again as she helped him get settled. “I’ll promise I’ll find some way to make it up to you.”
“Don’t be silly,” she chided as she neatly folded the meagre selection of clothes he had haphazardly shoved into his suitcase in his haste to leave the desolate boathouse, slapping his hand away when he tried to reach out and help her. “You’ve done so much for me already, if anything, this is me repaying you.”
She isn’t quite sure when the alcohol began to shove its way into the picture. She knows that he didn’t get it from her. She has none in the house, not anymore, not since Jack became closer to her than her own son and had placed the responsibility upon himself to help her get clean. They had poured all the liquor down the sink, shattering the bottles by smashing them in the back alley behind her apartment building and hiding the evidence by sweeping them under the row of large bins.
The transition was sudden and unexpected. One minute Marsha went from being a little worried about him. to smelling alcohol on his breath more often than not, to finding a bottle of alcohol not so strategically hidden in his room while she put his washing away when he was out on a shift. She didn’t dare confront him about it, but he knew she had seen it, knew she would have at least had to move it aside to put some of his things away. And then it all changed- now he drinks in the linge room, right in front of her, as if he’s given up being abashed and ashamed and can’t care less what she thinks of him. And she hates it. Hates it more than she’s ever hated anything, hates that he's just stopped caring.
She can’t really complain, though. She knows how he most commonly tends to manage these overwhelming feelings, the coping strategies that are less than healthy, the women with no names and the bars with no addresses and the make-outs with no faces. At least while he’s here, sleeping in her spare room and sitting on her couch, alcohol or no alcohol, at least she can keep an eye on him.
But what's done is done, and there’s nothing she can change about it now.
“She kissed me,” he mumbles during the ad break of the regularly scheduled viewing of ‘The Grinch’. He had come home from Travis’ drunker than she had ever seen him, face wet from tears and covered in a thick coating of dust, the first thing he said in greeting was that he destroyed the bathroom he had attempted to fix. “She kissed me, and then she kicked me out as if I had done the wrong thing.”
At the time, she had wished that she could comfort him, to console him in some way, to let him know that it wasn’t always going to be like this, but she would be lying. That's how it seemed to always go with Jack. Relationships were ruined because of women who acted without thinking and used him for a good time, leading him along like a lost puppy and kicking him away when they got sick of him. This is how it always goes, a repetitive cycle that he doesn't know how to break.
It shatters her heart into a million tiny painful pieces to see him so damn miserable, drinking every day and trying to forget all the pain that’s been pressing down on him, burying him deeper in a pit of his own despair, but this is better- at least here, in the spare room or asleep on the couch, she knows that he’s here, that he’s safe as he can be. He’s not out, looking for some misguided company to cheer him up, make his empty core feel full again, and regret it a million times over in the morning when it came back to bite him hard in the ass. This is better. A hangover might hurt in the morning, but not so much as a broken heart, and it won't last as long, either. Marsha would know.
Part of her is mad at his fellow firefighters at Station 19. Furious, even, enraged. How do the people, who work with him every day, who are supposed to know him every which way, not see that he is struggling? Not see that he has to fight every day to climb out of bed, that he claws his way to work, that he puts on a smile and a brave face because that’s what they’re expecting from him? How is it the job of a crazy old woman to take care of him? From the stories he has told, the firefighters at Station 19 are like a family to him, and he cares about them more than he cares about himself, but apparently, the feeling isn’t mutual, because Marsha hasn’t seen anything of the sort. Hasn’t seen hide or hair of them, hasn’t even heard them ring him to see how he is going.
It makes her angry- he has too much love to give but doesn’t receive any love in return, even when he deserves it more than anyone she knows.
She wonders how much they know. In her weaker moments, she wonders if they’re aware of how desperately he needs them at this instant, how severely he’s struggling. Maybe, perhaps, she might be able to forgive them if Jack has just entirely hidden it from them and has convinced them that he’s the same happy-go-lucky guy with the big smile and the warm hugs and the boisterous laughter that they know every day and can rely on, but somehow she doubts that when she sees him on her couch with a bottle not even knowing what day it is.
Looking at him these days hurts her, and though she doesn’t remember much about that long period of time in her very old life, she thinks that it has something to do with him looking very much like her.
It all comes to a head as the Christmas season starts to feel like it’s passing them by like a speeding car on the empty highway. When the sight of him sitting there starts to make her feel sick to the stomach and she feels the newly-familiar burn of uncontrollable, unreasonable anger that makes her feel something fowl, she turns off the TV and forces him to look at her through his eyelashes, eyes half-lidded and gaze fogged by alcohol. “Get changed,” she says as she brushes her hands through his greasy, unwashed hair, making it stand stiffly up in all directions. He looks so young. He lets his eyes fall fully shut and leans into her touch, almost chasing her when she starts to pull away, and she wonders with a heavy heart how long it’s been since anyone has handled him with such care. “We’re going out.”
“Where are we going?” he mumbles and for a second, she thinks he’s going to fall asleep, lulled by her touch, so she pulls her hand away. He slowly blinks his eyes open.
“I’m thinking about going Christmas tree shopping,” she says nonchalantly. “A real, once-living tree, not the synthetic kind that you buy at the shops. It’s almost Christmas and we haven’t even got a tree up. Where am I supposed to stick your presents?”
With a jerk, suddenly Jack is very much awake. His eyes are wide as saucers, his expression sharper and more aware than she has seen it in a very long time. He looks uncertain, and Marsha knows that they are both remembering a day that feels like a lifetime ago, a memory tainted by brandy-coloured fog; a burning Christmas tree, frantic running from the kitchen to the lounge with a sloshing mug of water, her own voice sounding foreign in her throat as she screamed for help, Dean stoically putting out the fire, Jack’s arms wrapping tight around her and his gentle voice promising that she was alright now, that he would keep her safe. “Marsha-”
She doesn’t want to discuss it, so she takes the bottle from where it sits between his legs, not that there’s much left in it anyway, barely a dribble, a mouthful, and returns to the kitchen to continue the dishes, deciding then and there that if he's going to attend his shift tomorrow, she's going to have to hide the rest of his booze to force him to sober up. “I’m not going to force you to do anything that you don’t want to do, Jack,” she says with as much strength and kindness that she can muster. “But I am going to go look for a tree, and it would mean a lot to me if you would come with me.”
He looks at her strangely for a moment, and she isn’t sure if he will agree or will go back to mindlessly watching the TV after fetching another bottle, but then he heaves himself up from the couch and rises on unsteady legs, and he stands there, swaying in her living room between the old couch that’s seen better days and the cluttered coffee table, and Marsha waits for him to fall over. But instead, he runs a hand across the back of his neck, shifts his fingers through his hair, and blinks owlishly as he turns and shuffles to the spare bedroom. “I’ll just… I’m gonna get changed, then.”
She briefly wonders if it would be rude and insensitive to shout after him and suggest that he take a shower as well. She thinks better of it. Jack getting up and getting changed and getting out is a step in the right direction and as good as she’s going to get for right now.
Marsha wants to swathe Jack in bubble-wrap, envelop him in cotton wool, wrap him in her arms where he will be safe and protected and loved, and cover him in police tape and signs that warn “Fragile: Handle With Care” and hope and pray that the cruel world takes notice. She wants to hold him when he cracks and hold him until he crumbles and hold him while he cries and she wants to curse at the world for ever doing this boy harm. She wants to march right down to Station 19 and give that so-called ‘family’ a piece of her mind, a well-prepared speech littered with cusses and hard truths and barbs that dig deep and hurt a long while. But Jack will probably never forgive her, if not for teaching them a lesson then for telling them that he is struggling in the first place when he has spent so much effort keeping it a secret, and the last thing Marsha wants to be is another person who has hurt him.
Fragile: Handle With Care. If only they knew.
Jack emerges from the bathroom wearing clean clothes. He’s combed his hair. He’s washed his face. He seems more awake and aware than Marsha has seen him in a long time, and though he still has the ever-present stink of booze on his skin, on his breath, in his tears, this is good enough for her. Jack will always be good enough for her and so much more.