Groundhog Day: A short story

Jackson felt awkward stepping out of the taxi and not paying, even though he knew that Floyd had already footed the bill. He'd sent him home early. Assured him he would drop his car off in the morning. Told him to take the next month off — to take as long as he needed. Hell, Floyd would probably wipe his arse if Jackson asked him to. Jackson knew he meant well, but he still couldn't help feeling like a baby.

You massive fucking baby, he thought to himself as he fumbled with his keys to unlock the door, trying two of the wrong ones before hearing the familiar click of the latch release, and feeling the door swing open under his weight. Now to find something else to prop him up throughout the stretch of darkness that lay in the evening ahead. The month ahead. Throwing himself into work was meant to be his Coping Strategy — he'd planned it all out in his head. No one was going to bring him dishes of crusty lasagne and spag bol while he lounged around on the sofa all day. The kitchen was where he belonged — he'd mastered how to orchestrate the perfect flambé without burning the contents of your pan to a crisp, what to do when your supplier misses four of the day's crucial ingredients and you have to improvise a third of your menu, the exact ratio of ginger to asafoetida needed in a Sindhi Kadhi Chawal to create the perfect tanginess on any tongue. Grief? That wasn't his business.

The record on the player was the same one that’d been there for the past two weeks. Jackson couldn't bring himself to move anything even slightly — perhaps if he left everything the way it was, he could pretend that nothing had changed. He placed the needle where he’d left off the last time, and Ryan Adams' ‘Damn, Sam (I Love a Woman That Rains)’ slowly filled the living room. Damn, Sam, he thought. She fucking pours.

Margot had introduced him to Ryan Adams. Before her, his record collection consisted purely of techno, trip hop, and drum and bass — The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Aphex Twin, Massive Attack, and the like. Margot taught him that experiencing a song didn't always have to involve sweat plastering your hair to your forehead while you bounced around in a sea of sticky bodies under a random bridge somewhere past Ancoats. He'd take a longer route home to savour Jeff Buckley's ‘Grace’ album on the way back from work, and they'd dance to Regina Spektor together while doing the dishes. Their differing music tastes were a pretty perfect analogy for their personalities — Jackson was always running somewhere, definitely down to lateness and never exercise. He'd handed in all of his university assignments 10 minutes before the deadline on a good day, and it wasn't unlike him to wear the same pair of socks three days in a row. In contrast, Margot had jogged in the campus gym, she'd always had a draft of her essays prepared the week she received her titles, and all of her outfits were intricately put together — yet seemingly effortless. They balanced each other out.

Jackson slid open the door of their antique drinks cabinet, reaching for the bottle of Monkey Shoulder he'd spent the past few days slowly ploughing through. He popped off the cork-style cap and lifted the neck to his lips. There weren't any appropriate glasses in the house since whisky had never been the drink of choice for either of them, but the drink itself seemed appropriate now. It was what he'd seen characters in TV dramas drink in his situation, so he went through the motions, not knowing quite what else to do. The sharp burn at the back of his throat gave him something new to focus on, it dulled the sirens that constantly blared in his head — blinding flashes of red and blue screaming that he had lost his wife. Because that was what he'd done. He'd fucking lost her. He'd promised to have and to hold her in sickness and in health, but he hadn't been holding on when he should have been and now he didn't have her, would never hold her again. The doctor had said there was nothing that he could’ve done, no way of knowing what was going to happen, that some medical professionals would struggle to predict a fatal brain aneurysm, so there was no way that Jackson could have. Jackson wouldn't accept this, though. You didn't just let the other half of your whole person die and not sense that something was wrong. Nope, not possible. Jackson's lids felt heavy on his eyes and told him that it was time to perform the next façade of his new life — sleep. The tiredness he felt was purely alcohol-induced, and he knew he'd wake with a start in a couple of hours, frantically trying to reach out to the one person he’d find solace in, who wasn't there. But it was something to do.

When the tinny sound of his old bell alarm clock rang out the following morning, Jackson was already awake. Since he wasn't working for the next month, his alarm would serve to provide him with a normal sleeping pattern, remind him to get out of bed each morning and put one foot in front of the other. He couldn't sleep this off – the thought made him almost laugh out loud. He'd probably never have a full night's sleep again. As he rose out of bed, he caught sight of his car in the driveway — Floyd had been true to his word. Jackson was surprised he hadn't heard him arrive, but grateful he hadn't knocked on the door to see how he was doing. Floyd understood that it was a totally redundant question.

What to do today? The thought sat in Jackson's brain, something between a genuine question and a desperate cry for help. He decided that he’d prepare the restaurant menu in full, or a version of it. He didn't feel like eating, but food was fuel to keep going, and he was good at cooking it — he wanted to feel good. He'd have a shower, throw some clothes on, and then head over to Morrison's for the ingredients. Actually, he'd probably have to stop off at Waitrose on the way back since he was such a fancy bastard chef. It would get him out of the house.

At the wheel of his car, Jackson was alert. He stuck to the speed limit and paused at every red light, giving old gals ample time to cross the road at their own pace. Sure, he’d thought about pulling out of a junction at just the wrong time, letting an oncoming truck barrel into the side of his modest '04 Mondeo, but that wasn’t really an option. He wasn’t going to be a sad-ass cliché and off himself because he’d been widowed. Another one of those phrases. He’d skilfully skirted around the D-word since it had happened — instead, he used all of the euphemisms he knew: gone, passed, in a better place. That last one pissed him right off. 

Both Tesco and Waitrose were within walking distance from the house and along the same route, but walking meant partaking in a cruel form of sight-seeing — during which he was forced to picture all of their memories, and the what-ifs that now existed in place of the life they’d been building together. The window of the coffee shop where they’d spent Sunday mornings now framed other couples on tentative first dates, fiddling with the straws of their matching frappucinos. The run-down karaoke bar that had lent its acoustics to their shoddy singing talents the night Margot had drunkenly begged him to duet ‘You're the One That I Want’ with her as they stumbled home from a catch-up with the uni lot was a stark reminder that their songs would be sung solo from now. On the outskirts of town — the part where they’d almost been able to pretend they lived in the countryside — park swings rattled in the breeze, haunted by the children they’d planned to delight by teaching to soar in high in the air, but would now never meet. The travel agent’s on the road heading towards the town centre now symbolised all of the trips they’d never take together, places that she’d never see. Even the small things, like the new Jewish deli they’d been meaning to try, made him want to scream. So he drove into town and kept his eyes firmly on the road.

Jackson could navigate the local Tesco with his eyes shut, he’d worked weekend shifts there to support himself throughout his culinary training 10 years earlier, after he’d quit his job as a junior developer for The Yorkshire Building Society to turn his passion for cooking into his profession. His mum had hit the roof, she thought he was crazy to give up a cash-rich career in software design for what she labelled “A pipe dream”. Jackson's dad had surprised him by backing him all the way: "You can have your “I told you so” moment if he comes to you with his tail between his legs, but there's no harm in him giving it a go", he’d said to Jackson's mother in defence of their son's choice. Jackson had never loved him more than in that moment.

In the August of 2008, Jackson completed a two-year course in professional cookery studies at Stockport College, and gained a prestigious role as the commis chef for El Gato Negro — an award-winning restaurant in Ripponden that gave West Yorkshire a taste of traditional Spanish cooking. Success and circumstance saw Jackson climb the culinary ladder past sous chef and straight to head chef over the course of the next three years – and when he joked about moving on and opening his own place, his boss had nothing but words of encouragement for him. In 2012, Jackson had his own “I told you so” moment when he opened the doors to Anywhere. After growing up with four brothers and sisters and their wildly different palates, Jackson's restaurant was his answer to the long laboured over question — “Where do you want to eat tonight?” — that’d seen the beginnings of World Wars III through to twenty-three during his childhood. The restaurant menu was split across the seven continents — the idea being that you could take your taste buds on a trip around the world, and there was something for everyone. “Where do you want to eat tonight?” “Anywhere”.

Waitrose were all out of togarashi seasoning, but this could be easily substituted between the other ingredients, so Jackson wasn't too bothered. He unloaded his car in one trip and then set about sorting the ingredients into different piles according to their dishes — the secret to a good meal was all in the timing, so you had to make sure you knew exactly where to reach for a certain spice or sprig at the precise moment you needed it. As he began prepping the oven, Jackson realised it was far too small, and it suddenly dawned on him how stupid his idea was — he was a team of one cooking a menu over 45 dishes strong on his reconditioned two-oven AGA. Good effort, mate. He resolved to cook himself a spiced beef and rice hot pot with a side of the remaining Monkey Shoulder.

The steak sat in Jackson's stomach, adding to the dead-weight feeling that’d taken over his body the day he heard the news — a sensation that was now just a part of him, like an added limb. Looking through old photos was another form of needless torture he’d previously refused to put himself through, but right now he needed to see her face. He needed to remind himself that, not so long ago, he’d felt joy and excitement and anticipation for the future — instead of each day being the equivalent of waking up after a drunken fight and wondering why your entire body ached, before remembering. Jackson pulled out an old mahogany chest that they’d found at a car boot sale a few years back and filled with mementos like photos, cards, and cinema ticket stubs in the time since. Margot was big on keepsakes, insisting that preserving good memories was as crucial to their well-being as the warranty on their boiler, "Plus, we'll need plenty of photos for our future teenagers to Instagram on our birthdays in 20 years", she’d said, laughing at her own joke. That laugh. Jackson's eyes were fixed on a photo of Margot falling about on the beach in St. Ives a month earlier, and for a second, he almost hated her for being so happy-go-lucky at a time when their world was so close to being torn apart.

Margot had a quiet, unobvious beauty. Less Michelle Pfeiffer circa ‘Scarface’ and more Kirsten Dunst's Lux Lisbon in ‘The Virgin Suicides.’ It crept up on you. It had crept up on Jackson, all right. One minute he was wondering whether the self-assured blonde that had approached him in the bar expected him to buy her a drink on his measly student loan income, and the next he was spending 40 minutes wondering if his eyes were blue or green and which colour shirt would accentuate them the most and whether she would even notice any of this the next time they went out together. Jackson knew that Margot's eyes were grey with flecks of green in them, her hair appeared fair in the light — but the colour really bordered on brown, she had a ton of freckles that sneaked onto the edges  of her lips, and a single dimple that she lamented for its asymmetry. Each of these things his gaze had collected — like treasures — in their mornings before she woke or when he would capture her own private moments, daydreaming or applying a lipstick, before she’d noticed him entering the room.

As he browsed the tokens of their life together, thumbing through old receipts from evenings in their favourite restaurants, and notes that they’d left for each other on the fridge before work, Jackson pulled out a square baggie with two orange pills inside. He recalled a guy in the crowd presenting him with them as freebies when New Order played Castlefield Bowl a couple of months back — "Strong stuff" — the guy had promised him. Jackson had pocketed them with no intention of taking them that night, he hadn't done drugs since university and he liked to think that he’d grown up a bit since then. Still, there was no harm in saving free drugs for a rainy day. Days don't get much bleaker than your wife pushing up daisies, Jackson thought to himself.

Now, he felt like an addict desperate for his next fix — as though his hand grasped a hypodermic needle primed for injection, rather than the two tabs of Molly that rested in his palm. He considered the crashing comedown that he’d experience the following morning, but quickly dismissed any further reasoning in his head. Suddenly, he was the addict, existing entirely in the short term with no care for consequence. He just wanted to feel carefree for five minutes, so this was a gift: four hours of potential freedom from the dark corners and sharp edges of his mind wrapped in two inches of plastic. After popping the bag open with one hand, Jackson tossed an orange pill into the back of his throat and washed the bitter chemical taste down with an equally bitter swig of whisky.

About 40 minutes had passed since Jackson had taken the pill, and while he felt agitated — pacing the room like a lunatic stockbroker anxious to close a deal, he didn't feel high. He had ditched the whisky and switched to water once the thirst had kicked in, and he was beginning to realise why the pills had been free. It seemed he was experiencing all of the shitty side-effects of the drug — the nausea of the come-up and his tense, grinding jaw – without any of the pros. His mood hadn't changed at all. The second pill sat on the edge of the coffee table, an invitation. 

Usually, Jackson would begin a night with only half a pill to gauge its potency — safety first and what have you  — but that wasn’t a priority for him anymore, so he drained his glass of water with the synthetic sunshine-coloured tab and stepped over the photos to place the needle back on the record player, resuming the Ryan Adams album. As he settled back into his position among the mementos of his former life strewn across the floor, the drug began to take its full effect and he felt his surroundings swell into focus, allowing himself to be hypnotised by the groove of heartbreak from one of his favourite records — which he’d come to understand in a way that he’d never wanted to.

Jackson’s restless hands reached out and brushed Margot’s face in the photos around him. Margot blowing out candles on a homemade birthday cake that he’d baked when money was too tight for gifts. Margot posing in a vintage dress that very closely matched his parents’ sofa. Margot dancing on her own, a moment he’d stolen for himself when she wasn’t looking; the two of them dancing together on their wedding day, a mixture of wine-and-deliriously-happy drunk. A blurry snapshot they’d asked a passer-by to take in Porto without checking the result; his face stamped with lipstick-kisses from Margot before he’d left for a cooking retreat in Italy. Margot wearing the same lipstick at a New Year's Eve party; and then Margot on the beach in St. Ives again, only her shoulders were shaking and her laughter sang out in his ears — this was all a big joke, silly. I'm right here.