Creep - Jennifer Hillier [52]
But he couldn’t turn his back on Lenore and the baby. They’d had a quick civil ceremony, and four months later Randall was born.
Things were all right at first. Both their parents helped with the baby, and Morris was drafted by the Green Bay Packers after his junior year. Lenore was happy to get out of Texas. There were good times in those early days.
But barely two years later, the ligaments in his right knee were torn apart by a badly timed tackle in practice. Despite a year of rehab, his knee never fully recovered. At the age of twenty-three, his career in the NFL was over.
They moved back to Texas, where Lenore encouraged him to finish his degree in finance. After graduation, his father, a VP at LoneStar Capital, hired him. Morris liked the job well enough, but the resentment of losing his football life never went away. The death of his dream ate at him constantly, gnawing in his gut like a rat stuck in a cardboard box, and some days it took all his willpower just to get out of bed. Drinking was the only thing that dulled the bitterness.
Stephen was born two years later. The marriage was already in shambles, but that didn’t stop their third son, Phillip, from arriving three years after that. By then, Morris was a full-blown alcoholic.
He managed to hide it, at least at work. He was hardworking and affable, and the bank’s clients enjoyed his football stories and loud sense of humor. He moved up through the ranks with relative ease, thanks in part to his father.
But life at home was a different story. Morris was filled with an anger he couldn’t control, and the drinking only made it worse. He was a distant, impatient father, and a harsh, resentful husband. The littlest thing would set him off. Every argument with Lenore seemed to end with something in the house—a vase, a stack of dishes, their framed wedding photo—being smashed to pieces.
Like many alcoholics, Morris refused to acknowledge he had a drinking problem. Lenore, codependent and terrified to raise three boys by herself, stuck it out despite the marriage being a farce. Eventually she found a support group, who made her realize she’d never change him and that she could, and would, survive without him.
They were both better off now, though Morris wouldn’t exactly consider them friends. Lenore was still living in Texas, happily remarried to a lawyer who apparently hated football.
A few years after the divorce, Morris accepted a job at Bindle Brothers in Seattle, and he moved out of Texas for the second time in his life. The boys were finally out of high school and it seemed like a good time for a fresh start.
The job was satisfying, but it was lonely being in a new place. It was hard to meet women his age, and most of the guys at work were married. So he didn’t have much of a social life. The pounds began to creep on—too much television, beer, and takeout. As he gained weight, his bad knee began to hurt again. Then the other knee began to creak. Exercise became torturous.
When he met Sheila, he was still in denial about his drinking. Even when it began to affect his work—so much so that he was told by Bob Bindle Jr., the managing partner of the investment bank, to start Alcoholics Anonymous or lose his job—he still thought it wasn’t that big a deal.
It was Sheila Tao who gave him the kick in the ass he needed. He’d had a crush on her long before anything romantic happened between them, but the thought that something might happen if he cleaned up his act was enough to spur him on. A few weeks after meeting her, he joined AA.
When he’d completed all twelve steps a year later, Sheila was the first person he called. By then he was completely in love with her and determined to win her heart. He was over the moon to discover she felt the same way. When he kissed her for the first time, just before midnight at the end of their first date, holding the bag with the goldfish he’d won for her, he’d felt sixteen again. They’d been inseparable ever since . . . she was his whole world.
As clichéd as it was, Morris was a better