“Look, this isn’t the time to worry about all this. It will work out, I promise. And besides, that’s not why I came.”
“Why did you come?” I sounded prissy and sullen.
“To see you,” he said. “To make sure you were okay. And, well, I know it sounds lame, but to tell you how amazing I think you are.”
I rolled my eyes, making him laugh. “That is lame.”
“I’m serious. Not everyone could have made it through all that in one piece.” My mind flashed again on the hunting knife—not Marshall’s intention, I knew—but my stomach rolled at the thought of “pieces.”
“Your courage is impressive. And,” he smiled again, “somebody’s got to take you home.”
Home sounded heavenly; I smiled in return. Marshall was right. There was enough time to worry about the fall-out tomorrow and nothing I could do about it tonight. One day at a time, after all.
I turned down Marshall’s offer of a ride and Mary Kate’s offer of continued chauffeur services, and drove myself home. Probably a mistake since I sailed through a red light without so much as tapping the brakes. By the time I made it home, I felt too jittery to stay there, so I called a friend to give me a ride over to the club. It was either that or drink.
Tuesday wasn’t my usual night for a meeting, but even though I’d only been sober a handful of months, it was long enough to know I needed to be in a safe place. Ugly, but safe.
The HP & Me Club is a testament to the fact that sobriety doesn’t guarantee good taste. By virtue of living in denial and manufacturing a steady stream of excuses, drunks are some of the most creative folk I know. In recovery, however, our energy goes into day-to-day survival while most of our money goes for coffee and cigarettes. There was never enough left over of either commodity for beautification. The décor at HP & Me was a queasy mélange of church rummage sale items, leftovers, and “found” items. The find usually materialized on the side of the road on trash day and was generally considered upholstered manna from our collective Higher Power. If HP thinks threadbare, velveteen, orange love seats are good enough for the club, who could argue?
First thing I did when I got there was head behind the counter to the rows of members’ coffee mugs hanging from pegs on the wall. Like everything else, the cups were a weird assortment; the wall displayed equal amounts of basic brought-from-home cups, those decaled with local business ads, and mildly obscene joke mugs.
As I poured coffee into my Alice in Wonderland mug, I sensed the presence of a warm body, way too close, behind me. I jolted, splashing coffee over the counter and down the front of my shirt.
“Whoa! Cut her off.” Ben, an auto mechanic who four years ago had passed out and set his house on fire with a dropped cigarette, slid behind the counter, grabbing paper towels to help mop up.
Ignoring Ben’s helpfulness, I spun, anger flaring. Scared the hell out of the new guy lurking behind me. Sober only a week, Paul was already a trial. Tall and skinny with a tuft of blond hair sprouting from the top of his head, the only thing differentiating him from a corn stalk was the black framed glasses that repeatedly slipped down his narrow nose. My fear-induced anger drained away.
“Wow! Hi.” Paul seemed surprised by the reaction he’d caused. Most people just yawned when he spoke to them.
“Hi, Paul. How are you doing?”
“I’m sober another twenty-four, right? One day at a time.”
“That’s great, Paul.”
“Yeah, well, I’m doing ninety in ninety so I’ve only got eighty-one more to go. But this is where I’ll learn to walk the walk, right? Not just talk the talk.”
Hopefully when he’d completed the suggested ninety meetings in ninety days he’d have found his own voice instead of parroting AA slogans. Still, he was sober and working the program—huge accomplishments, both.
One of my friends from the Wednesday night women’s group eased up on us. Stacie and I had stumbled into AA on the same night nearly five months ago. Sobriety twins—we got a lot of Mutt and Jeff remarks. Stacie stood 5’2” in her three-inch heels, but her abundance of body art, piercings, and orange-dyed hair kept her in the limelight. Tonight she was wearing a red plaid skirt along and a bright purple T-shirt with the legend Love Goddess scrawled across her boobs. This was her demure look.
“Hey, girl. How’s it going?”
A ghost memory of the knife slashed through my mind at her question, setting off chain-reaction shivers.
“It’s been better.”
Stacie looked a question, but I didn’t want to get into it in front of Paul. Not having an insightful bone in his body, he had no clue we wanted him gone. Stacie was going to have to wait. Normally, neither of us would have had any difficulty shoving past a guy to have a girl-chat, but Paul was equal parts vulnerability and annoyance, and he was just too new to sobriety to risk hurting his feelings. Instead of rescuing me, Stacie had likewise been ensnared.
“Yeah, I’m not doing so good either. I asked some of the guys to be my sponsor, but they all said no. Too busy, you know?” His eyes skittered sideways, not wanting our looks of disbelief to confirm the lie he told himself.
The rejections he’d received in his sponsor hunt pissed me off. Although working the AA program did wonders for teaching guys empathy and compassion, there were plenty of sub-Neanderthals around, fighting extinction. I’d seen several actively avoid Paul’s company, and the few who let him join the conversation spent their time making sly comments that, fortunately, went over Paul’s head. Finding a man willing to put up with Paul’s eccentricities would be difficult. I made a note to talk to a few of the more evolved men. I wasn’t optimistic.
As the time for the meeting approached, Stacie and I, with Paul trailing along, went to claim seats around the tables in the side room. I zoned out during the usual readings of How It Works, The Promises, and The Traditions, tuning in just in time to stick a dollar in the donation bowl when it passed. When it finally got to the point where the group was asked if anyone had a “burning desire to speak,” I was ready.
I passed.
The old-timers eyeballed me pretty heavy, wheels turning as they mentally put a check mark next to my name under the “to be watched closely” column. I abandoned my recent quit-smoking vow, bummed a cigarette from Stacie, and hid behind the smoke. Nobody calls you on your crap as skillfully—or with as little hesitation—as a group of recovering drunks. Tough love was invented around the tables.
After the meeting, a bunch of folks decided to head out for coffee and pie, but I declined that, too, and headed for home. Stood in the parking lot for five minutes before remembering I didn’t have my car. I ended up having to bum a ride from Paul, which really put the icing on the cake. One of us was pleased.
A pile of messages awaited me on my voice mail when I got home. Robert, my boyfriend of three months, was the first. He knew nothing of my day, and I was too exhausted to catch him up to speed. I’d call him tomorrow. Marshall had called to tell me to take the next few days off, and Mary Kate had checked in on me. The next four messages each recorded a few seconds of silence before clicking off. I checked Caller ID, but it’d been blocked.
Frowning, I deleted the whole mess, then crawled into bed.
CHAPTER THREE
“Letty, what are you doing here? I thought Marshall gave you the day off.” Lisa, our office manager, looked peeved at the glitch in her seamless schedule.
I’d always envied Lisa’s crisp, put-together style, although whenever I tried to copy it I ended up looking more icy-dominatrix than was advisable for a therapist. She favored chilly blues and wintery whites and wore spike heels that could drill a hole in concrete. Her hair was clipped short with frosty, blond spikes that—rain, shine, or tornado—did as they were told and looked like they could hurt you. We liked to keep Lisa happy.
Unfortunately, I discovered that Marshall had also given word for Lisa to cancel my clients’ appointments. It upset me that the decision had been made without my input, but I
tried convincing myself he had meant well.
“Lisa, can you try to reach my people and tell them there was a slight misunderstanding?” Her efficient eyebrows gave me silent attitude. I sighed. “A misunderstanding on my part, and see if any would still like to come in.”
“I can try, but I’ll tell you now, your morning is shot. I’ll work on the afternoon folks and see what I can do. The Thursday and Friday client list should be a lot easier.
“Thursday and Friday! Everyone got canceled?” Now I understood her irritation. She’d probably spent the better part of the morning making phone calls and would have to repeat the process all over again with suitable apologies.
“Just do your best. I’m sorry about the inconvenience. If you see Mary Kate, could you ask her to set up a meeting with me? We were supposed to have her supervision yesterday, but…”
“No problem,” Lisa breezed over my explanation. “She comes in at ten; I’ll catch her then.”
As I escaped down the hall, Marshall stuck his head out of his office. From this angle, he looked decapitated.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I work here. Why did you cancel my clients?”
A frown creased his face as he stepped into the hall. “I’d think that was obvious.”
“I just wish you’d asked me first. That’s all.” I sounded petulant, which only increased my agitation. Although he didn’t see clients in therapy, I could feel him scanning my words and actions, sorting them out, searching for clues and nuances to my state of mind.
Skip this. I turned away, heading for the sanctuary of my office.
“Letty?”
I turned back.
“I’m afraid I have to insist. I’m sure if you take some time to think it over, you’ll agree. Besides, it’ll give you a chance to catch up on your paperwork. I’d like us to meet today, later on.”
Irritation bubbled up but I kept it from leaking out through my face or voice. “You’ll need to catch Lisa before she calls everyone back.” I’d be damned if I was going to face her moody eyebrows again.
Uncharacteristically, I shut the office door, closing myself off from the bustle of the clinic. Closing myself in. Also uncharacteristically, I toyed with the idea of rearranging my furniture. Like into one big pile barricading the door.
My office was no longer a sanctuary.
Pissed me off so bad I opened the door, then flung myself down in the chair. Three seconds later, I slammed it shut again and sat back down, holding my face tucked behind my hands.
Not good. Not good, not good, not good.
I buried myself in the backlog of paperwork, telling myself it was a good thing I had something to keep me busy. It wasn’t. First of all, it wasn’t nearly intense enough to keep at bay the images of Wayne’s rage. I’d think I was making progress, then realize my muscles were twitching with edginess, nerve synapses miscuing and sending me into unnecessary panic-mode. My fight-or-flight button was stuck in the ON position.
For another thing, writing was almost impossible with my throbbing hand.
When Mary Kate tapped on my door, I nearly exploded from my skin. She came in like an irresistibly bouncy puppy, gushing equal parts solicitude and nosiness. Despite the fact I’d asked for the meeting, I was irritated at her energy.
Also, like a puppy, she’d attached herself to me from the beginning of our acquaintance. At some point, she’d gotten the impression that I’d specifically requested to mentor her internship, when in fact it was Marshall who was in charge of the assignments. Although older than most interns—in fact more than seven years older than me—Mary Kate exuded an eager vulnerability, making her seem much younger.
Completely devoid of fashion-sense, she was constantly twitching her too-large skirts back from their meandering circuit around her hips, constantly retucking blouses into the front of her slacks while forgetting about the back, and—although she’d never to my knowledge had toilet paper stuck to her shoe—something made me anxiously check her foot for offenders every time she exited the bathroom.
Supervision with Mary Kate was always interesting. She possessed an innate understanding of people, and her insatiable curiosity to know her clients, inside and out, stood her in good stead. That same desire could be a pitfall, however. In supervision, we were working on her need to recognize the danger signs of over-involvement and how to establish boundaries. We hadn’t gotten very far.
Trying to redirect the conversation away from yesterday’s ordeal and back to her internship was like trying to thread a hysterical chicken through a needle. Not gonna happen.
“Oh my gosh, I couldn’t believe it when I heard some psycho had you trapped in here! I thought my heart was going to stop. I’m just so glad nothing happened to you.”
“Mary Kate…” We needed to talk about her choice of words. “Psycho” wasn’t a favored label in the clinic.
“I mean, nothing really bad. Of course, just being held hostage is bad enough, don’t get me wrong. If the police hadn’t shown up when they did, who knows what could have happened. But I bet you probably could have talked him down if you had more time.” She smiled, her confidence in me as humbling as it was alarming.
“I doubt that, Mary Kate. I didn’t have a lot of history with this guy. I wasn’t having much success before the police got here and, besides, it’s important to realize that we can never be certain of containing a situation like that.”
“No, but you did know some of his history, though, right? Through Carrie?”
I was too startled to reply. Our client list is confidential. Despite the uproar yesterday, and even though Wayne’s relationship with me was sure to be disclosed, there was no reason why Mary Kate should have known of Carrie or of Wayne’s connection to her.
“I snuck back,” she said.
“You did what?”
“When Marshall cleared everyone out yesterday, I snuck back to Regina’s office.” Mary Kate pointed to the wall separating my office from my co-worker.
“Why would you do that, Mary Kate? That was so dangerous! Who’s to say the guy wouldn’t have killed me and then gone on a killing spree? That happens all the time these days.”
“I would have heard that and could have run away before he got out. But, I don’t know… I know it sounds stupid, but I didn’t want you to be alone with him. I knew I couldn’t do anything, really, but if it turned into one of those murder-suicides, we’d at least know why.”
I’m trained to hear the most awful things and stay impassive, but listening to Mary Kate blithely discourse on my hypothetical murder nearly did me in. The fact that she’d hunkered down, ear pressed to the wall as Wayne toyed with my life, upset me so much I couldn’t figure out how to respond.
I finally just sent her away, and slipped out back behind the dumpster for an illicit cigarette. Although one or two of my colleagues smoked, too, we were all ashamed of it, treating the subject as taboo. Marshall, a health nut, was known to slip the 800-number to the Tobacco Quit Line on our desks when we weren’t looking. He’d even initiated an incentive program for those trying to meet health-related goals. He was weird that way.
By the time I met with Marshall, I had a raging headache and serious chinks in the wall of denial I’d erected about coming in today. Marshall was either too nice or too smart to say “I told you so,” but the glint of it twinkled behind his eyes.
“How are you holding up?” he asked.
I debated my answer. If I denied any repercussions, he’d know I was lying and might very well push for an extended leave of absence. If I admitted that my office felt more like a crime scene than a safe haven, same thing. Luckily, I hadn’t been sober long enough to lose my tell-just-enough-truth-to-make-the-lie-seem-plausible skills.
“I have a pounding headache, and I wanted to throttle Mary Kate just now in supervision.”
Marshall’s grin sparkled. “Just wanting to throttle interns isn’t cause for alarm. You didn’t act on it, I take it?”
<
br /> “No, I restrained myself.” I considered filling him in on Mary Kate’s voyeuristic grand adventure, but decided not to yet. For one thing, her revelations upset me too much to evaluate her behaviors from a supervisory perspective. Objectivity is critical in performing both supervision and therapy, and I didn’t want Marshall doubting mine. More importantly, I didn’t want to rake up all the nitty-gritty details of my ordeal. I’d gone over it with the police, but only because I’d had to.
“Have you heard from the police?”
I jumped as if he’d read my mind. “No, not yet.”
Marshall looked at me curiously. My passivity in not contacting the police was an admission of sorts, and we both knew it.
Time to go on the offensive. “Has administration decided whether to support me or not?”
“I hope you know you will always be supported here, Letty.” Marshall’s hurt and sincerity shown in his eyes. I almost felt guilty—until he went on. “Even if they disagree with you on an issue that doesn’t mean they don’t want what’s best for everyone.”
“But you can’t please everyone, Marshall. And in this case, it sounds like the clinic will take care of itself, first and foremost.”
“Wouldn’t any entity? It’s survival. If administration doesn’t make the clinic its number-one priority, then we’re all out of a job. What good is that to us or to the community? And it has the board to answer to as well. There are all sorts of complications in a situation like this and, frankly, no easy answers.”
“Explain to me how letting a dangerous man go scot-free is a service to the community.”
Marshall ran his fingers through his dark hair. I’d seen him do that before in meetings when he was about to announce an unpopular policy change.
“What am I missing here, Marshall?”
“He’s denying ever having stabbed you. He says you cut yourself, that you broke the glass and slashed at your own neck.”
I stared blankly. Dread rose in my chest as a horrible suspicion bloomed. “Why would I do that?”
The Enemy We Know Page 2