Room Empty

by Sarah Mussi

  From which no one is trying to recover.

  37

  I find Fletcher. We lie on the grass at the bottom of the garden, beside the compost heap. I’m trying not to go in with all guns blazing. I can’t anyway. I’m too exhausted. My heart is doing that irregular shit thing it does so well. I’m trying hard not to panic. Judith says that panicking never helps anything. We need to take charge of our emotions. And for once, this is not all about me.

  ‘Fletcher,’ I say.

  I find his hand in the grass beside mine. I hold it.

  He does not reply. But he does squeeze my fingers, just a little bit.

  I want to think about my Finger Thinness, about how my bones feel in the grasp of his hand. But I don’t let myself.

  ‘You can’t give up,’ I say.

  Fletcher lets go of my hand.

  There is a silence. I try to do mindfulness. I try just to listen to the spaces around the rustling of the leaves. Life is suffering. Detachment is the path. I fail.

  ‘I emailed Kerstin again,’ I say. ‘I am trying.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  He’s not fooled.

  ‘You can’t give up,’ I say, hoping to get a better response.

  ‘That’s so totally goddamn awesome coming from somebody who gave up, like, aeons ago.’ He sounds angry. No, not angry – just not here.

  ‘Why are you so goddamn on holiday?’ I try to lighten things up a bit.

  ‘I’ve just stopped caring,’ says Fletcher. He shifts, angles himself away from me. ‘It’s too painful.’

  I reach out to grab his hand again.

  ‘Don’t give up on me, please?’ I say. It comes out all wrong. Far too manipulative.

  ‘Knock it off, Dani.’ His words are acid dry. ‘You’re going to die. You know you are.’

  Sandstorms whirl in some distant desert.

  ‘I’ve done everything I can. I even found the woodyard. None of it was good enough,’ Fletcher says. He almost laughs.

  I sit up and look at him. Lips curled. Jaw clenched. Remote. I have to make him see HE CAN’T GIVE UP.

  ‘Fletch?’

  ‘All I want to do is use again. That’s all there is.’

  All there is? Great. What about me?

  ‘Fletch?’ This time I shake him. ‘That’s such crap. You sound like Lee.’

  ‘Leave Lee out of this.’ Fletcher throws my hand aside. ‘At least he doesn’t try to be what he’s not.’

  ‘So you’re saying I’m trying to be what I’m not?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m not saying that.’ Fletcher is defensive now. ‘I’m just saying: can we leave Lee out of this?’

  I sigh. ‘I can leave anyone you goddamn like out of this. I just don’t want you to give up.’

  And I realize, suddenly, with terror, that I need Fletcher to carry on believing we can recover. I need to carry on believing that he can help me. I have become invested in his belief in me. If he gives up, I really am going to die.

  So I say it. I try not to sound fake or guilt-trippy.

  ‘If you give up, I am going to die.’

  That is what I say. I’m not being melodramatic. I just know it’s true.

  ‘You’re going to die anyway,’ says Fletcher. ‘That’s just it. You decided that. You decided not to go back into the room. You decided because your mum was an arsehole you’re going to throw your life away as well.’ Fletcher picks up a bit of broken paving and hurls it at the honeysuckle.

  ‘Well, look who’s talking,’ I say. I can’t help it. It’s a betrayal, I know.

  ‘Thanks,’ says Fletcher. He stands up and shakes my words off. ‘In those letters, I was just trying to let you know that mothers aren’t all goodness and light. That you need to challenge your own Belief System too.’ He’s smiling now, but I can see the rage behind his teeth. Hopeless, raw fury.

  Touché.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mutter.

  ‘If you start to recover, I’ll go back to Circle Time,’ says Fletcher in that jokey voice which I don’t know how to take.

  ‘I will try,’ I lie. I don’t know how to try.

  Rage at Reality.

  ‘OK. Try now,’ says Fletcher.

  He digs deep in his pocket and pulls out a pack of biscuits. It’s one of those packs that are sealed in cellophane. The biscuits are broken and crumbled. They’ve obviously been in his pocket for a long time. Even if I was going to eat something, I don’t think I’d choose bum-crumbled biscuits that have been in Fletcher’s back pocket for ever.

  Fletcher breaks the pack open. The crumbs fall on the grass. He tips pieces of broken biscuit into his open palm.

  ‘Go on then.’ He thrusts his hand at me. Aggressive.

  I sit up. I try to salivate.

  ‘You just want to save me so you can feel good enough,’ I mumble. ‘All your caring is just another form of selfishness.’

  ‘Don’t try to wriggle out of it,’ he warns.

  I have no saliva left. If I put those crumbs in my mouth, they’ll stick to the roof of it like pieces of gravel. I hate biscuits. I love biscuits. I can’t eat those biscuits. I ought to eat those biscuits. They might make Fletcher go back to Circle Time. I could eat a whole supermarket aisle full of biscuits. I ought to do that for him. Save us both. My throat feels like a trapdoor has flicked shut across the back of it. No crumb shall pass.

  ‘Go on then,’ he says. ‘If you’re so goddamn upset about me, eat the goddamn biscuit.’

  I start to panic. I can feel a whirlwind opening up in my stomach. It’s like a black hole. It’s sucking everything into it. I can’t put a biscuit in my mouth. My mother locked me in a room and threw away the key. My mother died and left me there alone. My mother never loved me. I can’t put biscuits in my mouth. My mother wanted me to starve to death. With her rotting body. I want to save Fletcher. I want my mother to have loved me. Goodness and light. I must please my mother. I am going to die. I must die. She wanted it. I have to do what she wanted.

  Then I will be loved.

  I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to die.

  ‘I’ll help you, seeing as you’ve lost the power of movement.’ Fletcher picks up half a biscuit. ‘All you have to do is open your mouth, Dani. Can you do that for me?’

  Sarcasm.

  It hurts.

  I can’t open my mouth. I can’t do that for him. I can’t eat biscuits.

  I panic.

  Voices float across the garden from the centre. The noise of cutlery, crockery. It’s lunchtime. If I eat the biscuits and somebody else has skipped lunch, I’ll lose a point. I will not get my point. I WILL NOT GET MY POINT. Without points, I will never, never be lovable. I will never be good enough. Even Fletcher will abandon me.

  ‘We need to talk about it,’ I say.

  ‘No, you need to eat it,’ says Fletcher, ‘and I need to go to Circle Time. We don’t need to do any more talking – we’ve already tried to do Talking.’

  But if we talk now, we could stop pretending that everything is OK; we could start talking about real things. I could find the right words.

  Fletcher levers my mouth open. He places a piece of biscuit on my tongue.

  ‘Now swallow,’ he says.

  I look at him. My hands are trembling. My chest is trembling. Tears well up in my eyes. I’m sweating. I can’t do this. I can’t swallow the biscuit. I’m fighting to let it stay there, half in, half out, balanced on my lower lip.

  ‘You see,’ says Fletcher. ‘You see what I mean? You can’t do it. Not even to save me. And that’s why I’ve stopped believing. Why I’ve stopped caring. You want everyone to feel sorry for you all the time.’

  I look at him. What does he mean? I never asked him to feel sorry for me.

  ‘Yes, sorry for you,’ he says. ‘Sorry because you’re so thin. Sorry because you were locked in a room with a dead body. Sorry because you’re dying. Sorry because you found Carmen. Sorry because you had a lunatic mother. Sorry because you can’t walk.’

  Is t
hat what he really thinks? Is that the truth? Am I doing all this so that somebody will feel sorry for me?

  ‘So I’m gonna take all my sorriness back to the streets, and I’m going to get so goddamn shitfaced I won’t feel sorry for nothing.’ He laughs like a manic. Then he shudders.

  And I realize he’s right. I do want people to feel sorry for me. Everybody should feel so sorry for me. The world should stop turning and shed tears, all for me.

  He is right.

  I want violins. The whole lot.

  But being pitied is so patronizing. I can take care of myself. I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me, either.

  Tony must be killing himself laughing.

  It’s hard to speak with half a biscuit lodged in your mouth when you can’t eat it or spit it out.

  I manage to say through the crumbs, ‘Is that what everybody says? Is everybody going around saying they feel sorry for me?’

  Tony must think I’m the classic example of a self-made, fatal double bind.

  ‘What the hell do you think?’ says Fletcher.

  He throws himself back down on the grass. I hear the thwack of his head as it hits the turf. He doesn’t say ‘ouch’.

  I know he’s right. I’ve seen it in everybody’s eyes, and I have not seen it – because I did/didn’t want to see it. But everybody is sorry for me. Everybody knows I’m going to die.

  ‘Then why don’t they do something?’ I mumble. ‘Why don’t they stop me from dying?’

  ‘Hello?’ says Fletcher. ‘What do you think I’ve been trying to do? Why do you think I’ve lodged half a stupid biscuit in your stupid half-open mouth?’

  I flinch.

  ‘You have all of life stretching in front of you, and you want to throw it away. All of this.’ Fletcher points at the honeysuckle, at the tree overhead, the grass cuttings. ‘Everything is yours. All you have to goddamn do is swallow an effing biscuit. But you won’t, will you?’ He laughs a hoarse laugh. ‘No, you won’t swallow the biscuit, and you’re happy to see me die trying to make you. That’s how selfish you are, Dani.’

  I know he’s right, but he doesn’t understand about the points, and the panic and the Alien and the flooding. He doesn’t understand that I might drown the world. That I have to stop myself. He doesn’t understand that when I try to live, everything flips up on me, and I’m swallowed into a black hole. He doesn’t understand how cold it is in Outer Space. He just doesn’t understand.

  And neither do I.

  Tears are running down my face. I’m not sobbing. It’s so hard trying to stay alive. Such a balancing act. And I wish I were dead. Maybe. And I say so.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ says Fletcher. ‘Don’t say that. Not after everything I’ve done for you. I can’t believe that. I think you’re going to die, and I think you’re making yourself die, but I don’t think you wish it. Not truly. If I thought that, I’d walk away right now.’

  I take hold of his hand. He can’t leave me. I won’t allow it.

  ‘I can’t save you,’ says Fletcher sadly. ‘I wish I could. I think I would do almost anything to save you. And I know you’re doing all this because you think nobody loves you. But I love you, Dani. Although I know you won’t believe that. Maybe you can’t believe you’re lovable in any way. But that’s all I can do: just love you.’ He raises himself up on to one elbow. He takes the half biscuit from my mouth and throws it into the bushes.

  It is such a simple, kind gesture, filled with such despair.

  I tremble. Can’t stop.

  And then he leans down. For a moment, I think he’s going to kiss me again. He’s trembling too and his breath is cold.

  I tense up. He feels it.

  ‘I’m in love with you,’ he says softly.

  He pulls back.

  ‘And I can’t save you.’

  ‘Fletcher,’ I say.

  ‘And I can’t bear it.’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘I am,’ he says. He strokes the back of my hand. His eyes are alight with a gentle glow. ‘I’m in love with you, and I’m not going to lie about it. I’m in love with you, and if you are determined to die, then I must accept it. I surrender. I have found my Higher Power. I am in love with you.’

  ‘Fletcher,’ I say again.

  I’m drowning in a terrifying happiness. I can’t tell him I love him back. I don’t want to give him my hopeless, blighted, conditional love. He deserves so much more.

  I look at him and let him look at me, until he turns away and stares up at the sky.

  Step Seven

  Shortcomings

  38

  Tomorrow is here.

  Nothing is making sense.

  Fletcher hasn’t come to Circle Time.

  I keep hoping the door will open, and he’ll stumble in. Or that he will message me that he’s in the library, on the case again. I want to see that soft glow in his eyes. Hear more about his Higher Power. I try telling myself, It’s not my fault. If I could have, I’d have swallowed that biscuit. We can’t save anybody else. We can only save ourselves. This is his choice. He’s choosing not to come to Circle Time. It probably is my fault. He’s choosing to get thrown out of the programme. He really has given up. I should have swallowed that biscuit. Perhaps he wants to come to Circle Time, but is feeling too bad. It’s his decision. If I’d tried harder, I’d have been able to swallow. He said he’s in love with me. He’s choosing not to see me. He can’t bear to see me. I am going to die. The thoughts spiral in my head.

  Tony is telling his life history. We have to do Tony’s life history once a week. That is, unless they can get a guest speaker to come and tell us their life history. Today we listen to Tony again.

  ‘My name is Tony, and I am an addict. It bowls me over that here I am, an addict, with more years inside prison than you guys have lived and here I am talking to you. This can only happen in very special groups. This kind of love only happens in recovery. I didn’t know what the heck I wanted when I was an addict. I couldn’t say I needed love. I couldn’t say that I needed to give love. I need to say it now: I really want to be loved. I blossom on love and I want to give love to all of you. You know, addicts are the best people. We are unbelievably kind, unbelievably real, unbelievably friendly, unbelievably slippery and unbelievably deceitful too. But above all we’re indescribably intelligent. Yes, we run strategies, don’t we?

  ‘Anyway, back in the day, when I went to school, they brought in professionals who said: DON’T SMOKE. Don’t smoke cigarettes and certainly don’t smoke weed. Because if you start on weed you’ll end up smoking crack. It was known as the Gate-way Drug Theory.’

  I glance across at Lee. He grins back at me, raises one eyebrow and points at himself, like he’s saying: Yup, that’s right. Unbelievably kind, unbelievably real, unbelievably friendly, totally conniving and fabulously intelligent and on the hard stuff. That’s me!

  There’s something about Lee that’s irrepressible. I can see why Fletcher defends him.

  Tony’s voice drops a notch. ‘They didn’t know in those days that addiction is a disease and that the development of the disease follows certain patterns. The thing was, I was sitting there, listening to those experts, thinking: OMG how exciting. That sounds like an adventure that’ll take me far away, away from this shithole I’m living in, while the other kids in class were thinking: Holy shit, that sounds dangerous. I better not do that.

  ‘But that’s us. We are addicts. We’re a special club. Still, thank heaven I shot so much heroin. Thank heaven I smoked so much crack, because I’ve broken through and found a world I never knew existed: a world where nobody else gets to make me different from who I am. A world that has introduced me to all of you, sitting here, and to the freedom that recovery can bring.’

  I like Tony. There’s something all right about him. He’s only fake because he has to be. He doesn’t try to hide it, either. Every line on his face tells me he’s sorry about having to shoot crap at us.

  ‘Well, the first time I starte
d to use, it wasn’t anything too serious. I just found my dad’s whisky bottle. I used to have to hold my nose to drink it. But I wasn’t drinking it for the taste – I was drinking it for the high. That’s what made me different from most of the other mortals down here on Planet Earth. They didn’t need to get high in order to feel human. That’s what makes us addicts special, makes us star-crossed beings. I just wanted to get high, higher than the stars, get way up there, back towards my celestial home – and I wasn’t fussy about what got me there either.’

  Vaguely, I wonder if Tony has an Alien? It’s a new and disturbing thought. Maybe all addicts have aliens? Maybe Tony has my Alien. I frown. I don’t want to share my Alien with him.

  Tony pauses, seems to look at me as if he understands. ‘And you know why? Because until I got into recovery, I felt like an outsider. I was never going to belong. Not even to myself. I felt that inside me was a big, bottomless black hole.’ He looks at me again. ‘Then one day, I saw little rows of white powder, lined up on a table and that’s when I discovered my true love: heroin.’

  Tony’s voice breaks, grows hoarse. ‘And, wow, I broke every rule in my book. I swore I would not become a thief – well, that was the first one to go. I swore I would not become a prostitute, but soon I was living on the streets, selling my arse to whoever wanted it. I just didn’t care what I did, as long as I could use. That was how little I thought of myself.

  ‘Yep, I did pretty much anything for that otherworldly buzz. I tried everything to see if it could fill the void inside me. You know how when you cheat at crosswords and you choose a word you know doesn’t really fit, and you write it into the spaces and try to change the other words around it? Well, that was me. I tried filling up the emptiness inside me with anything I could lay my hands on. I tried blaming the world around me. But that hole can only truly be filled up by recovery, by a twelve-step programme.’

  Jennifer is staring right at me. Like she’s jealous that Tony glanced in my direction. Like she’s already much further on the road to recovery than I am. Like she’s totally on Step Twelve now and is doing well. Sometimes I hate Jennifer. I really can’t see her as a star-crossed being. I hate her stupid haircut. Everything about her shouts out: YOU MUST APPROVE OF ME. YOU MUST SEE THAT I AM SO MUCH BETTER THAN YOU.