by T. Braddy
Winston looked around for any random ears that might be listening in. It knocked me out of my silent reverie for my old life. He whispered, “That’s an awfully fucked up way to look at it.”
He was smiling. It was a crooked, unnatural mess when he did it, but it was genuine enough.
What he didn’t need to know was that I’d packed each and every item of Vanessa’s individually, that I had put them into boxes and containers with a dedicated care often associated with mothers of newborns. Every piece of clothing. Every scrap of paper. Every piece of jewelry. There wasn’t much left, but what remained was treated with extreme care. Vanessa, in her drug-addled fugue, had pawned most anything with value. Winston didn’t know that. He also didn’t know – because I did not tell him – that Vanessa’s things lay in a padlocked chest in the near-secret attic opening, just above my bedroom. I’d have remembered her ring, certainly. Even if not, even if there was a microscopic chance I’d pulled it from its place so the dog could have access to it, the bookshelf where I’d found it was at eye level, and Willie was about the size of a beagle on the fatter side of healthy. He couldn’t have made it up there with a ladder and a pair of opposable thumbs.
But Winston didn’t need to hear all of that, so I kept on putting out chairs.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I said quietly. It was just something I needed to deal with on my own, before my perspective started pulling me back to where I was before I got to Savannah. I didn’t need the company of dead men anymore, I hoped.
The back room of the church where the meetings were held twice a week was just big enough for the attending group, but at some point a new location would be necessary. I’m sure some of the members would miss the faded, almost uncomfortably hokey paintings of Jesus and Moses and every other all-star from the Good Book, but I wouldn’t. They set my teeth on edge. Always seemed to be staring. Judging. Like they might start talking at any moment.
It was one of the more popular AA meetings in Savannah. Even though it was seldom full, those who attended possessed the air of recent converts to a fanatical religious sect, people who have had their own Damascene Road experience. They went on and on about themselves and the program, raving about how it had saved their lives.
Mostly, I kept quiet. I was happy to be sober, to keep the voices and apparitions at bay, so I didn’t testify to the group as often as was expected, but I got by.
Winston ran the whole meeting. He was just a few years older than me but looked practically ancient when he was tired like this. “I lived two men’s lives before I was thirty,” he’d said once, “and then I hit bottom and felt like I died two men’s deaths. It was only then that I was able to find my way back to the middle, somewhere between life and its alternative.”
He was an articulate guy, sometimes able to pull ideas out of the air most writers would be envious to stumble upon, but he was prone to forgetting the coffee and donuts, so he had his faults.
Re-entering the room with a box of glazed several minutes later, I was struck with a particular feeling that plagued me in the minutes leading up to each meeting. That need to understand how fucked up I was and what to do about it.
Not that I believed unabashedly in all twelve steps or any of that, but there was something about this place – this meeting, in particular – that drew me in. It was Winston, partly, I was certain, because his dogged determination to maintain his group was akin to a preacher shepherding his flock. His phone rang constantly, and he catered to every feasible request. If Billy Mitchum hoofed it to a liquor store and started wandering the aisles, Winston would drop everything and drive over, talking him out of that case of Bud like a hostage negotiator.
I put the donuts down and milled around by myself for a bit, taking in the atmosphere which had settled upon the room. It was a church organ and some amens away from being a Sunday sermon. Hell, we were adjacent to a church, so the shadow of the cross was not unfelt. Some people, mostly the older crowd, spoke in earnest of “getting back in the pews sometime soon.” That kind of humility was often difficult to follow through with, as it often felt like the eyes of the whole church turned to burn holes in the broken-down as they entered the sanctuary.
As soon as I had the coffee at a drinkable temperature, the congregants flocked to the table and pounded the stuff. Some ventured outside for a smoke, and though I didn’t join them, a part of me was happy some people still had the audacity to truck with dangerous vices.
The meeting started on time. Winston checked the clock on his phone before turning it off, which sent the rest of the spectators to doing the same thing.
“Brother Rolson,” he called, later, after the meeting had commenced, “I felt it on my heart that you should speak tonight, given the nature of your recent circumstances. We have some new members here tonight, recent transplant to this fine city, as well, and I believe them to be lucky to have someone like yourself around to speak to their situations.”
It was me being volunteered, but I didn’t mind so much.
If my story had any message, it was that you can’t really right the wrongs of the past; you can only make right use of the present. I wasn’t quite ready to deal with the idea that someday I’d have to contend with all of the wrongs I’d committed in my life, and for now just doing right in the moment would have to suffice.
My meandering testimonial was interrupted briefly by the sound of a door opening. Someone coming in late. She was obviously a few years younger than me but dressed like someone even younger than that. She seated herself in the back row and very obviously struggled with not checking her phone. She held it in her hand and flipped it over a few times. Every so often, the phone went into her pocket but almost immediately came back out for the dexterity test she seemed to be performing.
Afterwards, most people stood around, chatting. They circumvented the topic of alcohol so that it was the only thing lingering in the air around them. You couldn’t talk that much about not talking about drinking without it creating an impossibly strong aura in the room.
I ventured outside for some fresh air – the coffee and sugar and multitude of bodies created a staleness in the meeting hall – and found the woman who’d snuck in late sitting on the front steps, smoking a cigarette and flipping idly through an app on her phone.
She was slender and freckled, attractive in all the right ways. If you looked closely enough – in the eyes, particularly – you saw something approaching frailty, but even that and the scars of her addiction were masked by her evocative beauty. There was a drugged-out look about her, but you’d not notice unless you looked closely.
“Not a bad story you told in there,” she said, not looking up. “You were some kind of fucked up when you were drinking.”
“I wish it were only the drinking.”
“Ain’t that the truth. When I gave the stuff up, I thought the clouds would part, and God’s light would shine on me for the rest of my life. Turns out, a light does shine, just on all the other things that made you drink in the first place.”
“Sounds about right,” I said. “I’ve only been sober six months. Haven’t quite seen the light. It’s still kind of muddy when I look around. No idea what in the hell’s going to happen in another six months.”
She took a long, slow drag on the cigarette. “One day at a time.”
“So, you’re not new to the cult, then.”
This was the first time she looked up. She laid her phone on the pack of smokes next to her and clasped her hands under her chin. “Don’t let them hear you say that.”
“I like it. It’s just – I’m still stretching out my funny bone, you know?”
She nodded. “For me, yeah, I’m not new. Quit twice and been back through the wringer a few times, but I always come stumbling back. Jack Daniels was my vice. Mix it with Coke, and you got me going. The last few times I broke it off with Bill W., I started to put on weight, so it didn’t take me long to get back here. I like fitting in my jeans.”
“I’ve dropped a little over ten pounds since I quit. Been running a little bit; that seems to help. A bottle of Beam and a case of High Life. That’s where I got my kicks.”
“Ugh. Together?”
“Simultaneously, maybe. One right after the other. Shot and a beer – that sort of thing.”
“Okay, gotcha. I was about to say. Jesus Christ.”
Her hand moved back toward her phone, almost instinctively, and she caught herself but then picked up the phone anyway. Instead of unlocking it and playing around, however, she placed it on her knee. She took one last drag on her cig and stubbed it out before flicking it.
“So,” she said, “I’m a local and you’re not, so why don’t I introduce you to a place you can go when you get the almighty craving. I can’t guarantee you’ll keep the weight off, but I fucking swear it’s worth it.”
* * *
She took me to a cupcake shop on the corner of Bryan and Barnard, and though the desserts were delicious, it wasn’t a secret stowaway of a place, either. It wasn’t a date – just two drunks out feeding the craving in a nontraditional manner – so I had no reason to feel as though my masculinity were in question. Not that I’d ever worried about my masculinity, but I’d never actually eaten at a cupcake shop. Cupcakes, yes, but usually homemade or store-bought ones, and never in a building specifically meant for cupcake consumption. The walls were bright pink with sprinkles painted along the ceiling, and the menus were written in a font as sweet as the desserts themselves.
It was the kind of place I’d have ridiculed friends for visiting, but I was thirty-eight, broken-down, and alone, so what the fuck did I know? Also, I couldn’t think of any real friends I had, beyond Deuce, whose calls I had been avoiding since leaving town.
She introduced herself as Allison. She was beautiful in a damaged sort of way. Blonde-haired. Tattoos. Eyes darkened by lack of sleep. Careless in both word and deed, she said whatever came to mind. Said ‘fuck’ several times in a row while telling a story, even though a gaggle of ten-year-olds were nearby. I felt an immediate connection with her.
I insisted on paying for the cupcakes and coffee, even though I was in no financial shape to pay for much of anything, save for dog food. She let me, though her wry smile said she found it cute in a saccharine sort of way, not genuine. But she didn’t protest.
“I don’t know about you,” she was saying, polishing off a giant red velvet number, “but when I quit the first time, it was like my sweet tooth got unlocked. Like it was a hidden gene that was activated the moment I put down the bottle.”
“I still don’t think that’s happened for me,” I said. “I’m mowing down French fries and sodas like the world’s supply is ending.”
When she talked, her voice was somewhat raspy with cigarette smoke, but she wasn’t too far gone yet. Just on the far side of being a party girl, well on the path to frazzled middle-age. “I’m not even one of those kinds of girls, though, you know? I’ve never been into cakes and sweets and chocolate and that kind of shit. It wasn’t until I stopped that I even craved sweet things. Before that” – she made a sidelong gesture, cutting the air with her hand – “didn’t give a shit.”
A prim-looking couple glanced over at us, but Allison didn’t notice. She was engaged in a near-orgasmic response to the last bite of cupcake. “Goddamn.”
“How long you been sober?”
She picked a dab of icing from the cupcake wrapper and placed it on her tongue. “This time? Ten months. Before that – and I was drinking again for a while – but before that it was three years.”
“But you’re only – how old are you, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m thirty-one,” she said. “First time I got sober, I was twenty-four years old. DUI. Nearly killed my goddamned self. It was a one-car wreck, thank God, but the effect was that I ruined a car, my financial status, and my life. My standing in the community hadn’t been tarnished, because it had never been that good in the first place.”
I nodded.
She kicked me under the table. “I just revealed something! Come on!”
“Right. I–”
My past was no longer a secret, I guessed, but it seemed meetings were the only place I felt comfortable discussing how I got to be sober.
I toyed with my napkin. Couldn’t make eye contact at first. “Same situation. I hit somebody with my car. I mean, it was a wreck, but it wasn’t just me. I hit a woman, nearly killed her. She hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt, she’d have died.”
“At least you were given a hell of a reason to quit drinking.”
“Oh, that didn’t get me to quit,” I replied. “I had myself convinced–”
“It wasn’t the drinking.”
I nodded.
She fidgeted with her cigarette box. Slid her cupcake saucer away from her. Sipped her coffee.
“Had some bad things happen,” I said.
“Beyond the wreck? You mean like a DUI?”
“I mean, it was a ‘dark night of the soul’ kind of experience, where it always feels like three in the morning. I didn’t make a lot of sound choices, but you know how it is.”
She nodded, even if what I’d said was incongruous with the conversation. She said, “Sometimes it still feels like it’s three in the morning for me, and being sober only makes it worse, because I can’t have a beer or a shot to help relax. Sometimes I just think, ‘If I could just have a beer, I could be marginally happier.’ It’s, like, a curse that I can’t have a beer and stop there. I mean, I can. I can have a beer and stop...sometimes.”
I said, “It’s the times you can’t that mean you can’t drink.”
She pointed at me and touched her nose with her index finger. “Bum wiring,” she said. “Come on. Let’s go outside. I need a smoke.”
I was tempted to ask for one, but something strange happened. I grazed her elbow on the way through the door, and what felt like a bolt of electricity snapped through me, knocking all need for a cigarette from me. My thoughts didn’t even circle back to cigarettes.
“You all right?” she asked, when she saw my pallor. “You look like you just walked over a grave.”
I told her I was fine, trying to find the voice I used to convey it when the sentiment wasn’t true. She retrieved a smoke from her purse and lit it up. I watched the smoke curl away from the tip.
The unnatural pause settled in and started to dig its way between us. I stumbled for something to say that wouldn’t sound entirely forced.
“It was real nice having cupcakes with you,” I said. “Hope to see you at the next meeting.”
She pffted. “Come on, now,” she said, offering what I was beginning to realize was a mischievous grin. “You’re cute, and I gave the signal. I asked you out. For cupcakes, for Chrissakes. The least you could do is ask me for my number, make me feel like you’re interested.”
I smiled. This girl was not to be taken lightly.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” I said. I thought about the ring magically appearing in my house. “It’s just, it’s felt like midnight inside me for the last few months, and I don’t want to drag you into something weird.”
The way her eyes glimmered made me think of Vanessa, and I gave myself a silent drubbing for that. It was just my only point of reference, I guessed.
“Darkness is something I get,” she replied. “Listen–”
“No, no,” I replied. “That was only just to say I, well, I’ve been so focused on putting myself back together, brick by brick, that I – why don’t we try this again?”
Allison smiled, turned, and began to walk away. I was dumbstruck, caught, and I didn’t know how to force myself to move. “Wait,” I managed, but could say no more.
She turned and walked backwards for a few steps. “I put my number in your phone back in the cupcake shop,” she said. “When you went to the bathroom, just about the time you should have asked for it. Don’t worry; I forgive you. Call me when it gets a bit brighter out, if you get my meaning.”
Third chapter
Savannah’s not a bad place to be. I wouldn’t say “bad place to live,” because I didn’t quite believe I was living anywhere just yet, only existing. It’s a bleary-eyed town sometimes, as a lot of touristy, vacation-heavy places are. The streets sometimes teem with zombies on leave from their lives, and I don’t suppose I’m any different. I hadn’t found a way into the bar or drug scene so prominent in the city, but then again I wasn’t looking for it. Just a quick glance revealed a town filled with people dumping mound-fulls of loose soil over their problems. Even the tourists who largely enjoy themselves seemed like they were keeping something hidden. Why else seek oblivion? The undercurrent I noticed flowed, well, like a river through the town, and even though plenty of people seemed to notice it, very few commented on it.
Still, I liked Savannah. Maybe I loved it. It’s big enough, and I don’t know many people, so it’s anonymous enough. My problem, I figured, was that in Lumber Junction, I carried this sign around with me that told everybody I was damaged. In my hometown, the McKane name is mud, and what happened with my mama and daddy burned the surname to a crisp. All the stuff that happened with Vanessa and me didn’t help, and so part of me was relieved to leave the dirty looks and quiet gossip behind.
The drawback of being anonymous is that nobody knows you. I had spent the last six months more-or-less like a ghost, save for the acquaintances I’d made through work and attending meetings. I possessed few good, solid relationships. I guess I’ve been a loner for most of my life anyway, but living in a new town is like first noticing silence. You don’t appreciate the little noises in your life until they’re completely gone, and then the lack of noise itself is more deafening than the alternative.