Walking on Broken Glass

by Christa Allan

  A laugh.

  Suffering over.

  “Let's get started before the sun sucks the life out of us,” she said.

  Only a silo-sized vacuum cleaner hose could suck the energy out of Molly. Twenty years younger and she’d be on meds for hyperactivity. Instead, she's on meds for infertility. She and Devin had been baby practicing for almost two years. Practice had not made perfect. Over a year ago, when I told her I was pregnant, I almost wanted to apologize. Carl and I hadn’t planned to be parents. But we were. For six weeks. Then Alyssa died. I stopped feeling guilty around Molly. Mostly I stopped feeling.

  I bent over, pretended to adjust my shoelace, and hoped Molly didn’t see the grief floating in my eyes.

  “I’m ready.” I popped up. Perky trumps pity. “And wait till you hear what happened.”

  When I chronicled the latest school dramas, my body didn’t feel so heavy as I pounded my way down the path. A paralegal for trial attorneys, Molly didn’t share many details about work. We entertained ourselves some days imagining which kids in detention would become lawyers and which ones would need lawyers.

  “So, get this, I’m handing out tests, and—”

  Her power walk shifted down two gears. She held up her hand and said, “No, Leah. Stop.” American manicure this week, I noticed.

  I looked over my shoulders thinking some school person had materialized behind us and Molly had just rescued me from embarrassment and possible unemployment. No one.

  “Safe. Trail clear of suspects.” I rattled on.

  Another shift down. We now strolled.

  “I have to talk to you about something, and it has to be today.” She tucked her shoulder-length cinnamon-shaded hair behind her ears, a habit I’d learned meant she was ready for serious.

  I sidestepped a clump of strange goo. “What's up?”

  Molly pointed to a bench where the path split to lead to the pool or school. That always struck me as an unfair choice for kids on their way to school in the mornings.

  She sat. Scary news was sit-down talk. I paced.

  “You drink too much.”

  My feet stopped, but my soul lurched. My ship of composure pitched suddenly on this wave of information. I willed myself to calmness, “Who are you, Molly? AA's new spokeswoman?” The ten-year-old inside of me rose to the surface. “Oops, gender bias. New spokesperson?”

  “I’m serious. No more jokes. I’ve been praying about this for weeks, not knowing how to say this to you. After last night, I knew it couldn’t wait.”

  “Oh, so God told you to talk to me. Got it.” I scattered pine-cones with the tip of my Nikes.

  “I don’t think you get it,” Molly said. “God hasn’t text messaged me about you.” Her cool hand wrapped itself around my wrist. “Would you sit down, please?”

  I wanted to walk away—run, really—but her words anchored my heart. I couldn’t move. I waited. I waited to breathe again. Waited for the tornado of emotions to stop swirling in my chest. I sat.

  “Yesterday, Carrie called to see if you’d made it home. She wanted to drive you, but you absolutely refused. When she asked about whether to call Carl to pick you up, you told her … well, that's not worth repeating.”

  “So I had a few too many. It was a party. People drank. I drank. I’ll apologize to Carrie for whatever I said.”

  “You don’t remember, do you? Do you remember that night we went to Rizzo's for the company dinner?” She paused while two tricycling kids and a set of parents meandered past us.

  If my brain had a file cabinet of events, the drawers were stuck. Dinner at Rizzo's. Retirement. Somebody retired. I tugged at the memory and tried to coax it out.

  “Of course I remember. That guy, what was his name? He retired.” I leaned back and wished the wrought-iron bench slats were padded.

  “And?” Not really a question.

  “And, what? Since you already know the answer.”

  “Leah,” she said and leaned toward me. I still couldn’t look at her. “Dinner was late. You grabbed the wine bottle from the waiter, gave him your wine glass, and then told him you two were even. You said if we’d pound our silverware on the table, we’d be served faster. You almost dropped a full bowl of gumbo in your lap. You said it looked like something you’d thrown up the night before.”

  I wanted a button to zap a force field around me. I wanted silence. A piece of me had broken, and Molly had found it. If I talked too much, other pieces might shatter. I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk turning inside out.

  “You were out of control,” she said, the words filed by her softness so the edges were smooth when they pushed into me.

  Yes, and out of control was exactly what I’d planned.

  I couldn’t look at Molly yet. I couldn’t admit to my best friend in the universe that Carl told me almost every night something was terribly wrong with me. I thought I’d managed to divide myself quite nicely: Leah in the bedroom and Leah outside of the bedroom.

  “I want to disappear,” I said to the grass blades mashed under my shoes.

  “You are disappearing. That's the problem. You’re my friend. I want you here.” She slid next to me and placed her hand on my shoulder. “In the two years we’ve known each other, your drinking has gotten worse. I know you suffered after losing Alyssa. I know you still do. But you need help, or something awful is going to happen.”

  I wanted to hate her. But how could I hate a friend who loved me enough to save my life?

  “I lost my sanity at the apple juice case,” I repeated to Dolores, the intake clerk who scribbled information onto whatever form they used to admit the inebriated. She placed her pencil on the glass-topped desk, clasped her hands over the clipboard, and peered at me over her reading glasses.

  “Were you buying it to mix drinks?” she asked quietly, as if afraid the question would hurt me.

  I’m being admitted into rehab by a woman who clearly failed to understand that apple juice mixed with few, if any, hard liquors. My galloping knees knew that was something to be jittery about. Hadn’t I explained the twelve-pack of beer in the grocery cart? Why would I be worried about mixing? Did rehab centers hire teetotalers so they’d never have to worry about employee discounts for services?

  “Noooo. It just seemed too overwhelming to decide which brand to buy. You know, the whole cost per ounce thing.”

  No doubt Dolores knew I was ready for admission after that, but she persisted. She asked who referred me.

  “This was all my friend Molly's idea. She even made the appointment for me. This morning after our walk. Before my husband's golf game ended.” Good grief. My inner child needed a nap.

  This information about Molly seemed both unsurprising and amusing to Dolores. “Yes, it often works that way. People see in us what we can’t see in ourselves. Don’t need mirrors here.”

  Thirty minutes later, Dolores and I agreed I would voluntarily admit myself the morning of July 4.

  Leah Adair Thornton. Age 27. Middle-stage alcoholic.

  3

  Carl … I’m checking into Brookforest, the rehab clinic …”

  Carl looked as if someone was approaching him with a rope and a fast horse.

  Seeing his eyebrows almost meet in the middle of his face, I was relieved he’d chosen a table wedged in the corner instead of a booth in the middle of the restaurant.

  The strategy Molly and I had concocted was for the night to conclude with my enlightened and sympathetic husband reassuring me all would be well. Already the plan required some tweaking. Maybe, before I blabbered on, I could guarantee background noise by paying a bus-person to strategically drop a tray of dishes.

  “How is it that you’ve suddenly decided you drink too much? Maybe it's not the drinking. Maybe you’re just having a nervous breakdown.”

  Carl had obviously not read the script I’d mentally prepared for him.

  I should have planned this better. Having breakfast as dinner to tell my husband of five years I’m leaving him for a
month was probably frowned on by Dolores and the admissions staff at rehab. But after tonight, it might be a new question on the screening test:

  “Do you consider breakfast a more appropriate meal at which to reveal your addiction to a loved one?”

  When I announced I thought I drank too much, I theorized it’d be best not to be drinking. Although breakfast could be counted technically on the list of acceptable meals for having drinks. On our last visit to New Orleans, we’d reserved a table in the Garden Room at Commander's Palace. I had gauzy memories of sipping mimosas and Bloody Marys, listening to jazz, and sleeping in the taxi on the way back to our hotel. But our local Eggs in a Basket in my little suburban oasis was as far a cry from Commander's as I was from being an angel in a Victoria's Secret commercial.

  I managed to remain mute until waitress Tina finished jotting our orders and cruised off in the direction of the kitchen before I answered Carl.

  “Right. A nervous breakdown. I’m having a nervous breakdown—in the summer when I’m not teaching.” My drawling sarcasm shifted to rising frustration. “Besides, haven’t those gone out of style? Really, does anyone even have a nervous breakdown in the twenty-first century? What is that anyway?”

  Rhetorical question lesson.

  “What do you want from me, Leah? I think I’m meeting you for dinner, and you slam me with this?” He slid his fingers into the top pocket of his shirt, reaching for his phantom cigarettes. He quit two years ago, but the gesture lingered.

  Tina materialized from behind me and placed the coffee carafe on the table. She smiled at Carl, who’d started orchestrating his dining concerto. First, he slid the utensils from the faux-cloth napkin. Then, one by one, the knife, fork, and spoon pirouetted in one hand while he wiped them off with the napkin in his other hand. It was a ritual I expected at every meal away from home, but this was Tina's first show. She was mesmerized. Carl, however, was oblivious to his one-woman audience.

  Still no coffee cups.

  I leaned forward, as if on the brink of revealing tabloid information. “Tina,” I whispered, “what's the likelihood of finding cups for the coffee?”

  Her crimson lips puckered as if they’d just been pried off a lemon. She puffed her cheeks and sashayed off to what I hoped was the holy grail of lost coffee cups.

  Carl was either studying his reflection in the spoon or analyzing a smidge of gunk. I watched him. In that silly moment, surrounded by strangers and noise, I glimpsed the Carl of my heart and heard fragments of delicious laughter. It swished by like those faces on the metro in Ezra Pound's poem, like petals on a wet, black bough. If only I could collect them to reassemble a relationship.

  The high-chaired baby behind him leaned over, bombed the floor with scrambled egg, and applauded himself. I tried not to stare, but tides of longing swelled in the hollowness that should have been filled with Alyssa.

  Carl waved his hand in front of me. “Come back. Food's here.” I’d obviously underestimated Tina's stealth capacity. Again, she hovered. Her brown tray seesawed near my head. My head, not Carl's.

  She transferred her cargo of blueberry blintzes, whole wheat pancakes, and, finally, coffee cups to our table. She wedged her tray on her left hip and plunged her free hand into her tassel of chocolate hair braids.

  The young waitress produced a pencil with a flair David Copperfield would have applauded. “Anything else y’all need?”

  Sure, place my order for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. But Tina was in the business of feeding bodies, not souls. I just said, “No, thanks.”

  Carl's attention shifted to his plate. Each round, golden pancake was stabbed and lifted with one fork tine. He swirled his buttered knife between each one in figure-eight patterns so precise the Olympic committee would have awarded him a 9.7 score—at least if the judge from China cooperated.

  I poured myself a cup of coffee and wondered again how to explain my drinking problem to the man who, oddly enough, always said I was never satisfied. If I told him about a fabulous house under construction nearby, he’d ask why the one we lived in wasn’t good enough for me. I thought we had conversations; instead, he thought we had indictments.

  “Pretend someone asked if you wanted to invest gobs of money in something that disappeared in minutes. Or asked you if he could smash your head with a baseball bat. Or asked if you wanted to vomit profusely.”

  “Why would I want to do such patently stupid things?” He talked to his lap while he smoothed out the wrinkles in his napkin.

  “Exactly!” I punctured the air with my fork and knife on their way to dissecting my blintzes. “See, normal people would wonder if they were being interviewed for a reality show for the criminally insane.”

  Carl surveyed his options from the syrup carousel. His steel gray eyes scanned my face. “And?”

  “And, well, alcoholics listen to this and think we’re talking to someone we threw up on the night before. We’d offer him a drink. We’d hope he’d ask if we were ready for another round.” I launched a chunk of blintz into my mouth and wondered if I’d soon be attempting a serious conversation with a purple-stained tongue.

  The aluminum carousel squeaked as he fidgeted between maple syrup and pecan praline. He stopped at maple and wiggled the little pitcher from its sticky neck hold.

  “How do you come up with this stuff? Who told you all this?”

  Where was a chalkboard when I needed one? I would’ve dragged my fingernails over it. Several times.

  “Me. I told me this.”

  The food arrived at the next table. Bacon. The smell pulled me into Sunday morning breakfasts at my parents’ house when I was still in college. When I was still single. When I was still in denial.

  Carl sighed, one of those we’ve-been-here-before shallow breath sighs, and raked his fingers over his newly shaved head. Two months ago Carl decided he’d rather have no hair than curly hair. I’m grateful he's not of those lumpy-skulled men who look like they needed spackling to even out the shape.

  “I think, Leah, you might be confusing fun at parties with flashback guilt from skipping church.”

  He intended the church bait to lure me into one of those dog-chasing-its-tail discussions—lots of activity, but nothing's ever resolved. He's selling church? I wasn’t buying. Carl only appreciated organized religion because it provided a legitimate tax deduction. Church, or at least the building, was a place to be seen, not by God, but by the upwardly mobile faithful. As for me, well, God was on my “To Do” list. Somewhere between watching the grass grow and death.

  “Carl, it's not just parties. I drink every day. Not just weekends. And we both know the church thing has nothing to do with alcohol. And I’ve tried to stop drinking …” My fingertips sketched squares on the table as I spoke. The last few words barely escaped my lips.

  He floated his napkin over his leftover wedges of pancakes. My weight-conscious husband covered his food to stop himself from overeating. Covering up worked for too many things in his life lately. He’d once uncovered his world to me and to the possibility of a life less rigid, less predictable, less careful.

  Our first Christmas morning as newlyweds, Carl brought me breakfast in bed and told me to close my eyes. He placed something on my head. I laughed and asked him if he had a tiara made for his princess.

  “Not unless you’re a rodent,” he said. His voice smiled.

  I opened my eyes, reached up, and my hands grazed a felt cap with ears. Mickey Mouse ears. He’d arranged for us to spend a week in Disney World: a week he scheduled to begin that very afternoon.

  No more Magic Kingdom.

  “Real alcoholics can’t stop. You’ve stopped. So, how can you be,” he coughed out, “an alcoholic?” He stacked his plate on top of my empty one. “I have a drink when I come home from work. So you get drunk occasionally. So what? You’re creating a crisis. Plus, rehab? Drastic solution, wouldn’t you say? Do fat people just give up food?”

  Carl r
eached for the carafe. “Wait.” He stopped pouring. “Is this what you and Molly drummed up on your walk this morning? I knew you couldn’t have come up with this ridiculous idea on your own. You’re so easily influenced by people, and you’re so impulsive. Haven’t we talked about this?”

  No, we did not talk. He talked. I listened. Again and again and again. “This” translated to “you’re supposed to discuss important issues with me before making a decision.”

  I looked past Carl at egg-bomber baby now shaking the contents of his bottle onto the highchair top. A bottle probably filled with the apple juice I left behind. I guess he has a mother who can get through the grocery store without marveling that both beer and diapers can be purchased in a twelve-pack.