I knew I should listen to Benny's story—there's probably a test later. But no matter how often I swallowed, the knot in my throat wouldn’t dissolve. I had that first day of school shivering anticipation, only then I knew what I was going to say. I wished I had a script. If my contacts didn’t make me want to rip my eyes out I wouldn’t be forced to wear glasses, which at this moment slipped down my oily nose. At least the sweats camouflaged my lumpy legs, which had been acting as silos for the ice cream that had become one of my daily food groups.
“Leah?”
My child voice escaped before I had time to add years to it, “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m next?”
Dr. Sanders didn’t answer. He just nodded and gripped his pen. An extra fine point. My favorite. I lusted after pens. I probably shouldn’t share that today. Someone coughed. I focused on the outer rim of Theresa's hair.
“Well, my name is Leah. I’m married. My husband's name is Carl.” Each word sounded like a stone carefully placed. I paused, knowing I’m supposed to share how I became a willing inmate. I’m here, if you really want to know the truth, which if we did, none of us would be here, but the truth was I have to be drunk to have sex with my husband. So now I’m here, and I’m not only not drinking, I’m not having sex.
“Umm. Well, I’m here because my friend Molly took me to lunch and said I needed to stop drinking. Not that I was drinking all that much. But, you know, I’m just mid-stage, and, well, I just mostly drink beer.”
Doug snorted. “Girl, I’ve spilled more beer on my tie than you drank in your whole little life. I don’t even know why you’re here.”
“Doug, shut it down. You don’t need to be all over new chick, giving her a hard time and all.” Wow. Theresa to the rescue?
“Seems to me like she got lost on her way to the country club or somethin’.” Doug slapped his hands on his knees and leaned forward. I wasn’t sure if he was going to throw up or stand up.
“Leah?” Once again, Mr. Doctor's voice. “Why are you smiling?”
“Why am I smiling?” I echoed, rotated my wedding band, and stared at the floor. This wasn’t a question I was prepared to answer. I didn’t read about a smiling probation period in the papers Ms. Wattingly had given me. Why did it matter? A test? Lady or the tiger? Sobriety behind one door. Insanity behind the other. Still the band spun around my finger. So much friction, my fingers would explode into flames. My hand on fire would put a stop to that smiling.
“I … I just smile. I don’t think about it, really. I always smile. I mean not always, but mostly.” I was a stammering adult, apologizing for a smile. This was why people drank. This and the fact that I now held a conversation with the floor.
“Uh-huh.” Mr. Doctor's pen tap-danced on his clipboard.
I knew that response. I practiced it often in teaching, mostly at parent conferences or in discussions with school board personnel. Loosely translated, it meant, “I don’t believe one syllable of what you’re telling me, and I don’t think you do, either, but we’re just not going to go there now.”
Finally, I suspended my psychic transference with the floor. When I lifted my head, the first face I saw was Annie's. Her eyes were dull, like unpolished silver. An invisible screen separated us. She focused on a movie playing itself out, one only she could see. I stopped smiling.
The pause allowed time for random body shifting. Even my well-padded posterior felt numb. It didn’t help that the room could have doubled as a meat locker. The near-freezing temperature must have some effect on addictions. In that space of quiet, I allowed myself my first deep breath since the mini-interrogation.
Everyone else seemed comfortable with the stillness. Me? I waited for the other shoe to fall. Why?
Exactly.
Why did I have to gird myself for impending doom? If the bad thing hadn’t already happened, it's sure enough going to happen, and it's just a matter of time, probably even closer than you think if something good's happened, so buck up, baby. Hold on. The breath out of everyone's mouth was a gale force wind.
A few coughs broke the stillness. Theresa sneezed and wiped her hands on her jeans. One of the U2 kids belched. They both laughed. Annie surfaced from her meditative state. Doug snored. Amazing. Minus the gravel he seemed to be processing through his nostrils, he could be mistaken for someone deeply prayerful.
“We’ll shut down introductions for now. Let's review some ground rules for these group sessions. First,” and this time Mr. Doctor smiled, “would someone mind elbowing Doug over there?”
Journal 6
“You need help.”
Oh, yes, I thought, more than you could possibly imagine. But the words that danced from my mouth wore different clothes. “You’re probably right.”
He stopped counting the pairs of folded socks stacked in the corner of the suitcase to turn to me. I stood behind him. Out of arm's reach. “Probably? No, that's where you’re mistaken. There's no probably.”
The suitcase yawned on top of the tightly made bed covered with a cranberry silk quilt and a floral embroidered duvet. Carl's lips made an almost perfectly straight line between his nose and his chin.
“I’m going out of town for over a week. I told you last night I needed you. In fact, I told you even before I left for work yesterday I couldn’t wait to get home. And you? You won’t come to bed with me.”
She flinched as the raw disgust in his voice crawled down her back.
“You watch some stupid shows on television, read. I never know what you’re up to out there while I’m in here waiting. Waiting for you. When you finally get yourself in bed, you won’t let me touch you. How's a husband supposed to survive like that?”
She stilled her body and waited. This would not be the end of the tirade. I knew he must punish me as he felt I ’d punished him . At least this was familiar. I knew what to expect.
He walked over to me. His meaty hands filled the hollows of my shoulders. He leaned over. His mouth pressed against my right ear. I focused on the Miersdorf watercolor hanging on the wall. Painted with jazzy reds and inky blacks and sapphire blues, the piano grinned at the shadowy figure perched on the piano stool. I made myself tiny inside the shell of my body. His moist whispers coated my neck. The clammy wetness reminded me of the mulch in my father's backyard and how, when he’d turn it over, a manure-heavy steam would rise from the pile.
“I’ll be home on Sunday. We can make up for all the lost time. I know you’ll be ready then.”
16
Do you know what's worse than group with Dr… . ? Oh—I know. Nothing,” I said to Jan, whose afternoon shift started while I suffered in the Little Shop of Therapy Horrors. Actually, I was talking at her since I didn’t want or ask for a response. Judging by the lazy grin on Jan's face, I wasn’t the first trauma victim suffering from post-group syndrome.
I power-walked around the nurses’ station, grateful for the locked windows that kept me from leaping—of course, how much damage could I do to myself from the second floor—but also to outrun the cigarette smoke wafting from the rec room.
“There are no windows in that room. That's perverse. And it's freezing in there. Nobody told me I’d need a coat. Walking out of that place …”
“Hey, at least you didn’t have to be carried out.” Jan's smile betrayed her attempt at sounding serious. “Anyway, think about this,” she said, scooting her desk chair over to reach the ringing telephone, “visiting starts on Sunday.” She was laughing by the time she answered the call.
The weekend morphed into some never-ending story of impending doom. First, when we leave the group session we’ll board a bus Friday evening for our first AA meeting away.
Then I’m pummeled with the thought of visitors. The army of ants that paraded through my stomach decided to pitch tents.
It's almost time for another meal. Here, meals have little or nothing to do with hunger. Maybe, before I’m totally sober and completely, certifiably ready to leave here, my stomach will adjust to this schedule. Not that it m
atters. I’ve already learned to eat on demand. When I’m hungry, I hope there’re enough Nutty Buddies or Blue Bell mini ice cream sandwiches in the freezer to stuff into the empty rumbling cave.
Today, though, it seemed pointless to even try eating. I was sure some reverse gravitational law would kick in—and whatever I sent down would reappear. Already, I couldn’t believe there was a time when I used to pray to not have to cook yet one more meal.
Mom always said to be careful what you pray for—you might just get it. “But,” she’d be quick to warn, “it may not come wrapped in the package you’re expecting. Remember that before you start asking God for all kinds of foolishness. Sometimes you’re just borrowing trouble.”
The yellow bus coughed its way out of the parking lot, entering Trace Street with just enough energy to squeeze into the snarling early evening traffic. This pumpkin was not the carriage I expected. But then, I wasn’t headed to the ball either. Maybe school buses were used as part of the aversion therapy. Don’t make us too comfortable, or else we may not want to leave.
We arranged ourselves like so many strangers, careful not to invade one another's space. The bus leveled the playing field. No one person had authority in this territory. Even Doug sagged a little less—which was Doug-ese for saying he was actually sitting straight. All eyes seemed focused on the shifting shapes of cars and glass buildings that, as the sun set, blazed like fingers of fire sprouting from restaurants and strip shops and gas stations. Each of us viewed the city through a window of our own. Protected from noise for so many days, hearing only the hum of florescent lighting, the drum roll of central air conditioning, the cafeteria clatter, and the thumping of doors as they opened and closed, the assault of traffic surprised us. We were so reverent we could have all been in silent contemplation for a spiritual retreat or holding a memorial service for a mutual dearly departed.
Myrtle, the bus driver, who could have been a not-so-distant relative of waitress Tina, was a burly, plum-faced woman. Her faded magenta hair poked straight out from the back of her head like a squirrel's tail. She was decked out in a sunflower yellow and blue plaid cotton housecoat snapped up the front, brown men's socks, and slippers. If this was the attire de rigueur for AA meetings, Molly and I had spent way too much time in my closet.
After a chorus of adolescent whining and begging Myrtle tuned into the rock station. Mick Jagger's static voice scratched and screamed through the radio. Benny and Vince started singing, Theresa chimed in, and their voices rose to meet Mick's.
I gripped the seat in front of me as the bus lurched and belly-flopped its way to its destination. I think the place was called Serenity. There's something bizarre about us having to be transported to serenity.
The kids and Theresa laughed as they joined Mick, and then I watched as, one by one, everybody in the bus picked up the tune. Even Doug choked his way through a lyric or two, his emphysemic rock-tumbler throat singing sounding like Keith Richards.
So, there I sat and wondered why I felt like an idiot. Why was participating in this song fest so difficult for me? I couldn’t allow myself to act silly even when there would be no real or lasting consequences. Though in my impulsive, spontaneous moments of the past, I’d be loud or brassy, like when I started “Second Lining” at one of the company dinners. Carl had reminded me of the definition of low profile. But in three weeks, I’d never see these people again.
When I drank, I imagined myself like Julie Andrews singing on a mountain top, twirling and twirling, facing the heavens, arms outstretched. I could be delightful and deliriously goofy when I filled myself with enough beer or wine or vodka or whatever. The alcohol bashed the self-imposed emotional straitjacket the sober Leah would be terrified to remove. Drunk Leah felt light, almost ethereal. Eventually, I had the best of both worlds—a fun-filled Leah who, the next day, couldn’t remember the havoc she wreaked or the embarrassing improprieties.
But no booze, no coping mechanism. I didn’t know how to act like a truly sober person. And I didn’t know I’d have to actually start feeling—feeling scared and angry and sad—and I’d have to start remembering.
Less than an hour ago, I had to be coaxed onto the bus. Jan's voice echoed Mom's when she had scrunched her body on the floor to peer under her bed, negotiating with Edison, our neurotic thunder-shy cat. Mom's fleecy-warm voice belied the verbal assault.
“Edison, if you don’t crawl from under this bed in the next thirty seconds I’m going to shave all of your hair and pierce your ears.”
Now Mom was gone, Edison was hundreds of miles away, probably looking over his shoulder for Mom, and I was the one who wanted to stay under the bed. All dressed up, my neatly creased khakis and my white button-down Gap almost starched blouse. My white canvas backless sneakers. And I couldn’t, wouldn’t, budge. My body froze. I didn’t want to leave the center. I didn’t want to walk through those doors. I wasn’t afraid of going to the AA meeting. I wasn’t afraid of getting on the bus. I wasn’t even afraid of coming back. I simply couldn’t leave what had come to mean security. I was safe here. No one could hurt me or force me to do anything.
The only other time I experienced this terror was when I woke up and found Alyssa, so still in her crib, so agonizingly still. They pulled her away from me, and she never returned. The overwhelming frightfulness of that moment gouged my soul—emptiness I tried to fill with Robert Mondavi and Johnny Walker and Miller Light.
When Jan said it was time to leave, my legs refused to transport me. I scratched the back of my hand, watching those familiar snail-like welts return. Maybe Carl felt tiny shifts in his universe with every motion of my fingernails urging the redness on.
“What will happen to me? How will I know I’m coming back? What if there's an accident? Please, please don’t make me go. I want to stay. I’ll stay in my room. Just don’t make me go.” Thankfully, everyone else had been escorted to the bus, missing my unscripted, irrational performance. How did she know to send everyone away? What had she seen in me? What part of myself had I unknowingly given away?
I pleaded with her. I grabbed her hand. She pried it loose, leaving the indentation of a halo pressed into my palm from her diamond ring.
I made her promise nothing bad would happen to me. That I would come back.
“Leah, breathe. You can do this. Just put one foot in front of the other.” Jan pointed me in the direction of the bus. She walked so closely behind me that our bodies made one lumpy shadow.
I felt like I was in one of those recurring dreams where I’d end up in school without wearing my Peter Pan collared button-down shirt, or I’d be wearing the shirt but not have a navy blue knife-pleated skirt to tuck it into. I looked around the bus. No one pointed or laughed, so I must still be fully clothed.
Not one of them looked at me.
They sang in one loud voice now, knowing, of course, that Mick was absolutely right. What we wanted, we could not have. What we wanted was alcohol or sex or drugs or money or any combination of those. What we needed was sobriety. That search for sanity linked the construction worker, the physician, the loan officer, the high school students, the housewife, the thief, and the waitress.
Mick's song became our anthem.
17
We arrived.
Cars littered the blacktop slab like grown-up Hot Wheels tossed from the sky by careless children of the gods. The bus nosed its way along a chain-link fence, separating the parking lot from the painted white brick church that hovered on the edge of the street.
Myrtle leaned over, tugged on the black handle, and the bus doors yawned opened. “Party's over. Time for me to grab a Subway before the meetin’ ends.” She stood and swiped her hands across the front of her housecoat, wiping off some invisible gunk from her lap. “Three twelve-inch subs only $11.99 tonight,” she announced to the backs of the newly and begrudgingly sober riders who shuffled down the bus steps.
Theresa paused by my seat. “You coming with us or what?”
I chanted my silent mant
ra when the bus stopped: I will lift myself off this seat. I will move my legs forward. But my rebellious feet protested. Sorry. No can do. We’re happy right where we are. I stared down at my sneaker-clad size sixes, hoping no one else heard them screaming at me. “You are being so disobedient and a little confused about who's in charge here,” I sneered.
“Girl, who are you yapping at?” Theresa's voice reminded me I only felt alone.
I pushed myself off the seat and slid a foot forward. I could beg Myrtle to let me ride with her to Subway just this one time. We could get orders to go. Deliver them to the meeting. Were AA meetings catered? Probably not. But they could be. I could start a new business: The Thirteenth Step. I came to believe in the value of proper nutrition and shared this …
Myrtle cleared her throat. Twice. “I’m hungry, and the meetin's about to start.”
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