Walking on Broken Glass

by Christa Allan

  “Great, Bob. I’m great.” He put his coffee cup in the sink and walked outside.

  42

  As I had promised Rebecca, on the way home from taking my father to the airport, I brought up the idea of marriage counseling. The good that came out of the Great Dinner Disaster was that I used it as an opportunity to guilt Carl into agreeing to an appointment. Carl used counseling as an opportunity for penance. We were even.

  Our first session with Melinda was the getting to know one another, let's make sure we’re comfortable introduction. After we’d arrived at her office, an unassuming cotton candy pink wood-framed house in an older section of the city, Bonnie, her receptionist, handed a blue clipboard to Carl and a pink one to me. “I know, sexist. Please fill these forms out, and no cheating, kids.” She smiled and sat back at her desk.

  A few pages of the usual medical information requests, but other pages asked about our dreams and goals, strengths and weaknesses of ourselves, our spouse, our relationship, our opinions about money, education, sex, families, children. We finished within a few minutes of one another and handed them over to Bonnie. She took them into Melinda's office.

  Carl and I sat next to one another like strangers on a bus. Carl picked up a Sports Illustrated. So reminiscent of Annie, who I’d not seen in weeks. I said a quick prayer for her and for everyone at Brookforest that I’d probably never see again. All those weeks our lives were intertwined by our shared weaknesses, and once we became strong, we unraveled from the group. God's way of binding us somewhere else?

  Melinda walked out holding our clipboards. “Hi, you two. Come in.” I wouldn’t have known she was Rebecca's sister because they shared little in terms of their physical appearance. Only a few inches taller than I, Melinda had curly, dark brown hair past her shoulders. Her generous curves contrasted Rebecca's tall, sleek frame. But once she started talking, I had no doubt they were siblings. They shared an assertive sassiness and a warm, honest compassion.

  Carl and I sat in separate chairs facing her desk while she talked about how she envisioned couples’ therapy, what she expected from us, and what we should expect from her. Carl asked about her experience with couples in therapy because of alcoholism.

  “I’ve been working with couple and individuals for almost eight years now. Are they all alcoholics in recovery? No. Sometimes the addictions are food, drugs, sex, gambling. Some of my clients are the children of the others or the adult children of the others. We all have something that brings us here.”

  She told us that, after today, the three of us wouldn’t meet until she’d met with Carl and me individually. Carl squirmed. I saw her eyes made note, but she kept talking. “When the three of us come together again, I’ll share what each of you want as the three most important areas to talk about here. After today, your chairs will face one another, not me. I’m not the one you’re here to build a relationship with. I have my own I need to work on.” She rolled her eyes, laughed, and pointed to a picture of a handsome, shiny-haired, black cocker spaniel. “People tell me Sigmund and I have an amazing resemblance. More than Becca and I, wouldn’t you say, Leah?”

  We scheduled our next appointments, and she gave each of us a set of Scripture passages she wanted us to read before our next couple time together. “You need to congratulate yourselves for being here. The first year in recovery is tough. Most marriages don’t survive the first year, and the majority of those who relapse are going to do it the first year. Think there's a connection? Oh, yeah. If you had kept drinking, Leah, you could’ve shortened your life by as many as fifteen years. Now that's sobering, don’t you think, Carl?”

  I didn’t have to tell her how Carl felt. His body language and monotone, clipped responses conveyed it all. She focused most of her eye contact his way, and when he responded to something she said, she rewarded him with a smile or nod.

  Melinda sold me. Now if Carl could just buy in.

  I expected my days as a sober person would be excruciatingly long ones involving teeth-gnashing, wailing, hand-wringing, and gazing with naked longing into liquor store windows. Time and circumstances controlled my drinking life. Like many with alcohol-crazed brains, I had my routine, my standards, my inflexible self-imposed tyranny.

  WEEKDAY VS. WEEKEND RULES

  1. No drinking earlier than five in the evening on weekdays.

  2. No drinking earlier than ten in the mornings on weekends.

  3. If the weekday was a holiday, then it fell under the weekend rule.

  VACATION RULES

  1. Weekdays and weekends shared the ten in the mornings rule.

  2. If the vacation involved morning brunch, drinking before ten o’clock was acceptable (by definition, a morning brunch was breakfast where the following were available: a milk punch, Screwdriver, or Bloody Mary. If attending a Jazz Brunch, champagne was acceptable.)

  OTHER RULES

  1. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER drink at school.

  2. No drinking before church services of any kind. (Since we generally didn’t attend, the ten o’clock rule applied.)

  3. No drinking while driving. Unless in Louisiana, where this rule was suspended since “to go” cups were available when exiting a bar, and Drive-Thru Daiquiris provided acceptable locations for getting a drink “for the road” on the way to a party. (Rule amended to take into consideration new driving laws requiring covered drinks for drivers and passengers.)

  4. After three consecutive days of raging hangovers or worrisome blackouts, there would be a three-day rule of ABSOLUTELY NO ALCOHOL. By the second day of the three-day rule, if no alcohol had been consumed, then it was assumed that no alcohol would have been consumed on the third day. In which case, a drink at five on the afternoon of the second day was acceptable since no drinking on the third day was assumed.

  CONTAINER RULE:

  CONTENT DETERMINES CONTAINER

  1. Anything Not Clear: This is the preferred container. Required to disguise gin or vodka drinks requiring an olive as pure drinking water.

  2. Clear Container: Use with caution.

  If the gin or vodka drink necessitated a lemon, orange, or lime slice, a clear container was acceptable, because lemons, oranges, and limes are acceptable water fruits.

  May be used any time drinking is acceptable under conditions outlined above under Weekday vs. Weekend Rules.

  DISPOSAL RULE:

  ABOVE VS. BELOW NEWSPAPER

  (PRIOR TO CARL's ARRIVAL HOME)

  1. Drinking alone on a weekday (see above), fewer empty cans (two or three) could be viewed in the garbage can.

  2. If drinking on a weekend (see above), more cans were acceptable. Any cans above acceptable had to be placed under the newspaper.

  In the name of everything holy, how did I ever find time to drink?

  43

  Well, look who it is,” said Dr. Nolan, who entered the exam room and looked at my file at the same time. “The little princess sprung from the big house. Life on the outside must be good.”

  Carl sat across from the exam table. With her back to him, it wasn’t until I said, “Carl, this is Dr. Nolan,” that she realized he was there.

  “Oh, I am very sorry, Mr. Thornton. I was so busy reading about Miss Leah here, I didn’t look where I was going,” she said. “Glad to meet you.”

  “Thanks. Nice to meet you,” he said. “I have a few questions, Dr. Nolan.”

  “Good. I like dads with questions. Let me just bother your wife a minute, then we can talk. You know how grouchy these moms can be,” she said, shaking her head. “Leah, you didn’t tell me you were married to Jean Luc Picard.” She talked and prodded and prodded. “That man is one fine-looking white man. Um-mm-mm.” She said to Carl, “My husband said I have a thing for bald men. So this is why Momma over here and I liked each other so much, I guess.”

  Dr. Nolan helped me to sit. I felt like a giant fly squirming off sticky flypaper. I skipped the torture of subjecting my bare feet to frostbite-inducing stainless steel stirrups. The solution in most
offices? Athletic socks. Is that the best we can do?

  She checked my ankles and feet for fluid. Asked about the vomiting, my food and fluids, and sleep. I told her I’d started walking again. “Only once a week, so far. But we walk two miles.”

  “Any exercise is better than no exercise. Build up one day at a time. Now that should be an idea you can relate to,” she smiled and patted the top of my knee. “Okay, Jean Luc, your turn.”

  His face did that eyebrow and mouth twitch like his muscles forgot what to do for an instant. One of those perplexing expressions of his when I don’t know if he's suppressing a grin or a grimace. “I’m sure you knew this pregnancy was an accident. Leah being an alcoholic at the time. I calculated she’d probably been drinking for at least four to five weeks. My concern, of course, is for the baby. What I want to know is how her drinking may have affected our baby.”

  Hello? Guilt Trip Planners? Ticket for one, please.

  Dr. Nolan, who looked at the floor for most of Carl's oration and nodded every ten seconds, waited before she looked at him and answered.

  “Mr. Thornton, Leah's first appointment was at Brookforest, so we’ve been quite honest with one another from the beginning. For the record, I usually don’t refer to a pregnancy as an ‘accident’ as most people do understand that most intercourse is not ‘accidental’ and one of its natural consequences is pregnancy. The reason I mention this to you, and the reason I feel so strongly about using the word ‘accident’ is for some parents, and I’m certainly not suggesting that you would be one, the ‘accidental’ pregnancy is born and becomes the ‘accidental’ child. I’ve had adults sit in this office telling me they were accidents. It makes me sad to hear. Imagine carrying that burden for life. But in God's eyes, not one of us is an accident. Now that's something I wish people would carry around with them.”

  Carl picked up a striped cotton teddy bear perched on the desk and examined it during Dr. Nolan's reply. “Now about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome,” he said and returned the little bright bear to the desk.

  Dr. Nolan explained Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, or FAS, is at the most severe end of an entire spectrum of disorders known as Fetal Affective Spectrum Disorders. “One out of 750 babies is born with FAS. Another 40,000 have some fetal alcohol effects at birth,” she said. “Sometimes there are effects going back to the first four to six weeks, the time when most women aren’t even aware they’re pregnant, like Leah.” She explained the effects ranged on one end to a low birth weight to FAS babies born with central nervous system disorders and a host of other complications.

  “Can I guarantee that this baby has absolutely no effects? No. But I wouldn’t expect there to be from the history I’ve taken from Leah. And we’re going to turn that baby's life over to God.”

  Carl's expression buckled on that one. “We’ve been down that road, Dr. Nolan, I …”

  “I know about Alyssa. We’re trusting God with this baby, and this baby's road.”

  Later, when Carl opened the car door for me, he said, “Did you say anything to Dr. Nolan about my parents when you first met her?”

  “No. She didn’t even ask. Why?”

  “Just curious.

  Dr. Nolan was God's mouthpiece today. I knew Carl's parents were fond of referring to him as “their little accident.”

  “You were right. I do like her, but next visit I’m calling her Whoopi Goldberg.”

  “I think she’d get a kick out of that,” I laughed.

  Thank you, God. Thank you.

  Another Saturday walk with Molly, but my steps outpaced hers today. Something was wrong.

  “I know I’ve been exercising more, but even on one of your slow days, you’re ten steps ahead of me. What's up?” I shifted down to her shopping mall speed.

  “Devin and I decided to postpone in vitro.” She soccer-kicked a pine cone in her path. “It's the money. Our finances just can’t bear it anymore.”

  Their finances can’t bear their wanting to bear a child. Interesting verb choice, especially for a diction discussion. Two things I couldn’t control—alcohol and teacher brain. Teacher Leah corrected errors on restaurant menus and berated television reporters who said, “Between you and I …” or “irregardless.” You can take the teacher out of the classroom, but you can’t take the teacher out of the teacher. Friend Leah understood Molly was learning lessons, gut-wrenching ones.

  “But you two have spent weeks getting ready. Why now?”

  “We calculated what we’ve spent and what we will be spending. It's tens of thousands of dollars. Our insurance doesn’t cover it. It's our savings, our retirement, the second mortgage on our house. We want to be able to afford the baby after it's born. Great parents we’d be. What do we say, ‘It's like this kid, we spent all our money trying to have you, and now that we have you, we can’t afford you’?”

  “Maybe Carl and I could help. We could set up a baby in vitro fund. We can do that, really. Carl loves you and Devin. He’d want to do this too. I’m sure of it. Of course, I’d talk to him first, but God blessed us for a reason. Why can’t we use our money to help someone who needs it?” Wow, did I just look like my father because I so sounded like him.

  Molly's eyes widened into the agitated look I felt the night I heard Dad and Carl's duet. She veered around a fallen tree branch and accelerated to her usual pace. I trotted to stay with her.

  “No, Leah. Absolutely not. This is our decision. Thank you, really, but no.”

  Four steps forward.

  I’ve not missed one AA meeting since I left Brookforest. Rebecca and I have met every week, I’ve steadily worked on my Steps, and I spend time reading the Bible, my Big Book, my daily meditations.

  Six steps back.

  Just when I rejoiced about some progress in our marriage, the wheels not only stopped turning, they peeled out in reverse.

  We both had appointments with Melinda the next day, one after the other. Our couple meeting had been scheduled for Friday, and we had reading homework I hadn’t started. Carl hadn’t bothered to share his assignment, even though I was sure we wouldn’t be cheating if we knew. My passages were The Virtuous Wife of Proverbs 31, and something from Song of Solomon. I started with the outstanding wife of the Bible universe, but about six lines in, I felt sick. Not pregnant sick. The “how am I ever going to measure up to this woman” kind of sick. I wanted a nap just reading about what this woman accomplished. Had I leaped too quickly? Maybe Melinda wasn’t the match for us. I closed my Bible and opted for the nap. Maybe after rest—which, hey, AA said we needed to take care of ourselves—I’d be more open to Mrs. Goody Twenty Shoes.

  “Amazing Grace,” my new ringtone, woke me. Carl told me Friday's appointment might be a problem because his father scheduled meetings with contractors.

  “What came first on the appointment schedule? Melinda or the contractor?” Since dinner disaster night, Carl and I have seen his parents on only two occasions: once for a weekend breakfast and the other time we stopped by their house so Carl could sign paperwork for an insurance policy. They were adequately attentive, but with the emotional enthusiasm of people forced to watch home movies of your cats or the four-hundred-ninety-two photos of your vacation in the Smokies. They were pleased about the baby, but probably not so much about the baby's mother.

  “Why?” he asked. “You think there's a conspiracy? There isn’t.”

  “Couldn’t you reschedule the appointment with the contractor?” I turned on my back and contemplated the dust edging the fan blades. How long had that been there? Good reason to keep a fan on, especially if company's here … like the in-laws.

  Just because you choose to hide it or not see it, that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

  It's dust on a fan blade, God.

  Have you forgotten, “The Lord formed man of the dust of the ground?”

  “Leah, did you hear a word I said?”

  Yes, God .

  “No, I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  “I’d asked if you could
reschedule with Melinda. Call me back later, and let me know.”

  “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”

  “I rescheduled a business meeting so we could be here,” Carl said as he tapped the arm of the barrel chair. “That means we have to leave here exactly at one o’clock.”

  He faced me, but he swiveled his conversation to both Melinda and me. I looked at her.

  She sat, impassive, and twirled a yellow highlighter between her hands. “Fine. Who's going to be the timekeeper?”

  “Me,” Carl said. “I’ll do it. That way I can be sure we won’t go over.”

  “What are you suggesting?” I asked.

  After several more volleys across this net of hostility between us, Melinda said, “To your corners. Remind me, why did the two of you come here? Leah, you start. Tell Carl the first issue on your list. Then, Carl, you tell her the first issue on your list. Let's start there.”