Last Last Chance

by Fiona Maazel

  I laugh. J.C. pinches her arm. “It’s not really our business,” he says.

  “No, it’s fine. She’s a crackhead.”

  Sam says, “Nuh-uh. I thought crackheads were black. And lived in the slums.”

  “Not this one,” I say.

  “And she’s your mother? You’re a mother-daughter team in rehab? I think that’s sweet.”

  I nod. “And we’re for hire. You know, kids’ birthday parties. Bar mitzvahs.”

  Sam says, “That’s awful,” and hugs her stomach as if to protect the baby from my aura. I look away. Plague is imminent, but in the meantime let’s defend against my self-contempt, which is so virulent, it smites the unborn.

  “So lemme get this straight,” I say. “You want to stay in our rooms indefinitely and we should, like, bring you food and stuff?”

  “That would be great,” J.C. says.

  “We don’t have family,” Sam adds, as if I missed it before. As if the salience of being alone rationalizes everything.

  “Except Luke here,” J.C. says, and pats her belly. I notice the smile between them and it depresses me no end. My life really does suck. No, wait. Life is fine, I suck. I’ll never be like this couple. When I was eighteen, I was already fixated on subway tracks, how I’d like to sit on the tracks and wait. I could never throw myself before a speeding train, but surely I could wait for one to come along.

  Mother is lolling her head against the wall.

  Sam wants to know if she’s dangerous. I say only if she runs out of drugs. J.C. asks the obvious question and I say, “Well, look, you can’t just clean up because someone sends you to rehab.”

  “My dad was a drinker for years until he found God,” Sam says. “After that, he’d start and end every day with the Lord’s Prayer.”

  J.C. has clearly heard this story before. He looks out the window and I notice he’s got ears like coins jutting from his head. I have never seen ears so independent of skull. I wonder if he has extraordinary hearing.

  I suggest we turn in. J.C. and Sam opt to sleep in my room. I make a crib of burlap for them on the floor. Amazing how fast an incredible situation becomes rote. All you need is a toothbrush or hand towel. I wonder if it was like that for the people hiding Anne Frank. I turn off the light. J.C. and Sam spoon. He puts his palm on her stomach and says good night to them both.

  Thirty

  Next day, Mother was a wreck. She’d been snorting coke all night to compensate for lack of crack. She was also upset the prom teens had slept in my room, not hers. She said, “I found them first, you know.” As codicil to why she was depressed, she mentioned last night’s rune casting, which ended with uruz: weakness, sickness, death.

  I am on the benzodiazepine wean, which means I’m pissy all day, too. I should be grateful there even is a wean—courtesy the cook-nurse—else I might have a seizure and bite off my own tongue. I’m not into that at all. I’d be like Lavinia in Titus Andronicus , minus someone to avenge the rape of my loins. As is, cook-nurse metes out pills, humbles dose, and no one loses a tongue, whose cognate, apropos nothing, is an octopus arm, which, now that I know, has me creeped out about my own tongue, but newly enthused about everyone else’s.

  We went to breakfast. My scrambled eggs looked like moon rocks. I pocketed some honey buns for J.C. and Sam, a dented orange, and a tub of peach jelly. Mother rolled her eyes. “The girl needs nutrition,” she said, and scooped her eggs into a napkin.

  Two women I didn’t know joined our table. Mother was so busy purloining the ham she forgot to put on her shun-me face. The women were Margaret and Sandra. They were in their forties, maybe, it was hard to say. Most addicts verge on decrepitude well ahead of schedule, so it’s wise to strip five to ten years off the gloss. They had been here nine months. One kicked horse tranquilizer. The other, coke. When they shook my hand, it felt disingenuous, like when your mobster buddy gives you a hug just before you get whacked. Also, they were of some dense matter, both of them. Like Polish charwomen. All gam and cankle, which portmanteau I learned at my last rehab because of the Olympic weight-lifter lady who came in lacking for the appearance of connective hubs between, well, calf and ankle. I guess she had forists, too.

  Margaret and Sandra asked our names and clean dates. Mother said, “What’s that?” I said, “I’m in detox.” They nodded. I began to detect mutual simulacra in their hairstyles, as if each were trying to copy the other, but failing. They wore it short and packed, though Margaret’s came at her face like some unruly bush while Sandra’s attempted to quit her skull like men overboard. They were both gray at the roots.

  Margaret said she was staying in F-7, which was not too far from me, so if I ever wanted to stop by. Sandra said, “Me, too.” Turns out they were sisters. Sisters in rehab. I guess Susan wasn’t kidding when she said Bluebonnet prized family.

  We tarried at breakfast. Today was Mother’s turn to share at group, and I didn’t think I could stand it. Also, the rehab sisters were fun. Of chief interest to them both was the money they’d saved by being clean. It was earmarked for plastic surgery—farewell dewlap for Margaret, snip and lift for Sandra. I never thought of clean-time money as a kind of money, but then I had never had it, so what did I know.

  Margaret checked her watch and groaned. They were expected in town as part of the resocializing program, which got them jobs at the dollar store. Margaret cashiered. Sandra made announcements over a PA. The druggie buggy was idling outside. The driver, Dan, who’d had to wake up at four a.m. just to get here on time, was probably working out a pension-to-nuisance ratio, and figuring this job was not worth it.

  The ladies stood, and only then did I notice their aprons, vertical mint candy-cane stripes, and that plastic surgery was probably a good call for them both.

  Margaret asked if we were going back to our rooms anytime soon.

  “After group,” I said.

  They exchanged a look. All these women and their looks.

  “Listen,” Sandra said, and sat back down.

  I felt a secret coming on. So did Mother. She looked almost interested. We all four leaned in, making a tent of heads.

  Margaret produced a bag of food shanghaied from the kitchen. Mostly staples. Roughage in a can. Dried fruit. She said, “Any chance you can bring this to my room?”

  Mother sat back, disappointed. “You got a bunny or something?”

  I socked her in the arm. These were our new friends. You can’t offend new friends in rehab. It is a bit like jail in that regard. There are factions. And smugglers. And a chain of command.

  As if reading my thoughts, Mother said, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Margaret asked us back into the huddle. “Have you been able to follow the news at all since getting here?”

  My jaw dropped. “You can’t be serious. You have refugees, too?”

  “Too?” Sandra said.

  Mother nodded. “We have a couple stashed in her room.”

  She said this like my room had spores.

  “Who’s in your place?” I asked.

  “We have five, if you can believe it. Single mom, her father, and her three kids.”

  “This is totally insane,” I said. “Is this really happening? We are turning into Hotel Rwanda. And all because there are a few people running around Texas who may or may not have plague?”

  “Superplague,” Margaret said.

  “Shadowplague,” Sandra added. And then, “We didn’t make the rules. And if I were out there, I might be doing the same thing.”

  Out there. I couldn’t believe that’s what she was calling it. In recovery, out there is where people relapse. Out there is a horror. It is everything we hope to leave behind. The cretinous things we do to score drugs, finance drugs, hide drugs. I can’t even name all the people I’ve raked over. The lies I’ve told. Getting clean is not about leaching Xanax from your blood; it’s about getting the hell out of out there. Only now, the phrase had taken on a whole new meaning. Now, out there was just a place where everyone liv
ed and behaved like us, minus the stigma. They might say: I am simply protecting my family. Or: I will screw you over a thousand times if it means protecting myself. How long before the prom teens or the family in F-7 disbanded? How long before survival trounced compassion?

  Out there was getting closer by the second.

  I took the bag. Margaret said she’d be by later to talk, she wanted to talk to me. I said, Fine, sure. We headed off to group. Mother was flagging. Breathing hard. She was all bone by now. She could fit into clothes I wore when I was ten. Clothes I did wear, because she’s a pack rat. Nothing worse than seeing your mother in a Care Bear shirt so tight her clavicle juts from the arc of a rainbow.

  We had not walked three minutes before she stopped. “I can’t make it,” she said, and clammed up against the wall. I stood her upright and took her hand.

  “My stomach hurts,” she said.

  “You can have some water in the library.”

  “I don’t feel well.”

  “Come on, Izz.”

  I dragged her alongside the sack of provisions for the refugees, who were beginning to feel less alien, more mirror image. I was disgusted, of course, but then I was only projecting what the future held for them. Maybe they would prove me wrong. Maybe they would stick together.

  We were first in the room. This meant we could sit where we pleased, which was by the window. There were shrubs to admire—for instance, the creosote bush. Or lechuguilla, which looks like a nosegay of spikes. And, of course, tumbleweed, the brier of wanderlust. I love any plant whose chief enterprise is peregrination and empire. About 250,000 seeds per plant, dispersed by principle of the wheel. I saw one big as a sheep the other day. And here’s what gives me comfort: no matter what you are doing or what is happening in the world, there is, someplace, a tumbleweed ambling down the road.

  Mother languished in her chair. She looked like a snowman on the first warm day. I kneaded her shoulders. I said, “You can beat this thing if you want. We’re already here. Maybe I can even help.” But she just shook her head and, with a rearing of the lips, expelled into a napkin a clot of black cream hewn to the armature of her lungs.

  The others came in piecemeal. Cecilia was having a bad day. She kept asking for her parasol because no jaunt through the park is complete without a parasol. Gale sat her down. Possibly an Electra complex was at work in Gale, retarding her loyalties; she’d fare better with the Dees, whose binary cried out for a third. They came in next and sat opposite each other. Unclear if this was for the purpose of sight lines or enmity. I could not imagine they’d had a fight. Oops, they’d had a fight. Dee one’s rage came out in a muttering designed to solicit comment: Are you okay? What’s wrong? Dee two just stared at her thumb. Penelope dropped anchor next to me, said, “Want to see something?” and proceeded to sock, unsock her trach tube and drone with mouth wide, the effect being the syncopated hum of, I don’t know, Hiawatha. Susan came in last, which meant overtime at the staff meeting. She appeared underslept. Or unslept, given the pulp beneath her eyes.

  She settled in and turned to Mother. “Now, Isifrid. We are here to help you. But you’ve got to help us, too.”

  I nearly threw up my hands, with relief or anger, I could not say. Happy someone was getting in her face, but upset it would not work. It never worked. Isifrid was unmanageable. Also, if it did work, what was wrong with the way I did it? These freshmen were going to succeed with my mother? How galling.

  Susan went on. “We are all here trying to recover. This is supposed to be a safe environment. That you continue to take drugs on the premises hurts our efforts. And makes things dangerous for everyone else. So will you let us help you? Say yes, and we can all move on.”

  Mother could barely keep her head up, but she looked sorry. Susan nodded, and in came two women security guards to pat Izzy down. I could not believe it. They confiscated her compact. A pillbox. A dummy twist of lipstick. And throughout, Izzy said nothing.

  After the guards left, Susan said, “Obviously, we have been back to your room.”

  I sat up. J.C. and Sam! Mother’s equivalent was to raise her eyes.

  “Now look. We can’t stop you from getting stuff here, you will always find a way. But if you are caught again, we will have to ask you to leave.”

  I thought Mother might slide off her chair. I had never seen her so bad off.

  Susan said, “It’s your turn to share, Isifrid. You can talk about what just happened, if you want.”

  Mother rallied enough to say she felt sick. And then, amazingly, came the tears. “I don’t want to break the rules. But there’s just something in my head that drives me the wrong way.”

  She was heaving now, and I was terrified. I had never known her to melt down in all her years of abuse. It is possible I just wasn’t looking. Or that I wasn’t there. But more likely, Isifrid was bottoming out.

  “Can we stop this?” I said. “Is this really helping?”

  But Susan ignored me with such authority, it gave me the impression she’d seen this a million times.

  Isifrid composed herself. Slightly. “You took away all my cocaine,” and she wiped at her nose. “You can’t just do that to a person.

  She was dissolving. She was three years old. And she wailed. “Nobody loves me. You notice how there are no men here? No men? I don’t have anyone to love me. Why did they leave?” She had moved into a crash-landing pose, tilted forward, and then was off the chair entirely, squatting with arms wrapped tight around her head. “Come back to me. Please come back. I wish I could die.” They? Why did they leave? I had no idea what she was talking about. “You get used to a way of life, you can’t just stop. No one has ever been there for me. And why should they. I’m a terrible mom.” She was panting now, mewling and bawling, but the words were out. “Can’t you see? My babies hate me.”

  I was not learning anything new about my mother except that she couldn’t hold on. She was giving up. I wanted to pray for her. But of course I could not pray. Pray to what? If God were out there, he’d know the duplicity of my heart.

  I got down on the floor and pulled her in close. She balled my shirt in her mouth and wept silently into the fabric.

  An attendant from the infirmary finally showed up. Crack addicts have no recourse to a compensatory drug like methadone. Their minds crave the drug more than their bodies. But I didn’t care. I was ready to give her whatever she wanted, just to make it stop. “Can’t you give her a sedative at least? Something to knock her out?”

  “Calm down,” Susan said. “There is no reason to shout.”

  The attendant was three times Isifrid in girth and hulk. When they left the room single file, I lost sight of Izzy altogether.

  “Don’t worry,” Susan continued. “They are going to give her fluids and something to eat.”

  But I was still trembling. When did it get so bad? Susan asked if I wanted to share. I did not. She said she really wished I would. Dee two said, “Oh, go on,” like I was stalled on the diving board. What was there to say that I had not said before?

  “I can’t make myself believe in God. And because of that, I can’t pray for my own mother. That and I’ll never be able to stop drugs.”

  Gale went, “Who you been talking to?”

  Dee one said, “Hooey.”

  Susan told me to continue.

  I said, “I bet that sounds like just another excuse. But it’s not. If I don’t believe in a power greater than myself, then I obviously think there’s nothing out there to help me but me, and me is unacceptable. So … that’s all I got.”

  “Would anyone like to comment?”

  I felt a heaviness come on, lethargy and grief, because Susan just looked so bored, the others were burnt out, and this was my seventh rehab.

  Dee two raised her hand. “I think, maybe, the thing is not to take everything so literally. All you have to do is remove yourself from the center of the universe, and you’ve already made a step toward conceding a higher power.”

  Dee one sai
d, “Horseshit. You don’t need God, you don’t need anything.”

  They glared.

  “Why can’t I have faith?” I was actually asking Susan. “What’s so wrong with me that I can’t have faith?”

  Cecilia raised her hand. “You have faith,” she said. “Just not in things eternal.”

  The group adjourned. I was leaving the room when Susan took me by the arm. I felt conscious of my sack of refugee food, and tried to hide it behind my legs. Still, I felt pleased, like I was being singled out after class because mine was the noteworthy cause that had recommitted Susan to the sacrifices she made for us.

  “I want to talk to you about something. This morning, when your mother’s room was being cleaned, we found two people asleep in your bed.”

  “How Goldilocks,” I said, but I thought she might slap me.

  “I’m sure you know visitors are not allowed, especially now.”

  She took me even farther away from the door and began to whisper. “We are very lucky to be here right now. We are very … protected.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. No one wanted to go near them.”

  “What do you mean? Because they might have plague? You can’t be serious.”

  “Superplague. Lucy, listen to me. You can’t be accepting strangers into the center, though I suppose it’s moot at this point. Today we set up a perimeter with electric fencing. No one gets in.”

  “And no one gets out?”

  “Don’t be silly. This isn’t a death camp. If you want to leave, leave. You’ll just have to leave on foot.”

  “What about the people in town today?” I was thinking of Margaret and Sandra.

  “They won’t be coming back.”

  “Has everyone in this place lost it? Or is it just you. It’s not just you, is it. Everyone’s got a gun now, right? And there’s a brawl in the pantry over the last hunk of bread.”

  Susan gasped slightly, as if her water had just broken, and ran for the cafeteria.

  This was madness.

  Thirty-one

  J.C. and Sam were distraught. I found them on my bed, rehashing. They’d had a faceoff with Bluebonnet staff, which was more like people backing away slowly, and a row with the refugees in F-7, in which voices were raised and covers blown. J.C. was saying, “The whole point of coming here was to avoid stuff like this.” And Sam saying, “Don’t upset the baby.” Who were these people? “Who are you people?” This seemed to bring them up short. But really, what did I expect them to say? They were lovers who wanted to make it.