South on Highland: A Novel

by Liana Maeby

  When the man in charge of doling out our jobs asks if I’m up for mopping, I nod with something that I daresay almost resembles enthusiasm. I follow him to the kitchen, where he hands me an apron, a giant industrial mop, and a bucket of soapy water. I wrangle my tools out to the cafeteria floor and pull my hair into a bun so functional it’s immediately given a 401(k). I do all these things only to find myself staring blankly into my bucket of water, thinking, Shit. I don’t have any idea at all how mopping works.

  The fact that I don’t know how to mop is more than just an immediate logistical problem; it hits me as the total realization that I’m not capable of doing anything at all, really. I lack practical skills in the direst way. I’ve never set up a utility bill. I haven’t installed a wireless router or a cabinet. In fact, I gave Mari a stack of my checks so I wouldn’t even have to remember to pay rent each month. When I eat, I order out. I have an agent to handle all my business interactions. A flat tire means calling AAA to fix the problem. Even in college, I made enough money that I had no qualms about taking my laundry to a drop-off service—I don’t even know how to separate my whites from my colors.

  I’ve been staring at my reflection in sudsy water for several minutes when the man who gave me my job comes up behind me. I think he’s going to take it back, and I experience a pang of depression so intense it feels like I’ve lost a war. “You’ll want to start by sweeping up,” he says, grabbing a broom from the other side of the room. “The rest, I’m sure you’ll figure out.”

  5:00 p.m. – Dinner

  Walking into the dining hall for the third time today, I’m struck by the thought that prerehab, most of the people here hadn’t eaten three square meals inside of a single day once in the last decade. I take a seat in the corner of the room and play a game. As the patients file in, I try to guess the favorite meal of each person—that old culinary standby that never let them down even when drugs and alcohol and other human beings did:

  Mr. ’70s Mullet: Bugles and Diet Coke; Flamin’ Hot Cheetos on special occasions

  Heavy woman with long pink nails and a walking stick: Campbell’s tomato soup

  Sir Beach Hair and Holey Converse: Life Savers, just the red ones

  Iron Maiden T-shirt Man: Ferret food

  Myrna, my old roommate: Powdered donuts, when the methadone was working

  Speed-Freak Grandma: Cheez-Its from 1985

  Shivering Girl in pink leggings and an oversized men’s sweatshirt, which no doubt means that all the clothes she brought were too revealing for rehab: Semen

  6:00 p.m. – Recreational Time

  I walk out to the smoking area and see the same guy from this afternoon burning another cancer stick down to its nub. The male replica of me. I light an American Spirit and he sparks another Parliament, taking maybe five drags the whole time he stands there contemplating its incineration. When his cigarette is out and mine long gone, he finally turns to me, acknowledging the existence of another person in his space for the first time. “You want to play cards?” he asks.

  I say yes, even though like with many other commonplace things, I don’t actually have any idea how to play cards. We walk into the rec room, and the guy grabs a beat-up deck from a basket of innocuous toys and games that are supposed to offer us entertainment. He finds a table and I sit across from him. He shuffles with shaky hands. “I’m Lei, by the way,” I say.

  “Damon,” he offers as if it were a gift. “Whaddayou wanna play?”

  “Um . . .”

  “Poker? Blackjack?”

  “I don’t actually know how to play either of those.”

  Damon nearly snarls. “Well, what do you know how to play?”

  “War.” I say.

  “War?” Damon rolls his eyes and starts dealing the cards into two piles. “Okay, War it is.”

  I watch my companion hand out the cards. He wears several rings on his fingers and has a tattoo across his knuckles, the substance of which I can’t make out. It’s a name, maybe. He’s got dark eyes and long, beautiful lashes. His skin was once porcelain but is now marred by acne scars and tiny cuts and bruises. He’s wrapped in a faded Levi’s jacket, which hangs on him more like a layer of dirty skin than an article of clothing.

  Damon throws down his first card. It’s an eight, and mine is a ten. I collect. His next card is a seven and mine’s a jack. I win his queen with a king. “I’m pretty good at War,” I say.

  “It’s arbitrary,” Damon replies. I take two more of his cards. The next round, we both throw out aces, and then we lay down three cards apiece. Damon beats my six with a nine. He laughs sharply.

  “Figures,” he says.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Nine.”

  “That meaningful or something?”

  “It’s the number of times I’ve been to rehab.”

  10:00 p.m. – Lights-Out

  By the time lights-out rolls around, I’ve been in my room for an hour doing nothing at all. I’m exhausted, but I know there’s little chance of the strawberry-breathed, naturally blond angel of sleep visiting me anytime soon. My brain conjures up stock images of the rainbow assortment of pills I’d like to ingest to knock myself out. There’s red Ambien, orange Xanax, yellow Klonopin, green OxyContin, blue Valium, indigo Lunesta. Shit, even a Benadryl would be welcome at this juncture. But asleep or awake, I’m doomed to make my way sober through another night of torment. I look at my bed, neatly made up and so admirably hiding the horror show that lies beneath its covers. I don’t want to ruin my life’s sole element of order, so I climb on top of the blanket and settle in for tonight’s showing of my new favorite program, Shadows on the Wall.

  INT. REHAB EXAM ROOM - DAY

  Leila sits across from NURSE CARRIE, looking a bit anxious. Carrie flips through a page of lab results.

  LEILA

  Shit, there is a lot of weight to this room. I mean, you’re basically Saint Peter, but your pearly gates are test results.

  Carrie looks up at Leila a little sharply.

  LEILA

  Sorry, I make jokes when I’m nervous. Bad habit. One of many, obviously.

  Carrie just nods.

  LEILA

  And goddamn, am I nervous.

  NURSE CARRIE

  Well, you should be.

  Leila takes a deep breath. Closes her eyes.

  NURSE CARRIE

  But you’re also lucky.

  Leila opens her eyes.

  NURSE CARRIE

  Everything here looks okay. You’re extremely dehydrated, and your BMI is much too low. But your test results are all negative.

  LEILA

  Oh my God. Thank you. I was really scared there.

  NURSE CARRIE

  You have a second chance. Remember that, okay? Not everyone gets one.

  Leila nods.

  NURSE CARRIE

  Now, we’re going to get some liquids into you. And I can give you some Advil for the headaches, but I’m afraid that’s all you’re going to get.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Ten long and regimented rehab days go by before I have my first visitor, a fact that doesn’t especially surprise me. I can’t blame Johnny for not coming, as I’m sure he’s still pumping his veins full of ambrosial poison night and day. And I assume the only other person who knows I’m here is Harlan. So it’s my agent I expect to see when I enter the common room—appearing out of place while brushing an invisible piece of lint from his suit jacket, or maybe even buried in a phone call. Instead, I see my father. He’s alone, and he looks older and more prematurely stooped than I remember. I try to figure out how many months have passed since we’ve been together, but the task is pointless.

  Oddly enough, the first thing my dad comments on is how young I look. And it’s true. My hair’s pulled back into a clean ponytail, and I’m not wearing makeup. My leggings read as neutral, and I’m a bit dwarfed by the gray sweatshirt I’ve cocooned around my body. And I’ve been sleeping, really sleeping, so there’s even a bit of col
or in my cheeks. I appear fresh-faced and innocent, as though my past has been miraculously expunged from my record.

  My dad and I stand across from each other, both shuffling around a little until he finally wraps his arms around me and kisses the top of my head. We find an empty table near the window and sit. Neither of us knows what to say at first, and we do a lot of fidgeting. Across the room, a woman with a melting Mohawk abruptly stands and vomits into a potted plant. It’s quite the icebreaker.

  “Welcome to rehab,” I say.

  “I’m guessing this is not a place where you ask your neighbors for a cup of sugar much.” He pauses. “That’s probably drug slang, isn’t it?”

  I laugh. “There are some great people here, actually.”

  He looks around the room. “Interesting characters?”

  “Definitely. But also just people.”

  My father nods. I look into his eyes, and he offers me the kindest smile I’ve seen in a long time. It’s so gentle I can see it creep incrementally outward from the center of his mouth. I want to return the favor, but it suddenly feels improper and confusing, like sweetness is no longer something I get to pretend I contain.

  “Hey, Dad?” I ask. “How did you even know I was here?”

  “A man—Harlan—I guess that’s your agent? He came by the house.”

  The news surprises me. I’m not sure if I feel gratitude or betrayal, or anything other than fatigue, really. It’s a strange intersection. I’d always thought I could keep those two groups of people separate, seamlessly compartmentalizing my life.

  “Were you and Mom, like, shocked when you heard? I mean, did you know I had a problem?”

  “Leila, if we knew you had a problem, we would have done something.”

  I nod. I believe him. I did have it all together for a pretty long time. And I hadn’t been living at home for years.

  “Your mom . . . she just couldn’t, you know?”

  I nod. “It’s okay.”

  “Look,” my dad says. “I’m really struggling with how much guilt I should feel. Or responsibility.”

  “You mean, like, genetically?”

  He seems baffled. “I mean, as your parent. As the person who’s supposed to be looking out for you.”

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” I say. My dad shoots me a look like he isn’t sure if I’m going to tell him I’m pregnant with Hep C’s baby or secretly working a sting operation as a vice cop. I guess anything’s fair game now.

  “I read your book,” I say. “Your memoir.”

  My father looks relieved, and then he looks confused. “Wait, my what?”

  “Your book. I found it in the garage.”

  “I’m not sure I . . .” My father thinks for a moment. “You mean my novel?”

  “Sure. Your novel, your fictionalized memoir, whatever.”

  “The manuscript about the crazy guy? The thing I wrote when I was twenty-three?”

  Hey, that’s my age, I think. I’m tempted to grab my father’s hand across the table, but I don’t. “I really loved it, Dad.”

  He takes a deep breath and looks me over. “How long ago was this?”

  “I was eleven, maybe. Or twelve.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  My father gets up and starts to pace the room. He places his hand against a tree trunk to steady himself, and I cringe. There’s vomit in that pot, though my dad doesn’t seem to notice. He comes back to the table, but he’s looking at me differently now. My gaze must have hardened; the blood must have run away from my cheeks. My past must have reared her ugly head.

  “Leila, that book was fiction.”

  “Well, yeah. All memoirs are, somewhat.”

  “But it’s not a memoir. Not by any stretch. It was a novel written by a curious kid. You understand what I’m saying, right?”

  At first, I think my dad’s trying to pull one over on me, that he’s still too embarrassed to talk about his drug-laden past. But I consider for a moment, and it dawns on me that he’s probably telling the truth. I study his face and take in the parts where we overlap—the eyes, the cheekbones—but then I dwell on the nose and the lips, capable of such a kind smile, where we veer dramatically apart. Now that I know so intimately what it is to be an addict, I understand there’s no way that word could possibly describe my father.

  “But you don’t drink,” I say. “You never drank. Isn’t that because you had a problem?”

  “I don’t drink because I can’t stand the taste of alcohol. Never could. It just doesn’t do it for me.”

  I don’t say anything. I nod, or at least I think I do. I’ve gone a bit numb.

  “I’m a big old square, kiddo, have been my entire life. That book was just a young man’s flight of fancy. A way to do a little experimenting without any real consequences.”

  “But everything you wrote felt so totally honest. I mean, I’ve been there now.”

  He winces at the words. It makes me regret them.

  “Well,” he says, looking down at the scratches that cover the table. “Did you ever think that maybe I’m just a good writer?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  When I was ten, my class went on a field trip to the Natural History Museum, and I remember spending the day staring transfixed into the gaunt faces of dinosaurs that have existed for the last hundred million years as nothing but a collection of bones. In the ninth grade, my chemistry class took a field trip to Griffith Observatory, and I learned that I would weigh 37.323 pounds on Mars. At the age of twenty-three, after two weeks in rehab, I began taking field trips to an AA meeting inside the squeaky gymnasium of a Hollywood community center.

  For us patients, these nighttime journeys are the highlight of our time in treatment and the only occasion when we’re permitted to get out from behind the facility’s white walls. All rehab upperclassmen who have completed at least half of their monthlong stay are rounded up and buckled into one of the treatment center’s three anemically white passenger vans. A hum of taut excitement rides shotgun on these trips, and I can’t help but wonder if the point is for us to develop positive Pavlovian responses to the concept of AA meetings—like we’re being conditioned to look forward to future treatment simply because it’s more interesting than mopping the floor.

  I’ve been surprisingly distracted by the revelation that my father didn’t hand any addict genes down to me, though I haven’t talked about this to anyone yet. I’ve fostered something of a tight-knit friendship with my spiritual doppelgänger, Damon—by which I mean I’m currently up twenty-six games of War to his fourteen—but the guy isn’t much for conversation. I have managed to glean a few things about his past through careful sessions of coaxing. He comes from a wealthy town in Northern California, entered his first treatment center at the age of eighteen, and once had a Boston terrier named Iggy. His girlfriend Alex overdosed and died five years ago. Damon found her stiff and blue on the futon that served as the sole piece of furniture in their studio apartment, halfway through a Rolling Stone article about Courtney Love. The other thing I’ve learned about Damon is that his family will no longer take his calls on Christmas.

  Tonight marks my fifth time attending an off-campus meeting. Our clan is gathered inside a church on Coldwater Canyon, along with fifteen unaffiliated addicts. The session delves into the idea of learning to live with yourself as a sober person. I’ve never spoken at one of these meetings, and in the time I’ve known him, neither has my card-game compatriot. But now he raises his hand and stands. “I’m Damon,” he says, imbuing his name with the same derisive inflection as when he first shared it with me. “Addict and alcoholic.”

  “Hi, Damon,” we all say. It isn’t as funny as it sounds in the movies.

  “At this point in my life, everyone I know assumes I’m stupid,” Damon says. “They can’t understand why I keep ending up like this. Why I won’t just stop using once and for all, and learn to behave like a normal adult. But I’m not stupid. I recognize that this is probably my last chance
. There are only so many times a person can tempt fate and walk away unscathed, and the odds are no longer in my favor.

  “The last time I got clean, I went to stay with my older sister, Leslie. She works in real estate, but she wasn’t always, you know, like that.”

  A wave of laughter ripples through the room.

  “I’m a musician,” Damon continues. “And Leslie’s actually the reason I got into it. Christ, it sounds so stupid—but I remember being a little kid and sitting outside her door when she had friends over. That play Rent had come out a couple of years earlier, and my sister and her pals were all obsessed with it. They’d put on the soundtrack and sing along to the whole thing, and I’d listen from the hallway, memorizing all these words I didn’t even understand.

  “In retrospect, it was a funny situation: all these rich white eleven-year-old girls obsessing over HIV-positive junkies and trannies and, like, longing to be starving artists. Meanwhile, there’s sushi rice stuck in their braces. But for me, it wasn’t even about that shit. I just thought it was cool that people could have music playing their whole lives.

  “I tried to tell my sister about this when I was staying with her, you know? But she just looked at me like I was still a little kid and not a real person like she was. Like I was stupid. But I’m not stupid, and I don’t want to die. I know that I don’t want to die. But the thing I can’t get over is that without drugs, there are too many silences. There are too many moments that are just empty, that are filler. Living with myself sober is like living without a soundtrack, and I’ve never understood how people can do that.”

  The next day during rec time, I make a beeline for Damon and toss a deck of cards on the table. I’m determined to find out more of the basic things that comprise my friend’s personality, and I fire questions at him as we play our daily game of War. “What’s your favorite band?” I ask.

  Damon rolls his eyes at me, but I can tell he wants to answer. “The Velvet Underground,” he concedes. “Bowie’s a close second.”