Don't Let Me Go

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “Well. I saw her,” he said out loud.

  He wrote a letter back to Rayleen.

  “Dear Rayleen,” it said, among other things. “You’re a natural. This is the role you were born to play.”

  • • •

  Four lonely months after that, Mrs. Hinman passed away.

  Billy hadn’t seen her in a day or two, but hadn’t thought much about it, because sometimes he saw her every day, but oftentimes he did not.

  Then Felipe came over to drive them to the grocery store, and knocked on her door, but never got an answer. Felipe jimmied the lock on her mailbox and found about three days’ worth of mail, including her Social Security check, which she was notoriously careful about retrieving promptly on the third of every month.

  Felipe called the super, Casper, on his cell phone, and Casper came over and unlocked the door. Neither Billy nor Felipe went in.

  A minute later Casper came out and said she was in bed, just as if she were sleeping, and that it looked like she had died peacefully in her sleep.

  “Well, that’s something,” Felipe said.

  And Casper said, “Yeah, we all gotta go sometime.”

  “Least she had somebody to take care of her right up to the end.”

  “Yeah,” Casper said. “When did you guys get so close, anyway?”

  But Billy didn’t like to talk to Casper, and Felipe chose not to offer the obvious answer.

  Later, after Casper left to notify the proper authorities, Felipe asked if there was anything Billy thought they should do.

  “No friends or relatives,” Billy said.

  “So no memorial,” Felipe answered.

  “Unless we have one ourselves.”

  So they did, even though they had no idea what they were doing, figuring the intention was more important than the style in a case like this.

  • • •

  Then one morning Billy looked out his window, and it struck him that it was nearly spring again, and that all those lonely days and weeks and months had added up to a lonely year.

  “So what did you think, Billy Boy?” he asked out loud. “That just this once they’d break with tradition and add up to something else?”

  Grace

  Grace heard Yolanda let herself in with her spare key. It was the key that used to belong to Grace, only now Grace’s mom figured Grace wouldn’t need a key any more, since she never went anywhere by herself.

  Grace was lying on her belly on the plywood dance floor — because it was cleaner than the rug — doing homework. The Lewis and Clark expedition and Sacagawea. Grace was writing an essay about how the woman didn’t get enough credit in the history books. Like what’s new?

  Yolanda came and stood over her.

  “History?” Yolanda asked.

  “Yup.”

  “I used to like history.”

  “I hate it.”

  “Don’t you ever dance any more?”

  “Not so much, no. I got tired of doing that same dance over and over. I asked my mom if I could take lessons, but she says we can’t afford it. Are you here to go to the meeting with us? For her one-year anniversary? You’re pretty early. It’s not for, like, two hours.”

  Yolanda squatted down and put a hand on Grace’s back.

  “We need to do her fifth step first.”

  “Which one is that?”

  “Grace. I can’t believe, after all the meetings you go to, you don’t know the steps.”

  “Nobody said I had to listen.”

  “The fourth step is the one everybody hates…”

  “Oh, right. The inventory. The one where you have to write out all your character defects. Oh, wait, I know. Then the fifth step is the one where you have to tell them all to your sponsor or somebody.”

  “And that’s the one thing I absolutely insist on as a sponsor. Any sponsee of mine has to finish her fourth step in the first year.”

  “Oh, well, that explains a lot,” Grace said. “Good thing she didn’t put it off till the last minute or anything.”

  “Well, you know your mom.”

  “I can hear you guys!” Grace’s mom yelled from her bedroom.

  Yolanda rolled her eyes ceiling-ward.

  “Stay here, don’t come in the bedroom. Muchos privacy required for this one.”

  Grace ratcheted her voice into a scrunched-down whisper.

  “Are you going to tell her it’s a character defect to not let me see my friends?”

  “I can’t really tell her too much,” Yolanda whispered back. “She kinda has to tell me. But if it comes up, I won’t be shy about sharing my opinion.”

  • • •

  They came out of the bedroom after seven thirty, past the time they should have left to get a good seat at the birthday meeting. Grace’s mom was being too quiet, and looking mostly at the carpet, so Grace figured it must’ve been a tough deal in there.

  Yolanda elbowed Grace’s mom in the ribs twice, but nothing happened, so she said, “Grace. Your mom has something she wants to say to you.”

  Grace sat up cross-legged on her old dance floor and pulled the cat close.

  Grace expected her mom to come sit with her, but she never did. She just stood by the kitchen counter, running her finger along the edge where that one tile was missing.

  “Shouldn’t I wait and do all the amends together when we get to the ninth step?”

  “Eileen,” Yolanda said. “Your daughter is right here in front of you. Make the damn amends.”

  Grace’s mom sighed dramatically.

  “OK. Fine. Grace. It came up while I was doing the steps with Yolanda that it was kind of mean and selfish of me to take you away from those people.”

  “You can say names, Mom. You don’t have to keep calling them ‘those people.’”

  “Well, what difference does it make, Grace?”

  But Yolanda shot her a tough sponsor look.

  “OK. Fine. To take you away from Billy and Rayleen and the others.”

  Grace waited. But it didn’t sound like there was more.

  “And?”

  “And…I know it was very hard on you, and it made you droopy and sad.”

  “So…”

  “So I’m telling you I’m sorry.”

  “But you’re not changing your mind.”

  “I’m telling you I’m sorry.”

  “But you’re not. You’re not sorry. If you were sorry, you’d stop doing it.”

  “Oh, my God,” Grace’s mom said, turning to Yolanda for support. “You see what I put up with here?”

  “Don’t come crying to me,” Yolanda said. “I’m with Grace. Sorry doesn’t mean shit. Not if you don’t plan to stop doing the thing you’re so sorry about. There has to be more to amends than just a word. Anybody can say a damn word.”

  Grace’s mom squeezed her eyes closed, like the way she did when she was counting to ten to keep from losing her temper. Then she opened them and said, “It’s never enough, is it? Whatever I manage to do, it’s just never enough.”

  “Well, that’s recovery for you,” Yolanda said, not sounding too sympathetic. “We better get to this meeting. You just edgy cause it’s your year? Lot of people get edgy when they come up on a year.”

  “Maybe,” Grace’s mom said. “I have been feeling a little squirrelly lately.”

  Grace was hoping they’d talk more on the way to the meeting, but nobody did.

  • • •

  Grace was on her way to the coffee and literature table in the back to see if they had cookies this week or if nobody bothered to bring them, and while she was pushing and “excuse-me-ing” her way through all the people, she banged right into the big tire of a wheelchair.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “Curtis Schoenfeld.”

  “Hey, Grace,” he said, like he wished he didn’t have to talk to her at all.

  “Where’d you go? I’ve been coming to meetings with my mom again for like a year and I never once saw you. Did you move away?”

&nbs
p; “No,” he said, wheeling himself away from her. “We didn’t move.”

  She thought about walking along with him and talking some more, but he didn’t seem to want to talk, and besides, she reminded herself, he was a giant stinkhead, and he didn’t seem to have gone in a very non-stinky direction since she last saw him. So instead she just snagged three peanut butter cookies and sat in the back and waited for the meeting to start, which wasn’t a very long wait, because they’d gotten there a little late, practically when the meeting started.

  She decided to listen better to the steps this time, even though she really didn’t wake up and decide that until the reader got to four.

  “Four. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

  The man who was reading the steps had a deep, honey voice that reminded her a little of Jesse, and made her lonely for him.

  “Five. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”

  Well, at least she admitted it, Grace thought.

  “Six. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.”

  So maybe she just wasn’t entirely ready yet, and maybe that was OK, because she was only at step five so far.

  “Seven. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.”

  Grace didn’t tend to think of her mom together with words like humble. Then again, she’d looked pretty humble when she’d come out of the bedroom with Yolanda.

  Maybe she just needed time to get through more of the steps. It sounded like just admitting a defect wasn’t the same as having it taken away. That was a whole two steps down the road.

  At four steps a year, that would be…

  But something interrupted her thoughts. The reading of the steps and traditions was over, and the group leader asked if anyone was in their first thirty days of recovery, so he could give them a welcome chip. And Grace could never have guessed who would raise their hands. Both of Curtis Schoenfeld’s parents, that’s who! Both of them! So that’s why she hadn’t seen him for this whole year!

  Grace looked around to see where Curtis was sitting, and she saw him right away, but he wouldn’t look at her. Poor Curtis. Grace hoped his parents would get it right this time, and not put him through what she went through with her mom. There wasn’t a stinkhead on the planet Grace would wish that on.

  The first lady who shared was an anniversary person, like her mom. There were two that night. This lady, who had eleven years, and then her mom with one. So Grace knew her mom would go second.

  But, for some reason, even though she usually didn’t listen very well in the meetings, Grace listened to the Eleven Year Lady. Maybe because she was talking about positive stuff, different ways to look to things, not just going over and over all the drugs she took. Or maybe it was because Grace could tell her mom was listening, and that something her mom was hearing was making her look…humble.

  Accepting things. That’s what the talk was about. About how insane it is to try to pretend something isn’t a certain way, or that you can make it another way, just because you don’t like it. And how that seems to be the one thing that makes addicts use drugs, and pretty much ruins everybody’s lives. This thing about refusing to just accept the way things are when you can’t change them anyway.

  Then it was her mom’s turn to talk, but she didn’t seem to have much of anything to say. She said her name was Eileen, and that she was an addict, but then she just kept tripping over her own words. Finally she said she couldn’t really say anything because she didn’t know anything. She said she used to think she knew a lot, but she just got it now, how wrong that was, and how she didn’t know a damn thing.

  Grace snuck a little glance over at Curtis Schoenfeld to see if he was laughing at her mom for not knowing a damn thing, but he didn’t look like he was even listening. Besides, at least her mom had a year clean, so probably he wouldn’t dare.

  • • •

  After the meeting, Grace distinctly heard Yolanda tell her mom she’d done a good share. She gave Grace’s mom a pat on the shoulder and said that.

  “Good share.”

  Everyone was milling around and talking, and Grace squeezed her way through to Yolanda and said, “What was good about it? She said she didn’t know anything.”

  “Right,” Yolanda said. “That was the good part.”

  “OK, that makes no sense at all. How can it be good to know nothing?”

  “It’s not. But if you know nothing, it’s good to know that you know nothing.”

  “Oh,” Grace said. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Because as long as you think you know everything, nothing changes.”

  “Oh,” Grace said again.

  “You sound tired.”

  “I am. It’s late.”

  “OK, I’ll go round up your mom and drive you guys home.”

  On the way to the door, Grace smacked right into Curtis again. Literally. Banged her shins running into his chair.

  “Ow,” she said. “I hope your mom and dad stay with it this time.”

  “Seriously?” He still wouldn’t look at her.

  “Of course seriously. I hated it when my mom was out using. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. Not even you.”

  Then they walked to Yolanda’s car together, Yolanda and Grace and Grace’s mom.

  Yolanda said, “I thought you hated Curtis.”

  “I do. He’s a giant stinkhead.”

  “You were pretty nice to the giant stinkhead.”

  “Yeah. Well. No point me being a giant stinkhead, too.”

  Billy

  It was nearly the end of June, the morning when Billy heard a soft knock on his door.

  Nobody knocked on Billy’s door any more. No one. He had gotten his wish about that. Felipe still came once a week to take him to the grocery store, but at such a set time that Billy always waited for him in the hall. And no delivery person had come by here in ages.

  “Who’s there?” he called through the door, trying not to sound edgy. Not realizing, until his words fed back to him, how badly he had failed.

  Such a soft knock. Filled with something like trepidation, or even humility. If Billy had to venture a guess, he’d say the spooky, incredibly young couple upstairs needed something. Probably something he didn’t have anyway.

  “Eileen Ferguson.”

  “Oh,” Billy said, realizing deeply within himself how desperately he did not want to open the door for her. “What do you want from me?”

  “I was hoping I could come in and talk.”

  Her voice sounded lifeless and droopy, and it hit Billy hard that something might have happened to Grace.

  He ran to the door and threw it wide.

  “What’s wrong? Where’s Grace? Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine. She’s downstairs.”

  “Oh,” Billy said, his heart still hammering. “All right. You want to come in. All right. Come in. I guess. Should I make a pot of coffee?”

  “Oh, my God, that would be great. I could so use some coffee. It’s near the end of the month and I’m out.”

  She did not follow Billy into the kitchen. She just sat on the couch while Billy started the coffee. In his head, he tried on a dozen different ways to ask why she was there, but did not succeed in asking any of them.

  “Black with sugar, right?”

  “How do you know how I take my coffee?”

  “Long story.”

  Then he couldn’t decide whether to stand there and watch the coffee drip or go back out and sit with Eileen. And the decision locked him up so completely that he knew he had to break in one direction or another. So he rejoined her in his living room.

  She did not speak.

  “So, how’s Grace?”

  “Medium,” Eileen said. “Still a little droopy.”

  “Is she still dancing?”

  “No. She says she got sick of doing that same dance over and over. She asked me if she could take lessons, but I sai
d no. Because we don’t have the money. Seriously, we don’t. But all the time I was saying it I knew she could get lessons for free if I would let her, and I just felt like such a total shit.”

  On the word “shit,” tears began to leak from Eileen, despite an obvious effort on her part to prevent them. Billy brought her a box of tissues. He’d had them for nearly a year. A box of tissues didn’t fly away, not like it had used to. Nobody came over to Billy’s and cried any more.

  “I’m not sure how much you know about twelve-step programs,” she said.

  “Really nothing.”

  “You have to make amends to the people you hurt.”

  “Oh. I would think you’d want to make amends to Grace, not me.”

  “I already made amends to Grace. Why? It didn’t hurt you when I took her?”

  “Oh, no. It did. Quite a lot. Still does.”

  “Then why would you say Grace and not you?”

  “Oh,” Billy said. “I don’t know. Good question. I guess because I care more about Grace than I care about me.”

  After that conversation-stopper, a long silence reigned.

  Finally Billy popped up and said, “Let me just go get us that coffee, and then you can do whatever this thing is you came to do.”

  He noticed, as he handed her the mug, that his hands were shaking. Eileen must have noticed it, too.

  He sat across from her, and nothing happened for a truly excruciating length of time. Billy sat stock-still, weirdly aware of the slant of morning light through his thin curtains, and the way tiny dust motes danced in it, performing in front of his nose.

  “It was mostly humiliation,” Eileen said, startling him.

  Billy did not dare speak.

  “You know that feeling, like you’re a total fraud, and the world is going to find out, and then everybody’s going to judge you?”

  “Yes,” Billy said. “I do.”

  “That’s how I felt when you guys took Grace away from me.”

  “Oh,” Billy said. “I can see that must have been hard. I’d say we didn’t mean for you to feel that way, but I’m not sure that would be the whole truth. I think everybody knew it would be terrible for you, and we hoped the pain would inspire you to go back to being Grace’s mom.”