Chancers

by Susan Stellin

  It was dark out on the porch, which gave me some cover to compose my answer—one of those conversations where you feel like you’re talking to the night air.

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” I finally said. “He told me he’s going to detox at home, on his own, because he doesn’t want to wait to get into a program. But I’ve heard that before, so who knows if he’ll really do it.”

  “Isn’t that kind of risky?”

  “That’s what I’m worried about. He’s had seizures before when he quit drinking, so he really should be monitored—or at least take something while he’s tapering off. But Graham is so stubborn he’s not going to listen to me. I sent him a New Yorker cartoon showing a guy with one arm hanging out of a really badly nailed-together coffin. The caption was a joke about the dead guy always insisting on doing everything himself.”

  “But if he did get clean,” my sister persisted, “would you get back together with him?”

  I hesitated, worried about how she’d react if I said “maybe” or “yes.” I didn’t know how she felt about Graham at that point—she hadn’t given that away—but the stigma of heroin felt like something most people wouldn’t ever get past.

  “I don’t know if I could trust him,” I said. “That’s almost a bigger issue than the relapse. Then again, I feel like he’s made it impossible for me to fall in love with anyone else.”

  As soon as I said that, I expected her to tell me I was being overly dramatic, but she went for a gentler reply. “I think it’s a little premature to write off the rest of the male population, Sus. Besides, maybe the next guy you’re with will organize his silverware drawer.”

  That did make me smile. It had always bugged me that Graham kept his silverware all jumbled together—without separating the knives, forks, and spoons—and my sister fell closer to his end of the organizational spectrum.

  “I’m not sure that’s high on my list of necessary qualities anymore,” I admitted.

  “Well, at least you learned that.”

  —

  THE NEXT MORNING, before I left for the airport, my mom sent an email suggesting I turn on the Today show at 8 A.M. “They have a rebuttal of the Newsweek article of a few years ago re: women’s chances of getting married after 40,” she wrote. “Very interesting to see the happily married women who didn’t marry in their 20s.”

  I graduated from high school the year Newsweek declared that a single woman over forty was more likely to be killed by a terrorist than tie the knot. Now they were acknowledging what most people already knew: that their original article was totally wrong. But did my mom really think this was encouraging news to report, just after Graham and I had split up? I was only thirty-seven—I still had time left on the clock.

  I’d like to say that I was amused by the poor timing of her message, or at least brushed it off as a well-meaning mother hoping her daughter didn’t end up alone. But when she called before my flight, I snapped at her about it and she burst into tears, saying she felt like I’d shut her out.

  She was right. Before I left for L.A., I had told my parents that Graham and I had broken up, but I didn’t say why. Part of my reluctance had to do with my own difficulty talking about problems, but that wasn’t the only reason I held back. Addiction felt like one of those taboo topics, like abortion or being gay in some families, that everyone knew happened, but most people preferred not to discuss. I wasn’t an addict, but I felt a similar sense of shame—because Graham was using heroin, and because I still loved him in spite of his horrible habit.

  The only conversation I had with my parents about the reason for our breakup was a couple of months later, when I was in Michigan and my dad asked if Graham had a problem with drugs. I was surprised that he’d picked up on that, but maybe it had been obvious when they met him in New York. Still, I thought it was strange that they hadn’t asked me about it before. I couldn’t outright lie, so I said yes and my dad said, “I thought so”—and that was the extent of our discussion. There were no follow-up questions about what I’d been through or how Graham was doing. I remember being upset—but also relieved—that they didn’t ask more.

  When I sent an email to my sister describing that conversation, I drew her into the circle of secrecy I helped impose. “I didn’t give details so if they press you please be discreet,” I wrote. “I really wish it hadn’t come up.”

  —

  AS SOON AS I got back to New York I sent Graham a text asking, “How are you doing? I’m worried about your DIY detox.”

  “I’m ok,” he answered.

  “Do u want to talk?” I wrote back. “Need anything?”

  “I’m just scared to hear your voice ’coz it’s been the longest since we met and I’m missing you a lot. I’ll try in a bit.”

  He didn’t call, so I spent most of the night wondering why. The next day, he sent an email as if there were no problem at all: “When do you think we’ll be able to lay eyes on each other?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied, irritated that I’d lost sleep worrying about him. “But not until you’ve detox’d and aren’t on a chemical roller coaster….”

  I had no way of knowing if Graham actually was trying to detox, but on the flight back to New York, with thirty-five thousand feet of distance from my life, I’d decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. I was going to support him—not as his girlfriend, but as someone who loved him and couldn’t stand to leave him (and Liam) to deal with this all on their own. Even though I hadn’t known Liam that long, I felt guilty about leaving him in a tough situation, especially knowing how Liz’s departure had affected him and his dad.

  “Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé,” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in The Little Prince, and I kept thinking about that line: You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. I didn’t feel responsible for Graham in the sense that I thought I’d caused his relapse, but I did feel responsible for him just like the Little Prince was responsible for the flower he’d nurtured. Graham and I had taken care of each other, in a way neither of us had experienced with anyone else, and those feelings didn’t disappear just because the pull of drugs was stronger.

  So for the next few weeks, we settled into a state of relationship limbo, communicating mostly through email and text messages and the occasional call. That allowed me to keep my distance, but it also made everything we wrote more open to misinterpretation—and much more emotionally charged.

  “I know you think I’m not standing by you,” I explained in one email. “But that’s not what this is about. We were in this destructive cycle that was horrible for both of us, and I could finally see that it wasn’t going to change as long as you thought you could have me and not have to do the hard work of getting clean. You weren’t really facing up to what was going on—or what it was doing to you—but anything I can do to help you, I will.”

  I told Graham I didn’t want to give either of us false hope about the future, but it killed me to think that I might help him get through the hard part of quitting, and then watch him end up with somebody else.

  “i love you as much as ever i miss you painfully and no one else will get the good me,” he promised. “i only hope you can trust and love me again and we can be happy together. i think we can—i think you do too. you sparked something in me that made me crazy in love with you. i hope and believe in our future.”

  A few days later he admitted, “the ambiguity of our friendship/relationship is tough. i don’t know if your over me and think that not saying it loud and clear is letting me down gently or whether we are still together in some capacity or whether if i prove myself we can move ahead. but i can’t go from being your lover to just a best pal—i’m not that type….sorry, babbling, tough day (if only you knew or could feel it).”

  Since I couldn’t possibly know what he was going through, he tried to show me. That afternoon, he emailed a picture of himself wearing a black T-shirt with the word TRUST in big white letters across the front.
Usually his self-portraits were lit to make him look sexy, but in this photo he just looked pale and ill. It made me think he really was trying to quit—which was probably the point—but it was still disturbing. I didn’t want that image of Graham in my head.

  When I wrote him back, I said I’d rather talk about our future later, and mentioned that I was planning on going to a Nar-Anon meeting that night. “A bit nervous about it actually. The web site is kind of heavy on the god/higher power angle. Trying to be open-minded and just see if it’s at all useful.”

  Graham replied: “Don’t go. We need to talk more than you going to meetings.”

  I immediately called him and began to unload. “It’s creepy and fucked-up that you’re discouraging me from reaching out for help dealing with all of this.”

  “When have I ever discouraged you from talking to anyone?” Graham interrupted. “I never told you not to call Ethan—I said I was glad you had someone else to talk to. I didn’t tell you not to go see your sister. I never once asked you not to say anything to any of your friends. I’m sure they all think I’m a complete cunt now.”

  “You just sent me an email saying ‘Don’t go’ when I told you I was going to a Nar-Anon meeting!”

  “I said I wanted to talk. Those groups are all about learning how to put up with whatever shit an addict dumps on you. They’re going to try and convince you that you shouldn’t leave me, and that’s the last thing I want. I don’t want you in my life because you feel guilty about walking away.”

  I was stunned. That wasn’t at all what I was expecting him to say.

  “I’m going to the meeting,” I said, still pissed off. “I think it would be good for me to talk to other people who understand what I’m going through. And don’t worry—I’m not doing anything because I feel guilty.”

  But that wasn’t true; I felt guilty all the time. No matter what I did—stand by Graham, leave him, talk to him, cut him off—I felt like I was in a situation that didn’t leave me any good choice.

  —

  WHEN I GOT to the meeting, at a church near Times Square, I had second thoughts as soon as I walked through the door. It was downstairs in a fluorescent-lit basement and there were just a few other people sitting around a big table. I was hoping to lurk in the back of a larger crowd.

  I picked up some pamphlets before taking a seat, flipping through them while a few latecomers straggled in. The silence felt uncomfortable, like when you go to an event and the audience is sparse—you wonder if there’s a reason more people didn’t come.

  The meeting opened with readings from one of the pamphlets I’d picked up. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” everyone chanted. “Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I felt obligated to join in, but it reminded me of all the Sundays I spent in church with my parents, reciting prayers I didn’t necessarily believe.

  The Nar-Anon readings put me off for a similar reason: the unquestioning acceptance of platitudes and proverbs, the necessary faith in God or a higher power. Mostly, the idea of being powerless rubbed me the wrong way. During Mass growing up, I always refused to say, “Lord, I am not worthy…” so maybe that pride was still stiffening my spine. I knew I couldn’t control Graham’s addiction and that I wasn’t responsible for his decisions, but I didn’t believe that there was nothing I could do to help him get clean.

  But once people started sharing their stories, it did make me feel less isolated to hear some of the same things I’d felt: “I didn’t even know what a crack pipe looked like….” (Me neither.) “I wanted to believe he wasn’t using….” (Of course.) “He’s so smart and knows what it’s doing to him, so I don’t understand why he can’t quit….” (Exactly.) “I feel this huge responsibility because no one else knows….”

  At the same time, it was frustrating that the meeting didn’t feel like an exchange. You weren’t supposed to “cross-talk”—meaning, you couldn’t offer somebody else advice. While I understood that in theory, in practice it felt like everyone just gave their own little speech. So when one woman described a brother who sounded a lot like Ethan (he didn’t want to take time off to go to rehab), I wanted to tell her that I knew a guy who got clean without doing a twenty-eight-day program. But I thought that might sound too much like advice, so I waited to talk to her until after the meeting. She seemed grateful, but I would’ve preferred a support group with more give-and-take—ideally, led by a counselor who specialized in addiction.

  I was also put off by Nar-Anon’s outdated emphasis on families. As one brochure put it: “Nar-Anon is designed for us—the parent, spouse, child, brother, sister or friend of the ‘user.’ ” There was no mention of “girlfriend” or “boyfriend” or “partner” in any of the pamphlets I read. The whole philosophy seemed to be about coping with someone you were tied to by blood or marriage, which didn’t account for those of us who could more easily walk away. In that sense, Graham was right: One flyer said I shouldn’t make any life-changing decisions until I’d gone to meetings regularly for three to six months. Presumably, that meant I shouldn’t break up with him for at least ninety days.

  In fact, half of the people at that meeting were in my situation—like one young woman who was about to get married and had just discovered that her fiancé was using cocaine. The invitations had been printed, she was getting fitted for her wedding dress, and she was too embarrassed to tell anyone else what was going on. I hope she got some comfort from sharing her secret with a room full of strangers, but I don’t think we gave her much help with her choice. “I don’t know what to do,” she confessed. We all nodded sympathetically—and silently. Where was she supposed to turn now?

  Still, some of the things people shared helped me get a clearer perspective on what I could realistically do for Graham, and see that I needed to establish better boundaries—so his needs didn’t eclipse mine. When I finally did my own share, self-consciously raising my hand, I admitted this to the group: As much as Graham loved me, I couldn’t ever compete with drugs, as long as they were part of his life.

  “That’s what’s starting to dawn on me—he can’t put me first,” I wrote in my notebook later, sitting in a park until it was too dark to see. “No matter how much he says he’d do anything for me, he really isn’t capable of making what’s best for me a priority. I have to do that.”

  The next day, I sent Graham a long email, explaining what I had and hadn’t gotten out of the meeting, and describing some of the other people I’d met.

  He wrote back, “i’ll tell you my reservations later, but if its good for you then great. saying i miss you is the understatement of the year.”

  Despite his reservations, Graham was still going to AA, emailing me about a meeting he’d been to at a church with no AC: “Man what a humid day to be sat next to some fat sweaty recovering alky in a too small unventilated room in the church extension. With all of their codes for meetings—gay, straight, smoking, step, open, blah…….they should have one saying ‘ventilated.’ ”

  That was one of the things I missed about him—all his funny observations, and the way he wasn’t afraid to say what he felt. Not just his emotions, but his unfiltered opinions, challenging conventions I was maybe too quick to accept. As much as Graham hoped some of my self-discipline might rub off on him, I envied his lack of inhibitions.

  —

  FOR MUCH OF the summer, Graham and I fumbled along as friends but still acted a lot like a couple: sharing the day’s news, leaning on each other for moral support, and arguing over stupid misunderstandings. In some ways, I felt closer to him than I did when we were having sex. We saw each other occasionally, but mostly emailed or talked on the phone, which made it harder for me to tell if he was still using.

  Graham was adamant that he’d quit heroin, but admitted that he took Suboxone, methadone, or Xanax once in a while—to help wean himself off dope, he told me. I was getting better at identifying the effects of different types of drugs: Crack
made him fly off the handle, too much methadone made him drowsy. But we fought anytime I confronted him about whether he really was getting clean, and I had trouble figuring out when he was lying. Just because addicts lie doesn’t mean they lie all the time, so I had to suspend my need to investigate everything he told me.

  I was vague when Graham pressed me about our relationship status. “i have no idea what your thinking, wanting, feeling,” he wrote me, depressed that I was going to Michigan in July without him. “i’m under the impression that we’re probably broken up, but it’s just getting drawn out like some slow death.”

  That was fair enough—I hadn’t ever said, point-blank, “It’s over.” Mostly because I was having a hard time letting go, but also because I didn’t want to hurt him. Just when I thought he was doing okay, he’d call me up in a panic, saying he was feeling a craving and couldn’t reach anyone else. “Could you just talk to me for a bit?” he’d ask. It was hard to pull away when he kept drawing me in, with loving emails or those desperate calls.

  “The way I look at it is more like a separation,” I wrote him back. “Whether we can be together again depends on what happens with both of us—I do realize it’s not just my decision.

  “I know you want a definitive resolution, but there’s so much I don’t know right now—who you are when you’re not using, how motivated you are to make the changes that are going to increase your chances of staying clean, and which problems might still be there when you’re not using.

  “I really believe one-on-one counseling with someone who understands addiction is going to be key for you. Besides realizing I couldn’t ‘fix you’ (to borrow a song lyric), I’ve also realized I couldn’t fill the emptiness you feel sometimes—without having my needs completely consumed by yours. I think it’s going to take therapy, not just AA, to help you address some of the underlying issues that make you turn to drugs for relief.