Parks had a tale to tell, of being indoctrinated into a strange cult, of hallucinating (at one time he thought he had merged, psychically, with a dog named Dr. Bob), of being coerced into taking drugs until his soul was no longer his own, his reasoning processes impaired by chemical need.
The media was much taken with this tale. Here was an alcoholism counselor who had shot a recovering alcoholic (an A A member with an incredible sixty-eight years of sobriety). There were some who sympathized, some who reviled Parks, and some (most, no doubt) who appreciated the distraction of someone else’s troubles.
It was the addiction defense that got Wesley in trouble. “I didn’t know what I was doing because my reasoning was impaired by alcohol” (or drugs if that was the case) was a dicey defense. If addiction were a disease, than the addict was not responsible.
The victims of crime were not inclined to say, “My assailant was suffering from alcoholism” and leave it at that. And AA made it clear that one had to accept the consequences of one’s actions.
But here was an alcoholism counselor, run amok after encountering a cult, a slave to a drug habit acquired in the practice of who knows what sort of despicable, movie-of-the-week perversity.
His lawyers thought his case was a good prospect for the addiction-is-a-disease defense.
No one asked Parks the crucial question—no one, that is, on the defense team.
The question was put to him by the prosecution.
“Gummy bears,” Wesley said. “I had a bad gummy bear habit.”
His defense never rallied from that moment.
“It’s too bad,” Kerry said.
Jack agreed.
“So we should go to a movie sometime,” Kerry said.
She was growing her hair back, having finally tired of shaving her head. It was in a sort of transition stage. She looked beautiful, as she would in all transitions, the immutable soul stuff of K. Beckett not something disguised by clumsy fashion or cosmetics.
“Sure.”
“Hey, I turned eighteen last week. I’m legal.”
“Happy birthday.”
“You don’t take that Camille woman seriously, do you? No he-ing and she-ing during the first year. You think anyone pays any attention to that?”
“No, but it gives the people who don’t get laid something to feel self-righteous about.”
“Exactly,” Kerry said, leaning into Jack. “So are you shooting for self-righteousness or what?”
“You know what,” Jack said.
Kerry sighed. “Yeah. I know. I’m the victim of a love potion. An evil cult leader messed with my mind, fired up my love receptors. I opened my eyes, you were there, so naturally, I’m in love with you. That’s the way you read it. Sounds utterly loony, but you believe it.”
“It’s true,” Jack said.
Kerry stamped her foot. She turned, headed for the hallway, stopped at the door. “So when does it wear off? When do I get to really loathe you for the asshole you are?”
She banged on out the door, not waiting for an answer. Which was just as well; Jack didn’t know.
Winter had melted away. There were flowers by the roadside. The grass was aching green, and Jack could hear T.S. Eliot saying, “Well, maybe May is the cruelest month.”
Poets were such weasels with the truth, so easily corrupted by the sound of a word, fickle in their affections when counting syllables.
Jack was thinking of poets because Kerry had given him another poem. She had been waiting for him in the hall after his class, had handed him the poem and dashed away.
LOVE was the title of this poem, another brave title, like DEATH. But didn’t everyone have a right to the all-caps questions? Wasn’t everyone at sea?
LOVE Kerry wrote:
“You’re just mixed up,”
the blind man said.
“You took a drug
and lost your head.
Now you think
your heart’s a boat
and in my sea
you want to float.”
And she said,
“Jack,
maybe you’re right,
but don’t you know
it’s not polite
to tell someone she’s
out of touch.
A kiss,
is that asking so much?”
The meeting that night was rotten. Sometimes an AA meeting could be dreadful. And why not? Any event in which humans featured had the potential for going bad.
The slogan under discussion had been Live and Let Live, and someone had talked about the flurry of AA bombings that had occurred in the winter and which—it was discovered—were all the work of a cult leader named Dorian Greenway (there had been no retaliating group called Enlightened Recovery; that spurious opposition had been an attempt to fan the fires).
“I don’t know why different kinds of people can’t stick to their own kind,” the man said. “You live and let live over there, and I’ll live and let live over here. That’s the way to do it. You got your gay groups and your young people groups and your couples groups and your drug addict groups and your Celestine Prophecy groups and...”
Others objected, pointing out that it was diversity that gave AA its strength. A truck driver could enlighten a lawyer. One human heart looked much like another.
A fat man in a tank top and those spandex bicycle shorts that—Jack felt strongly about this—should never have been allowed out of France talked at length about various personality types in AA that he didn’t like. He didn’t like people who told jokes. He didn’t like people who had petty problems. He didn’t like people who were dishonest (and admitted that his own ruthless honesty had cost him some friends). He didn’t like rich people, old ladies who owned cats, and people who quoted Hazelton literature that was not GSO approved.
The next man to talk kept saying “Listen!” probably aware that people weren’t. He felt that everybody had it wrong, and he wanted to steer them back onto the narrow path. He kept saying “The Big Book tells me...” Jack had been in AA long enough to recognize this locution as a sign that the speaker believed he was channeling either Dr. Bob or Bill W.
So not every meeting is perfect. Jack did not feel like drinking, but he felt a sense of loss that the warm evening magnified. T.S. Eliot again: Memory and desire were mixing in the lambent air.
The moon was full and philosophy lurked on its dark side. It was not good, they said, for an alcoholic to entertain deep thoughts. Like inviting a vampire into your home, the rule was: Don’t.
Jack went home to his efficiency apartment and lay on his bed. He reached for the phone, tapped Kerry’s number (which he knew by heart although he’d never called her). Kerry’s roommate, Angela, answered and Jack hung up.
I am just restless, he told himself.
But was it true, as many would insist, that any impulse, any twitch of yearning, was the new secular devil: Self-indulgence? Was addiction the itch at the heart of everything? Was greed the apple Eve ate?
Jack closed his eyes and dreamed he was in a bar. It was a bar of old men and bitterness. The jukebox played Hank Williams. A man with broken teeth said, “Listen! I’m telling you for your own good. Listen!” The man was too drunk to say more than that, toothless, a stubble of beard.
Jack turned and saw her at a booth and walked to her and sat down.
“Sara?” he said.
But she did not recognize him, or pretended she didn’t. “Do you come here often?” she asked.
He did not know what to say, realized that tears were filling his eyes. He was—what an asshole!—weeping.
Jack rarely spoke at meetings. He didn’t feel he had anything wise or impassioned to relate. Jack had a dread of becoming one of those people who chronicled their lives in detail at every AA meeting, as though the daily shifts in their internal emotional weather could possibly be of interest to anyone else.
But that evening Jack said, “I don’t seem to have any sense of direction. Can confusion b
e considered an emotion?”
After the meeting, a man came up to Jack and suggested they might go for coffee.
His name was Ken. He had been sober for nine years, worked in the vague world of computers, was married, had two kids, a house.
“Confusion’s good,” he said, studying Jack over the rim of his coffee mug. “When the world explodes, it takes a while for the debris to settle.”
“I’ve been sober almost ten months,” Jack said.
The man nodded. “Exactly. Stuff’s still floating in the air.”
“They say you are not supposed to make any big decisions in the first year,” Jack said.
The man nodded. “They say a lot. You might have noticed.”
Jack liked this guy.
When Jack celebrated one year without a drink, the chairman of his home group asked Jack to tell his story. Jack didn’t want to, but his sponsor, Ken, said, “It’s a positive experience. You should do it.”
Jack was nervous, but once he began to talk, he lost himself in the story. He wanted to explain how accepting his alcoholism had given his life a theme, an organizing principle. This thought was somewhat complicated and might, he realized, elicit shouts of Keep Coming Back! (an exhortation which, while loving, often meant, “You need all the help you can get, you poor wretch”).
After Jack spoke, Ken came up to him. “Good job,” Ken said.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned the alternate world stuff,” Jack said.
“Oh, they always like that part. You did a terrific job. Congratulations.”
Jack excused himself to find a restroom. He was washing his hands in the sink when he looked up. In the mirror, he saw one of the stall doors opening.
Jack turned as Ed Tilman came out. Ed was smiling.
“Didn’t want to startle you,” he said. “I’m not supposed to be in the country, so I’m doing the furtive thing. I didn’t want to miss your one-year anniversary, though. Congratulations.”
Jack was surprised when Ed Tilman leaned forward and hugged him. Tilman was not a demonstrative man.
“I heard your story. Edge-of-the-seat stuff. You’re wondering about this hand, are you?”
“Oh, well—”Jack was embarrassed, flustered. He’d been caught staring.
Ed removed the glove, revealing solid flesh. He was missing the ring and little fingers.
“It’s a small price to pay,” he said. “I thought I was going to have to go through life half ghost. Worse, I thought I was going to have to go through life like a man walking on a log, apt to topple off at any time. I’m lucky. How do you say it? I got an attitude of gratitude.”
Jack wanted Ed to meet his sponsor, but Ed shook his head. “I got someone else I have to talk to. People think he’s dead, but he’s fine. He learned his lesson too, tries to get to meetings regularly.” Ed ducked back into a stall, closing the door just as the restroom door opened and a tall man entered. The man wore a black leather jacket. He studied himself in the mirror, ran a comb through his pompadour.
His sideburns were graying, but, if he was who Jack thought he was, he’d lost weight.
He turned and looked at Jack. “Your momma ever tell you it’s not polite to stare at strangers?”
Jack said, “Sorry,” smiled foolishly, and got out of there.
Jeez, Jack thought. Jeez.
Outside, Kerry was waiting for him. She had a card she had made and she wanted him to open it.
“Come on, come on!” she urged.
She turned her car’s heater on, reached up and flipped the overhead light. Her hair was long these days, swirling around her cheekbones. The chill air had brightened her eyes.
“Open it, Jack.”
Jack tore the envelope and pulled the handmade card out. It said, in big printed caps, HAPPY AA ANNIVERSARY, JACK. DON’T QUIT BEFORE THE MIRACLE. PLACE FINGER HERE.
Jack looked up at Kerry, smiling. “Go on,” she said.
A red paper heart was glued in the middle of the card, an arrow aimed at it from the instruction, PLACE FINGER HERE. Jack put his finger down, felt the gritty, pebbled surface.
“Okay,” Kerry said. “So open the card.”
Inside, a stick-figure girl was grinning (each square tooth carefully delineated) with her arms spread apart, welcoming. The card read, YOU HAVE JUST BEEN ZAPPED BY MAGIC CRYSTAL LOVE DUST. YOU WILL BE THE HELPLESS LOVE SLAVE OF THE FIRST PERSON YOU CAST YOUR EYES UPON.
Jack smiled at Kerry.
“So,” she said. “Did it work?”
Jack smiled ruefully.
Kerry looked suddenly glum, the effort of willed lightness and hope eroding. “It didn’t work.”
“Kerry, I—”
“You don’t love me.”
“Kerry, I have always loved you. That was never the point. That was—”
Had he frightened her? She looked terrified. Jack turned, imagining some monster pressing against the passenger window. Nothing. He turned back, and Kerry was leaning toward him, her lips pursed, eyes closed.
This is never going to work.
He saw a closed door, behind it the wreckage of his future, the heartbreak, the despair to come.
He saw all the yearning trouble, the obstinacy and desire, the predictable foolishness, the facile censure of his peers (he’s twice her age, an old story), the exhilaration and fear... all this behind that door.
He opened it and kissed her.
Irrational Fears Page 27