I think about Benny’s Disney book, the waxy pages I’d flipped through last night, trying to make sense of the pictures. Mom was easy to pick out—the only figure with earrings and long hair. And Benny, the short one. But there were two men in the pictures: Steven and me, I guess.
Except I didn’t go to Disney.
The morning of our flight, I was sleeping off a bender. I hadn’t even packed. Mom was beyond pissed. She’d shoved dirty clothes into my lax bag and said I could spend the whole week doing laundry in the hotel for all she cared. It was Steven who convinced her that I was too old to enjoy the trip, and I’d be bored watching Benny on all the kiddie rides. I’d told myself that was what Steven wanted anyway, a week alone with his real family. They’d left me behind with a hundred bucks for takeout and strict instructions not to have anybody over while they were gone. While the three of them lived it up in the Magic Kingdom, I’d spent a week on the cracked leather couch in Chase’s basement, nodding off into crusty bowls of mac n’ cheese, too fucked up to know what I was missing.
Had Benny missed me? Had he drawn what he’d wished for? His big brother beside him on the big kid rides, chowing down on burgers and greasy French fries, fist bumping Mickey. I wasn’t there for any of it, but Benny had drawn me anyway.
Just because you’re hovering at the starting line doesn’t mean it’s going to turn out any different. You’re an addict, Eli.
An addict.
The word is a one-two punch to my gut. I fold over my knees, hands crossed at the base of my neck, and I stare at the floor between my feet.
An addict.
There’s nothing left to hide behind. Nothing but this office and Richard Fisher and the truth.
I can’t bring myself to look Fisher in the eyes, so I fix my gaze on a worn spot under his desk where his chair has left permanent indentations on the cheap industrial carpet.
“You’re right.” The words have the bitter tang of humiliation, of despair. I fight rising panic, the urge to run from the room and never look back. But I press on, forcing out the words that claw like a caged monster on the inner walls of my skull. Once I’ve said it, I can’t take it back. Saying it out loud makes it true. I cling to one threadbare strand of hope: if I’m broken, Richard Fisher can fix me.
“I’m an addict,” I whisper, the words barely audible. The admission is the rush of crimson from a severed vein—I sink into the couch, drained and bone-tired.
Fisher’s eyes are full of knowing. “Acknowledging your addiction is the first step, Eli. Sometimes that step can feel like a thousand miles. But once you’ve taken it, you can start the real work of recovery. After acknowledgement comes acceptance and then action. My sponsor once told me that recovery is just those three steps, over and over again. The rest is maintenance.”
He hands me a white folder from a pile on his desk. STEP TWO, the folder reads, and then across the bottom: We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
I’m too exhausted to think past the next thirty seconds, much less a whole new packet. How many freaking steps are there anyway? Fisher must have a whole library of these damn things.
“Remember Step One?” Richard Fisher asks. “Honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness?”
I tip my chin, thumbing through the pages.
“Step Two is about being open to getting help. When we realize that drugs are hurting us, not helping like we thought, we have to figure out a different plan. The Twelve Step program asks us to look outside of ourselves for something positive that can help us choose a different way of life. That’s what we call your higher power.”
“As in, God?” I ask doubtfully. The only version of God I can muster looks like he walked right out of the Sunday comics—long white beard, hooked staff. A cartoon.
Richard shakes his head. “Not necessarily. Your higher power can be anything that resonates with you, and that usually takes a little while to figure out.” He squints at me for a minute, the light crisscrossing his glasses. “The first time I worked this step, I was six months into a three-year prison sentence. My son was dead, and my wife hated me. I was pretty sure that if God did exist, he had to be a raging asshole, and I was better off without him. So I picked the next best thing—the underside of my bunky’s bed.”
“Seriously?”
“It was bigger than me, and if it could hold my bunky’s fat ass up in the air like that, it had to be stronger than me, too. It wasn’t much, but it was the best I could do until I started trusting people again.”
I toss my bloody tissue toward Richard’s trashcan, but it falls to the ground a good foot too short, earning a flicker of a nose wrinkle from Richard Fisher. “Can you hear how lame that sounds,” I ask, “or are you immune to cheesiness after thirty years in this place?”
Richard chuckles. “You’d be surprised how cheesy can ring true sometimes. How bad you start craving something simple and real when the rest of your life is a complicated shit show.”
I think about my life back home, the arguments it seemed like Mom and I were getting in almost every weekend, the constant effort of resenting Steven, the exhaustion of trying to do everything right, so that I didn’t lose Savannah, so that I never had to go back to being a nobody again. The words simple and real settle in my brain like fallen leaves on campus in October, quiet but just right.
“Sometimes,” Richard continues, “people in treatment choose to think of this program, or their small group, as a temporary higher power until they get more clarity. Maybe you could try that.”
I think of Prison Tat with his bulging biceps, Will’s blue faux hawk, and Mo, who’s constantly spouting program-ese. I give Richard Fisher a skeptical scowl. “Seriously?”
“Believe it or not,” he says, “the people here have all felt like you at some point, Eli. Lean on them a little. Nobody gets through this stuff alone.” Richard glances up at the clock. “We can talk more about this tomorrow. For now, though, I’d like you to get started on the packet. You’ll be processing some of the questions in group tomorrow.”
“More sharing?” I groan.
“You bet.”
I tap the folder against the flat of my palm, and I will myself to look Fisher in the eye. Because I’m empty now, and I need him to tell me that there’s something that will fill me back up again.
“If I do this,” I begin, and Richard Fisher raises his eyebrows. “If I do these packets, and I share in group, and I come here and talk to you, then I’ll get better, right?” The question lodges in my throat, and I blink away tears that burn at the back of my eyes. “I’ll get my life back. And maybe—maybe I’ll get Savannah back, too?”
Richard Fisher gives me a small, sad smile. “The work of recovery is a long road, Eli, and we can’t know how it will turn out. Once we take down all the things we were hiding behind, our lives become more honest, more authentic. We see the world differently, and sometimes we find we don’t want the same things we did before. But let’s take it one day at a time, okay?” He motions toward the folder in my hand. “That’s the place to start.”
I promise Fisher I’ll start on the packet, but I leave his office in a fog of doubt. I needed him to tell me he could fix me, that A+B=All Better, not give me a bunch of philosophical mumbo jumbo about a “higher power.” Because no matter what Fisher says, I know the only person I can depend on is myself.
At first glance, the Step Two questionnaire looks like another dirty laundry list of all the fucked up things I’ve done. I flip through it, lounging on a picnic table in the visitors’ yard after lunch, the afternoon sun so warm at my back I could almost forget where I am, almost forget my admission in Richard Fisher’s office.
Almost.
Blacked out? Check.
Driven a car while under the influence? Check.
Lied? Cheated? Run from the cops? Check. Check. Check.
I swear these packets are like flashback tours through the worst kin
d of haunted house, the kind you can’t get out of until you’ve seen everything there is to see. I’ve been on an emotional tilt-a-whirl since Savannah left, a constant seesaw between hating her and missing her so bad it hurts. But as I skim through my own answers to these questions, a quiet truth slows my swirling emotions into a dull ache: No wonder she left you.
I skip the rest of the questionnaire and flip to the next part. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. I skim the page.
Sometimes it can be hard to trust anyone other than ourselves, especially if the adults we thought of as our higher powers have let us down.
A memory comes to me like a swift kick in the ribs. I flip open my journal and sketch the night with words.
I was eight years old, and Dad had promised to take me to a baseball game. Steven had just started coming around, and he’d bought me a brand-new Phillies cap special for the game. I’d packed my glove in case a fly ball came my way. Dad told me I might even be able to get it signed. He promised lots of things—pizza, ice cream, the best seats in the stadium. And then he didn’t show.
I sat on the front porch steps until it was dark, and Mom came outside.
“He’s coming,” I told her, as she sat down beside me. A neighbor’s TV blared the game through the open window next door. Glowing blue light filtered out into the yard. “He’s coming.”
It wasn’t until later, when a brisk pounding on the living room window woke me from a dead sleep, that I knew Dad had finally shown up. I’d run to my window, pressed my face against the glass. Mom was on the porch. They were arguing, gesturing wildly and yelling so loudly that one of our neighbors shouted at them to keep it down. Mom put her hands on Dad’s chest and shoved; I watched him stumble backward.
“No!” I screamed, pounding on the glass so hard it rattled. Dad glanced up. I knew from the look that passed over his face that he had heard me. But instead of coming inside, he turned and headed back to his bike.
“Dad!” I hollered, taking off out of my room and down the stairs so fast I almost tripped on the hem of my pajama pants. “Dad!” I burst through the front door and out onto the porch just as the motorcycle revved to life. “Dad, wait!”
Mom tried to stop me, but I yanked away from her, so that all she held onto was a handful of my pajama sleeve. But it was enough. By the time I jerked free, Dad was already pulling away from the curb. “Dad!” I screamed, running up the sidewalk barefoot, ignoring the stab of chipped concrete in my soles. “Dad! Come back!”
Porchlights flickered on. I darted into the street as the bike’s taillights disappeared around the corner. “Dad!”
“Eli,” Mom said, panting as she finally caught up with me, “come back inside.” She tugged at my hand, her eyes skipping furtively toward the nearest house, where an old lady had lifted the corner of her living room curtain to peer out at us. “People are watching.”
When I didn’t budge, Mom dropped to her knees in front of me. “Eli, honey,” she said, pushing my hair out of my eyes, her fingers gently brushing my scar. “Eli, look at me.”
“He left me,” I whispered, the truth washing over me like ice water. Dad wasn’t coming back. We would never be a family again.
Mom gripped my shoulders, forcing me to meet her gaze. “This didn’t have anything to do with you, okay, buddy? This was not your fault.”
I stared hard into her hazel eyes, black like holes in the soft glow of light from the street lamps. “I know,” I told her, shaking free from her hands. “It’s yours.”
For a second, Mom looked stunned, as though I’d slapped her. Then her lips pressed into a tight line. She stood up, gripped my hand firmly in hers, and silently led me back to our house.
After that night, Dad didn’t come around as much anymore. Birthdays and special events, if I was lucky. At school, I’d stare out my classroom window and imagine his bike pulling into the lot. Then I’d wait for the intercom to buzz on, calling me to the office where my dad would be waiting. We’d eat soft pretzels and cherry water ice, and we’d count the boats, and everything would be the way it was before. And when that didn’t happen, I decided maybe Mom was wrong. Maybe it was my fault after all.
“What are you working on?”
I startle, slamming the notebook closed. Libby’s standing next to me, dressed in ripped jeans and a t-shirt, her hair pulled up in a high ponytail.
“Geez,” I say, quickly ducking my head to swipe at my eyes. “Where’d you come from?”
Libby’s eyes narrow. “I’ve been standing here for like two minutes.” Her eyes flicker to my purple notebook, half-hidden under my clasped hands. “Must be some deep dark secrets in there, huh?”
I look past her, thinking of deep dark secrets and the scars on Libby’s wrists. “Relatively speaking.”
She smirks. “I’m surprised to see you out here. Kinda figured you’d be up in your room, stewing in post-breakup self-pity.” She waves her hand, shooing an invisible fly. “The afternoon speaker starts soon. You coming?”
I turn back to my step work, flip to a random page, and pretend to read. “No thanks,” I say. “Pretty busy stewing at the moment.”
Libby holds up her hands. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“No problem.”
I peer up from my notebook. Libby’s blonde ponytail swings against her back, brushing her shoulders as she walks away. From this angle, I could almost mistake her for Savannah.
Day 10
The treadmill whines as I coax it to 3.0 mph. Red plods along beside me, trying to work up to a jog. I’d give anything to run, but after the push-up incident, the doctor had made me promise not to do anything that might further injure my bruised ribs. Besides, even walking makes me feel like I’m wearing steel ankle weights. At least the pain gives me something to focus on, something other than re-hashing the Step Two share that I’d fumbled through in group earlier this morning.
Afterwards, Howard had opened the floor for guys to share about their higher powers. Mo talked about the AA community; Prison Tat was the only one who talked about Jesus—he kept kissing the heavy gold cross around his neck and holding it to the sky like he was fist bumping the Holy Spirit.
Words like “hero,” “trust,” and “unconditional love” got tossed around the room like balls of yarn, weaving a web around the circle with me on the outside. Because it’s not enough for me. Like I told Richard Fisher this morning in counseling, it’s like I’ve stalled out at Step One. I don’t how I’m supposed to pick a higher power when, in my experience, there are no heroes, just regular guys dressed in capes and masks. They’re not there when you need them, and they sure as hell don’t come when you call.
Red stumbles on the treadmill, struggling to keep his pace. I glance over at the fluorescent numbers on his dash. “You can do better than that,” I joke.
Red shakes his head and fumbles for the Pause button. His face is a tomato, and he bends over, clutching his side. “I gotta quit smoking,” he wheezes. The treadmill conveyer belt is spattered with sweat. “Whoever said your muscles remember is full of shit.”
“How long has it been?”
“Three years, maybe?” Red wipes his face on his shirt sleeve and starts the treadmill again, slower this time. “Nothing since high school.”
“I don’t think muscles remember that well. What sport did you play, anyway?”
Red shoots me a wry smile. “Cross-country.”
I laugh. We walk side by side for a minute, like those old ladies at the mall. Except slower. Finally, I work up the nerve to say what’s on my mind. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“What’s your take on this whole ‘higher power’ thing? I mean, it’s bullshit, right? Some magical being is going to make me better?”
Red gives me a sideways glance. “I guess it depends on who your higher power is.”
“Don’t tell me you’re actually falling for this crap, du
de.”
Red presses the Pause button again and turns to face me. “You know, after Lisa died, I was really fucked up. I kind of went off the deep end. I think I wanted to follow her, you know? But not the easy way. Not with a handful of pills or a gun to my head. I wanted to do it slowly. One needle at a time.”
I wince and glance around the gym to see who else might be listening. Everybody’s doing their own thing—a few dudes are lifting weights, and there’s a chick on the elliptical. It’s just me and Red and the story that unfurls between us.
Red tips up his water bottle, takes a long chug, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “So anyway, there I am, basically homeless, sleeping in flop houses mostly. I didn’t have any bags, so I kept everything in my pockets. My stash. My money. I spent a couple of weeks like that. During the day, I’d wander around on the streets and try not to think about Lisa. Then I’d find a place to crash for the night.
“So, this one morning, a couple weeks in, I wake up with a gun to my head. There’s this dude in a ski mask, his hand shaking so much that the gun keeps bumping my cheek. ‘Give me all your shit,’ he says. And so I did. The dude took everything, all the cash I had on me, my stash. Everything. Then he took off. I followed him out into the street, and I remember the sun was so bright, burning, you know? And I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know how I’d gotten there. I reached in my pocket for my cigarettes, but they were gone, too. The only thing left was one quarter.
“So I took that quarter to a pay phone, and I stuck it in the slot, and I dialed Lisa’s number. Because I knew I was done. I knew it was time to end it. But I was scared, and I wanted to hear Lisa’s voice, even just on her voicemail, one more time.
Lifeline Page 12