Category: fiction about addiction and recovery

The Blueness of Summer

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“The problem is clear, Reg–we have the wrong colors! Everything must be painted blue. Then we’ll have more peace. At least I will!”

She threw her up hands in disgust, then pointed at the living room’s pale yellow walls, orange floral couch with lime green and lemon yellow pillows, a tarnished goldtone floor lamp, all three tables an antique white.

Reg stood with hands on hips. This was the stand-off he had hoped to avoid. If she was going to tick off the terrible errors of each and every room he’d lose it. This was not their city house which “requires a more spare palette”, she’d insisted. This was a vacation home, a spiffed-up cottage, really, and he liked it just the way it was.

“Absolutely not. It required no renovations. The colors are lively. It’s a simple place. For once we can go outside the lines, relax. And I’m not buying a bunch of new furniture.” He ran a palm over his forehead. “You liked it well enough when we bought it in spring. We’re lucky to have it.”

Reg said this with satisfaction and pride. He’d saved a long time to afford the right place on Whitetail Lake. A moderate-sized, old but not too-creaky lake house on a half-acre. It made him happier than he’d been in years.

Marin turned away from him to face the view of water, let her eyes rest on birches and pines on the opposite shore. The lake was languid today, a smattering of clouds reflected in its gently sloshing surface. It made her feel moody and restless instead of calmer.

“I’ll shop at second-hand stores, garage sales if I must. But it has to be re-done in blues.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “The girls need blue, too. They’re too agitated here.”

With a dismissive wave of his hand, he left. The girls needed to fish with him, swim, get sweaty and dirty, water ski, meet new friends. They still had time to make good messes at ages ten and twelve. At home they were under Marin’s watchful gaze and tutelage. Here they could whoop and race around. He had no intention of falling prey to his wife’s obsession with color therapy out here in the northern woods, on this welcoming lake. It had become a strange keystone of her life but it was not his.

He worried she was losing it. This color thing was now impacting how she cooked, organized things, even wanted everyone to dress. He knew it was her attempt to re-exert control over her life. It had been hard. She’d lost her job ten months ago so she had more empty time. But they’d lost a helluva lot more than that. He understood she needed to adjust; he still did, too. He was lonely for her, for the past, and it felt like a black hole some nights. But time, it was all about time. And color, apparently.

Marin watched her husband head to the boat house where he stored his fishing tackle. He’d be gone all day, likely. She just couldn’t get into fishing, baiting the hook, the harm it did to fish tossed back in, the hours of boredom as you cast a line and waited, cast and waited. He cleaned and cooked them with relish. She ate them but felt haunted by their grace in the water, scales flashing as sunshine glanced off their sleek bodies. It almost made her cry.

Water. It was an ever-changing tableau of shadows, of light. A blue life. It was the reason she had agreed: to be by the lake, hear it all hours. Musical blueness. And she needed everything indoors to reflect calm and an inviting coolness, as well.

“Kel! Give that back! You have the old one!”

“Let go! You’ll tear it! Mom!”

Natalie and Kelly exploded into the room, the older, Nat, trying to pull her new beach towel from her sister’s hands. Nat knocked over stacks of books Marin had been sorting. She shot her mother a look but kept moving and holding onto the towel. They were like two harnessed, runaway horses.

“Stop galloping about! Walk!” Marin commanded, but they were already beyond hearing range.

She stood in the middle of the room and counted the items she wanted to dispose of. The tables were barely tolerable but at least not yellow or orange. It gave her a headache, all this vividness in the cramped living room, the old fireplace smelling of decades of fires. At home there were wide expanses, many windows, clean lines, grey, taupe, pale rose, ivory. It was really for Reg, this Whitetail Lake adventure with fishing and hunting, the nature he missed from childhood. Sorely needed at a crucial juncture in his career. And the girls loved it so far, even their small bedrooms that accommodated only twin beds. They said it was like going to camp. Reg insisted it was homey. What did that mean? Wasn’t their city house homey in a classic way, hadn’t she made it so?

What did she get? What did she even have left, anymore?

It was not a good time to examine or answer such questions. She grabbed her bag and keys, jotted a note and left it on the green lacquered breakfast table. She was going paint shopping.

*******

The whole next week they had to eat, sleep and live around their mother and her paint buckets. Their dad was fishing mostly. Sometimes he took them skiing or on boat rides of the deer’s tail-shaped lake. The three of them swam into the dusk, calling their mom to join them. She was too busy painting. In another week their dad would be going back to work. Worrisome.

“How’s it a deer’s tail? It’s so big you can’t even tell,” Kelly asked.

Nat snickered. “You can see from a plane what it’s like.”

“I’d do that.”

“You’d do anything, that’s the problem.”

Kel bit off a cherry licorice stick inch by inch but paused. “The problem is mom and that painting. We’d have more fun if she stopped.”

“I know. She’s…paint crazed! It’s blue madness!”

They laughed though it wasn’t very funny.

“I think,” Nat said, “she’s still trying to feel better. Dad says we have to be patient. It’s only painting walls, at least.”

Kel looked at her as she licked her fingers clean, then wiped them dry on her shirt. “She doesn’t drink at all. Danny’s been dead a year. She should be better by now.”

Nat put her arms around her sister’s shoulders. “Yeah, Danny’s gone…we’re here. So we can’t give up on her.”

“He hurt all the time. He couldn’t play, anymore. Danny had to go, didn’t he….? He’s better now, right?”

“I guess. Yeah.” She gave her a squeeze and stood up. “Want to swim out to the floating dock and lay out for a tan?”

******

Marin walked through the kitchen with its bright breakfast nook, the living room, three bedrooms, two bathrooms. Even Reg liked their bedroom, how it soothed. She had emptied them of extraneous things, found used natural wood furniture. But what delighted her were the aquamarine, cornflower blue, teal blue in variations of all three that covered walls and woodwork. No, illuminated. It was as if she was floating underwater, inside a small universe of blue, a skylit haven. It reminded her of bodies of water all over the world, places she had travelled when she had curated art for the museum. She was light-headed with pleasure. The panorama of tones loosened up straggling tension. Her heart unclenched.

At the doorway to the screened-in porch she had hesitated, paint brush and can in hand. The walls were knotty pine that felt warm with a sheen deepened from many years, hands, weather that passed through. It held a couch covered with a worn navy, red and cream plaid, two easy chairs that matched and a low table for books and random objects. Reg had left a copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson essays there, the book she had bought him for his thirty-ninth birthday, when things had gotten tougher. Inside it she had inscribed: “To your soul from your love.”

Marin left the porch unpainted. Instead, she dug out the one picture she had brought of Danny. She painted a frame she had found at the local antiques store, a deep sapphire blue. It matched his eyes though a stranger wouldn’t know that. The five of them were sitting on the edge of a pool in Baja California, the last vacation he would be able to bear. But his smile was so powerful you could see God in it.

She hung the picture between two large screened windows. Under that she put a small white ship’s anchor and sat down on the couch. Danny would have loved the cottage. She felt the closing of her throat, the sting of tears and waited for them to etch hot trails down her face. But they didn’t fall. Her throat gradually opened again. A brisk breeze crisscrossed the porch and lifted the hair from her damp neck. She watched the girls playing badminton in the front. Reg was sitting on a chaise lounge near them, sipping a lemonade she’d made fresh earlier. She got up and left the cottage, pulled to the lapping water, trees and birds. The summer’s sweet light and her family.

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New Tree City, as Pen Sees It

The look-out is the monster maple in our back yard; it’s the main place I like to be, especially when dad gets home and relaxes on the porch. His spot and my spot both overlook the hilly area behind our garden. He watches the tomatoes, cucumbers, squash or sugar peas grow and ripen–whatever is in season, we tend. I guess he  must look at the hills and woods and remembers what it was like when he grew up here with Pops and Gram, but they’re both long gone. He has told me how there wasn’t a house for at least a mile in all directions back then. Now we live on a paved street at the edge of town and Marionville just keeps creeping past the corner where they finally put a stop sign. A few good cars had to get bashed and a half-dozen lives of cats and dogs ended before it mattered. Now it’s a four-way stop. Dad says it doesn’t mean anything; nothing will stop the town from spilling over the hills and up here.

I’m who he has now. He calls me his blue-eyed soul girl because I like Motown music and because I’m the only girl left, I guess. Mom took off last year. She found out she could make more money as a medical receptionist down below, some small city by Ann Arbor. She has this new person in her life, a girlfriend named Lela. Don’t ask me what that’s all about because dad doesn’t say a thing so I’m not going to ask. I don’t see Mom much since she moved out. She calls once a week or I do. I haven’t met Lela but maybe one day I will. I miss mom too much some days, others not so much. When you get down to it, dad is about what I have, too, except for three good friends at school and a couple of neighbors I like to fish and ski with, meet for a Saturday movie at the Miracle Theater. It’s strange growing up with just a dad but we always did get along better than mom and me. I didn’t ask him to go school shopping with me, though. Telly’s mom took me and got me a bra, too. He hasn’t noticed which is a relief. I’m afraid it will upset him, my growing up already.

Dad says I’m better at climbing trees and running than most boys and he’s right about that. I’m eleven, I can outrun most of the guys around here, and I’m a strong cross-country skier and better downhill skier. He says when I turn twelve I might get faster or maybe slower. We’ll find out in three weeks, after my birthday. I have no intention of slowing down. I can’t help being strong and fast, it just suits me, as mom says.

The reason I spend so much time in the upper third of this maple is because I can see everything. And it’s peaceful. I can survey a small kingdom. There are the Scranton hills, named after Jonas Scranton’s farm that went under before I was born. They’re a relief no matter what the season, they just roll out their colors and designs: mind-freezing beauty. I get a great view of Marionville spreading out beyond the bottom of the hills, namely the south end of the lake, several businesses and the jumping waterfront park. The big woods on the far side of the lake are special after it goes dark. Yellow and white spots shine here and there until the dense trees are sparkling like they’re full of fairy lights.  And I get a decent view of Telly Martin’s place to my right, where he, his parents and sisters live by Silver Creek, in their chalet. Especially their back yard, which is where most of the interesting action is at any house. They’re always doing something, like badminton and barbecuing. I haven’t been there in a few weeks and I miss them even though the two girls are younger and like Barbies too much. My mom, I know, enjoyed Telly’s mom; they had coffee many mornings. But no one asks about her.

Telly and I used to hang out more; he’s fourteen now. I think he also wonders about my dad. One time Telly came by, dad was sitting in the rocker by the scarred square wooden table he uses for about everything. A glass was in his hand so he didn’t reach out to shake Telly’s, as is his way. A big ole bottle of Jack Daniels was next to his book, likely a complicated spy novel he can get lost in. The reading has always been his pleasure, but the whiskey came out after spring break. Before that, a cold beer on a warm week-end was all I saw.

“Come around to see my Penny, eh, Telly?” dad said. He’d had two small glasses already. Three is his limit but it should be one. Or none.

Telly shrugged. “We were going to take a walk. I keep seeing a red fox at the creek. Real pretty.” His hands were in his jeans pockets. He smiled nice.

“Never mind the fox, son, and never mind my daughter. She’s too young to go off with a young man.” 

“Dad, I’ve known Telly for six years–” I protested. It was shocking to hear him talk like that.

“That’s right. He was eight, you were barely six. Played all day.  That was then. This is now. We don’t need more trouble.”

Telly frowned, then winked at me with each eye, our way of saying “later.” He left before I could stop him. But I can see him in his yard; we keep an eye on each other in lots of ways. In fact, my dad doesn’t even know we leave notes under a big loose rock in the field stone wall that divides the Martin’s property from the empty lot between us. That goes back at least four years. Still, I’ve had some doubts about Telly this fall. He’s like a polite acquaintance when I see him in school and hangs out with the first person to move into New Tree City. That’s what dad and I call it.

A developer bought ten acres of the hills and planted skinny, skimpy trees, some maple and some poplar, a little bunch of white pine. It was re-named New Scranton Hills. They brought their big earth-moving machines and started digging up the rich, sweet earth. First time I saw it I winced. It hurt my bones, even my teeth. Dad swore.

So what dad really watches since spring are the new houses cropping up like morel mushrooms. Only he likes those so much he’s on a mission to gather them every spring.

“That’s what’s wrong with Marionville. It can’t stand being the same year after year. It keeps looking to progress but it’ll end up being just like any other fast-growing town. They’re all the  same. Like white bread, right, Pen?”

He took another swallow–I could hear him cough a little–and I grasped the next branch, got a familiar foothold and pulled myself up higher. The leaves were starting to fall and a red one landed on my face. It smelled ancient and comforting.

“Well, dad, nothing can stay the same forever, probably.” I zipped up my hoodie against the autumn chill.

“There you go, that’s the mentality your mother has, our county has, the whole blasted country has. Gotta be bigger, fancier, more, more, more.”

I looked down through a new hole made by leaves falling. He was on his second glass and already he was getting miserable. I had a mind to shimmy down and grab that whiskey bottle and pour it in the garden, let the bugs and squash get tipsy for once. They’d probably just get sick, though.

“Well, no one knows this land like all of us up here, dad. And for sure no one loves it more than you. Pops would be happy you haven’t sold out.”

He chuckled. “That’s right, Pen. No selling out. You can bury me right here, too.”

I looked out over the land and blinked, then looked again. There was a house going up that looked way too big for the land it had grabbed. The carpenters were done for the day, and the frame they had left was a three-story something that dwarfed the new trees and the houses on either side. It hinged on being a mini-mansion from what I could tell. I wondered if it was one of those community places where there would be an indoor swimming pool, rooms to throw big celebrations in, maybe a game room for things like billiards.  I pressed against the sturdy trunk and leaned out a bit, parted the leaves. But it might just be a house, with all those options in it. You could fit four of our house into that building. It made me dizzy to think of it,  excited and mad all at once.

“You hear me, Pen? I don’t want you to start making friends with any of those people, okay? That’s the type young Telly might go for now, you wait. New Tree City people just don’t belong up here.” He banged his glass on the table. “Period.”

But I was gazing out at the lake and the woods and the sky beyond. A silky wash of dusk and then twilight colors spread over the treetops of the lake’s far shore and they glowed for a minute. It got so intense, that’s all there was: oranges, pinks, yellows, then night blues but with a weird light of gold fanning out over the world. The tiny fairy brights lit up the blackened woods after that.  I was alone but happy in my treetop. My dad had given in to whiskey or sadness or maybe sleep. I understood this: he wanted to forget some things and remember others. But New Tree City sat mostly empty of memories while I had nearly twelve whole years in this place. I really held the whole world in my arms. It fit me just right. I’d write a note to Telly about it in the morning; he always got it.

Why I write–and live–despite the odds

I have been home from work since eight-thirty, for an hour and half, and I have eaten dinner at the desk while typing. There is a writing contest submission deadline I am trying to meet. 

Rita, my protagonist, hopes to steal away from Maggie’s tea cups and chat and make her way to the upstairs medicine cabinet. There is a bottle of pills there, and Rita wants them. Needs them. She hadn’t exactly intended on stealing them, but there they are and here she sits. Nerves on fire, stomach jumpy, sweat rising at the base of her neck. She knows she has little to complain about–a good man and home,  excellent career. But she  needs those pills to supplement her own. To get through the next few days.  Maggie, her neighbor, an older woman whose ill husband rests nearby, won’t miss them. Will she? She’s just going to borrow them. Or is she? Can she do that to Maggie? Is Rita really a thief and an addict? Or is she a woman ready for change?

I keep writing, glance at the clock. Close to midnight. I have to get up in the morning and go to work. I figure I have three more nights to work on the short story, get it down to 3500 words and submit it by midnight 9/1/11.  The story is saved and I head to bed. The next night and the next I labor, eyelids heavy, mind weary but bursting with ideas and characters. I awaken in the night and keep company with Rita and her worried, stalwart husband, Wade, as well as kind Maggie and her failing spouse, Jonathan. The story nags at me at work each day. Is it good enough yet? What needs revising? What are the real odds of it being published in a big glossy magazine? Maybe I should just scrap it and start over. But there is no more time.

The night it is due to be emailed to the magazine, I go over it a last time, but as I decide it is worth submitting I am struck with a frightening thought: the midnight deadline is likely not Pacific Time. I look at my watch. It is nine fifteen.  I check the submission rules. The time is Eastern Standard Time. I am too late.

The first reaction is to toss the notebook I fill with first lines, titles and ideas as I say things I hope the neighbor can’t hear. Then it dawns on me: I have spent two weeks working on a short story that will not have a chance in a contest that meant something to me because I was too stressed about getting it done. I somehow neglected to get the time right. I am overcome with disappointment in myself; tears reduce me to wordlessness. Well, it probably wouldn’t have gotten chosen, anyway, I think, as self-pity threatens.

The contest theme was to write about something that reflects an aspect of women’s lives today. One thing I know affects women’s lives and can write about is addiction, since I make a living helping those who struggle with it. And I also have known something of it’s dazzling magic, its nefarious lure and damage.  Having survived experiences that can scatter and destroy a woman’s will and dreams, I have been an intimate of those detours beyond the known road, the netherworlds. More was given at great cost to a substance dependency that was accidental, even avoidable, than I can accurately tally. It dragged me through my youth and demanded my life more times than I like to recall. At age twenty I cut a deal with God: help me out and I would do the same for others. In time, the promises came to pass. I am one of the fortunate. I have had at least three lives and the one I live now has only grown happier, richer, broader. Standing on some rubble affords a decent view.

There are millions of alcoholics and addicts in this country. A significant portion of them are women who are often unseen and unheard. Many of those substance dependencies begin with a prescription or two for legitimate reasons, then become an illusory panacea for many other ills.  Or perhaps two or three glasses of wine after dinner each night to quell loneliness or fear become a couple of bottles or more in order to feel normal, to get by.

I just meant to get out the message once more: there is freedom from that bondage. There can be a voluptuous renewal after a ruinous life. With help, the healing can make one warrior-strong at the innermost core. Writing is one way I may be able to offer hope.

The women and men, youth and children I write about, then, often emerge in complex patterns from the warp and woof of my own life. There are also innumerable others who cross my path without so much as a nod in my direction, yet I see them and wonder. I pay attention to learn more.  But all the other characters arise from unknown origins with something they want to say and do, and they offer small or great gifts from their imagined, powerful lives on paper.  They resemble newly incarnate creatures as the story is crafted word by word, line by line. For writing to me is a kind of holy thing, a lifeline, a bridge to distant realms as well as a magnifier of Divine Love. It sweeps me up, breaks opens my mind. It resists pessimism, discovers fascinating company and endures all manner of false moves and then surprises me with a revelation. And through the sometimes tedious process a peace is fashioned that endures and a joy that succeeds even in the midst of gloom or uncertain times. Writing, in the end, asks me to freely give part of my heart and soul to others, and in so doing, the well is replenished for more giving in the non-writing life.

So, I missed that deadline.  I am still displeased with my failure to read all the fine print. Rita and Wade, Maggie and Jonathan–they wait in the file. I may have to revise the pages a few times–maybe that’s why it wasn’t submitted this time. Or maybe they need a bigger story. It could be that it was just a lesson once more about what matters most to me and how I need to give it more attention, respect and time. After all, if I care enough to write the stories, I have to care enough to give all I possibly can to every single word, each new beginning.  That is how I have learned to live–and write–despite the odds.

The Point of Drinking on this Tuesday Afternoon

Win Ottomeier ran down the library steps with light restraint. She was anxious to be on her lunch hour but didn’t want the others–Marie, Theo and Antonia–to take any notice of her. They sometimes ate together but usually not, as they liked to talk shop and gossip and she more often liked to not talk. Her hour was important to her, a time to empty her mind of a million orderly bits of information, of the sight of the heavy books she consulted as well as the glaring screen of the computer with its cornucopia of search engines.

And the people, oh the public, how they often swarmed her desk with their eager faces, located her on the phone, their words spitting and swirling up to the Rubenesque women cavorting on the ceiling’s mural. To Win, it was a veritable storm of faces and hushed verbiage from the moment she walked in, esoteric inquiries and needs.

Not that she didn’t like data. There was a solid appreciation of the ways one made sense of micro and macro worlds, how she could  conquer and divide until the facts were distributed or disposed of correctly. Win did not complain when the first computer system went in all those years ago. Adaptation brought rewards. It complemented her studied reserve, that sleek machine.

But it was her twenty-first year at the city library and she was becoming–what? Disengaged. Bored. Libraries had enchanted and upheld her, even saved her life a few times. Her work had mattered once. But now it all pressed in on her like a too-small room. She felt she was becoming irrelevant as people did more of their own digging, PCs in hand. And then there were all those virtual books, disturbing in their untouchable distance, their convenience. The images of an increasingly synthetic world mystified and daunted her.

At times Win had desperate fantasies of heading to the airport and buying a one way ticket to, say, Patagonia, where Magellan thought he had stumbled across native giants in 1520. At five foot eleven they had seemed enormous to the small Spaniards. But that was a view from history. When she got there, what then? There was petroleum and tourism and who knows what other irritants. She had only to look it up to find out, so why bother going at all. Still,  she asked herself: how much could one person absorb in a lifetime? Especially if one had a near photographic memory as Win did. She would go to her grave with footnote 219 on page 367 of a tome regarding prehistoric America emblazoned on her brain. Where was the meaning to it?

This is what she had been plagued with during sleepless nights: the exhaustive nature of fact gathering and what it all boiled down to, at this point in her life. Living in a junkyard of data, that’s what. She carried on in an expert loneliness infused with random, electic knowledge no one really cared about. Not even Win, anymore.

So at twelve-fifteen on Tuesday, she slipped out and headed three blocks down to Tate’s Lounge. She liked the soup and sandwich special there. And the drinks. They all greeted her like a regular. It had surprised her a couple of months ago. Had she gone there that much?  Since March when she discovered the place on a particularly soggy day, Win had been stopping by during or after work, maybe once or twice a week since summer began.

She looked over her shoulder to make sure her co-workers had turned the corner as usual, seeking out Indian or Lebanese fare. Then Win took the last booth and ordered a bowl of soup and a half gilled cheese. Zina, the waitress, called her by name and asked how the books were doing.

Win answered, “They’re looking great, standing at attention as usual.” The waitress chuckled; she was a tolerant sort.

It was such a relief to be here. The place smelled of onions and peppers, grilled sausages with cheese, creamy chicken soup. It was very unlike Win’s kitchen which was gleaming and small, the refrigerator sparsely populated with yogurt and orange juice, take out Thai leftovers, a handful of brown eggs. Two bottles of wine.

Win finished the remainder of the chicken soup and wiped her mouth with the thin napkin. Now for dessert. She reached for her vodka and cranberry and sipped once, then let the vibrant mixture fill her mouth a few seconds before swallowing. It was calming, tart, smooth. It was just the antidote for all the faces and tongues wagging and the tangled weave of supposed facts, data parading itself before them all as though it was critical to something, the final word.

Win breathed in the scent of her drink and finished it off quickly, then sat back.  The last word was something her husband, Harry, once enjoyed. She should not wear anything but sensible shoes or she would have bunions, she was not to clean the oven with nasty chemicals, she was cautioned to not spend more than allotted for Christmas despite her desire to get something really good for the nieces she loved so. He’d even had the last word on whether they would have children–not a good idea, not in this crazy world, not on their improving but modest income.  But he did care for her, didn’t he? Didn’t they take a week’s vacation at a national park she picked each year? Didn’t he cook dinner three times a week? What did he tell her every night before they parted ways at their respective bedroom doors? “Rest well, old gal.” She got and gave a medium hug and it counted most days.

Six months ago he had said good-night–she’d hardly head him–and the next morning he’d left before she got up. A note on the bed told her everything: “I know you don’t like Flagstaff, but you know I do and I’m now retired, so I’m gone.” And the P.S. was his final opinion about her life. He advised her, “If you stay, you should work until 65 to be on the safe side.  Or just come to AZ and we’ll figure it out.”

She thought she couldn’t manage but she did; discipline went a long way toward getting through things. It was more and less than what she thought, this being by herself. It hurt less in some ways, not at all in others.  His face receding, she ordered another vodka and cranberry. Just saying the drink’s name out loud calmed her: a healthy fruit full of antioxidants with a fortifying alcoholic beverage. Harry hadn’t wanted her to drink, not even a drink made with cranberries. “One makes you a bit goofy, two makes you unpredictable,“ he’d said, as though either was character defect she needed to avoid. Perhaps so. The wine she drank, then, was drunk sparingly, a half glass when he was watching, two or more when he was not.

Now she had endless nights to watch the skies and the city’s bustling business from the tenth floor condo, a glass or three of wine keeping her company. And she had the afternoons weekly, one at the least, two if lucky. She could sit and drink, float away. After awhile it felt as though she was on a fanciful barge decorated with multi-colored lanterns, headed down the Nile or the Colorado or even the Columbia River which lay just beyond the condo, rushing to join the Pacific, salt and fresh waters mingling.

When she got back to her post, no one at the library ever said anything. They might look bemused, but that often seemed the case to Win. 

She decided to order a third drink despite the waitress–was it Zina or Zinia? –raising her eyebrows, biting her lip.

“Are you going back to work, Win?”

“Of course, in a few minutes.” Win shrugged off her discomfort, drank away the dullness she felt.

She wanted to say so much more: I can drink as much as I like now. Harry has no say. I am not thirty; I’m hanging on to sixty by a thread so I am a full-fledged grown-up who makes my own choices. I deserve a break, a change in routine. I am happy as a clam nestled in this booth. I am a talented research librarian but truly sick to death of gathering information instead of living it and so I am drinking to think it over some more.

Win finally got up, gathered her purse and wobbled to the register, paid her check and with a nod to Zinia (of course, she knew that), left. She walked gingerly down the sidewalk–lest she lose her  balance and look a fool–then climbed the library’s steps to the brass-handled doors and yanked one open. She took the elevator to the third floor and walked right up to Antonia’s huge desk. The lovely old dear had a pencil in her mouth as usual but took it out as soon as she looked up.

“The whole point of drinking on this Tuesday afternoon is so I can  finally look into your piercing hazel eyes–which I’ve always admired despite your unkindnesses–and say I quit, good riddance, farewell, and good luck.”

Win turned to go and lost her center for a moment. But there was Theo, who had always looked good to her, even when he’d lost the last of his hair, even when he’d dropped too many pounds after his divorce. He took her elbow in his hand and sidled down the stairs with her.

“Good show,” he whispered. “Can I come by later? Dinner?”

She smiled, almost kissed him, but instead shook her head and plucked his hand off her elbow. Then Win left without a backward glance, just slipped away to Argentina.

Playing Today: Addiction v. Recovery

The night was deeper than the far side of the woods, which Damien peered into every now and then. He could feel it cover his hands and sneakered feet, his rather forgettable face and ragged thoughts.  He stuck his hands into his jeans pockets and leaned against the van. It was ten o’clock when he’d pulled off the road and parked at the end of the fire lane. He’d waited twenty-five minutes. Either Tanner was up to his neck in deals or something was wrong. They had been friends since middle school and they had an understanding. When one of them needed something, the other came. Or at least called.

He needed oxycodone and had called. He hadn’t needed it for sixteen months but that was before. Before Jeanine grew impatient with him and left. Before his hours were cut from forty to twenty at the store. Before he hurt his back again lifting a box of car parts, cars that gleamed in the sunlight like the deluxe machines they were. Unlike the vehicle he owned.

Gravel spit and jumped and Damien jerked to attention. It was the driveway by the corner, Old Burl’s place.  All he needed was someone to stop and ask what he was up to on a Friday night, parked on this road. He hurried behind the van and waited for the old Cadillac to slowly pass. Only when the tail lights became pinpricks did he step out again, forehead damp, mouth dry.

It had come to this again. The waiting. The wanting that drove every other thought out of mind. Now, every shadow slunk around him, every small noise caused alarm. He should have gone to the city where he would have been lost among a hundred others on the street. That’s where he belonged. That’s what he understood. Wasn’t it?

There had been a time when he had raced down the road to glory. A college scholarship for track which he cared less about than leaving this town.  Three years being on the Dean’s List and the expectation of law school. He had always lived a life made incrementally more attractive by the number of challenges surmounted. It had been hard when he was a kid, mom ill with cancer, then taken down when he was ten; father consumed by that woman he’d married when Damien was fourteen. But he’d made it out alive and found the magic door: education.

Then there was the ridiculous accident the summer before his senior year at State. He’d come home for a month to visit and had been helping his father scrape paint from the house. He’d backed down a few rungs on the ladder to get an icy bottle of water in the cooler below. They’d been catching up. His father was happy with him, his only kid making good, had a girlfriend, Jeanine. The talk had been expansive and warm so that Damien had opened up for the first time in years.  Working together was just the thing.

Damien swiped his brow with his forearm to catch the sweat. “What’d you just say?”

“Oh, get me one of those while you’re at it–I’m dying up here. How can August heat up more?”

And Damien had gotten the bottles, stuffed one between his shorts’ waist and his sweaty back, then held the other one in his left hand. His skin shivered from the cold, damp plastic. He took each step carefully but when he was six rungs from the top, he felt the bottle squeezing against his back, then leaking chilled water, a shock to buttocks and legs. The surprise of it threw him off. Or maybe he had been too relaxed, too confident that day. But his left foot lost contact with the next rung for a split second and he fell back, a flight that felt endless until he hit the ground like a one hundred sixty pound sack of cement. The fortuitous future morphed into a nightmare. Then he blacked out.

That’s when it had started. A back surgery. The pain requiring potent  pills. Rehabilitation, more pills as the months turned into a year. Ten, then twenty a day. Living with his father and stepmother as though he was a boy rather than the man he needed to be. The lurking phantom of pain even when he walked well enough and then looked for work. In one year, his law school chance had slipped away. In two, the addiction had settled right, an unwanted roommate that Damien couldn’t dispense with. He ate them or snorted them, and sometimes shot them, whatever was handy or worked best that  minute. It was either that or withdrawal, the sweats, the vomiting and intestinal hell. Agony in every fiber. Feeling crazy, skin aching, head askew. Being high was a thing of the past; now he just wanted to get through the days and nights. He left, took to the streets of a neighboring city and found more than he bargained for. He changed and although it felt worn, he acquiesced for the sake of Oxy. OC. Killer.

But eventually he’d had enough. He got tired of the no-win hustle that kept him running day and night, a game never over. Damien longed to snatch his life back, make it right. One morning he drove to a detoxification center  and they made him better than he thought possible.

It was an uneasy and uneven return to health once more, but it was like his blood ran pure again and his mind started to follow, to even make sense. Still, it took a long while to get twenty-two months clean. There had been countless bad days.

And there had been more of those again the past couple months. Damien had held out as long as he could. He just wanted out of his head awhile, to feel nothing for one night, to not think. To not feel worthless: Damien Harper, part-time auto parts worker, ex-junkie (“Once a junkie, always a junkie”), still at his parents’ or couch surfing. What a damned tragedy that guy is and so on and on. Lost it all. Well, he couldn’t stand it. He didn’t even have to be anything fabulous, anymore. He just wanted respect. Some peace.

A  sports car downshifted; the lights went out. It had been six  years since that fateful summer. Tanner had been there for him after the doctors stopped writing prescriptions. He got out and unfolded himself, then stretched and yawned. It was as though he had been on a leisure ride and had just stopped for a break.

“So,” he said when he leaned against the van next to Damien. “Ready to come back to the fold?”

Damien tried to laugh but it came out like a grunt. “What do you have for me?”

Tanner shrugged. “That depends. I might want something this time.”

A frisson of anxiety, almost like a thrill, ran through him. “Such as?”

Tanner took out a cigarette from a crumpled pack and ran a thumbnail over the head of a kitchen match, a flare resulting. His face looked a dirty reddish-yellow in the match light and he smiled at his old schoolmate. The smile more a grimace. He blew it out; the darkness felt cooler than before.

“I have a job. Delivery. It’s your old stomping grounds, the college. I  don’t really have the time tonight, bud, and you know the area well. How about it?”

Damien stared at him, the cigarette that dangled between his lips. Bartering, one thing for another. He remembered his old dorm at Hill and Ash, the union with the stone benches and fountain where they hung out and watched the girls. The cherry trees in the spring and the snow blanketing the massive steps of the administration building. He remembered his younger self: excited, maybe too fearless, but carving out a life he hoped to feel better about. Feeling stronger each time he got over the next hurdle. What mattered now? 

“Tanner. Really? You want me to be your delivery boy?”

He stepped way from the van and Tanner did the same.

“A very small  price. You get fifty pills. I get a job done. Not bad. Or do you want money? Of course not. You don’t want to be a drug dealer. That’s my job. You only want the drug, cheap. It’s a good trade, my friend. Time’s wasting’.” He slouched toward his car, looked at his watch, cigarette tip glowing.

Damien listened to the night. The frogs were singing in the distance.  A bird called out, then there was a flutter of wings from one tree to another. A car was trundling down the road and Damien knew Tanner was itchy, ready to roll. He felt his throat constrict, heart thump.

“Hey! You’re in the wrong place, man!”

Tanner shouted an obscenity, got in his car and roared off.

The voice boomed across the road. “Is that Damien Harper’s sorry van? What’re you up to, son?”

It was Old Burl. The town drunk for forty years, sober for about ten, he’d heard. Had finally gotten married, too. Good woman, Marie; met her in AA. He hadn’t seen the man since spring, at the parts store. Damien heard him gun the engine a little so he walked up to the vintage powder blue Cadillac. They shook hands.

Old Burl spoke first. “That was Tanner.” 

“Yeah.”

The old man cleared his throat and leaned his head out the window to better see him. “Well, why don’t you come by for a cup of coffee?”

“I don’t know–at this time of night?”

“This is as good a time as any, from what I can tell.”

Old Burl nodded at him and started down the road. Damien stood and looked around, then up. A capricious wind spread clouds across the inscrutable face of the night. Before too long, it would be autumn with a gorgeous harvest moon. Then winter again. So much time was going by. Damien had been so certain once that he would never get to twenty, then thirty. He could live as though he meant it or let life drift through his fingers. All that he had to do tonight was stay clean. Hang on and get through it.

Damien walked over to his rattling van and got in. Then he pulled up behind Old Burl nice and easy so stray rocks wouldn’t mar the Caddy.