I don’t belong here, I thought. These people aren’t like me. I’m not as bad as they are; not even close. I can figure this out on my own.
“This is a speaker meeting,” said Tom. “I’ve asked one of my sponsees, Tyler, to speak.” He pointed to his left, where a man who was maybe twenty-one, with skin the color of skim milk past its sell-by date, sat slumped in a thin, discolored T-shirt, jeans, and battered sneakers.
“Hey,” he said, managing to pull himself upright. “I’m Tyler, and I’m an alcoholic and an addict.”
“Hey, Tyler!”
Tyler hocked back snot and scratched his forearm. “Yeah, so. Um. Tom here’s my sponsor. He’s a real good guy. And he said I gotta come to a meeting and speak, so here I am. I’ve got . . . what is it? Fifty-seven days today.”
The room applauded, with people calling out “Congratulations!” and “Way to go!” and “Keep coming back!” Tyler ducked his head modestly and delivered the next part of his speech directly into his sternum.
“I know I’m s’posed to be sharing my experience, strength, and hope, but I’m mostly gonna be sharing hope, because . . .” He gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “I don’t really have much experience with this whole not-using thing.”
With that, Tyler launched into his tale. Mom was an alcoholic, Dad was a heroin addict. They’d leave him alone in the house for days at a time while they were “out partyin’.” Tyler had his first drink at eleven, stealing a pint of his grandfather’s vodka and drinking the whole thing. “And, from then on, I guess it was just one big party.” I dumped powdered creamer into a styrofoam cup and listened. “I’d drink vodka before school, sneak a few beers during lunch, smoke a joint in the parking lot before I came home. And that was ninth grade.” By tenth grade he was smoking meth; by the time he was expelled in the eleventh grade, he was sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night to hitchhike to Kensington, where he’d started to shoot heroin. Finally, his parents performed an intervention. No word on whether they’d cleaned up their own acts or were just sober enough to notice that their son was in trouble.
“They said I had to move out or go to rehab. This was after I, uh, stole my mom’s engagement ring and pawned it, ’cause I was all strung out, you know, and I, like, needed to score, and I didn’t care what it took. Didn’t care who I hurt. That was me when I was using.”
As quietly as I could, I tossed my coffee cup into the trash can and slipped out the door. This isn’t for me, I thought. I didn’t do meth, I didn’t shoot heroin, and God knows I never stole anything from anyone. I didn’t even smoke!
I walked briskly back to my car. Anyone who saw me would think I was a regular stay-at-home mom on her way to pick up some essential, forgotten ingredient—a dozen eggs, a cup of sugar—before her kids came home from school. Which I was, I decided. I wasn’t an addict, like the people in that room. I was a working mother under an inordinate amount of stress due to her job, her marriage, and a father in crisis; a woman who had, quite naturally, turned to an available remedy to help her manage her days.
“I’m fine,” I said. And then, to prove it, I bought a dozen eggs and a bag of brown sugar at the grocery store, and had fresh chocolate-chip cookies waiting when Eloise came home.
FOURTEEN
“Mommy!”
I blinked, rolling onto my side, running through my own internal whiteboard. Today is TUESDAY. It is five-fifteen. The next meal is DINNER, and you’d better start cooking. I heard, then saw, the doorknob of my bedroom turning back and forth.
“Mommy’s resting!” I called, and closed my eyes again. I’d been working flat out from five in the morning until it was time to take Ellie to school, and then from the moment I’d gotten back home until one. I’d decided to take a nap, and, after three blue Oxys failed to do the trick, I’d chewed up two more, then shut my eyes, and it was like I’d been punched hard in the head. I hadn’t just fallen asleep, I thought, trying to get my legs moving. I’d been knocked out, plunged into unconsciousness.
My phone was blinking. There were three new e-mails and a pair of texts from Sarah. CALL ME BACK, read the memo line. R U okay? read the second. U sounded weird.
Oh, God. I had no memory of speaking to Sarah. What had I said? What had I done? Panic surged through me. I pushed myself out of bed, pressed the phone to my ear, dialed Sarah’s number, and hurried to the bathroom so I could pee and talk at the same time.
I got her voicemail. “Hey, Sarah, it’s Allison. Um. Sorry if I sounded a little out of it.” I wiped and flushed, feeling frantic and sick and disgusted with myself, wondering how to gracefully ask what I’d said. “Call me back—I’m fine now!”