“Do you know where we are, exactly? Like, what town?” I’d been so sick and so out of it on the ride down, I’d barely noticed exactly where we were heading.
“Buttfuck, New Jersey,” Aubrey said, shoving books and papers under her bed. “I mean, I guess it’s got a name, but I have no f**king clue what it’s called. All rehabs are, like, in the middle of f**king nowhere. So you can’t cop.”
I took my armload of stuff and deposited it gently at the bottom of her freestanding wardrobe. “How many times have you done this?”
She kept her smirk in place while she answered, but her eyes looked sad. “Six.”
Six rehabs. Dear Lord.
“How about you?” I asked Mary, who shook her head.
“Oh, no, dear, this is my first time in treatment. Come on,” she said. “We should get in line for meds.”
Aubrey wandered toward the bathroom. In my bedroom, I put on clean jeans and a T-shirt, gave my plastic pillow a fluff, and zipped up my duffel and set it in the wardrobe. Then I followed Mary out of the bedroom and into the wide, fluorescent-lit hallway. Dozens of doors just like mine ran along each side of it, amplifying the place’s resemblance to a cheap motel. We walked down the hall until we arrived at the desk I’d found earlier. There were maybe two dozen women milling around, most of them dressed, a few in pajamas and robes. Many of them held white plastic binders. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the one Mary had in her arms.
“It’s the welcome packet, and the schedule. You didn’t get one?”
I shook my head no. A heavy-set woman wearing khakis and a yellow short-sleeved shirt hunched behind the computer at the desk. An engraved plastic nametag announced that she was MARGO, and the words MEADOWCREST COTTAGE were sewn in red thread onto the right side of her chest. Her desk was a poor relation to the burnished oak desk out front, with a bouquet of flowers and a dish of hard candy. This desk was made of cheap pressboard, and, instead of blossoms or treats, there was a stack of papers with the title A LETTER FROM YOUR ADDICTION.
Dear Friend, I’ve come to visit once again. I love to see you suffer mentally, physically, spiritually, and socially. I want to have you restless so you can never relax. I want you jumpy and nervous and anxious. I want to make you agitated and irritable so everything and everybody makes you uncomfortable. I want you to be depressed and confused so that you can’t think clearly or positively. I want to make you hate everything and everybody—especially yourself. I want you to feel guilty and remorseful for the things you have done in the past that you’ll never be able to let go. I want to make you angry and hateful toward the world for the way it is and the way you are. I want you to feel sorry for yourself and blame everything but your addiction for the way things are. I want you to be deceitful and untrustworthy, and to manipulate and con as many people as possible. I want to make you fearful and paranoid for no reason at all and I want you to wake up during all hours of the night screaming for me. You know you can’t sleep without me; I’m even in your dreams.
“Excuse me,” I said, aiming a smile at Margo. “I’m hoping I can speak to someone about leaving.”
She looked up at me. “Where’s your tag?”
“Tag?”
“Tag,” she repeated, pointing to my chest in a way I might have found a little forward if I hadn’t been such a wreck. “When you’re admitted, they give you a nametag with your welcome binder and your schedule. You need to wear it at all times.”
“Right. But I’m not staying. I’m not supposed to—”
She lifted her hand. “Honey, I can’t even talk to you till you’ve got your tag on. Check your room.”
“Fine.” I went back to my room as more women drifted out into the hallway. Most of them appeared to be Aubrey’s age, but I saw a few thirty- and fortysomethings, and some who were even older. The young girls wore tight jeans, high heels, faces full of makeup. The women my age wore looser pants, less paint, and, inevitably, Dansko clogs. The official shoe of playgrounds, operating rooms, restaurant kitchens, and rehab. “Excuse me,” said a sad, frail, hunched-over woman who looked even older than Mary, as she used a walker to make her way toward the desk. I shuddered, thinking that if I were an eighty-year-old addict, I would hope my friends and my children would leave me alone to drink and drug in peace.
Sure enough, back in my cell of a room, on top of the desk, I found a beige plastic nametag clipped to a black lanyard with my name—ALLISON W.—typed on the front. Beside it was a binder and schedule. I spared my single bed a longing glance, wishing I could just go back to sleep, then looped the tag over my neck and proceeded back down the hall.