She smiles sadly. “Sometimes in the middle of the day, even in the middle of a busy shift, it’ll hit me that he’s really gone and I have to go in back and take a couple of minutes no matter who’s waiting for me to bring their food to the table or refill their coffee cup. It’s the same kind of grief I felt after my brother Warren got killed in Vietnam. I’ll be okay for a while. Then it clobbers you like a wave you didn’t see coming. Crashes into you and pulls you under so that, for a few seconds, you can’t breathe.”
I nod. Say nothing.
“Oh, Corby, I just loved that little guy. Maisie’s just as precious, but Niko reminded me so much of you.”
May 8, 2017
“I used to use alcohol to drown out my problems,” the woman says. “Then it finally dawned on me that my problems were better swimmers than I was.” A few people chuckle. Others nod. She tells us it had happened little by little. First, she lost the cosmetics company she and her husband had started. Then she lost the husband, followed by her friends, her dignity, her freedom. “I got a six-month sentence for writing bad checks and three ‘failures to appear’ because I couldn’t manage to sober up when it was time to go before the judge. I was a hot mess, believe me.”
Her hard-luck story and her appearance don’t match up. She’s stylish, professionally dressed, midforties, maybe. Those look like expensive shoes she’s wearing. I noticed a Benz convertible in the parking lot on the way in and figure it might be hers. I’d never have pegged her for being a lush with a prison record.
“I had tried AA before and was convinced it just didn’t work for me.But the only reason it didn’t was because I wanted to keep drinking. It’s amazing how we lie to everyone including ourselves. Right? But I hadn’t hit bottom yet. That happened while I was in prison when I got this letter notifying me that my parental rights were being revoked.”
I lean forward, jolted by what she’s just said. Can they do that? And who is “they”? Her ex? The court? DCF?
“But after I lost my girls, I got serious about my sobriety. I wasmotivated, okay? It took me five years, but I got them back. One’s a high school sophomore now and the other’s in her first year of college. I’ve got a good job in real estate, own my own condo, and lease a car that’s fun to drive. I had lost all these things because of my obsession with booze. It’s like they say. When you’re an active alcoholic, you give up everything for one thing. But when you commit to sobriety, you give up one thing for everything. Okay, thanks for listening. I’ll share the time.”
Nice story, but her kids didn’t die because of her. Niko will never get to kindergarten, let alone high school or college. I look at the door, wondering whether I can get up and leave without much notice.
“Thanks, Priscilla,” the stocky guy at the front table says. “Who else?” Three or four hands go up, but he looks past them and seems to be eyeballing me. “What about you?” he says.
“Me?” I can feel my face flush. My arrest was front-page news the week before and I don’t want anyone connecting the dots. “No thanks. I’ll just listen.”
“All right. Want to tell us your name at least?” I shake my head. “Fair enough. Troy, you had your hand up. Why don’t you go?”
Troy tells a grim story about witnessing a lot of “grisly shit” while fighting in the war in Afghanistan. “I started shooting heroin while I was there,” he says. “And I was addicted to alcohol, too, by the time I came home. I didn’t think this back then, but now I realize I was drinking and doing smack to treat my PTSD.”
What he’s saying makes me think of Luke Lebeau, this kid in high school who sat in front of me in homeroom. He joined the army rightafter graduation, fought in Iraq, and lost his shit. Walked around town all day talking to himself.
“Me and a buddy bought a bar together, but we were both using and ignoring the bills that kept piling up. It failed after about a year. Then my girlfriend kicked me to the curb. My grandmother paid for my ninety-day rehab in New Mexico and let me live with her after I got discharged. The deal was, I’d be a caregiver for her husband, my stepgrandpa, who had this disease called Lewy body dementia. I liked the guy and took pretty good care of him, but Gram fired my ass when she realized I was stealing her jewelry and pawning it to pay for my bad habits. She didn’t press charges like my dad wanted her to, but my whole family cut me off.
“I went down fast after that. Slept in a tent by the river when the weather was decent, sometimes by myself and sometimes with women I’d pick up in dive bars or at the soup kitchen. When it rained, I’d find an unlocked car and sleep in that. In winter, I’d make the rounds at the shelters. The best ones would let you take a shower, give you breakfast in the morning. But those places fill up fast, so I’d usually end up at the ones where all you got was heat and a mat on the floor.
“Anyway, one day while I was waiting in line for the soup kitchen to open, I started puking up blood. Collapsed and woke up in the ER. When they found out I’d been in the army, they shipped me downstate to the VA hospital. One of the docs there gave it to me straight. Said if I didn’t stop pouring poison down my throat and sticking it in my arm, I was going to die from an OD or cirrhosis or maybe a gastric hemorrhage. Or maybe I’d end up with a wet brain, drooling and babbling in some locked ward somewhere. So what do I do as soon as I get out of there? Hitchhiked back home and panhandled until I had scrounged enough money to buy myself a speedball and a quart of bottom-shelf bourbon. The next day, sick as a dog, I wandered into a meeting in some church basement—not to get saved but because I knew they’d have coffee and cookies, maybe even doughnuts. Anyways, that was the day, six years ago now, when the miracle happened. I haven’t had a drink since. I’m not patting myself onthe back, though. It wasn’t me who got me sober. It was my higher power coming to me through all of you.”
Well, good for him that he’s stayed sober, and if he wants to believe in miracles, why not? But if I keep coming to these meetings, which I’ve promised Emily, my mom, and my attorney I’ll do, they better not try to shove religion down my throat. I want to get sober, not “saved” by some imaginary god that’s supposedly pulling the puppet strings. He sure as hell hasn’t handedmeany miracles.
This is my second meeting and, just like the first, when time is up, everyone stands, gets in a circle, and takes hold of one another’s hands. Someone says, “Who keeps us sober?” and everyone starts reciting the Lord’s Prayer. I do the hand-holding thing but, for the second day in a row, I keep my mouth shut. I can’t pray to something I don’t believe in.
Outside again, while I wait for my mother to pick me up, I watch a bunch of the others, laughing and lighting up like it’s a cocktail party without the cocktails. I’m right about who’s driving the Mercedes. She taps the brake as she sidles up beside me. “Keep coming,” she says. “It gets easier.” I smile at that small, simple act of kindness.
A guy from the meeting walks toward me. Scraggly beard and bushy eyebrows, early sixties maybe. Plaid flannel shirt, Mets ball cap. “I recognize who you are from the TV,” he says.
I tense up, thinking I’m about to be called a baby killer or something.
“Here,” he says. “In case you want to talk.” He hands me a Taco Bell napkin with his name, Dale Tebbins, and his number written diagonally across it. I say thanks, fold it, and shove it into a back pocket of my jeans. He starts to walk away, then turns around and comes back. “Something similar happened to me, more or less, so I might get the hell you’re probably going through more than most,” he says. “I was driving drunk with my niece in the back seat. Ran a red light and got T-boned by a Hummer. I walked away without a scratch, but the accident brain-damaged Kayla. She was eight then. Died five years later.”
I stand there, unable to think of anything to say.
“Day at a time, my friend. You can always drink tomorrow if you need to. Just don’t drink today. Well, I better get going. Give me a call if you need to.” I watch him walk down a row of cars and climb into a blue pickup truck. He waves as he drives out of the parking lot. I wave back.
During my scheduled visit with Maisie, Emily is true to her word. She doesn’t leave the house, but she doesn’t hover over us either. Maisie is subdued but seems okay. I make her half of a grilled cheese for lunch, her favorite, and cut up some carrot sticks. Get her to grin a little when I balance one of the sticks above my top lip and say it’s my orange mustache. After lunch, we cuddle up on the sofa and watch TV:Peppa Pig, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. When it’s nap time, I tell her to pick out a story. She chooses not one but two: her own favorite,The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and her brother’s,Where’s Spot?The door to the twins’ room is still closed, so at nap time I figure the crib is still off-limits. I put Maisie in the middle of Emily’s and my bed, kiss her, and tell her I love her.
As I’m leaving the room, she says, “Niko?” I turn back and face her, at a loss for words. There’s no way to explain death to a little girl who’s two. Instead, I hurry into the living room, grab that framed picture of the two of them, then go back and show her. “Niko,” she says. She touches his face behind the glass and smiles. That’s when I lose it.
That thing my mother said about grief? How it’s like a wave that clobbers you so that you go under and can’t catch your breath? That’s how it felt when Maisie touched her brother’s photograph. Emily and I had agreed that my daily visits would end when Maisie went down for her afternoon nap. I need to compose myself before Emily sees me crying. That woman at the AA meeting had had her parental rights taken away. If I want to stay in my daughter’s life, I need these visits to go smoothly. I grab my jacket, go outside, and sit on the porch step to wait for Mom to pick me up.
Emily opens the door. “It’s raining,” she says. “Why don’t you wait inside?”
