My Remedy (Open Door Love Story Book 3) (2 page)

He nods, holds his hands up in deference, and backs away. “I apologize. I was only trying to look out for you. You’re right, what you do and who you do are none of my business.”

“Damn straight!” I slam the door and turn the radio up louder than I can stand it.

I’ve got to drown out the noise in my head some way.

––––––––

I
turn the radio all the way down and park the pickup behind my aunt’s silver Ford Focus wagon in the driveway, then think better of it, back the truck up and move it to the curb in front of their sage-colored ranch house. My aunt and uncle are nice enough, but they never had kids of their own and I get the feeling I’m putting a crimp in their routine. But hey, I’m also working at their kennel in exchange for room and board and $200 a week – which I’m supposed to be saving for “school.” Whenever I figure out what I’m going to go to school for.

Because of the nature of their business, their house is located on a dead end that butts up to a good-sized piece of land. There’s a large fenced yard off to the side of the house, and an aluminum-sided barn behind that. All the way at the back of the property is the kennel. The office is attached to the rear of the house.

I get out of the truck and follow the path around the house, deciding that I have a better chance of bypassing any interrogation if I enter through the office door. It’s closer to my bedroom anyway.

The night is chilly on the cusp of warm. It really wants to be spring, and has only been dark for a couple hours even though it’s nearly ten. I left to go to an AA meeting at six, with zero intention of going anywhere near an actual meeting. I haven’t been gone that long, but on the off chance they ask where I’ve been, I decide I’m just going to say I was driving around. There’s plenty of farmland not too far from here and I have discovered that it is a nice place to drive when I’m in the mood. I probably should’ve done that instead of going to Ringo’s, in retrospect, but ... it is what it is.

The storm door is unlocked, but I have to use my key to get into the office. The dogs are pretty quiet and settled in for the night. I fed them just before I left and Aunt Nina would’ve turned the lights in the kennel off at eight.

The office is really just a mud room with a desk and some filing cabinets. We use one for files and keep any meds the boarders are on in the other locked cabinet. The floor is gray industrial linoleum because of frequent nervous accidents, the walls a high-gloss white so they’re easy to wipe down. I don’t turn on the overhead lights. They tend to buzz and flicker for a minute to warm up and I don’t really need to see anyhow. I’ve been here for two weeks and have barely gone anywhere besides the Safeway and the Lutheran church where my AA meetings are. I know my way around this house.

I head down the hallway, hurrying my steps past the den where I can hear both my Uncle Stan snoring and NCIS something-or-other on the TV, and into the bathroom. I fire up the shower and strip off my clothes. Deciding the skirt is a loss – mostly because I don’t like to have reminders of my less-than-desirable encounters – I put it in one of the plastic grocery bags that spring out at me from underneath the sink vanity every time I go to grab a new roll of toilet paper. My aunt insists that we’ll use them, and in this case I guess she’s right.

I chuck the bag in the trashcan next to the toilet, put the rest of my clothes in the hamper under the window, and step into the shower. I stand under the spray, letting it wash all of the loser boy off of me. The upside is I won’t have to down a Morning After pill, just in case, since my skirt and my thighs took the brunt of the mess. God, could there be any lamer silver lining?

The sob hits me out of nowhere. It’s like this a lot when I cry. I don’t know I’m going to be devastated until it comes on me in an instant. I hate to cry, and my body knows this. It’s as though it takes over for my brain and says, “Look, you need to do this whether you want to or not. Get your sad out.”

The problem is it’s hard for me to admit, even to myself, that I’m sad. Because I’m not just sad. I’m rejected, and angry, and confused, and in pain all the way down to the core of my being. That’s too much to handle. So my brain replies to my body, “knock it off, you big baby. Find someone else to put this sadness on. Izzy doesn’t want it.”

The crying stops as quickly as it began and I wash my hair, shampooing once, conditioning twice because my hair is long and stringy and always kind of a tangled mess. I use a body puff to scrub the last of loser boy off, paying extra attention to my girl parts, as though Suave coconut body wash can keep me from getting an STD.

I wrap a plush burgundy towel around my body and a thinner off-white one around my hair. (It’s totally a dog towel. I know Aunt Nina doesn’t really differentiate between dog things and human things – she keeps boxes of treats in the cupboard right next to the Oreos for fuck’s sake – but I do, and this is a dog towel.) I run the fan to suck the steam out of the bathroom.

My room is next door, so I quickly go from the bathroom to there, again without turning on the light. I shut the door behind me and walk to turn on the small lamp on the bedside table.

“What are you creeping around in the dark for?” my aunt says, hitting the switch on the wall behind me.

I jump and whirl around, pulling the towel tighter around my body. “Why the hell are you in here in the dark? Jesus! You scared the shit out of me.”

She doesn’t answer me, her thin lips pinched to a close. She stares at me intently with her big, light blue eyes just beginning to settle into their crow’s feet, and then holds out the at-home breathalyzer she purchased the day of my arrival. “Blow.”

“I don’t need to,” I say, getting right in her face. I open my mouth wide. “I haven’t been drinking and I didn’t even brush my teeth or use mouthwash. I had a pop at the meeting. Smell.”

Aunt Nina wafts her nose in front of my mouth and puts the hand holding the breathalyzer down at her side. “Meeting lets out eight, and it’s ten. Where have you been for two hours?”

I shrug. “Driving around. I was on my way home and decided to keep going out Farmington until I hit Hillsboro, but I ended up out by some alpaca farm in a place called Scholls?”

My aunt’s expression goes from suspicious to a little less suspicious. She’s not a harsh or mean or even overly paranoid woman. I don’t blame her for not trusting me. I’m sure I remind her of her sketchy best friend, my mother, who ditched her too, more than we’d both like to admit.

“Okay, yeah,” she says, her dirty blond hair bouncing on her shoulders as she nods her head. “I get turned around out there all of the time and I’ve lived here for a decade.” She smiles. “Sorry I surprised you.” Her grin grows wider. “The look on your face was pretty priceless.”

“I’m glad I’m here to entertain you.” I take a bow, clutching the towel on my head just before it unwinds and falls off. “Mind if I put some clothes on now?”

She chuckles. “Of course. Good night.”

I click the button on the cord of the bedside table lamp.

“Want the overhead off?” she asks, her hand hovering over the switch.

“Sure.”

My aunt flips the switch and turns back to me. “I’m glad you’re here, Izzy.”

Another sob threatens to choke its way out, but I manage to keep it down. “Me too.”

~

I
hear my Uncle Stan whistling as he walks down the hall. He stops when he gets to my room and knocks on the door twice.

“Up and at ’em, Iz.”

I don’t know who ’em are, but they need to sleep later. I drag my carcass out of bed, shuck off my neon cheetah print nightshirt, and get dressed in jeans and a red, long sleeve v-neck t-shirt. My crappy tennis shoes that I wear to feed and water the dogs are in the office down the hallway. I pull on mismatched socks, and finger comb my hair, yanking it into a ponytail with the same worn elastic I’ve been using since I got here. My dignity, I lose it often, but I sure can hold onto a rubberband.

The tasks I do at the kennel are really more like chores any 12-year-old can do. I let the dogs that are good to socialize out into the yard to relieve themselves and get some exercise. Then my uncle and I walk the rest individually around behind the barn. After everyone has had a bit of outside time, they all get brought back in and put into their pens. I give them all food and water – regular diet eaters go first and then special diet second. While they’re chowing down, I go pick up poop out in the recreation area. And, if there are any messes in the pens, I move the dog to a clean area and tidy up after them. I do this in the morning and in the evening. I don’t really interact with customers past putting a leash on their dog and taking it to its pen. Either my aunt or uncle take care of administering medications – mostly pills, but sometimes a dog will need an injection or IV fluids.

This morning is especially easy, since three of our boarders went home last night. We’ve only got six dogs to look after and four of them are good to go in the yard. I go around to the back door of the pens and let Duke, a Golden Retriever, Parsnip, a mutty Shepherd, Lola, a Black Lab, and Inti, a Husky mix, into the fenced-in path that leads to the yard. The dogs are eager to get to the gate, jumping and climbing all over each other in doggish enthusiasm. I open the gate and they’re all in, doing a lap of sprint and sniff. Dogs are so goofy.

With those guys settled, I get Loki, a Shih Tzu, and Peanut, a Chihuahua, leashed up and then call my uncle on the intercom. “Time for a walk,” I say.

“Be right over,” he replies. And he is literally right over. Using the intercom is kind of silly. I could probably holler at him from the doorway and he’d hear me, but who am I to question their methods?

My uncle Stan is my dad’s younger brother. They’re three years apart, but they might as well be twins. Stan Sundall is a broad, concrete block of a guy with a mustache always in need of a trim and an unkempt head of salt and pepper hair. He’s usually, generally, almost always in a good mood. He doesn’t expect much from people and is therefore rarely disappointed. Because he’s so much like my dad, I feel closer to him than I really am. I actually didn’t spend that much time with him growing up – a week in the summer or Thanksgiving every once in a while. With him and my dad both owning their own businesses, they don’t take a lot of time off for visits.

I hand him Peanut’s leash and we head to the area behind the barn. I walk one way around this worn circle path and he walks the other. When we get within ten or so feet of each other, we turn around and go the other way. The little dogs most often are the ones that get walked individually. They always think they’re super tough and get in too much trouble when the big dogs just want to run around and play.

“So,” Uncle Stan says, his voice loud enough I can hear him clearly across the circle, “Nina said she tried to get you to do a breath test last night because you got in sorta late. What’s up with that?”

I shrug. “I went driving after the meeting and got lost.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I’d appreciate it for my peace of mind and hers if you’d hit up a meeting this afternoon.”

I shrug again, trying to be nonchalant. My uncle totally knows something is up and is giving me the benefit of the doubt – something my dad did more often than he should have.

“Not a problem. I should probably go to more meetings in the daytime anyhow.”

We get close enough for my uncle to give me a stern look and then we change directions.

“Now, what I didn’t tell Nina, because she’s worried enough about you already, plus Ginger just gave her two weeks and we’re about to be short a trainer, is that I tried calling your cell phone just after nine and a bartender from Ringo’s answered it.”

I don’t wait for him to continue. “I swear to you, I wasn’t drinking.”

“But you were in a bar?”

I nod yes. And, damn, apparently I left my phone there because I don’t remember putting it back in my purse when I tore out of Ringo’s. Loki stops to poop, so Peanut stops too, and Uncle Stan and I stand across the circle from one another.

“Iz, do I need to start driving you to meetings?” he asks.

Yes, probably. “No, sir.”

Uncle Stan snorts. “Oh, it’s sir now is it? You think that’s going to allow you some leeway?”

I keep my mouth shut and stare down at Peanut’s shivering little body. He kicks at the ground behind him and barks sharply at Loki, ready for him to get a move-on.

“I don’t have a lot of rules, Iz. Don’t drink, don’t lie, do your work, and answer your damn phone when your aunt or I call. Got it?”

“Got it,” I say, already trying to figure out how to pick my phone up at the bar without getting caught.

––––––––

I
get cleaned up, and for the second time in two days lie to my aunt and uncle about going to a meeting. I need to get my phone back, and I need to go to the bar during the day to avoid the employees and the clientele that were there during my awesomeness last night.

Sure, I feel a little shitty about not going to the meeting, but the reality is they don’t do anything for me. Sitting in a circle with a bunch of other losers bitching about all of my inadequacies isn’t helpful. If it was, I wouldn’t have flunked out of rehab so many times. I mean, there I was locked up with the sole focus of not drinking and I still drank almost first thing when I got out.

Whether I drink or not is entirely up to me. Not my brain chemistry or some Higher Power. It’s up to me making a shitty decision or a good decision, and most of the time I make the shitty decision, but sometimes I don’t. This tells me that all I have to do is up my average of good decisions.

I get into the truck and crank the stereo. I don’t want to listen to all the nonsense I’ve got going on in my head. The instant I even think about making more good decisions, I really want to make a bad one.

My aunt comes around the side of the house and waves bye to me and then gives me a thumbs up.

My brain marinates in guilt. I pull away from the curb and head toward Ringo’s.

The parking lot has a lot fewer cars in it this morning, which softens me to Ringo’s a bit. A really gross dive bar has just as many customers at nine in the morning as they do at nine at night. This place is more your garden variety sports bar with a regular after-work crowd.