Small Blessings (24 page)

Iris had dressed that morning in purple jeans, a violently colored silk and metal sweater created by a fiber-artist acquaintance of hers, and hiking boots. Iris called them her shit-kickers, and she made a point of wearing them to faculty meetings and referring to them by name whenever possible. She liked to wear clothes that made a statement. The meek conformity of this place drove her insane. Imagine wearing a skirt and sweater with matching pictures of puppies on them! Or the same tweed jacket every day for years! But shit-kickers or no, standing before the door to the Book Store, Iris felt as scared—yes,
scared
—as Alice must have after she'd shrunk herself down in that hole of a Wonderland and come face-to-face with a cat. Without really deciding to do it, Iris looked around to see if the coast was clear, then stepped behind the giant boxwood that shrouded one side of the Book Store front entrance, pulled the flask out of her purse, and drained it. If her natural courage was failing her again, surely it was all right to resort (one last time) to some of the liquid variety. Iris was lifting the flask to make sure it was empty when she heard a car stop, a heavy car door slam, and footsteps coming up the walk. Who on earth abandoned a car in front of the Book Store when people were arriving for work? She had just enough time to get the flask back in her purse, but not enough to get out from behind the boxwood, before whoever it was reached the door and stood opposite her.

“Good morning, Iris,” Russell Jacobs said. “You have leaves in your hair.” He gestured toward the Book Store. “Are you going inside?”

A couple of drivers blew their horns from the street. Russell turned and waved as though the honks were a greeting. Agnes saw a construction machine creeping by on the road in the other direction. Traffic was blocked and backing up behind Russell's car, but still he stood there, looking at her, waiting for her to answer him. Iris had no choice but to come out from behind her bush. She lifted her head and fixed Russell with a haughty glare. “Yes,” she said. “I'm going in, thank you.” Russell held the door open, and Iris was forced to walk very close to him. Too late, she realized the haughty glare was a mistake. With her head up, even if she held her breath, he was certain to smell bourbon on her. But dammit, she was not going to slink past Russell Jacobs hiding behind her hair!

Russell surprised her by saying nothing. He simply walked behind her into the Book Store, nodded in passing, and then headed toward the coffee room. Unfortunately, that was also Rose's room. Iris wandered along in Russell's path, trying to appear aimlessly interested in things, touching books on tables without reading the titles, studiously examining a hideous pottery plate, hand-painted with pink roses. When she reached the archway into the coffee room, she paused before a display of self-help books. The title of one caught her eye:
In the Jailhouse Now: My Prison of Addiction.

Iris's conditioned response was to scoff at such books, but before her derision could gather much steam, she saw an image of herself, hiding behind a bush and slugging bourbon from a flask—this to work up the courage to face another human being and apologize for some equally ridiculous behavior of which she had only the haziest recollection, but which nevertheless made her burn with shame. The bourbon roiled in her stomach. A wave of nausea enveloped her. Oh my God, she was going to be sick, just like a first-year who can't hold her booze yet. Iris's stomach gurgled and pitched. She turned and raced for the bathroom, which was all the way on the other side of the Book Store.

*   *   *

Russell Jacobs was annoyed with himself for two reasons. The first was that he'd forgotten it was Friday and Rose would not be at work until after two this afternoon. The second was that he was here to see Rose in the first place. He'd had to deal with both of these annoyances when he'd gone into the back room, found she wasn't there, and realized he was astoundingly disappointed. And yes, a little desperate as well. Her not being there had forced him to own up to the fact that he really
needed
her to be there, needed a dose of her no-nonsense normalcy to counteract the disturbing ghost of Serafine Despré.

Russell looked around Rose's room gloomily while Sharon Something—a skinny little woman with dyed too-black hair, who'd been at the Book Store for almost as long as he'd been at the college—poured him a cup of coffee to go and rattled on about the weather. Why, Russell wondered, did people talk about the weather so much? He could see for himself, just by looking out the window, that—as Sharon Something was tediously explaining—it might appear to be a bright, sunny day
right now,
but there
were
a few clouds up there and the breeze was really quite
brisk
and that might mean a
shower
later on. If Rose were here, Russell decided—chatting on about cold fronts and thunderstorms—they'd have spent a few pleasant moments talking about books. Rose Callahan was one of the few people who actually
listened
when he talked about books and so forced him to think about what he was saying instead of just rattling on. The fact that thinking felt peculiar made Russell realize what an old fart he'd allowed himself to become. Perhaps this should have made him sad, but it didn't. Eight years in AA had taught him to accept those things about other people that he could not change, and he, like everybody, generally rose to the level of the company he kept. Old Fartdom did just fine with most of the people around here, but it was nonetheless pleasant to discover that it did not pass muster with Rose Callahan. Russell had enjoyed feeling parts of his brain that had been snoozing for years rouse themselves and come up with new ideas while in her company. Or at least dredge up something interesting he'd forgotten about for a long time.

“I wish I'd brought my umbrella. I just know I'll get wet walking to my car this afternoon after work,” Sharon Something said as she handed him his coffee.

“And then all your lovely wickedness would melt,” Russell replied automatically. Witticisms from
The Wizard of Oz
had long been a staple of his when dealing with college underlings.

Sharon Something went off into gales of cracked laughter. “Oh, Russ! You are such a
card
!” As she was a heavy smoker, the laughter soon degenerated into loud coughing. Over this unpleasant roaring, Russell heard an even louder commotion in the front room. A couple of shrieks were followed by the sound of pounding feet.

“What on earth…?” Sharon Something said, a veined hand flapping.

Together they rushed to the archway between the two rooms. “Oh my God, what has
that woman
done now?” Sharon Something said in a whisper, not even bothering to try to hide her disgust. And why should she? Jesus Christ Himself might have found the spectacle that greeted them difficult to accommodate gracefully. They got to the archway just in time to watch Iris Benson spew vomit on a shelf of glassware and then hurl herself through the bathroom door at the toilet, before which she then knelt and—as a student would have put it—puked her guts out.

“That woman is always doing
something,
” Sharon Something hissed, watching Iris's shoulders and back spasm violently. “And I, for one, am not cleaning that mess up! I don't care
what
Mr. Pitts says!”

“My, my,” Russell said, unable to keep himself from relishing the sweet victory of Iris Benson's complete humiliation. She had reeked of bourbon as she'd sailed past him. After this, she would never again dare make fun of him in faculty meetings. Forever and ever and
ever
she would look at him and know that he was there the day she got drunk at nine thirty in the morning and vomited all over the Book Store.

Iris finished throwing up and slumped over the toilet in full view of the few customers and staff. No one moved.

For eight years Russell had dutifully sat in AA meetings three times a week, listening to alcoholics talk about how humiliating it had been when they'd hit bottom. He himself had had rather a decorous bottom. Just before Christmas, eight years ago this December, good old Dean Patrick had called him in and announced it was obvious to him and to everyone else that he, Russell, had a problem with booze, and he was to get help immediately. That was it. No threats. No discussion. How Dean Patrick—not to mention everyone else—had known about his private late-night binges and the bottle in his desk, Russell had no idea. Before that conversation, Russell had always thought his drinking was under complete control, since it hadn't shown all that much—there had only been an occasional public overindulgence, and he had maybe missed a class or two—but looking into Dean Patrick's eyes, Russell had faced the dark truth: He had turned his life over to alcohol, and he would need help to get it back. Dean Patrick was that kind of authoritative presence. He was the last of the college's old-style, in-loco-parentis administrators so out of fashion these days. He had not been afraid to guide his students and faculty with a firm hand—which, in Russell's opinion, was something everyone, including himself, needed occasionally.

The next day had been the start of the college month-long winter holidays. Russell had checked himself (only slightly hungover) into that treatment center far, far away in New Orleans, delivering himself into the arms of abstinence and Serafine Despré.

Unlike Serafine, however, Russell hadn't had a drink since and had gone to AA religiously, at least three times a week. He'd always held himself slightly aloof at the meetings, as though they were more a lucky charm to ward off demon drink than a gathering where he might learn something. And Russell had always gone to closed meetings—ones with no visitors allowed—so that no one outside the program would know he was an alcoholic.

Now, however, staring at Iris and running through his derisive litany of all things connected with her, it occurred to Russell that he was
watching
another human hit bottom. With this realization came a rush of intense feeling like an epiphany, and he understood clearly for the first time that all alcoholics—yes,
all alcoholics
—suffered from the same disease; that he, but for fortune and Dean Patrick, could very well be hugging that toilet bowl instead of Iris; that his alcoholism was only in remission, which was not to be confused with being cured; and that if he didn't somehow align himself with Iris Benson
right now
and help her out of this humiliating mess then he, Russell Jacobs—especially now that he appeared to be standing on the brink of personal chaos—would drink again.

“Can't you see the woman is sick!” he said in a loud voice, startling everyone in the Book Store. People turned to stare at him with their mouths hanging open, looking dumb as sheep. Russell strode across the room toward the bathroom, all eyes following him. Ted Pitts had appeared at the door of his office and was staring at him as fatuously as the rest. “Ted,” Russell called out, “can someone get us a nice big trash bag?”

As if by magic, one was produced and held out to him. Russell took the bag, swooped up a linen napkin with the college crest on it, picked up the soiled glassware from the display shelf, and dropped it and the napkin into the trash bag.

“Now,” he said briskly, “may I have some kind of cleaner, please?”

This, too, was produced. Russell snatched up another crested napkin, squirted the soiled glass shelves, and wiped up the mess as best he could. He made rather a smeary job of it, not being much of a housekeeper, but at least most of the vomit was gone. He dropped the napkin into the trash bag along with the glasses, tied the neck of the bag, handed it to the astonished woman at the cash register, and said, “Put everything in here on my bill, please.” Then he turned to Iris.

She was a horrible pale green color, and there was a sheen of sweat on her face. She looked up at Russell with the eyes of a beaten dog. “Help me,” she said. And then, being Iris Benson and melodramatic to the core, she fainted.

*   *   *

The trouble was that in Tom's old life there had only been two legitimate ways to use up time—working and being with Marjory. Doing something for pleasure, except for his monthly poker game at Russell's, hadn't been an option for so long that Tom really had only a vague idea of what his pleasures were. He'd lost touch with the concept sometime early in graduate school, when he'd abdicated it willingly as one of the temporary sacrifices necessary to get a Ph.D.; then he'd married Marjory, and the next twenty years had been a blur of routine and anxiety. Not that Marjory—may God rest her sad, sad, soul—hadn't
tried
. He could see her looking up at him from her rocking chair—hands clasped so tightly around the arms that her thin fingers were bone white—and saying, “Go
on,
dear. Just because I'm not feeling quite up to snuff doesn't mean you can't go and enjoy yourself.” She'd meant it, too, even though she'd known that if he threw caution to the wind and whooped it up at some colleague's party by himself, the price would be weeks and weeks of unreasoning fear and paranoia for her. What Marjory hadn't grasped, had probably never even thought of, was that as long as he lived with her, her price was his price, and an evening of fun simply wasn't worth it.

Breakfast was over. Agnes was upstairs with Henry, thumping around in his room, having announced that Tom was perfectly free to go out, but she would need him here from a quarter till twelve until about two fifteen as she was going to be out for lunch.

This, in itself, seemed as strange to Tom as a woolly mammoth appearing in the front yard. Agnes hadn't done anything social in a long, long time. He'd been too stunned even to ask her where she was going. He'd wondered briefly if he should feel guilty about not inviting Henry along this morning. But then it seemed to him that Henry was fine, and besides he might as well admit, since as Chaucer tells us, “Thou art a votary to fond desire,” that he wanted Rose Callahan to himself for an hour, without Henry competing for her attention. Which seemed desperately immature of him, but there it was.