The Believing Game (12 page)

“I couldn't even tell you what pissed me off. I remember the kid's face before.” He stopped for a second. “And I remember it after.” While Addison talked, I made sure not to look away from him. He kept his eyes on the fire. He said, “I guess the damage I did — the serious head injury — that was the curb. The kid went down. I remember kicking him. You know, in the ribs. He curled up and for some reason, that made me mad, so I bent down and grabbed him by the hair.” It seemed like it had been ten minutes since anyone in the room had breathed. Addison kept going. “I slammed his face into the curb. His teeth shattered. I just kept banging. Chuckie
was wasted too. So it took him a while to get to me. You know, to pull me off. By that time …” His voice faded and he finally tore his eyes away from the fireplace. Addison looked around at all of us. “I sobered up in the holding cell, I guess.”

“One of the twelve steps involves making amends for our mistakes,” Joshua explained to us. Then he asked Addison, “Could you do that with this boy that you hurt?” It was another question Joshua knew the answer to. I knew it too and it hurt to hear.

Addison said, “I couldn't. Not fully. I wrote a letter to his parents. He goes to a special school now. That's what I did to him. My dad — he's probably not like your dads —” Addison looked at Sophie and me. “But he's got his own kind of pull around our town. I know a lot of people in the community stepped up and wrote letters to the judge on my behalf. You know — I was such a great kid. This kind of episode was completely out of character. Bullshit like that. They did it for my dad. So I ended up serving some time in this halfway house. Summertime, nothing major. And then they gave me two hundred hours of community service.”

“What else, Addison?” Joshua asked. I watched my own fists clench. What more could there be?

Addison's head swiveled to Joshua. For the first time, he seemed surprised by the question.

“What other burdens are you carrying? Who else do you feel responsible for?”

I shut my eyes and prayed he didn't name me. But instead, Addison said, “Chuckie,” in a strangled way that made it seem like he was trying desperately not to cry. His voice strengthened as he explained. “Maybe seeing what happened that night did it. My brother lost it. He just … I had to pull
it together, right? That was basically court ordered. But the more I got myself together, the more Chuckie fell apart.”

“Addison, you're so hard on yourself,” Sophie said. I sent her a silent thanks. If I had said it, Joshua would have scolded me for interrupting. He didn't even motion her to stop, though, when she added, “Chuckie's choices are his. You can't take those on too.”

We all nodded sagely, as if any of us knew what the hell we were talking about. He said, “It's not that so much. My parents pulled whatever kind of strings they could so that I avoided serious jail time. You know, people thought of us as a good family. Everyone saw what happened as a fluke thing. When your dad's a union guy and your mom's a nurse and your family sits in the first few rows at church every Sunday, people just figure you messed up. Some kids do that. And then everyone steps in to help them straighten out. But when Chuckie” — he searched for the word — “disintegrated, that made two of us. Two fuckups in one family. That's no fluke, right? That's what people think. So no one stepped in for Chuckie. And he was two years late. So Chuckie did time. Like real time. When he came home — I don't know what happened to him in there. But he wouldn't have landed there if I hadn't started falling first.”

When Addison stopped talking, he searched out Joshua. He looked at him as if to say,
Enough
. Joshua nodded and took over the talking. “Whenever we fall, we take down people with us. Sometimes it's the people we love most. Sometimes we don't even know who we've hurt along the way. Addison couldn't have predicted what his actions would cost his family.”

I couldn't stop myself. “Yeah, but that's discounting a major part of Addison's life. It's not looking at why he was
drinking or doing drugs in the first place.” I looked to Addison. “You even said it — Chuckie was too loaded that night to break up the fight right away. Don't you ever ask yourself why you were both so set on getting out of your heads like that?” In the corner, Wes nodded to himself, and that bolstered me a little.

“Maybe it's simplistic to blame all of that on someone's family, but your family couldn't have been perfect, or you and Chuckie wouldn't have been chugging whole bottles of vodka at a high school party. You wouldn't have developed a drug habit or even known how to hurt someone like that.”

“Elizabeth, that's too easy. Addison doesn't need you to let him off the hook.” Joshua didn't sound mad. More like weary. He was tired of me. “When we blame our mistakes on our families, we give away our power. That's the cowardly route.”

Addison nodded. “It's not like I was abused or unloved or anything. Most people might not like admitting it, but sometimes people get fucked up because they enjoy the feeling of being fucked up.” I'd spent hours leaning against Addison and listening to him talk about his dad's affairs, the coldness that had settled over his house after his mom discovered the cheating. But that wasn't the story Addison and Joshua had decided to tell that night. So I kept my mouth shut.

Jared spoke up then. “But genetics play a part in drug use, right?” He cleared his throat. “I don't think my parents were particularly shocked when I tested positive for coke.”

Hannah shot him a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”

“For cocaine, Hannah. I failed a drug test.”

He sounded angry and Hannah looked stricken and Joshua stepped in then, saying, “Okay, now, let's show each
other patience,” in his low, calm voice. He sat up and leaned toward Jared. “Did your parents also struggle with drugs?”

“Yeah.” At first, I thought that's all Jared would say. But he explained, “I wouldn't say
struggled
. My dad went to law school in the eighties. When my test came back, the school freaked out and my mom got all weepy, but he didn't even seem to consider it a big deal.”

“Is he still using?” Joshua asked matter-of-factly.

“I don't think so. They sat me down and gave me the talk. The disappointment talk.” Nods around the room. We'd all heard the disappointment lecture. “But my dad — it seemed like he was going through the motions. It was more about figuring out how to keep it off my transcript. I just wondered. He fell into it and then twenty-five years later, I did too. What does that mean?”

“Was it hard to stop using?” Sophie asked him. “You don't talk about it like you miss it.”

“Yeah, no.” He looked apologetically at Addison. “I'm not working the twelve steps. I go to the meetings because that's what the treatment team assigned, but the rhetoric just doesn't feel useful to me. I got caught and sent away and so I stopped.”

“Why do you think they sent you to McCracken Hill, then?” Joshua wasn't challenging, just asking.

“I think they just wanted someone else to deal with it.”

“Maybe your father worried about his own recovery?” Addison asked. I could almost see the wheels turning in his head, thinking about him and Chuckie needing to split up to get better.

“I just don't know that we're wired like that. That's why I asked about genetics,” Jared said. “My dad never went to rehab. He must have just stopped.”

“You believe he stopped,” Joshua corrected.

“Listen, my dad does not do coke.” Jared seemed embarrassed to hear his voice rise. He said, “Sorry. But maybe Addison and Chuckie have some genetic disposition that I lucked out and don't have. This just isn't that hard for me.”

“Is anything hard for you?” Joshua asked. I waited for Jared to lash out. It was the kind of Joshua question that seemed designed to infuriate.

But Jared stayed calm. He tipped his head to the side. “Yes.” I waited for the rest, for him to explain. We all waited.

Jared didn't say anything else. He stretched his arms and folded them behind his head. “Yes.” He looked at Joshua. “When did you get clean?”

Joshua smiled. “Brother” — he paused and smiled even more widely — “thank you for asking me for my story. But this weekend is our time to learn your stories. We have plenty of time to rehash my old life.” Joshua looked down at my hand and petted it. It seemed like out of all the people crowded into the room, he was only talking to me. “I'm an old man, so it's an old life. Remnants from a long time ago. Right, Elizabeth?” He laid his hand fully over my own. It rested heavily there, like his voice in the room. “Let's talk about those remnants of our old lives. Those scraps of pain. Maybe you didn't pack them in your knapsacks, but they're here with you. You all know what I'm talking about. There is a darkness following each one of you. Something has interfered with your radiance. It's standing in the way of your life. So we need to take it down.”

My eyelids felt heavy. I was relieved we were sitting down because my knees shook a little. I got the idea that if I'd stood, they'd be too weak to hold me up. Joshua lifted his hand off mine and that helped me feel less stifled.

“Elizabeth is very sensitive to this kind of episode.” I felt eyes turn to me. The staring smothered me. “What do you need to unpack, Elizabeth?” And then, maybe because I didn't answer right away, “Greer?”

My gut instinct told me to keep my mouth shut. I hadn't told anyone in the room besides Joshua what had happened. Maybe I had a valid reason for that. And it would hurt at least Addison and Sophie that I'd confided something like that to Joshua before either of them.

There was something in the room, though. Pressing me forward. So I told the story as quickly as possible. “My terror sometimes stands in my way. When I was ten, my cousin Parker held our family hostage on Thanksgiving. He accused my uncle of abusing him. He had a gun.” No one in the room spoke. I filled the silence. “We all were fine. It's not like he shot anyone. So no one really talked about it. But I was little and it really frightened me. I think it probably changed how I see some things.”

I sat still on the sofa, next to Joshua. I bit my lip and willed my eyes not to slide toward Addison. He'd have to decide whether or not to be angry that I'd hid something so major from him. But Addison didn't really hesitate. He moved from his seat to the floor and wrapped his arm around my leg. “Is this okay?” Addison looked up and then down to where he'd shackled my ankle in his grip.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Are you okay?” Meaning:
Does knowing that hurt you?

“I'm good. You feel lighter, I bet, with that off your chest. Right?”

“Almost weightless.” I let myself smile at him before looking up at Sophie, but she didn't actually seem angry at all. She held her hand up, making an L shape with her thumb
and index finger. Her pinkie stuck out too. Sign language for
I love you
.

“Was it sexual abuse?” Hannah spoke in a rush.

“What?” And then because my voice came out sounding sharper than I'd meant it, I asked more carefully, “What do you mean?”

Hannah fidgeted in her seat. “You said your cousin accused your uncle of abuse. I just wondered what kind. Sorry.” She looked like she wanted to sink into the couch cushions. “It doesn't matter.”

Sophie and I exchanged looks. It seemed like maybe we could guess at the secret standing in Hannah's way. “It matters. I mean, what matters most is that my cousin Parker was a child and he felt that hurt and helpless, right? He was physically abused. I don't think it was sexual.”

“What happened to him? Afterward?” Wes asked.

“I don't know.” It sounded awful now. Until McCracken Hill, I'd never thought about how my family pretty much turned away from Parker. It's not like my parents took Uncle Brady's side. But they didn't stand up for Parker either. And I never questioned that. “He went away to a bunch of different schools.”

“Like McCracken Hill?” Jared asked, sort of half-smiling.

“A little like that, I guess. Maybe more intense.”

“What does your uncle do for a living, Elizabeth?” Joshua asked.

The question startled me. “He's a clerk. He works at a law firm.”

“He's not a lawyer?”

“No. There's some tension about that. My dad's always been more successful.”

“Places like McCracken Hill are expensive.”

“I believe we've covered that topic already,” Addison said wryly.

Joshua studied me. I was beginning to see where this was headed. “I don't think my uncle Brady makes enough money to send a kid to that kind of school. Not for years anyway.”

“So, then, what do you think happened?” Joshua asked, but I still didn't connect all the dots. “I think if you looked into your father's bank account, you'd see years of tuition checks.” As soon as he said it, I knew it was true. I remembered my dad driving me up the hill to school that morning, how he'd even gotten teary when Ms. Crane searched through my stuff. I wondered if he'd been the one to deliver Parker to his new school. I'd figured I had put him through something he'd never pictured. But maybe my dad was an expert in sending away Cannon-family bad seeds.

“Elizabeth?” Joshua's voice broke through. “Where are you in this?”

“I'm here. I'm dealing.” Addison's grasp tightened around my leg.

“Let us in. What are you dealing with?”

“I feel like Parker. Like we're just problems that my dad paid someone to take off his hands.” I saw nods around the room. “But I'm almost an adult, you know. I'm sixteen. McCracken might suck sometimes, but I met you all. Parker was a little kid. How do you just send a little kid away?”