The Whole Lie (27 page)

“Help you, sport?”

I nearly laughed when the barkeep said it—she was short, with a fireplug-style gymnast body and black hair pulled straight back, and I wondered how much English she spoke. Had she picked up “help you, sport” during a training session? Had she decided it was the customary way for bartenders to greet customers?

“Can you do me a favor?” I said. “Can you fill a highball glass with crushed ice?”

“Glass of ice only?”

“For now.”

“Can do, sport.” She'd already nailed the nonexpression that cops and good bartenders keep glued to their phiz. In six seconds, I had exactly what I'd asked for on a thick coaster.

I took a look. It was legit crushed ice: the bartender, who knew her trade even if she didn't know much English, had sandwiched cubes between a pair of bar towels, then used something heavy to splinter them.

Good for her. If you're going to do something, do it right.

I pulled my wallet, set three twenties on the bar.

I picked up a shard or two of ice and popped them in my mouth while scanning the bar shelves.

There it was.

Wild Turkey. Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. One-oh-one proof, with that ugly-but-proud bird strutting across its label.

I stared. I imagined. I remembered.

There's a phenomenon in racing, skiing, any sport really: target fixation. The idea is that your body goes where your eyes go, whether you like it or not. When one car spins out, you'll see another, maybe more than one, follow him in and spin out in the same spot, piling up like cordwood. That's because the second driver comes along, spots the first, and comes down with a case of target fixation.

The cure is to make sure you're always looking where you want to go. Your hands take care of the rest.

Hand wrapped around my cooling glass, I looked at the wall of liquor. Zoomed in on the bourbon again.

What you do, you slow-pour the Wild Turkey over the crushed ice. Not all at once—you pause a couple times to listen. You can hear the whiskey melting the ice shards, the shards bouncing off one another. If you do it right, it's almost a jingle. It's almost a sweet little song.

My breathing had slowed. Everything in this room was clear and distinct and perfect. Barkeep wiping glasses six feet away. Tiny waterfall. Harp music from invisible speakers. Couple in the corner. Crisp twenties on the bar, new ones, you could slice a finger on them.

The Austin, Nicholls Distilling Company. Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. Established 1855.

You stop pouring a finger's-width from the top of the glass. The room-temperature bourbon melts the ice shards fast. As they melt, the level rises. Water is the only element whose density decreases when it's frozen. Thus ice floats. Thus life is possible.

Thus Wild Turkey. Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey.

Target fixation. My eyes: bourbon-locked. My hand: wrapping the glass.

I did not think about Savannah Kane, her neck snapped in a dirt lot amidst construction gear.

I did not think about Sophie, alone at home, crying on a sofa in bare feet.

I did not think about Davey, coyote-gashed, panting in a hospital cage, waiting to die or live.

I did not think about Dale, the easygoing one, hunched into himself for warmth in my truck, taking whatever he was dealt.

I did not think about Charlene, giving me more chances than I deserved, looking like a chump every time.

More than anything else, I did not think about her.

My hand on the glass grew cold.

In any heat-transfer scenario, cold flows to heat, rather than vice versa. Drop an ice cube in a hot skillet. You think the skillet melts the cube. And it does. First, though, the ice reduces the skillet's temperature. It's simple science, useful when considering the thermal properties of engines, transmissions, and other drivetrain components.

So my hand was cooling.

Shaking, too.

I tried to still it.

I couldn't.

Now the glass was thumping the cardboard coaster beneath. Quickly, regularly, like a dog leg-scratching itself.
Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

The bartender couldn't help but stare.

The couple in the booth craned their necks.

Stubbornness kept me from pulling my hand from the glass.

The hand seemed to belong to somebody else. I watched it like a TV show.
Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

“Everything okay, sport?”

“I'm…”
Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

“Maybe you not need no more to drink this day, sport.”

“I'm…”
Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

I lifted the hand to stop the thumping. The glass stayed with it. The couple stared. Two busboys had materialized from the kitchen. They raised eyebrows at the barkeep.

I flicked my wrist. Heard the glass drop to the bar, but by then I was three steps toward the door.

Twenty seconds later I was in the truck. The interior had gone cold, so it looked like I'd lied to Dale, same way I'd lied to everybody else. I unlatched the cat carrier, held him to me.

“What are we going to do, Dale?” I said over and over to the cat in my lap, my face in his fur. “What are we going to do?”

But I knew.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“Need to leave you again,” I said to Dale ten minutes later. “It'll be an hour. Sorry, brother.”

Dale chirped and rolled against the ball cap I'd shoved in his carrier so he'd have something that smelled like me.

What a goddamn trouper.

Next to the carrier: my booklet listing every meeting in this half of the state.

I sighed, eyeballed the storefront squeezed between a nail salon and a travel agency that ran people to and from Rio. Downtown Framingham. Two blocks south of Floriano's home, five minutes west of the parking garage where Vernon had died.

The narrow store sold AA books, signs, sayings, bumper stickers. Also
JESUS SAVES
signs, sayings, bumper stickers. There used to be meetings here every day, but according to my booklet this was the only one left. I wasn't surprised. Five years ago, when I'd last been here, this meeting had been at death's door.

Every group, every meeting is different. They have life cycles: They're formed, maybe they swell, maybe they raise the roof for a few years or a few decades. Then key players die out, and they take the meeting—its heyday, anyway—with them.

But every meeting gives somebody something they need. I was proof, wasn't I? Like this meeting or not, here I was. And here it was.

I reminded myself of all this as I banged on the door. In this neighborhood, they had to lock it.

A hunchback named Lenny turned, squinted, rose, let me in. “Conway!” He whispered it: I was five minutes late, and a chairwoman I didn't recognize was introducing her first speaker.

I sat in back and counted heads. Eleven drunks, squeezed in among the racks of Big Books and step books and testimonials and Bibles and those little silver fish people stick to the trunks of their cars.

I knew six of the drunks just from the backs of their heads.

Tried to listen to the speakers, but my head went where it went. I knew what I was here for. Shame had brought me. Humility would save me.

Maybe.

When the last speaker wrapped, Lenny hopped up with a clear plastic box in his hand. “Chip time!” he said, and I knew it was his big moment, the high point of his week. At the front of the room, he set the box on the counter next to an old-fashioned cash register. Rubbed his hands, peered inside.

The way it works: Some AA groups, not all, pass out coins or chips marking sobriety anniversaries. The chips are motivation for newbies. I never cared for that kind of thing myself. But everybody's different, and you should see the look on some people's faces when they earn their one-year chip.

“One year!” Lenny said, looking around. He held high the bronze-colored disc. “One year, going once … twice…”

No takers.

He went through the routine again for the six-month chip. A very dark woman with high cheekbones rose and shuffled forward. The other eleven of us clapped and whistled, and the way she bit back a grin as she sat damn near made me smile. Like I said, the looks on some people's faces.

“A month?” Lenny said, raising a silver chip like an auctioneer. “One month of one-day-at-a-time sobriety?”

No takers.

Lenny looked a little blue, resigned to handing out just one chip at this meeting. But he went through the motions, holding up a turquoise disc. “Last one,” he said without putting much into it, “most important one. Twenty-nine days, twenty-four hours, or a sincere desire to quit drinking. Anybody?”

I tried to push out of my chair. Couldn't do it at first.

“Anybody?” Lenny said.

I weighed sixteen tons.

“Going once … twice…”

I pushed off again, making it to my feet this time.

My chair scraped. My heart thundered.

In Framingham—hell, in most of the state—all the hardcore AA types knew about the Barnburners. They knew about the Meeting After the Meeting.

They knew about me.

People turned at the sound of my scraping chair.

People gasped.

My boots were cinder blocks. My legs were pudding. Lenny stood a thousand yards away.

I went to him.

Somebody whispered, “Barnburner.” Somebody else said my name. Somebody else choked on a sob.

Lenny: poleaxed, his mouth an O. I put my hand out. He just stood there. I had to reach for his hand. I had to gently pull the chip from it.

I turned.

I faced them all.

“I'm Conway,” I said. “I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict.”

They were supposed to say hi, but they were stunned. Nobody said a thing.

I wanted to say more, but my lower lip wouldn't let me. I tried once. Then again. Then I gave up, began walking back to my chair. It was time to close with the Lord's Prayer.

I took a step, then another. Then my legs mutinied and I couldn't go farther. I sank to one knee. One hand clutched my new chip. The other I set over my eyes like a man driving into the sun. I stared at the floor.

I wept.

“Bring it in here,” Lenny said.

Still staring at the floor, I listened to more chair scrapes and wondered what was going on.

Then they touched me.

They laid hands on me.

Every one of them. Eleven hands. On my head, back, shoulders, arms. Someone gripped the hand I was using to shield my eyes. I looked up. It was Lenny.

“Whose father?” he said.

It was the signal to begin.

They all started.
“Our father…”

Soon I joined in.

We prayed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

It was just about full dark ten minutes later when I pulled up at Floriano's. I grabbed the cat carrier, bounced up the stairs and in the front door.

I felt … clean but jumbled. Drained and recharged both. I wanted to drink a glass of water, rinse my eyes, and lie on my cot while Dale sniffed around his new home. I wanted to think. I wanted to plan.

All that went out the window when I spotted Randall. Sitting in a chair in the living room, reading a hardcover book. Kid reads like nobody's business.

“Well,” I said. “Hell.”

He looked me up and down. His eyes paused a beat at the cat carrier. “I tried Charlene's place first,” he said.

“Well.”

“Yes. Set poor Dale free and I'll tell you about Margery Lee.”

Me: rush of paranoia. Didn't I look different to Randall? Didn't I look like a man who'd shamed himself, who'd come
this close
to drinking? Paranoia doubled when I realized my free hand was fingering the twenty-nine-days coin in my pocket. I dropped the coin like it was a spider, let Dale out. He went straight over and sniffed Randall's shoe, the one covering his real foot.

“Floriano and Maria?” I said.

“Upstairs for the night. Why are you antsy? You sent me to Nowheresville, North Carolina, Conway, and you're going to by-God hear the results.”

I sat.

“Talk about unlucky in love,” Randall said when he was good and ready. I could tell he'd thought his story through. Probably wrote an outline on the plane ride home, or at least nailed one down in his head. He's like that.

“Margery met Vernon Lee the first day of first grade in Level Cross,” he said, “and married him the last day of their junior year in high school. She has been owned by him, and those are her words not mine, a full thirty-eight years. She's been beaten down every way you can name.”

“No surprise.”

“I don't mean he physically beats her. Not anymore, that is. Margery has been fully aware that her man is the boss for many, many decades, if you ask me. She's a ghost, Conway. A skeleton, a shell.”

“Losing her son couldn't have helped.”

“Exactly. And Blaine was her
only
son, I might add. Her only
child
. Now here's a twist: How would you react if I told you Savvy came north not to squeeze Bert Saginaw, but to
protect
him from being squeezed?”

“Protect him from … Vernon?”

“Indeed.” Randall's eyes went cloudy. “Once I got Margery going, once I opened her up, it was … it was a torrent. She couldn't stop telling me things Vernon's done. I shall quote again. ‘He's a corruptor,' Margery Lee did say about her betrothed. ‘A befouler, a viper, a ruiner of anything and everything sweet.'”

“He's also dead,” I said. “I mention that yet?”

“What?”

I told him about the parking garage, the crash through the wall. I tried to make it breezy.

It didn't come out breezy.

Randall looked at me awhile when I finished. “This explains the various abrasions and the fact you're moving like a constipated octogenarian,” he said.