Walking on Broken Glass (17 page)

I jabbed a grape tomato in my salad.
Stabbing tiny tomatoes with a salad fork was not conducive to releasing significant feelings of hostility.
“What are we supposed to talk about? And please don’t ask me, ‘What do you want to talk about?’”

She glanced out the window, probably wishing she was playing in the fountain. “It's awkward, I know. These first meetings always are. The time will pass faster than you think. Talk about your day, the food, or, in your case, the ice cream.” Cathryn laughed and slid her chair back from the table. “And trust that God's going to help you through this too.”

Enough with this God already.
“Why, is He going to be there?”

“Well, He just might be.” Cathryn smiled and walked away.

Everybody but Theresa and me would be checked out for overnights. After the group left, she and I were like two people on a blind date and about as comfortable as if we’d dressed for prom and found ourselves at a football game. Cathryn didn’t even attempt to rescue either one of us. She’d blockaded herself behind the counter with charts, the telephone, and a stack of magazines.

“I know you’re not the playing games kinda girl. You wanna watch TV?” Theresa aimed the remote, ready to fire away at channels.

So, this was my life. Saturday night in rehab. With another woman. A woman who collected bracelets like I collect pens.

We’re both pathetic.

At least we have that in common.

Sunday morning. Two hours and counting.

One day at a time. Sometimes, one hour at a time.

Before that first AA meeting ended, Kevin told us, “This is a twenty-four hour program. Nobody's asking you to stay sober for the rest of your life. Just tell yourself, ‘I won’t take a drink
today
.’ It's one day, one hour, one minute at a time.” Then he had handed out what he called sobriety chips.

In the bus on the way back, I told Matthew when I first saw the box of chips, I thought Kevin might be tossing them out to the group. They looked like the doubloons that riders threw from parade floats during Mardi Gras.

“It was one of those rites of passage. Picking up a doubloon off the ground before somebody smashed your fingers trying to take it away. I’ve seen grown men lifted off their feet by puny grandma types.”

Matthew looked perplexed. “Any why would anyone want these things?”

“I guess it's like catching money. Only we all knew it wasn’t. But some people said they’d be valuable later. One year, I was standing on a ladder when one of the riders pitched a handful to the crowd. Hundreds of spinning gold coins, then the sound of all that aluminum hitting the street. Like rain on a tin roof. The crowd just folded in on itself, people slapping themselves on the ground to nab one. Watching from above, it was kind of silly and amazing at the same time.”

“That's one problem you won’t have when you get your sobriety chip at the end of a meeting. Alcoholics are actually more civilized than that.” Matthew paused. “Well, at least the recovering ones.”

One of the chips Kevin called the Desire Chip, for people who had the desire or who’d been sober for twenty-four hours. Theresa elbowed me, “Hey, Miss Thing, we can get us one of those.” The thought of walking across that room made me want a drink, which I was sure was not what I would need to be thinking on my way to getting a sobriety chip. Seemed exactly the definition of irony. Alanis Moiresette should’ve written a song about it. I looked at Theresa. “No, thanks. I’ll pass.” She
tsk, tsk-ed
me, and Miss Bracelet jangled her way to Kevin while I sat on the sofa scratching my hand.

I regretted my dumb hesitation. If I had walked myself to the front that night, I’d at least have something to talk about this afternoon: my own little show and tell for company. I could tell Molly it was my prize for being a model patient for the first week. Carl would snicker and probably say something about how it didn’t take much to make me happy.
And he’d be so right, but for all the wrong reasons.

Theresa fell asleep in our room after lunch. I wandered into the hall looking for Jan. Pieces of sunlight jutted through the half-open blinds, a warm yellow pipeline for the dust particles floating lazily through before landing on whatever was in the room. Soft silence screamed and screeched in my brain, a tantrum of loneliness like the ones I used to drown with beer or gin or vodka or scotch.

Those first weeks after Alyssa died, earthquakes of silence shook the house. Rooms would have seizures, and I’d have to fling my arm on a wall to steady myself. Sometimes I collapsed on the floor, pushing the carpet with both hands to keep the ground from breaking.

We have to take her now, Mrs. Thornton. Please. We know how difficult this must be for you. It's time, Mrs. Thornton.

Time was all I had after they took her away from me that morning, carrying her out in her pink crocheted blanket. I refused to let them cover her face.
Please don’t, I begged. Please, don’t. She’ll be afraid.
She looked like one of the Madame Alexander dolls Carl's mother bought her. Translucent and tranquil. Softly angelic. And still. Tragically still.

“Leah?” Jan's hand rested on my shoulder. She handed me a tissue. “Runny mascara.”

“Thanks,” I whispered.

“Your visitors are downstairs,” she said.

I
took advantage of Theresa's nap to snag some mirror time. Maybe that face I thought I’d seen all those years ago would finally appear.

When I was little, I’d play a game where I’d look in the mirror, but the face I’d see there wouldn’t be mine. A wicked witch, insanely jealous of my be-yu-tee-full face, had put a spell on all the mirrors in the world. The only face I’d ever be able to see was oh so plain. A brown-eyed, nothing remarkable face.

I dusted powder on my face with the same vengeance I dusted the furniture. I hoped I could mash down the new roundness of my cheeks. Carl would notice the change.
Nah.
Other parts of my body were much rounder and much more obvious. I was sure he’d notice those first. He always noticed those first. Even when I was full-bellied pregnant with Alyssa, I’d scoop vanilla ice cream over my equally pregnant slice of apple pie, and he’d say, “Do you really think you need that? You know, you’re just making it harder on yourself to lose the weight later.” Of course, he’d never say I was fat. He didn’t have to.

Theresa was snoring when I left our room. At least
she’d
be doing something constructive during visiting time. At lunch Theresa told me she wouldn’t be seeing her kids or her husband today. “My old man, he's working, so the kids don’t have no way to get here.” She shrugged, tugged on her bra underneath her striped tank top, and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her shorts’ pocket. “Going to find a light. See ya upstairs.” By the time I saw her again, she was already asleep.

I slipped out and closed the door behind me in slow motion to avoid suffering whatever the consequence would be for waking Theresa.
Could they be worse than the one I’m about to deal with?
I should have worn something else. The denim skirt. Or the khaki pants.
I should have looked more L.L. Beanish.
The black shorts still didn’t camouflage the food that had made regular deposits on my thighs. The yellow Polo shirt.
What was I thinking?
Great. I’m going to look like a midget bumblebee.

But there was no turning back. I was Odysseus stuck between two equally disturbing forces. Stuck between the rock of Theresa and the hard place of the elevator doors that just opened.

Carl and Molly arrived at the same time.

Maybe that God of Cathryn's
was
on special assignment this weekend.

The visit wasn’t so bad in the way that shots aren’t so bad. Once the swift, intense burning jab was over, the dull pain throbs only when you touch the bumpy spot where the needle punctured your skin.

Carl and I hugged as if someone had wrapped each one of us in cardboard from head to toe. He’d barely stepped back when Molly's long, tanned arms, almost as thin as the tennis racket she swings, wrapped around me. I didn’t care that her silver butterfly pin smashed into my doughy right cheek. I didn’t care that her left foot pressed itself on top of mine. I only cared that she was there.

If Molly was not my best friend, she’d be one of those women I’d wish would drag toilet tissue on her stilettos when she left a bathroom. When she walked into a room, even women noticed her. I used to joke that I was her friend so she’d never be accused of profiling or political incorrectness. I knew, though, what attracted people to Molly was not what they’d seen on her, but what they’d seen
in
her.

“You look great,” she said after we disengaged. “Carl, don’t you think so?” It sounded less like a question and more like a direct order.

I looked at Carl. He hesitated.

My cue. “Molly, you’d compliment me if I walked in here straight from a mud bath without rinsing off.”

I led them to one of the sofas. “Not exactly
Southern Living
.” I could see Carl and Molly scanning the room, but trying to look as if they weren’t. “The idea was not to make the place too comfy or else we wouldn’t want to leave,” I said, relieving them of having to lie about the décor.

“Well,” said Molly, reaching for my hand and pulling me next to her as she sat on the sofa. “You’re not exactly here for the furniture. When you leave, we’ll write letters to those Extreme Makeover people. That’d be a hoot.” She grinned.

She was one of the only people I knew who could use the word hoot and not sound like she just arrived here in a time machine.

Before he sat, Carl brushed off the chair seat. He didn’t exactly settle into the chair. He seemed to hover, holding onto the chair arms as if a flight attendant would come along and announce takeoff at any moment. His movements were wooden, but maybe it was the heavy starch in his white and navy plaid button-down collared shirt and solid navy chinos.
So, he does know how to pick up clothes from the cleaners.

Carl sat across from me, looking, as my father would have said, “like a lost ball in high weeds.” He stared at his barely scuffed brown deck shoes, then glanced at Annie's stack of outdated
People
magazines. He leaned back and entertained himself by removing ant-sized lint from his pants. Totally out of his element. A vulnerability had tiptoed out of his soul when he wasn’t looking. It leaped the void between us, tripping the emotional siren I’d installed years ago.
No, go back. I can’t trust you yet, but I want to. I really want to.

Before the silence drowned us all, Molly threw out a lifeline. “Carl, tell Leah about your conversation with her dad.” Had the words not been dressed in her party clothes voice, I would have panicked.