Walking on Broken Glass (8 page)

How long had I slept? I smiled at the question, knowing my mother's response would have been, “Doesn’t matter. God never sleeps.” For most of my life, I imagined God suffered from eternal insomnia. No wonder He would, one day, stage Armageddon in an act of horrific vengeance. He’d been sleep-deprived by mothers for centuries.

No matter what earthly horror had been inflicted upon me, I depended on my mother's soothing pronouncement to wrap itself around my damaged ego. “God never sleeps” was my maternal shield against the worldly infidels, a no-nonsense ointment to heal my emotional bruises. It was a global warning for friends turned traitors, boys who never called, and employers who manipulated. I comforted myself with the promise of heavenly havoc when the offender reached God, assuming the possibility existed that would allow such a cruel person to reach that height.

I had no doubt my mother watched my life unfold or, maybe, unravel. She’d probably jab God in the stomach with that manicured hand of hers just in case, in a surprising spiritual snafu, He might nod off when her daughter needed Him.

Let the jabbing begin.

Another knock, this time accompanied by an unrecognizable female voice, “Breakfast in a half hour.” I rubbed my right hand over my bare left wrist as if doing so could magically make my watch appear. Funny how you become so accustomed to the feel and weight of things on your body—the clunky stainless steel watch, the diamond and emerald tennis bracelet— like that phantom pain sensation amputees felt even after the limb had been removed. Not that jewelry deprivation was, on any level, comparable to a loss of limb. I’m rationalizing now, just in case, what? In case my thoughts were being zapped to a morality guard who would incarcerate my pettiness?

My rumbling belly signaled hunger or trouble. I figured I should at least cruise the breakfast options. After my two-step floss and brush, then my three-step skin care, I skipped the multi-stepped cosmetic routine. No one knew me here. We might as well each be assigned an alias since using a name outside of this hospital was almost a federal offense. Unless, of course, they admitted a celebrity in dire need of publicity.

Day 2. I wore white linen capris and a screaming orange sleeveless blouse scheduled for Day 3. The pants grabbed a bit too much when I bent over and reached for my new white canvas shoes. I spotted the meditation book on the floor near the bed. Sometime during the night, it must have fallen out of my hands. Probably on one of my bathroom trips. I placed it on the bed, finished tying my shoes, then opened it to July 5 and read,
“It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
Okay, Ursula K. Le Guin, let's you and I journey to breakfast, and we’ll take it from there.

Another knock.

“Five minutes,” mystery voice called out.

Did anyone ever open a door around here? Did they not realize there's a hall of people in various stages of withdrawal and recovery, and knocking was not conducive to either one?

A deep breath later, I opened the door that separated me from what I am, and what I might become.

V
oices rose and fell from the once empty patient rooms of the previous night. The ten-year-old inside me didn’t want to walk into the room alone. Frankly, neither did the twenty-seven-year-old who housed her. I neared the center station but didn’t see the familiar faces of Jan or Matthew.

Great. They deserted me too.

“Leah?” The voice of the knock approached. With the exception of wearing sneakers instead of deck shoes, she wore clothes identical to Matthew's from the night before—khakis and a white collared blouse. She, however, twisted her long hair into a loose chignon. I couldn’t tell if the charcoal-shaded wisps and strands that surrounded her head and neck were purposeful or just the result of sloppy braiding. She didn’t wear a drop of makeup, her eyes were the color of aquamarines, her skin was flawless, her legs rivaled Julia Roberts's—already I’m not liking this chick.

“You got her,” I answered in my best perky voice.

“I’m Cathryn. I work days.” She reached out to shake my hand.

“I guess I’ll know I’ve been here awhile when I’ve stopped shaking hands. How many more of you are there?” Judging by Cathryn's deadpan stare, not too many mornings kicked off with someone's skewed sense of humor.

“Not enough. Not nearly enough,” she answered. With both hands, she tucked her bangs into the uneven mass of hair on the top of her head. “I’ll introduce you to the group, then you and I will walk to the cafeteria together so I can catch you up on what you’ll be doing today.”

Bodies littered the drab room of yesterday. Two were lying on the sofas, hands cupped under their heads, eyes closed. One stood in the middle of the room and aimed the remote control at the television; stations flicked on the screen in measured beats. One sat in the back, legs crossed, and flipped through a magazine. Cathryn and I walked into the middle of the room. No one noticed, or they pretended not to notice.

Surely, this Tropicana orange blouse was a shocker to anyone's morning.

“Everyone, this is Leah. She arrived yesterday afternoon,” Cathryn said. Magazine-flipper raised her head, glanced at me, and nodded. Station-flicker waved over his shoulder with his free hand and continued cycling through the cable offerings. Sleeper number one, I learned later, was Doug. He grunted without even bothering to open his eyes. Sleeper number two actually stood, swaggered over, and patted me on the back. He was young enough to be one of my students.

“I’m Vince. Welcome to Junkie Paradise. Even though you don’t look like no junkie. Whatta ya’ in for?”

“Thirty days,” I answered, and he howled in laughter.

Cathryn waved him away, “Vince, be nice. Save it for group.”

“Aw, Ms. Fitz, you know I’m nice. Just tryin’ to make conversation,” he said and turned to me. “Sorry if you thought I was laughin’ at ya. I thought you was tryin’ to be funny.”

“No problem,” I mumbled and wished I’d worn something in military camouflage so I could disappear into the surroundings. Go figure. When I thought I was funny, everyone looked at me like I’d just spit. I answered a question honestly, and I’m the last comic standing. This place was definitely off center. Sober people must operate in an alternate universe.

Cathryn flicked the overhead lights on and off, a move that stirred Doug enough to open his eyes and grunt twice.

“Stop flashing those lights in my face. I feel like I’m home with my old lady.” Doug pushed himself up into a sitting position, but his body slouched into his lap as if his muscles were still asleep.

“Doug, if your old lady wanted you home, she wouldn’t have stuck you in here. Again. Benny, hand that thing over; you don’t have a license to speed through all those channels.”

Benny pointed and clicked the remote directly at Doug. “Sober, drunk, sober, drunk, sober, drunk.”

I shuffled behind Cathryn, wondering if she’d provide sufficient protection when Doug flew off the sofa to beat the blazes out of Benny. That familiar spool of anxiety unrolled in my gut, and its threads flew into my hands and knees. I rocked back and forth, heels to toes, heels to toes, stirring the nervousness as if I could somehow dilute it through the motion of my body. The body in the corner sighed hugely and, without even lifting her eyes to the scene playing out in front of her, continued to flip magazine pages. Vince disappeared into what I suspected was the bathroom.

Doug stood, dragged the back of his knobby hand over his wide mouth, then wiped it across his well-worn Levis, and wrestled the remote from Benny. But instead of this being the prelude to the battle I anticipated, both men laughed as Doug, now in control, pointed the remote at Benny, “Pot head, Coke Nose.”

“Are you two kids finished now? You’re about to be late for breakfast.” Cathryn shook her head back and forth in the way harried mothers do after telling their precious Rambo-tots to stop eating bugs for the zillionth time.

Vince appeared from around the center station and pounced on the elevator button. When the doors opened, the men filed in. Vince straddled the space between floor and elevator. “So, Annie, ya’ coming or what?”

Annie abandoned her page-flipping and strolled through the room to where I stood next to Cathryn.

“Y’all go ahead. I’m taking the stairs.” Her Southern drawl suited her unhurried style. She pulled a purple hair clip out of denim overalls that must have fit looser three sizes ago, and clipped her streaked brown hair into a fat ponytail. Her eyes were the color of green signal lights, so unreal they looked like wet paint. Midnight-black eyeliner edged her lids, which were covered with moss-green eye shadow. Her lashes fanned out like they’d been dipped in wax. I made a mental note to discuss her foundation choice, a tan that made it seem as if she’d taken her face to Florida and left her body behind.

“After Theresa arrives, the women won’t be outnumbered,” Cathryn said, as she unlocked the stairwell door and held it open.

Annie looked me over like a statue she might have been deciding to buy, glanced at Cathryn, shrugged her meaty shoulders, and said, “Yeah, guess not,” before she traipsed down the stairs.

Cathryn closed the door, stepped back over to the central station, and grabbed a clipboard hanging on the wall.

“Leah, open the door next to the one I just closed. We can talk in that office.”

An acid pit sloshed against my stomach walls. Tiny creatures pounded bass drums against my temples. My hand started to itch again. I couldn’t stay here. I didn’t belong in this institution. I wasn’t like these people, this subculture of misfits. Our mutual exclusion of one another proved that. Molly meant well, but she pushed me too far, too fast. Too enthusiastic. I should’ve waited. Clearly, I didn’t fit the definition of a textbook alcoholic. I’d already proved I could give up alcohol for more than twenty-fours hours. I’d explain all this to Carl, who would explain it to whomever who would then arrange for my discharge.

“Is there a phone in there? I need to make a phone call. A private phone call.” I hoped I’d used my best assertive voice, but the one I heard belonged to a child.
I just need to relax.
I mean, one phone conversation with Carl, and I’m headed to the beach house. Or Molly. I could call Molly. She’d understand once I told her about this bizarro world I’m locked in. I’m sure we can find a place for people more like me, people I’d feel comfortable with.

Cathryn walked around me to the office, and I thought I heard her say, “No phone calls” as she passed.

“Did you say, ‘No phone’ or ‘No phone calls’?” I massaged my forehead where the temple drummers had relocated. Phone deprivation? What would the ACLU think of this? Surely this was a Civil Rights issue. No answer. Maybe she hadn’t heard me.

I wandered into the office, a sparse, ugly room. Cathryn sat behind a submarine-gray steel desk, creating handwriting havoc in a chart. My body was as hesitant to move as my mouth was to open. “What did you say about the phone?”

The tidal waves in my stomach intensified. I wanted to sit, but I might constrict the pool of nausea. Besides, there was no phone in here. I’d have to go someplace else anyway.

She looked up at me. “No phone yet. Sit down, and I’ll explain.”

“I don’t want to sit down. I want a phone. I know there are phones here. I’ve seen them. I’ve heard them ring. I want a telephone. I want to call my husband.”

My words marched out of my mouth like good little soldiers, slowly and deliberately.

“No one has phone privileges for the first seventy-two hours. That's one of the things we need to discuss.” She closed the folder, stood, and tilted her head toward me to make eye contact. “Let's talk. You can eat breakfast after that.”

I sent the troops out to battle one more time. “I don’t want breakfast. I want a phone.”

“I know. In forty-eight hours you can use the phone. But, for now—” she slipped the clipboard under her arm, and pointed toward the door “—we’re going to breakfast. Your face is as white as the paper I’m writing on.”

I was clearly not winning this battle.

M
y trauma over the phone issue re-prioritized after I bolted out of the office in a desperate search for the nearest bathroom. This business of moving to sobriety wasn’t much different than moving away from being drunk—they both involved throwing up. I didn’t remember this being mentioned in the brochure, either.

Breakfast was a culinary disaster. Foods that ordinarily and happily co-mingled on a plate proved less appealing in stainless steel troughs guarded by hair-netted people wielding long slotted spoons. Whatever hope I held out for the coffee dissipated as soon as I spotted “de” in front of “caf.”