I don’t know, is all I have as a response, and I’m sorry.
As I’m getting off the call she says in the sternest voice I’ve ever heard her speak in, Enough is enough, you’ve got to stop this. Stop it right now. Do you hear me? Enough is enough. As much as I had dreaded the phone call, this last instruction, this line drawn, by my mother of all people—this girl-woman my sister and I took care of as kids, whom I’ve defended my whole life and avoided most of my adulthood—feels like something I’ve been missing for a long time but hadn’t realized until now. Like how you don’t know how hungry you’ve been until you see food, or how tired you are until your head hits a pillow.
Annie walks me back to The Library and hugs me good-bye. I agree to call her before going to sleep and rush into the building to catch the last half hour of the two o’clock meeting. I manage to get a seat next to Polly, who makes well-look-who-showed-up eyes at me. Asa is there, looking tired from being awake most of the night before. After the meeting he tells me matter-of-factly that he’s spending the night again at my place and that he’ll pick me up there to go to the Meeting House at six. All I can manage is Thank you.
Polly slaps me in the head and says, What the fuck, Crackhead? We walk to the dog run and I tell her what happened. She listens and nods and is in no way surprised. Just keep coming back and next time, call me, OK? I promise you won’t want to use once I’m through with you. She comes over to my place for a while until Asa shows up. Asa and I go to the Meeting House and come back to my place afterward and eat quiche and roast chicken from the bags of food from Jean that arrived while we were out. While Asa unfolds the pullout bed from the couch, I call Jack to give an accounting of the day—the meetings, talking to Polly and Annie and Asa, apologizing to my mother, counting one day at The Library—to which he responds, Do it all again tomorrow. After I say good night and hang up the phone, Asa turns off the lights and we crawl under our respective covers. Benny curls against the door, as far from me as possible.
I can’t sleep. Can’t help but run through the events of the last three days. Everything that followed the phone call to Happy—the bad high, the good high, the Asian guys, the broken stems, the vodka, the ruined lighters, the paranoia, the thoughts of suicide—is familiar, follows the same desperate script of every time using. But what’s different, what is completely new, is what happens after. I realize that from the moment I ran into Asa on the street twenty-four hours ago, I have not been alone. After Asa I’m with Annie and after Annie with Polly and now, again, with Asa, who is asleep on my pullout couch.
I lie in bed, awake, in the dark. I can make out the edges of the white sheet that I’d nailed to the wall above the terrace door to cover its small window. One of the corners has come off and I watch it flap against the door, making shapes and movements that remind me of the cops and DEA agents I was convinced were lining up on the terrace two nights ago. I curl against the window next to the bed and try to blink away the thoughts of what would have happened without Asa. I remember him sitting across from me at the New Venus diner on my first night back in the city, how I had no intention of going with those boys to dinner, how Jack made me, and how it was Asa who told me to meet him the next day at The Library, which was where I met Polly and Annie. How are these people, whom I didn’t know less than a month ago, how are they now the most important people in my life? My mind races with how unlikely it all seems, how arbitrary.
The room and the city outside are quiet. I listen to the sound of Asa’s rough breathing and look out the window to the Empire State Building. The old skyscraper goes dark at midnight, as usual, but as it does this time the remaining lights in the skyline
As I’m getting off the call she says in the sternest voice I’ve ever heard her speak in, Enough is enough, you’ve got to stop this. Stop it right now. Do you hear me? Enough is enough. As much as I had dreaded the phone call, this last instruction, this line drawn, by my mother of all people—this girl-woman my sister and I took care of as kids, whom I’ve defended my whole life and avoided most of my adulthood—feels like something I’ve been missing for a long time but hadn’t realized until now. Like how you don’t know how hungry you’ve been until you see food, or how tired you are until your head hits a pillow.
Annie walks me back to The Library and hugs me good-bye. I agree to call her before going to sleep and rush into the building to catch the last half hour of the two o’clock meeting. I manage to get a seat next to Polly, who makes well-look-who-showed-up eyes at me. Asa is there, looking tired from being awake most of the night before. After the meeting he tells me matter-of-factly that he’s spending the night again at my place and that he’ll pick me up there to go to the Meeting House at six. All I can manage is Thank you.
Polly slaps me in the head and says, What the fuck, Crackhead? We walk to the dog run and I tell her what happened. She listens and nods and is in no way surprised. Just keep coming back and next time, call me, OK? I promise you won’t want to use once I’m through with you. She comes over to my place for a while until Asa shows up. Asa and I go to the Meeting House and come back to my place afterward and eat quiche and roast chicken from the bags of food from Jean that arrived while we were out. While Asa unfolds the pullout bed from the couch, I call Jack to give an accounting of the day—the meetings, talking to Polly and Annie and Asa, apologizing to my mother, counting one day at The Library—to which he responds, Do it all again tomorrow. After I say good night and hang up the phone, Asa turns off the lights and we crawl under our respective covers. Benny curls against the door, as far from me as possible.
I can’t sleep. Can’t help but run through the events of the last three days. Everything that followed the phone call to Happy—the bad high, the good high, the Asian guys, the broken stems, the vodka, the ruined lighters, the paranoia, the thoughts of suicide—is familiar, follows the same desperate script of every time using. But what’s different, what is completely new, is what happens after. I realize that from the moment I ran into Asa on the street twenty-four hours ago, I have not been alone. After Asa I’m with Annie and after Annie with Polly and now, again, with Asa, who is asleep on my pullout couch.
I lie in bed, awake, in the dark. I can make out the edges of the white sheet that I’d nailed to the wall above the terrace door to cover its small window. One of the corners has come off and I watch it flap against the door, making shapes and movements that remind me of the cops and DEA agents I was convinced were lining up on the terrace two nights ago. I curl against the window next to the bed and try to blink away the thoughts of what would have happened without Asa. I remember him sitting across from me at the New Venus diner on my first night back in the city, how I had no intention of going with those boys to dinner, how Jack made me, and how it was Asa who told me to meet him the next day at The Library, which was where I met Polly and Annie. How are these people, whom I didn’t know less than a month ago, how are they now the most important people in my life? My mind races with how unlikely it all seems, how arbitrary.
The room and the city outside are quiet. I listen to the sound of Asa’s rough breathing and look out the window to the Empire State Building. The old skyscraper goes dark at midnight, as usual, but as it does this time the remaining lights in the skyline
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