Jean Thompson ~ Help Me Rhonda

“God grant me the serenity … “

Charlotte bowed her head but kept her eyes open, most­ly to see who else was look­ing around instead of being rev­er­ent and prayer­ful. The Fox News blonde’s face was squeezed up tight, her nose near­ly touch­ing her fold­ed hands. Dawn One, tonight’s leader, seemed pret­ty into it also.

“ . . to accept the things I can­not change, the courage to change the things I can . .”

Creepy Bruce was look­ing straight at her. She closed her eyes to shut him out. Always the creepy guy. There were nev­er any cute drunks.

“  . .  and the wis­dom to know the dif­fer­ence. Amen.”

People set­tled into their chairs. Dawn One said, “Is there any­body who’d like to start?  Should we just go around?” Nobody spoke. The group tend­ed to be balky about talk­ing, at least until they loos­ened up. “All right,” Dawn One said. “I’ll go. There was a cri­sis with my old­est boy. He doesn’t have his license any­more but he snuck out of the house and took my car and got stopped for speed­ing and open liquor. He got his girl­friend to bond him out. I told him he had to move. He called me a B, and said that every­thing wrong with him was my fault.“

There was a sym­pa­thet­ic mur­mur. Somebody said, “Talk about not accept­ing responsibility.”

“Then his girl­friend who is a real piece of work as in, restrain­ing order, shows up at my front door and starts run­ning her mouth and I hold up my phone to record her in case it turns into a police matter.”

One of the things about meet­ings, Charlotte had learned, was that peo­ple came from all walks of life. It was a democ­ra­cy of drunks. Dawn One worked in the kitchen at the coun­ty nurs­ing home. She was a big, heavy-duty woman with a face as pink as a ham. Dawn Two didn’t come as often. She’d lost some teeth, “to mis­ad­ven­ture”, she said, and she was self-con­scious about talk­ing. The Fox News blonde — well that was what she looked like — was actu­al­ly a lawyer. There was a librar­i­an, a cou­ple of moms, a col­lege instruc­tor-that was Charlotte‑a man she thought she rec­og­nized from Home Depot, a retired rail­road work­er, some­one new­ly fired from their Subway job. She didn’t know what Creepy Bruce did. He was court ordered, and those were guys who didn’t always have a lot to say about their circumstances.

It wasn’t such a big town. Sooner or lat­er some­body she knew would turn up at a meet­ing. Well hey there! Probably some­one from the col­lege. Everybody there seemed stoned on something.

The meet­ing was held in one of the store­fronts at the end of a strip mall. The next door ten­ant was a tax pre­par­er who had some­body dress up like Uncle Sam to wave down cus­tomers at tax time. There was also a nail salon and an auto sound sys­tem shop. The mall was at the west­ern edge of town. Looked at a cer­tain way, you could say the town was all strag­gling edges and not much cen­ter. The high­way beyond the park­ing lot ran on west past a cou­ple of ware­hous­es and a Mexican restau­rant that used to be an Italian restau­rant and was on track to be some oth­er kind of restau­rant entire­ly before too long.

Beyond that, the land opened up to farm fields. Now, in September, it was still light out when the meet­ing start­ed. The air glowed with pink sun­set haze, and if you stopped in the park­ing lot to take it in, you saw how the ordi­nary world might be made beautiful.

Then you went inside to one of the two the meet­ing rooms which had no win­dows, no pic­tures or any­thing else on the walls. A long table and fold­ing chairs, and a small­er table for cof­fee. Outside, a hall­way and the restrooms. There was noth­ing to dis­tract either the eye or the spir­it. Not drink­ing was seri­ous, grim business.

“ . .  told him, you work on your sobri­ety and I’ll work on mine. So now alco­hol has cost me my kid.”

“He’s not gone for good. You don’t know that. He’s still your child, and a child’s nev­er real­ly lost.”

“Until they’re dead,” Dawn One said.

 

Charlotte taught lan­guage skills and com­po­si­tion at the junior col­lege. Four of her class­es met on cam­pus and two were online. It was a lot of lan­guage skills. The col­lege was deter­mined to enroll as many stu­dents as pos­si­ble, and to process them so that they would be pleased with their con­sumer expe­ri­ence. She had good stu­dents, often adults with jobs who were going for a degree one or two cours­es at a time. She had bad stu­dents who came in all vari­eties of bad: lazy, indif­fer­ent, illit­er­ate, absent.

“You’re so picky about this stuff,” one boy com­plained. Classes had just start­ed. There would be more of this.

“The rules of gram­mar are picky, not me.”

“I like the way I wrote it bet­ter. Rules are elitist.”

Charlotte tried to main­tain stan­dards. But stu­dents were always going to the dean to file protests if they thought their grades were too low, and then the dean would call Charlotte or the oth­er instruc­tors to see if some­thing couldn’t be worked out. If you need­ed excus­es to drink, it was the per­fect job.

She went to a Monday night meet­ing, since Tuesday and Thursday were her busy days, Wednesday passed in a blur, and by Friday she was run­ning on emp­ty. You could always go to an online meet­ing or online chat group-every­thing was trans­act­ed online these days-and she tried that, but she got side­tracked with the ques­tion­naires that were sup­posed to help you assess your­self. Has drink­ing caused you prob­lems at work?  Do fam­i­ly mem­bers com­plain about your drink­ing? Have you tried to stop drink­ing and been unable to? Have you ever for­got­ten things you did and said while drinking?

It felt good when­ev­er she could answer nev­er or almost nev­er. Of course the ques­tions were not sup­posed to make you feel good about your drink­ing. They were meant to jolt you out of denial and make you con­front the real­i­ty of your addic­tion. She was one of those smar­ty pants drunks who had every­thing fig­ured out.

Maybe what she need­ed were dif­fer­ent questions:

Has drink­ing ever caused you to make late-night phone calls to your mar­ried boyfriend’s (now ex-boyfriend’s) house, pre­tend­ing to be the police depart­ment and warn­ing them about an armed sus­pect loose in their neigh­bor­hood?  1) Never 2) Sometimes 3) Often

Have you ever gone out for din­ner with friends and wok­en up the next morn­ing unable to locate your purse and your bra? 1) Never 2) Sometimes 3) Often

Have there been occa­sions when friends or fam­i­ly mem­bers told you they were wor­ried about your drink­ing and you told them you were work­ing with a ther­a­pist who thought your prob­lem was not alco­hol, but past lives resur­fac­ing? 1) Never 2) Sometimes 3) Often

 

After the meet­ing, Charlotte went home and called her boyfriend, Dennis. Or rather, she called him from the car as she drove home. “Are you com­ing over?”

She heard him open­ing the refrig­er­a­tor and the rack­et he made look­ing through things on the shelves. “I don’t know.”

“Well, when are you going to decide?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“Then don’t bother.”

“I was asleep, you woke me up.”

“Sorry.” She lis­tened a minute more. He was root­ing around the refrig­er­a­tor and mak­ing a lot of clat­ter­ing noise, like he was assem­bling some elab­o­rate, mul­ti-ingre­di­ent meal. Charlotte said, “I wish you wouldn’t do what­ev­er you’re doing, the sound gets mag­ni­fied and it’s hard to hear.

“Hey, it’s not like you’re say­ing anything.”

“Ask me how my meet­ing was.”

“Are you in the car, huh? Are you dri­ving? You sound funny.”

“Yes, I’m dri­ving.”  She slowed at an inter­sec­tion and stopped for the red light.  “Are you com­ing over or what?”

“What. Ha ha.”

“It was real­ly a good meet­ing. People said some pret­ty intense stuff.”

“So now you’re gonna go home and drink.”

The light changed. Charlotte punched the accel­er­a­tor. “What makes you so smart, huh?

“Such an expert. Oh, right, you’re just a big drunk yourself.”

“Then I guess you don’t want me to come over.”

“I didn’t say that.” She hat­ed that she could nev­er make up her mind about him, nev­er hold on to a right­eous anger. “I meant, don’t come over with an attitude.”

It was almost eleven when Dennis showed up. “Don’t freak out, but I brought beer.”

“I don’t want any. I don’t even like beer.”

“Good, more for me.” He opened one can and put the rest in the refrig­er­a­tor. “I would have come over ear­li­er but I fig­ured you need­ed a chance to calm down after unhap­py hour.”

That was his dig about AA.

“You know, it’s pret­ty easy to make fun of meet­ings instead of ask­ing your­self why you find them so threatening.”

“Who me?  Threatened?” Dennis was grow­ing a beard because he thought it would make him look thin­ner. He flopped down on the couch. His shirts wouldn’t but­ton over his stom­ach any more so he wore them loose over T‑shirts. Charlotte didn’t like that he was gain­ing weight, but she was mor­bid­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by her own dis­gust. She couldn’t explain it any bet­ter than that.

Dennis used to teach part time at the col­lege but they let him go dur­ing one of the bud­get purges.  Now he did free­lance tutor­ing and scored col­lege entrance tests for a test­ing com­pa­ny. Education, he said, was now a com­plete­ly degrad­ed enter­prise. Charlotte knew he was depressed about not being able to get anoth­er job, and she would have felt sor­ry for him except he was so good at feel­ing sor­ry for himself.

She said, “I think we have a tox­ic rela­tion­ship. We’re stuck in unhealthy patterns.”

“Are you going to get mad­der if I agree with you, or if I disagree?”

“Shut up for a minute. I need to fig­ure this out. I think you grat­i­fy my sick need for rejec­tion and abandonment.”

“They’re just putting words in your mouth, you know that, right?”

“You’re in denial about your own drink­ing so you try to under­mine my sobriety.”

“What? What sobri­ety? Did I miss it? You mean, last Tuesday, was that it?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a healthy rela­tion­ship. I embrace mar­tyr­dom and long-suffering.”

“Oh for God’s sake,” Dennis said. “It’s like, if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich? If you already know this stuff, why do you keep drinking?”

“I don’t know. Move over.” Charlotte sat down on the oth­er end of the couch, but Dennis took up most of the space and she sagged into the crease in the center.

Dennis draped an arm over her shoul­der and spi­der walked his hand down to her breast.

He said, “Let’s do it where I’m on top of you and squish­ing you so you can’t move.”

 

She’d been doing pret­ty well at the not drink­ing.  She’d thrown out all the wine in the house and all the old bot­tles with an inch or so of Scotch or cognac. Even the Japanese mirin she’d bought for some for­got­ten recipe.  At one meet­ing a woman said she used to go to gro­cery stores and drink all the lit­tle bot­tles of vanil­la extract.  Not buy them, just walk around the stores drink­ing them and leav­ing the emp­ties on the shelves. Charlotte thought she was OK keep­ing the vanil­la extract, but she did get rid of the mouth­wash and cough syrup.

Six days with­out drink­ing. It made her rest­less, ener­getic. She start­ed in clean­ing the apart­ment.  She swept and mopped the kitchen floor and scrubbed the bath­room. Degreased the funky oven.  Emptied the garbage.  Vacuumed and made some effort at dust­ing. Then she sat in the liv­ing room and inhaled the chem­i­cal smells of cleanliness.

There wasn’t any rea­son or excuse to start drink­ing again. She hadn’t been hav­ing rot­ten days at work, at least, noth­ing worse than the stan­dard base­line rot­ten­ness. Her moth­er hadn’t called. (They said that alco­holism ran in fam­i­lies. In Charlotte’s, it gal­loped.) Nothing like that. Just a ques­tion: what was she sup­posed to do next? A long, vacant stretch of time opened up. She could orga­nize her clothes clos­et by sea­son. She could alpha­bet­ize the books on her shelves. And then what?

She drove to a sports bar where she was unlike­ly to see any­one she knew. There was a Cardinals game play­ing on all four giant tele­vi­sion screens. Woo woo! She would be a Cardinals fan! Everyone was watch­ing the game with­out any par­tic­u­lar urgency, and drink­ing the same way. Charlotte found a seat at the bar and ordered a gin and ton­ic. You didn’t drink the wine in a place like this. You could be a drunk and still be a wine snob.

She had two more drinks. They sent lit­tle shiv­ery sparkles rac­ing through her blood­stream. “Let me get your next one,” said a man sit­ting beside her at the bar.

She hadn’t noticed him. He was old­er, but not trag­i­cal­ly so. At least he wasn’t wear­ing a base­ball cap. She ruled out the base­ball cap guys, which was prob­a­bly anoth­er snob thing, but was a use­ful sort­ing tech­nique. “Thanks, but three’s my limit.”

He grinned and did the lean­ing-in thing. “Now how do you know it isn’t four?”

“Because any more and I over­drink my tol­er­ance. My cells need a cer­tain amount of alco­hol to func­tion. It’s like a big slop­py bell curve where you can graph the decline in men­tal acu­ity and judge­ment, as well as bal­ance, coör­di­na­tion, and reflexes.”

The man picked up his drink and walked away.

The next time she went to her meet­ing, she said, “I knew what I was doing, drink­ing. I always know. I’m very artic­u­late about what I’m doing, and why I shouldn’t do it. Then I do it anyway.”

The Fox News blond, whose name was Lisa, said, “I guess you’re good at talk­ing the talk.”

“But not walk­ing the walk, yeah, I know.” The AA lin­go could be irri­tat­ing. There were whole meet­ings when it seemed like every­body spoke in slo­gans. “I’m sup­posed to be a smart per­son. I have a mis­placed faith in my own intel­li­gence. My gift of gab. My ana­lyt­i­cal skills. None of it keeps me sober.” There, she was doing it again. She should just shut up.

Lisa said, “OK, so, I had to get over things about myself too. I always prid­ed myself on being so com­pe­tent and respon­si­ble. You all know how that turned out.”

Lisa had been the trea­sur­er for their meet­ing, keep­ing track in a spi­ral note­book of the dona­tions used to buy cof­fee and snacks. Then one night, dur­ing their break, she took a phone call and said she had to go, and rushed out leav­ing the lit­tle pile of mon­ey and the note­book on the table. Somebody else had to step up and take over being treasurer.

When Lisa came to the next meet­ing, she con­fessed that she’d staged her depar­ture so she wouldn’t have to be bur­dened with respon­si­bil­i­ty any more. Lisa always looked so sharp and put togeth­er in her lawyer clothes. But if you exam­ined her close­ly, you saw the scurf of chapped skin around her mouth, and the chewed cor­ner of a fingernail.

“Let go and let God,” advised the Home Depot man from across the table. “It may be corny, but it’s true.”

“I’m not much of a God per­son,” Charlotte said. She wasn’t sure if she was apol­o­giz­ing or not. There was a lot of God in AA, prayers and every­thing. Mostly she just went along with it. Now she’d blown her God cover.

Nobody spoke. Of course you were sup­posed to be hon­est. That didn’t mean peo­ple want­ed to hear your unpleas­ant hon­est opinions.

Creepy Bruce cleared his throat. It sound­ed like pieces of some­thing, pieces of Bruce, were com­ing up. Health wasn’t the first thing you thought of when you looked at him. His nose was full of bro­ken blood ves­sels and his skin didn’t fit over his face very well. “I don’t know one way or the oth­er about God. I wasn’t raised up as a church type. So, ‘forces greater than our­selves’, I don’t think God, I think, like, gravity.”

There was anoth­er silence. Bruce shrugged. “I didn’t mean you should go around pray­ing to it.”

That long, flat stretch of what comes next. What did peo­ple do when they didn’t drink? They pur­sued absorb­ing hob­bies. They read a lot of Jane Austen. They trad­ed all their drunk dra­ma for seren­i­ty. You were a dif­fer­ent self, clear-eyed and thankful.

But what did that mean for your old self, the per­son you’d always been? Had that been some false, infe­ri­or ver­sion of sober you? Were you meant to cast it all aside with­out a back­wards look? How could that be right? How could it not break your heart?

Charlotte’s office­mate at the col­lege was Katie, a new young instruc­tor who made Charlotte feel like a croak­ing hag. Katie was patient and unselfish and encour­ag­ing with her stu­dents. She spent her office hours with one or anoth­er of them, heads bent togeth­er over what­ev­er prim­i­tive piece of writ­ing they had come up with, explain­ing com­mas ver­sus semi colons, sen­tence frag­ments, para­graph uni­ty, then explain­ing every­thing all over again to the next (or the same) stu­dent.  She was the teach­ing equiv­a­lent of a holy vir­gin.  It was unwor­thy of Charlotte to hope for the day when Katie real­ized she was being scammed by some enter­pris­ing pla­gia­rist or whin­ing liar. But she did so hope.

Katie brought home-made muffins to school and offered to share them.  Katie lis­tened to the most shop­worn stu­dent excus­es with sym­pa­thy.  Her grades gave every­one the ben­e­fit of the doubt.  Charlotte con­sid­ered telling her that she’d get a rep­u­ta­tion as an easy teacher, and stu­dents would mob her class­es.  It was more pru­dent, and it made for a lighter work­load, to be a hard ass and scare them away. But Katie was what the admin­is­tra­tion want­ed. Instruction that was as sooth­ing as a spa, and stu­dents who got their money’s worth.

Charlotte said, “You don’t real­ly believe that girl’s sto­ry about her roommate’s sui­cide attempt, do you?”

“Why not? Things like that happen.”

“First she said she over­dosed, then she said she tried to slit her wrists.”

”Both. She did both.”

“And this girl has not been at a bed­side vig­il. Did you smell the coconut oil on her?”

“I hear what you’re say­ing, but when you can’t prove any­thing one way or the oth­er, isn’t it best to give them the ben­e­fit of the doubt?” Katie had freck­les on her nose. She wore jew­el­ry made out of sea shells and hunks of pet­ri­fied wood. Some peo­ple were born whole­some. “You think I’m too easy on them.”

“It’s fair to say that some por­tion of them are unmotivated.”

“I’m just try­ing to be encouraging.”

“Nothing wrong with that.” Katie would have a suc­cess­ful career here. The admin­is­tra­tion, after all, want­ed to be encour­ag­ing. It was good for busi­ness. Some day this vast, semi-edu­cat­ed horde would take their place in the world. They would run every­thing, and their con­tempt for knowl­edge, for clar­i­ty of expres­sion, for the effort of show­ing up in the first place, would spread like an oil slick.  Who was she kid­ding.  People like that already did run everything.

Charlotte said, “I aways want­ed to be the wacky, goofy teacher. You know, keep a par­rot in the office and train it to recite Emily Dickinson.”

“Why would you do that?”

“For fun. To shake things up. Oh come on, do you see a par­rot any­where in here?  I want­ed to star­tle them out of the old class­room bore­dom. Engage them in unex­pect­ed ways. Add some drama.”

Katie was giv­ing her an uncer­tain look, as if per­haps she was meant to be laugh­ing along, but didn’t want to be rude. “So what hap­pened? With the par­rot idea, and everything.”

“They nev­er got any of my jokes. They just stared at me. I went back to mak­ing them dia­gram sentences.”

“I don’t like dra­ma,” Katie said. “I like every­thing to stay on an even keel. Or I wouldn’t get any work done.”

“You were prob­a­bly raised in a nor­mal home, weren’t you?”

 

Sometimes Charlotte imag­ined every­body in the meet­ing drunk. They’d sit around the table all red-faced and jol­ly and snig­ger­ing, each of them lost in their own ver­sion of drunk-world. It would make for a fun par­ty, at least until some­body start­ed bleed­ing or weep­ing, until some­body wound up in the emer­gency room or in jail.

Dawn One said, “Whatever you grow up with, that’s nor­mal to you. Doesn’t every­body pass out with their face in their plate at din­ner? Doesn’t every­body leave their kids in the car while they stop in at the tav­ern? Doesn’t every­body pack up and move in the mid­dle of the night because they quit pay­ing rent? Okay, nobody did that on tele­vi­sion. But those were just shows, you didn’t have to believe them.”

Creepy Bruce said, “You had tele­vi­sion when you were a kid? Man, you were lucky.”

As usu­al, what­ev­er Bruce said made for a dead stop in the conversation.

One of the moms picked it up from there. “I feel so bad about my kids.  I used to blame them for my drink­ing, when­ev­er they’d talk back or mis­be­have. Once I was gro­cery shop­ping and my lit­tle girl was act­ing up.  She want­ed some kind of can­dy I wasn’t going to get her, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer and kept putting it in the cart and run­ning off and get­ting more when I took it out. She could tell I was close to los­ing it with her, I guess I had that look, so she ran off one last time and came back lug­ging a bot­tle of white wine. ‘Here Mommy, this is for you!’ “

Charlotte said, “That’s actu­al­ly a pret­ty fun­ny story.”

Everyone turned towards her. “I meant, fox­hole humor.  Gallows humor.” They weren’t exact­ly fol­low­ing her.  It was like teach­ing one more bad class. “See, doesn’t that make the point about nor­mal being what you grow up with. In my fam­i­ly, that would be a sto­ry we’d tell at Christmas din­ner or oth­er spe­cial occasions.”

“That sounds very unhealthy,” the mom said.

“Doesn’t it though. But there’s times I miss the god­for­sak­en sit­com awful­ness of it all.”

“You should try not to,” the mom said. She didn’t look like a drunk, what­ev­er that was sup­posed to look like. She looked like she spent a lot of time play­ing tennis.

“I am try­ing not to do a lot of things.”

“No cross talk,” Dawn One remind­ed them. She was the meet­ing leader again. Nobody else ever want­ed to do it. “We don’t make judgements.”

Charlotte said, “I’m tak­ing inven­to­ry, all right? Like you’re sup­posed to. I’m exam­in­ing my motives.”  Sometimes all you could do was to throw some slo­gans around.

Dawn One said, “It’s not a con­test here. It’s not like who­ev­er is the most sober gets a prize.”

Oh but it was a con­test. Because they were all of them needy and dam­aged and didn’t know how to be any­thing else. Because drink­ing made them feel wised up and know­ing, and who cared what any­body else thought anyway?

She sat back and let the oth­ers talk. It wasn’t good to let your black and white think­ing take over. It wasn’t good to feel your­self injured and ter­ri­bly mis­un­der­stood. It was what the meet­ings ele­gant­ly called, stink­ing think­ing. But some­times you got tired of try­ing to explain your­self to strangers who didn’t seem to par­tic­u­lar­ly like you. Everybody talked about addic­tion, and how the brain and the liv­er ganged up on you and demand­ed a drink, and how alco­hol took up more and more space in your sys­tem, how it pushed and shout­ed and bul­lied and dragged you down.

But nobody talked about the drunk good times you might have with your drunk tribe, and how you belonged to them the way you belonged to no one else, how too much wine was a sacra­ment of unholy com­mu­nion, at least until you or some­body else screwed up.

You weren’t sup­posed to have such regrets.  Except that you did.

The meet­ing end­ed. They all joined hands. “Keep com­ing back, it works if you work it!”

Charlotte, fak­ing it until she could make it, except at the moment she didn’t care. She got her­self out of the room and head­ed for the exit.

Creepy Bruce was hang­ing out by the door. She low­ered her head to bull on past him but he got him­self in between her and the exit. He said, “Uh, I was thinking. . .”

Don’t. Just don’t. But she had to stop, and wait for him to rum­mage around the parts depart­ment of his brain. “There’s this song by the, what’s their names, Beach Bums . . “

“Beach Boys.”

“Yeah.  It goes, ‘Help me Rhonda, help help me Rhonda’.”

“Yes, I know that one.” His face was the col­or of skin that had been under a ban­dage for a long time. A gust of bad breath issued from his mouth like the under­ground air from a cave. What was the say­ing? You look a fright. That was Bruce. A fright. “What about it?”

“I don’t remem­ber the rest of it.”

“So what  . . “

“Say you don’t want to do a real prayer. You can do it side­ways. Help me Rhonda.”

He was look­ing at her with some kind of expec­ta­tion. “Thank you,” Charlotte said.  “I always liked that song.”

Was she meant to say more? Sing out the miss­ing vers­es? “Thanks,” she said again, and pushed past him to the out­side. “You have a good evening.”

She didn’t go home right away but drove out beyond the bright edge of town and fol­lowed the grid of coun­ty roads, north and south and east and west, in a widen­ing square. The lights of town were a pink­ish smear in the dark­ness, like some far­away galaxy seen through a tele­scope. She kept the radio off and sang every Beach Boys song there was out loud. She still remem­bered them all, thank the Rhonda.

 

Dennis said he want­ed to break up. “Okay,” Charlotte said. She guessed she was sur­prised, but it didn’t sink in right away. “How come?”

It was Saturday morn­ing and they were at the farmer’s mar­ket. It had been Charlotte’s idea and Dennis hadn’t want­ed to go.  He sulked along behind her while she browsed the toma­toes and lumpy squash. He wasn’t a good sport about such things.

“You’re too com­pet­i­tive. Always throw­ing it in my face that you have a job and I don’t.”

“What?”  They were right in the mid­dle of the shop­ping crowd and it was hard to hear. “You have a job.”

“I have mini-jobs.  Not a real job job.”

“That’s ridicu­lous.” Her arms were full of slip­pery plas­tic bags of veg­eta­bles. It was hot and noisy and the asphalt under­foot bounced the glare and rack­et right back at you. All around them peo­ple herd­ed kids, ate Karmelkorn, browsed the local hon­ey and pro­duce and sun­flow­ers and tie-dye shirts and wood­en lawn orna­ments.  It was a fun com­mu­ni­ty event that you were sup­posed to enjoy more than you actu­al­ly did. “How do I throw that in your face?”

“You’re always talk­ing about school, what you did at school today, the stuff you have to do for your classes.”

“Because that’s what I do all day! What do you want me to talk about? Do we have to dis­cuss it right this minute?”

“And then this AA busi­ness. You act like you’re some shin­ing exam­ple, like you have every­thing all fig­ured out, and that makes you so supe­ri­or. Well you’re not.“

“Where did this come from?”

“You’re not any bet­ter than I am. You’re just a drunk who wants a lot of sym­pa­thy and atten­tion for being a drunk. It’s very hypocritical.”

“Wow,” Charlotte said. “I guess I’ve real­ly been put in my place.” She stopped in the mid­dle of the glare and the push­ing crowd to squint up at him. Dennis was wear­ing a T‑shirt that said ‘Sarcastic Comment Loading. Please Wait.’ He was look­ing away and scowl­ing out over the crowd. “Okay, bye, I guess.”

“Wait, could you give me a ride home?”

“You’re kid­ding. Oh all right. Did you want any of these tomatoes?”

Back at her apart­ment, she set the things she’d bought on the kitchen counter. All the healthy and local­ly grown veg­eta­bles she would now have to actu­al­ly pre­pare and eat. She called Dennis. When he answered she said, “I real­ly thought we’d been get­ting along bet­ter lately.”

“That’s you mak­ing assumptions.”

“What brought this on? I mean, brought it on right now, today?”

“You know, break­ing up means you don’t have to answer rela­tion­ship ques­tions anymore.”

“Just this one. I’m try­ing to under­stand, you know, trig­ger points. Why things are going along, going along, and then this whole oth­er thing hap­pens. You know?”

“No. See, this is exact­ly what you do. You pick pick pick at stuff and you want to talk every­thing to death.”

Charlotte went qui­et. She didn’t think he was wrong. She heard Dennis fum­bling the phone from one ear to the oth­er, no doubt doing some­thing more inter­est­ing or impor­tant than talk­ing to her. He sighed. “All right, I don’t hate you or any­thing. But we get on each other’s nerves. You know?”

She knew. “So, today . . “

“It was hot, and it took you forty-five min­utes to pick out Brussel sprouts-“

“They didn’t have Brussel sprouts, it’s too early.”

“You see what I mean? Huh? Can’t you just let me say Brussel sprouts? I was in a bad mood and I want­ed to go home.”

“So you broke up with me on an impulse.”

“It was an impulse with an under­ly­ing process.”

“All right, well . .” She’d asked for an expla­na­tion, hadn’t she?  “I’m not sure I can use any of that as a learn­ing experience.”

“I have to go, the game’s starting.”

“What game,” Charlotte said, but he had already hung up.

She went to a liquor store and spent fif­teen min­utes in con­sul­ta­tion with one of the employ­ees, telling him she had a din­ner par­ty com­ing up and she want­ed some­thing special.

She left with a Pouilly-Fume, a Spatlese Riesling, an Australian Shiraz, and a Barbarescero which the employ­ee praised as hav­ing “excep­tion­al poise”.

Back home, Charlotte lined up the bot­tles on the kitchen table. This was going to be no acci­den­tal falling off the wag­on, no whoop­sie slip. This would be a pre­med­i­tat­ed felony.

She opened the Pouilly-Fume first. “Marvelous,” she said aloud. “An exquis­ite bou­quet with sub­tle hints of . . wine.”

She drank some por­tion of it, then opened the oth­ers. The Riesling was too sweet. The Shiraz was too dry, though not what you’d call bad. The Barbarescero was just right. She drank two or three or four glass­es and called her mother.

“Who died?” her moth­er said.

“Nobody.  Nobody we know.”

“Because you only call when there’s some kind of awful news. You can’t stand talk­ing to me unless there’s a funer­al. Well one of these days it’ll be my funer­al. Then who are you going to call?”

“You’re not mak­ing sense”, Charlotte com­plained. Although there was a way in which she was. Her moth­er always made drunk sense. “I called because I haven’t talked to you in a while.  I want­ed to say hello.”

“Hello. I wor­ry about you. You don’t earn enough to buy a house. You’re going to live out your days in a grub­by lit­tle apartment.”

“People do that. My apart­ment is not grub­by. You’ve nev­er seen it.”

“Because you’ve nev­er invit­ed me.”

“You can come any time.”

“That’s not an invi­ta­tion. An invi­ta­tion is, I want us to spend Christmas together.”

“Fine. Come for Christmas.”

“You aren’t say­ing it right.”

“Mommy Dearest, please come for Christmas.”

“Are you drink­ing? You’re drink­ing, right?”

“I am enjoy­ing an adult beverage.”

Her moth­er made a sound in her nose, half sniff, half snort.  “I myself have giv­en up alcohol.”

“Get out of town.”

Go ahead, don’t believe me. My com­plex­ion looks so much bet­ter. People notice, I get compliments.”

“That’s great, Mom.” And she guessed it was. If it was true. If it was any­thing that might last. “What made you decide to quit drink­ing? Did you fall again?”

“How much longer are you going to keep bring­ing that up?”

“You need to take care of your­self. I’m just saying.”

“I took a wrong step. It hap­pens every day in America. But it’s nice that you pre­tend to care.”

Charlotte let a silence set­tle. She had to care. She and her moth­er were the only ones left. All their pitched bat­tles and stu­pid good times — the night the garage blew up!  the day they stole the cat! — all of it dwin­dled down to the two of them.  Charlotte’s father, ten years gone, his liv­er turned wormy and drown­ing his body from the inside out.  Her broth­er Carl, dead three years now of an ear­ly heart attack. “Well, he sure enjoyed him­self,” peo­ple said, mean­ing he had been a good-times guy, a par­ty guy, and doc­tors, hell, if you lis­tened to them you’d nev­er be able to do anything,

They had not seen her younger broth­er Greg in years.  Greg was the one who hung back from all the row­di­ness, the one who got teased, the one who suf­fered. He said, more than once, that they were crazy, all of them, they deserved each oth­er. He’d left home after high school and moved to Colorado and last they’d heard he was work­ing as a car­pen­ter in a town on the west­ern slope. For a while, Charlotte kept track of him on Facebook and tried to send him mes­sages but they nev­er went through, and after a time even the online glimpses of him went stale.

So it was real­ly just her moth­er and her­self. Her needy, furi­ous, obliv­i­ous moth­er.  Who presided over the din­ner gone to hell, the cop at the door, the cham­pagne toasts and fan­cy beer steins, the kid not picked up from bas­ket­ball prac­tice, the pan left on the stove to burn, the cry­ing jag, the pow­dery feel and scent of her per­fume and make­up when she bent to kiss you on a going-out night.

“Mom? Was I always the same per­son? I mean, the same as I am now.”

“I do not under­stand what you’re saying.’

“Was I always a prob­lem? Or did I start out all right, and then maybe I took a hun­dred and eighty degree turn, you know, fell in with bad com­pan­ions. Or maybe I suf­fered some life-alter­ing trauma.”

“Goodness, you’d remem­ber a life-alter­ing trauma,”

“Not nec­es­sar­i­ly.”

“Well, you were always a twitchy lit­tle thing. Always wor­ry­ing if you were being left out. You weren’t the most lov­able child. Oh I don’t mean I didn’t love you. I was only con­scious of hav­ing to make an effort.”

“I guess it’s good to get that out there.”

“I think we should talk some more about Christmas. I think it’s a very nice idea.”

When she got off the phone, Charlotte lined the wine bot­tles up on the kitchen table. “Eenie mee­nie miney moe,” she said, count­ing off. How was that was sup­posed to work? Well any­way. She drank up eenie, then mee­nie. Somebody banged on the door. Oh, was she mak­ing noise?  Maybe, but so what, it was the week­end. Saturday night! “Shut up in there, you know what time it is?”

No, not real­ly. “Sorry,” she said, but by that time who­ev­er it was had gone away.

Then it was morn­ing, gray and fuzzy. She felt rot­ten. What a sur­prise. She went into the bath­room, where some bad things hap­pened. Then she tried to go back to sleep. Her intestines were wrestling around like two pigs under a blan­ket. She could feel some­thing pok­ing her. Had she swal­lowed some kind of sharp object?

She got out of bed and found the emp­ty wine bot­tles. All four of them. Eenie eenie eenie eenie.  But the bot­tles weren’t chipped, so she guessed she hadn’t swal­lowed any glass. She vis­it­ed the bath­room again and tried to shit what­ev­er it was out. Nothing. She was sweat­ing and the sweat turned cold on her. She tried throw­ing up. Then she had to try not to throw up.

She crawled back into bed and called Dennis. It took two calls before he answered. “Do you know what time it is?”

People were always ask­ing her that. “Would you take me to the emer­gency room?”

“Huh? What for?”

“I don’t know. I hurt, it’s real bad.”

“Hurt where? Are you hung over?”

“No. Yes, but that’s not the prob­lem. All my insides keep try­ing to get outside.”

He coughed, a long, slow, wak­ing up sound. “Maybe you should call an ambulance.’

“Just get me to the ER. Please.”

“It’s pos­si­ble you’re over­re­act­ing. You’re a clas­sic overreacter.”

“Dennis!”

“All right, I’ll take you, but we’re still bro­ken up. That hasn’t changed.”

“Fine, great.” The bro­ken glass shift­ed in her. “Ahh, ahh, ahh shit. You’ll have to come over here.”

“You’re kid­ding, you mean I have to walk?”

“It’s not my fault you don’t have a car.”

Dennis start­ed to say some­thing else but Charlotte dropped the phone and ran to the bath­room.  She was still in the bath­room when, some time lat­er, he knocked on the apart­ment door.  She tried to get off the toi­let but wound up on the floor.

“You have to let me in.”

“I can’t. I can’t get up.”

“You nev­er gave me a key. You had no real com­mit­ment to our rela­tion­ship.” He rat­tled the door.   Charlotte heard it open. “Did you know you left your door unlocked? Where are you?”

“In the bathroom.”

“Are you doing any­thing gross?” The bath­room door cracked open and Dennis peered in. “What are you doing on the floor?”

“Just go get my car, I think the keys are in the kitchen.”  She hauled her­self upright to sit against the tub. When she was a sil­ly young girl, she’d imag­ined the thrilling romance of a man sweep­ing her up and car­ry­ing her away, res­cu­ing her from a fire, per­haps. Or Rhett Butler car­ry­ing Scarlett up the stair­case to rav­ish her. Now, ha ha. Dennis wasn’t in good enough shape to car­ry any­one, it was too ludi­crous. Plus she was pret­ty sure she smelled bad.

Somehow she man­aged to get her­self down­stairs. Dennis pulled up on the side­walk and she shuf­fled into the front seat. The pain had ebbed. Maybe she didn’t the emer­gency room after all. But it seemed unwise to sug­gest this, and so she slumped against the door and lis­tened to Dennis say dis­parag­ing things about her car, how the engine was under­sized and it had no pickup.

It was Sunday morn­ing, still ear­ly enough that the sky was smudged with gray, but the sun was climb­ing, and peo­ple were jog­ging and walk­ing dogs and head­ing out to get the Sunday paper. She was nev­er going to take a nor­mal, tran­quil morn­ing for grant­ed ever again. At the emer­gency room entrance, Dennis slowed to let her out. Charlotte said, “I think it would be nice if you came in with me.”

“I was going to. I was going to park the car and come in, Jeez.”

Inside, she told the admit­ting clerk that she had severe abdom­i­nal pain with vom­it­ing and diar­rhea. The clerk was ok with that. No big­gie. Charlotte took a seat to wait. It wasn’t crowd­ed, but the oth­er peo­ple wait­ing looked as if they had been there for a while. There was always some­body worse off than you were.

When Dennis sat down next to her he said, “Are you going to tell them how much you drink?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know. It might be med­ical­ly impor­tant.”  He took out his phone and start­ed play­ing one of his games. He was wear­ing sweat­pants and a T‑shirt, clothes he might have slept in or might have just put on.   It was always dif­fi­cult to tell with Dennis. When a nurse called Charlotte’s name he said, “Am I sup­posed to stay here or what?”

“You have my car,” she remind­ed him.

The nurse took her back to a cur­tained off bay. “So you woke up with a tum­my ache?”

 Charlotte felt the pain uncoil­ing again inside her, that bro­ken glass snake. “Ow. Yes.”

The nurse took her tem­per­a­ture and blood pres­sure and sent Charlotte down the hall to pee in a cup. The nurse stuck her in the arm and drew a syringe full of bright blood. She asked Charlotte how bad her pain was on a scale of one to ten.

“Twenty-five. I’m kid­ding. I don’t know. Eight or nine?” She hoped that was a good answer.

After a while a doc­tor came in. “Let’s take a look under the hood, shall we?” He was try­ing to be brisk and enter­tain­ing, but Charlotte could tell he was pissed off about hav­ing to work on a Sunday morn­ing. He made Charlotte lie back while he pressed his palms against dif­fer­ent places on her abdomen. She said Ow here and there, try­ing to cal­i­brate her sound lev­el to the wrig­gling pain.

The doc­tor fin­ished his exam and pulled Charlotte’s wrinkly shirt and jeans and embar­rass­ing under­pants back in place. “All right, here’s the sit­u­a­tion we find our­selves in,” the doc­tor said. He wasn’t very old. He’d grown a small chin beard, she guessed to make him­self look old­er. He was prob­a­bly a brand new doc­tor, he was going to prac­tice on peo­ple like her. “When’s the last time you drank alcohol?”

“Let’s see.” Charlotte made a show of search­ing her mem­o­ry. “Yesterday. Last night. I had some wine. Why?”

“How much wine?”

“I can’t say. I spilled some of it.” This seemed like a rea­son­able answer. It was prob­a­bly even true. “A cou­ple of bot­tles. Most of a cou­ple of bottles.”

“You’re still legal­ly drunk eight hours lat­er. We need to get you into detox, then we can sort out the rest of it.”

“But my stom­ach real­ly hurts.”

“You have an enlarged liv­er. And bor­der­line alco­hol poi­son­ing. I’m not sur­prised you have some gas­tric symp­toms. I’d real­ly like to get you checked in. Help us help you.”

It was dawn­ing on her that she now had an entire­ly dif­fer­ent prob­lem. “But I’m not drink­ing now, am I? See? Not drinking.”

The doc­tor shook his head. He was try­ing to be all pro­fes­sion­al and seri­ous, but clear­ly he could be help­ing sick lit­tle chil­dren or cur­ing can­cer if he didn’t have to waste time on her smelly drunk self.

“What did he say, huh? That guy I came with.”  It made her furi­ous to think of Dennis rat­ting her out, and now he’d prob­a­bly dri­ve her car all over town. “It was just wine!”

They brought a wheel­chair and loaded her into it.  She tried to protest but she was a drunk and they were doc­tors. Did she want them to call the police? “Police?  Tell them to find the guy who stole my car!” If she didn’t want any more trou­ble, then she should sign here. They would get her some juice and maybe a sooth­ing pill. There was some­thing very wrong going on, she demand­ed to speak to who­ev­er was in charge. “I am not hav­ing a good qual­i­ty patient expe­ri­ence!” The doc­tor with the lit­tle beard was walk­ing away down the cor­ri­dor. “I bet you were a C stu­dent,” she called after him. “I bet you hand­ed every­thing in late!”

But by then they had wheeled her through two sets of dou­ble doors and into a room with peach col­ored walls and soft light. They helped her onto a padded couch-thing and fas­tened straps over her arms and legs. “Whoa! I didn’t say you could tie me up!”

They said it was part of treat­ment, treat­ment she had agreed to in writ­ing, and it was only so she did not injure her­self. “My stom­ach still hurts!  Really real­ly!” She was sob­bing, furi­ous. What had she done that was so wrong?

There was a new nurse here. She was wear­ing peach, to match the walls, and blue hands, or maybe those were gloves. The nurse had an IV pole with a bag and some tubes and she was squeez­ing Charlotte’s arm with her blue fin­gers. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for a vein.” With her free hand the nurse hoist­ed a syringe. “Now, just pre­tend this is a big old bee.”

The bee bit. “Ow! What are you doing, what’s in that?”

“Electrolytes, most­ly. And a lit­tle nip of hap­py juice. Calm you right down.”

“I don’t want to be …”  She meant to say, calmed down, but her tongue wasn’t work­ing right, and her head was too heavy, and the only part of her body awake and twitch­ing was her gut.  “I have to . . “

Vomit.  The nurse was right there, shov­ing a bowl under her nose, whisk­ing the mess away, giv­ing her a glass of water to rinse her mouth. Charlotte’s eyes were glassy with tears.

“Please,” she said. “I have to get out of here, this is no good.”

“Out with the bad goop, in with the good goop,” the nurse said. “Try to relax. This is going to take a while.” The nurse’s voice had a blurred, fuzzy qual­i­ty.  Charlotte kept falling asleep, then anoth­er stab of pain would jerk her awake. She twist­ed around in the restrain­ing straps. She was going to god­damn die, right here in a hos­pi­tal tor­ture chamber.

“How long, exact­ly does it take?  How long do I have to stay here?”

“Until you’re sorry.”

“I’m sor­ry now.” And she was. She was sor­ry for screw­ing around like she had all the time in the world, like it would always be some­body else’s fault, like noth­ing mat­tered. A dif­fer­ent kind of pain, shiny and hot, made her yelp. “I promise, I’ll nev­er drink any­thing ever again.”

“A drunk’s promise,” the nurse scoffed.

“What oth­er kind do I have?”

But the nurse had gone away. The pain was now both inside of her and out­side. How had that hap­pened? Had she dis­ap­peared? Up and died already? How could you go to hell if you didn’t believe in it? Or maybe that was where they caught you. The clause you hadn’t both­ered read­ing.  “Help me, Rhonda.”

Now that was sil­ly. But she tried again. “Oh Rhonda you look so fine, and I know it wouldn’t take much time.” It didn’t sound so bad. She’d always thought she had a nice singing voice. “For you to help me Rhonda, help me . .”

Help her what? Get into heav­en, maybe, drunk heav­en. It was like a beer com­mer­cial.  Everybody was hav­ing a good time and get­ting along and nobody was spilling their drinks or call­ing their ex-spouse to announce they were abduct­ing the chil­dren. Oh Jesus she hurt. RHONDA! RHONDA!

“Who’s Rhonda?” the nurse said, pop­ping back in. “Hold still so I can check your vitals.”

“Am I dead yet? Seriously.”

The nurse didn’t answer. She was try­ing to keep Charlotte’s arm from flop­ping around.  “What hap­pened to your blood pressure?

Charlotte tried to say that she hadn’t done any­thing to it, and it wasn’t her fault. There was a space of float­ing time, then she opened her eyes again. A man said, “One, two, three.”

And she was lift­ed up! Finally, she would be res­cued! She let her head loll attrac­tive­ly. Moistened her lips.

Then they put her back down, oof. Flat on her back. Someone was say­ing, “I want a quick scan. Lickety split. Then prep her.” A man’s face peered down at her. “Charlotte?”

Your appen­dix rup­tured, and you’re bleed­ing out. We’re going to get you into surgery as soon as we can. Do you have any questions?”

“Are you a doctor?”

They put a thing over her mouth and nose, a plas­tic thing, and told her to breathe. You shouldn’t have to tell any­body to breathe, you just did it. “Big breath,” they said, encour­ag­ing her. Well all right, but..

 

She opened one eye. Closed it again. “Am I dead?”

“Just the drunk part of you. We took it out. It was ruptured.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

She slept again. The next time she came to, Dennis was sit­ting in a chair by the win­dow, look­ing at his phone. Everything hurt. Outside the win­dow, it was either get­ting light or get­ting dark, she couldn’t tell. She nev­er knew what time it was.

When Dennis saw she was awake, he put his phone down. “You all right? I guess you have to do every­thing the hard way. They left some­thing for you to sign. I think it’s so you won’t sue them.

“Yeah, I bet they have whole stacks of those things print­ed out and ready to go.” She tried to sit up, but that part of her body was not tak­ing requests.

“Dude, they basi­cal­ly saved your life.”

She hat­ed that Dennis still said Dude. “Sure, and before that they basi­cal­ly tried to kill me.”

“If you have to stay overnight, can I keep dri­ving your car?”

 

Charlotte went back to her meet­ing one last time. It had been explained to her that if she drank any more, she real­ly would die, so either way, good-bye.  She thought she’d sign up for a yoga class or a pho­tog­ra­phy class instead, some­thing that whole­some, enthu­si­as­tic peo­ple did.

There was a big old orange sun­set, and she lin­gered in the park­ing lot to take it in. The sun’s hydro­gen fus­ing into heli­um, nine­ty-three mil­lion miles away. See? She still knew things. For a while there she’d been afraid that drink­ing had pulled too many of her wires loose. She hur­ried inside so she wouldn’t be the last per­son to arrive, the one every­body looked at.

Creepy Bruce wasn’t there, and she was sor­ry. She could have been a lit­tle nicer to him. But she’d been gone a few weeks and meet­ings tend­ed to churn through dif­fer­ent peo­ple on a reg­u­lar basis. Dawn One was still there, also Dawn Two, who had acquired a com­plete set of shiny white teeth. There were peo­ple she didn’t know. Dawn One lead them in the Serenity Prayer and said, “Is there some­one who’d like to start?”

Nobody. Some things didn’t change. Charlotte cleared her throat. “Hi, I’m Charlotte and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi Charlotte,” the room said back, with some stragglers.

She hadn’t planned on say­ing any­thing, but now she had to keep going. “I just want­ed to, ah apol­o­gize to every­body for being, oh I don’t know, arro­gant and a snob. If I ever cor­rect­ed anybody’s gram­mar, well, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t remem­ber you doing that,” Lisa said.

“I prob­a­bly just thought it.  Anyway, I’m sorry.”

Dawn One said, “What brought this on?”

“I got sick and had an oper­a­tion. They took some stuff out. But I still have a drunk brain.”

Charlotte felt her­self run­ning out of gas. There was only so much you could say.

“Drunk brain,” a man she didn’t know said. “Just don’t go to no drunk brain surgeon.”

“No jokes, she’s try­ing to say some­thing serious.”

“It’s ok, I’m always jok­ing. Serious gets too serious.”

“You’re fac­ing up to things, that’s good.”

She guessed it was. She didn’t real­ly have a choice. Things were fac­ing up to her. It was anoth­er trig­ger point, and the gun was loaded. Oh Rhonda, Rhonda, you are the angel at the bot­tom of the bottle.

~

Jean Thompson is a nov­el­ist and short sto­ry writer, whose most recent nov­el is The Poet’s House (Algonquin). She has pub­lished 9 pre­vi­ous nov­els, includ­ing The Year We Left Home and Wide Blue Yonder, and 6 short sto­ry col­lec­tions, includ­ing the National Book Award final­ist Who Do You Love.

Thompson’s short fic­tion has been pub­lished in many mag­a­zines and jour­nals, includ­ing The New Yorker, and been anthol­o­gized in The Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prize. Her work has been praised by Elle Magazine as “brac­ing and wild­ly intel­li­gent writ­ing that explores the nature of love in all its hid­den and man­i­fest dimensions.”

Jean has been the recip­i­ent of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fel­low­ships, among oth­er acco­lades, and taught cre­ative writ­ing at the University of Illinois–Champaign/ Urbana, Reed College, Northwestern University, and many oth­er col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. She lives in Urbana, Illinois.

Her web­site is: https://jeanthompsononline.com

Visit her blog at: https://jeanthompsononline.com/why-my-new-book-is-not-a-book/

Visit her YouTube chan­nel at https://www.youtube.com/@OurHeartsAfire