Blue Umbrella Sky

by Rick R. Reed

  It must have rolled around to meeting start time, because a guy with a beer gut, reddish beard, and kind smile, seated in the center of the circle, cleared his throat. He smiled at everyone. “Would those who choose to please join me in the Serenity Prayer?”

  Billy had heard of the Serenity Prayer but wasn’t familiar with how it went. He’d be a good sport and at least try to mouth the words as they were spoken.

  The man said simply, “God,” and then paused.

  There was a little shuffling of feet, a shifting of bodies; some bowed their heads.

  And then they began speaking in unison.

  “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

  “The courage to change the things I can.

  “And the wisdom to know the difference.”

  New age hooey, Billy thought. What happens now?

  The bearded leader of the group began. “Hi, everyone, I’m Stan. And I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi, Stan!” everyone cried out in response, and Billy smirked, rolling his eyes.

  Stan went on to describe how things would happen in the meeting. There’d be readings, followed by sharing and then “observance of the seventh tradition,” and then announcements.

  He might as well have been speaking in a foreign tongue as far as Billy was concerned. These folks had simply traded one addiction for another. He slouched in his chair, wishing he could be home, in his bed, sleeping yet another one off. He could get up later, find himself the greasiest cheeseburger and fries in town, and feel like himself again.

  And then… a tavern near his apartment that opened early. Visions of a backlit bar danced before him, rows of bottles of different-colored potions reflected in a huge mirror mounted behind them.

  He shook his head, trying to make himself listen, as Jon had told him, with an open mind.

  But it was hard. And his ears didn’t really perk up until the readings had gone by—so much gibberish—and a couple of people had shared their miseries.

  But when the “librarian” began to speak, to share, Billy woke from his state of sloth and boredom.

  Claire wasn’t what he’d expected. What he’d expected was a woman who overdid the sherry after Sunday mass. I mean, come on, her clothes make her appear like someone ready to bake cookies or maybe join some other old biddies playing pinochle at the senior center.

  “Hi, everybody.” She smiled and met eyes with several of the people in the circle, Billy included. Billy was caught short by the warmth—and the inherent mischief—of that smile. Her dark brown eyes engaged with his for only a second, but Billy felt as though he’d been really seen.

  “I’m an alcoholic named Claire.” Her voice was raspier than Billy expected, a Brenda Vaccaro growl that spoke of too many cigarettes.

  “Hi, Claire!”

  Billy mumbled, “Claire,” and gazed down at the floor, noticing some dried vomit on his shoe.

  “Ah… what do I say? I’m grateful to be here. Grateful to be among you all, who help me on this sometimes twisted, sometimes tiresome road to recovery. We’re all different, aren’t we? And yet I see myself in each of your faces. I know your pain. I know your struggles.” Claire drew in a deep breath.

  Billy forced himself to look up.

  “I know your joy too.” There it was, that smile again—radiant and just a hint of “I’ve got a naughty secret.” Billy began to wonder if there was more to this woman than met the eye. He had perhaps judged too quickly and too harshly.

  “When I walked into these rooms, too many years ago for this gal to reveal, I was a mess. On the outside everyone thought I was on top of the world, a theater actor at the top of her game. I’d done major roles on the big stages in town—Steppenwolf, Goodman, Court. A little film work. Some TV. If you passed me on the street, I’d look vaguely familiar to you.” She grinned.

  Billy would have never assigned her the occupation of actor.

  “But on the inside I was barely hanging on, honey. I’d leave the theater and head straight home. I wasn’t big on drinking in bars. I had other uses for bars, which I’ll get to in a minute. Ironically, the consumption of alcohol wasn’t one of them. No, I’d go home, usually still floating three feet off the ground—that’s what being on the stage did for me. I wonder why it wasn’t enough? Anyway, I’d get home, and the first thing I’d do, after kicking off my shoes, was pour myself a shot of bourbon and crack open a can of Old Style.”

  She chuckled. “I was a classy broad.

  “I’d tell myself the beer and the bourbon were just to bring me down after the adrenaline rush of being onstage. Amazing how many times I bought that line! But if it were true, I would have stopped after the first ones. Got myself to bed. After all, the booze, especially at first, brought me down quick, made me reasonably comfy, you know? But I kept going… and going. Like the Energizer Bunny.

  “When I was drunk enough, that’s when I’d go out. Hit one of the watering holes in my ’hood, which back then, was Lincoln Park. And I’d pick somebody up—anybody. I didn’t care. Male, female, tall, short, fat, thin, rich, poor, black, white…. Just hated to sleep alone. Hated to be alone. Couldn’t stand the sight of myself. To find someone who saw me, you know, and wanted me—that was the ticket. That was my addiction.”

  Claire paused for a long moment. Billy wondered if it was because she’d maybe crossed over into bitterness. Even from this short exposure to AA, he already knew the meetings were supposed to be about helping one another recover—not despair.

  “What was my point? Hell if I know. Oh yeah, I wanted to talk about hitting bottom.” Claire sighed, looking around the room as though she were gauging how she’d be accepted—or not.

  “One night I met up with this guy, a kid really, couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or so. Cute. Bit of a baby face. Sandy hair. Big brown eyes. The kind you don’t know whether you want to mother or just fuck the shit out of. You know what I mean, ladies?”

  A spasm of nervous laughter pulsed through the room.

  “Anyhoo, we got to talkin’, and he’s all flattery and shit. Tells me what a nice figure I have, how I couldn’t possibly be in my forties.

  “I trusted him, you know. I was three sheets to the wind by the time he suggested we find someplace more private. Here’s the thing about me and being loaded—most people couldn’t tell. Whether it was genetic or years of faking being someone I wasn’t, who’s to say, but I could be shit-faced and you wouldn’t have a clue. It’s all about poise and diction.

  “So we went out into the night. It was hot. You know how Chicago in August can be? Humid as hell, with heat that fairly shimmers up from the sidewalk.” Claire left them for a minute. Billy could see it in her eyes. The place she traveled to wasn’t a happy one. What she said next came out fast and low.

  “Long story short. Keith, that was his name, tells me it would ‘fun’ to do it outside, since it’s such a hot night. And I’m of a mind where anything goes. We traipse down to the lakefront. Remember when it was all big boulders at the end of Belmont? The gay guys used to hang out there.

  “There weren’t any gay guys there that night at the Belmont Rocks. There wasn’t anybody. Too late. And I trusted my Keithy. He was a little boy. Harmless. Maybe even a virgin. It didn’t occur to me that he would like the rough stuff.” Claire let out a bark of bitter laughter. “Oh, but he did. He did.” Claire nodded. She was silent so long, Billy wondered if she were going to speak again. So did several of the others, since they leaned forward, expectant.

  “I won’t catalog the abuse. Let’s just say I can never hear someone say ‘on the rocks’ again without shuddering—for many reasons.” There it was, that bitter laugh again. Billy wondered if Claire was beyond laughing joyfully. A pain rose up in his heart.

  Claire shrugged. “He left me for dead. The three Bs, folks—bloody, bruised, and battered. Some kids found me around dawn at the bottom of the boulders. Broken ribs, split lip, both eyes black, face of a monster. Slacks around my
ankles. Blouse eaten by the sharks.” She hooted. “A couple more inches and I would have been in the lake and maybe no one would have found me.

  “Yada, yada. An ambulance came. At St. Joe’s, they patched me up, sent me to detox.”

  She smiled, and Billy was taken aback. It was radiant—he found the joy he’d sought earlier.

  “And I am so fuckin’ grateful to Keith and for that night because—ta-da!—here I am. And I might have never found all of you and a way to throw these fuckin’ chains off if Keith hadn’t taught me that painful lesson one August night so many moons ago.”

  There was a hush in the room, broken by Claire at last saying, “That’s all I got.”

  People shifted their feet, looked around. Billy glanced up at the clock. The hour was almost up. Finally a few folks mumbled their thanks to Claire, and then everybody clapped.

  Here’s the thing. She looks like somebody’s sweet old grandma. We never really know people from what we see on the outside, do we? I’ll never judge someone again by the surface.

  Silence. Billy was about ready to accept that they’d do whatever ablutions they did at the close of an AA meeting when Stan said, “We got time for one more share.”

  Like a classroom full of kids where no one has the answer to the teacher’s questions, gazes darted away from Stan, down at the floor, at each other, wondering, “Will you be the one? Will you break the silence?”

  Billy was stunned to find himself raising his hand. It was almost as though his arm and hand had developed a mind of their own. Everyone peered at him, and a rush of fire rose to his cheeks. He looked over at Jon, who nodded.

  He tried to swallow but had no spit, so he just put some breath behind words and said them. “Hi. I’m Billy… and I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi, Billy!”

  Shit. They say that to everybody. So why do I wanna cry? Billy choked down his sobs and his fears and just started talking. Those first words he’d just said were, really, the most important. Billy even thought for a second of that old cliché, the one about the journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step.

  Everyone saying “Hi, Billy” was standard, the voices tired, practiced, rote. But the moment wasn’t standard. Not for him. It was an opening of arms. It was an explosion of release and relief. It was being seen, really seen, and not judged.

  It was a moment Billy knew he’d never forget.

  He grinned, knew it came out sheepish. His mind went blank, but damn it, he’d make himself speak even if he only uttered gibberish. He had to trust that the words would come.

  The clock ticked down.

  “I don’t know what I wanna say. I do know what I wanna say. I just said it. I’m an alcoholic. A fucking alcoholic, just like my daddy and his daddy before him. Admitting that’s more of a thing than I could have ever realized.

  “I’ve denied it all my life, pretty much.

  “I should have known when I took that first stolen beer with my cousins at age eight.

  “I should have known when I was sneaking my parents’ vodka before classes started in high school, watering it down so they wouldn’t know. And finally, just pitching the bottle out when it was empty. What to do then? I was fourteen. How could I buy another bottle? Oh yeah, the answer came to me. Smile at the obviously gay guy coming out of the liquor store on Halsted. Maybe do a little more than smile.”

  Billy hung his head, then forced it back up, though he would look no one in the eye. Not yet….

  “Replacing that bottle became a routine, one that started my signature move of mixing alcohol and sex. I was kind of a prostitute, huh? No, I was one. Booze instead of cash.” Billy let out a long, shuddering sigh. He’d never told anyone any of this before.

  “Gradually, I grew up. Didn’t need to offer up myself for a bottle. I could buy my own. And I did. But the pattern of drinking and sleeping with strangers continued. I even mixed it up with an alphabet soup of party drugs too. As I got older, I started hanging out in the clubs—there was T, G, X, all, of course, part of PNP.” Billy shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if you know what those letters mean—you get the gist. They all boil down to the same—running away from myself. Dulling the feelings. But here’s the thing: I dulled everything, not just the bad shit, like low self-esteem and self-loathing, but the good stuff too, my compassion, my kindness, my simple joy.

  “All of it went away. I drank myself through college at Loyola. Theater and voice major. Amazing that I managed to graduate.

  “And I could sing! I didn’t tell you that. I sang at open mics in coffeehouses and bars all over the north side. At one point, after I graduated and hooked up with a band, very briefly, I even had an agent interested.

  “They said I sang a good song. They said I had a style.” Billy smiled, wondering if anyone got the paraphrasing. He looked over at Claire and she winked, smiled back.

  “It all went to shit. Even the singing. And yet it was the singing, the singing that led me here to you.” He looked over at Jon. “You came to see me in my last gig, huh?”

  Jon, arms folded across his chest, nodded. He didn’t say anything, maybe because of the prohibition against cross talk Stan mentioned at the beginning of the meeting. Or maybe simply because silence really was one of the best ways of getting someone to talk.

  Billy waved as though batting at a fly. Scratched the back of his neck. “I had the reverse Midas touch. Everything I touched turned to crap. That agent? I missed meeting up with him one too many times because I was loaded. That backup gig at Davenport’s? Got fired my first night because I was too drunk to stand up.” He laughed bitterly. “At least the show was over when that happened. Ah! I have a whole novel full of sad stories, all of them ending in tragedy.

  “Poor me.”

  He glanced at the clock, wondered if the meeting should be ending at the top of the hour, thought he should wrap it up.

  Somehow.

  “But not poor me. Because I’m here. Because I’m Billy, and I’m an alcoholic. And I need help. Because my own will sure as shit hasn’t done me any favors.” He looked around the room, forcing himself to make eye contact with each person in that little circle. He thought he’d see those faces in his dreams, always. “And I’ll be here tomorrow, or somewhere like this, and the next day and the next.”

  He hung his head low, staring down at the floor, and whispered, “Because I can’t get better alone.”

  Chapter 10

  MILT TOOK down two mugs from the kitchen cabinet.

  He ground some beans, poured them into his french press, and then filled the electric kettle with water, plugged it in, and switched it on.

  The radio, tuned to the local “nostalgia” station, MOD FM, on this December morning featured Peggy Lee singing “Fever.” The song was seductive, almost bawdy, as it always was. Lee’s smoky voice and the material were a perfect match. But this early in the morning, seductive and bawdy were a bit much, especially at high volume. Milt moved to the living area to turn down the stereo.

  While he waited for the electric kettle to heat the water, he stood by the window to see what the day had in store for him. The sun rose in the east, and the colors were glorious, a blend of purple, gray, and orange. Ruby came to stand beside him, tail wagging, belly full of chicken, brown rice, and sweet potato—Milt’s special blend. It was as though she too were observing the splendor of the morning sky.

  He looked down at her for a moment and then back out at the just-after-dawn sky. “I made the right move in coming here, didn’t I, girl?”

  Ruby glanced up, warm chocolate eyes appraising. He almost expected her to nod, to agree. But other than a double thump of her tail on the floor, she kept her own counsel.

  “I wasn’t so sure when I got here last summer. The heat! Those triple-digit temperatures every single day. That storm!” The tile flooring in the trailer was new; so was the dark brown leather recliner. His other furniture had managed to emerge pretty much unscathed from the earlier flood.

  I
n truth, the storm was a blessing because it had forced Milt to get rid of the olive-green scalloped shag carpeting that had been there when he bought the place. His old recliner had had to go too. It was way too similar to the one Frasier’s dad had on the TV show of the same name. It was an old-man piece of furniture, battered, tatty, and on its last legs.

  The new chair was stylish—it didn’t even look like a recliner, but more like an elegant overstuffed chair. The flooring, flood-proof, the sales guy had assured him, was a porcelain tile that looked like distressed hickory but was much sturdier. The rising sun was just beginning to fall on it in slats now, which revealed to Milt that he needed to run the Swiffer around the place.

  Winter was truly the season of heaven here in the desert. Clear blue skies and temperatures in the seventies during the sun-drenched days and going down to chilly lows of forties and fifties at night.

  By the time he turned away from the window, Ruby had taken her place on the couch, curled up and snoring. The electric kettle made its little beep, letting him know he could mix up his morning brew.

  He went into the kitchen, looked first at the french press, and then at the two mugs he’d taken down.

  Two mugs.

  He staggered back a couple of steps and plopped down on one of the stools he had at the kitchen bar. He covered his face with his hands and wept. Just like that, he went from serene, calm, and happy to sobbing so hard his eyes burned and his nose ran like a kid with a bad cold.

  He allowed himself to wallow in sorrow for only a couple of minutes. Then he shook his head and stood. A roll of paper towels hung above the kitchen sink. He yanked one off and blew his nose, laughing at himself. “You’re losing it, buddy.”