Blue Umbrella Sky

by Rick R. Reed

  “No.” Milt smiled across the table at Dane. “This is where I am now. My blood’s gotten acclimated to the heat. I have Ruby.” He looked over at the dog, curled up in her bed in a corner of the living room. Her ears perked up when Milt mentioned her name, but she didn’t stir. She’d been made sleepy, heavy, by being slipped meat and pasta at the table earlier.

  “And there’s more possibility for me here now. You know?” Milt surprised himself. He honestly couldn’t have predicted he’d be voicing these words, these sentiments. But now that they were tumbling from his lips, almost as though he’d rehearsed them, he realized they were true.

  “I spent a long time living for someone else. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t begrudge Corky that time. I cared for him because I loved him with all my heart. I still do. I did it because I know, without even the smallest bit of doubt, that if the tables were turned, he’d have done the exact same thing for me. Caring for my sick and dying husband was both a horror and a joy, a blessing. I’m grateful to have been his person, to have been there for him when he most needed me, whether he knew it or not.”

  Milt had to stop. The tears were welling in his eyes, the lump in his throat expanding. Dane, in his wisdom, didn’t say anything stupid. He didn’t say anything at all. He merely reached across the table and took Milt’s hand and squeezed it.

  He let go when Milt found himself capable of going on. “It’s taken me these months out here—alone—to realize that Corky loved me so much he would want this new life for me.” Milt smiled through his tears. He confessed, “I think he’s even let me know it—in subtle little ways.”

  “It is beautiful here,” Dane said quietly.

  “You’re disappointed, aren’t you?” Milt cocked his head. He poured them both some more wine. “The truth is, Dane, if you’d have come out here a few months sooner, I might have actually packed things up and come back with you.” Milt drained his wineglass. “But things have changed.” Milt smiled. “You really thought you might lure me back?”

  “Well, I’d be lying if I said I came out here only as a getaway, although I did desperately need some Milt time and some sun!” He chuckled. “But before I left, Seth and I talked about it. There was this hope, and I’ll be the first to admit it was a very selfish hope, that I’d come out here and find you feeling a little lost and a lot homesick. And through careful, subtle persuasion, my specialty, I’d talk you into coming back. Seth even said to offer our place as a landing pad until you could get yourself back together—as we both knew you would.

  “So when you said you missed it, I leaped on that, because I wasn’t sure you did.” He smiled, but there was a little sadness there. “I could see you were making your way here. I could see a certain settling in. I never expected to see you in a trailer, for Christ’s sake, but it’s cute, and it’s homey, and it’s you. Yours alone. And I see that as healthy. I see that as a good thing, as much as the selfish part of me wants you miserable, pining for the cold and gray skies of eastern Ohio. Ha! Fat chance.

  “No, Milt, my old buddy. I see good things for you here.” Dane’s gaze drifted out the window, and Milt imagined he was looking at Billy’s trailer.

  Dane said, “You didn’t ask, and you sure as hell don’t need it, but you have my blessing.” He looked toward the silver trailer outside again. “You deserve something for yourself. And I know Corky would be as happy for you as I am. As happy as Seth will be when I tell him all about this Billy Blue person.” Dane burst into laughter. “That’s not his real name, is it?”

  Milt laughed. Nothing was funny, but there was a sense of joy bubbling over. “Yes. It’s his real name. Least as far as I know. He makes me think of these impossible expanses of blue skies we get out here. He makes me hopeful. I just might be falling in love.” Milt’s gaze went quickly down to the surface of the kitchen table. Where did that come from?

  Dane stood up. He crossed to Milt and bent down to hug him. “Your hope, I’m sure, isn’t misplaced.” He squeezed Milt a little harder, that way he had, bordering on painful, and then straightened up. “Since you did all the cooking, why don’t you let me clean up and take Miss Ruby out for her final walk?”

  “You don’t have to do that—” Milt started to protest.

  “Milt, Milt, Milt. You don’t get it. I’m trying to get rid of you. I need to get to bed. Now, it’ll take me ten minutes to load up the dishwasher and watch your pup pee. Would you just go so I can also get the couch made up?”

  “Got it.” Milt stood, gave Dane a lingering full-body hug. It felt good, real, and right.

  He went off to his bedroom.

  Chapter 18

  BILLY REALIZED he wasn’t sure. Jesus, when would life, and the decisions we needed to make, ever become simple? Uncomplicated? When he was a kid, Billy had thought that growing up meant knowing what you wanted, how to get it, and exactly what road to travel for happiness. Now he thought the older he got, the more confusing things became.

  Milt was right for him.

  Milt was wrong for him.

  The time for true love was now… or never.

  Billy sat in the 7:00 a.m. AA meeting at Sunny Dunes. This meeting was especially for the LGBT people, and Billy attended almost every day because it made for a good start. Apparently a lot of other people felt the same way, because the room was usually packed with between fifty to a hundred people.

  Maybe it was due to the early morning light and the promise a new day held, but Billy loved this meeting particularly because it was so friendly. There was always a greeter outside (and Billy had been coming to this meeting long enough that he usually knew the designated greeter, but even if he didn’t, it was always nice to be hugged), making each and every person who came into the room feel welcome, whether he or she was there for the first time or had been coming for years.

  Inside, it often felt like a family reunion, with lots of laughter, chatting, and more hugs. The big room had become as familiar and as comfortable as his own home. Once upon a time, before he was in the program, Billy would never have imagined an AA meeting could be so friendly, so full of life and fellowship.

  But he knew that for many of the people gathered here, and for him, this was a new life. And for many of them, their only life. Why shouldn’t it be fun? Why shouldn’t it feel special, warm, inclusive? Sobriety didn’t have to mean, Jon McGregor once told him, that one had to be sober, not in the strictest sense of the word. We could feel happy and whole if only we’d accept the gifts and miracles that were ours to claim if we simply followed what the program laid out—honesty, openness, willingness.

  Because the meeting was so large, Billy didn’t always get to share, nor did he always want to. But today he wanted to make sure the meeting’s leader that morning noticed his raised hand.

  He had something to say.

  It took three tries, but finally Billy got called upon. He’d been worried as he watched the clock edge toward eight.

  “Good morning! I’m grateful to be here today among all of you guys. Thanks for the lead, Brian, and congrats to everybody who took chips. You’re awesome.” Billy stared down at the black Cons he wore, realizing time was wasting.

  “Guys. I’ve fallen in love.” When Billy said the words, he drew in a sudden breath. In that little space, several people applauded, and a couple said, “Uh-oh.”

  “And the good news is he’s a great guy. Handsome. Charming. Loves animals. Sweet as all get-out. So-so cook. Can’t carry a tune in a bucket. But a keeper, I think, in just about anyone’s book.” Billy sighed.

  “And he’s a normie.” Normie was what people in the program called those who didn’t suffer from the disease of addiction/alcoholism. Normies had never been in recovery, because they’d never needed to. Normies didn’t use buzz words and phrases like “easy does it,” “let go and let God,” “progress, not perfection,” “higher power,” or “character defects.” Normies could go out to El Portal in Cathedral City and have a margarita or two with their enchiladas. They co
uld have a Bloody Mary at brunch at Spencer’s. Enjoy a beer on a hot day. All with no problems, all with no worries that one sip could lead to a thousand.

  Normies really didn’t “get” what recovery was all about. And why should they? It wasn’t a part of their world.

  When Billy mentioned that his new love interest was a normie, a groan went up in the room, which wasn’t the reaction Billy had hoped for. Where was that applause when he needed it?

  “Anyway, he knows my past. He knows I’m in recovery. He knows I go to meetings.” Billy held back that “he” had followed him to a meeting once. No need to dwell on stalkerish stuff like that.

  “I think he accepts who I am. A drunk.” But does he? Billy wondered. The subject of Billy’s disease had not come up for serious discussion. Not really. “But he knows about my clean time. He knows I love the program and that I love you guys.

  “Here’s the problem. I worry that, if things progress and get serious, it’ll be weird. Like, maybe he’ll expect me to stop coming to meetings. Or he’ll be jealous of the friends I have in the program. And believe me, kids, when I say there’s no way I’d subject some of you to him.” There was hooting and laughter. “Just sayin’. See? You get me. I can say that to you and you understand. I can tell you about the bender I went on and how three Chicago police cars chased me home. We can laugh about that. I can talk about being passed out on the floor of the men’s room of a movie theater and we can have ourselves a righteous chuckle.

  “Him? Maybe not so much. He might not find things like that amusing. He might be put off, or worse, disgusted.

  “And I can’t blame him for that.” Billy sighed, stretching out his legs in front of him.

  “What if we don’t have common ground? What if it all goes to shit because we’re not on the same page?”

  Billy looked around. There was a mix of boredom, concern, apathy, and sympathy. Cross talk, or answering questions and offering opinions, was forbidden at meetings, so Billy didn’t really expect anything more than what was in front of him right here and right now.

  “Anyway, that’s all I got. Thanks for listening.”

  Brian, a heavy guy with a mass of wild white hair, had led the meeting. He thanked Billy for his share and then said they were all out of time. He asked the group to recite the seventh step prayer together. It asked the higher power to accept the good and the bad in each of them—and asked for strength as they went out into the day.

  Billy wanted to ask Milt to do the same. He usually felt better after a share, kind of relieved, but today, he just felt more confused.

  OUTSIDE IN the parking lot, Billy paused from unlocking his bike when he heard a soft voice behind him calling his name.

  He turned to see a woman who’d sat quietly in the back of the room. She was older, maybe fifties, with dyed red hair and a lanky and tall body. A smattering of freckles spread, like a constellation, across the bridge of her nose and her cheeks. When she smiled, she revealed a big gap between her front teeth. In spite of what some might call “defects,” Billy thought she was arresting, maybe even stunningly beautiful. Her wide green eyes regarded him with what Billy perceived as amusement.

  He stood and extended his hand. “Hey.”

  “Hi. I’m Char.” She looked at the bike and then back at him. “I liked your share.”

  “You did? Thanks.” Billy affixed his bike lock to its proper place on his bicycle. He stood up straighter and moved toward Char. “Why?”

  “Because I’ve been there.” She grinned and held up her left hand. With her right hand, she pointed to the simple gold band on her third finger. “Going on ten years now.”

  “That’s great,” Billy said. “Happy?”

  “Happiness is a fleeting thing. It comes and goes. But we’re solid. And… she’s a normie. In fact, this woman has a beer and it’s lampshade on her head time. She’s such a normie that she thinks alcoholics’ lives are like Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon in that old flick, Days of Wine and Roses. Ever see that one?”

  “Oh yeah. Watched it with my sponsor once upon a time, to tell you the truth. I thought it was terrific—and rang true.”

  “I guess you’re right. What I meant was it took me a while to convince Bridget, that’s the wife, that we’re not all like Lee Remick. Some of us are Jack Lemmon—we do recover.”

  Billy nodded, remembering how Lee Remick’s character in the movie never could manage sobriety—and that factor was what led to the death of their love.

  “My point is a relationship between someone in the program and a normie can work. It’s all about wanting it to.” Char looked faraway. “I guess that’s true for any relationship. Once you get past the initial ‘perfection’ stage, it’s all about a decision to make it work, huh?”

  Billy nodded.

  Char went on. “But you guys have to have common ground. You need to understand each other and what makes your relationship unique—its challenges. First and foremost, in my opinion, the normie has to be humble enough and loving enough to know that, for us, sobriety has to come first. Not our spouses. Sorry. Not our jobs, pets, kids. I know that sounds harsh, man, but I think you know what I’m sayin’ and why. If we let our sobriety take a back seat to anything else, we run the risk of letting our disease become active again—and you know as well as I do that can be a life-or-death thing. Unless we’re clean, we’re not much good to spouses, employers, pets, or even kids. We have to guard that.”

  “Yeah. I get that,” Billy said. “Only I’m worried that he won’t. That he’ll feel slighted when I’m off to yet another meeting. Or I’m meeting, say, well, you for coffee someday and he wants to come and I tell him no.”

  “I know,” Char said. “And I’m not saying it’s easy. Hell, Bridge and I are still negotiating. We still have our differences. She still feels slighted sometimes, even accuses me of being brainwashed or in a cult.” Char laughed. “I’m sure you’ve heard it before too. But we make it work. Why? Because next to my sobriety, she’s my top priority. God, I love that woman!” Char’s face lit up with joy. “And she loves me in spite of all my, as we like to say, character defects. We make it work because we want it to work.

  “I don’t know about you and your man. Early days, right?”

  Billy nodded. He didn’t say Even earlier than early days. If I’m lucky, we’re like a just-fertilized egg in the womb.

  “Well, all I can say is that if this is going somewhere—and I think it is ’cause I saw the passion in your eyes and heard it in your words when you shared—you’ll work things out so that you can both protect what’s important, as well as be there for the other.

  “Try to make him understand. But if you want my advice—and I know you didn’t ask for it, but I love to give it—don’t try to draw him into the program. Keep things a little separate. One thing is—normies and us just can’t ever completely ‘get’ each other, not in my experience. That’s why, even if this becomes soul mate territory for you, with a white picket fence and a shared Frenchie, you’ll never be able to get from him what you get from the rooms. Because we’re your people. Always. And these meetings, the steps, your sponsor, all that good shit will help keep you the best man you can be—for him.”

  “Wow. Thanks, Char. I think you’ve helped me more than you know.”

  “It weren’t nothin’.” She grinned.

  They both knew it was something. But that was the beauty and the miracle of the program. They helped each other out with no more than a desire to be free and to share that freedom with another lost soul.

  What Char had done this morning was momentous, but all in a day’s work too.

  Billy hugged her. “Let’s do coffee sometime.”

  “Sure thing, Billy. Take care.”

  And she was gone. Billy watched her drive away in her little green-and-white electric Smart car and found the thing he’d found the very first time he’d stepped into a meeting: hope.

  Chapter 19

  THERE WAS something different the next ti
me Milt saw Billy. It wasn’t anything extraordinary. In fact, what made it special was its very ordinariness.

  A couple of days after Dane had gone back home to Ohio and the acute pain and joy of his visit had quieted to something gentle yet throbbing, like an old scar, Billy simply showed up on his doorstep early one morning.

  Milt had just taken Ruby out for a long walk, all the way around the perimeter of the park, which was about three miles all told. The weather forecast for that day predicted unseasonable heat for late winter, with late-afternoon temperatures soaring up to the low nineties, so Milt thought getting Ruby’s major walk out of the way early was not only a good idea but a vital one. The walk was perfection—they started off just as the sun was coming up, with the sky on fire with color—pink, lavender, tangerine. A gilded band winked on the horizon. There was a gentle breeze, almost a whisper of air with just a hint of chill to it. There was quiet, blessed peaceful quiet.

  Milt had a feeling, in this serenity, that circumstances in his life had done a one-eighty. Taking in the silhouetted palms and the mystical soaring mountain ranges gave him a sense of contentment he hadn’t allowed himself to experience—until today.

  At home, he was deciding what to do about breakfast when the kitchen door swung open. Billy poked his head in the doorway. “I know, I know. I should knock, but we’re old buddies, right? Open-door policy among friends?”

  Milt, at the sink, shook his head in mock dismay, pretending to be appalled at Billy’s social graces. “Seriously? You just swing the door open? I could have been in here naked, jacking off or something.” He chuckled.

  “Well, isn’t that a pretty picture!” Billy laughed. “If you’re trying to discourage me from barging in, you’re taking the wrong approach.” He hesitated there in the open doorway. “Um, can I barge in?”

  “You’re already halfway there, you big doofus. Get in here.”

  And Billy did. Milt looked him over from head to toe. Internally, he gave a low whistle. Billy had something in common with the mountain ranges surrounding the valley, in that Milt never grew tired of the majesty of the view. He always appreciated it.