Stronger

by Misty Provencher

  "You have kids?"

  "Oh, just one. Howie. He's out in California. For work."

  There's a whole extension of Mrs. Lowt out there? "Do you have grandkids?"

  She laughs, swatting the air at my suggestion. "Oh no. Howie doesn't have time for children. He works too much. His partner, David, does too. The boys lives in Huntington Beach, just a block from the actual beach. They've been together...how many years has it been? Twelve, I think?"

  I almost choke. Mrs. Lowt has a gay son? And she's talking about him as if she's completely at ease with it? I would've never guessed that any of these aspects of Mrs. Lowt's life belonged to her. By how she pinched butts and preached to me, I thought I knew enough to know her, but I realize I have no idea who she really is.

  "Goodness," she says looking up at the grandmother's clock on a shelf in her living room. "It's nearly time for Break Ins and Busts. Come back anytime, Lydia. You know you're always welcome over here--it's just that Peaches and I have our routine. I can't break it or he'll pee in my church shoes."

  She's got church shoes?

  She hustles me to her front door.

  "Come back anytime, Lydia. Anytime. If you ever want to watch with us, let me know."

  <<<<>>>>

  I'm sitting at the edge of my bed that night, looking out the window at the silvery, night sky and it's the first time I've thought of anything besides having a drink. Aidan's lying belly-down on the other side of the bed, his face turned toward my seated hip, but his eyes are closed. It's the first time I've really thought about how Aidan's been staying with me.

  I'm having a hard time reconciling the last week-and-a-half in terms of my three-date rule. But this hasn't really been dates, has it? We've been sleeping together, although he's never touched me once. Having him here has been...simple.

  "What are you thinking about?" His drowsy voice startles me. His eyes are open, watching. I wonder how long. I catch him doing it all the time and I'm suddenly lost on what it might mean. Long looks used to translate easily between the sheets, but it's not so simple with Aidan. I'm unsettled by how much I want him to stay. Of course, I'm not about to tell him any of this.

  "Snow," I say.

  "Mmm. You need a tree for your million ornaments. But I don't know if we can find a tree big enough to hold all of them."

  "I told you, I don't put up a tree."

  "Why not?"

  "I just don't," I say. How do I tell him that a tree means home? It means this place is my home and I live here? This apartment has always been my transition place, just a place for me to wait until Des finishes his business and comes back to me. I don't know what to think of it now.

  "Tomorrow, if it's not so bad out..."

  "I'm not going tree shopping."

  "No, I was thinking of taking you to a meeting with me."

  I already know what kind of meeting he's talking about. "No thanks."

  "Okay," he says with a little shrug under the covers. He closes his eyes.

  That was just a little too easy. I've heard of the kind of meetings he attends. Tables full of slobbering drunks. You stand up in front of a whole room of them and admit to what a douchebag you are. As if I'm one of them. As if he is. I don't see why he even keeps going.

  And it's freezing cold outside. If I have to go out, there will be a fifty-fifty chance that I have to walk in the direction of the liquor store. And if I have to walk by the liquor store--

  If I even made it there, by the slim chance that I did, I bet the chairs are all the folding kind, the ones that have no padding. My ass will ache the whole time. There's nothing worse than chairs that squeak every time you move around, so everyone has to turn around and stare at you.

  Then, they'll all want to preach at me with all their stick with its, or their You can kick this, or if I could do it, so can you. I'm positive they'll be rattling strings of encouraging quotes heisted from t-shirts and bumper stickers like Prohibition cheerleaders. I'm annoyed with them already.

  Aidan says he goes twice a week to these meetings. I've never kept tabs on his coming and going to know how long a meeting even takes. Probably an hour. Maybe two, if they sit around eating cookies and talking afterward. I chew my thumbnail thinking about that particular hell. Depending on how far away the meeting is, Aidan will be gone at least an hour and, at most, two or three hours if I don't go with him.

  And that means I'll be here by myself.

  I think of a couple days ago, when he went out for the salt and flour. I chomp the corner of my nail right off, remembering how hard it was to stop myself from going down to the liquor store. I don't know that I'm any stronger than I was only a couple of measly days ago. It sure doesn't feel like I am.

  I don't want to go. But I'm not sure I can stay here without Aidan watching over me.

  I slide down beside him. His eyes are open again. He reaches up and pulls my ravaged thumb from my mouth, tugging my fingers so I turn on my side to face him. With my forearm against his chest, he peers down at the word scrawled on my ring finger.

  "That's a tattoo, isn't it?" he asks. I nod. He squints in the semi-dark to read it.

  "It says Strong."

  "Ahhh," he says, "good choice of words."

  "It's not a word, it's a name. My husband's last name. He got me drunk and had me tattooed."

  "Oh," Aidan says and his frown makes me feel ashamed. I lay there with my heart stuck in my throat like a spiny peach pit, trying to put my finger on why. There are plenty of reasons to feel terrible: I'm a married woman, lying in bed with another man; I've got a husband who has not only cheated, but committed a felony doing it; I'm branded forever with my mistake's name. I'm gnawing on my thumb again and only realize it when Aidan gently pulls it from between my lips.

  "I'm sorry he happened to you," he says. I force a laugh from my throat, trying to make light of it.

  "Yeah, well...you don't know the half of it."

  "Will you tell me about it?"

  "I don't want to..."

  "Never mind then," Aidan says softly. He runs the knuckles of his curled fingers like feathers over my throat. "Would you just tell me one thing? Did he give you those bruises that were on your neck a couple days ago?"

  Eric's fingers jump out from the memory, gripping my neck instantly. His bruising words follow, echoing in my skull: Girl, you know what you are. I was waiting my turn. Modo's Trophy Girl.

  I swallow turn away, looking out the window. Without any liquor running through me, the humiliation is unbearable. My eyes become bathtubs, overflowing with the sting of my shame. I'm caught beneath the surface. The room swims.

  I manage to choke out, "No. Des didn't do it."

  I'm glad Aidan doesn't ask about the burns on my legs. Instead, I lay there, paralyzed and praying, that Aidan doesn't make me admit that the damage came from some random guy that waited his turn for me at Modo's. Slut was such a funny word to me, a joke, until Eric showed me that it was true.

  Aidan's hand moves beneath the sheets, finding its way to my forearm. He pulls me closer, turning me toward him again. I curl my head beneath his chin to avoid his eyes. My forehead pressed against his neck, I feel him swallow.

  He rubs his palm against my back. The soft circle there breaks my dam. The shame spills out of me in great sobs, pouring down over his chest, but he doesn't say a word. The twitch of him in the valley between my thighs stills. He doesn't pull my hair, splaying my head back to kiss my neck. He doesn't push my head under the covers toward his hips.

  He does none of the things that I have come to expect of a man. Instead, he keeps on tracing soft circles, like the links of Olympic rings or the graceful turns of a figure skater, across my back.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MEETING DOOM AT ITS OWN DOOR

  "We have to get going, Lydia," Aidan groans from the bedroom door. He doesn't even try to hide the edge in his voice. I'm sure he suspects that I'm stalling and I am. But I also have to look more than just right for something like this. I'll p
robably have to stand up and confess my name along with all my sins that got me to the meeting.

  I'm still scrutinizing my belt choice, my head tipped to my shoulder. I loop my thumb under it.

  "Not sure if this looks right," I say. This would be so much easier if Aidan was Desmond. Des would walk right in, pointing and critiquing, and it would be done. As it is, I'm floundering in front of the mirror, making us both late to the Meeting of Drunken Doom.

  "They don't care what you look like, I promise," he urges. When I don't budge, he drops a shoulder against the door frame. "If you don't want to go, you don't have to. Maybe you're not ready yet."

  Not ready. Maybe he doesn't mean it to be insulting, or maybe he does, but either way, it jabs me. I can't sit in this apartment alone and be 100% sure that I won't throw on my coat and shoot down to the store for a bottle. Even though I don't want to go to this meeting, it's a ready or not situation.

  I step away from the mirror and get stuck again. My thumbnail ends up between my teeth. With him standing there, staring at me, waiting for me to move, I finally realize it might just be easier if I ask him to do what I need. It's humiliating to ask, but I can't seem to unglue myself without it. He's stuck with me through the last few days of throwing up and looking like hell; I hope this won't be too much for him.

  "Could you ask me to turn and tell me exactly what looks right or what doesn't?" I say. My voice has a soft quiver in it that I hope he interprets as sexy instead of what it is--scared. For a moment, it seems like he's not willing to feed into my sick dependency.

  "Is that what your husband does for you?"

  I nod. Aidan's stare is intense, as if he's putting a puzzle together in his head.

  Then he says firmly, "Turn."

  I do as he says, slowly. When I'm standing with my toes facing him again, I can't tear my eyes off the floor. I feel like my clothing has gaping holes over my nipples, over my crotch. It's a focused sort of vulnerability that is worse than being naked.

  "You wear jeans like a rock star's wet dream, Lydia," he murmurs. His footsteps close the space between us. "And that shirt shows every reason why God, in his infinite wisdom, made you a woman and not a man. But," he pauses in front of me, his shoes pointing at my toes, "I would put your hair down."

  His fingers release the knot of dreads I artistically bundled up at my crown. They rain down like Medusa's tresses. He clears his throat, cueing me to look up at him. His grin trembles.

  "We're good to go," he says.

  <<<<>>>>

  The meeting is held in the basement of the Parish Street Church, a church I have never even noticed before, although I've passed it a thousand times. It's like any building, with thick, brown bricks and a cross studding the apex. It represents brimstone and confession to me. I shake and Aidan misinterprets it as a reaction to the frosty temperature. He grasps my hand to distill warmth or courage, or maybe there was no misinterpretation at all. Maybe he's hanging on so I won't bolt.

  He leads me all the way around the church to the back and we descend the concrete stairs like criminals, slipping into a musty, gray, cinderblock corridor. Once the door latches behind us, with a metallic bang, Aidan lets go of my hand. I guess he figures I'm good and caught.

  The hall is dim, the main light coming from an open door twenty feet away that casts a rectangular, yellow glow. The murmur of conversation spills from that doorway.

  I pause as Aidan continues to walk toward the door. I think of turning back. I would, if it didn't feel like my heels just turned to cement blocks. The musty basement air seems too damn close and all I want is to get a breath of somewhere else.

  "You coming, Lydia?" Aidan says, but he doesn't wait up for me to move my cement shoes. He just shoots me a grin and walks around the corner of the door.

  People greet him, but I'm clinging to the shadows of the hallway, an outsider. The people in there don't sound like alcoholics. Their voices sound like normal, everyday voices, which is worse for me.

  It means that the people in there have been cured. They've got a handle on their fuck-ups and now they're swimming their way back up to the surface, to life. I'm the slobbering drunk I was worried about. They're going to see right through me. I step away from the door, putting my back against the cold, gray wall. I can't go in there. I'm not one of them. I'm paralyzed by my shame.

  "Are we ready to begin?" a man's voice asks. It's familiar. Dull. Ah yes, Leonard. "Devon, can you grab the door?"

  The door is hinged on the inside, so Devon doesn't even see me as he shuts me out with a metallic clunk. Shit. I stand there, waiting for Aidan to come out and retrieve me. Or to tell somebody in that room to throw me a lifeline. I'm drowning in shame out here.

  Nobody comes. I mutter a string of curses. Now it's going to be twice as hard to walk into that room. Everyone will look up and gawk at the loser that couldn't make it on time.

  I stomp my right foot and throw my shoulders back against the wall.

  I'm either going to stand here for an hour and wait for Aidan or I'm going to open that goddamned door. It's one or the other, because I know that if I leave, I'm headed straight for the liquor store.

  I'd trade a million karat diamond for a gulp of liquor burning down my throat, but I know I can't do it. I'm wrung out. I can't go back to the Erics at Modo's; I can't sit in my apartment drowning my life in endless shots. If there's nothing else in life for me but another drink, I'm going to end up swinging from my shower rod. This is rock bottom, I suppose, and the precarious position I've been holding onto, between a rock and a hard place, has squeezed my future flat.

  The door swings open with a squeak. Aidan ducks his head out, sees me plastered against the wall, and, with a grin, lifts his hand. He waggles a finger playfully at me to come inside. My chest stutters in short breaths. When I don't move, Aidan comes out, takes my hand, and leans his head down to whisper in my ear.

  "You don't have to say a word. Just sit there and listen."

  I nod, because if I open my mouth, I'm pretty sure that nothing good is going to come of it. I trail behind him, into the room. There are round tables with folding chairs and he drops my hand the moment we hit the one closest to the door, pulling out a chair for me to sit. I perch on the edge of the folding chair with wide eyes, waiting for all the eyes in the room to turn and critique me.

  Leonard--I can tell who he is from voice alone--is standing at the front of the room, beneath a naked light bulb, droning a welcome to everyone in the room. Many of them don't tear themselves from his dull opening speech to look at me, but then, many others do. Some flash me a bored glance, a few smile, some assess me like an unwanted newcomer to the playground, before turning back around. I feel dismissed as I slide further back onto the creaking, metal seat of a folding chair. I was right about the lousy chairs.

  There are no individual introductions. Thank God.

  Leonard announces the evening's topic. Something about spouses, about fighting addiction while staying committed. Something like that. I can't really concentrate on the words since I'm still debating how I can bolt past Aidan and make it out the door, up the stairs, down the street, and to the counter of the liquor store.

  Then my stomach sinks with the thought of downing the whole bottle in one gulp. It's a sick fantasy that nearly gives me orgasms at the part where I'm drinking, and nearly makes me throw up when I think about finishing the drink and still having to deal with my life as it is right now.

  I rinse and repeat the fantasy, soiling and cleaning my mind in a frantic tumble, as random people speak from the other tables, introducing themselves and admitting their losership openly. For the first couple speakers, I'm so busy worrying that someone's going to call on me to say something, I don't really hear a thing. It's not until a familiar brunette speaks that I pay attention.

  "Hi, my name is Natalie, and I'm an alcoholic. I've been sober for eight months and three days," she says. Her hair is separated in a razor-sharp, white part that runs down the center of her head.
There is a dull murmur of hi Natalie's that rise up from the folding chair trenches. "I've also been married for a year. I think that it's incredibly hard to work a relationship, even when your spouse is a normy and even when he's supportive of my recovery from this disease. An established relationship is hard enough, but I can't imagine beginning a new relationship and trying to juggle it while trying to get sober at the same time. The two are at odds. You have to be well and whole before you can really think about giving yourself to another person." Murmurs of agreement rise up and a few people clap. "I was thinking it might be useful to talk a little about the suggestions in regards to relationships in the first year of sobriety, Leonard? I think there are newcomers who might benefit."

  She says this while glancing at Aidan and I. There's nothing else in my head but the clang of one word: bitch. I can't believe Aidan's own friend is doing this. Aidan is the one person who is helping me. He got me here.

  As Natalie's eyes come to rest on me again, I can't take any more of it. It's either explode right here and now, or ditch this place and hit the nearest bar on my home.

  It's not like I really have a choice.

  So.

  I jump to my feet. The metal chair flips, clattering across the floor behind me. Anyone who didn't know I was in attendance before, definitely knows it now. The sea of faces turns to give me center stage.

  "I wouldn't be sitting here now if it wasn't for that night at Modo's! Yes, Aidan made a mistake and we had sex, but it was just his friend's name for Christ's sake! I don't even want to be here, but I am, because Aidan's gotten me this far. And if it's none of that--if you're giving me the death stare because your husband looked at me when I first met the two of you--then, it isn't my damn fault...quit being such a jealous bitch for Christ's sake!"

  Aidan rubs his forehead with one hand, looking into his lap with an embarrassed grin. He's probably regretting everything from the moment his lips touched my Mojito-filled belly button, right up to the second ago, when I sprung off the seat beside him.